“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.
Six
eeme had talked a lot of piffle, but some of his words had made me think. There was no sense in seeking the key; Meeme had said that the key comes to a person. Naturally! My boyish heart swelled with pride, because I felt that I had understood Meeme’s words and grasped their hidden meaning. It wasn’t possible to find the mysterious key anywhere in the forest or among the moss; it wasn’t a milkcap or a lingonberry, which any berry picker could pop into his own mouth. It had to be some quite well protected and covered object, to be passed on by one adept to another. Hadn’t the old man spoken of watchmen? The key must be passing from one watchman to another. They inherited it, as guardians. That seemed most likely, for why would a watchman just give away a precious treasure? I wouldn’t do that, for any price. But when someone died — that was a different matter. One watchman passed away and another one took his place.
I was biting my nails with anxiety. I felt great satisfaction with my smartness, but I was even more excited by the knowledge that some years ago I had received a gift. A ring! Of course I had no real reason to believe that that ring, given by Meeme, was the coveted key that would help to find the way to the Frog of the North. At the same time there was no denying that there was something strange about the ring coming to me. Why was I the one that Meeme gave it to? Men and boys didn’t wear rings. It would have been much more logical for the ring to go to some woman, even though the women of the forest didn’t care much for jewelry either, and besides, every family had baubles to jingle on every finger. The old treasures acquired in the days of the Frog of the North had mostly survived, and were lying around in chests, unused. But this ring was wrapped in a leather pouch; it was separated from its fellows, had been singled out. My ring must be associated with some mystery, and in my childish enthusiasm I was certain that it had to do with the key to the Frog of the North.
The only thing that made me hesitate was the fact that Meeme gave it to me. Why did he? Did he know what kind of fortune was associated with it? If he knew, why didn’t he keep it for himself? What sort of person was Meeme really? As I have said, I had always seen him alone, lying around swilling wine and, earlier, eating mushrooms. He looked snotty, covered in resin and mud, his eyes blurred and his brows full of scurf. His appearance was not trustworthy. If that ring had been given to me by Uncle Vootele or Ülgas the Sage or even Tambet (of course he would not have given it to anyone born in the village at any price), I would not have doubted a bit that that treasure was somehow noteworthy. With Meeme, though, it could only be the caprice of a drunk. He’d found some old ring somewhere, wrapped it in a bit of leather, and slipped it to me. And now he was sniggering like a jaybird at me putting the ring on my finger and hoping it would lead me to the Frog of the North.
So for a start I sought out Uncle Vootele and said to him: “Tell me about Meeme.”
“Why are you suddenly interested in him?” wondered Uncle Vootele. “Did he offer you wine? You mustn’t drink that; it makes your head swim.”
“He didn’t. Or actually he did, but I didn’t take it. I didn’t take mushrooms either. Tell me who he is! Why is he always lying on the ground and never walking?”
“Oh, he does walk; he doesn’t always loll around in one place,” said Uncle Vootele, fingering his beard. “Look, Leemet, Meeme is a strange person. In his day he was a great warrior, brave and strong. He should have led that battle in which your grandfather was killed. But Meeme didn’t want to go into that battle. In his opinion it was a terribly stupid idea — to fight the iron men with their own weapons. Even the wolves were left at home, and we walked on foot to the battlefield, where the iron men smashed us to a pulp with ease. Meeme could foresee this, and said that such warfare was madness. But no one listened to him.”