In any case Ülgas the Sage inadvertently saved Hiie’s life, because if the torture of the girl had continued, she would have given up the ghost. Now Tambet was reconciled by Ülgas’s words and no longer forced poor Hiie to drink milk. But he could not love a child who did not behave as the ancient order had prescribed, so he hardly spoke to Hiie at all, and always looked at her with a vague sense of revulsion, as if there were some fault in her.
My lessons with Uncle Vootele continued. We didn’t practice Snakish so much anymore, as I was quite skilled at it, but we wandered in the forest, sometimes the two of us, sometimes with Ints too, draped like a ribbon around my neck, chatting about the land and the weather. Uncle Vootele talked about everything that had once been and was now gone forever. He pointed out overgrown shacks in the bushes, whose residents had either died or moved to the village, and told me what mighty old men and stern old women had once lived out their lives in those structures. Hundreds of years ago nobody could have imagined that one day those hovels would lie empty, their walls crumbling and their roofs caving in. We broke through the undergrowth and toured the ruins of these abandoned shacks, finding lots of traces of the former owners. Often we encountered a whole preserved household — crockery, knives and axes, chests of animal skins, and other chests full of gold and precious stones. In ancient times they had been plundered from the ships that used to sail our coasts, whose crews were destroyed by the Frog of the North. It was strange to touch brooches and precious stones that had once come under the giant shadow of the Frog of the North. It felt as if something of the warm flames that came from his mouth was still preserved in them.
We left everything we found exactly where it was, because we had no desire for the skins, the crockery, or the treasures. We already had everything we needed — the fortune we had amassed through the generations down the centuries. So we climbed back out of the decaying ruins, and the bushes covered them like the thickest cobwebs.
Sometimes in our wanderings we did meet living people, however. They were mainly old people, sitting in front of their little hovels, dozing in the shafts of sunlight that fell through the canopy of the trees. Uncle Vootele would chat with them and the elderly folks were happy to respond. They told us about their lives and everything that had once existed when Uncle Vootele was just a boy. The sight of Ints gave them great pleasure, too, and they hissed Snakish words quite competently with their toothless mouths, asking Ints about some snakes they had known in their time. Ints told them as much as he knew, but mostly he had to admit that all those snakes had died long ago, because adders do not live as long as humans.
“Yes, of course,” the old ones agreed. “They must be dead by now. That whole world that we knew is dead now, and we’ll die soon too, and that will be that.”
I really wanted to find out more about the Frog of the North from these old men and women. I was fascinated by the Frog. I really wanted to see him, but I knew that it was no longer possible to call him up with strong hissing as in the olden days. Surely, though, he must live somewhere; after all, he still existed, and was just sleeping, as Uncle Vootele had told me. But where? Uncle didn’t know; even he had never seen the Frog of the North. Yet those old people remembered him; in their childhood they had seen the Frog of the North rising in the sky, and one hoary old gent, with a body like a skeleton, had even seen combat in the shadow of the wings of the Frog on the seashore.
“Oh what a battle it was,” he muttered, smiling his creepy, scrawny smile, his skin so very thin that you could see every detail of the jawbone in his skull. “The Frog of the North killed them all, or scorched them half to death, so we only had to chop them to pieces and gather up the booty. Those were the days!”
“Where does the Frog of the North live?” I asked.
“Under the ground. But where exactly, that I don’t know. That is known only by the watchmen, those who have the key. Without a key it isn’t possible to find him.”
“What watchmen?” I asked. “What kind of key?”
“The key leads you to the Frog of the North,” the old man explained. “Of course, I haven’t seen it; it’s a very secret thing. The only thing I know is that there are some watchmen who have access to the cave of the Frog of the North, but who those watchmen are, I don’t know. They must have been people like us, but who exactly, that’s never been revealed. It’s a secret, and no one has stuck their nose into the Frog’s business. He was our strength and power; we only knew that he was resting somewhere deep down and would rise when we all called on him together. We didn’t need to know any more; that was enough. Those were the days!”
Later, when we had gone and left the old gaffer dozing in front of his cave, I asked Uncle Vootele if he knew anything about the watchmen and the keys.
“I’ve heard about them,” said Uncle Vootele. “But I think it’s the same sort of nonsense that the Sage of the Grove spouts. Well, all that business about fairies and sprites. They’re the sort of old legends that are made up just to find a simple reason for every complicated thing. No one wants to admit that they’re foolish. The Frog of the North appeared in the sky from who knows where, and disappeared again who knows where. But people couldn’t be content with that! Humans can’t stand things that are outside their reach. So they made up a story about some watchmen who know the Frog’s hiding place, and a key that leads to that secret place. A thing like that comforts people. They don’t know where the Frog of the North is sleeping, but there are some people who do, and with the help of a mystical key it’s possible for them to find that magical cave. Thanks to that kind of legend, the world becomes simpler and clearer.”
“No one knows where to find the key,” I said.
“Yes, but there’s even a legend about that, which the old man didn’t tell you. I’ve heard a story that at the summer solstice, when the sun is farthest in the sky, a fern bursts into flower, and that flower is the key that helps to find the way to the Frog of the North.”
“So the fern blooms?”
“No, of course not. A fern never blooms, but it’s nice to believe that you only need to wander in the forest and find a fern blossom on solstice eve, and the key you need is there. Of course, even finding the fern blossom is no joke, and the legend does say that finding such a blossom is very rare, but even that faint hope is much better than knowing that the dwelling place of the Frog of the North cannot be found in any way, even by standing on your head or doing a somersault. People always want to leave a little possibility; no one can be satisfied with inevitability.”
Uncle Vootele was right, for I was not satisfied with that story either. Of course I respected my uncle greatly and believed everything he told me, but since I so terribly wanted to find the Frog of the North, I convinced myself that this time he was wrong. What if there was some key? It was much more exciting to believe that than my uncle’s words. Since the solstice was soon coming, I told Pärtel everything I had heard, and invited him to come with me in search of a blooming fern. Pärtel agreed immediately, but Ints declined.
“It’s madness,” he said. “A fern never blooms; all adders know that.”
“But on solstice eve!” I was convincing myself more than him.
“Not even on solstice eve. It’s ridiculous. How can you believe such nonsense? You might as well believe that a wolf can fly on solstice eve, or that adders grow legs at the solstice. Nature remains the same, whatever night it is.”
Common sense told me that Ints was right, of course, but the blind desire to find the key to the Frog of the North made me obstinate.
“Well I for one am going to look for that fern flower,” I declared. “Maybe you don’t even think the Frog of the North exists?”
“The Frog exists,” replied Ints. “He existed even before the first adder crawled in the forest, and he lives forever. So my father told me. I don’t know where he’s sleeping. No adder knows that, and there are no Snakish words to find it out.”
“The watchmen and the key exist!” I said, and told him what I had heard from the skeletal old man.
“Maybe,” said Ints. “Perhaps some people really have found the Frog of the North. I don’t know. Adders have a lot of knowledge that humans don’t have, and sometimes humans have discovered things that we don’t know. But I assure you that the fern blossom is definitely not that key. There’s no such thing as a fern blossom and only a fool could look for it.”
“I’m going anyway!” I declared angrily. Laughing, Ints wished me luck and crawled home. Pärtel and I stayed to wait for solstice eve.
I won’t give a long description of that journey, which lasted until morning; it’s embarrassing to recall it now. The only excuse for our foolishness might be that we were just little boys then. We walked across the great land, turning around at every fern we came upon, assuming that the miraculous bloom might be very small, striking the eye only when looked at closely. But we didn’t find anything. Not a single fern was blooming, and the morning found us resting by a fallen tree, our legs terribly tired and our whole bodies worn out and heavy from sleeplessness.
That is where Meeme found us. Or rather we found him. As always, we hadn’t noticed Meeme approaching; suddenly he was simply sprawled on the other side of the tree, asking, “Boys, want some wine?”
In other circumstances we might have even tried some of that forbidden village drink, out of curiosity, because it was just the two of us, and it’s always better to plunge in and do in a strange place what isn’t allowed at home. But this morning we were too tired, so we just shook our heads wearily.
“What are you doing here so early in the morning?” asked Meeme. “I thought your huts were pretty far away.”
“We’re looking for a fern that blooms,” said Pärtel, although I was nudging him with my elbow, because I’d started to believe that Uncle Vootele and Ints were right — that the fern really did bloom only in legends. So it was embarrassing to admit that we’d been wandering so far all night for the wrong reason.
As I feared, Meeme fell to jeering at us, until he was choked by the wine catching in his throat.
“A fern that blooms!” he crowed, spluttering with laughter. “Weren’t you looking for a green fox? I hear that such an animal has been seen in these woods.”
“We’ve heard there’s a key in the blooming fern,” explained Pärtel, taking no notice of my nudging — or maybe not understanding it and thinking that I was simply twitching from tiredness. And he told Meeme everything.
Meeme was no longer laughing, but merely snorting scornfully.
“We simply wanted to try,” I said then, apologetically. “Of course it was silly. Obviously there isn’t really a key at all.”
“That’s not what I said,” replied Meeme with unexpected abruptness. “The blooming fern doesn’t exist.”
“But there’s a key?” I asked.
“So they say,” answered Meeme, in his former drunken tone again. “But there’s no sense in looking for it. The key will come into the right person’s hands when the time is right.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“That’s what my blind grandmother told me,” replied Meeme, starting to laugh and cough again. “She also said that you can walk along a rainbow to the moon, and that if you eat a handful of earth, you change into a cuckoo. My blind half-wit of a grandmother told me all sorts of things. Go and figure out whether they’re true or not. Anyway, I haven’t eaten soil, because I don’t want to become a cuckoo. Cuckoos don’t drink wine; they have to lay eggs in other birds’ nests, but what I want to do is drink. Your health, boys! I assure you wine tastes a lot better than fly agaric! These foreigners are smart people! Let everyone move to the village; that’s where they live a proper life! Long live the villagers! Long may they live!”
We left him raving by the tree trunk and trudged home. The sight of Meeme had moved my thoughts in a new direction.