The Raven And the Wild Goose
by Hyel

It is a dark and stormy night.

The trees sway in the embrace of the howling wind. A lightning strike flashes for a moment, revealing three shadows dancing in the heart of the storm, raising bony hands to the merciless sky. Above them on a high rocky ledge stands the lonely figure of a slim-legged boy.

A crude, whining voice shouts through the wind:

"When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lighting, or in rain?"

Orlando sits down on the ledge above the three witches and takes out his manuscript. On its cover the words 'The Oak Tree' is written in round, childish handwriting. As a lighting strikes again the boy searches out the right part hastily and starts to write down, in the dark, his thoughts and poems on the smudged pages of the manuscript.

"When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won," another witch replies.
"That will be ere the set of sun."

Orlando puts down the manuscript and looks up into the raging storm. He shudders in ecstasy. Oh, how lovely the storm is, how handsomely the sorcerous threesome's words ring! How could he ever dreamed of becoming worthy of the great masters? Suddenly his great work seems ridiculous when compared to Shakespeare's text. Struck with grief, he stuffs his manuscript back into the breast of his jacket to protect it from the rain.

Orlando stands up and turns away from the valley where the storm still rages and the witches dance, soon rising in the air and flying away with the winds. He starts running down the hill, jumping over rocks, careful not to slip on the rain-soaked grass. The lower he runs the farther away seem the sounds of the storm and the clap of thunder. Instead, the air is filled with the sounds of battle. Midway down the ground is slippery not with the rain, but with the blood of soldiers, and instead of rocks the boy skips over the bodies of the fallen. Somewhere a war stallion neighs and the cries of soldiers ring in the air, but the battle has long since been over.

When he reaches the hill's end, the night had already made room for a pale, grey morning.

Orlando stops as he reaches a long, serpentine country road and leans on his knees, his breathing hard. The country around him is spotted with hills and empty of people. Nowhere are there signs of habitation. Instead, a group of travellers approaches the place where Orlando stands. He stays and waits until they are within earshot, but they pay him no mind at all. Orlando stands quietly and listens, watches.

"So foul and fair a day I have not seen," says the man riding in the lead. He is dark, heavy-set and serious, a bloodied bandage wound around his head. All men in the troupe are dirty and battle-weary. Even their horses are tired, and Orlando has no trouble following the troupe along the road.

He watches as the three witches appear from thin air, or from the mist that wasn't there a moment earlier, and address the amazed men. He sees the doubts and ambition spark in Macbeth's dark eyes as the witches foretell his becoming Cawdor-than and king of Scotland, and trepidation fills his mind.
Soon two men ride to meet with the troupe, bearing greetings from King Duncan.

"We are sent
To give thee, from our royal master, thanks;
Only to herald thee into his sight, not pay thee," one of the men declares.

"And, for an earnest of a greater honour,
He bade me, from him, to call thee thane of Cawdor;" continues the other.

"In which addition, hail, most worthy thane!
For it is thine."

The darkling Macbeth changes in front of Orlando's eyes. Happiness and fear flicker and mix in his expressions.
Somewhere a lone raven caws. Its voice is like the bell of doom, final and unstoppable.

"Woe, it has begun," thinks the boy.

***

On that grey day began the series of events which would unavoidably lead to the destruction of the noble Macbeth. In the famous Shakespeare play greed and violence corrupt a good man. When provided with ambition, a favourable prophecy and the perfect opportunity, Macbeth and his wife murder the good King Duncan, so giving the throne to Macbeth as his heir. Eventually Macbeth, driven by guilt and ghosts, meets his death in the great battle, the climax of the story.

Macbeth was always the lord and creator of his own destiny, even if, near the end, he could no longer control his imminent doom; whereas Orlando, Virginia Woolf's 16th century poet, survivor of centuries, keeps in the shadows, watching, taking note, ever the prisoner of his habits. Though Orlando was in his time many things - an ambassador and a gypsy, a man and a woman, a warrior, lover and a wife - his greatest passion was always literature. He read about others' passions, wrote of his own, watched and listened, learned. Like Woolf herself, Orlando has been a prisoner to both conventionalism and freedom.

I fell a little bit in love with the character of Orlando. Behind all his noble melancholy and serous poetism he was a human being who makes mistakes, learns, and continues his journey. Orlando is a true seeker who hunts through centuries some distant symbol of happiness. He isn't perfect, and in his imperfection he is no worse than any of us.

Shakespeare's vortex of stimulating passion, quick-tempoed destruction and murder carried me with it in an entirely different way than the dizzying fury of 'Orlando's' slow contemplation and consciousness in flux. Perhaps Orlando would have read the story like I did, shivering in sensation, listening with deaf ears to the cawing of the raven and watched with unseeing eyes as the dark clouds gather, called forth by Lady Macbeth's evil incantation. "Come, you spirits," he would have whispered aloud as he read the curse, "That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;/And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full/Of direst cruelty!"

'Orlando' is a biography, as the author constantly stretches. It tells the story of Orlando's life beginning from the days of his youth and continuing until her thirty-sixth year, or, if you count time by another method, until three centuries from there. Without explaining or wondering about this much, the book reveals Orlando's thoughts, feelings and mistakes, rising at times to dramatic surrealistism. Purity, Chastity and Modesty, the three metaphorical virgins, visit the book's pages in a wild play of symbols that forms around the bed of the sleeping Orlando.

Macbeth, on the contrary, is a play about death; not just the death of the murdered Duncan or the death of Macbeth, but the end of goodness and the end of a life lived well.

Another difference between the books is in their completely opposite views on responsibility and sin, which tells of the three hundred years between their publishing. Shakespeare magics up visions of the works of evil, mixing together the worst sides of the supernatural and the darker side of mankind, as if Macbeth's sin was partly caused by the witches, the forces of capricious evil, and only partly caused by Macbeth's own ambition. Orlando, for his part, is competely human. Even he himself admits to being greedy and hedonistic, maybe even evil, stating in the next moment that he doesn't care one bit even if he is. All of Orlando's sins are purely human, and so were Macbeth's, regardless of the witches' prophecy. Where Orlando managed to ignore his sins, whether that be a good thing or bad, Macbeth's conscience carried him to the edge of madness. Even if Orlando never committed anything as atrocious as a murder, there's a clear difference between Macbeth's abandoned goodness and Orlando's natural pride.

Where Macbeth was an antihero suitable to the Middle Ages, a man who had lost the battle against the base sinfulness of man, Orlando suited the atmosphere of optimistism and the rediscovered feeling of self-worth that was eminent in the Western people in the 1920s. Also where 'Macbeth' followed the traditional formula of beginning, conflict and inevitable resolve, Woolf began, ran through, and ended her story from the basis of different emphasis. 'Orlando' seems plotless, like one could expect from a biography, but that's just because its climax and emphasis are more subtle.

I could not help but prefer Orlando's character to that of Macbeth; Orlando's playful seriousness was a much more attractive paradox than Macbeth's goodness and ambition. Still 'Macbeth' as a story and poetic storytelling affected me in a different and perhaps more powerful way than the strange turns of Orlando's life. When I look around myself and within myself I see that my life really isn't that different from Orlando's - I ponder the same things as he did, and she does, and strive for the same goals. Macbeth's story, on the other hand, carries me with it especially because there is hardly anything corresponding to it in my life.

Still, I understand about guilt. Perhaps that is exactly what makes my blood boil when I read about Macbeth's fate.

Fate, death and doom - these are the augury in Shakespeare's raven. I smile slowly. I am not that different from Orlando; I no longer believe in destiny, and am much more content to chase his distant image of happiness, his wild goose.

***

The butt of a spear strikes the ground and sand billows in the air beneath its weight. The hand holding the spear is strong and sure. On the head of the spear hangs the head of a dark and handsome man. Black hair stirs in the gentle wind.

The spear's holder, the filth of war still clinging to him, covered with blood both his own and that of others, bows to another man, equally war-affected. The other noblemen gathered 'round follow the spear-holder's example.

"Hail, king!" cries the man, "for so thou art: behold, where stands
Th'usurper's cursed head: the time is free."

Orlando lets out a small sigh. Even as a boy he had understood inevitable destiny, and what it would mean for the noble Macbeth. Unlike then, she now no longer feels the joyful shiver that the prospect of giving in to destiny had then awoken within him. She still understands why Macbeth acted as he did, but no longer would she follow his lead.

Even before the men turn to leave, Orlando has turned her back on them, gathered her skirts, and started up along one of the countless hills that spot the Highlands. Even though the land is muddy after the rain and the heavy skirts hinder her, she runs a few steps. She no longer looks down after her, but above her, on the high open sky, flies a lone wild goose.

-end-