For a time you have had to be a voice crying into the valley to dare say anything, and now, even with this growing sensibility, we still condone mairuak because we believe they may turn around and tell us something new. Mairuak will always be capricious, damaging every community with their deceptive tricks. It’s known to most. I swear to Eneko that I will not show deference to yet another mairu.
At the foothill of a mountain, near his own rampart, a mairu and I met once every few weeks. As we turned onto the descent into Navarra, I glanced at him and thought, He is too giant, with a too ingenuous smile. The mairuak don’t take sheep from a shepherd or grain from a farmer without expecting something in return—they always need a trade-off. The spirit of this one mairu was false and brutish. His speech buzzed irritatingly like a gnat, like a sound you’d prefer to ignore.
I half-imagined I might meet this mairu’s true self in his domain, rather than relying on the moving carapace of his person. Around him I held my breath, always feeling feverish twangs in my chest, wild in the grips as though near the Basajaun.
The spirit of this mairu is pressed flat like an orkidea, thin as a layer of tissue paper, where he and his friends destroyed the crops we needed. I found traces of it buried in the earth of his stone circle, crooning like ember.
Ardi galdua atzeman daiteke, aldi galdua berriz ez. Gaitz guztiak, bere gaitzagoa. Onak on direla, hobeak hobe.
"One may recover a lost sheep, but not lost time. For anything that's bad, there is always something worse. But as good as good ones are, better ones are even better.”