A long time ago when men and women first started to think about the world and their place in it, a boy and a girl were born. Both had parents who loved them and whom they loved back. The girl had two sisters, an elder and a younger one, whom she loved dearly. The boy had an elder brother whom he loved dearly.
Now the girl was born to a fishing family in a little fishing village on the coast. She grew up a strong swimmer as she loved to spend time underwater investigating the coral reefs close to shore. She would often watch the shoals of fish that swam past and envy the way they could visit the deepest beds and the most distant shores of the great wide ocean.
The boy, meanwhile, was born the son of a shepherd and lived in a shepherd’s hut with his family high upon the mountainside. And from the high mountain pastures where he helped herd his family’s flocks of sheep, he loved to look down at the valley beneath him. First the purple scrubland running down the mountain, on to the green pastures beyond following the blue gleam of the river until finally it reached the sea. He would often look up at the eagles soaring high above his head and envied them their ability to fly across the land and take this view with them wherever they went.
Now it so happened, that in this land too at that time there lived a witch who demanded heavy taxes from the people. Every year the girl's family would give the witch half the money they earned from the sale of their fish. Every year the boy's family would give the witch half of what they earned from the sale of their sheep’s wool.
But this year, disaster struck both families. The girl's father was out at sea catching fish when a sudden storm overwhelmed his boat. He was a strong swimmer, just like his daughter, and he swam safely to shore. His boat, though, sank without a trace. Those people who were watching from the shore wondered. For, where there had been blue sky with not a cloud in it and only a little wind, there was suddenly this violent storm which had just as suddenly disappeared.
The next day, the boy's father found his sheep had all been struck by a strange illness which made their wool fall out and rot. The shepherd tried everything to get the sheep's wool to grow back, he fed them by hand and gave them every natural remedy he knew, but to no avail. In the end he had to put woolly sweaters belonging to him and his son onto the sheep to keep them warm. Nothing in all his experience seemed to give any clue as to what was wrong with his sheep.
And so, when, later that month, the witch came for her taxes, neither family could provide her with any of their income because they had made none and had only just managed to pay for food on what savings they had stored away.
The witch, strangely, did not seem surprised or angry to learn of this and instead a small smile was visible at the corners of her mouth. "Fisherman,” she declared in pleasant, measured tones, “in exchange for your missing taxes, you will bring to me your second daughter, whom I will take into my service as a familiar. One year from today, if your payments are renewed, I will return your daughter to you in her human form." To the boy’s father in a similarly friendly voice, "Shepherd, in exchange for your missing taxes, you will bring to me your second son, whom I will take into my service as a familiar. One year from today, if your payments are renewed, I will return your son to you in his human form."
When both boy and girl were gathered before her at the witch's castle, she addressed them in turn. "Boy, I have need of a new familiar who will provide me with news of my lands and deliver messages to its rulers. You will choose a creature whose form you would take." To which the boy replied in a trembling voice, "Your highness, I would choose to be a bird of the air, such has always been my favourite creature."
"Very well – you shall become a bird. And you, girl, I have need of a familiar who will provide me with news of my seas and deliver messages to its captains. You will choose a creature whose form you would take." To which the girl pointed out her chin and replied, "Your highness, I would choose to be a fish of the ocean, such has always been my favourite creature"
"Very well – you shall become a fish, but since the role of a familiar is a challenging one, I will give, to each of your chosen creatures, qualities of the other, so that you may spend some time in companionship in both air and sea."
And so just as promised the fisherman's daughter became a fish, and the shepherd's son became a bird.
As the days passed, the fisherman's daughter who had already loved the sea so much as a girl learnt to love it still more as a fish. She swam in the shallows and darted in and out of the corals. She followed the dolphins and the seals out into the wild open ocean and dived deep to places where the sea was dark, the weight of the water heavy, and strange shapes brushed past her in the gloom. She travelled to where the water was cold and icebergs ruled and to where the water was warm and clear. All this time she delivered messages and collected news for the witch. But of the boy she thought nothing.
Meanwhile, the shepherd's son flew high, higher even than the mountain pastures where his father still herded his wool-less flocks. He gloried in the feel of the ice cold air as he swooped and dived across the sky. And he wondered at the curve of the earth laid out beneath him stretching for mile upon mile and, just as he had when still a boy, he marvelled at the valleys and the rivers beneath him. He too delivered the witch's messages and collected news for her. He too thought not of the girl who had shared in his fate.
Then, one day when the sun glinted from the sea as if it contained a diamond in every drop of water, the boy was drawn to its beauty. He remembered the fisherman's daughter in that moment and how she had chosen to swim as a fish through the world’s seas. He remembered the witch's suggestion of companionship and he thought of how much he missed his brother and his parents. He knew he couldn’t visit them for they would shoot an eagle that flew too close to their flock. He decided then that he must visit the girl in the sea. The boy/eagle tucked his wings far back behind his body and dived. Through the clouds he fell, their dampness lending extra speed and fervour to his flight down towards the sea. And when, beak first, he met the deep precious water, he kicked back with his feet, spinning, circling, zigzagging in his excitement at the shocking feel the cold ocean had on his feathers.
Like an explosion of light, glinting in the sunlight before him, came a shoal of fish which banked sharply to the left at the sight of this intruder and then swam up, up towards the sun until, to the boy's amazement, they shot right out of the water. The boy followed them upwards; he rose out of the water working his wings energetically to shake them dry. For the second time the whole shoal of fish burst into his vision this time moving quickly away from him through the air! They were beating their fins and flying as if they too had wings. And there, in amongst the shoal, one fish shone brighter and flew higher and beat stronger than the other fish. It ducked and dived and spun in the air above them. It was the fisherman's daughter. And at this moment she saw the bird that was the boy flying to meet her and she turned to join him. In their joy, they tumbled and turned together in the air, glorying in their flight.
After a year in the witch's service, it was once more time for the shepherd and the fisherman to pay their taxes. This year the shepherd's flock had doubled in size and had produced the finest wool the valley had ever seen with no more sign of the rot that had so plagued them the year before. The fisherman unable to catch fish without his boat, had taken over from his wife doing the housework and cooking the dinner while his wife took their daughter’s place with their other two daughters gutting the fish brought in by the fisherman. The fisherman’s wife had once been the fastest fish gutter on the coast and soon she had taught her daughters the trick to her quick hands and the trio was wanted for their fish gutting skills up and down the fishing villages along the coast. Their taxes paid, the witch kept to her word and turned the children back into humans again, but still a little smile was visible at the corners of her mouth.
When the two children returned to their families, they told them stories of the places and creatures they had seen. They talked of beautiful cities and never-ending deserts, volcanoes belching out molten rock into the sea, and ice floes the size of mountains. They described the feel of the wind on their backs when they flew up into the sky or the cold shock of the water as they dived into the sea. They spoke with longing and yearning for the life they had left behind.
When the fisherman’s family found out that their daughter had been a fish for a year they were horrified. The shepherd’s family, on finding out that their son had been an eagle for a year, were also horrified. The fisherman’s family could not stop thinking about how of the many fish they had gutted, one might have been their daughter. The shepherd’s family could not stop thinking about how of the many eagles they had shot down to protect their flocks, one of them could have been their son.
So it was that the two families marched together on the witch’s house, determined to make their grievances known. When they reached the door of the witch’s house, the fisherman’s family jutting out their chins in defiance, the shepherd’s family trembling at the thought of what the witch might do to them, it swung open just as the fisherman reached up his hand to knock. Nervous but determined, the two families entered the house and confronted the cat that stood in front of the fire. “Now, look here!” began the fisherman, addressing the cat. But at that point, the witch walked in from the kitchen, and so the fisherman stumbled over what he had been going to say.
“You have all come here because you expected that when I said your children were going to be my familiars for a year, you thought I meant they would be my pets like, Tom, my male housecat here, who by the way is just a cat and is certainly not my own animal form.”
“Well, yes,” cried the shepherd’s wife, while the fisherman was temporarily struck dumb, “We could have killed our son at any time over the past year when we were shooting at eagles to protect our flocks.”
“And we could have killed my sister at any time when we were gutting fish to earn money so that we could pay your taxes,” the youngest of the fisherman’s three daughters spoke out.
The witch sighed and turned to her two erstwhile familiars, “Girl, would you tell your parents what happened to you whenever you came close to getting caught in a fishing net?” The girl thought for a moment, “The net would pass just by me or I would always be on the edge so I had enough time to swim out before it closed shut.” Then the witch asked, “And you, boy, what happened to you whenever you flew too close to a shepherd’s bow and arrow.” Realisation dawned on the boy’s face, as he replied, “The arrow never quite reached me – it would either fly too high or too low. You did it, you protected us from harm!” The girl and the boy jumped up and hugged the witch, “Turn us back, you must turn us back. It was the most wonderful experience we ever had. The only thing that was missing was our family!”
At this the smile at the corners of the witch’s mouth grew broader and she looked to the parents of the children. “If your children return to their forms, it will be without the protection I gave them this year. They will live their lives as any other creature - fish, bird or human - does: in constant danger of death. What will you do? Will you continue in fear that you will be the means of this death or will you join them as is their wish?”
