From Rite of Passage. Published by Leméac Éditeur and Acts Sud in 2010 and Talonbooks in 2020. Translation copyright Linda Gaboriau, 2019.
Once upon a time there was a spunkie who had to leave his native Scotland with his whole family because of the Great Famine.
Before we go on, you should know what spunkies are. Spunkies are beautiful emerald-green elves who, once night falls, wear a lantern on their bottoms. They hide in the woods during the day and sleep underground, preferably among the roots of garden vegetables. People who don’t like them, in general villagers who are unhappy that their breadboxes have been raided by the nocturnal visits of these naughty creatures, say they are bad, sneaky, even perverse, but more indulgent people claim that the tunnels they dig to make their homes in the garden help aerate the soil—a bit like earthworms—and that losing a bit of bread from time to time is a fair price to pay for having healthy soil. You see, spunkies love bread. They live under vegetables, they could devour as many as they want, especially the potatoes that grow like weeds in Scotland. They prefer, however, the good soft crumbs and the crisp crust of bread. They burrow tunnels in a loaf, the way they do in the earth, beginning in the centre and working their way to the crust, leaving not a crumb behind, but a family without bread.
After nightfall, spunkies emerge from their tunnels in tight groups, lanterns on their bottoms, children and adults, males and females alike, and they invade a kitchen within seconds and ransack a breadbox within minutes. Little cries of joy can be heard in the night, followed by the rustling of feet on the wood floors because spunkies love to dance in the moonlight—if there is some—after their feast. Singing when the bread is particularly good.
Everyone knows that there is no point in getting out of bed to surprise them or chase them away; by the time you’ve lit a lamp or grabbed a broom, the kitchen is empty. Like the box. The family attacked—spunkies perform their pilfering one house at a time every other night—has to accept its fate and suffer the loss fuming. No bread for breakfast, but a fine garden, well-aerated.
Some, the stingiest villagers, the ones who refuse to share anything with anyone and who consider the loss of one loaf of bread an unspeakable tragedy, stubbornly persist in hunting them down. They set mouse traps—as if spunkies weren’t smart enough to avoid them—resort to flypaper, butterfly nets, and even go so far as to hide behind the woodstove to catch them.
They are called will-o’the-wisp, or Jack-o’lantern, or Joan-in-the-wad, or Jenny Burn-Tail, but spunkie is much easier to say, especially for children who dream of capturing some and keeping them in a glass jar, even if they’re afraid of them.
In France they are called fireflies, or lucioles because the French variety is shinier. People even say the French ones are much chattier than their Scottish cousins. Another big difference: French fireflies only shine for one night, whereas spunkies in the British Isles are tougher and can live for hundreds of years.
All of which is to say that our hero—let’s call him Spunky, for short—was one of the countless victims of the Great Famine that had besieged Scotland for several years. That was not so long ago and apparently consequences can still be seen. The Scots have become miserly, they say, because they were deprived of everything, even black bread.
Much has been said about the devastating effects of this famous famine on human beings—the extreme poverty, dysentery, mass exodus especially to America—but no one has studied the fate of the fairies, the trolls, the goblins, gnomes, elves, and other extraordinary creatures born of man’s imagination and who depend upon its vivacity and vigour to survive. The World of Magic was born, lives on, and will survive as long as there are humans all around the world who pretend to believe in it, who fear it and chat about it around the fire in the evening, wide-eyed, agitated, and breathless. When humans cease to believe in their existence or are too preoccupied by serious problems to think about them, creatures of Fairyland grow weaker, they wilt from lack of attention or belief in their role in this world and their usefulness, and they finally disappear.
That is what could have happened in Aberdeen, where our story begins, if the spunkies hadn’t decided, after a long year without bread—spunkies can’t stand potatoes and that’s all people managed to grow in Scotland during those dark years—to jump on the first boat leaving for anywhere in order to survive.
That is how Spunky, who was considered a young man despite being some two hundred years old, found himself with his whole family in the Aberdeen port, a huge naval yard where boats were being built that immediately set sail to transport wood and human beings to destinations so far away and so exotic they defied imagination. The wood was an attempt to bring back money, the humans, an exhausted Scotland relinquishing its last resources, a great hemorrhaging.
Spunky’s father, so old and shrivelled his lantern shone a pale yellow, but who still possessed amazing strength and determination, had announced a few days earlier, in an accent impossible to imitate here, in words I will translate into our talk:
“I refuse to disappear ’cause those ones stopped believin’ in us just ’cause they’re starvin’ to death! If we travel far away, if we cross the Big Pond, if we leave for America, maybe we’ll find folks over there who’ll believe in us, fear us, and feed us!”
The spunkies used their ears to find their way around: they wanted to emigrate to a country where they’d understand the language, North America, of course, but maybe Australia or New Zealand as well.
A magnificent ship with colourful sails leaving for India tempted them briefly—the British Empire reigned that far, after all, and people spoke English almost everywhere there—it smelled so good and looked so proud. But what kind of bread would they find in India? Just when they’d become so discouraged they were prepared to jump aboard the first ship to take them wherever, at least as far as possible from their misery and the lack of bread, Spunky’s father spotted the Rhode Island about to set sail for New England. He consulted some rats he knew who informed him that Rhode Island, in addition to being a boat, was also a state in the United States where, apparently, life was good and rich. In bread? The rats conferred before declaring that wherever you find the good life, there is always bread.
The family gathered under one of the moorings that tied the magnificent sailing ship to the wharf, to receive the last instructions from the head of their family.
Spunky, however, decided he didn’t feel like listening to his father hold forth as usual, dispensing with absurd confidence useless orders that no one would follow and proclaiming the commonplaces which had been his specialty for centuries and which drove all his offspring crazy. They had been a bit estranged, Spunky and his father, for some fifty years and Spunky would have gladly left him behind. The thought of no longer having to put up with his presence delighted him. His father was getting old and after his death, he would become the head of the family, so he simply had to bide his time. Oh, life without him, what freedom!
Little did he know!
His fate changed in one second and he would never again see a single member of his family.