The Last of the Eggstone Collies

© Elizabeth Jane Andreoli 1997

CHAPTER 2

A long way away from Eggstone Farm was an island. It was a curious sort of island because it wasn't on any of the maps. It had no jetty, no telephone, and no shops, and every time it thought perhaps a sailor might have seen it, as a faint shadow against a distant horizon, it picked itself up, and drifted serenely away on the Trade Winds until it felt it was safe once more.

On the island lived two old men, a cow, six chickens and a large quantity of vegetables. They passed their days gardening and poring over a lot of very old documents which they referred to as the Ancient Lore. They had a sturdy wooden boat in which, on rare occasions, they sailed to the mainland to buy tea, without which the younger of the two men swore he could not face the mornings. This was a secret source of irritation to the older one, who managed very well on fruit juice and pure spring water, but being a kind sort of chap, he kept his feelings to himself. This being the only possible source of disharmony between them, they got along extremely well together. In fact they had shared the island for hundreds of years, so by this time they were very old indeed and quite exceptionally wise.

Most of their home was taken up with a vast library. It was like no library ever seen before. Apart from shelf upon shelf stacked high with ancient books in every language known to Man, there were tea-chests of tattered sticks, glass urns of leaves, preserved in glycerine, and great heaps of unusually shaped stones. Francis and George knew that there was a language to be learned from every single living thing on earth, and it seemed a waste to restrict themselves to the writings of men. Many of the earth's greatest prophets had been dolphins, who left their words traced in great ripples across the sea bed, so that the course of the tide resonated through them, and sighed their message in surf on distant shores. The snakes of the desert were also great sand-writers, and left a wealth of knowledge about their lives and rituals traced on the high dunes of the Sahara. Barnacles were great seekers after symmetry, and lived their lives arranged in careful patterns which they believed to represent the world, and the Great Dry Beyond. Other beasts had less to say, but seemed to spend their lives saying it. Rabbits were great gossips, and chewed chatty letters to each other on every inch of the heathland turf. Caterpillars carved terse and beautiful poems on the edges of leaves, musing upon the strange transition from grub to butterfly. Unfortunately, being greedy creatures, they often demolished their best work before it could be preserved. Francis' love of animals made him a natural student. He put his knowledge to good use in the vegetable plot. Various carefully worded signs pointed the garden pests to a couple of rows of plants at the far end. These were theirs to eat, provided that they left the others alone. The system worked very well, and if George thought a good strong insect spray would do the job more easily, he was wise enough to keep his feelings to himself.

George was not a great scholar. He enjoyed reading Francis' translations, and dabbled in a spot of learning now and again, but mainly spent his time gazing out to sea. For the first time in a long, long life, George felt old and useless. There was no purpose left for him. He was not a man who could keep himself going, day by day, on a mass of little jobs - chalking up tiny achievements for himself like a hamster counting the revolutions of its wheel. George was a man who needed a Quest. Some grand, all- embracing Errand of life and death. He had been a hero in his time, one way and another, and had had rewards heaped upon his head. Now he knew what happened to heroes. They grew old, foolish and bored. People forgot them. Where were the crowds now? Where were the beautiful maidens, grasping at the bridle of his horse, with parted lips and eyes alight with adoration? Where were the firelit feasts - the heady cups of wine? All was vanished, leaving only an old, old man on a diet of tea, spring water and turnip stew.

"I'd give my eye-teeth for a baron of beef," he muttered peevishly to himself, "... if I had any eye-teeth left ..."

The only animal language that George could speak was Medieval Dog. In the dogs of that age was a spirit that stirred his blood. They too were fighters and wanderers. Their jokes were rich and ribald. The tales they passed down held a growl of good fellowship. He treasured his collection of ancient bones, each with its own story tattooed upon it, in marks of tooth and claw. A lot was lost in translation of course, since dog language was accented by smell, which could not be preserved. But a lot remained. The joy and pride of belonging to a pack. The savage pleasure of battle. The raw courage against enemies.

George remembered the early days when Francis began teaching him with puppy-sticks. There was so much to consider. Were the marks made with tooth or claw? How deep were they? At what angle did they go in relation to the straight grain of the wood, which always represented the horizon? He attempted his first translation.

"The small, paw-toothed not-friend ... er ...enemy ... is, sorry, was ... flat ... prone? ... upon the ... er ... thing that covers ground. Prone upon the grass?"

Francis had laughed in delight. "You look too deeply, my friend. Try to read it a little more simply."

Hours of bewilderment passed. George scratched his head, turned the little stick this way and that, and stamped and swore in exasperation.

Then suddenly the message winked out at him, as clear as the day it was written:

"The Cat Sat On The Mat!"

At first he was a slow and unwilling learner, but soon the strange language gripped his imagination. He had to admit, speaking Dog had certainly come in handy during that last spot of bother in Wales. Fine animals, those collies had been, he mused. With a stab of bitterness, he wondered why the glory of death in battle had been for them, and not for him. They had given their lives boldly to defeat a great enemy. They would never know old age and feebleness. They had fought and died at the side of an old man, and at the end of it all, it was the old man who lived to tell the tale. Francis always said there must have been a Purpose in preserving his life. George was blowed if he could see what it was.

Unlike George, Francis was a scholar through and through. He had never sought danger, and hated battles. His courage was of a quieter sort that endures without rewards. Francis loved God, animals, George and his garden in that order. The rapport he had with every living thing that ran, flew, crawled or swam, fulfilled every need he had. He only hoped he would live long enough to finish translating the works of Mudjanda - a wolf-like creature who had lived in the mountains of Tibet, somewhere around the first Ice Age, and who had foretold the birth of Christ. His writings were preserved on fossilized branches. Since Mudjanda had been visited by thousands of prophetic visions in his long life, the collection took up most of the house and garden.

Francis was not afraid of dying. He knew he would go to the God he had always trusted, and perhaps even in Heaven there would be a garden to tend. But he did want so desperately to finish the translation, and now that the music had started, he was aware that little time was left to him.

It started very gently one morning. He had risen with the dawn to collect seaweed from the shore. The surf seemed to sing to him - soft and insistent. He padded on, filling his creel. As the sun broke through the mackerel clouds, the song rose in intensity. The light became a golden chord that whirled around him, battering at his senses. He felt like a man who had been deaf all his life, and suddenly could hear. As he closed his eyes and let the song wash through him, he seemed to see a map of the heavens, with every star processing through its allotted path around the sun. And every star had a separate note to sing, and a separate rhythm to keep. And the notes coupled and tripled into chords. The chords widened and widened, higher and higher into white light: lower and lower until lost in ultraviolet. The rhythms locked together, weaving among each other until their threads were lost in one great pattern that flung itself in great pulsating waves across the universe.

Francis dropped to his knees, tears pouring from his closed eyes. He had travelled the length and breadth of the world, and seen its wonders. It was as if he had been an insect scuttling on a leaf. Now he saw the splendour of the tree. Now he heard the music of the spheres.

He knelt for a long time on the beach, humbly expecting to drop down dead with the glory of it all, but nothing happened. A twinge in his knees reminded him that he was still human, and an ache in his belly told him he was hungry. One by one, the little ordinary things of the day asserted themselves. Although the music never left him, he learned to put it to the back of his mind so that life could carry on.

From that day onwards, he worked ceaselessly at Mudjanda's prophecies. When that was done, he promised himself, he would do no more than sit on a chair, gaze at the sea, and listen to the music. His life's work would be complete.

It was interesting to see past events cropping up accurately again and again in Mudjanda's writings. Earthquakes, fires, famines and wars all matched up to contemporary reports. Even George was recorded. There it was, etched on the ancient stone - that tale of valour long ago when the young man, unsainted, rode out to slay the dragon. But the last two lines of that passage brought tears to his eyes:

"He who slays the fire-breather cannot die. Never, until the Great Stone be split."

Mudjanda often referred to the Earth as "The Great Stone". Was George then doomed to grow older and frailer on the island until the end of time? It was a cruel trick for his God to play upon his friend. The melody bourne around him on the air throbbed and swelled - a reminder of time passing. Another passage caught his eye:

"The Great Stone sings its sweetest psalm To those whom it will swallow."

Song and death. The two events were paired in every breed and generation. The hymn at the graveside. Even the lullaby a mother sang to prepare her child for sleep was a little parody of that greater song, and the longest sleep.

George did not really understand why his friend was suddenly so anxious to finish the translation, but could not bear to see him tiring himself. He took it on himself to put Francis' notes in order. The main chapter headings were:

1) Historical Events : Past
2) Historical Events : Future
3) Geographical Locations : Before Ice Age
4) Geographical Locations : After Ice Age
5) Omens : Symbols Used and Rough Translations
Appendix A: Historical Events Future : Mudjanda's Advice on Avoidance of Same
Appendix B: Omens : Cross-referenced with Appendix A
Appendix C: Glossary of Place Names : Past, Present and Future

It was a massive job, and in the long months that followed, George began to wish that the mighty Mudjanda had been strangled at birth. He also picked up a good working knowledge of the ancient wolf dialect which was very similar to Dog. He hated the conceit of this Mudjanda. Lines like: "I, and I alone, am the instrument to save the Great Stone," made him sick. Still, it made fascinating reading once one got one's tongue around the language.

This was quite literally true, since the faint scratches showed up much better if you licked them.

"Just look at this, Francis!" scoffed George one day. "Really, the arrogance of the fellow!" He pointed to a line and translated: "The mist will fall upon them, but I will save them. I am the strength of the future."

"No, George," corrected Francis. "It's 'They will save them. They are the strength of the future."

"It's not, you know. It's just the same as Medieval Dog. The singular is a mark made by the upper left canine tooth. The plural is a mark made by the upper right canine tooth. Now you look at the angle of those marks more carefully."

Francis peered at the stone. "I do believe you're right!" he said. "Well done, George!" Then he stiffened. The colour ran from his face.

"Fetch me Historical Events Future Branch Three." George handed him the gnarled fossil. Francis read it, re-read it, and finally passed it to George.

"Translate that for me," he whispered.

"... 'and it shall come to pass that those dogs will fight the Ancient Evil Ones, for they shall play: Evening with Morning, and the Morning will learn at the Evening and the Evening shall run with the Morning until night falls ...' Must I go on? There's a lot more, all in his usual pedantic style."

Francis reached for his notes and read out his own translation.

"And it shall come to pass that this dog will fight the Ancient Evil One and it shall play and learn at Evening and Morning until night falls."

George silently handed him the notes on Chapter 5: "Omens: Symbols Used and Rough Translations". Under "Morning" were the definitions: "start of day", "dawn of new idea", "young creature". Under "Evening" were "end of day", "end of useful life", "old creature". Under "night" was "darkness" and "death".

Francis wrote out a new translation for the passage. This time it read as follows:

"And it shall come to pass that those dogs will fight the Ancient Evil Ones. The young will learn from the old, until the old ones die."

He looked at George. Tragedy was on both their faces.

"We were wrong..." they whispered to each other, "... and Toby is on his own."

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Modified:2/8/97

Created:25/7/97