The Girl and Her Tiger: Wandering Together
When the fog rolled over the northern moors, doors were shut and lights went on. A practice designed to keep away the wisps which danced and the voices which talked and led anyone, foolish enough to walk in the fog, far away to never returned. Like the little boy who had gone out that morning and wandered further than he’d meant. Now, as the fog rippled around him and he huddled behind a bush of heather, hoping to hide from ghosts; the voices began.
“One, twenty three, one…”
The boy stopped shivering with fear to listen more closely. It was one voice, not many. Even though everyone said the fog was filled with a haunted chorus that would tempt the listeners to walk into swamp bottoms.
This voice wasn’t tempting anything. It sang a list of numbers, over and over. The boy frowned and peeked around the heather bush. It wasn’t the howl of pooka or the chant of the faeries who flew the skies. It sounded like a girl. The fog swirled and he darted back. The voice grew louder, “one, twenty three, one.” It was coming closer.
Then, the fog clapped in a whoosh of white fingers and then fell back like curtains, to reveal the speaker.
It wasn’t a pooka, or a faerie, not even a golem. The boy leaned away from the heather bush, trying to remember all the stories. Was it a changeling? The girl was dressed in knitted clothing made of thick wool and sea creature patterns. Maybe she had walked out of the sea?
The boy felt curiousity pull like a string of yarn caught around his thumb. He would have darted out to speak with her, but the fog swirled again. It shattered away this time, as a much bigger form broke out of the white space. A tiger, a white and black beast but it followed the girl like an over-sized tabby.
Its great head was bowed close to one of her small shoulders and upon its head was a knitted toque of red and black. On its back was a knitted saddle, the same colours as the toque and from each corner hung lanterns flickering with green and blue flames. Willow-the-wisps!
The boy, who had been leaning around the heather, fell backwards with a yelp at the sight of the ghosts in the lanterns. At least, he guessed such strange flames must be willow-the-wisps, though the girl seemed so real and so small. Not at all like a faerie changeling or even the gruff ghost hunters he’d heard of.
“One, twenty-three, one…” The girl’s voice continued to chant. She had to be one of the faeries, the boy thought, he could think of no other way to explain her star and whale patterned clothes, the tiger she could ride like a horse or her strange song.
“Will we ever find her Koto? I want to go home, this place is cold.” The great black and white stripped cat purred softly, and nudged her shoulder. She rubbed between its ears and began to chant again. This time the chant became a song that called a name: “Asha, Asha, we all fell down. Where are you, where are you? I wish you found.”
The fog rolled over then, obscuring the strange duo from the boy once more. He wondered if they’d disappeared but then, so quiet as if the girl had suddenly walked miles away, the counting started again.
“One, twenty-three, one…”
The boy stayed crouched behind the heather, and the fog began to thin, showing the speckle of stars in the sky above. The distant howl of hounds and shouts of worried humans brought him back to the present. He leap from behind the heather, realizing he’d stayed far longer than he should have. He’d stayed out in the fog and he wasn’t in a faerie hollow or the stomach of a golem. He looked up and found the Wanderer, it glittered at the peak of the northern sky. By its angle, he knew he had gone very far from home. He shivered, feeling the cold and felt very alone under the sky, black and full of silver eyes. He gave a last thought to the girl, who she had been looking for; with a strange tiger and stranger song and then he ran toward the sounds of home.
He saw his father’s dogs first, they leaped around his legs, barking and barking. He patted them on their heads, like the girl had to her tiger.
“Thank you, thank you for finding me, clever girls. ” He told the dogs. His father came next, a tall form lit by yellow lanterns, and his mother, leading a group of the villagers. He had been out far past dinner. The whole village had been worried.
The girl and her tiger passed from his mind for the rest of that night, but in later years he developed what his parents bemoaned was an unhealthy interest in the seeking of trouble out on the moors. He looked for the girl and hoped she’d found what she had sought.
ARR ~ Moony
Author’s Note: This Sunday afternoon scribble was inspired by the song below.
