Scatterlings by Martin Shaw

Author:Martin Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940468686
Publisher: White Cloud Press
Published: 2017-11-24T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Bear Standing Upright Under the Moon

EFFICACY, FRONTIERS, MIGRATIONS

It’s rough weather up on Haldon Hill. As one of the main routes through Devon and into Cornwall, its exhausted motorway is straining to the very limit as truck after truck groans and grinds its load up and over this ancient tump. The road is a churning menagerie of sound: the thick flap of the wheels, high whines from frustrated engines, and the steady put-put-put of the exhaust pipes. In the darkening light of late afternoon, a curling snake of headlights stretches all the way down towards the city of Exeter.

Up here, Haldon has its own weather. There can reside here an arctic frigidity quite unlike the cold in the hidden villages and hamlets below. As the rain hurls its ravenous fangs down on the shining cars, only half a mile away I’m tucked into a thin scattering of wood, deep into ceremony.

I’m as dapper as I’m ever going to get, regardless of freezing downpour: grandfather’s cufflinks, sash, tailored knee-length tweed, silver rings on fingers, waistcoat and bespoken old-time boots. An elaborate horse strap from the Hindu Kush is firmly woven into a large leather bag, which weighs heftily from my right shoulder, filled with gifts. Doesn’t stop that rain, though, sleeting sideways though the gloomy verticality of the pines. For a second I gingerly remove my trilby and slosh out the gathered moat of rainwater under its upturned brim. Then back to it; the weather begets efficiency.

The story hut is looking almost ready for business. In the midst of the pines there is the rotted base of a very old oak, still rooted in crumbly black soil. A small bed of bracken has been diligently assembled, and on top reside a stash of dry kindling, a hip flask of Irish whisky, three strands from a blanket, money, and a slow-whittled antler-tipped staff, ornate at its handle with the carved appearance of a local denizen.

Above that is a simple woven roof of grasses and branches. And most important, it’s near flowing water; otherwise I fear there’s no possibility the guests will arrive. Fretting like a concierge at some fancy hotel, I pace the soil and glance through the dripping tree line for just a hint of their arrival. Just a few rustles in the glittering bushes. This story knows how to make an entrance.

I should tell you, this tale brings a very old arrangement with it. Though I’ve encountered it told as a local story, and through a local mouth, I intuit immediately that it’s taken a migration across the Irish sea to get here. I can just smell it. It’s a wanderer amongst the steadies. There’s a subtly different magic to it that, I admit, settles wonderfully amongst the tussocks and green lanes of Devon. It works. I don’t know if it arrived on a fishing trawler or on the back of an eagle or squeezed itself out into the confines of Newton Abbot library, but it’s here. And it works. Some know it as “The Storyteller at Fault,” one of its many names.

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