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A small, white-furred, non-human figure stands in the dim green light of a forest clearing

The Birchwood Cub

- a tale of the elfen

The Birchwood Cub is a bit of an experiment, and is an attempt to write a 'folk-tale' from another culture, in this case the Elfen, the non-human race to which Caeci Wolfsong belongs (see 'Of Mist and Marshlight'). It is the kind of story that story-tellers have been handing down through the generations in every time and culture.

I was very influenced by Russian folk-tales when I wrote this short piece, particularly by a small volume of Russian tales for children, told by Alexei Tolstoy and published in this country in the 1940s by George Routledge & Sons.

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In Iryleer, the grey, wolf-haunted forests of the north, the night has fallen. Darkness shrouds the pines and all is quiet, a velvet quietness, broken only sometimes by the shift and slide of snow. We are above the snow-line, and the ground is pale with the edge-of-vision glimmering of snow at night. The air smells sharp with the promise of more snow to come, although the sky above the trees is clear as crystal, stars ablaze like sprinkled hoar-frost on a raven's wing. Darkness and quiet and cold.

But the darkness is not total. In the scattered elfen-groves the Solstice fires burn high. Cubs roam the scented darkness of the woods or chase each other through the rope-walks linking every lodge-house, playing practical jokes and vying with each other to see who can count the most stars in the indigo-black sky above the trees. Further to the north, a half-seen violet gleam, the Icewall looms like the end of the world, a place of myth and legend, populated only by Ice-giants and Frost-gnomes. Beyond it are the Icefields, and beyond them...nothing. So near, World's-edge, the all-devouring dark, so near.

In the centre of the elfen grove the Circle stands. Within its latticework of stone and living trees the small quiet flame of the grove's main Heartfire burns. Each heartfire is lit from a brand taken from an already existing heartfire, as each has been lit from an older one back into the time of myth. The first heartfire was lit with a piece of the sun itself by Margafar, the wolf-witch. She it was who taught the elfen how to hunt and how to live in harmony with their grey forests. She built them the first grove, and every grove since then is built the same way, an unbroken chain of being. At the centre of all things, always the heartfire.

And as the night creeps in soft-footed through the trees the singers sing the old songs, accompanied by the shirring tones of the siron and the ringing strings of the sarol, the eerie dissonances of the ralet overlaying the music with spine-chilling descants. Dances are danced, the dancers shifting shape as they dance, blurring form to form, until it seems that the whole forest has animated and is twisting and twirling in the flames and the shadows.

Then the exhausted cubs, even those shadow-wrapped and hiding, are sent off to soft beds of bracken and fur within the lodges, and the storytellers tell the ancient elfen tales as the grove huddles closer around the Solstice-fire. Some of the tales will be of ghosts and shapelings, for the winter solstice, the low point of the turning year, is a time of great unease, and at this time the forest is a place of terror as well as beauty, death as well as life. Amber and green eyes shining in the gloaming and thick winter pelts creeping erect in horripilation, the elfen shiver in delicious horror as the grisly tales are spun, until the muted growl and groan of the night-wind in the trees becomes the sound of the earth sleeping uneasily, nightmare-wracked and haunted by the countless dead she hides within her bones.

But some tales are of great heroes, of marvellous jokes played, of fearful and strange adventures. The greatest elfen hero is Sareci Frostfur, and there are many stories about her.

This is the first of them, as it is told by one of the elfen storytellers. It tells of how Sareci came to be, back in the first days of the world...

Once, deep in the northern forests, there was a grove like ours. One of the lodges, named the Birchleaf lodge, had had no cubs; their weaving was in vain - no combination brought forth issue - and there was no quickening in the females' bellies in the spring. They watched the other lodges grow and thrive, and they were saddened when they saw and heard the other lodges' cubs as they played 'hide-go-look' or 'stalk-and-catch' among the trees. they took no pleasure in the sounds of youthful voices or the cries of infants, for their kalia, their lodge-house, was always quiet and still.

Spring followed winter, summer followed spring, for twelve years and a year, and still the Birchleaf lodge had had no cubs. Their sadness grew until, at length, the lodge went to the teral to consult the shaman-elders of the grove. They combed their fur and braided swallows' feathers in the manes, and with their gifts of bread and spice-cakes they sat down before the heartfire of the shaman-elders. Terishta Shadowspeak, my ancestor, the eldest of the lodge, a fine musician and a storyteller, asked what they should do.

"Without a cub our lodge will die," he said. "And we will all have lived our lives without a purpose. When we die our heartfire will be nothing more than ashes, dead and cold and scattered to the snows. Tell us what to do."

The shaman-elders ate the gifts of bread and spice-cakes. Then they shook their old heads and the spirit-stones braided in their manes all clicked together with a sound like thunder. They threw the bones and frowned over the hidden message there. And then the eldest said:

"Beyond the forest's edge and many days away there lives K'vashta, the owl-woman. You must go and ask her. She could tell you what to do. You will never find K'vashta's lodge by walking in the world. She is in some part Spirit, and your journey will be in the Spirit-world. Travel to the north towards World's-edge. There will be K'vashta and your answer. We shall ask the Wolf-witch and the Dreamer to watch over you and guide your steps, but the journey will be long and full of fears; K'vashta loves not company and cherishes her loneliness. Still, she may see you."

One of the females of the Birchleaf lodge was a carver of wood. She carved the naming-sticks for kalin, carved the hunting-spells on bows and spears, and made the magic images for festivals and pairings. She it was who carved the masks for dancing and for spirit-journeys. Her name was Laeri Woodshape, and she was our ancestor. She was tall and strong with fur as black as charcoal, and her eyes were green as spring shoots.

Laeri's life-mate was Kerris Seesfar. He had glossy chestnut fur and eyes as brown as pine-cones. In his mane, as well as the carved bone warrior-rings, he wore jay's feathers, for he was the greatest hunter of the grove - even the bears moved softly in the woods for fear of Kerris Seesfar. He was our ancestor too, a fine and skillful hunter, strong and brave.

Laeri Woodshape and her lifemate Kerris Seesfar were the strongest and most skillful travellers in the lodge, and so it was agreed that they should go to seek K'vashta. They boiled the leaves that open up the doors between the worlds, drank off the bitter brew, put on their Spirit-masks, and went on a great journey. They stepped across the fire, through the blue dream-smoke, out of the world and into the Spirit realm. They went to seek K'vashta, the owl-woman.

She is an old, old woman who lives far to the north beyond the thunder, deep in the great Icefields. Her lodge is underneath the star round which the sky-wheel turns. Its walls are not of moss and branches like our own, but woven out of green-blue light. Sometimes, at night, you see them in the northern sky.

The journey to K'vashta's lodge was very long and very cold and there were many dangers on the way. That journey is another story though, and will be told another time.

When they arrived they took their snowshoes off and left them at the door of K'vashta's lodge. Inside, the lodge was warm; its walls of light were lined with the skins of the great white bears that roam the Icefields. Owls circled silently benoeath the glowing roof.

K'vashta sat beside her own Heartfire, which burned with green and yellow light. Her fur was grey with age. Her eyes were blue as ice, and sometimes strange reflections moved within them, cast by things not in our world at all. She knew why they had come.

"Your lodge will have a cub," she said. "A cub as beautiful and strong as a birchtree, as white as snow-fox fur, with eyes as golden as the sun. She will grow up to be a great hero. You will make her, and she will be made of magic and of love. Her name is Sareci, which means 'made from the forests'."

And then she told them what to do.

K'vashta turned her back. They left the lodge and, taking up their snowshoes, turned for home. The journey home was harder and more dangerous still. It is another story, though, and will be told another time.

Laeri Woodshaper and Kerris Seesfar told the others of the lodge the old Owl-woman's words.

Then Laeri went into the woods and laughed a little, softly, to herself, because she was so happy that the lodge would have a cub at last - and such a special one. And then, as K'vashta the owl-woman had told her to, she took a stump of birchwood - birch because it is a magic wood and also named her lodge - and carved it into the shape of a cub, complete in every detail and life-size. Then she went to the river and found two bits of amber, smothed and polished by the water's touches, yellow as the sun. These she made into a pair of eyes for the birchwood cub.

Kerris Seesfar took his throwing-spear and hunting bow and went into the woods. As he'd been told to do, he caught a snow-fox, and he sewed a skin for the birchwood cub from the fox-fur, white as snow. Then he took his bear-tooth necklace and he gave the birchwood cub a set of teeth as sharp and strong as ivory. To give the cub a voice he caught a taiga-bird and sewed its tongue inside the cub's mouth.

Then it was complete.

They wrapped the wooden cub in soft warm skins and every night they rocked it in their arms with love, and sang to it. This is one of the songs they sang to the birchwood cub:

"Sareci Frostfur, take your ease,
Birds are singing in the trees,
In his den the wolf-cub's curled,
Night creeps in across the world.
You sleep sound in loving arms,
Safe from night and all its harms."

Every night they rocked and sang, and soon the wooden cub grew warm. It took a breath, and then another, and it blinked its amber eyes. The cub began to grow - K'vashta's magic and their own love saw to that. And very soon the Birchleaf lodge-house rang with the cries and laughter of a living cub, as strong as birch-wood, fur as white as snow and eyes as yellow as the sun.

Sareci grew up fast and strong and clever. The grove all loved their snow-furred cub, and knew that she was special. They looked on her with joy and pride. Each evening she would sing to them, her voice as sweet as a taiga-bird's. And every night the lodge slept soundly in their cozy beds of moss and bracken, happy in their love for one another. Life was very good. Sareci's presence made the Birchleaf lodge's heartfire burn as brightly as the sun itself, and in return, no cub was ever loved as well as Sareci Frostfur.

None of the other cubs could hunt as well or sing as sweet. She knew the forest creatures, charmed the birds out of the trees, spoke with the clever grey-maned wolf. Sometimes she would hunt all day, only to sneak up and touch the hunted creature, hunting not for food, but for the pure joy of the hunt. All the creatures of the forest loved her, because she was partly made from them. Even the bad-tempered bear loved Sareci Frostfur, and though she wandered far from the grove, exploring tracks that only she could find, she never became lost, because the trees looked on her as their own, made partly from them as she was. Sometimes she swam in the great river, and the river saw her amber eyes and knew her, playing with her, floating her quite safely on his foaming shoulders, gently tumbling her and warding her from hidden rocks.

Sareci grew up to become the elfens' greatest hero. There are many songs and stories about her. But they are for another time.

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