TALETELLER AND MAPMAKER


This is a story that really should begin with something like ‘Once upon a time there was a boy who lived on the moon’ or perhaps ‘Once long ago there was a boy who came down in a faraway desert like a glittering star that fell from the sky.’  Because what you are about to read is a story so fantastical and so magical that it certainly deserves a good beginning like that.  But alas, I am not the storyteller of this particular tale.  Why?  Well because it is not mine to tell.  It belongs to a man who is just now stepping out of the front door of a quaint, thatch-roofed cottage in his green wellies and dark brown overcoat.

All there is for me to do, dear reader, is introduce you to this man.  He is, it pains me to say, a rather ordinary looking fellow.  His face is ruddy and rugged; the face perhaps of a man who has spent too much time under the hot sun and the cold rain.  There are lines around his eyes and streaks of grey in his hair.  You might pass him on the street and think him fifty-five when in fact he is but forty-two.  But those extra years on his face have been well-earned, for had he not been out there in world and made his travels he would not have discovered this marvellous tale he his about to tell.

His name is Mr. Yewtree and he lives here at Foxglove Hollow, a rambling old cottage at the end of Cottingley Lane in the small, out-of-the-way Devonshire village of Fairweather, England.  He lives here with Mrs. Yewtree, with whom he has just taken breakfast and kissed goodbye, and his son Jacob Yewtree.  We shall meet him shortly.

Now as Mr. Yewtree loops a big woollen scarf about his neck - it is now the middle of October and the cold winds are picking up - and traipses down the garden path carrying a weathered blue bag with something colourful poking out of the top, you might be wondering why we have to begin this tale at all with the taleteller.  This is, after all, not the most exciting beginning to so fabulous a tale.  And while the little village of Fairweather may be very pretty in the spring and summer, now that autumn is here and the grey clouds are low and heavy in the sky it looks very dour and miserable.  Not exactly the perfect place to begin such a wondrous adventure.   In this, of course, I agree with you.  But I must ask you for a small measure of patience.  There is a reason this tale must begin with the taleteller and I promise you will one day discover why.

As Mr. Yewtree shuts the lopsided garden gate behind him and makes his way up Cottingley Lane you might also be wondering who I am and what I have to do with anything.  For the purposes of this particular tale you really shouldn’t trouble yourself with such matters.  It is true that I have my own remarkable tale to tell, and one day I may tell it to you.  But for now, let it be known that once upon a time I knew Mr. Yewtree, and he told me his incredible tale - a special gift few have had the pleasure of - and it has stayed with me ever since.  I am merely the chronicler of this tale since, sadly, Mr Yewtree has never been inclined to write it down himself.  But perhaps, before the end, and in the interests of completeness, I may tell you who I am and how I came to learn of this extraordinary tale.

At the end of Cottingley Lane, which is barely more than a grassy track now and quickly turning to mud as the weather fails, Mr. Yewtree comes out onto a cobblestone road.  Before him, and encircled by the pleasantly undulating cobblestone road, is the village green.  It is a large green with room enough for several impressive oak trees, a duck pond and even an old well.  All along its border, standing like sentries between the billowing tussocks and the cobblestones still slick and shiny from last nights rain, there are Victorian street lamps.  Even though it is only ten o’clock in the morning the lamps are switched on, burning brightly and yet warmly.  A good job too, as the day is grim and there isn’t a sliver of blue to be seen in the sky.

Now the green - or the Fairway, as the locals call it - sits at the very heart of the village of Fairweather, and when the sun is shining and the days are warm the children come to play here all weekend long.  On weekdays when all the boys and girls are at school the mums come to sit by the pond together; to knit and sow, to feed the birds and, of course, to gossip.  In the evenings, when the dads are home from work and have had their dinner and read the paper, they sometimes come down to the Fairway - some with dogs - and sit up by the oaks to smoke their pipes and talk about the cricket.

Mr. Yewtree, ignoring the invitingly lit cobblestone road, cuts across the Fairway, and as he does I wonder if you are thinking to yourself that this is a setting from a bygone age.  It is, I can tell you, though not as far back as you might imagine.  The year is 1982.  But time has a way of flowing around the village of Fairweather that leaves little trace of its passing, in the same way perhaps that a river flows around a large boulder.  It takes many years for the flowing waters to make even the smallest changes to the boulder, and even then they cannot penetrate it or change its shape, but merely smooth away its rough edges.  And so it is with Fairweather; the old street lamps are now electrified, there are televisions in living rooms and there are cars in driveways, but they have had little impact on the day-to-day goings-on of life in the village.  Things, for the most part, are very much the same here now as they were a hundred years ago.

The winds suddenly whip up and blow Mr. Yewtree’s scarf and overcoat sideways as he steps off the Fairway at the North end.  If he’d had a hat on he would almost certainly have lost it.  It’s a good day for it, he thinks to himself as he crosses the cobblestone road and opens the school gate.  It is Friday the 22^nd today, and so normally there might be a throng of screaming children playing football and hopscotch in the playground now, but it just so happens that today is a teacher training day.  So, to the delight of most of the children, today is a day to stay warm and toasty indoors; a day for boardgames in front of crackling fires and hot soup by the window while the wind howls outside.

And so except for that whistle and whoosh of the wind, Saint George’s School stands preternaturally quiet on this October morning.  Deserted.  Well, not quite deserted.  You see the small school library in the East wing also serves as the village library and Mr. Dovetail, the librarian, is not about to let a little thing like a teachers training day or a wee spot of wind keep him from opening up today.  He sees Mr. Yewtree coming up the path now and comes to open the door for him.

“Morning to you, Mr. Yewtree!” he bellows as he closes the door behind him, and giving no thought to the brass ‘Quiet Please’ plaque propped upon his own desk.  In fact Mr. Dovetail is perhaps the most unlikely librarian you might ever meet.  He is an absolute giant of a man, with broad shoulders, bulging muscles and an enormous black beard.  He is also almost entirely incapable of keeping his voice down.  But a more jolly and gentle man you could never wish to meet, and all the children and all the teachers too love him, and could never imagine having anyone else to mind their books and keep everything in order.  “Lovely weather we’re having today!” he adds, clapping Mr. Yewtree on the back.

“Good morning to you, Mr. Dovetail,” replies Mr. Yewtree rather more quietly.  “It’s just perfect out there, isn’t it?  Is he here?”

“Oh aye, he’s here all right,” replies the librarian with a knowing smile.  “Just past history in the-”

“Maps section,” Mr. Yewtree finishes for him.

“Where else?” Mr. Dovetail roars through a barely contained laugh.  “I’ll let you get on, then.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dovetail,” says Mr. Yewtree as he flattens his windswept hair and straightens his scarf.

The maps section.  Where else indeed?   While Jacob is a quiet boy who likes to keep to himself, it is no secret in the village that he loves maps.  Ever since he was a small child he had been drawn to them.  As soon as he could walk he would ignore the piles colourful picture books that had been his Christmas and birthday presents, and instead sneak into his daddy’s musty study.  Here there were countless shelves towering above him, each one groaning with old books and new books.  He would pull the wooden chair from behind his daddy’s desk - which was very hard work for such a little boy as it was so old and heavy - and push it up against the bookcase on the farthest wall.  Now he could stand on the chair and reach the fifth shelf.  Here there were books of gold and silver!  Atlases so large that it was all little Jacob could to pull them off the shelf, and because they were so heavy he couldn’t possibly hold them, and he would have to let them crash noisily to the floor.  Sometimes mummy and daddy would hear.  Then they would come to sit with him and they would examine the maps together.  They would trace their fingers together across mountain ranges, oceans and deserts, whispering their names as they passed.

It wasn’t long before Jacob was drawing his own maps.  He copied at first from his favourite atlas, the most massive of all his daddy’s books, which Mr. Yewtree had long since given up putting back in its proper place and had left on the floor for Jacob to explore whenever he like.  His first map, at just four years old, was a very good copy of North Africa.  The next was the Arabian Peninsula.  He did these first, he would later tell his mummy and daddy, because they seemed to him emptier and easier to do.  Mostly though, it was because he loved the yellows and oranges of the desert.  Mr. Yewtree put both of these maps into frames and they still to this day hang on the wall of his study.

“Morning, Jacob,” whispers Mr. Yewtree as he comes around the history section to find his son sitting at a table behind a pile of books.

“Hey, dad,” says Jacob, barely lifting his head from his latest project.

“I thought you were coming out with me today,” says Mr. Yewtree.

“But dad, it’s horrible out there.  It’s definitely a staying in day, don’t you think?”

“Not every day can be a straying in day, son.”  Still the boy doesn’t look up, and Mr. Yewtree peers behind the fortification on books and sees that Jacob isn’t reading or exploring a map at all.  He’s drawing.  “What’re you doing?” he asks.

“Sitiatoria,” says Jacob absently.

“Sitia-” Mr. Yewtree falters.

“Toria,” the boy finishes for him.

“Can I see?”

Jacob suddenly puts down his pencil and looks up at his dad, and we see now that he looks just like him.  The same ruffle of unruly dark brown hair, the same pointed ears - just like a pixie, or so his mum had said - and the same mouth that always looked as though it was on the verge of a mischievous grin.  His eyes, the bright blue green of an ocean swell on a sunlit morning, he got from his mother.  “It’s not finished,” he says reluctantly.

“So what?  Come on, let me see,” says Mr. Yewtree as he rubs his wind-bitten hands together.

Jacob picks up the A3 pad of cartridge paper and passes it up to his dad.  The boys’ latest project was an island not copied from any atlas, but conjured instead from his own imagination.  The coastline, a smooth continuum of deep beaches in the South that turn to a jagged, fractured range of cliff faces and spiky islets in the North, was complete.  There were snow-capped mountains in the Northeast, and from the foothills Jacob was already in the process of laying down thin streams and great rivers that snaked across mysterious, as yet unrendered lands and ran out into the sea.  In the top left corner of the page he had drawn a little slip of curling paper and, just like in all the old maps he knew so well, he had inscribed upon it the name of the island.  In the bottom right corner of the page, and beset on all sides by stormy waves, he had drawn a compass rose, the Northward needle pointing reliably to the top of the page.

Jacob was a startlingly imaginative child, and so it had come as no surprise to Mr. Yewtree that, as his son had grown up, he had drifted away from the thoroughly explored continents of planet Earth and set sail in search of new lands.  At just seven years of age the boy had made his first voyage across the Dreaming Sea that surrounds and protects all the exotic and ridiculous worlds of the imagination, and came back with tales of a strange island called Hikidoki.  There, he would later tell mummy and daddy over breakfast, he had discovered the Hulalorian’s, a tribe of trumpet-eared, scarlet-feathered people that lived along a black ash-banked river that flowed with purple water.  By teatime he had drawn a map of the island, annotated with all the correct and proper names of the forests, mountains and settlements, and supplemented it with several brightly painted pictures.

Hikidori was the first of many such ventures.  Over the years Jacob came back from the ghostly waters of the Dreaming Sea with reports of evermore strange and surreal lands and peoples.  At the age of twelve he had now mapped and documented over one hundred and fifty islands, his favourites pinned to his bedroom walls, of which Sitiatoria was just the latest.

“Is it inhabited?” asks Mr. Yewtree quite seriously.

“Of course,” says Jacob, and scapes back his chair to come around and inspect the partially drawn map with his dad.  He points to the foothills and says, “There are wild fairies living just beneath the hilltops here, and all along the coral blue beaches to the South there are these big crusty giants with enormous shells on their backs.  There aren’t any cities or towns or roads or anything like that, though.  It’s an untamed wilderness.”

“Very impressive,” says Mr. Yewtree and nods approvingly.  “Is it dangerous?”

“Well the shell giants are actually quite friendly, but they can’t talk,” says Jacob with a shrug.  “The hilltop fairies, though, they’re vicious.  All the hilltops are actually covered in these massive, glittering red and green toadstools.  Get too close to those and they’ll snatch you up and take you deep underground, never to be seen again.”

Mr. Yewtree does a fake shiver and says, “Well I’m just glad you made it back home safely.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says the boy knowingly, and whips the pad out of his dads’ hands and steers his way back to his fortification of books.

“It’s very good, son,” says Mr. Yewtree, then claps his hands together a little too loudly, “but get your things together and let’s go.”

“Oh come on, dad!” Jacob whines and quickly sinks back into his chair as if that might protect him from the horrible outdoors.  “It’s like winter out there, and blowing an awful gale.”

“I know!” says Mr. Yewtree brightly.  “It’s absolutely perfect.  Now come on.  Scarf, hat and gloves.  Let’s go!”

“Daaaaaaad!” Jacob resists, even though he knows the battle is lost.

“I’ve got a great tale to tell, and it’s long overdue you heard it,” says Mr. Yewtree.  “It’s set in the desert, don’t you know, and guaranteed to keep the wind and the cold out.”

“Eurgh!” groans Jacob, and lands his head down splat, right on top of the fairies hilltop lair.

For someone who so enjoyed braving the wild and unknown lands of his imagination, Jacob was less than interested in exploring the rugged and very real woods, meadows and hills that surround the village of Fairweather.  What a great shame that is, too, as the Devonshire wildlands hereabout a ripe for discovery and adventure.  I should think there are many girls and boys out there, trapped in smokey cities and ugly grey towns, who would love to have such a mysterious green frontier just a hop, skip and jump from their front doorstep.

Now I must at this point take a moment to ask you not to write me and ask for the location of Fairweather.  Perhaps you think it all sounds very twee and charming, and would like to come and visit for the day.  Perhaps you might wonder to yourself that Fairweather sounds like just the sort of place you might like to live yourself  You might have already checked a map or two and discovered no mention, not even the merest of hints, that this village even exists at all.  I can assure you that it most certainly does, but the people of Fairweather are a private lot and work very hard to keep their little world as far apart from the comings and goings of modern life as they possibly can.  If you were to meet a Fairweatherian on the street they would almost certainly smile and tip their hat as they passed you by, being generally a pleasant folk, but they are in truth not overfond of the outside world and the dizzying changes the flow of time marks upon it.  There have, from time to time, been brave young explorers who have left the village to seek their way and fortune in the wider world.  All have come back with harrowing tales of industrial wastelands and mean-spirited people, and they never leave again.  “Those that are born in Fairweather die in Fairweather,” many are wont to say.

There is but one road in and out of the village.  It is a wide road paved with large grey slabs of slate, though it is so seldom used now that dark green weeds and pretty wild flowers have flourished between all of the cracks and it looks more now like a meadow beneath a low canopy of creaking elm boughs.  Sometimes wanderers from the outside world come drifting down it, never really knowing where they are heading or for what reason, and find themselves enchanted by the leafy lanes and chocolate-box cottages of Fairweather.  When they see the blacksmith working his iron - clang! clang! - in the village square, or the flour-dappled baker setting out the first of the days’ puffy loaves, their hearts might be filled with a longing for something they never knew they longed for.  But soon enough, as the sun begins to dip and turn the blue sky all to gold, they will drift away again up that meadowed road.  Never again will they return, and only in their deepest dreams will they remember the fair village of Fairweather.

So Jacob doesn’t know his own good fortune then, and as he clambers up the windswept hill behind his dad he finds himself suddenly wishing the day was over; that it was evening and he was tucked away in his cozy bedroom.  Those misty, tangled forests of West Sitiatoria were not about to map themselves, after all.

As they mount the crest of the hill, the twinkling lights of the village now at their backs and the brooding woodland of knotty oaks stretching out before them, there comes a sudden and fortunate break in the weather.  That’s not to say the sun comes out to warm their rosy cheeks and numbing ears, but the wind seems to fizzle away into a less boisterous, altogether more friendly breeze.  Still good enough, Mr. Yewtree thinks to himself as he pulls a colourful diamond-shaped kite from his blue bag.

“Hold this, will you,” says Mr. Yewtree to his son and, handing him the kite, sets about unknotting the brightly-ribboned tail from the flying line.  “Friends of yours?” Mr. Yewtree says after a while.

“Huh?” Jacob grumbles, as if suddenly roused from his own important thoughts.

“Down there,” says Mr. Yewtree, nodding down the hill before them.

Jacob looks over his shoulder and sees two girls and a boy playing in the shadows of the oakwood eaves.  He recognises them immediately.  There was Hannah Savannah dressed in a yellow Sou’wester and Mackintosh and bright red  Wellies.  While her face was obscured under her enormous hat he knew it was her because trailing from her neck was the signature scarf in stripes of red and grey.  She seemingly never took the thing off, even on hot summer days.  The other girl, Sally NcNally, was easily identified from here by her overwhelming fondness for black.  Black boots, long black dress, black parka with silver buttons and fur-trimmed hood and, just to set the whole ensemble off, a black umbrella.  She always looked like she was dressed for a funeral.  One might have expected a dour, morbid personality to go with that outfit, but from Jacob’s limited experience she was a bright and happy thing.  The boy, Felix Nithercott, wore a dark brown trilby - ‘borrowed’, Jacob suspected, from his fathers’ extensive collection - that was too big for his head, a pair of round, thick black-rimmed glasses and a green tweed sports jacket that was entirely inappropriate attire on a blustery day like today.  It also, thinks Jacob to himself, looks stupid on a twelve year old kid.

“Just some kids from school,” he says a little sullenly.

“Uh huh…” says Mr. Yewtree, concentrating more on his son than the knot of ribbons and string.  “How come I never see you doing anything like that?”

“Like what?” says Jacob, knowing full-well what.

“Playing outside with friends.”

“Because,” Jacob squirms, and feels suddenly very uncomfortable.

“Because?” asks Mr. Yewtree, who senses his sons’ discomfort and does his best to attend more closely to the knot, and to make out like this is nothing more than idle talk.  It is not, I can tell you.  Mr. Yewtree is very worried about his son.  Jacob may be bright and creative, but it seems to Mr. and Mrs. Yewtree that he is also lonely, even if the boy doesn’t know it himself.  It is the sole reason, in fact, that he has dragged Jacob up onto this gloomy hilltop today, and if a gentle conversation won’t tease him out of his too-safe shell, then perhaps a thumping good tale will.

“Because I have better things to do with my time, okay!” Jacob suddenly blurts out.  “Are we going to fly this stupid kite or not?”

A thumping good tale it is, thinks Mr. Yewtree to himself.  “All right, all right,” he says as he finally frees the ribboned tail from the flight line.  “If you’ll do the honours and initiate take-off!”

Jacob takes a couple of steps backwards and, just as he’s about to launch the kite, he sees Hannah Savannah staring up at him, her scarf twirling in the wind.  She waves.  Jacob turns away then and throws the kite into the air.  A gust of wind snatches it up and, as Mr. Yewtree lets the line run off the spool, the kite of red and yellow soars quickly up into the grey slate of sky.

“Here,” says Mr. Yewtree as he passes the spool to his son, “she’s yours to captain.”  Was that a hint of a smile he saw on Jacob’s lips as the flight line tugs at his fingers?

“My goodness!  Look at it go!” the boy marvels as the coloured diamond shrinks into the stern deepness of the sky.

“You know I once knew a boy like you,” says Mr. Yewtree rather awkwardly.  He doesn’t really know how to start his story, only that he must start, and start it quick before the moment is passed.

“I very much doubt there has ever been anyone quite like me,” says Jacob as he lets out the flight line and watches the diamond deepen into the sky.  “But let’s see.”

“Well okay, then,” says Mr. Yewtree.  “All good tales begin with a once upon a time, and that is exactly how this particular one begins…