Mr Carnovan's Little Shop of Dreams, Part 2a of 5

‘Tonight I will tell you what happened in Lansby when your grandmother opened the door to Mr Carnovan’s shop,’ Michael’s father said as he tucked the covers under his son’s chin.

‘But what about the ogre and the three tuneless tenors? Grandmother had to pass them to get to Lansby.’

‘You remember them, do you?’

‘And then there’s the giant and the raging torrent. And the knight who gave Grandmother a ride over the mountains on his roan horse. You can’t leave them out, Da.’

‘That will be several nights’ stories, Michael.’

‘Yes.’ Michael smiled at the thought of the many stories his father would have to tell him.

‘Well, I suppose it is only right to tell all the story in the order in which it happened. We mustn’t get ahead of the words or leave any of them out, for all the words in a story belong to it, and it wouldn’t be the same story if we left any of them out.’ Michael’s father settled into his chair. He didn’t see The Murphy creep into the room and crawl under the bed, moving silently with his belly against the rug, his tail held low to the floor. Nor a few seconds later did he see a faint shadow flit across the wall of the room behind him. If the father’s eyes had been such that could see a house guard, he would have seen Lú climb up on Michael’s small desk and seat himself, with his legs crossed at the knee and dangling over the edge. As is only polite when listening to a storyteller—for storytellers deserve our complete attention—Lú took his hat off and sat it beside him, with the shiny gold buckle on the front facing forward, because that is the proper way to display a hat. Nor would it surprise me at all if a few of other benevolent spirits in the neighbourhood weren’t present in the room or floating in the air outside the window of Michael’s bedroom, for Michael’s father was known for the excellence of his stories. But since I have no proof that they were there, I will omit them from this tale.

‘It was on the way to Lansby that your grandmother ran into the ogre and the three tuneless tenors,’ Michael’s father began. ‘You will remember that after shutting her door and closing her gate, your grandmother found the path to Lansby with the help of the wishing stone. With her string bag in her left hand and her purse full of golden coins deep in the right-hand pocket of her coat, your grandmother walked steadily up the long hill south of Dunfanaghy until she reached the point where the first blade of grass was bent. The trail was faint, but she could see that it led up over the hill and down. Your grandmother pulled her blue shawl tightly around her shoulders, for the breeze blowing up there in the hills chilled her, and she fixed the Red Sox baseball cap your Uncle Brendan sent her firmly on her head lest some stray wind decide to have a bit of fun and tumble it off her head.

‘For there are impish winds that like nothing better than to watch a human being chase after a hat. Just as the poor person catches up and is reaching out to snatch the cap back, the wind gives a puff and the hat goes scrumbling away. There are many fearsome stories I could tell you, Michael, about people who have spent their lives chasing hats forever scrumbled just beyond their fingertips by the wind. But those must wait until another day, after we have finished the story of your grandmother’s visit to Mr Carnovan’s shop to buy you that fine blue box that sits atop your bookcase.

‘Now, the hat forced her hair out into a circle of lovely white locks that stood out several inches around the sides and back of her head. And the sun looked down from the sky, and it caught sight of your grandmother’s blue shawl against the golden hills of Donegal, and it quite liked the shape of her head and the colour of her locks as they flared out beneath that bright red Red Sox cap. So the sun said to itself, “Ah, now there is a sight to improve the day. Nora Kathryn Orrin, O’Connor that was, striding forth on this fine morning and adding to the pleasure of every creature both visible and invisible that sees her. But why is she headed towards Lansby? Does she not know of the ogre and the three tuneless tenors that lie in wait as the path to Lansby crosses over the little arched bridge above the stream that runs between the hills? Has she not heard of the mighty torrent guarded by the giant and its sharp rocks hidden by the raging waters? And what of the knight with the roan horse who guards the pass through the mountains?”

‘The sun thought for a bit and then it said, “I will do what I can to ease Nora Kathryn Orrin’s way, for she is a fine woman and doubtless she has a good reason to be on the path to Lansby, although for the life of me I can shine no light on why she is headed there.” And the sun warmed the air so the breeze was no longer chilly, and it chased away a cloud that was floating overhead. And having done what it could to make your grandmother’s journey pleasant, the sun sailed on west through the blue sky, for it had much to do before it set for the night.

‘The path wound on and on, for no path likes to run in a straight line. If left to themselves, paths visit groves of trees and linger in the cool shade, and they veer off to the left or to the right so that they can pass by the yellow and red flowers that grow in out-of-the-way places. They love to follow streams and gaze at the mysteries that lie in the slow, dark pools. And they climb up tall rocks so that they can look down on the deep valleys or across the mountains to the sea. No, every path likes to wander about. It’s only humans that want a path to march in a straight line.

‘Now, the path to Lansby has been there for a long time, long before there were humans in Donegal, which is to say for a very long time indeed. There are some who say that it was built by the ancient kings of the Tuatha Dé Danann and been kept in repair by the Micniai and the Iníonneachtanna, the guardian spirits of our houses and our land, ever since.’

The Murphy raised his head from between his paws in disgust, and his tail whipped back and forth, disturbing the dust bunnies that had moved in beneath Michael’s bed immediately after his mother had finished pushing the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner under there. The man was taking unpardonable liberties with the story of the making of the path to Lansby.

‘There are others who says that the brindled cats built the road.’

The Murphy smiled to himself under the bed and licked his right front paw so that his hairy tongue made a rasping sound, for that is a cat’s way of saying ‘You got that right, mate’. ‘Ah, the man was just building suspense and delaying the story before telling the truth of the matter,’ thought The Murphy. ‘It is an old technique and he used to good effect, exactly what one would expect from a man trained by my father and grandfather.’ And The Murphy rested his chin on his front paws again.

Lú na Micniai’s eyes blazed with indignation at the suggestion that the brindled cats had built the road to Lansby. ‘And tall tales they would be that they were telling then,’ he squeaked in his high-pitched voice.

‘Did you hear a noise, Michael?’ The man turned his head and looked about the room. For a fraction of a second he thought he saw something sitting on the edge of Michael’s desk, but when he took a closer look, there was nothing there.

Michael shook his head no. ‘Perhaps both the guardian spirits and the brindled cats built the path to Lansby.’

‘Now that is a good thought, Michael,’ and the father nodded in satisfaction at his son’s remark. ‘An excellent thought. For everyone who uses a path helps build it. And so it was the day your grandmother journeyed to Lansby. For so few people use the path she was following that some days the path forgets where it leads. It lies there on the earth and rests in the warm sun, and the wind blowing through the tall grasses bends them over the path and almost covers it so that the traveller has to look twice to see where the path is. Or it watches as a leaf breaks free from its tree and drifts through the air, rising and falling in the breeze. And it listens to the songs of thanksgiving the bees sing as they visit the flowers. Oh, the path to Lansby has an easy life, Michael. Sometimes for days on end it has nothing to do. But your grandmother woke it up and helped it remember that it runs from the hills south of Dunfanaghy to the village of Lansby, where Mr Carnovan has his Little Shop of Dreams. And the path was only too happy to help your grandmother along. But it was in no hurry, and it could not imagine that your grandmother was. So the path delighted in showing her all the glories that lie along the road to Lansby.

‘And your grandmother followed the path as it wound beneath the trees and lingered in the cool shade. She gazed with pleasure at the red and yellow flowers as the path veered first to the left and then to the right. And she paused for not a few moments to ponder the mysteries that lie in the dark, still pools of the stream that journeys beside the path for a time. And she looked with joy upon the deep valleys and across the mountains to where the ocean sings its song to the land.

‘But your grandmother was not the only being to be enchanted by the path to Lansby. Many a creature, both human and not human, has travelled the path to Lansby and found pleasure in it. And many a creature makes his home beside it. Now some of them are quite harmless. The path to Lansby makes no objection to the field mouse that builds his little house beside it. And the rabbits have long loved the meadows to either side of the path. But others are a bit more dangerous.

‘As the path wandered out of yet another grove of trees and down a long slope into a deep valley, your grandmother saw that a stream ran down the bottom of the valley, and there, where the road crossed the stream, was a stout bridge built of emeralds and sapphires. Now this was a proper bridge, Michael. It arched high over the stream so that in the spring when the streams flood, no traveller would get his feet wet. And the emeralds and sapphires of which it was built were so large that no flood could sweep them away. And those rocks were so tightly fit together that even if you took the smallest, sharpest knife you could find, you could not insert the tip of the blade between two of them. And the bridge shone green and blue in the light.

‘Your grandmother walked down the long hill into the deep valley, but as she got closer and closer to the bridge, she began hearing the strangest noise. When she was still far away, it sounded like the cawing of all the birds nesting on Horn Head when you’re a mile off. When she got a little closer, it sounded more like a thousand pieces of chalk screeching against a slate. Had it not been bright daylight and were your grandmother a superstitious woman, she might have wondered if a banshee were not waiting beside the bridge over the little stream at the bottom of the valley to steal her soul. As it was, when she was a half-mile off, she had to cover her ears with her hands to keep out the noise.

Continues