The Divining Tree

A tale fraught with seeming inconsistencies
but therein containing the true reason why crows like shiny things.

It was several hundreds of years ago, on the night before the Prince's wedding, and as it was the custom in those days to bestow upon the child about marry a rare, beautiful and unusual gift, the Prince's mother and father called their son to their private apartments. As he was his parents' favoured child, the Prince was bound to receive something of unparalleled greatness. He hurried to their rooms with this in mind.

Now, in the way that parents have of being long-winded and ceremonious on occasions of gift-giving to their children, the King and Queen made their respective speeches to their son, (stopping to confer with each other, or argue a bit over the various places of residence, dominions, realms and leaseholds at the time he spoke his first words or took his first steps and other such matters of vital importance to the moment), while the son nodded his loving obedience at the appropriate interval.

At last the King and Queen presented their son with the wedding gift of which they were so fiercely proud: they had had commissioned for him the forging of the most unspeakably beautiful, polished suit of golden armor time had ever seen. The Prince was enraptured.

"This suit of armour," he said, resisting his parents' tendency to verbosity, "is perfectly beautiful and perfectly useful. It is all I could ever need or want. Now I look to the future with great hope and anticipation, for I'm certain this suit of armour will protect me from all adversity, having been forged from gold, and your love."

And so the son set about dressing himself in this suit of armour, commenting as he did on the parents' cleverness in assuring the remarkably perfect fit that it was. And when at last, all the myriad plates and clasps had been secured, the Prince stood before his parents.

They were at first speechless over the fine image he was, and then, after some moments of admiring her son, the Queen approached to kiss him, and as she stepped close her admiring glance was interrupted by what appeared to be a flaw, a smudge of some kind in the armour breastplate. Drawing a fine lace handkerchief from her sleeve, she dabbed it on her tongue and gave it the good sound rubbing-out of a spot as only mothers can do. But when she looked again, instead of the glistening plate she expected, the smudge became quite worse, and worse still, she imagined she could see it form an image. And indeed the image was her own face – but only momentarily the strikingly beautiful visage of the Mother Queen, as it began to transform itself into the face of thoroughly grotesque old Hag.

The Queen gasped at the site of it and stepped back, and as she did turned to her husband and called out to him, now completely distressed, as the image in the armour had blinded her. The King rushed toward his son, furious with a trickery that would see his beautiful wife a Hag. And so he gazed at this smudgeoned breastplate and said,

"why, what do you mean to offend your mother this way? It's nothing at all but dull plate."

At which moment, the smudge began to arrange itself again, and the King glanced with angry disdain at the restless spot. But what he saw coming clear was not his Queen's image at all, but his own kingdom, and in that kingdom, a war in full engagement. And as he continued to watch in dreadful amazement, he recognised his own coat of arms fall broken on the battlefield.

well, this was far worse than any unbecoming rendering of his beloved wife's image. The King was fully distressed by what he believed to depict his death by his own son's hand in battle.

The Prince, on seeing what disastrous effect the armour was having on his parents, began to flail at the clasps. He pried his best at every hinge and lock that the armour possessed but it was in vain; the poor Prince simply could not remove a piece of it.

……………………………

Now, even in those days, exiling a beloved son (especially a Prince and heir) over the odd tricks that the light had played on a shiny suit would be considered a bit excessive, but that is precisely what the King and Queen decided to do. However, being the loving parents that they were, they did not exile him without some necessary provisions, and determined that he would be provided with a sword and a flask. They also indulged him a night's rest in the castle provided he would set off at first light.

During this miserable night, word arrived from the castle of the Prince's bride-elect, wishing him well and recommending that he seek the advice of a certain Hag of distant kinship who counted among her varied gifts, a talent for amour dismantling. Until then, of course, the wedding was off.

And so, at first light, the Prince set off, hoping through hope that he would somehow find this Hag and one day return to his future kingdom. It was a fierce undertaking for a young Prince, who, until now, had never been outside the walls of the parental kingdom he called home. And so, it was in this way that the dejected Prince left the great kingdom, head low, dragging flask and sword behind him.

The Prince walked and he walked, from dawn until next mid-day. He found the hours of walking tiring in the extreme, not only because of the weight and confinement of the armour, but also because the land started looking familiar, and he began to wonder if he had not walked in circles. So he sat down on a rock, hoping that someone would come by. He hoped for some sign of the Hag, or someone who knew of her – at least someone who had some knowledge of the lay of the land. And after hours of waiting (which in less lonely times would be a few moments) a young girl came singing by. The Prince cleared his throat and called to the girl with a feigned air of the casual

"You – singing over there."

 The girl stopped and turned to answer, and being too polite not to laugh and enquire of this suited knight where his horse might be, simply answered,

"May I be of service to you, good Knight?"

The Prince answered that he had found himself in the awkward position of having lost his bearings as the result of having been thrown miles through the air in the course of a bloody but victorious jousting match, and if she could possibly direct him to the nearest village…

"You certainly must have been thrown a great distance, brave Knight," said the girl, "for the next village is seven years' from here." The girl bid him good day but he was keen not to let he leave so soon, and so put all manner of enquiries to her about anything he could think of. He enquired of her ancestry, and she explained the circumstances of her pathless travel: she did have a family when she was a child, but her parents, brothers and sisters had all met death long ago. He asked her if she had ever made the acquaintance of the certain Hag, and she said yes, but he would not find her available presently as she had climbed a particular tree for an uppermost branch and had somehow in the process burst into flames and tumbled to the ground. 

Before long the Prince asked the unbearable question. "Tell me," he said, "when you look into my armour, what do you see?" The girl did not respond immediately, but looked up to the sky and then back at the armour, then again at the sky, and again at the armour. The poor Prince, expecting dreadful revelation, inquired again. At last the girl replied, 

"How perfectly odd".

Well. After the night he'd had, and all the walking and disappointment over the news of the witch, this was just too much. 

"For heaven's sake!" he shouted. 

"Strange indeed," she said, "when I look up above me is the bright sky of mid-day. Flawless, in fact. A remarkable solstice for this year…. But when I look in your armour, above me is a cloudless night just fraught with stars. And two moons. And the stars are moving, Oh, now they've stopped. They're arranging themselves! Yes, a perfectly odd suit of armour you have. May I enquire where one might have come into possession of such a thing?"

The Prince, being so relieved that this girl was not adversely affected by the armour, poured out the sequence of events that led to his coming to rest by this rock, and entreated her to help him. Naturally she agreed, with a shrug of her shoulders, being the affable sort of person that she was. 

"If you've rested enough, we might as well begin" she said.

So the girl and the somewhat rejuvenated Prince started off along the wooded path, but it was not long before they came upon a tragedy. Along the path they noticed the traces of a disturbance: bits of feathers and leaves strewn about. They found the cause presently – a small bird was fluttering, grounded and distressed, fighting to disentangle itself from a lyre string. Immediately the Prince rushed to help it, and seeing that the string had pierced its heart, pulled the string out at once. 

"Now you've done it," said the girl, "that bird cannot possibly survive like that. Take a leaf, make a cup and catch the blood, and when it's full, pour it back into the bird." 

The Prince did this exactly, and lifted the bird close to the sky (as close as his gold-plated arms would allow) and off the bird flew. And the Prince and the girl continued on their way.

It was some time before another thing happened. As they approached the crest of a hill, they saw quite ahead, a small girl with a basket of seeds on her arm, standing in the roadside, crying. The Prince was endeared immediately. 

"She is homeless, too," he said. "we'll take her with us and raise her."

"You are in no position to help her," said the girl, "she is not defenseless – leave her to her seeds."

And the girl insisted they continue on their way without her. The Prince wondered if this girl was at all of sound judgement, that she would leave such a helpless little one behind. His reservations vanished, however, when as he glanced back for a last look at the little girl, he caught sight of her change into a large black bird that flew into the trees. 

For the next hours they walked in silence, he in confused wonder at the perfectly odd way life was outside the kingdom walls, and she, untroubled, but glancing occasionally at his armour, then up at the sky. Eventually she got tired from this walking, too, and agreed that a good sleep was in order. So they found a reasonably protected hollow by the trees. The girl fell immediately into a quiet sleep, but the Prince, having to necessarily sleep in a somewhat awkwardly upright position, could only at best drift into a shallow sleep from time to time. During his waking-remembering-where-he-was or, more appropriately where-he-was-not spells, he saw the approach of a snake. He was immediately alarmed and scrambled to right himself, drawing his sword with a flourish that woke the girl and startled the snake, and in one stroke severed the snake's head.

As luck would have it for this Prince, he was not quick enough, for the snake had time to sink its old fangs into the girl. And the severed head of the snake remarkably enough turned into a bird which began to fly upward and in circles over their heads, and then descend, to perch itself on the Prince's shoulder.
"A snake is not my assailant," said the girl, "but now I'll feel the full effects of its venom. And to begin with, I am terribly thirsty."
The Prince took the flask from his satchel and offered it to her.
"I can't drink this," the girl said, not masking her annoyance, "or I'll go blind as well. You have to give that flask back to your mother. And the sword has to go, too. Throw it down into the estuary and let it be broken on the rocks and hope that the sea washes it away." Then she became very pale and fainted dead away. Now the Prince was really distraught. He turned to the bird and said, "How will I ever make any of this right again? I can dispose of this sword but I cannot return to the Kingdom for any reason". And the bird cocked its head and stared with its beady eye at him, took up the sword and flask in its talons and flew toward the east. And when the Prince could no longer find a trace of the bird's outline in the sky, he gave into an exhausted sleep.

The Prince woke again to see the bird returning from the direction to which he'd flown away. Rather than perch on his shoulder, as the Prince had hoped, the bird flew in a strangely angular pattern over head, which the Prince was convinced were instructions on how to find the Hag. Bird then alighted on the girl, and dropped some small objects on the ground. And when the Prince drew closer to pick them up, the bird reared and began flapping his wings and cawing for him to stay back. So, from where he was standing, and to the degree that he could make out anything clearly with the restrictions of the armour, the Prince thought he made out among those small objects, bits of coal and gold. And the bird continued to caw at him, a strange kind of sound that sounded almost like, "war! war!" It most certainly sounded that way to the Prince, who understood the bird meant to tell him that on returning his mother's flask to her, he discovered that indeed war had broken out in the kingdom.

Now this presented a quandary for the Prince, who fully appreciated his responsibility to venom-poisoned girl, but who wanted nothing more than to return to the kingdom and defend his father's rule. Surely his father cast him out to protect him from the war foretold in the armour, he would have to be brave and face the battlefield, and in so doing, earn his place on the throne.

 But the bird had an altogether different intention, for, as if reading the Prince's thoughts, he picked up one of the bits of coal in his beak and spit it at the Prince knocking him soundly off his feet.
"Yes, alright," sighed the Prince, "first things first."
And so the Prince set off for the witch's tree, charging the bird to watch over the unconscious girl until he could return.

The Prince followed the bird's instructions as best as he was able, and in time found the witch, exactly as the girl had told him, asleep at the base of the tree. He was considerably repulsed not only by her appallingly unkempt appearance, but also by the cacophonously twitching and snorting way she slept. The Prince doubted that he had indeed even found the right Hag: how such a thing as this dusty mound before him have any means to cure venom bites, let alone disarmour a golden Prince. But his doubts disappeared when the witch rolled to the other side, revealing the flask beneath her.

"What a perfectly mangy old thing she is," he thought. He kicked at her feet and shouted, "Wake up, witch!" The witch was taken off-guard, but righted herself immediately and cackled, "What do you want?"
"I want you to do something for me. I want you to take that flask to my mother, the Queen."
"Why should I?" the witch snapped at him.
"Because I am your master and king," said the Prince, "and I command you." And on saying this, believed he saw the witch recoil. "But you are a despicable lying old Hag and I don't trust you. So I want you to bring back her shoes to prove that you have done this. And I'm going to wait here until you return."
"Master or not, what's in it for me? I have my own shoes I like quite well." And the witch cackled and choked in delight at the game.
"I'll get you that branch you have your eye on. But – you also have to cure a girl's snakebite. She's already fainted dead away so I expect you'll need some help."
"All right then," said the witch, "I'll take that flask to the Queen, ‘though I never knew a mother willing to take back her tears. You'd just better be prepared to make good on the deal, impudent Prince." And she cackled again.

And so, in the way that witches have of becoming remarkably obsequious when they think they've got the better end of the deal, she got to her feet and made a grand curtsy to the Prince, and as she stepped back drawing her cloak up around her, changed herself into a big old black sputtering crow, took up the flask in her claws, and headed off in the direction of the castle of the Queen.

Now, a seven-year walk for an exiled Prince is not much as the crow flies, and so the Prince saw the Hag's return before too arduous a wait. She returned with the shoes and a message: the King had become so distraught and full of remorse over the banishment of his son that he renounced his title and became a wandering idiot. His mother, however, had received his tears, regained her sight, and wants him to return to rule the kingdom in her place. This intensified the Prince's desire to have everything set right again, because he would at last assume his rightful place as ruler of the kingdom he missed. He told the Hag he would go and bring the girl back to be healed and claim the branch for her. 

And so, the weary Prince returned to the rock where the girl was asleep, the bird watching over her as he'd hoped. The three set out for the Hag's tree, he carrying the girl, while the bird rode along on his shoulder. At last this entanglement would be sorted out. But the Prince had only walked a short distance when his arms and legs began to feel the weight of the girl he had to carry. His pace slowed until he was barely advancing at all. He lamented to the bird his doubts and regrets over all that had taken place. He moaned at length, and then was quiet. They plodded on in silence for a long while, until the bird suddenly took flight, and as he flew away, cawed back to the Prince, "war! no-war!" The Prince called after the bird again and again, but the bird had disappeared completely from view.

On and on the Prince plodded, until at last the tree was in sight. The Hag was there, as she had agreed. As the Prince set the girl down at the base of the tree, the Hag said,
"Climb the tree."
"No. You are an untrustworthy old Hag. I demand that you wake her up first."
"I will not."
"Alright then: as your King I demand that you make her right first."
"You are not my King – I serve no cynical child King. Defend yourself against me!" and the Hag picked up a twig from the ground and pierced his armour with it. In shock and anger that his armour should prove so feeble, the Prince reviled the Hag, and his parents, for their injustices against him and cursed the makers of this gift that was no gift at all. 

And once he'd exhausted himself of every form of insult he could turn toward the Hag, he said, "Alright, Hag. I'll get you your branch." And he began to climb the tree. When he'd reached a rather large branch, but still quite low in the tree, he called down to the witch, "Will this one do?"
"No!" the Hag replied, "It's far too frail, and faces the wrong way." So he climbed a bit more.
"This one, then." called the Prince.
"No!" the Hag called back, "It's crooked from the wind."
So the Prince climbed a bit farther, still.
"This one you'll have to make do with, if I go another limb higher I may fall, and I'd surely get caught in these branches. You're an impossible old Hag and I'm not going to cater to an old crow's whims. After all, I am a King."
"A deal's a deal," said the witch. "And there is just one branch in that tree that is of any use to me."

So, entirely against his better judgement, the Prince scaled. He found the branch, and as the Hag stood below, nodding and wringing those grubby knotted hands, the Prince began to worry the limb from the tree. Having no sword to make a clean cut, the Prince had to work the branch with every bit of strength he could find, until at last, with one furious wrench, the branch was free. He held it above the tree's crest and called down, "Now cure her!"
And the witch replied, "Throw down the breastplate of gold."
"You crazy old Hag!" The Prince was livid. "If I listen to you I'll have not a thing left. Here I could have been ruling my kingdom at this moment – and thanks to you and a meddlesome bird, and that one with the snakebite over there – instead I'm up this ridiculous old tree. I'm hungry and tired and angry, and I've truly had enough. There, I've got the branch loose for you, come get it yourself!"

"Throw down your breastplate." was all the witch would reply. Well, the thoroughly overwrought Prince cast every imaginable epithet down at the Hag, averring all the while that the removal of any bit of his armour was wholly impossible, and besides, the reason for this gift he had yet to fulfill – to reclaim his father's throne for him. The Hag was not convinced.

And so the Prince and the Hag argued on from their respective places until close to the following dawn, each amazing the other with their exasperating stubbornness. After a welcome period of silence, the witch called up to the Prince,
"What do you see from up there?"
"I see a thousand hills and valleys, I see every place that I have been. I see every path's crossing and the Kingdom to which I will one day return. I see the night and its stars on the left of me, and the violet sky preceding dawn on my right. I see everything."
"You do not see anything at all, impudent Prince. You see what does not exist."

And so the Prince's anger returned and the argument resumed.
"You impossible old Hag! I ought to take this branch and use it to put an end to you!"
"Do that!" dared the witch. And with that, the Prince began to make his way back down the tree after her. He struggled through the first branches and so completely lost his bearings that he ended up heels over head in the tree. The Hag began to cackle with enormous satisfaction and said, "You should never climb a tree if the way about it is not known to you."

The acrimonious Prince righted himself, huffed, and sat. He sat and he and brooded through the sun's full circle, and just as it approached again, he stood upright in the tree. He then pulled the breastplate from his armour and cast it down to the witch, and said to her, "No-war." And with that, the branch began to shudder in his hand, and it became a golden snake which leapt from his grasp and circled down the trunk to the Hag. As the snake made its descent, the plates and mail of the Prince's armour began to fall: not into pieces at all, and not to the ground below, but into a thousand clattering leaves of every imaginable colour, arranging themselves in a vast spiraling dance around the tree, until every last leaf fixed itself in place in the tree.

The Prince was so overwhelmed by what he had seen that he didn't notice the Hag's departure. He climbed down from the tree, and saw the girl, still asleep from the bite. He called out to the witch, but briefly, and in vain. Sitting down beside the girl, he noticed the still-golden breastplate on the ground nearby. He picked up the remnant of that once-captivating armour and broke it in two, and with the jagged edge, cut the snake's venom from her wound. In moments she woke, and remembered what had happened, and looked the Prince up and down, not actually having seen the person who was the Prince until this moment. She took that bit of breastplate from the Prince and made a mirror of it for him; the other fragment they left at the base of the tree for the Hag, which pleased the old Hag to no end, (and her cackle of delight can still be heard at times in clattering leaves of a certain tree to this day).

And so, the Prince and the girl set off in the direction of the Prince's kingdom, chatting about the weather, and how unusually temperate the evenings seemed to be for this time of year.