Free The Green Hero by Bernard Evslin

wise advice.
    As he spoke, the words themselves froze in the air and fell to earth, rearranging their letters and spelling out new words. This is what he read:
    Yes of foe
    Always no.
    In such a test
    first is worst
    last is best.
    “Thank you, Salmon,” said Finn aloud. Then to himself: “Now, what can he mean?”
    He read the verse and read it again. But still it made no sense. “I can’t ask him, either,” said Finn to himself. “He will never repeat himself nor ever explain. He teaches that the best part of wisdom is unriddling things for yourself. I did pretty well at such puzzles when I was under his tutelage, but my wits have grown rusty, I fear, at Tara. Still, I must make myself understand. For ignorance, upon the start of such a journey, is death’s own darkness.”
    He stared at the words again, and stared and stared, sunk upon his haunches, feeling the very marrow of his bones freeze as the wind screamed.
    Finn heard something. He whirled about and looked back toward the castle and saw a remarkable sight—Dagda’s harp flying after him. Its strings were tightened by the cold, and it sang as it flew:
    Farewell Tara’s halls
    Its weaponed walls.
    I journey long
    to aid your song.
    “Would you be coming with me then?” asked Finn in wonder. “O Harp of Dagda, will you accompany this homeless lad upon a scroll of deeds?”
    The harp answered:
    Who fingers my strings
    full sweetly sings
    of colored shadows, truthful lies,
    of the fears of the brave
    and the folly of the wise.
    “Ah, you rhyme after my own heart!” cried Finn. “Unriddle me this verse then.”
    Yes to foe
    Always no.
    In such a test
    first is worst
    last is best.
    “This is the message sent me by the Salmon of Knowledge, a most wise and prophetic fish. Can you read me its meaning?”
    “I can,” said the harp.
    I tell you, Finn
    brave young friend,
    Your tasks begin
    At the very end.
    “Begin at the end, is it? But is this indeed what he means that I must start at the last item, the Boar of Ballinoe instead of the Lion of Louth, which heads the list?”
    “Yes, yes, so I guess,” sang the harp.
    Not north to Louth
    But west by south
    Must we go
    toward Ballinoe.
    “West by south it is!” cried Finn. “And ho to the Boar of Ballinoe!”
    The cat and falcon, too dark against the snow, found the hunting very poor. Finn consulted the harp and was taught a spell:
    Cat and bird
    By this word
    I teach you to bleach
    Quite out of sight.
    Now each by each
    Go white, go white.
    No sooner had he said this spell than the cat turned white as an ermine, and the feathers of the gray falcon paled until she disappeared against the snow, except for the hot black circles of her eyes. Invisible to their prey, then, cat stalked and hawk stooped, and filled their bellies again.
    After some whirling snowy miles Finn met a man in rusty armor riding the skeleton of a horse; his hands were bone and his head a skull. He offered combat, but Finn said:
    “Begone! I cannot wound you for you have no blood. I cannot kill you for you are dead.”
    The wind whistled through the standing bones of the horse, making a thin laughter. The skull spoke:
    “I was fat, very fat. My wife, the beauty, said: ‘Stop eating. Grow thin, or I take a lover.’ So I began to fast until I had starved myself quite away and became as you see me now. But she took a lover anyway because I was poor company at mealtime.”
    “Unjust, unjust!” cried Finn.
    “All of that, brave lad. Even worse—for now, having grown fat by eating what I did not, she held profundity of flesh a virtue, said the body was a reflection of the soul, and that my soul must need be pinched and mean to produce such emaciation.”
    “Never have I heard such wicked reasoning,” said Finn. “Did you kill her then?”
    “Oh no, I loved her. I stayed on listening to her abuse, trying to be friendly with her lover—a stout man without much to say for himself—until she found that irksome too and bade me