STORIES OF MOTHER GOAT

MOTHER GOAT

THE SHEPARD´S ROCK

We were walking down the hill, mother Goat and myself, in an area for me not yet explored. And there, half hidden among the bushes, we carne to the presence of the most peculiar sort of a rock. It had the shape of a puff mushroom, the ones that people would commonly call snake’s bread. It had a colour between gray and white, with dark spots of moss.
Realising that it was the first time that I had seen the rock, Mother Goat told me tha the rock was know as the Shepherd’s Rock.
“The famous Shepherd’s Rock!” I exclaimed in surprise, because
I had heard people telling stories of a Shepherd’s Rock, but I had no idea of what rock they were talking about, or where it was. Mother goat show me a few holes that somebody had chiseled in the
rock, as to put the feet and hands there, with the purpose of
climing to the top without much effort.
“Look, Mano” said mother Goat. “Some one had the good idea of making those holes to climb easily. Put one foot here and another there, and you will see how easy it is.”
We climbed easily to the rock, that it was not too high on the upper side of the hill. But, as it was in a sloped hill, it looked of a respectable hight looking down from its top to the lowe part of the hill. I got impressed by the panorarnic view of the valley, one could observe from there. And since that day the rock became my favouri te spot. There I would spend hours, contemplating the pnorama, and the people working down in the valley. It was ever so entertaining to observe, from that hight, the world around me. In the valley, farmers were going about their duties, making hay or irrigating their meadows. On the skirts of the hills, would be some men ploughing the land with big oxen, or with horses. Other times they were collecting the harvest. The men, some would whistle. while other argued with each other. In the lowest part of the valley there was a mill and, from that distance, it looked small, like a dwarf’s house. It seemed to be working non stop all the tima and, even from so fare away I could heard its disconcerting noise, resambling a creaking gate hit rasty hinches. Farther away, passing the valley, there were more villages, and more fields, with their different colours, emerging from the various sorts of harvest. I would imagined those patches as blankets, and the people, working there, like flees, so small they looked to me from so fare away. In those queite days, when there was not a brizze, It was fun for me to shout and hear the eco unsering very clearly from the other side of the valley.
That first day that I climbed to the rock, after observing the panorama for a while, Mother Goat directed my attention to some marks engraved in the rock.
“Look to those marks, Mano. Have a good look and tell me what
you make of them.”
“They look like foot prints, grandma” I said.
“Your guess is a good one. They are foot prints of a shepherd,
his goat and his dog” said grandma.
“Who you think had that sense of humour, grandma, to waste time doing that sot of joke? Was he the same man that made the holes to climb the rock? Or may be it was the same one who carved the dog there in the Wolves´ Gate?
“Come on, Mano!” Mother Goat exclaimed. “Don’t you see that those are the real thing?”
“Granuother, how can they be real? Nobody is so heavy as to leave marks on a rock”
“You are right, Mano. Nobody is as heavy as to their feet in a
rock. But those marks were left there from the day the rock was bor?” said Mother Goat.
“But, grandma, rocks are not born. Are they?”
“This one,yes. It was borne all of a sudden, sprouting from the eart a mushro” mother.
“I never! I being told that rocks are rocks since God made the
world.”
“Then you never heard the story of this rock, Mano?” Mother Goat asked.
“Oh yes, I heard abou this rock, and other rock, but I never
heard that they wuold grow like mushrooms.”
“Then you heard not the story of the shepherd?” mother asked. “What story, gradma? I heard no story of any shepherd.”
“I think you never pay attention. Because every body knows that story.”
“Then you know the story as well, grandma?” I asked.
“I know it better than any body else, because the shepherd was
a very good friend of mine, from whom I learned lots of secrets of
these hills and those forests.”
“Then, this story you talk about happened not so long ago?”
“Well, not so long, for a story it is, but I was very young then.”
“What happened to that shepherd, grandmother?” I asked.
“The shepherd was from my village. He was a very poor shepherd.
He only had one goat and a dog.”
“You are right, grandmother. He was not very rich. But in my
village there is a woman even more poor. She have only a goat and no dog.”
“Well, there you are, Mano. Ways will be some one worst off
than ourselves. This shepherd lived in a very small house, with only a single room which he uased as kitchen, living room and bed room: all in one. There, the three of them, the goat, the dog and the shepherd, ate and slept.”
“And what the ate, grandmather, if the man was so poor? Because the goat could eat grass; but the dog and the man could not live on grass. Could they?”
“You are right; they could not live on grass. But, when one is poor, ith very little can be conten. As the saying goes, God bless the ones who are satisfied with what they got, for they never will be poor. The man was very ingenious and he managed to find a away to live. His dog would catch for him, may be a partridge today and a rabbit tomorrow...
“Then that dog had to be a very clever hunting dog, eh, grandma, to catch so much.
“Today and tomorrow is a way of talking, Mano. I coudl have said now and then, and it was the same. But there was plenty game in those days.”
“Oh well, then the man was no so poor as you said, eh? grandmother?”
“If we count wealth as money, or property, he was a poor man, but tunking of other things he had no need of complaining; because 1 tell you that there are people in this world that would be very happy if they had this freedom that we have. Many rich men of this world would envy the life of the poor shepherd: to go to bed when he felt ike and to get up when he felt like to do so, without
anybody telling him what to do, and without bills to pay. But that is another story. The man was wealthy for more reasons than those; because he was a very pecial persono. One of those men that nowadays has disappear for good.”
“I do not understand your talking, granmother. What was so special about that man, if he had only a goat and a dog?”
“There are people who have something especial, Mano, and even they do not know what it is.”
“This happe_to me, granvother. 1 would like to be pspecial, but 1 don’t know what to do.”
“May be you are ,special already. But 1 will tell you something that the famous shepherd told me once, when 1 was your age. Never close the door to things that seem_ incredible, and one day may be you can see and hear the same things the shepherd could.”
“Then the shepherd was poor but he was not a fool, eh, gran<:L.w-other?”
“He was not a fool, but to be clever has nothing to do with the things I tell you. I talk about what God puts in our spirits or our souls. The shepherd was no fool, not a bit; but people thought that he was a fool, and they laghed of hiS stories.”
“Were his stories very amusing, then, grandmother?”
“lt was not his intention to make people laugh, but people laughed of the man and not of his stories.
“Why was this, grandmother? What stories he told for people to
think he was a fool?”
“He had been not always like that. He used to keep to himself and very little he would care about what people thought of him. Let me tell you what happened to him: The downfall of the shepard started one one day that it was fiesta day in the village. To the man there were not fiesta days. All days were the same for him. If it was raining, for him still it was a good day, and if there was sunshine, it was a better. He never drank alcohol, or di he smoked. Never in his life he had a foot in a tavern; because he had other ways of passing his time, better than the other foolish men getting drunk in the tavern. But that lousy day of fiesta, as the shepherd walked by the tavern, a gang of youngsters, who were there getting drunk, drugged the man inside -against his will- for, as I said, he didn’t want to know about taverns and the like of them. The youngsters made the man have a drink, tha he druk to be polite hit them. And the drink, as he never had one before, soon made the man go crazy. As he lost his head he drank more, and then he was not the owner of his tongue any more; and through his mouth he lost the secrets of his head. Secrets that, if he was not dunk, would not mention to those crazy young and drunk people.
“What secrets were those, grandmother, then?”
“Fairy tales, and other spirits of the forest, with which he was familiar...”
“Ad what you expected, grandmother? They have to laugh. A man
telling those stupid things of spirits and fairies. Fairies dont...”
“Shut your mouth, Mano, before you say that” -Mother Goat shouted at me. I was almost frighten by the urgency she told me to close my mouth. Then she explained to me that there were things that I should not be toldo about. For that reason she could not tell me those secrets she knew, because she didn’t want to be taken as a fool as it happened to the shepherd. But she assured me that there were fairies, that the forests, the springs and even the stones, all have a sort of spirit. The woods –she went on telling- are full of charms, but people can´t see them, just for the reason that they cant see what they don’t believe.
“Have you seen any of those charms, grandma?
“I have seen things in this woods that you would not believe if you don’t see them by yourself. But you do not say anything of this. I saw lizards coming out of the springs, and they could change into other creatures as they pleased. Those are bad spirits, the ones that make some water poisoned. But other springs had charms, and that water is fresh and pure, that even could cure disease. I saw little men coming out from the interior of trees, little men, as small as mice.
“By the way, grandma, I heard that there are trees with bad shade, and one never should sleep in that shade. Is that true?
“It is true. There are many proverbs in our language about that, as you probably heard. And proverbs camr from experiences of
a sort.”
“And what sort of trees are those.”
“Don’t be a fool, Mano. The tree haved nothing to do with it. It depends of the spirit that the tree has inside; for when the tree is possessed by an evil spirit, behaves as a person would behave in the same circumstances. I saw trees walking...”
“Trees walking, grandnmother! Ha, ha. Now you told me a good one. Trees walking without legs. Aha!”
“Yes, strange, isn´t it? That is not all. I saw trees shaking and falling into pieces without there been a breeze of win. To prove it to you, I will show you a pile of fire-wood I have in the burn. They are all small pieces from a big tree. But the strange thing is that the wood will not burn. It is dry as straw, but no fire would burn it. You tell me why is that so. It was fron an old oak which I went to a lot of trouble to carry most of the pieces home for the fire. There I left them to dry in the barn; and what for, if it doesntt burn? One day I will tell you things that, for the moment, you are to young to understand.”
“But what about the shepherd, granuother? You were going to tell me about the shepherd and you keep beating about the bush
“Beating about the bush, eh? Who is the one that keeps asking
questions and taking me away from the story? You get on your feet and and look if the hacienda is not too fare.”
“They are in the same place, grandmother. It seems they are enjoying that patch of grass.”
“If 1 forget, you keep an eye on them; because as soon as the
morning breezy starts to blow from the directions of the meadows, they get the nose of the green grass and there they go like a shot.”
“Don´t you worry, grandmother. I always keep one eye in the plate and other in the cat.”
“You are right, Mano. I a1ways keep beating about the bush when telling a story. But some times the shortest way home is the one you know best. You may understand better now, after this chat, the misfortune that came upon the poor shepherd. For a story, my friend, is not a story on ts own. The shepherd cou1d see all those things that I told you, things that you do not be1ieve. And as you do not be1ieve then, so didn’t the peop1e in the tavern. And, ofcourse, they had a good 1augh, as you did now. So I beg you that, what 1 te11 you, you keep it to your se1f.”
“I wi11 not open my mouth, grandmother. I promise.”
“I hope so, because otherwise our friendship will not progress any farther, and you will never hear another story from my lips. But, if you know how to keep a moth shut, I wi11 te11 you many secrets of those vast forests that you see from here. And when I told you those things you will be a wealthy man, as shepherd was, Because, as I to1d you, you never will be rich if what you want is money. And now let me go on hit the story:
The shepherd, mad with alcohol, 1eft all his wea1th go through his mouth, and then he was not thappy any more. When he left the tavern, peop1e wou1d comment:
“Who wou1d think that an idiot like him cou1d be so inventive.”
“One have to recognised that the chap has a good imagination.”
“But he is crazy, no dout.”
The shepherd, among other things, had the finest ears that any
creature could have. Because he had exercise them in listning to every sound of the hi11s, the trees, the birds, and all those other charms of the country-side. So he cou1d over hear those conversations, of the peop1e having behind him. Never before the man heard those words, that he was mad or stupid, and the shepherd
brcame very sad. The young men from the village, wanted to hear more of the shepherd’s stories, to go on laughing, and they didn’t miss an ocasión to pull the man into the tavern to make him drink and to hear mor of what they thought were amusing stories. The shepherd, as gamblers do, wanted his credit back, for which he would tell, with more emphasis, all the things he could see and hear, and he would plead with the men to believe him. Another grave mistake on the shepherd side. The youngsters would go on laughing, and when the shepherd 1eft then, again they commented:
“How!this foo1 can invent so much?”
“Usually crazy peop1e do.”
“Oh he is more crazy every day.”
The poor shepherd, his happiness lost, would sit in this spot, no sure any more if he was a amad man or a fool; and he would cry his sorrows in company of his dog and his goat. So sad his crying was, that his dog and his goat cried with him...”
“A dog and a goat crying, grandther? What are you saying, grandma, Ji, ji!” I laughed.
“Shut up, boy! You are no better than the others, and you are
laughing too soon, as the others did. Let me te1l you, and you will see what I ment: The man used to pray for a miracle, to show the people what he told them was the truth. So one day, crying the most sad of al1 the crying that can come out of ahuman heart, he implored to a1l the charms of the forest for a miracle. And guess what happened? This rock, where we are sat, you and me, started to grow under his feet. The rock grew so of a suddenly, that there were left the foot prints of the goat, the dog and the shepherd.
“Ah! Then the people believed what he told them, eh, grand mothep?” I asked, thinking that it was the end of the story.
“No way! They thought that the shepherd had cracked, at last.
Le me tell you what happened: He run to the village shouting: “Come to the woods! There is a rock being born.”
It was afternoon, a hot summer day, and the farmers, tire of
working in the fields, were having a siesta. Some were in bed, others under the trees. Only children were playing on the roads, some of those invented games of theirs. Alarmed by the shouting the neighbourhood got up from their sleep, coming to the windows and
running from under the trees. When they heard the shepherd saying
that a rock was bourn, all the people angry for being disturbed with such a stupid idea, and they shouted abuse to the shepherd:
“Go to hell, you mad man.”
“God forbid! To awake everybody to tell that a rock is bourn.” “The chap has crack up, at las.”
“It had to happen, sooner or later, with his head xo full of shit.”
“What, grandmother? They call the man shit, you said?”
“I am sorry to be rude, Mano. But this is only to give you an idea of the abuse the neighbourhood shouted at the por man. You must know that people, when are very tired, and are waked from their rest, without good reason, can get in a terrible temper. Their mind, in those circumstances, doesn’t think straight. This was why the hildren, playing in the roads, all laughed on hearing those abuses; and ecouraged by the elders, they too, run after the man throwing stones and shouting insults to the him.
“A rock growing, you fool! Rocks you are going to get” the children said, enjoying themselves to the expense1 of the man.
The dog and the goat run by the man, and they got most of the
stnes, but didn’t run faster than the man, even when they could,
but didn’t abandon him in that moment of danger becaude they were inseparable
“What people said to the shepherd, then, grandmother, when at
last they saw the rock? They had to believe the man, then. Didn’t they?”
“They did. Not only that: they were very sorry for what they had done to him, and so they name the rock after him and offered a mass for his soul. And I tell you, I never saw so many people in church as that day.”
“He died soon then, granuother. Maue he died +e-r a stone _ his
head, or may be. ..”
“Shut up, Mano. You never guess what happened to the man, so let me tell you: When the news was spread, the whole world came to see this rock. People from villages and cáties, farmers and students, cats and dogs; all sorts of folk. They neve have seen anything like before. Every one wanted to see the shepherd, to
talk to him, and to find out about him and his stories...”
“Did the shepherd told the world about the things he could see or hear, as you said he could, eh, grand mother?”
Mther Goat told me that, when days pas and the people, from the village could not see the shepherd, the dog and the goat, they got alarmed and started to search for them. And looking for the shepherd was how they found the rock that was nto here before. The searching
party found, by the rock, the shepherd’s boots, his old clothes and the stick, but the shepherd, the dog and the goat, never have being found.
After hearing that from Mther Goat, I stopped to think for a moment, turning, in my head, the mysterious disappearance of the shepherd and his friends. Then I asked Mother Goat:
“What you think happened to them, gran nother? It seems a
misterry.”
“To me there is no mystery. They are inside the rock. They
went to the charming world of fairies. They joined those things of which we know very little, but the shepherd knew so much.
“Do you think that is possible, granuother?” I asked.”
“If my ears are telling me the truth. Because many times I heard the voices of the dog and the goat and the man there inside the rock. You try for yourself some times. Put your ear there, and tell me wha you hear.”
THE END


THE PRINCESS AND THE SPRING

It was like a fighting contest between the sun and the clouds. For a while the sun seemed to win, then the clouds would close in, and thr rain would persisto. Mother Goat was in abad temper because, due to the rain, she could not go on spinning the flax, since the skein would wet. And to mother Goat that job was like smoking to a man. She had to be doing tha sort of job all the time to be happy. In a bad temper she said to me:
“Mano, this blast rain is playing a joke on us. Let us get under cover.” Saying so she called the goats, with that lovely way of treating the animals, as if they were people. “Come on, my girls, we are going to the castle to get cover from this rain.”
The goats came runnin to her,_brcause they could understand every word Grandma told them. I talked to my sheep_castting e few stone stones to theit thich heads, and all in a mob wen to the derelict castle. There was not much left of the castle if ever had been one. But some stand pieces of walls had a thick roofs of hawthorns and ivy that the rain could not pass through. Under one of those roofs we hid_from the persistent drizzle. Our hacienda we left on a patch of pastur where we could keep an eye on them. But the kids didn’t like the rain, and they lay by us like dogs. From that hidden place we could see the hills on the other side of the valley. On the the skir of the hills, there were a couple of farming villages with_fruit trees around the houses. Near to the first house in one of those villages, there was a meadow, and there, sprouting under a rock, was a small spring. On the higher part of the meadow there was a giant oak tree, shaped like umbrella. I had heard some vague talk about that spring and the oak, but I never paid much attention it. That day, despitte the persistent rain, a trickle of
women were coming and going to the spring to fill up pitchers and bottles. As some were coming others_re going, and the would stop for a while under the tree to talk. I could heard, from that distance, the rumour of their conversation and their laughing. I felt curious about the behaviour of the woman, queueing for water under the rain, because the spring was not_one of those springs which use by he neighbourhood. It was one of many insignificant little springs that sprouted everywhere in the skerts of the hills. I was going to
coment the matter hit Mother Goat, when she exclaimed, as_talking to herself:
“Now I fell from the donkey!”
“What grandma,_I asked, because I realised that she wa talking about the same thing as I was thinking.
“We are in a leap yea” she said.”
“A leap year!” I exclamed. because I ever heard the word before, or if I did I never pay attention to the meaning. “What is a leap year,_randma?.”
“A leap year has one day more than the other years, Mano. And it happens every four years.”
“Grandma, has that leap year of yours, something to do with that water?”
“Yes, today is a holiday. Twenty fifth of June. How silly of me no to remember that, otherwise I would have gone to church today, becau this is a very important holyday.
“What sain is today, Grandma” I aske, because for me all days were the same.
“It is Saint James´ day, don’t you know?”
“1 don’t know, Grandma. I have to work the same every day, holiday or no holiday!”
“Yes, it id Saint Jamesi day, and leap year. Oh it is a very important day today. Many things happen in a day like today. This is why the woman are taking that water home.”
“What for, Grandma?
“There is a tradition for having that water in a leap year and Saint James day. Suppouse to be good luck. The water is said to work miracles if take in a daya as today.”
“why it have to be today, Grandma?”
“Because in a day like today, twenty-fifth of June, in a leap
is when the princess and the twelve princes visit the meadow. Or don´t you know that?” _
“What princess or prince are ypu talking_bout. There are not
princesses and princes in those villages, or are ‘there?”
“What! Didn’t you hear the story of the princess and the twelve
princes?” Mother Goat asked, as if I was the only person in world who didn’t know such story.
I had heard stories about princess but I could not guess what princess Mother Goat was referring to. she told me a story that I had heard before, even if in a different way as she told me. There was a legend of a hen, with twelve golden chickens, coming out of the spring to stroll on a meadow. The hen was a princess and the twelve golden chicks were princes. But stories about princesses were not my favourite ones, for which reason I never paid much attention to the legend. Mother Goat told me, to my surprise, that the spring of such legend was, in fact, the one where the woman were collecting the water. And the meadow was the one where the princess and the princes stroll, disguised as chickens. Mother Goat had a very special way of telling stories. In most of the cases she started in_ the end and, after a while, she would go back to the beginning. But she would say that it was my falt for asking too many questions.
“On Saint James’ day, on a leap year” Moter goat went on telling “is when the main door of the athedral is open. In this date is when big people, from all corners of the world, used to go in pilgrimage to the holly shrine of Compostela, to enter the cathedral by the main doo...”
“Grandma” I interrupted “how big were those peoples to neet the big door open for them?”
From my point of vie Grandmother was talking about giants.
“Oh, Mano, dear! You are thick as a plank. I said big people, but coul have said important people, and it would be the same.”
“Don´t get angry, Grandma. You talk about big doors and big people and I thought you talked about giants, you know.”
“I will explain to you, then. That main door of the cathedral is call The Portico of the Glory. To enter the cathedral through that is the same as to enter paradise or heaven. You understand now?”
“Oh yes! It is a superstition, as you said sometime” I said, convinced that it was what_Mother Goat meant.
“You could call that in other words, Mano. Because very import
people can be more superstitious than poor people. But in this case
they call it devotion. They do that as a promise. But then, what is a promise, but superstition? You are right, it is superstition. Now
you, let me tell the story and you will see:_Long time ago, more than two hundre years ago, in a day like today, a king came through this land on his way to Compostela. His business was to marry his daughter, in suchda remarkable date.
“Don’t tell me, Grandma. I see now. The king wanted his daughter and the boy friend to pass through the main door, so they would be happy ever after. Yes?” I interupt to show Grandma that 1 was not so thick as she told me.
“Now you hit the nail now, Mano. But in one thing you are wrong. You see, princesses don’t have boy-friends. They have pretenders. That princess, we talk about, had twelve pretenders; and despite of been a beautiful woman, she was to_young to think of marriage. She was a child, really. That was why she could not cope with the pressure, and the bussines turned into a disaster.”
“Grandma, if it happened so many years ago, who told you that the princess was beautiful, or so young? Who knows that?” I asked, because I could not see how anybody could know about something that
happened in the beginning of time.
“You have to use your imagination, Mano. Have you ever seen an ugly princess?”
“Grandma, I never saw a princess, big or smal.” I complained.
“This is why I say that you have to use your imagination. Let me show you how I come to see that the princess was beautiful and very young. She was pretended by twelve princes. Now, would any woman be pretended by twelve princes if she was not beautiful? No, never. Two or three, or even half a dozen, by the fact that she was a princess not by twelve men, twelve princes. She had to be something for that, and that was her beauty. Now, why do I presume that she was very young, between forteen fifteen and sexteen years old? Because a leap year happens once every four years. Then you take away leap year and you make twelve years, so the princess would be too young. And if yo added four years to dixteen you make twoenty, if my fingers are telling the true._So the princess was
to young to marry at twelve and too old to marry at twenty. For that acount she had to be something between ficteen or sixteen. But there are other signs in the story that point out at the younger age of teh princess that. The kin, very clever, as most kings are_didn´t want to antagonised any of rhe princes, as surely would do if he chose one for his daughter. So he asked his daughter to choose one herself. But she could not make up her mind, which it proves that she was too young to think about marriage. And this was the reason why the twelve princes were coming with her and the king to Compostela, because she had not make up her mind before the date for the journey to_hrine. But she had to do so in the way, before they finish_the pilgrimage to Saint James. The to choose a prince became tomuch for her and, when they were in this part, the poor thing got very ill, a nervous brea_own, I would say. The cortege had to stop; and to look for quarters to stay. In those days, the king had the right of a roo wherever he chose, but in that ocation the cortege was toolarge to stop in any house. The only house large enough_for such an occasion_was this one that you see in ruins.
“What, Grandma? Do you mean that they stotped in this house?”
Mother Goat lifted her hand an made a circle as to mark the
place.
“Yes, Mano. Here was where they stopped for several days. After that the king gave to this house the title of castle. But I do not know why it never was cal astle. It was better know as the tower, because they built a tower in memory of the king, and to make the place look like a castle. It is hard to believe that, isn’t it, Mano, to look at those stones on the floor, covered with thorns, and to think that one day there was a king under this roof; a king, a beautiful princess and twelve handsome princes. Oh if those stones could talk! This empire of ivy, thorns and stinging nets, today a house for lizards, has seen grand things in times pass. From here there was a lane to the main road, with trees at each side... But what am I saying? That could be another story. Nevertheless, one ca_not help but to close the eyes for a moment and imagine what happened here one day. Close your eyes, Mano. Close your eyes, as I do, to see this place as it was then. Listen to the sound of the many horse´s shoes, stepen on the stones of the yard, beautifully decorated with all the trappings and brass. And there the twelve princes with their expensive clothes and their sharp swords. And above all, a king with his well trimmed beard and a heavy golden crown on his head. Then the princess, the beautiful princess,
covered in gold and pearls from head to tow_with her broked heart,
despite all that wealth. Poor thing! What is wealth and power without love?”
While _Mother Goat went on with that long description, I kept my eyes closd_as in a dream, trying to see the scene she was painting; but sa I never had seen such trappings, my mind could not imagine what I longed to see. In the mean time Mother Goat went on with the story.
“The soldiers and the servants had to improvise tents in the _
yard and the gardens to leep, because the house was not large enough for so many people. But the princess was given the best room that there was in the house, and she went to bed_immediately, without eating a mouth full of that food that she been offered. When she was on her own, she cried her heart out till there wewre not more tears in her eyes. Her crying was so sad and painful that it attracted the attention of the fairies, to investigate. Fairies seemed to be tuched by the human crying. There seems to be something truthful in crying that no other sentiment can match. You take all the animals in the world and only birds can sing, but not one can cry. How sad, Mano, not to be able to cry. And that proves that only our souls can cry. But what am I saying? That is another story. I say this, so you can understand the heart of that poor child. So let us get on with her story. The young and beautifu princess, was afraid of the twelve princes, and the life ahead of her. She would prefer, at her age, to play like children do, and be free of the heavy burden that wealth so imes curries with it. She would rather woud a farmmer´s daughter and, instead of been wealth, have the freedom that you and I have. And she that night did pray to God to die. That was the only truth and desire she felt in her heart that night. And next day, when the servants went to her room, they could not awake her; and they tried and they waited and waited, and waited again, but she never wake up.”
“Then was she dead, Grandma.” I asked.
“I supposed that that was the conclusion at the time. But she was not dead; she was sleeping, and sleeping she is to this da” said other Goat.
“Then she is enchanted. Isn’t she?”
“Well, I suppose that it can be the word, even when I do not like the expression” said Mother Goat.
I thought that the story was finis, and I was left hit a feeling as the one who finishes a meal and is still hungry. Mother Goat was looking fare away to the women who were coming and going for water to the spring.”
After a while, I asked her:
“Granuother, what they did with the princess, then, if they could not awake her?”
“They bury her. What else?” Mother Goat said, as if that was the final word. .
“They bury her!” I exclaimed, because, if she was at sleep, I thought that she would be kept somewhere, but not bufy her.
“Yes, they bury her where that oak grows” said Mother Goat.
“Wha! They bury her under that tree, you mea?” I wanted to make sure that Mother Goat was not pulling my leg.
“Not under that tree, because the tree was not there at the time. Let me tell you what happened:
After much grief the king meditated for a good time, looking at the valley, just as I was looking now; and he thought that this valey was the most beautiful valley he ever saw. Because you and I do not appreciate this beauty, because it is ours to see every day. But if one day you are fard away, you will remember what I told you today. The king, after contemplating the Valley, thought that to died in this place was not so bad, after all, and he gave orders to bury his daughter over there. That oak was planted over the rincess’ grave by the king himself. I told you, in the beginning, that the king was a wise man and he didn´t want to antagonise any of the princes. Well, there is the proof that he was a wise man. He new that the only thin that could outlasts a stone is an oak tree. So he didn’t put over the princess’ grave an elaborate ston, instead he planted a tree. The twelve princes did cry over the grave al day long, and from their tears a Spring was born. You aske anybody and they will tell you that the so tree is call, to this day, the King’s Oak. And the spring is know by the name of The Princess’ Spring, or the Fountain of the Princess, as some othe people calls it.”
“Grandma, then the princess is enchanted, or is realy dead?”
“I don’t like the word enchanted, as I told you, but I don’t know how to call it, so we may say that she is enchanted”
“Then why she was turned into a hen, and not into a frog?”
“Frogs, frogs!” Mother Goat grumbled. “Those are storie for
children, Mano. Stories you heard of weak witches turning princeses into frogs are all nonsens. This story is a real one, hit not evel on it. But things, some times, even with the best of good intention can go wrong, and in this one things went very wrong.”
“Why they went wrong, then, Grandma? You know why?”
“With stories you have to use your mind, and from there you can deduct many things that the story don´t tells you. Let me show you, from bits and pieces of the story, which from the word of mouth reach to us fron centuries back, how things went wrong. It is say that the princess would much prefer to be a a country girl, marry no any prince and not to carry the heavy responsibility of one day be a queen. She ruther would be a country girl, and the fairies, or whatever spirits they may be, aworded the princess with her wishes. To do so they had to trasport the princess to another time. And how could they do that? Putting the princess to sleep and wait for another time to came. Then, when that time arrived some one would undo the encanting an awake the princess. Since then, at mid day, the time she was vure, on Saint James day, in a leep year, the princess desguised as a white when, and the twelve princes as golden chickens, come out of the spring to stroll on the medow, waiting to be desenchabted. But the work had to be done in a date as the same day and the same year as that in chich she was put to sleep. But leep year happen every four years, so odds went very much againts the_princess. Add to it the fact that people do not believe in those things any more, and the princess may leep there for eternity.”
“Do you know the secret of how to do it, Grandma?
“There is no secret, Mano” said Mother Goat. “Everybody knows how can be done. The twelve golden chickens are the twelve princes.
For the princess to be free she have to be liberated fron the twelve princes. They all have to be killed”
“But, Grandma, the twelve princes were not vure hit the princess, were they?”
“No, of course noto But they left their heart with the princess, and they are there as symbol, I would, if you follow me.”
“And i t is as simple as that, and nobody ever did try to awake her in all those years?”
“Not as simple as you think, Mano. The chickens all have to be killed before any of them touches the water. If only one runs to the water safely, everything is lost; and another leap year have to come before there is another chance. It is say that lots of men tried in the pass and feel. But nowadays nobody believes in those things. That is the problem. But if I was born a man I would be a happy one, and the poor princess would not be there any longer.”
“Then it have to be aman, to disenchant the princess, Grandma?”
“Of couse! If she is a woman, only a man can do the business” said_Mother Goat.
“Then I should try when I am aman, eh Grandma?”
“When you are aman? You are aman, aren’t you?”
“I mean when I grow up, Grandma.”
“Age has nothing to do with it, Mano. There is nothing in this story that says sothing about age.”
“Grandma, what happens with the chickens, when you kill them all.”
“What happen? They turn into gold, and you put them in your pocket and you are the richest man in the world. This is why they are golden chickens. They are the recompense for anybody who awake_ the princess. Yes, a very rich man will be the one who achieves that.”
“And the princess, grandma? What about her?”
“Well, when she turns into a woman, she will be a princess no more. But she still would be very young and beautiful.”
It was raining no more, for the time Mother Goat finished her
enchanting stor. The sun came out with a vengeance. In days, as those, horseflies stay hidden from the rain under the leaves, but
as soon as the rain stops they come out hungry for blood. The ones that most ffere_ere the kids, for all the flies seemed to go for
their young blood.
“Let us get out of here, my sons, before those devils finish with you blood” said Mother Goat to the kids and all run up the hill with a swarm of flies behind them.
There were not many watches about in those days, because very few people could efford those luxuries. But I learned early to know the time by the sun, like many people, so I calculated that it was
eleven, take or leave a few minutes. I made my sheep run aiming a fewstons to their thick heads, thick heads, because they could not understand any other language, and they shot home as if the hills were on fire. There I left them in the corral. I didn’t bother about lunch. I took a good piece of bread from the cover and ran to the meadow. I new short cuts through the valley, and I could run as fast as a hare when I was a boy, ans in no time I was by the Princess Spring. There was only an old woman, filling a pitcher with the miraculous water. I pretend that my haste was to drink, but the woman said to me:
“Boy, this water is very cool, and you are sweating. Rest a minute before you drink.”
I said thanks to the woman, as a well mannered boy, and I sat on the shade of the big oak and started to eat my bread. The woman left with her pitcher full of the precious water. She smiled at me,
happy as if she was carrying gold. I was alone, at last. That suit me,vbecause I didn’t want people watching me as desenchated princesses. Near by the meadow was a house, and in the orchard there was aman picking up cherries. I knew well that man, because he was famous as the village idiot, and he was a nasty crearure, hated by dogs, cats and chidren, because he di nothing bu to cast stones to every body. What he could know about princesses and other stories, I thought. So I didn´t bother about the chap.
As I was eating the bread, a stroke of genius hit my head. I went down to the meadow and, a bit away from the spring, I crumbled the bread, and scattered the crambs all over the grass. That I did with the intention of leading the hen, and the so call golden
chickens, as far away from the water as possible. The bread scattered, I broke a good branch of laurel, from a bush. Then I sat behind the tree to wait for the hen and the chickens to come out. All of a suddenly I found myself with a problem. What to do with
the princess? I was not aman yet to marry her. But if she was
beautiful, as Mother Goat said she was, I didn’t like the idea
of loosen her. And what they would say to me at home if I arrived with a girl? They would say: “Another mouth to feed, boy? Don’t you think we are enough?” But soon the solution came to my clever head. I only had to sell the golden chickens to be rich, as Mother Goat said. Then I could buy a big house, and have dogs and horses and live with the girl happy ever after, and I never would see_sheep near me in all my life. how it took me so long to think that? But, when I thought that all was in order, a dout invade my heart. What if Mother Goat story was not true? A chill as the water of the spring run down my spine, and I shook as if it was a cold winter day. Of course it was not true, all that fairy tales of Mother Goat. How could I be so stupid, to believe all those stories of hers? But Mother Goat was right in one thing: if nobody believed in those stories, and if they were true, the poor princess would not have a chance to be awaken. I was not so stupid after all. May be that the people, going there for water, pretending that it was miraculous water, their intention was to see the princess. Yes, that was what it was. Those country people are clever than they look, surely they are. With all those thoughts, and the murmur of the spring, the pleasant shade of the oak, and because I had run so fast I felt to_sleep, like a baby in the arms of mother. May be it was only a nap, but enough to have a dream. In the drearn 1 saw the hen with the twelve golden chickens coming, one by one, from the water and, as soon as they saw the bread, they run for it. The golden chicks chirped and the hen cackled, all very happy having a feast on my bread. The cackling was getting louder and louder, and the hen
grew and grew, till it was big as a girl. So loud the cackling became that I awake with a jump. As I looked at the meadow I thought that I was still dreaming, because there was a white hen, with many chicks nning around, all looking for the brea crumbs. I didn stop to count how many chicks they were. I jumped on the meadow and, with the laurel´s branch I started to massacre the chicks. They run fast as lighting, and the hen was coming at me with winds open, ferocious as an eagle, defending her offsprings. But I was determined, as a warrior, to finish with all those princes, once and for ever, and to liberate the princess. The chicks and the hen were losing the battle; and they were already changing their voices, from cackling to shouting with human voices. There were horrendous shouts, louder and louder. They were telling me to stop, pleading to me not to kill them. But no way, they all were going to die. But, when the screaming was getting ridiculous, I saw, on the corner of my eye, the idiot who was picking up cherries, coming for me blandishing
a large stick and shouting mercy for his chicks. I had the time to
see a couple of chicks, legs up in the grass, and they looked dead
alright, but they didn’t look gold to me. As I said, I could run
as a hare when I was a boy, but day I run even faster to go away with my life, because if the idiot could catch me I was as good as
dead chicken.
********************

E FAIRIES

THE story of the shepherd, being the first story that mother Goat told me, disturbed my mind a great deal. I could not believe that those fairies of hers had the power to make a goat, a goat and a man disappear, passing through a solid rock; at lese there was a secret door somewhere. But I checked all the small cracks on the rock and none seemed to be a door. So asked myself: “What the fairies want a goat, a dog and a shepherd for? Isn’t it true that they live from nothing, and that they need not the material things that we human beings do?” Nevertheless, in several occasions, I spent a good deal of time with my ear against the rock, trying to listen whatever was going on inside. And in many an occassion I heard, as coming from inside, the dog barking, the goat bleating and the man talking. I never could possible imagine, at my tender age, that so many noises could reverberate on the surface of a rock.So I thought that, really, all those noises were coming from inside the rock. I could hear not only dogs and goats and sheep; I heard, birds singing, and the win on the trees. And I would tell myself: It has to be a very crowdy place inside there. But mother goat, would interpret, in her fantastic way, all those noises I told her were coming from inside the rock, and so she wen on stuffing my poore head with more fairy tales. In that way our friendship grew and, in the company of that woman, time passed for me without noticing, as in an enchanted world. Even in the times when she didn’t tell stories, to be with her was a story on its own. For, if there was a world of fairies, she was one of them, because she didn’t seemed a creature of this world. Som-times I helped her to gather wood for the fire, for she,
was all the time stocking fuel for winter time. Other times we would look for mushrooms, or for wild strawberries; or other herbs and roots for her medicines. Or even for some strange but pretty fowers, that she would take home and keep in flower pots. Those activities were very interesting, becauso, at the same time, she wou1d tell me the names of those goods. The trouble was that, the country peop1e used names of their on, and they were of not value as the ones that later on wee were teach in the school. There were the plants call sheep´s tongue and cow feet, to name only a few; then the mushrooms called snake’s food, and toad’s bread. Birds had their popular names, as well. For example¡ the woodpecker was cal Carpenter, and the magpies were call Marias. The same with animals. The wolf was John, and the fox Peter: the list was endless.
This avobe explanation, seems not to have a porpose in this story, but it shaws how mother goat had the control of my head, and how she could easily make me believe her extrange stories, which some times they got me into a lot of trouble, as I am abot to saw in the folowing story. One morning, one of those misty mornings, mother Goat and myse1f were sat on the top of the rock, using our raincoats as base for our bottoms, because the rock was coo1. Mother Goat aws going on spinning the linen, because she never stopped, she had to be doing that job a11 the time. As she as not very talktive thet morning, I was observing, pensive1y, the diffused shadows that the trees produced, mixed with the sun and the misto. And I was omposing my own fantasies with those shades: ghosts, monsters, giants creeping among the trees, and then pretty fairies that mother goat hat put into my head. A11 those imaginative creatures were put in motion by the morning mist an the breeze as it shook the brancheis. The sun, fighting with the mist, was slow1y winning the batt1e, and the beams, for moments, would fi1tered among the trees and the bushes would move like the waves of the see. How I thought of that without ever having seen the sea? The reassong could be that the morning seemed to be a special day, and the phenomenon excited my imagination. I had een many misty mornings and foggy mornings, something that I didn’t like, because I felt shut in. But that day, perhaps ecause 1 took time to observe the phenomen, I thought of it as a very special and pretty evento. Mother Goat, as reading my thoughts, or as if I had said asked something to her, stopped her work and said to me:
“You are right, Mano. This is a very special day. lt is in days like this one, when the occasion can arise to see the fairies.”
I was surprised by her comment. And, as I had heard those beleaves of mothe goat too often, I said to her, almost without thinking:
“1 don’t believe in fairies, grandma.”
“Don’t said that!” she shouted at me.
The spindle felt from her hands and, at the same time she jumped on her feet. I was take by surprise and I umped on my feet as well, frighten as if I had done something very wrong.
“What is i t, grandma?” I shouted looking around.
“QuiCkly you shout I believe in fairies” she said.
“What?” I exclaimed.
“Quickly, quickly, shout, Shout” she urged me.
I obeied to what she so urgent sked me and I shouted with all the power of my lungs. I had a well exercised ones, even at that tender age, because the comunications in those times and villafes was to shout from hill to hill.
“I believe in fairieeeeeeeees!!!!”
Mother Goat put her hand behind her ear to listen and, after a moment,
the echo came back from the other side of the valley: “Fairieeeeeeeee!!!” Even I was surprised on hearing the echo so loudly, fore it was went on, passing by us, and it seemed that it would go on for ever, lost among the mist morny.
“Thank goodness!” mother Goat sighed. “You saved that poor thing.”
“Who I saved, grandma?”
“You saved a fairy from dead. God bless you” she repeated and she sat down again, and shr went on with her spinning.
“Who I saved, grandma?” 1 asked, not understanding what she meant.
“You savetJ that fairy” she said.
“Which fairy?” I asked.
“Which one is no mater. You saved one” she said.
I insisted, because I didntt see what other Goat up to. Then she went on explaining, in a very detailed manner, how the echo was the voice of fairies, or something like that. If the fairy had died already, she said, then the echo would not answer my call. According to what she said, a fairy dies when some one says that dont believe in fairies, like I did.
“Grandma, if that was so, there wouldnt be many fairies lef because I heard many people saying that fairies don´t existo.
“You are dead right there, Mano. There are not many fairies left, and so it happened with other animals. Only God knows how many species of fairies have desappea already. What is how things are.
“Then there are many sorts of fairies, grandma, as there are birds and other animals?” I asked.
“There are, I presume, because only a few years ago, when I was your age...
“When you were my age was long time ago, Grandma.”
“I was gpoing to talk about the fairies, Mano. The years of a person are nothing, for what 1 meant. But you leave things there. When I was your, it was almost natural to see fairies around, and now you have to be very lucky to see one in your life time. Only in a very special day, like today, there is a chance to see one.
“Tell me, then, grandma. Why today is a good day to see those
fairies of yours?” I asked still no sure if she was pulling my leg.
“I will not tell you. Because you are too young, and you are not going to understand me. And even wors, if you do, you then would go around telling other boys; and the other boys would tell their parents, and then people would say that I am mad in my head. I bet they would think that, because I know how people thinks. You already know what happened to the poor shepherd.”
“Grandma, I will not open my bill. Or you don´t believe me?”
“For the moment, Mano, there are many other things that I can teach you. As I told you once, we are surrounded by a world full of wonders, if only people stopped for a moment to watch ot to listen. But I will teach you how to open your eyes and stretch your ears, to see and to listen what is under your nose; and you will be surprised then how blind and deaf you were.”
“Don’t be angry, grandma. But tell me why those fairies can be seen only in a day like today. You trust me. I am not going to tell your secrets to anybody. I promise you once more.”
“Then I will tell you. But if I find out that you go around spreading tales, I will break my distaff on your head. You bet if don’t” said the woman pulling her distaff from her waist and shaking it at me.
“Oh, grandma!. How stubborn you are. If I said that I ar going to keep my mouth shut I will keep my mouth shut.”
She stuck the distaff on her wast again and went on with the jop pulling the flask with her long and bony fingers, and she spinedle seemed to go Berserk rotating in the air. I had the feeling that she thought that the spindle was my neck that she was twisting. What I didn’t understand, at the time, was that she was acting, really. Her anger was all part of her way of tel the story, so I would believe better her fantasies.
“Come on, grandma! What I have done now?”
“You are no better than the rest. One moment you don’t believe in fairies and next asking me to tell you about them. Poor things!”
“Why you say poor things, grandma. Is it not true that they tuen into gold anything they touch?”
“Who told you that nonsense?” she asked.
“I heard people saing that, when they tell stories about fairies. They make gold out of straw, and they do what they fancy. They can be rich or poor, as the occasion comes.” I told mother.
“Make gold out of straw. Do what they please. What you know? Listen to me, my boy. Those stories you heard are stories for little children. But to me yo are not a child. You are a shepherd, so you are a child no more. You work like aman, for you are and you are no stupid, even when some times I have my douts. So don´t believe in those nonsense people talk and they tell you? I say poor things when I talk about the real fairies, because they have their limitations, too. They need us to believe, for them to go on living. Why that is so I don’t kow. 1 wish I knew more, but 1 have my limitations, too. What I know is this: People believe in the wrong things, things that never existed, and they can’t see what is under their noses. And, as you said, there may be not many real fairies left.. .the same as other things that we have lost. Then, when there is nothing to believe, what we will do of ourselves?”
“Grandma, how many times you have seen those fairies, then?” I asked a bit to loudly for grandmother’s taste.
“Shiss!” she warn me, looking to both sides, as making sure that nobody overheard me.
“Not so fast, boy. I don’t want everybody to know. Look, to start with, to see something you have to believe, because if if you don’t believe, I ask you how can you see. I saw fairies many times and in many shapes, because what I gather, there were many sorts of fairies at one time in this forest of oaks and chesnuts. But now there left only one king. I don’t know what happened to the resto: they died or they went to live somewhere else. But the ones that are still aroun, are the more interesting ones. They are completely transparent, and only in a very special light can they be seen. Because in the shade they don’t show and in the sun light they are transparents.”
“Then you are right, grandmother. If they can´t be seen in the
shade, and they can´t be seen in the sun, you tell me how anybody can see them.”
“There is where it comes a day like today, Mano, when there is no shade and no light. You see those sunbeams, that that for a moments they cross the mist and the trees? Well, when when the fairies pass through those defused rays of light, they can be seen as clea as you and me.
“And how they look like, grandma? Are they as pretty as the stories tell us.”
“Pretty as the storieS tell us? Well, well, Mano! You still can´t see the trees for the wood. What I am talling you about, are no about pretty nor ugly thins, Mano. People, like you and me, can be call pretty or ugly. But fairies are not human. So, what do good looks have to do with them?”
“Grandma, animals and birds are no human, and some are pretty and some are ugly” I corrected grandmother.
“There is not such a thing as an ugly animal, Mano. Beauty is only skin deep. So birds are more colourful than others, but that is all” said Mother Goat.
“Don’t you tell me about birds, grandmother. I saw one that is lost about somewhere, and it is the most beautiful bird you ever saw. I tried to catch it, but I never can get near it.”
“What for you want to catch it?”
“To put it in a cage and to show it to everybod” I said.
“To keep in a cage! Is i t then a sin or a crime to be beautiful,
Mano? Is it such a crime to be handsome, that you have to imprison the poor thing and deprive that innocent creature of its freedom, only because of the colour of its feathers.
“Grandmother, I would put it in a big cage and I would give it plenty eat and water for drinking. What more a bird want than that?”
“The bird wants the win, Mano.So leave the poor thing alone. But, I will tell you that there are not things more blind than colours. This bird that you talk about, looks more pretty because it is the only one around this place. But if all the birds were like that one, you would feel the same for any other bird with no colours at all. And as a proof of that, look at those doves, that are plenty about in sunmer. They have only one coulor, a very grey one, but they look beautifu the same. They looked beautiful because they are so gracious and peaceful. The same happens with people, and with the fairies. Feathers and clothes are the same ilusion.
“Don’t tell me, grandma, that they have feathers like birds.”
“Feathers like birds!” mother exclaimed, and she smiled. “No feathers, no clothes, Mano...”
“what! Don´t tell me that they have no clothes” I said.
“What they need clothes for? They don’t feel the weather as we do; and they have not shame to hide.“
“Then they are naked, or what?” 1 was perplexed.
“Oh, you don’t understand me and I don’t blame you. I am trying to tell you how to look at the hidden world around us. But you only can think in colours and clothes, because that is what your poor head is use to see. Now, when you look at those sun beams, don’t look for colours or clothes, beauty or the opposite. Try to see something that still is not in your head. Close your senses to all the other material things about you. In that way you will have a better chance to se the fairies; and may be other things that are around you, and that you can’t see now.”
“Grandma, in the way you tell me, I understand less every minute. I was told that fairies had dresses made of gold. That is why they are calle fairies.”
“Now that you mention it, I must admit that their hair seems that of gold. Yes, the hair is the most prominent thing of those creatures, almost covering their bodies from heat to tow.”
“Then they are all women, grandma?”
“All women? You know, I never thought of that. Yes they seemed to be all women, those that are still left around here. Well, more than women I would say girls, more like children. They are very, very slim, with a neck very fragile and very long; their faces, are long with enormous eyes. And so are their hands, thin with long fingers. One thing that seems very small are their feet, but then they are very small creatures, anyway. When they run or dance in circles, if we can call dancing what they do, their hair opens and it seems they have wins. That may be why, in some stories of
fairies, people say that they ha wins.”
“Do they talk or sing, grandma?”
“They don’t talk like us, and they don’t sing like wet do. But they sing somehow. It is like the singing of the pine trees when they are shaken by the breeze. lf you come to hear that singing, you will feel very sad, or something that you never felt before... something like you as if you were wounded and you have a medicine that smoothens your pain.”
“I heard that many times, grandma” I said.
“What did you hear?”
“when you are not around, I feel pain, here into my chst, like I was was hurt. Then, as I liste to the pine trees I felt sad, but the pain goes.”
“Do you, really, heard all that?”
“Many times, grandma, many times. I don’t like to be on my own in the hills. I am not afraid, but 1 feel hopeless.”
God bless you, and be happy, because I assure you that most of those tree songs that you heard are not trees, but the songs of those little creatures; and if you can hear their songs, it would not be difficult for you to see them as they are. And I tell you this, because till now we talked only of how they look like, but not of the effect that they can cause with their presence. When you see them you will not be the same boy again. Your life will change, you will see.”
That conversation with Mother Goat, about the fairies, brought to me a lot of trouble. The idea of seeing the fairies, drove me mad. I would get up very early, without be call, and the first thing I would do was to run to the window and see if it was a mis morning. As a rule, in the mornings of late spring and early summer, there would be a haze covering the woods and the hills due to the humidity of the night’s dew. But it soon disappear, as the sun came over it. Now and then the mist would turn into fog that would last most of the morning, specially in the outskirts of the hills and the valley. If I saw, from the window, one of those foggy mornings, I would leave immediately with the sheep for the hills, without waiting for breakfast.
“What is the matter with the boy, that suddenly turned so ansious” I heard mother commenting.
In the hills I would find a place where even Mther Goat could not find me. There I sat on rag, on the top of a trench or the trunk of tree and I would keep my eyes on the sumeamsr as they crossed through the mist and the trees. Any disturbance of the flight of a bird, or a breeze turned turning the tree brancheis I would interpret it as the songs of the fairies. Time would pass for me without I noticing. A couple of hours would be like a couple of minutes. And it was there where the trouble started. Because my sheep had their own ideas, and little or nothing they care bout faries and mother Goat’s tales. They only warry about their bellies. So, while I was there dreaming, they would go down to the valley to eat the juicy lettuces, the cabbages, parsnips and onions; anything green was grist to their milI. They never had such a good time in their lives, and if they could think with their thick heads, they would think that I was the best shepherd in the world. For not other shepherd had ever led his flock to tbetter pastures.
The ones who didn’t think so good of me were the farmers. Very often I was awaken from my dreams by the shouting of angry people chasing the sheep from their greens. Then there were the complains and the pulling of my ears by mother.
“What is the matter with you, boy. You started been a good shepherd, and now you are careless.”
I could not tell to her, or to uncle Tom, the motive of my behaviour, because I had promised Mother Goat to keep the secret about the fairies. But, after those floods of complain by the farmers, and the ear pulling sections of mother, I promise myself not to waste more time with that nonsense of chasing fairies. Then, as I saw a foggy morning from the window, I could not resist the temptation, and I would to say to myself:
“Let us try once more. If today I don’t see the fairies, I will bother no more.”
And there I would be transported to another world again, watching the sun beams playing with the fog and the trees, while the sheep were having another feast of juicy vegetables down in the medows.
It was one foggy morning identical to the one when Mother Goat gaveme the lecture about fairies. It is today o never, when I can see those creatures, I thought, being that morning special, as I thought it was. And there I was, deeply concentrated in my task of catching a sight of those creatures when, suddenly I noticed that I was in the air, lifted by my arm as if I was going to fly. So absentminded I ws that I got the fright of my life, and I screamed. But the fear turned into terror when I saw that I as in the hands of the most horrible creature. He was the ugliest man in the world,the brutish, stupid and the meanness of all farmers. Dogs and cats would run for their lives on seeing that man coming in their way. His orchard was the only one where children wouldn’t dear to go to pinch a pear or an apple. In the markets seldom was there the occasion when he would not have fight with someone. Men would avoid having arguments with him, because very little a contradiction was need for him to start a problem. He as the man who I killed his chickens in the meadow. And there I was in his hands as a little bird in the claws of an eagle. My sheep had the unwise idea of choosing his lettuces that morning for their breakfast, and they had devoured the top of each plant, without caring for vinegar or oil. The man, instead of shouting and swearing, like the rest, he chased the sheep from his field to someone else fields and then he came to look for me. How he found me, I don’t know, but there I was to his merey. Comprehending what was going to happen to me, I started to beg for merey, but my pleading felt in deaf ears. The brute started to bashed me with the stick as if I was a dirty earpet. And soon I was not pleading merey anymore, but praying to die soon; because I knew that the sinner was not going to stop until he chased the soul out of my body. I learned, with that experience, that only the first blows are painful. After that, shame takes over and there is no pain anymore. It is all like a dream a nightmare, but time passes and one doesn’t awake. When I came to life again the man was not there. Most of the fog seemed to be gone, and the day had a colour that I never had seen before. Have I been dreaming, I asked to myself. I felt like jelly, my body shaking like a leave. But the pain of the body was nothing compare with the pain of the soul. I felt so ashamed of that violation of my dignity that I wanted to die. And I prayed to God to died, and I meant it.
As I was there, hopeless, alone with my grief, I heard a
rumour, like the sound of a refreshing breeze, a beautiful sort o a song that I never heard before. I was so soothing that to run inside my blood. The song, or whatever it was, seemed to be healing my wounds. Then, through my tears I saw, among the sunbeams and the trees, something like a whirlpool of water coming in my direction. I dried my eyes with the reversed of my hands, thinking that the whirlpool was part of my tears. But the whirlpool of water kept coming in my way for the more I dried my tears, and it was brighter as it was coming near and near. I could see the trees through the
water, because it was clear as glass. Already near me, the water broke in many bubbles, and soon the bubbles took the shape of little girls; but different to all the girls I had ever seen. They had long
golden hair to their feet, and still I could see the trees through
their bodies, but a bit distorted. They were going in circles, like children playing, and they made a humming noises like the win in the bushes, very soothing rumour. I felt back frighten, as they approach me, and they walked over my body, but they were weightless and their feet were very cool. They were as Mother Goat described them, but with some difference, because they changed continually. Their hair started to fell over my face, it was like rain. The hair of the little creatures got entangled as they went around in circles, and soon the many things became one; and like a whirlpool of water, they went down the hill, across the trees, in the same way as they came up before. I felt like to go with them, and I got up, but I was left with my arms stretched. Then I looked to my arms and there were not brushes. My whole body had stop to ache, and I didn’t fill ashamed anymore. Thou I was confused, because I still could not believe what 1 had seen. At this point I heard Mother Goat shouting. She had heard my crying, while the man was thrashing me and she was coming to my help.
“What is all that crying, Mano, she shouted out o breath.”
I run to meet her crying excited: “I saw them, grandma, I saw them.”

**********************
THE TWINS

At the end of the Owl´s Valley there wa a place call Crows Wood. There the river , because of the highger terrein, turn sharp to the right. And there, during God knows how many years and how many floods, the river had deposited a great deal of gravel. The pine trees were very old, and the highest I ever saw. That was a favourite place for all the crows in the area; and it was for that reason that the place was known as Crow Wood. Very often, those crows were scratching for food where the river had deposi its gravel. People, in those areas, believed that crows can live a hundred years. And one of those crows, that very often could be seen scratching in the gravel, was a very famous one, and people would say that it was more than a hundred years old. I heard old people saying:
“That crow was already there when my grandfather was a boy.”
They could say that i t was the same crow, because the bird had different characteristic to the other crows. The bird was larger than the other vrows and its its crowing was not as coarse as that from the other crows. It was like the voice of a woman, and it seemed to call:
“My sons, my sons!”
I had seen that crow myself many times. The bird was all the time on its own, as if it didn’t want to have anything to do with its race. Then I learned that there was legend about that extravagant bird. Some people believe that the legend was a true one, and most would take it as a joke. The legend said that, more than a hundred years back, a summer storm had flo°o/the valley so suddenly thatLtook people by surprise, and some people drowned. Among those victims of the flood were the twins, whose bodies never had been found. The crow, according to superstition and legend, was the ghost of the twins´ mother looking for her sons. In one ocassion they started mining the gravel to for building purpose. In those days, when small firms could not efford machines, practically all the mining was done by pick and shovel and, as the workrnen were digging, they came across two small skeletons, one embracing the other, as if they had died holding one to another. Every living creature in all the villages around, went to see the skeletons. An people would coment:
“Then it was true, the legend of the crow.”
The priest came with other men, and they put the skeletons in a box and took them to the church. Next day there were a funeral in the churc, and everybody went to the funeral. 1 was puzzled by all that sort of business: so many people going to a funeral of skeletons that had been already bury for God knows how many years. 1 could not waitlthe the moment to talk with Mother Goat and ask her an explanation. Because, 1 was sure that Mother Goat would clarif the matter for me; always had an explanation for everything. One hot and hurnid morning 1 was with the woman on the Horse’s Hill. We were sat in the shade of a tree, from where we could see the valley. A couple of white clouds appeared over the mountains, and they seemed to travel fast in the direction of the sea. Mother Goat was looking the clouds and, turning to me, she commented:
“1 think we are going to have Saint Mark’s storm.today.”
The country folk of that region beived that around the middle of Jne/always would be a big storm; and it was know as Saint Mqrk’s storm. As the story of the twins, who died in the floods, was in everybody’s mouth, I said to Mother Goat:
“May be another storrn as that one when the twins drowned, eh grandma? “
“1 pray that God didn’t hear” she said..
“Do you beIieve that those skeIetons were the ones of the twins, grandma?”
“Who else if not the twins, Mano?”
“Then the wandering soul of the mother, can rest in peace, eh, grandma? Now that the sons are bury in holy ground.” I said, borrowing the words that I heard from the older people.
“Amen, son. She deserves a rest, after all those years trying to find her sons. Poor soul! Rest in peace” Mother Goat said, and she made the sign of the cross.
“Ame” I responded, as a good christian. And then 1 said: “People don’t taIk about anything else nowadays, eh, randma? All the talk is about that legend.”
“Legend, you said, Mano? Legend is something that may or may not be true, but this one is a very true story, as the skeletons prove it.”
“Do you know the story, then, grandma?” 1 asked, sure that the answer would be affirmative, for if she didn´t who else would know it.
“1 am the only one who knows it, son” she said, as 1 was expecting. Well, the only one who knows it to the last detail, just as it happened” she corrected herself.
“Then you remember when it happened, grandma?” 1 asked.
“Come on, Mano! Don’t be funny. Do 1 look so old?”
“Then when it happened, grandma? More than a hundred years ago?”
“Let me se” she said, and she started to calculating numbers with her fingers as she talked to herself. “Ninety years, less twelve or fourteen, makes seventy-six or seventy-eight. Then twenty and another thirty makes fifty; and there we have a hundred and twenty, take or leave one year or two. Then we have to think how old was my grand-mother, in those days, and we said another twenty or so. Ves, it is what 1 was thinking, Mano. A hundred and forty years ago.
That was the way grandmother knew about dates, by the ages of her grandmother and her mother, and herself and so on. She knew nothing about numbers, but with the help of her fingers and the ages of her forebears, she could calculate any date, as from the beginning of time, or so 1 thought at the time. So, if she said a hundred and forty years, a hundred and
forty it was.
“GrandJother, i t can´t be so long. How t:he bones coul still be there; because they were intact, as good as new. were not rotten a bit.”
“The sand, Mano. The sand kept them.”
“You know, grandma, they were embracing each other as if they were alive.” 1 told mother Goat, even knowing that she, too, had seen the skeletons.
“Poor things! They died the same way they lived. All the time together, holding hands as if they were lovers. Poor, poor creatures! They were angels, nevertheless they were victims of the curse, as any other poor devil. Let them rest-in peace, Mano” grandmother said.

****************************



THE CAVES


When the entire wood of chestnuts was cut down, Goat became very sad. She said that the wood was very special, and that there was not another one the same in the whole world. It was an enchanted wood, home to many creatures and other things, and to cut it was a sacrilege. She cursed all the workmen that cut the trees, even when it was not their fault, for they were only doing a job.
“Mano” she said to me once “I wish those men be swallow by the earth under their feet.” I never heard Mother Goat swearing like that before, and 1 got frighten by the tone of her voice, because she meant what she said. Then a day came when 1 thought that her words had reached heaven, for the terrain gave up at the pas of a cart loaded with wood, and cart and oxen dropped down to a deep hole. Some men improvised a crane with trunks and ropes and they manage to pull up the cart and the oxen, but the poor oxen were dead. People from all the villages around came to see the hole, which was of enormous proportions, or so 1 thought, because 1 never had seen anything alike before. After pulling up the cart and the oxen, they n dug up the soil that had fallen to the bottom, and then they discovered a passage high enough for a man to walk upright. While some men were at the bottom dug, others at the top pull the ropes with the buckets full of soil. A few old men, sat on the trunk of a tree, were telling stories. They said that all the hills there were full of passages underneath, because the moors had mined gold there for many years. We children paid good attention to those stories, because there were not books available at the time, and we lived from the stories told by the elders. The men pulling the ropes, on hearing the older men talking about gold, would shout to the ones in the hole:
"Hey, bring a pot of gold for me, too."
The young men, who explored the passages, brought up some earth ware pots, but no gold. Then the men said laughing":
“Some one ate the stew already."
"Yes, we were too late for lunch."
We children enjoyed playing football with the pots, while the men, after so much trouble digging up the soil, dropped it to the bottom again, finished filling it up with branch and stones found around the place. Later on Mother Goat commented with me:
“Mano, many times I felt sorry not to be born a man. But men nowadays are like chickens. Look at those young chaps who explored the passages. They only went a few paces inside and already turned back frighten as children. And then they rushed up to fill in the hole as afraid that some monster could come up from inside there. If I were a man, Mano, I would explore those passages, all right. Because I tell you that it is a lot to be seeing down there."
"Do you think that still are some pots with gold down there, grandma?" I asked.
"There are things even more important than gold, I am sure of that. When you grow up into a man, you should explore; those mines, and you will be surprise what you may find inside there."
"How can I do that, grandma, now that they filled in the hole with stones?"
"I know of another place where would be easy to go inside. A place that only 1 know and nobody else.”
Then Mother Goat took me to the old quarry, the place supposed to be the old hoses cemetery. There she picked up a small stone and, lifting it high to the sun, she said to me:
"Look at those little pieces that shine like stars, Mano. You see, they are gold. But they are so tinny that it doesn’t worth the. It would cost more to take it from the rock. Then she showed me, high up in the quarry, something like a round mark where the hawthorns grew. And she assured me that there was an entrance to the caves.
"Grandma, why the moors bother to mine it, if it was so worthless? They didn't have better things to do, or what?” I asked.
"The moors didn't have to dig it, Mano. Time and water had done the job for them”
Mother Goat said.
"Which water you talk about, grandma?" 1 asked without understanding what she ant.
"Many years ago there was some gold in the river, and there are some stories of people that became rich washing sand. But it was not much and soon all the sun and pebbles along the river were washed, till there was not a grain of gold left. But when thet4oors reached this area, clever people as it seemed they were, realised that the gold had to be inside the hills. The river only had what the springs brought out from inside the hills."
"Aha! Now I see, grandma. Then they mined the hills looking for gold. Isn't that so, grandma?"
"You are quick in the uptake, Mano. But what you do not know is what a legend says about that. As 1 told you once, a legend may or may not be true, but 1 think this one is more than legend."
"And what that legend says, grandma."
"That legend says that when the moors opened tunnels under the hills, they found enormous caverns there, that the water had excavated during millions of years. There were ponds where the water had deposited all the gold washed from the rocks, and it could be pick up by the bucket full. But then one day they blocked the entrances to the caves and left. Since then nobody found those passages.”
"I know, grandma,” I said, interrupting Mother Goat. "They ate the potatoes of the stew, as the men said the other day, and left the water for us."
"They may have plenty, but more than they took may still be there, because the legend says that those caves are never ending, like another world under there. I said that the entrances were never found, but I meant not until sixty years, when I was a girl, the men that were digging the stone in the quarry came across one of the passages. But then, like the other day, men didn't dare to go very far in their exploration. But, a young man from my village explored the caves a few years later, but what he saw under there, he took it with him to the grave, for he died of fright."
"Grandma, why the moors closed the caves if still was gold there?"
"They didn’t go away of their own will. They were kick out.”
"Ah, I see now, grandma. There was a war, and they closed the mines when they lost, so nobody could find their gold. Isn't that so?"
"Something like that, Mano" Mother Goat said.
"Grandma, how you know so much if you never went to school?"
"1 never went to school because in my times there was not school for the poor people, Mano. The same happened to other people in the past, but they left their stories written in one way or another, like the man who left his story of the dog he carved in the stone there in the Wolves Gate. And then you saw the footprints that the shepherd and his animals left in the rock. People in those days could not read or write had better memory, too, because they had to exercise it, and their stories passed from mouth to mouth, and so stories lasted. And 1 tell you, Mano, that very little wee would know if it was not in that way, for what has been written is nothing compared with what been told. I will tell you a story that is still fresh in every mouth, because, compared with other stories, this one could be say that it happened yesterday. Ever even when it is told in more ways than one, still the story is the same, for the essence is what matters."
After that tirade, Mother Goat told me a story that, a few yeas later, I found out that it was a true one:
Once, there was in my village a family of peculiar qualities. I remember the two old men very well. I was a girl when they died. They may have more than a hundred when they pass away, specially the older one, who was single. Those men could not read or write, but they could tell stories hundreds and or a thousands of years old."
“Grandma, do know how many years are thousands of years? May be there was no people around here in those times" 1 corrected Mother Goat.
"What you don't know Mano is that all this land, at one time, more than a thousand years ago, was more important than it is today. There were castles and palaces, and may be cathedrals. Now you can’t see nothing of that, but the names of those things are there see in the names of the land, and that we can't ignore. Those old men could tell those stories, because they heard them from their grand parents, and their grand parents heard them in the same way; and so on, from the beginning of time. And with the experience they inherited, they had enriched their knowledge. They knew about the stars and the moon that can influence our lives more than we think. The farmers would consult those men to know when it was the very best moment to saw or collect their harvests because those men knew, by the moon and the stars, but specially by the moon, when it was the appropriate moment to do those jobs and so have a good harvest. There were no doctors in all the villages, in those times, and those men knew medicines for people and animals alike. They not only told stories of the past; they told stories of the future, and now we know that they knew what they were talking about, for there are the cars and the airplanes to prove it. But their speciality was telling stories of the past. One of those, as I told you, was single and the other was a widow, and he had a daughter, marry and the couple had a son. That young man went to study medicine to the university of Santiago. For medicine was his vocation inherited from his older relations. That family was well off, for they were good farmers, but not rich as to send a young man to university. Nevertheless, they did so, because it seems that the old men wanted to have a man of medicine in the family, at all costs. So they were making any sacrifice possible to see their dream come true. In the university the young man soon became popular among the other students, because he told those fantastic stories learned from his grand mother and his old uncle. Among those friends he cultivated the friendship of two brothers of a noble family. The brothers were from other part of the country, born in a large city, and little or nothing of the simple life of the peasants, and even less of the folklore of our region. They felt under the spell of those stories told by their new friend and during a school break they came with him met his old relations. And for the first time they got in touch with the simple life of country people, and they thought that everything was wonderful.
Those things that we live with everyday, and which we don’t give them a thought, were wonders for those young men: as tools made by a skilful blacksmiths, or oxen carts and wooden ploughs made by the craftsmanship of carpenters; the gentleness of the domestic animals, obeying to the call of their names, as if they were people; every one of those experiences was for them a wonder. Then at night they, the dinner cooked by the young man mother, they enjoyed so much, that they said would not change it for the best banquet of a king.
“Grandma, that woman ought to be a good cook to cook dinner better than the women who cook for kings."
"It wouldn’t be so elaborated as those meals for a king, 1 am sure. But in the simplicity is where beauty lies. A well-seasoned stew, with, cabbages from the orchard, new potatoes, beans, smoked pork and dumplings, to make the juice whitish and thick, can be mouth-watering, even for a king. But, this is not the story. Where was 1, Mano?"
"Grandma, you were saying that those noble people, or however you call them, enjoyed the stew very much,” I said, trying to put Mother Goat back on her.
"No, it was not that what was about to say. I was going to tell you that, after dinner, and after collecting the dishes, the mother and the father of the young man went early to bed. The pretext was that they were tire after a long day's work, but really they were not more tired than any other day. The pretext was to get out of the way and leave the men on their own. They
realise that the students were eager to listen to the stories of the two old men. The five men sat by the fire with a large jar of home grown red wine.
"Then it was in winter, eh grandma?" I asked, because of the fire she mentioned.
“Why you asked that, Mano?"
"Because you said that they sat by the fire with the wine. Men do that in winter, or not?"
"It never crossed my mind, Mano, if it was winter or summer. That is not important. But your question comes handy, because otherwise may be 1 would not tell you this: nothing refreshes the memory as a good fire and a jar of good red wine. And if the fire is pine wood, even better."
"Why pine wood, grandma? A fire is a fire, pinewood or any other. Isn’t it?"
"Oh no, Mano. There are fires and fires. Pinewood is the most common fuel in this region, and it has been for ever so. And all the stories told, as from the beginning of time, were up by those fires and by the same red wine of the region..."
"1 see, grandma, 1 see now. The old men could remember better the stories if the fire was from the same wood as when they heard the story themselves. Yes?"
"You u are clever when you u want to be, Mano. Because I tell you this: it took me years to think of that myself. You just said it, boy. That is one of the reasons: the other reason is the bark of the pinewood. As you know, it bursts as fire cracks when it gets hot and sparkles all over little tars and looking at those makes the memory alights as well. We don’t know why, but they make you remember. But what am I talking about, Mano? This is not the story. I was going to tell you that in that house they produced the best wine of the region. Those men, as 1 told you, knew about herbs more than the devil, and there they mixed something in the wine that nobody knew what it was, but people said that such wine would make you remember the day you were born.
So with the fire burning, and the wine on the table, the young men sat by the old ones to listen to their stories. One of the men, the grandfather, got a basket of potatoes to peel while telling his share of the stories. I was the custom of those men to do something while telling their stories. Because, with nothing to do the hands want to tell the story themselves, and they get in the way. The other man, the single one, got his distaff and the spindle and started to spin the flax…
“But, grandma, what did you say? The old man doing that job?” I interrupted to ask, because 1 never heard of a man doing that sort of job.
“The old man, yes. He always would do that job while telling stories. It was his way of concentration, it seems.”
“But, grandma, that job is a woman job.”
“Don't be a donkey, Mano. That job, as many other jobs, is not a woman job, or a man job, it is a job; something that has to be done, that is all.”
“Well, I never in my life have seen a man doing that.”
“Your life is in for a surprise, yet, Mano, for you will see many things hard to believe. There are men who knit, and for that they are not less of a man than others. And now that you
said that, I will tell you something that otherwise I was going to leave out, because it was not part of the story. It is something that you would not care about, but I will tell you the same. In the beginning I told you that, for lack of doctors, those men were consult instead, for they had a great knowledge of natural medicines, for animals and people. And I tell you this: it is a lot easier to find a cure for animals than it is for people. You see, animals are ill or are healthy; but people, sometimes, think they are ill and they are not, and there are not herbs that can cure that sort of illness. But those old men could see what the problem could be in that sort of people. Those are problems that our head can’t cope with: little food and too much work. Lack of love, and so on. In those cases, the medicine those men would recommend was a change of job. If they were women, then they would be told to do the job of a man. It could be harder for the body, but a rest for the head. And if they were men, they would be told to leave aside those heavy jobs for a while and take to knit or to do some cook, and those advises did work in most of the cases. So don't you be ashamed of doing a woman's job, because you will be a man all the same and may be healthier. You see, those old men were masters of their trade, and they always have to do something while they told stories, because stories are words and, as I told you sometimes the hands want to talk but they say nothing and only get in the way. To keep them busy away was like to tell: sued make stick to your last. And this is what I am telling you, Mano. If you do interrupt me once more, I leave you there and the story.”
The old men had been told by their grand son that the students were interested in the
story of the caves; because it was precisely in those years when the entrance to the caves had been discovery in the quarry, so the news was in every bodies mouth. In those days, as I told you, some men did a bit of exploration, a few paces of the tunnel, but everybody was scared to go farther. Now, the story that those old men knew, and they told to the students, was more or less like this one I am going to tell you:
At one time there were three caciques in this area, who lived in their towers, at some good distance apart, of which places there are no left a single stone nowadays, but the names are still there. The towers were in sight of each, forming a triangle. In that way the caciques could communicate by signals and tell each other of any apprising of the people, so one would go to hep the others. According to the stories of those old men, the caciques had their good reason to fear a revolution; fore they exploited the peasants too hard. The older people and children had to work the land, and the young men were trained as soldiers or they had to work in the gold mines. And while the people were poor, the caciques and their people were getting reach beyond belie. But what more hurt the people was that, if their daughters were pretty, they had to serve at the caciques for a year. Then those girls, as people knew what they were there for, would not find a man to marry. So, in one occasion the revolt started in one of the villages.
It seems that when the peasants revolted against one of the caciques were winning, the other caciques came to help. The villagers were chased, and all the people found refuge inside the
mines, or so they thought, because there the soldiers would get lost, but the workers knew the place as well as their hands. But then what the caciques and their troops did? They blocked the entrances to the mines and left everybody inside...
"Grandma, they left the people there inside for ever, or they left them there till they were very hungry and they didn't fight anymore?"
“In there they were left for ever: Men, women and children.
"And nobody tried to save them, grandma?"
"Well, yes and no. As the story goes, the caciques did that to teach a lesson to the others so there would be no more revolts. But the news of that ill behaviour did travel fast and it was not long before the whole nation was against the caciques, and revolt sparked everywhere, and the war started. The caciques lost, but what did happen to them we don't know. But this is more or less what those old men use to tell, and that is how it was told to the students.
"Grandma, did the students explored the mines, then?" 1 asked, thinking that Mother Goat had finished the story.
"The old men were very slow in telling their story, because they told every detail, and not with a big brush as I told you. For their way was to tell the story in shifts: where one left he other started and, in between, they refresh their memory with a glass of that devilish wine of theirs. Now and again, one of them would get up and feed wood to the fire. In that manner the
story would last all night; but even if it lasted a week, nobody ever would get away without knowing the end. But so vivid the story was told that, one could see the story passing in front of ones eyes as if it happen in that very moment it as told. So as they were telling the story, the students were seeing themselves in the caves already, exploring all those enormous caverns, as large as valleys, where the gold was still glittering there. One of the students had, for some time, kept an eye on the several balls of flax that the old man had span in all those hours of story telling. The old man, without hurry had, nevertheless, span miles of thread, the student calculated.
By then the candles were burning short, and their flames were leaning towards the doors, looking for the fresh air of dawn, as it is the case with candles.
And there the story was left, when
In the woods the crows were in the top of the pine trees announcing the new day, too; fore crows are even better than cockerels to announce a new day. At that time the old men
went to bed to have their rest, for their sleep could not wait once they heard the crowns in the woods. The students did the same and went to their room. But the young men could not sleep, because they were making plans to explore the caves. The one who I said was keeping an eye on the balls of flax that the old man had span, the one who noticed as well how the candles lean towards the doors, to catch the fresh air of the morning, exposed his idea to the others. With those balls of thread, that the old man had spin, they would not get lost in the mines. They would tide up the string at the entrance and walk unwinding the string, and they could return following the thread. And the candles would tell them of danger, for the flames would search for fresh air, or would fade where there was lack of air. And so they pass part of the early morning making notes of what they need for the adventure. Been students as they were, they
they knew that some precautions had to be taking in those cases. They nee_ ladder to climb to the entrance of the tunnels, a shovel a pick and ropes, good shoes and good clothes, and some bandages. Then the flax balls, the candles and plenty matches; for, if some got wet, there always
would be more to spare. They made a note of those things, and many others; and that same day, about noon, they carry all the equipment to the quarry, where the entrance of the tunnel was. They lean the ladder agents the wall and up they went. They tide the string to the ladder and, put a piece of wood in its hole so it would unwind while they walked, through the tunnel.
“And what they found, grandma” I asked inpatient.
“Very little or nothing is known of what they found or what they saw. But one can deduce that they went very far, because it is known hat they went as far as the strings lasted, and more. When the string run out, the two visitors wanted to return, but the young man of
the house wanted to go on. The others could not persuade him not to do so. They sat down and waited for their friend. He promised them no to go too fare. But the others waited hours, very
worry, but they didn't know what to do. Then they decided to call loudly for him, and that was a mistake, because their shouts did travel along the passages and the echo kept coming back and repeating itself as if it never would stop. And even the young men felt frighten of their own voices. In the end they decided to go in search of their friend without the help of the string.
It seems that they came to an enormous cavern, as the old men mention in their story, and there they found their friend, lying on the floor, apparently dead. They carried him out on their shoulders, and took him home, using the ladder as a stretch. They lay him on his bed, and then they found that he was not dead, no wounded. He had the eyes open, but his face was disfigured as if he had been frightened to dead. The story says that there he stood three days, laying on his back, as looking to the ceiling without saying a word, and almost without breathing. His friends and his relations talking to him, but he would not saying a word. On the third day he awake but he didn’t respond to the question of his friends who kept asking what he had seen, to be left in such a state of fear. He did plead instead with them to close the entrance to the cave.
“Please” he pleaded, “don’t aloud anybody to go inside that place.”
When he got assured that the cave would be looked he smiled, his face turned to normal, as in peace, and then he died as a little bird.

At this point Mother Goat sighed deeply. I was waiting for her to continue, but seeing that see was pulling the distaff from her waist I realised that the story had finished. I was not satisfied with that unexpected end and I asked her:
“What you think the man saw, grandma, to be so frighten. You think that he saw all the skeletons of the dead people that were left there”?
“May be he saw them alive, and no dead.

*************************




THE STAG MAN

The stag mingle with the sheep and the goats for some time, perhaps
thinking of those animals as part of its lost family. We had ample time to observe its magnificent beauty at close range. And it was an exciting experience, because there were no stags in the region, and we never had seen one before. We found out later, that the animal came from fare away, running from the hunters. But, as grandma used to say, the poor thin jumped from the pan to the fires, because when men of the Villages around got the news that a stag had been seen in the region, all run to the hills and the woods with guns and dogs, as in a contest to see who was going to claim the price first. On seeing that behaviour of the men, Mother Goat said to me:
“You see, Mano. As soon as any animal is around, they go for it: it has to be kill At less in this case they will do a favour to the poor thing.”
“A favour, grandma! A favour to the stag, you mean?” I asked to make sure that it was what grandma meant.
“Yes, to the stag. Who else? The poor thing is very old, and God knows how lonely and sad he is” said grandma.
“How you know that he is old, lonely and sad, grandma?” I asked.
What most ca1l my attention of the stag, were his antlers.
an animal needs to carry on his head so many horns that he looks
like a tree? Grandma, without having seen a stag before, seemed to be well informed of the characteristic of those animals. She told me that one could know the age of the animals by the horns, because they grew one every year. That was how she knew that the stag was very old. She told me that the animal was lonely and sad because, been Very old it was of no use any more to the family, because someone else had taken his place. I asked grandma how she knew all that, because she never had seen a stag before, and she could not read to find out in books.
Then she told me that at one time there were plenty of those animals in the area. She could not remember those times, but she could remember well a fantastic story told by her grandmother, that she kept very near to her heart. Then grandma took me to a place in the woods that had seen before, but of which I had no notice of it. There, on close inspection, one could guess that there were the foundations of a some sort of building. Hidden by the thorns there were slates and pieces of wood. Grandma took a heavy slate from among the thorns and, after cleaning it with the sleeve of her
raincoat, she kissed it and, shaking her head in a disbelieve manner. She through the stone over the bushes again and said.
“In there, Mano, my life came to be, about a hundred and thirty years ago.”
“A hundred and what! Come on, grandma. You are not even a hundred years old. What you are talking about?” I complained, because I suspect that, sometimes she took me for a fool.
“Who knows how old I am? And who knows when our lives started?
But, at less in my case, I know that this place was the beginning.”
Grandma started to tell me the story, in which precisely,
a stag had something to do with her life.
“At one time, Mano, there were many stags over this hills and in those woods. Not only stags: there were wild boar and wolves and
other small game, in abundance, I could say. Those were the times when all the lands belonged to the castle, and nobody could hunt in all the lands that one can see around without a licence from the castle. To look upon all that game, in all those extensive lands, there was a keeper, who became a legend. My grandmother, Mano, would tell those stories when I was a little girl. She was an extraordinary story teller, and she had the memory of the devil, Go forbidding. I can not make justice to her, when it comes to tell stories. But, at less I can say that I am a chip of the old bloc because I like her, have a good memory, and I thank God for that. Some times I get lost, I must admit, but it is only because there is so much in my head. I was very small when she told those stories, and I could not understand the meaning of some of them. But the stories stay in my memory clearly and, with time, I came to understand them. Yes, I was a little child when grandmother
died, but I remember. She died young. She was picking up figs
when the branch gave in and she fell own and broke her back. She went in a terribly pain, poor thing. Be aware of fig trees, Mano. They are false, and they break for nothing. Poor grandmother! If I close my eyes, I can see her, clearly, with all the colours of her nice clothes, sat by the fire place, telling stories to the neighbours, who would gather in our house in the evenings to listen to her stories. She, instead of wearing black, like all the older woman did, would ware colourful clothes like a gypsy. But, what am I doing talking about my grandmother, if to remember her makes me sad? Let us talk of something else and leave grandmother rest in peace.”
“Grandma, why you do this all the time? You start a story, and when I start to like it, you finish it” I complained.
“If you were a bit older...but what you now about lost love and the like? Eh, Mano? No, now that I think of that, I can’t go on telling you this story of love and tragedy.”
“If your grand mother told you, when you were very little, you can tell me, that I am not so little already” I protested.
I told you, Mano, that grand mother didn’t tell me those
stories. She told me other stories, of course. But the one about the Stag Man and the house that was here, she would tell to the neighbours, and to my mother. But I listened and the story still is in my head.”
“Well, grandmother, tell me it very simple and later I will
understand it, as you did.”
“I tell you, Mano, that nothing is more difficult than to tell something simple. But it is a nice day, today. Let us sit here
and make homage to this place, where once there was love and tragedy. It
There was a log, that I even hidden by the grass. It was badly rotten, but dry. On a rapid inspection I could see that the wood had been that sort of column that sustains the canopy of a fire place in country houses. We sat on it and Mother Goat begin her story of the Stag Man:
It happened short after the famous floods, in which, among other people, the twins and the game keepers wife died. This story of the stag man, as I already said, a story of lost love and tragedy. But I am not going to refer to it in that way, because something good came out of all that. So I would say that, what once happened in this place, was a fantastic event. But you should hear it from my grandmother’s lips; because she told the story with her
heart on her lips: tenderly and sentimentally, for which I understood, later, as I became a woman, that she was lost and madly in love with that young man.
“Lost mad! You are funny, grandma” I interrupted her, because I thought of the phrase as exaggerated one.
“What is fanny about that, Mano?” Grandma asked.
“Well… nothing. But who cares? To tell me a story you don’t have to tell me how mad your grand mother was. Or have you?”
“You are right there, Mano. The sentiments of the heart you don’t need to tell. They talk by themselves” said grandma, and she went on:
“You must learn that from the heart of a story, there is more left out than it is told, for that reason one have to guess the rest. My grandmother never said that she was mad in love with that young man, not with those words. But by the way she described this house, a blind person could see, clearly, that she was talking about love, and things of the heart, and not about stones and wood. Because one day you will learn, my friend, that we do not remember material things if they once were no warm by the human heart.”
At this point grandma got up on her feet and, making something like the sign of a cross with her hand, she asked me:
“Come down here, Mano. Look at the grass and the and the thorns over there and tell me, then, what you see. You see that the grass has different colour here and there, and it grows smaller. That was the foundation of the house and, as you see, it had almost the shape of a cross.”
Grand mother sat again and went on:
“Now, Mano, why you see slates here and there, and pieces of rotten wood, but you don’t see stones? Because this was a wooden house, built of thick pine logs, Placed in such a way that they formed a wall stronger than stones. But the roof was covered with slates, and on. top of the slates there was turf, to make the house more insulated. In spring, the turf would flower and, more than a roof, it looked like a patch of garden. The windows were small; and, according to grandmother, the house was fresh in summer and warm in winter. As the terrain is a bit sloped, as you can see, there at the front of the house was a banister and four steps to the door; four and not less, my grandmother said. The keeper’s wife had flowerpots all along the banister, all very special flower that the keeper would find in the hidden corners of the woods. The way my mother described the place, so vivid, I could see it as it was at the time. But the best part, the one my grandmother described with the heart in her mouth, was the inside of the house: Going in, the first thing one could see, according to what grandmother told, was a very large kitchen, that would do as kitchen and living room. There was a fire lace composed of a very large granite stone, and there were benches at each side. There were two rooms. This was the reason why the house had the shape of a cross. But one room was large than the other. The larger one was the couple’s bedroom, and the other smaller one was used as a larder, to keep all those things people keeps and may be they never use them. By the chimney there was a narrow staircase leading to a sort of loft, which was the room of the young man. The room was low, and the window was a thick glass on the roof. It was a room with corners to hide things, as children like it. With what a sweet sentiment grand mother would that room. A bird in spring could not sing a better song than the voice of grandmother, when she talked about that room.
Mother Goat stopped as trying to remember something, and I have time to ask if that man marry her grand mother, in the end.
“No, they never marry. But that is not important” she said.
“Not important? After courting and be mad in love, as you said,
they didn’t marry. Well... well!”
“They were not courting, Mano. Who said that? I am talking of when of when my grandmother was a little girl...”
“But little girls don’t get mad in love, grandma. Or are they?”
“I regret the moment I pronounced that word, Mano. I could say
something else, but that word came to my mouth. I told you that you
were too young to understand this story. And I didn’t want to go into it. But now that I am on the floor I have to dance, and I will show you one thing that boys can not understand. Let tell you this: those were the times when my gran4mother got a job in the castle, to look after the twins. It was the game keeper who recommends my grand
mother for the job. As you know the castle was not fare from here, and my grandmother, in her spare time, would come to this house. She was a lot younger that the keeper’s son But that doesn’t make any difference for a little girl to fall in love, because girls are different to boys. They are more lovable, romantic and dreamier, if that is the word. Or may be they are more primitive; for we forgot where we come from. But we came from the woods, and we would be better off if we were still there. My grandmother saw that room and this house in the woods, simple but secure; and being a girl as she was, the setting awake, on her inner spirit that filling that the birds never lost. This house was, to her, a nest. You can’t understand that, because you are a boy.”
“And what happened to the boy, ‘grandma? You talk and talk of your grand, and the boy what?”
“Oh, the boy? He went to Cuba, when he was about eighteen years
old.”
“Why he did so, mother, if this house was so nice, and he was in love with your grandmother? That is crazy, isn’t it?”
“He was not in love with my grand mother, Mano. I didn’t say that either. My grandmother was too young for him at the time. For him my grandmother was a friend. My mother was the one in love with the boy and the place. But all it was a dream. Because all this story is like a dream. Let me show you. Let me tell you this: the
people from the castle neglected everything, before the twins were born and brought happiness to the place. In those days they neglected the servants; they didn’t pay them and didn’t care about anything. And when the cat is away the mice play. Poachers would not take any notice of the keeper, and they would kill everything. The keeper saw things coming to an end. He thought that his son had not future in that place. Sooner or later, there wouldn’t be game to look after. The house and the place were the property of the castle. Romance is once thing, but reality is another The keeper saw this and advised his son to find better pastures in another land. And the son, on coming off age, held to the advice and went to Cuba. But what the keeper and his wife didn’t foresee, till the moment of truth, is how painful it can be to see the only fruit of ones life to part, perhaps not to be see ever again. The couple felt miserable after their son left. Most of the beauty that surrounded their lives suddenly seemed to disappear from their eyes. They had lived a romance in this enchanted place, since they had marry, but, when their son left, the dream seemed to be over, because they had lost their harvest. And then came the floods, and the keeper’s wife
drowned. That was the end.
“
As grandma was talking, my imagination was somewhere else, and
I was not paying attention. She looked at me, realising that I was not with her, and asked me:
“What are you thinking, Mano?”
“I was thinking, grandma. Has this story something to do with the stag man, or you got lost?
“What? The keeper was the Stag Man. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You didn’t. You only talk of your grandmother” I said.
“Yes, I was carry away. But it may be as well. Because you would understand better, from now on, why the keeper went mad on his head” grandmother said and she started the story of the stag man, when, precisely, I thought she had finish it:
“After the son going to Cuba, and the wife died in the floods, the keeper’s heart broke, came to pieces. Since that day he never shaved, and never changed his clothes, and the clothes would fell to pieces hanging on his body. Never again he alight a fire, and he lived as art animal.”
“I see now, grandma. He had to eat grass, because he didn’t cook, and then he grew horns, and...”
“Shut up, Mano. Let me tell you...”
“Well, grandma! If he didn’t make fire he could not cook, and then what he had to eat?”
“You are right to think like that. But you remember the story of the shepherd, how well he managed. The keeper could do the same, even better; because when there is not happiness, there is less appetite. Because I tell you that, loneliness and sadness, are things that feed themselves. But, in the case of the keeper, people felt very sorry for him, because they thought that he was mad for the lost of his son and his wife; and now and again, they would leave food for him by the door. My grandmother said that many times she left her teeth without a bite of bread to give the food to the keeper.”
“Then how he turned into a stag, grandmother?” I asked impatient.
“If you don’t ask me questions, and more questions, Mano, I will finish sooner. As I was going to say, before you put your foot once more, when the twins died in the floods, and the castle burned down in part, the owners, like the keeper, they, too, went to pieces, and soon died. The other son, who people thought of him as an idiot, lived in what the flames left, in a corner of the castle, and he didn’t care about the world. I told you before what the mice do when the cat is away. The hunters from fare away as the city, gave themselves to this hills and the forests around, and they killed everything that run on four legs or flight on their winds.
stags, boar, wolves, foxes; rabbits, hares and birds. Nothing
was left standing on their feet. That was told by my grandmother.
But, strange enough, a stag and a hind survived the massacre. The
reason might be because the male was a stag with great experience in the art of surviving; or perhaps the couple came from somewhere else, as that one we saw. If someone has seen the animal, it was always at night, and fare away. The first to see it was a young man coming home later from seeing a girl friend in other village across
the hills. Those youngsters would take short cuts through the woods and, over the hills, when they visit other places. And after the first more men would say that they saw the silhouette of the stag, far, on top of a hill, looking more like a monster or a ghost
than a stag. Hunters would go to the hills at any time of the night, with dogs and guns, but they never could see the animal. As people were very superstitious in those days, they started to say that it was the devil, and not a stag. In the end so famous that stag became, that a wealthy man put a price on its head, as if it was a criminal. Well, the gamekeeper knew that the stag was real, and not any devil. So, he decided to kill it himself. Why he decided to do that, I don’t know. But, certainly, it was not for the money. May be there still was some proud left on his heart as a keeper, and he wanted to show that he was better than anybody else. As a keeper he knew why the hunters could not get nowhere near the stag. For who else better than a keeper can know that sort of business? The stag, that had escaped with his life more than once, but just, could smell the gun powder a mile away. And as soon as it scented the powder, he would turn into smoke, if that is the word.
Well, tins happened in these way, according to how my grandmother told: The keeper had his gun hanging by the fireplace since the day his wife had died, rusting there as a forgotten relic. He got hands on it and cleaned it with the kerosene from the lamp, and he rubbed it well with several cloves of garlic. There was a large box by the fireplace that was used as bench as well, where there were kept all those things that every body feels sorry to through away. From that box, the keeper got a couple of cartridges. In those days cartridges and guns were different to the ones that there are today. But I know, by my grandmothers mouth, that the keeper used to prepare his own cartridges. He would fill the
cartridges according to the animal he was going to shoot. One lead for a stag, a boar or a wolf. May be four leads for a fox; and several for a hare or a rabbit, and lots for a partridge. Then he would mark the cartridges with chalk. As he could not read, he would put as many crosses on the cartridge as leads were inside. Well, the story is that from the box he got two cartridges with one cross mark on each. He emptied the cartridges over the table and he tried the powder with the tip of his tongue, to see if it was still alive. It was as good as the day he ha filled them up. Then he refilled the cartridges again, and rubbed them with garlic, as well as he did with the gun, so the stag would not smell the powder. That same night, the keeper went to the hills and shot dead the stag, with only one shot.”
“Was it as big as the one we saw, grandma? Because if it was as big as that, the keeper could not carry” I asked to be sure.
Mother Goat made a pause and she sighed deeply.
“According to my grandmother, they went for it with a cart. The animal was so beautiful that many people felt sorry for the poor thing. Most of the commentaries were favourable to the keeper for his skill. But there were the ones who said: “That old man is going to starve to dead before I give him another piece of bread.” The hunters would say something similar, but out of envy, because they would like to kill the animal themselves.”
“What hey did with it, grandma? Did they eat it?” I asked, no sure if a stag was good for food.
“Yes, the same man that had offered the price, threw a party and all the men from the villager around went to it. They ate the stag and got drunk, that it is the only thing men do in those circumstances.”
“And what they did with the horns, grandmother?”
“The horns and the skin they gave them to the keeper. He stuffed the head ?” and he hung it by the fireplace, as a trophy. The skin he nailed on the logs of the house outside, to be curer.”
“Grandmother, just because the keeper killed that stag, he was called the stag man, then?” I asked, thinking, once more, that the story was over.
“Some time after he shot the stag, the keeper changed. He alight fire again, washed himself, changed clothes and he cooked some food. He even started to clean the house and put flowers in the flower pots over the banister. But, despite that change, he preferred to be left alone, and he didn’t welcome visitors. By then my grandmother was a pretty woman, already and, in one of the
very few occasions that she went to see the man, she noticed that the skin of the stag was not there nailed on the wall any more, and the stuffed head had disappear from its place on the wall. Grandmother was still a good friend of the keeper, but she thought it better not to asked questions about the skin and the stag’s head. She presumed that, perhaps, the keeper decided to get rid of those things, may be out of remorse for killing such handsome animal.
One evening, near dusk, the postman left a letter for the keeper with my grandmother. As the letter was from Cuba, she knew that it had to be from the keeper’s son, the man that she loved when she was a little girl. She ran with the letter to the keeper’s house to know the news. The keeper could no read but my grandmother could, because she learned to read in the castle when she looked after the twins. So she would read the letter to the keeper, and see what that man had to say. When she arrived there, among the trees it was getting dark already. She saw light coming from the windows and, before calling at the door, she looked through the he window. She could not believe her eyes, at the sight she saw. The keeper had
made, with that sort of fancy dress with the skin and there he was disguised as a stag, sat by the fire, smoking a pipe, and by his feet, there was laying a stag. Grandmother said anything and went away, and she returned next day, at noon. She read the letter to the keeper, where his son said that he was going to come in a visit very soon. With that good news, that made both happy they chatted a lot about the times when the son was a and my grandmother a little girl, and how much the keeper’s wife loved my grandmother when she was little. Then my grandmother had to tell the keeper what she had seen the evening before. The keeper didn’t seemed surprised my grandmothers discovering his secret, because he was very friendly with her, and he knew that she was not going to go about telling
telling everyone. But the keeper had to explain to her the motives of his behaviour. He told grandmother that, after the party, when he went to bed he could not sleep, and when at last he did, he was tortured by nightmares. He saw his son saying goodbye crying, with tears of blood dropping from his eyes. Then he would see his wife dragged away by dark waters, crying for help, but he could not help her. He would awake, and as he felt to sleep, the same nightmares would come back. At last, he dreamt that he was a stag, and he was all the time chased by dogs and hunters, and he never had a moment to rest. One day he heard a sound, whose intensity was louder and louder, till it exploded inside his head, and he awaked with a
splitting headache. He thought that the nightmares were due to the
excess of eating an drinking, something of which he didn’t since
long time past. But the nightmares returned night after night. Then one evening, at dusk, he overheard noises outside and, looking through the window, he saw the hind sniffing the skin of the stag that was there nailed to the wall outside. The keeper compared the loneliness of the hind with his own, and he felt sorry and guilty for killing the stag. Then, one evening, a bad storm seemed to be imminent, and the man felt uneasy, because he hated storms since his wife died in the floods. And that day he felt a strange cold in his bones and, for the first time in many years, he decided to alight a fire. He alighted the fire automatically, almost without thinking how he did it or why. The fire burning, the first heavy drops of rain started to knock on the windows. Then he thought of the skin. It was dry and cure already, and it was going to get soaked. He pulled the stag’s skin from the wall and put it over his shoulders, and walked inside. It was raining heavily already, and it was turning cool. He felt the skin warm over his shoulders and sat by the fire, and he felt the skin on. Then he felt like smoking a pipe, something that he forgot about since the dead of his wife. And for the first time in all those years, the keeper felt a degree of happiness. While smoking, and looking at the fire, he heard something outside and he went to the door see. It was the hind, land sniffing at the wall where the skin had been hanging. He left the door open and the hind walked slowly to him, and sniffed the skin he had over his shoulders. The keeper walked inside and the hind followed him. He sat again by the fire and the hind lay down on the floor. Slowly and smoothly, the keeper touched the hind’s back, and the animal started rummaging. That was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship, and the keeper saw light in his life
again.”
“Now I see, grandma. For that he was known as the stag man. Surely some people said that he was crazy, yes? A man disguised as a stag,” I said, thinking that it was the end of the story.
“As far as I know, apart from my grandmother, nobody ever saw the keeper disguised in that manner. Well, only once a young man had an encounter with him at night. But he didn’t recognised the keeper, and he thought that he had seen the devil” said Mother Goat and she laughed for a while, that crafty laughter of hers.
“What is so fanny, grandma?” I asked, because I could not see the motive for her laughter.
“God forgive me for this laughter, because the story is not for laughing, for it is not fanny at all. But, in this moment I saw the
face of my grandmother, and she always laughed when she told this
bit of the story. Let me tell you, Mano, and you will see. She laughed because she could see the face of the young man when he pulled the horns from the head of the keeper. The poor chap got the fright of his life, and he run home through open country leaving his clothes on the bushes as he run...”
“Grandma, was that the man who thought the keeper was the devil?” I asked, because I was a bit lost for the twist that grand-mother had given to the story. That was the one. The only person who saw the keeper disguised as a stag, apart from my grandmother. But, as we said, he thought that he had seen the devil. Let me finish, Mano, and you will see: So in love the keeper was with the hind that, with the fear that the hunters could shoot it, he kept watching upon the animal day and night. To look after it became an obsession. He would go at night wherever the hind did, and he would keep watch from the top of a parapet, as a male stag would watch its herd. The keeper turned into a stag, really, not in the shape of a stag, but in his mind he was one. He run and jumped as a stag, and ate grass, for he had not time to cook anymore. He went mad really. And what happened then? It happened that his behaviour, attracted, precisely, what he tried so hard to avoid: the hunters. Because, when I said that only my grandmother and the young chap saw the keeper in that disguise, I meant face to face. But from far ay many other people had a sight of him disguised as a stag, but they thought that he was the real thing. Then the word went around that there was another stag in the woods, and the hunters started to look for it. And then, just as it happened in his nightmares, it happened in reality. For time and time again, he had to run from the dogs, not because he was afraid of dogs, but trying to cover the live of his friend. The keeper, of course, knew better than anybody else every corner of the forest and the hills, and places to hide. This is how he managed to avoid the hounds and the poachers. Again as before, the hunters would comment, on seeing the presumed stag disappear from under their noses:
“That stag is the devil.”
”It must be the spirit of the other one.”
“How is it that the hounds lose so soon its trail?”
Those were the comments of the hunters. The dogs could not find
the hind, because the keeper knew every trick the book. He would prepare concoctions like a witch, but contrary to a witch, he used Plenty garlic and oil, among other herbs, and he would wash the hind’s coat with all those preparations, as well as the skin he worn. But one night he lost his head...Well, almost. The young chap I mention before, that was coming home late from seeing his girl friend in another village, took a short cut through the hills. As it was a night of bright moonlight, the young man saw, coming up from behind a wall, what seemed to him the horns of a stag. He, like
the people in the region, had heard all the talking about the elusive stag. He walked low and silently in that direction, to make sure that what he saw was the stag. And soon he proved to himself, that really it was the head of the famous stag. The young man, strong as he was, soon hatched a plan that, had it work he would kill the stag with his bare hands, where dogs and hunters failed.
He thought that, if he could reach the animal without been heard, he could, from his side of the wall, had hold of the horns and twist its head and, eventually, break its neck against the wall. He managed to get there, walking as mouse. Once there he got up and he held the animal from the horns, from over the wall. But, as he was expecting a strong resistance from the animal, and the resistance was not there, he lifted himself on his feet, and the head of the stag came loose on his hands, and he rolled over down the parapet with the stag’s on his hands. He had time to see a face with long beard and big surprised eyes, and an open mouth from which came out a horrendous scream. The young man thought that really he had pulled the horns from the devils head, and he ran for his life. As my
grandmother would say laughing, he arrived home with barely his skin, for he left part of it and his clothes in the bushes.
“Grandma” I asked with a laugh, “did the young man told the people that he had seen the devil, or he kept It to himself, not to look crazy?”
“Why crazy, Mano? There are devils in this world, you know? But so many years ago, there were more devils than today. When the young man arrived home, more dead than alive, the only words he could say were that he had seen the devil. Then he told everybody, explaining every detail, of how the head of the devil came loos in his hands.”
“Then the hunters stopped looking for the stag, eh grandma?
“Now you hit the nail, Mano. Not only that: the keeper, realising that the young chap had not recognised him, helped with the story, saying that something similar happened to him before.”
“Then the hunters didn’t chase then anymore, eh grandma?” I asked, happily, to see one of Mother Goat’s stories with a happy ending.
But something was bothering me. Questions and more questions started to come to my head. But my head was like that when I was young: never satisfied with the end of any story. I looked at grandmother, and I noticed that she was going on with the never ending job of her spinning. That was the only story, as far as I could remember, that Mother Goat had stop to do he spinning to tell a story. But I hadn’t notice the detail until she resumed the spinning again. Then I remember the first thing she said when we arrived on that spot. She had said that something good had come out from all that sad story. I could not see that the story was so sad, after all, apart from the dead of the keeper’s wife in the floods. But I had heard of that event from Mother Goat in other stories. So that story could not finish like that, and I saw the need for some explaining.
“Grandma” I asked, “what happened to the keeper in the end?”
“I was waiting for you to ask that. what took you so long?”
“I was thinking about the hind as well? And the keeper’s son? Did he came from Cuba, as the letter said?”
“Yes, he came from Cuba alright, unfortunately for him and his
poor father.”
“Why?
“Let me tell you. Let me tell you, Mano, and you will see what the devil do to some people: The son arrived secretly one evening, because he wanted to give a surprise to his father. So he left all his luggage in town, and he walked to the house in the woods, avoiding to be seen by the villagers. He arrived at sunset, and his father was not at home, but the door was, because the keeper walkways left it open. The son let himself inside, and started to observe the details of the house where he had a beautiful childhood. And been such an idyllic childhood, he had remembered it with nostalgia during all those years away. But, by then, his mind had been used to the great cities, with wide streets and high buildings, and other luxuries, and he got a surprise on seeing there now everything so small and neglected; and he felt sad for what he saw. Things were not as he imagined them from fare away. In that moment he realised
how right his father was, when he advised him to find better pastures in other lands. He did try to imagine what his life would be like, if he never left that house. Nevertheless, on observing the
abandon of the place, he did remember that thins were not like that, when his mother looked after the place. Then everything seemed new and clean, and the house was a happy house. Now it was an old and sad house, he thought. For houses soon get older than people, if nobody looks after them. After observing everything down, he went upstairs, to his room. The room seemed old dusty and cool. There were cobwebs everywhere. The bedding, he thought, was the same
as the last day he slept in that bed, and he guessed that his father never entered that room since he left. He returned to the living room and sat on a bench by the fire place. He looked at the gun hanging on the wall. It seemed the only thing clean in the house. He longed to fire that gun when he was a boy, but his father never left him to do so. But he learned how to fill the cartridges, and more than once, when he was alone, he had load thee gun and aimed at the birds from the window, but he never got the courage to pull the trigger. The sown of a sot would tell his father and he would have been punish for his desiring.
Well, there hi was, in his birth place, and he could not come to terms with himself and his pas. He was crying when he heard noises outside. It seemed some talking, and he presumed that it was his father. By then it was getting dark, and, as he looked through the window he saw, among the bushes, what he thought were the horns of a stag. He had heard about the stag that his father had killed, and then about the one that people said was the devil. He heard all those stories from other neighbours who immigrated to Cuba. Because in those days all the young men seemed to go to Cuba. He felt very excited on seeing the stag, and he looked at the gun, and asked himself if his father was still using that old faction gun, because it seemed clean. Then he thought of the cartridges that his father always kept inside that bench. And the first thing he saw, on open the box, was the cartridge that his father didn’t used the nigh he killed the stag. He loaded the gun with the same emotion as he
did when he was a boy, and was doing that when nobody could see him.
All that he did in a speck of time, because things learned in childhood stay in the head for ever, and they come alive in circumstances of great emotions, like the one the man was experiencing at that moment. He went back to the window, and the stag was still there. He lean he barrel on the window sill, aimed, and this time he pulled the trigger. The stag fell heavily to the ground, with a thud of the body as it dropped, like something that falls in the water. He run to the bushes, with the gun still smoking on his hand, and there he found his father laying among the bushes, his eyes, to the reflex of the twilight, that comes clear after the aurora, looking in surprise to his son. Or to his dead. Who knows what the eyes see when dead comes upon us?
Mother Goat got up on her feet, called the goats and started to walk up the hill. I looked at the place, as the one who expects to see a ghost, then I run to catch up with her. Things could not finish like that. What happened to the son after he shot his father? And what good came of all that, as grandmother said in the beginning of the story?
“The son went back to Cuba” Mother Goat reply to my question, and she went on walking.
“And he never marry your grandmother, then?”
“Nobody heard from him again. He promised my grandmother to take her to Cuba, but he never did. Provably he got kill, because there started a war in Cuba in those days.”
“Oh, grandma, I don’t like this end. And you said that something good came out of this story. I don’t see anything good”
“I am the good thing, Mano. Or I am not good, then?
“What you mean, grandma?” again I asked.
“That man was my grandfather. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Now, come, grandma? You never said that.”
“I thought tat I told you. Yes, my grandmother got a daughter from that man. That girl was my mother.”
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