A Shadow Folktale

Mal tells Inara a folktale from Shadow

[This is part of a much longer story, Ends with a Horse, which is in turn part of my “epic” (i.e. long-winded) series of Firefly fanfic. But I thought it would make a good stand-alone. The only context you need is that, previously, Saffron came aboard and caused all kinds of trouble—but the crew is now focused on the idea that she installed malicious software, a trojan horse. Also, Mal and Inara are together in this story, although at times their relationship is precarious and rocky. Mostly this scene came about because I thought it would be amusing to re-tell the Celtic myth of Angus and Caer Ibormeith in Mal’s voice and draw some parallels.]

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“You know,” Mal told Inara, “I think I’ve had about enough software and hardware for tonight. Could use a break from trying to figure out what River meant with this ‘What begins with an apple ends with a horse’ business.”

“You’ve tried asking her directly?”

“I have. She still gets all loopy and squirrelly when I push it.”

“I thought she seemed a little more put together lately. Improving since Saffron left the ship.”

“Hmm,” he agreed. “She’s got her head on straight when it comes to flyin’ the ship. But explaining what’s goin’ on in that brainpan of hers is still more difficult than opening a Chinese puzzle box. And she keeps talkin’ on about ‘ends with a horse.’ Still can’t make head nor tail of it.”

“It certainly can be difficult to sort out what she means with all her references.” Inara snuggled into Mal’s side, getting comfortable. “I’m still trying to figure out one that she was telling me a few days ago.”

He cocked his head, with a little smile. Maybe I can help? he queried with a look.

Inara understood exactly what he meant, and began her story. “River was telling me…well, I think it was a myth, about the god of love, Angus, and a woman who was turned into a swan, named Caer Ibor-something.”

“Oh, you mean the story of Angus and Carr,” Mal responded easily.

“You know what she was talking about?”

“Sure. Only Angus weren’t no god of love, he was just an ordinary fella. River musta been feedin’ you some kinda 废话 fèihuà there.” He stopped for a moment, as he wondered how River knew the tale. That girl seemed to have no limit to the odd bits of information what collected in her mind. Like a magpie, she was. Gorram, still thinking of River as some kinda bird.

“You know this story then?”

“Absolutely,” Mal stated. “Every kid on Shadow heard the story of Angus and Carr. I guess it was…well, you could call it a folktale, I suppose. Carr Filkins, what taught me wilderness survival skills, she was even named for Carr in the tale. Better person for reading nature you never saw. She could spot a bitty twig sticking outta the ground, what nobody else woulda noticed, and she’d stop and dig out a sunroot or a prairie turnip—they’re right tasty, when you roast ’em, though you’d never guess it, the way they look. She could find wild foods and live off the land like nobody else I ever saw. That winter in New Kasmir, if I hadn’t known some of what she taught me, we woulda starved, rations were so short. ’Course, if she was good at tracking vegetables, she weren’t a patch on Terry Chang, who could track animals like nobody’s business. Terry, she could tell you—”

“Terry Chang was a woman?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t she be?” He regarded her quizzically. “Surely you don’t believe tracking skills are gender-specific? Don’t gotta be a man to be a good tracker, darlin’. Terry weren’t so good at the shooting, but hunting parties always wanted her along, on account of her tracking skills. Between her, and Carr, and Murdoch Harbatkin and Hank Blodgett—well, they’re the ones what taught me most of what I know about outdoorsmanship.”

“So what’s the story of Angus and Carr?” Inara asked, getting him back on track.

“You want the full deal?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” he said, settling in to tell the tale. “Angus was this fella. He fell in love with Carr, what got turned into a swan…”

“Wait a minute. Was she already a swan, or did he fall in love and then she turned into a swan?”

“Alright, I guess I better tell you about Carr first. Carr was a maiden, beautiful and good, but when she was young she got a notion somehow that she weren’t all that beautiful after all, and she had doubts about her own goodness—I mean, who doesn’t? But she had no reason to doubt herself, no real reason anyhow. I reckon maybe she had the kind of parents what told her she weren’t good enough or something, made her doubtful. Anyways, she wanted to be better than she was, so she went to this old crone—”

“An evil old crone?”

“Well, no, not exactly evil. Evil is more—”

“An old witch?”

“No, not a witch, though she did have magical powers. An old crone which made a bargain with Carr. There’s lots of old crones in Shadow folktales,” he said in an aside. The reminiscences had awoken Mal’s Shadow accent, which grew more folksy as he told the story. “I reckon not so much a witch, more of a wise woman, with magical skills. Anyways, the crone showed her how to be beautiful and young-looking always, how to please people with her ways. Reckon that took care of them parents that thought she weren’t good enough.”

“There must have been a catch.” There always was, in folktales, when you made a bargain like that.

“’Course there was a catch. She would always be beautiful and young and graceful, but she could only be a woman one day a year, on All Saints’ Day. Rest of the time she was a swan.”

Inara looked at him, her expression quite serious.

“Time come, Carr begun to regret her bargain. She was beautiful and graceful and all, but she had to spend most of her life as a swan, and live with the swans. And people came and saw her, and said as how she was beautiful and graceful and such, but all they saw was a swan. They didn’t see her as a woman no more. And since the crone had given her eternal youth, Carr was lookin’ at a long future of people lookin’ and admiring and never knowing what she truly was underneath all them feathers.

“That’s where Angus come into the story. He happened upon the swan lake late one night, on All Hallow’s Eve, and saw the magical transformation when Carr turned into a woman. He barely caught a glimpse before she was swallowed up in the mist. He went on home, but he couldn’t get the swan woman outta his mind. Dreamed about her every night. I think he musta known something fishy was goin’ on, ’cause ordinarily a man don’t go about finding a girlfriend that way. And he oughtta known better than to mess with some magical 废话 fèihuà like that—like to get transformed himself, you know. But this is a folktale, not real life, so of course he persisted. Went out lookin’ for the swan woman again and again. Every time he saw a swan, he looked past the fine plumage on the surface, trying to see into the heart of her, to see if he could find the swan woman of his dreams. And of course, thinkin’ on her so much, he fell deeply in love with her.” As he recounted the folktale, Mal’s Shadow accent had grown more and more pronounced, and by now he was in full swing. “Well, the years went on, and at last come a time when Angus come to a lake filled with hundreds of swans. And he looked, right to the heart, and he seen right through the borrowed feathers of the swan woman, and knew she was the woman of his dreams, underneath it all. Chose her right outta a lake full of swans.”

“And love conquered all,” Inara guessed. “His seeing her for what she truly was broke the spell? And they lived happily ever after.”

“No,” he answered. “It was more complicated than that. You can’t expect to reverse years’ worth of magical spells just by fallin’ in love or kissin’ a frog or something. No, you see, now he knew which swan was really the woman he loved, he followed her. She weren’t so sure she loved him, I suppose, so she didn’t make it easy. Flew off to different parts, he had a devil of a time keeping close to her. He waited until the next All Hallow’s Eve, when she transformed into a woman, and for that night and day he courted her.”

“Courted her?” Inara asked, still amused by Mal’s quaint expression.

“Yeah. Told her he loved her, showed her how he loved her, made her know that he loved her for who she was, her true self on the inside, and not just for her beauty and youth and grace what everyone else could see.”

Inara was very moved.

“Then, at midnight, it was time for her to change back into a swan.”

“That doesn’t seem fair! Couldn’t they break the magic spell?”

“They did. But they had to use trickery. You see, the crone objected.”

“So the old crone was still around.”

“Sure was. How else do ya think the magic spell persisted? The crone said they had to prove that their love was forever, not just for a day and a night.”

“But they’d only had one day and one night.”

“That’s right. And that’s where the old language came in handy.”

“The old language?”

“Yeah, it’s…actually, I don’t know much about it myself. But there were some oldtimers on Shadow what knew bits and phrases of the old language—mostly cuss words and greetings, far as I could tell. Reckon it came from Earth-that-was, probably some obscure language that just about died out before the exodus anyways. Well, it seems in the old language, there ain’t no word for ‘a’—y’know, you can say, ‘the day’ but you can’t say ‘a day’—the way you say ‘a day’ is just the same as sayin’ ‘day’. So Angus and Carr—well, they could prove they had loved for a day and a night, which was, in the old language ‘day and night’—in other words, for all time. Forever.”

Inara was so moved she couldn’t speak.

“So it was just a matter of semantics,” Mal concluded. “So how was it River come to mention this tale?”

To Mal’s utter amazement, Inara threw herself into his arms, kissing him and murmuring, “I love you, Mal. I love you, I love you, I love you,” over and over and over again. He didn’t ask any more questions.

I know, he thought, and held her tight.

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glossary

废话 fèihuà [nonsense]


Author note: The "old language" is Gaelic (Scottish in this case), where the phrase "Là agus oidhche" means both "a day and a night" or "day and night."

I've seen the chapter this is part of, but this is a nice little one shot.

I'm still working on the teaser for my next story. But maybe I'll have something I can post after next weekend.

One part of this comes from a story my mother-in-law told me. Her mother was a Gaelic speaker. Her father did not speak Gaelic, and her mother did not teach Gaelic to any of her children. My understanding is that MIL's mother had a bunch of Gaelic-speaking friends, and they basically used the language as a way of talking amongst themselves without the rest of the family being able to understand -- eg. they could criticize their husbands, even with her husband in the room, because he didn't understand a word; they could gossip about scandalous things and the children wouldn't understand, etc. My mother-in-law only picked up a few words and phrases of Gaelic -- mostly greetings ("How are you?") and I'm sure cuss words as well, although my MIL won't admit to that! ;-)

Ha, that's always one use for multiple languages...

So is that the specific version of the story that was told to you, and then you researched it and found all the mythology attachments?

Well, actually, what I meant is that what my mother-in-law told me about her mother and Gaelic inspired that little paragraph about the old-timers on Shadow using the bits of "the old language." Greetings and cuss words are some of the last things to die, when a language dies out. (Although Gaelic certainly isn't dead yet.) I'm not sure when I first read/heard the story of Angus and Caer Ibormeith, but I probably looked it up when I read the Yeats poem "Song of Wandering Aengus," many years ago. I have a friend who recorded a song setting of the Yeats poem. I think I looked it up then, because although the song was fascinating, there was so much symbolism that I didn't get, even though I'd done some reading in Celtic mythology. Or it might have been in high school -- there's a novella by John Galsworthy with significant references to the same myth, particularly the apples -- I had to write a paper on it for English class. Or it might have been in college -- I took a class that had a lot of Celtic mythology readings, although most of them were from the Fionn Cycle. Anyway, I got the references to the trout because of that class. And then I read a book about two years ago that focussed on Angus, although mostly not this particular story. All that stuff got mashed around in the ol' brainpan here, and contributed to the "Shadow version" of the story of Angus and Caer Ibormeith.

Apples, huh? I see why this ties in even more.

Lots of good metaphor and synonyms.

Apples are always a fruitful source of symbolism. 

Not to mention explosive in this fandom.