Of course there was a wise old woman. There always is, in every fairy tale. In every story, probably. She’s the fairy godmother, or the hero’s great-aunt, or just the crone who lives next door.
If the hero and/or heroine are somehow so unlucky as to have grown up without a godmother, or great-aunt, and in a crone-less neighborhood, it doesn’t matter. She shows up, anyway, like clockwork, at their isolated cabin in the woods as a storm rages at midnight, just as the baby’s being born, or the crisis is coming, or the good fairy/bad fairy is about to lay a blessing-that-will-be-a-curse, or a curse-that-will-bless, on somebody.
Apparently, these women are simply everywhere, unavoidable, tripping over each other in the streets and desperate to impart their hard-won wisdom. The crone will show up, come hell or high water or logic.
The question that occurs to any halfway intelligent, thoughtful listener is, of course, what is the frail old biddy doing out there in the forest, in the night, in the middle of a raging storm? What is it about deep, dark, untraveled forests that proves such a draw for old, stooped women? Why don’t they just stay home, or at least walk around during daylight hours, when they could see where they were going?
On the other hand, in every story everywhere, they always find shelter and help when they need it, so maybe this is a given, if you are a crone. And, if that is true, then presumably the crones know it, and so they know they don’t have to worry about mundane details like paying attention to where they’re going or being sensible about their travel plans.
It’s curious, really, this crone lore: who are they really? One could mine a lifetime of research, probably, if one were an academic in search of a particularly esoteric Phd., out of the habits and lifestyles of fairy tale crones.
Speaking of which, do you know what those Grimm Brothers were really doing, when they collected and wrote down all their alarming stories? (No need to rehash that old chestnut about how grim the Grimms truly were. Consider that settled.) The Bros. G were researching language, comparing stories and noting how they diverged across the countryside. (Little Red Riding Hood might have been Little Pink Knickers in one town, and Big Red Shawl in another— somehow, they used the differences to diagram an evolution of words and grammar—and thus invented History of Language, causing many English majors much misery for generations.)
In this story, if it’s a real story, then, there has to be a Crone, and there is. Don’t we feel lucky? We’ll meet her now. She’s not a godmother, nor an aunt, nor anybody’s neighbor. She’s not even necessarily old. But she is the requisite wise woman, or the closest approximation we’ll get here. She is called simply The Crone. We’ve typecast her in title and office, because really, why waste time trying to fancy things up?
It was to this woman, large and square and waiting, tapping her foot on a path running along a cliff over a broad, slow river, that Faraway brought Seth when they’d escaped the bloodthirsty virgin and her clamoring warrior clan, when their wounds dripped hot blood (red from the hero, green from the dragon)and they’d both nearly blacked out in the darkness, the insensibility, the sheer confusingness of their flight.
“Oh ho!” she cried, “What happened to you?” And then there was a time of ministering, and inspecting, and poking and prodding, most of which neither Seth nor Faraway much noticed, as they were both just too glad to be on solid earth, and free from pointy Medieval hunters, to care about such minor details.
This may have been the moment, so far, when the two of them were most attuned. Getting away, then getting down, and all the dizziness and blood loss and desperation that went along with those, were their shared experience. They had been blooded, as a partnership. They lay now, on the still ground, while the crone tended to them, and thought of little except the stillness, and the quiet, and the freedom they’d gained from quick death or slow and painful hacking. And each other. When they thought back, or at all, at that moment, each included the other in his thoughts.
—When Faraway’s better..., Seth’s more cogent thoughts began.
—When this hero can stand..., went Faraway’s.
You see they were a team now. Sometimes, barbaric as it may sound, shared peril is the best thing to cement a team, and shared injury is good glue.
“And where have you boys been?” the crone asked. And Seth found, to his minor surprise, that he could answer; that her words pierced his thoughts and came clearly. Moreover, he found that he wanted to answer, that the time for talking, for discussing and understanding, had come.
(You must know that the essence of all stories only comes in the telling. Understanding is born of relating. The meaning, the shape and reasons for our past comes into focus not as it happens, not as we think about it, but through words, as we tell. Any number of things may happen to you, but until you use them in a story, they are only random incidents. It is as you relate your tale, as you string those incidents onto a thread of logic like a rosary, that they take on shape and function. Virginia Woolf said we impress our memories, and she thought doing so was artificial and wrong. The Apostle Paul said we redeem the time, and he thought this was godly and good. But all they both meant was that we make sense of the un-sensical, that which does not have, inherently, a pattern or point. And what would the Apostle Paul and Virginia Woolf think of being cast together as our great and worthy wise ones? They’d be offended, no doubt, and one would rail while the other might laugh. You decide which would do which, and when you tell someone else about it, you’ll have made that story yours.)
“We’ve been to a small planet taken over by a flower, and to, I guess, the Middle Ages, where there was a woman who was hunting a unicorn. That was... pretty disgusting,” he added. “And... we didn’t do much. Mostly, almost as soon as we got there, we had to start trying to escape. The flower wanted to to turn him into mulch and make me protect her, even though she didn’t need it. And the hunters just wanted to kill him, but I think they would have killed me, too, pretty quickly. But we didn’t do anything. I don’t know why we were there.”
He frowned at the dragon then.
“Did you rescue anybody?” the Crone asked. “Set free any prisoners? Right any wrongs?”
“No. Like I said, mostly we just had to get away.”
She nodded. She’d been washing his worst wound, where a rock– or something– had struck him on the shoulder and torn a flap of skin loose. She’d already wrapped up Faraway’s leg. She seemed to have about her no end of linen, bandages, and little bottles of heaven-only-knows-what which she used to dab at them, pour over their cuts, soak their bandages, or demand they drink. So far, Seth had enjoyed one that tasted of vanilla and gagged over one that tasted like burnt cabbage.
“Pretty stupid, then,” she agreed with him. “Terrible waste of time for a stalwart hero like you.”
She went back to her wrapping, not stopping till his entire shoulder was mummified and he couldn’t move it. “That should hold,” she nodded.
“Do you do this much?” he asked.
“What? Oh, almost never. But then, it’s not often that a mythical beast and his hero come swooping down pouring blood and looking bedraggled. I go with what the world hands me, you know?”
Seth nodded vaguely.
“And now let’s get you bedded down so you can rest, and then we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Come this way.”
She waited while Seth hauled himself up, and then they both stood still while Faraway gravely, slowly brought himself to his feet. Then she turned and led them along a sketch of a trail, through trees and thick bushes, and eventually right into the densest, most inaccessible copse in the woods.
She’d disappeared. Seth looked hard at the riotously intertwined foliage to find a way through, and failed.
“Oh, here,” he heard, and a hand reached out and grasped his shirt, pulling him past branches and sharp twigs that caught at him but somehow failed to dig in, and leaves that seemed to magically open... until he found himself standing next to the crone in a clear space, with a hedge of trees and greenery all around, and a palm-sized patch of sky overhead. And Faraway had found his way in, as well, somehow, so that they were all curled into the space together, touching on every side but comfortable, fitted. “And here you’ll be safe until you’re ready to move again, to find your next quest or rampant flower that needs pruning.” And the crone grinned at him, toothy, mocking, yet friendly, and he somehow found himself smiling back, although at the same time shame over his last two adventures burned in his throat and weighed down his mind.
“Thank you,” he mumbled. “Um–”
“Oh, don’t worry. No one will find you. Except me, I’ll come back. But for now you need to sleep, the both of you. Give my salves and potions a chance to do their work. Get you healing. Go on now, find a spot and stay there. Make yourself at home.” Again, she grinned, already backing away into the undergrowth. “I’ll check in on you in the morning.”
And a soft forest floor, it turned out, was a surprisingly comfortable place to sleep, particularly when curled up against a warm dragon, the dark of the copse all around them, and with the tiniest opening into the sky as a nightlight.
When you are a hero, a warm bed is a rare thing. Regular meals are just as rare, and if you are a hero traveling with a dragon, human conversation also falls into this category of strange-and-valuable. Seth had been enjoying long hours of sleep next to Faraway in their copse of trees, and feasting on fruit and meat and fresh green vegetables that the crone brought him, and chatting with her about inconsequential things – the time of year, and whether the nights would stay warm, and the denizens of that area, and who might wander by to discover him. Three days went by like this until Faraway decided to hunt, and took off in a crack of air and a rattle of branches, and the Crone led Seth back up to the cliff-top path where she’d met them, and showed him a likely spot to sit and look down on the river rushing far below.
Rivers are gossipy things, chattering and moving their news along, always eager for what’s coming, what’s next. You can’t trust rivers, but by that same token, you needn’t worry over them too much. They are too flighty, and too hurried, to catch many details, and what they do hear will be broken up, splashed into pieces, before they ever have a chance to repeat it clearly.
“What do you do here?” Seth asked.
The Crone shrugged. “I live.”
“But what does that mean?” the hero asked. “Are you a prisoner in this forest? Were you driven out of some city somewhere, made to live here alone in some hovel somewhere? Is there a king of a prince who has wronged you, sent you to this wilderness?
She glanced at him. “I live here.”
“But–”
She gazed down at the river as it passed, chittering, below. A couple of birds were squabbling over some trash on the far shore, and far upstream there might have been a boat coming into view around a corner. Finally, the Crone sighed, and shrugged, and looked up at Seth.
“I am not a prisoner, or a victim of any kind, hero-boy,” she informed him. “I came here by choice – and how do you know I even live alone, anyway? I do, but that’s beside the point. My home is in a city near here– at its edge, anyway. You’re the one sleeping in a forest. I’ve lived in many places, and I’ll live in many more, before my life is over. I’m happy here, for the moment. But I don’t need rescuing, or avenging, or any other heroic service, thank you very much. That’s not how life works, and you should learn that if you’re going to actually be a hero, and not just some dumb kid running around swinging his sword where he shouldn’t.”
Seth was taken aback, and also a bit angered. He’d only meant to make conversation, and see if perhaps he could offer anything to the Crone. She had fed and cared for him and Faraway, after all. It seemed only right to, well, go out and kill something for her, or something, if she needed that.
“I didn’t–” he began.
“Oh yes, you did. Listen, boy, let me teach you something. You don’t owe me anything for this, it’s just what old, crazy women do in stories– they take care of fallen heroes and patch up raggedy monsters. I’m a supporting character here, got that? But I also get to share some wisdom. Ready? Listen then: life isn’t a story, that you can make up. Oh, it is a story, really, but only after the fact. You don’t get to write it till you’ve lived it, first. Then you can tell it any way you want, and make anything you like out of it. Completely heroic, savior of the world, whatever you want.” She looked at him closely, and saw that she’d lost him. “What I mean is, no one gets to plot out their own path in life. You don’t get a map, and you can’t draw your own. What happens to you, how your adventures turn out – you can’t choose those things. Things happen, and you just have to do the best you can as you face them. So all your worry about being heroic, about doing the heroic thing, at all times and in all places - it’s ridiculous. You can’t know what’s heroic. You won’t find noble quests every place you go, and you probably won’t even recognize them when you do. But if you’re prepared to serve some greater good, if you’re really ready and willing to take on injustice when it shows its face– and you are, I can tell that, so you don’t need to prove it– then you’ll do that when the opportunities arise. And until then, you just have to muddle through like the rest of us. When you’re telling people about your adventures afterward, then you can edit out all the boring parts, the days and weeks you think are un-heroic. You can tell your story however you want– that meeting you had with that killer Rose has the makings for a fine heroic tale, if you ask me. And the story of the bloody virgin, too. That’s a very fine adventure, the revealing of evil lurking under its cover of beauty, the proclaiming of horror where the public sees what’s right and proper. Good stuff,” she nodded vigorously. “You just have to learn to tell it. But this obsession you have for recognizing your own heroism as its happening, or knowing which path in front of you is going to hold the greatest nobility– that’s just stupid. It won’t work. And you’ll drive yourself crazy, and end up doing nothing if you don’t stop.”
“Is this what Faraway told you?” Seth asked her. His voice was stiff, and he was sitting very still, and he said it not because he thought the dragon actually had been talking to her, or would have said any of the things she’d just said, but because he had to argue, had to find a way to oppose what she said, and that was the only objection he could think of.
“No, it wasn’t Faraway. Good God, boy, who do you think I am? I’m here to give you advice, that’s my function in this life, I suppose, and it’s certainly the right I’ve earned, after cleaning your wounds and feeding and keeping you. Hear what I say and do what you will with it– you can cast me as the bad witch or the wicked stepmother or just a senile old biddy, if you ever tell anybody this part. But what I am is a friend, and what you are is going nowhere, when you could go great places, and be great use to a great many people. And I think that’s what you’d like, isn’t it? Am I wrong, boy?”
After a second, Seth shook his stiff head. No, she wasn’t wrong there.
“Good. Then... go. Fly off with Faraway. And see what comes next. Where will he take you, what will you find there? You’ll never know until you go, boy. But you’ll cheat yourself of your greatest story if you go with a pre-planned agenda, always rushing off after the nearest injustice, or the most convenient battle to fight or maiden to free. Sometimes you have to live in a place a little while before you can see where the real injustices lie. You have to get to know people before you can understand who needs your help, and who just wants to use a handy hero. And then,” she finished, looking satisfied, “You won’t find yourself chatting up bloodthirsty virgins who get off at the sight of their barbarian boyfriends slicing off the heads of whatever’s around them.”
“But,” Seth took a deep breath, “But once you get to know people, it’s harder to know if they’re good or bad. It all gets... complicated.” He sighed heavily, his chest heaving as if in a great release.
“Well, yes,” she agreed, tilting her head reflectively. “People are complicated, and their good guy/bad guy status is generally full of shades of gray and very inexact. But still, life’s better when you acknowledge that instead of just bashing ahead and refusing to take time to see it.” She turned her head and looked at him, frowning. The river slowed its rushing to hear. “The problem with a complicated situation isn’t knowing what to do,” she said. “The problem is making yourself do the right thing when you see its consequences. Sticking around to get to know people means you’re going to realize how your actions will affect them. And even when you’re righting wrongs, there’s going to be some fallout. If you save the virgin tied to the stake, you’ve saved her life, but then the dragon she was being sacrificed to is going to be mad, and want something else instead, isn’t he? And if you kill him, well, maybe you’ve murdered a good creature, who deserved to live and never meant to cause all that trouble. Or, even if it was a nasty, horrible dragon, once you kill it all the sheep and goat populations in the area will start to get out of control, and you’ll have created an ecological disaster. Never thought of that one, did you?”
Seth certainly hadn’t.
“I thought,” he began, but then didn’t say anything.
“You thought there was nothing to it, that being all heroic meant glorious battles with cheering crowds, and probably a girl throwing herself at you when you’d finished. Blood and battle and wine, women, and song. Well, it can be all that– but only when you tell the story. And those are really not the most interesting parts of an adventure, anyway. There’s much more interesting stuff to tell before and after the battle, and in the shadows behind the big celebration. Go for the interesting stuff, hero. You’ll find plenty that’s worth your attention.”
Seth sighed again, lifting his shoulders and dropping them, inadvertently dislodging a pebble to go bouncing down the long, steep slope into the river, which hurriedly sped up and rushed on as if it hadn’t been listening in. Seth never noticed.
“What should I do now?” he asked.
The Crone gathered herself up, and stood above him dusting her not-inconsequential body off. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she told him. “You’re the hero – go adventuring! You’ve got a dragon – fly off on him. See what he thinks, where he wants to go. The whole world is open to you, my boy. Go explore it, and come back someday to tell me what you found and what you did there.”
She turned and started to walk away. But, like all Wise Women (or Aunts, or Godmothers, or Crones anywhere, in any story) she stopped when she thought of one last word to share.
“Go gather a story,” she told Seth. And then she walked off.
“I will,” he muttered. And he waited for Faraway to fly back, and then took off with him and flew higher and higher, and winked out in the empty blue of the sky, and went places he’d never imagined, and saw situations he could never have understood.
And so their story was started.
NEXT POST: COME INTO MY PARLOR (Friday 11/13)
