Faldora and the Patoo

Faldora was once young. There weren’t many around who remembered those days.

She seemed a fixture in her little mountain village, with its jumble of wooden roofs pointing to the sky, as permanent as a rock with an age equally indiscernible. But she was young once indeed, and uncommonly wild. Her eyes, cloudy now, were bright and as deep brown as good soil. She would run through the thick forest around her village, up and down the leaning slopes as nimble as a cat. Her dresses put up a valiant fight, but none were ever a match for her energy, and always ended their days dirt-streaked and torn.

Most days Faldora came home after exploring to the house at the centre of the village, with the juice of some fruit smeared on her face. Faldora’s mother would scold her child with her head of fuzzy braids, but the effect was almost always spoiled by a laugh and a hug and an exclamation of “my wild girl!” The blood of the forest was strong in both mother and daughter, as folks say.

Many of the village elders tutted and mashed their lips at Faldora’s exploits and often happily tattered state. They told her mother that she really ought to bring Faldora to heel. Faldora’s mother only smiled and said, “life will do that. I will not be the one to kill her wildness before its time.” Some also whispered that the girl was spirit-touched and would make warding gestures when the exuberant, dirty child passed them. Faldora didn’t care. She didn’t care much for other children either, not spending much of her time with those her age in the village outside of school. There was too much to see and do in the mountain’s labyrinth of trees. The girl often liked to pull off her shoes and scrunch her toes in the undergrowth, enjoying the soft loam that gave way beneath her feet. Sometimes it felt to Faldora that her world in the sun-spotted twilight under the shifting green canopy was as small and intimate as a jewellery box, and yet, as wide and strange as the sea. She had visited the seaside before with her mother, and while she was entertained by the waves and shells in the sand, the forest was in her soul.

The forest, and its creatures, watched Faldora and grew fond of her. She made friends with a mischievous little duende with a red straw hat, who had tried to play a trick on her with a pit covered in sticks and leaves. As they wandered around together, Faldora would try to walk backwards so that she would leave the same prints in the earth as his small backwards feet. This always ended with her falling and rolling, screaming with laughter on the permanently damp ground.

Once, exploring together, they came upon a calabash stuffed into a hole at the base of a large silk cotton tree. Faldora reached for it, but the duende warned her away. He told her in a serious voice to leave it be, that it might contain the skin of a witch. Faldora did not touch it but believing it to be one of the duende’s tricks, told her mother about it that night as she braided Faldora’s hair. Her mother forbade her from going back into the forest to Faldora’s shock. That night, several women and men from the village went into the forest with grim faces in the warm glow of their rough, lightstone-tipped torches. Faldora learned that the forest was not always a benevolent place.  

Many, many moons after stumbling upon the witch’s skin hidden in the calabash, Faldora was back to roaming under the trees. One day, without the duende in his red hat, she walked father than she ought. The girl, who was not so little now, and warier than she once was, found herself at the base of an immense tree with leaves as wide as an old woman’s waist. She stopped and looked around the never silent forest, feeling as though something was watching her. Nothing appeared, so she went back to exploring the tree.

As she clambered about snagging her clothes on the man-sized roots, a dark shape careened into one of the branches, crashing by the startled girl’s feet. It was an owl, small and grey, with a wing bent at a grotesque angle. Nothing good follows the appearance of an owl in the daylight, said the village folk, but Faldora didn’t pay much heed to such superstition. Still, since the calabash, she was more cautious. Faldora picked up a long stick, almost as wide as her wrist, and prodded the owl. The owl turned angry amber eyes on her.

“Don’t look at me that way, owl,” she said. “I didn’t put you there.”

The owl shuddered and she thought he was dying, but suddenly there was a young man before her, swathed in grey rags. His upper arm was bent painfully.

“I am no ordinary owl. I am a patoo,” said the figure in a rasping voice.

“So, I see,” said Faldora. She knew the legend of patoos. They were a species of owl who could change into human shape for a short time, but she’d never met one.

“What happened to your arm?” she asked.

“I felt the need for an additional elbow,” said the patoo caustically.

“Well, if you’re going to be rude, I’ll leave,” said Faldora, turning to trudge back through the forest.

The patoo let out a loud huff, “don’t leave, I need your help. Please. There are some men after me.”

“Why?”

“They want to kill me! Why else, girl?”

Faldora crossed one arm over her chest, with the other elbow propped up on it, and rested her chin on her hand, thinking.

“How far behind are they?” she asked, listening to the sounds of the forest.

“Not very, I couldn’t fly far with a broken wing.”

“Turn back into an owl. I’ll carry you,” she said.

The patoo in man form narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then shimmered. An owl sat on the ground again before her. Faldora scooped him up as gently as possible, clutching him to her chest. She walked as quickly as she could in the direction of her village. Before long, however, she heard heavy feet tramping through the undergrowth and the sound of men cursing.

“Stay quiet,” she said to the patoo. Quick as a shadow Faldora darted off the path. She used her foot to crack a large, rotted log, digging an opening with her fingers. Faldora unceremoniously poked the patoo into the cavity she’d created.

“They’ll expect you to be up in the trees somewhere, they won’t look for you here.” She pushed the log deeper into the undergrowth near a fallen tree and kicked some leaves over it while wiping her hands on her dress.

Faldora walked back onto the path in time to see three men heading towards her. Out of the corner of her eye, she also saw a small shape watching in the trees.

“You seen an owl?” the first man asked gruffly. He was tall and much too broad with a heavy beard stretching across his jaw.

“No sir,” said Faldora, ever so slowly walking backwards. She heard the cry of a bird, a familiar sound. “But if you keep walking this way, you’ll find my village where you can get food and rest.”

But the men had noticed that Faldora was nearer to womanhood than childhood. They seem to have temporarily forgotten about the patoo. She kept walking backwards as they drifted towards her. The small shape shifted silently through the bush.

“Why don’t you come closer?” said one of the men, a head shorter and half as broad as the first. He wore a big, black wide-brimmed hat pushed so far back on his head that Faldora fleetingly wondered how it stayed on.

“Oh, no I have much too much to be doing,” said Faldora, who was still walking backwards, though her pace had quickened. She glanced to the right where she heard a subtle shifting in the brush. She began to move in that direction, gradually veering off the path again. The men followed. Faldora turned and ran. The men ran after her, but she knew the forest floor well. A flash of red up ahead. A quick gesture. Faldora jumped over a pit covered with sticks and leaves. The duende was there to pull her to her feet as all three men plummeted into the pit.

“I knew you were following me earlier!” exclaimed Faldora, swooping down to give the duende a fierce hug.

Faldora returned for the patoo, who transformed into his man shape as the pulled him from the log.

“You could have been more gentle putting me in there,” he said crossly, holding out his injured arm.

“My life was in danger because of you, be quiet. Now get back into owl shape, my mother will fix your arm or wing or whatever you feel like calling it.”

The patoo, chastened, said simply, “Thank you. My name is Burwood,” before becoming an owl once more.

Faldora’s mother did indeed bind Burwood’s wing. The patoo stayed hidden in the house until he was well enough to fly away in secret. He visited Faldora many times as she grew into adulthood.

One day, after a long absence, he arrived to find that she no longer lived in her mother’s house. She lived with a man at the edge of the village. Burwood spied through a window, watching a toddler waddle around the house behind its mother. Faldora was round with another child. The wildness in her eyes had dimmed and Burwood wanted to weep for the loss.

He flew into the forest where he met the duende.

“She is lost to us, isn’t she,” Burwood said mournfully to the duende.

“Not lost, no. She still comes to see me sometimes,” he said, a little sadly, “but she is changed yes. It is the way of the world to saddle the wild things, but in her heart, I have to believe, that she is untamed.”

© Stephanie Koathes. All rights reserved.