#chansons

“Well, the three of us – your mum and your dad and your father – shared a long look then, and we knew that the Great Forest had played us like fiddles, but gosh if we didn’t fall for the child then and there. We knew it was ours and we thought, well, we know when we’ve been got; fair play to you, Forest, we came to take what was yours and we got one more mouth to feed instead.

“And what a mouth it was! As soon as you worked out the knowings of words, child, there was no shutting you up, that’s for sure. Not that we’d have wanted to, anyway, for – even as a little one – you had such a way with telling tales that it lit up our hearts, so you did.

“Now, don’t look like that. It’s not as if you were never quiet or that your gobbiness was a chore. You were always a keen listener, too, always hungry for hearing new words, new gossip, new stories, and new songs. Voracious, you were, and that’s a word we learned from you! You were capable of quiet the same way the deep of the woods is, you understand? The way that sometimes the wind holds its breath and the animals all tread on tiptoes, and then the trees and the moss and the stones have that deep quiet, like they’re eating up every sound. And you think to yourself, in that moment, that if you took an axe and chopped down one of those trees, then you’d find all the words and sounds that tree had ever heard written there on the stump amongst its rings.

“You have, child, in honesty… you’ve always had a little of the Forest about you. Even now you’ve grown and had your schooling and started to make something of yourself, we can still see a bit of it in your eyes. It’s that deep quiet and that deep hunger, both, you understand? They are, at the root of it, wild things.

“Why, when you were growing, you used to disappear for days at a time. When first it happened, we were worried sick! You were not more than five at the time, and we woke up one day and you were just gone. Not in your bed, not at your chores, and not even tucked in a cupboard with a borrowed book. The three of us were all in a panic. But then your father spotted some movement out in the yard, and he found a young boar out there, just finished bursting through the fence and making a break for the trees! And, before it got there, it turned to him and he told us he saw that quiet and that hunger in its eyes. We panicked again, when we thought about that, because what if you didn’t come back? What would we do then, with our three hearts all full of loving for you?

“But, sure enough, a couple of mornings later, we woke to find you safe in your bed. After that, when you up and vanished, we all knew what to look out for. Sometimes, we’d see a boar or a pig, or sometimes a hare or a wood dove or a stoat. You were especially fond of turning into a young buck of a stag, for a time. Not that we ever saw you change, of course. You’d just be vanished, and we’d see a curious beast coming or going and know you were alright.

“That’s why the magic folk started coming to visit, you know? Every now and again, we’d spot a pointed hat or some swishy robes or a twisty staff coming down the track, then we knew there’d be questions. We don’t know how they found out about you – for the folks in the village were all sweet as gingerbread on you and they weren’t the sort to gab – but those cunning kind have their ways. Maybe they saw it in the stars or heard it from a bird or saw your likeness in a scrying pool, who can say?

“What we can say is what a fuss you made, whenever they mentioned they wanted to take you away to study at some great tower or haunted ruin or cosy cottage or wondrous library! Well, you gave the library a second thought, but the rest all got short shrift and wailing. You screamed and you stamped your feet and, somehow, they always went away thinking there was nothing enchanted about you at all. It was like we felt something in the earth shift. We could almost think that you wanted to believe so hard you were just a regular child, and our child too, that you made your want and your words into a lever and you moved the world around it.

“Of course, you never needed to move the world to convince us, silly one. We have always known, from the moment we saw you swaddled in that pigsty. We knew in our bones, then: that child? It is ours.

“Still, their visits did get a bit troublesome. Especially when that lady with all the stars on her cloak came by. You know, the one who brought her daughters along and they played with you in the yard? She was a bright one, for sure, and not just because of all those gems sewn in her cloak! And it seemed like she didn’t all-the-way believe you were just ours, even with all your to’ing and fro’ing.

“So that’s when we decided it was time to move. We figured we would stand out less, maybe, if we were a bit less out on our own. So we sold up the little farm (such as it was) and we moved to a town, the biggest one we could get to. And that town was the first place, young one, where you saw a knight.

“You fell head over heels. For that whole year, we heard about nothing but quests and noble deeds and rescuing folks in distress and fighting monsters (both beastly and human). The number of splinters you got from duelling all the other children in the streets with your little wooden sword! We even looked at trying to get you squired, for a minute, but… well.

“When the hedge knight came by the town to look at taking someone on, you’d pulled one of your vanishing acts. They took longer, then, for we lived farther from the Forest. It was near a week till you came back, leaving a handful of sparrow feathers stuck under your bedroom window. By then, the knight had come and gone.

“She wasn’t much of a knight, we suppose. Her armour was more cast iron than shining steel, and her horse was more cart than charger. Still, even a grubby knight is still a knight, and it was all you dreamed of in those days. You seemed to want it so much… we thought maybe the world would tilt enough to let you pluck your dream out the night sky.

“You were stricken when you realised you’d missed her. We couldn’t keep it from you, not when the whole town was buzzing about her visit. It was… well, it was the first time we heard you tell yourself a story. It was a lot like the story you told the wizards and witches and enchanters… that you were just a regular child. Just our child, not magical or valiant or destined.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re telling you this, love. You see, you’ve had to tell yourself that story so many times over the years, you might almost all-the-way believe it. You’ve written it under your skin and across your bones, like in the trunk of a great tree amongst the rings, and there’s maybe only a little toe or pinky finger left that remembers the truth of you.

“And this is the truth of you, child of ours, there is still something of the deep quiet and the deep hunger in your eyes. If there wasn’t, then maybe we wouldn’t be telling you this and, if we’re honest, maybe that makes us cowards. But it is still there, so we are telling you.

“So know this: you may sometimes wake up with marks of the wilderness about you. You may sometimes feel the need to drop everything and disappear and it will overwhelm you. You may sometimes feel an itch in the back of your head and it won’t go until you scratch it by finding something new and something strange and making it a part of yourself. You may sometimes see your eyes reflected in the eyes of another and feel, for a moment, that gut-deep fear that you are beheld by something ravenous.

“This is all fine, love. This is all beautiful. It’s all regular and normal, our child, for you it is. You cannot change it and we would not want you to.

“But you’re about to make your way in the great wide world. You’re going to go and you’re going without us, and we’re so proud. All those years eating up stories and sounds, all those moments when the words burbled out of you like a wellspring fresh-dug in the bedrock… you took that and that tavern minstrel’s lessons and you made it into something. Something magic, or so we think. You’re not just going on an adventure, you’ll be bringing the adventure back too! To any who’ll listen. And we think there’ll be a fair few young ones with quiet eyes and hungry ears who’ll need to hear you.

“And, because of young ones like that, we need to make sure you recall yourself. That you remember all of it, all the way that you eat up every bit and make it part of you again.

“So that’s why we’ve told you this tale. This is us stamping our feet and wailing and making our wanting a great big lever, so that maybe you will feel something in the air shift just a bit.

“You have always been a bit in-between, child. One foot in our world, one hoof in the Forest. Or, as you might say it, you’ve always been the kind to scribble in the margins. To play in the space between ‘The End’ and ‘Once Upon a Time’.

“We think that’s as it should be. So, please, for us: try to remember.

“Because we love you, our little piglet.

“And we’d like it if you knew why we call you that. And if you know why, every now and then, you will feel the need to go and let yourself be lost.”

That is the story of the In-Between Child, as told by its parents to it, and by them to me, and now by me to you.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I said I’d give you the facts. I told you I’d stick solely to actual things that really happened. And what did I give you? A story about a shape-shifting pig child.

So, y’know, you’re thinking: hey, I have been written a promissory note that this cur’s ass cannot honour!

I understand, I really do, and I offer my utmost apologies! However, I promised to tell you the tale as it was told to me. And, I swear to any god or virtue you care to name, these are the exact words as they were told to me.

So if you have a problem? If you want to accuse someone of telling tall tales? Don’tst thou come at me with your accusations. Please take it up with the three parents of the In-Between Child. I’ll even tell you where I last them!

You probably won’t find them there, of course. It was many years ago. And they move around a lot.

But that’s hardly my fault, is it?

I am just a humble bard trying, for once in its life, to tell a simple story full of simple facts, just as they were told to me. You and me? We’re looking for the same thing. Just a little bit of truth.

If fact is stranger than fiction, well, is that really surprising? Facts cannot rely on a humble bard to craft them into pleasing shapes; you must simply take them as they are.

You must simply trust them, the poor lumpen things, unpolished and unpretty.

You are still looking at me with those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me eyes. Which, by the way, are one of my least favourite kinds of eyes. I am, frankly, offended.

After all… would I lie to you?

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