Tales from silver lands

by Charles Joseph Finger

Once there was a woman in Paraguay who had no children and she wished day and night for a boy and a girl. She did more than wish, going to a place in the woods where were wild sweet limes and oranges and lemons, and where the pools were covered with great leaves of waterliles, and in the quiet of that place she made a song about the children she wished for. In that song she sang of the boy as handsome and swift of foot and strong of arm, and she sang of the girl as a light creature with keen eyes and silken hair. Day after day she did this and at last her wish came true, for she had a boy and a girl and the boy was straight-limbed and well made and the girl as lovely as a flower of the air.

So far, so good. But that was not the end. The woman had wished that the boy might be strong and brave and swift and all these he was. But she had not thought of other things, and, sad to say, he lacked sight. For him there was neither day nor night, neither sun nor moon, neither green of the pampas nor blue of the sky. As for the girl, it is true that she had sight so keen that she could see the eye of a humming-bird at a hundred paces, but her legs were withered and useless and she could not walk, for the mother in wishing had said nothing of her health and strength. To crawl about, helping herself with her hands, was as much as she could do.

Seeing what had come to pass the mother was very sad, for her dream had become a very pesadilla, a nightmare. So she grieved and each day grew paler, and at last one evening caught her children in her arms and kissed them and they saw her no more, the neighbours next morning telling them that she had died.

Now one day when the children were well grown, there came to the house in which they lived a man in a torn poncho who said that he had walked hundreds of miles, from the land of the Noseless People where it is always cold. He was tired and hungry and torn with thorn-bushes, and his feet were cut with stones. So the boy and girl took him into the house and gave him water to wash himself with and chipa bread made of mandioca flour and sweet raspadura in banana leaves. When he was well rested and refreshed, in return for their great kindness he told them of a strange old witch-woman who lived far away, one who knew many secrets by means of which she could do wonderful things.

“In a turn of the hand,” said he, “she could make the girl strong of limb and with another turn could restore sight to the lad.”

Then he went on to tell of other witches that he knew, saying that there were many who were not all bad, but like men, were a mixture. True, they sometimes kept children, but that was not to be laid to their meanness but rather to their love of beauty. “For,” he said, “it is no more wrong to keep a child to look at than it is to pluck a flower or to cage a bird. Or, to put it another way, it is as wrong to cage a bird as it is to steal a child.”

The meal being done the three of them sang a little, and the sun being set the old man bade them good-night and stretched out under a tree to sleep, and the next morning before the children awoke he had gone.

All that day brother and sister talked much of what the old man had told them, and the girl’s face flushed red and her eyes were bright as she looked at her brother and thought of how sweet it would be if he could see the mists of the morning and the cool cleanness of the night. Meanwhile he in his dark world wondered how he could find his way to the witch and persuade her to work her magic, so that his sister might be able to go up and down, and to skip and dance on limbs that were alive. So at last they fell to talking, and the end of it all was that they started on a journey to the witch, the brother carrying the sister on his shoulder while she guided him safely through thorn-thicket, past swamps where alligators lay hidden, and through valleys where bushy palmetto grew shoulder high. Each night they found some cool place where was a spring of crystal, or a pool of dark sweet water, and at last they came to the little hills where the witch lived.

They found that all was as the old man had said, for the witch was a lonely creature who saw few, because few passed that way. She was glad enough to see her visitors and led them to a fragrant leafy place, and seeing that the girl was drooping like a wind-wearied bird, did what things she could. To the boy she told tales of the birds and the golden light of the sun and the green of spreading branches, thinking that with her tales they would be comforted and content to stay with her in her soft green valley. But the more she did for their comfort and the more she told them of the wonders of the world, the greater was their desire to be whole, the girl with her limbs unbound, the boy with his eyes unsealed.

Before long the lad told the witch of the old man’s visit and of their hopes that had led them to take the great journey, and then the old woman’s heart fell as she saw her dream of companionship vanish. She knew that as soon as they were whole again they would leave her as the birds that she fed and tended in nesting time left her when winter came. Then she told them no more pleasant tales, but tales of things dead and cold, of gray skies and desert places, of tangled forests where evil things lived.