'What's through that arch?' he asked the ambulance man.

'That's the Hare's Gate,' was all the man would say. 'No-one ever goes through there.''

That night Billy was lying alone in his bed feeling sick and miserable when he thought he heard a voice crying out, 'You must go through the arch.'

He thought he knew the voice but he was much too frightened to do anything.

The next night Billy was feeling even worse and he heard the voice again. This time it said, 'If you want to get well, you must go through the arch.'

This time Billy got out of bed and went to the window and looked at the great bones gleaming in the moonlight. How could he get well by going to such a terrible place? He was so frightened he went and hid beneath his sheet.

The third night he heard the voice again, and this time it said, 'If you want to get well you must go through the arch and bring back the water of life.

This time Billy didn't seem to be able to stop himself. He went out through the open door to his ward and down through the darkness to the gleaming white bones, and he was through the arch before he knew it.

He found himself in a bare and blasted landscape, with a sky the colour of ash. 'Where am I going to find the water of life in a place like this?' he said to himself, afraid and all alone.

Just then a mole pushed his head through the ground and looked at him. 'You want some water?' it asked, and climbed out of its hole and stood up on its back legs. It was nearly as tall as Billy.

Before he could answer the mole said, 'My name is Fatkin. Follow me.' Then it dropped onto all fours and ran away through the darkness.

Billy hurried after the mole though he had no idea where he was heading, but no matter how fast he ran he couldn't catch up, and soon he was lost. Panting, he came to a stop beside a clump of old reeds where some ducks were sleeping. He knew that where there were ducks there might be water and so he went around the clump and, sure enough, there was a little rusty pond and there was Fatkin, who was just disappearing into a new hole.

'Wait a minute!' called Billy. 'Is this the water of life?''No, you'll have to sing for that,' said Fatkin, and then he was gone.

'But I don't know any songs,' said Billy despairingly. It was true: no-one had taught him any songs for as long as he could remember. How was he going to get the water of life? Then a memory woke up in the very back of his head of a single verse his father used to sing him, long long before, when Billy was very small. How had it gone? Feeling like a fool, in a dry, croaky voice like a frog, Billy sang:

'Dance to your daddy
my little babby
dance to your daddy
my little lamb.'

Instantly there was a change in the appearance of the pool. Instead of a dirty rusty colour it now seemed black and clean and deep. Great bubbles started rolling up to the surface and bursting with a scent of peat, and then Billy stepped back in terror as a great black horse came bursting out of the depths with water streaming from its mane and its eyes flashing like stars and its nostrils snorting the air. But as soon as it stepped out of the pool and onto the dry land, the black horse changed into a tall pale woman with long black hair, wearing a heavy black cloak that shone with jet-coloured beads.

'I am Epona, what do you want from me?' she asked.

Billy was so scared he could scarcely speak, but though her voice sounded so cold and black he could see that her eyes were tender and brown, so he summoned up all his courage and said, 'Could you tell me please how I can get the water of life?'

Epona reached into her cloak and brought out a small wooden cup; brim-full with water. 'Take this,' she said, and her voice was kind.

But then she drew herself up to her full height and spoke fiercely again, 'Never drink from the cup or give it to another to drink; never spill a single drop until you are home, or you will wake up dead!'

With that she vanished as though she had never been there and left Billy Scarlet with the little wooden cup of water trembling in his hand.

He looked around him for any sign of the gates or the hospital, but it was so gloomy that he could see nothing. And even if he could find them, where was his home? He was totally lost. Then he thought he heard a noise, not very far away: a sort of a tapping sound. He went a few paces in the direction of the noise, but he could see nothing. Suddenly he realised the sound was coming from underneath his feet, and that it was the sound of a pick-axe chipping through rock and coal .

'Of course!' he said to himself. 'It's Fatkin working at his tunnels.'

By the time Billy had worked this out, the mole had already dug busily away a few yards further, so Billy began to follow him as best as he could. 'Fatkin guided me to the water and Epona,' he thought, 'so perhaps he will lead me home.'

As he followed he could just make out that he was climbing a small hill, and that the slope was covered in tree stumps. When he got to the top he couldn't hear Fatkin any more, but now there was a chopping noise as though someone was hacking away wildly at a tree with an axe. The trail of tree stumps led to a thicket of fir trees, and Billy could see a fire flickering through their branches.

Expecting to see Fatkin, Billy stepped bravely into the clearing, but then stopped in amazement. By the light of a fierce fire he could see a big man, stripped to his waist with the sweat pouring off him like a river, chopping trees down with a big axe and flinging them on the flames.

Billy decided to be brave: both Fatkin and Epona had helped him, perhaps this man would too. 'Excuse me,' he asked, 'do you know which way my home is from here?'

Instantly the man flung down his axe and ran at Billy with a roar. He had a large hare tattooed on his chest in blue and a very hairy face. 'Before I tell you anything,' he shouted, 'you must give me a drink from that cup. My name is Brude, the Destroyer of Forests, and all this chopping trees is thirsty work.'

Billy was about to hand Brude the cup when Epona's words came into his head: 'Never give it to another to drink, or you'll wake up dead!'

'I can't give you it, I'm sorry,' he said.

'Then I have nothing to say to you,' Brude shouted, and ran back to pick up his axe.

Billy didn't know what to do. He couldn't give Brude a drink but he didn't know which way to go. The darkness seemed never-ending and there was no sign of Fatkin. A great despair came over him and a tear fell from his eye and splashed on the earth. Instantly the strangest thing happened. The fire went out with a single hiss and Brude gave a great roar of pain and dropped his axe. All round him Billy could see saplings bursting out of the ground while those trees still standing started growing at a tremendous rate. The opposite seemed to be happening to Brude. He was running round and round in smaller and smaller circles getting hairier and hairier and shrinking until finally he turned into a hare, and sprang away through the wood that had grown up from Billy's tear.

Billy didn't know where else to go, so he followed the hare through the trees till he came to a clear space beside some ponds. There he found Fatkin the mole sniffing cautiously at the bark of the new trees. Meanwhile the hare that had been Brude limped off into the darkness.

'At last it's you, Fatkin!' Billy said, relieved to see his friend. 'Do you know where my home is?'

'I can't tell you that,'said Fatkin, standing up on his back legs again and putting his rough pink paw on Billy's shoulder, 'but I can show you the way you must go. Can you see that hill over there? Well, there's a path on it that curves up as gently as your mother's breast. If you go up that you'll be on the right road.'

'Thank you, Fatkin,' Billy said, and ran toward the path, taking care not to spill the water in the little wooden cup.

The climb was hard and Billy was thirsty when he got to the top, but before he could think about that he saw a most peculiar sight. On the very top was a large iron throne with a man perched on it, dressed in rags. When he saw Billy the man jumped down and ran towards him. Billy could see his clothing had once been very fine: an elegant charcoal suit and black leather shoes. He still had a kind of long thin blackened crown on his head, and had obviously once been very rich. But the most peculiar thing of all was that the man was cradling a handful of burning coals in one hand, close to his chest as though he was cold. Yet the coals were singeing his clothes and burning his hand so much that when he came up to Billy he had to pour them into his other hand, and his face was running with a constant stream of sweat.

'Can you tell me where my home is?' Billy asked.

'Is that the cup?' the man asked eagerly. 'Give it to me, it's mine to drink. I am the Lord of Fire and this is all my kingdom, Give me the cup, I'm parched with thirst.'

The words of Epona came back into Billy's head: 'Never give it to another to drink or you'll wake up dead.' He wanted to help the man but knew he couldn't give him the cup. The Lord of Fire uncomfortably swapped the burning coals back into his other hand.

'Can't you just tell me where my home is?' Billy asked.

'I've never given anyone anything for nothing and I'm not going to start now,' snapped the man. 'Look at my kingdom. How do you think I got all this?'

Billy looked around him in the gloomy grey light. All he could make out was empty black earth, stagnant rusty pools and, here and there, derelict-looking machinery. He looked at the Lord of Fire with his coals burning first one hand then the other, and a great pity came over him and a second tear fell from his eye and struck the ground. Instantly the strangest things started to happen.

Where there had only been cinders and dry earth, grass sprouted up in a great sloping meadow. Then the Lord of Fire gave a great roar of agony and threw his hands up in the air. The coals flew away like comets and Billy watched as the man's hands turned into hooves and his face grew as long as a horse's, and he fell down on all fours and the roar turned into a neigh. Billy blinked: the Lord of Fire had turned into an old pit-pony that nibbled gratefully on the lush new grass. Then Billy watched as the coals fell out of the sky like meteors and landed on a small farmhouse at the foot of the hill. To his horror it burst into flames.

Holding the little cup as carefully as he could, Billy ran down the hill to warn the people in the farmhouse, but when he got there he could see no-one, just the fire raging away. Then, in the heart of the flames, he heard a voice he recognised cry out,

'Help! Save me!' It was Fatkin the mole. Billy looked around desperately for any water, but there was only what was in his cup, and that was too small an amount to put out such a fire. Anyway, hadn't Epona said, 'Never spill a drop until you're home, or you'll wake up dead'? What was he to do?

But Fatkin cried again, 'Save me!' and Billy Scarlet knew he had to try and help his only friend in this strange place. So he threw the water from the little cup into the heart of the great fire and then an astonishing thing happened. Instead of only a few drops coming out of the wooden cup, a huge splash of water exploded out of it and deluged the fire, putting out all the flames at once and draining away to form a great lake. At that moment the sun rose, looking red and raw, but very reassuring after so long a night. Billy searched through the hot blackened stones in the new daylight for his friend, Fatkin the mole, but could find no trace of him. Then he heard a lark singing in the sunlight, soaring up into the sky and pouring out its song like water from a cup, and he realised he could understand what it was saying:

'I'm released! You've freed me from fur into feathers! You've released me from my prison in the dark!'

And Billy understood that Fatkin had been turned into a skylark. He looked at the sodden steamy blackened bricks of the farmhouse and asked, 'But I spilled the cup. Why haven't I woken up dead?'

Fatkin sang as he climbed higher and higher into the sunlight, 'Because you're home already, my little babby: don't you know your own fields? This is the place where you were born.'

Billy looked at the farmhouse again and recognised it in the daylight for the first time. This was his home where his father had taught him the song. A third tear fell from his eye, a tear of joy, and landed on the ashes. Instantly a great field of wheat sprang up, whispering in the wind, and the whole farm was restored. He squinted into the sunshine trying to see Fatkin, but the lark had flown so high up he could neither hear it nor see it.

So Billy looked around him, and now he could see the hospital as plain as day, so he began walking toward it along the edge of the field. Before he had gone halfway, he heard a crushing and a pushing of the wheat, and then a woman stepped out of the field in front of him. She had golden hair in plaits and a long yellow cloak threaded with gold. At first Billy thought she must be the farmer's wife, but then he saw her brown tender eyes and he knew it was Epona.

'Where's my cup?'she asked him, fierce as ever but laughing as she said it. As he handed it to her she said, 'Look at my land,' and he turned to look at the strange country he'd been wandering through.

Where there had been nothing but bare black earth, now there was a farm with a big field of wheat, a lake with all kinds of birds nesting, a hill with horses grazing, and a forest full of deer and rabbits.

'You have cured this place, and you have cured yourself,' she told him. 'Now sleep.'

At once Billy felt a great tiredness sweep over him and it seemed as though he lay down among the warm wheat. He flicked his eyes open lazily and -- he was back in bed at the hospital. Instead of Epona there was his mother leaning over him with a glass of water.

'You're well,' his mother said, her face full of relief.

'We're home,' he replied, remembering what Fatkin had told him in the dream.

Back to the Ballad

Projects