The Hanged Man: Part 2: Mabon
Post #3: In which two mothers grieve together ...
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CHAPTER 2
RAPUNZEL
She glanced out the tower window and saw a stranger. She dropped her book and bolted to her feet, finding herself in the center of the room with her hand pressed to her drumming heart. She hadn’t seen a human being, except for her mother, in months. It was a shock. She felt annoyed by how much of a shock it was. Why did she feel so afraid, and dodge out of sight like a criminal? She was perfectly safe. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Still, she stayed out of view from outside the window.
When she looked out again, the stranger was gone.
When her mother came for her usual evening visit, Rapunzel didn’t mention the stranger.
The tower was light and airy. Rapunzel had her favorite cat for a companion, along with books, her needlework, and her paints. Carpets covered the floor and a velvet coverlet draped the bed. Her mother brought her food and wine. She wasn’t idle because her mother continued to teach her the old and secret ways.
The tower possessed neither doors nor steps. The only way in or out was to climb the golden ladder of Rapunzel’s hair.
The stranger came again and again, until he was no longer a stranger. He rode a white horse. She no longer hid when she saw him. He walked around the tower, looking for a way in. He looked up at her and she looked down at him. Neither spoke.
Now she entertained two visitors. Neither knew a thing about the other. The strange situation gave a welcome interest, a spice of tension to the sameness of Rapunzel’s life.
One day she heard the familiar call, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair!” spoken in an unfamiliar voice. He’d been watching. He’d seen and heard her mother. He’d found the key to the tower.
At the window, Rapunzel unpinned the long heavy plait of her hair, leaned out and wrapped it around a hook mortared into the wall. The plait fell down to the ground, a golden rope.
His name was Alexander. He was amazed by the tower room and her life there. He sat with her in the window seat, asking eager questions and never taking his eyes from the thick plait of hair, now coiled on the floor at her feet.
She’d never had a friend her own age before. She’d never talked with a man. Her only companion had been her mother. His questions were soon answered. Her life was small. First the cottage and garden of her childhood, and now the tower. The biggest part of her life, the secret ways of magic and power, she never considered revealing.
Her curiosity about him was even greater than his about her. He was a window on an unknown world, filled with people and far-away places. He came from a family of wealth and privilege. He was an experienced traveler. She drank in every detail with flattering attention.
Alexander changed. He spoke less. Every day he begged her to loosen her hair. She did, to please him, though it meant nearly an hour of work to comb out the heavy sheet, braid and pin it again. He ran his hands through it and kissed her like slow fire, and she forgot everything else for a time.
Rapunzel’s mother taught her about the power of the natural world. She learned the names of rain. She learned to master wind and read the subtle language of grass, herb and flower. Yet Rapunzel looked out from her high tower windows into a world of nature and people she was entirely removed from.
“What’s the use of all this learning? What’s the point if I spend my life locked in this tower? I want to be free!”
“The world is big and it’s not safe for you.” Her mother closed her lips and turned away. Rapunzel, weeping with rage and frustration, wound her hair around the hook outside the window and threw bitter words at her mother as she climbed down and walked away. The next day she came again, stoic, patient and unyielding, as though nothing had happened. Rapunzel smoldered.
Alexander called her his princess and kissed her mouth while he wrapped her hair around his hands. She was his secret joy, waiting for him in her tower. One day he’d set her free. They’d marry and she’d bear him many golden-haired sons. But for now, she remained his private joy, his cherished possession, safe in her velvet-lined stone casket.
Her mother and her lover talked and Rapunzel listened. After all, what could she share with them? What did she know? What could she learn, apart from what they taught her?
One night, while Alexander lay sleeping next to her, she thought, my hair gives them both freedom to come and go as they will. Why shouldn’t it give me freedom?’
The next morning Rapunzel stood by the window in the sun. She gathered up her hair, strand by strand, combing it smooth and plaiting it into its usual thick, heavy rope. She took a pair of heavy shears and cut off the plait.
She felt light and free. She turned around at the window, feeling sunlight on her bare skin. She washed and dressed, tidied the room and bed, and wrapped the rope of hair around the hook for the last time. She climbed down and walked away from the tower.
DEMETER
Demeter woke as early sun poured in through the window. Gale and storm the night before had left the air fresh and still. She’d gone to sleep thinking of wheat rippling and bending like golden fur in the wind. The cottage was quiet. Persephone still slept or perhaps was out with the horses. Demeter made her morning toilet. After she set the table with fruit, bread and honey and heated water, she knocked on Persephone’s closed door. She heard no answer. She opened it and found the bed made, the room tidy.
Outside, birds made a great noise as they began their morning activity in trees surrounding the cottage. Familiar barn smells embraced her and horses whickered in greeting as she slid the heavy door open. Persephone wasn’t there. She reassured the horses she’d be with them soon. Demeter walked here and there, visiting Persephone’s favorite places. At last, she walked through the trees and onto the bare hillside. She saw no sign of Persephone.
She returned to the house, troubled now. For her own comfort rather than any need, she ran a soft brush over the horses’ coats and tidied their coarse-haired manes and tails. She turned them out, forking hay into a pile against the barn wall. With fork and wheelbarrow, she cleaned stalls and put down fresh straw. She refilled water buckets at the pump and checked the outside trough, skimming wind-borne debris from water’s surface. While she worked, she listened for Persephone’s return. Leaving the barn cats crouched like the spokes of a wheel around their dish, Demeter returned to the house and put away breakfast, uneaten. She made herself tea and took it to an old chair of woven willow outside the door in the morning sun. She sat and waited for Persephone.
The sun rose to its zenith and then sank. Persephone didn’t come. Demeter did no work that day. In the evening, she made a bright fire for company and wrapped herself in a shawl of grey and purple. Hours passed and she sat waiting.
At dawn, she searched Persephone’s room. Nothing seemed to be missing except her cloak and a pair of sturdy leather boots. All her finery hung in the wardrobe.
As she let herself out of the cottage to go to the barn, she found a raven perched on the back of the willow chair. It flew to the ground and shifted into the shape of a woman dressed as a warrior in a leather tunic with a shield strapped to her body and a drinking horn at her belt. Her face looked hard and proud.
“I come from my father, Odin, with word of Persephone,” she said. “She was taken by the Wild Hunt and left Valhalla this morning in the company of Hades. Odin bids you to wait for further news of her. She’s well and unharmed.” As she spoke the last words, her form shimmered and wavered. The raven flew up and over the tree tops with great strong sweeps of its wings and disappeared.
Demeter took one of the horses and rode out into the world. She sent messages demanding aid and justice to Odin. She told everyone she met that her darling, her treasure, her innocent Persephone had been kidnapped and raped, spirited away by Hades. Persephone was much loved, and people heard the story with horror and grief. At last, exhausted and hungry, Demeter returned home late in the night. She cared for the horse but did nothing to ease herself. She built up the fire and sat wrapped in her cloak in her chair. The night passed. Demeter waited. Underneath the waiting, anger and grief swelled, pressing against her belly and chest, but Demeter kept herself still and silent. Soon, she knew, news would come.
Late in the evening of the third day, she heard a knock on the door, and without waiting for answer a bent old woman entered. At her heels stalked a large wolf with amber eyes. It lay down on the rug before the fire. Hecate threw back her hood and her eyes were like embers in the dim fire-lit room.
“I come with news of Persephone. She’s well and safe. Come, Demeter. Set the table and we’ll sup together while I tell you of her.”
They sat together, Hecate, Queen of Crossroads, Mistress of the Dark Moon, older than Zeus and all his family, and the Corn Mother, vigorous, generous bodied, abundance in every curve of hip and breast, hair thick and faded from the color of ripe corn to wheat. They drank barley water and ate bread and honey, olives and cheese. As they ate, Hecate told Demeter of the Wild Hunt, Persephone’s night at Valhalla and her journey to the Underworld with Hades.
Demeter stood up. Her cup tipped over. “The Land of the Dead? He took her to the Land of the Dead? My girl is a prisoner—with him—there?”
“Sit down and listen to me! He didn’t take her against her will, far from it! She insisted!”
“Oh yes,” Demeter sneered, “We all know what a gentleman Hades is! Far be it from him to coerce a young and innocent girl!”
“Demeter, listen to me! Persephone is ready for a life of her own. It’s time for you to let her go. She deliberately met the Wild Hunt and she’s chosen her path ever since. As for Hades, her courage and curiosity shame him. I’ve never seen him so subdued. Make no mistake, Persephone has the power to hold her own with him!”
“Very well. She’s had her little adventure. Now she must come home. She can’t stay in that place! My beautiful, bright girl in the Land of the Dead? I won’t bear it! I’ll find Zeus. I’ll demand her return.”
Hecate reached into her robe, drew out the empty rind of a glowing pomegranate and put it on the table between them.
The fire burned on the hearth, sap bubbling. Demeter fixed her eyes on the pomegranate and her face fell into lines of age and weariness.
“Surely the law can’t hold if he tricked her into eating this?” she said in a low voice.
“It wasn’t a trick,” said Hecate. “I took it to her myself. I told her the law. She chose to eat of it, knowing it would bind her to the Land of the Dead.”
“You took it to her. You took it to her?”
“Yes.”
Demeter rose to her feet. She picked up her shawl and draped it over her shoulders. She sat with her back to Hecate and stared into the fire, her hands resting in her lap.
Hecate sighed. She stood, pulling the hood of the cloak up over her face, and became an old woman, slightly bent, moving with weary strength to the door of the cottage. The wolf came to her side. She opened the door and stepped out into the night, closing the door behind her.
Nothing could prevent Demeter from caring for the horses, and for their sake she rose each morning, clothed herself and went to the barn. These morning tasks were all that marked the passing time. She wasn’t interested in food and took a mouthful of cheese or bread when she remembered. She longed for sleep and often dozed off in front of the fire, but when she lay in her bed she couldn’t rest. Sometimes in the night she opened the door to Persephone’s room and looked in it. If only she could discover the right way to open the door, Persephone would be there in her bed. Standing in the doorway, the room silent and lifeless before her, Demeter thought, Is it real? Is she gone? My sweet child, my girl—can she really be gone?
If Persephone was gone, was she still Persephone’s mother? If not Persephone’s mother, who was she? What was she? There seemed no point to anything. Demeter no longer recognized her life.
One night she heard another knock at the door. Demeter rose to her feet, determined to keep Hecate out. She flung open the door but a woman of her own age stood there in well-made but plain dress. She carried an air of power but her face was ravaged with grief. Demeter stepped aside and the strange woman entered. She bowed before Demeter, not as a servant but as a peer. “Lady,” she said in a colorless voice, “I’m Elizabeth. I’ve heard of your trouble.”
Demeter put a hand to her breast. “Do you bring news of Persephone?” she demanded.
“No,” said the other. “No news of your lost daughter—or of mine.” Her pain filled the room. She stood there with her eyes on the floor.
Demeter’s anger lay down. This woman understood her suffering. “Come,” she said. “Sit with me by the fire. I can give you tea. I’ve no comfort to offer but perhaps it would ease you to tell your story.”
Together they built up the fire and heated water. With the pot between them and cups on the table, they sat down together. Each looked into the fire. For a time, they were silent and then the stranger began to speak.
“A life holds many seasons of waxing and waning, even a lonely life, as mine has been. It’s hard to be outcast because of the color of your soul, but no matter. This is not a story of exile, but of another sort of loss…and gain.
I lived for a time in a little stone house in a gentle countryside. At the back of the house was a walled garden where I spent many hours tending the roots of my life. One other house stood nearby, inhabited by a man and wife. None came near me, of course, except for a few driven to my door in the darkest hour of night for some overwhelming need. We won’t speak of that. None came in the daylight hours with open face and outstretched hand to mingle their touch with mine in scented herbs, share the textures of life, or laugh.
A window of the neighbors’ house overlooked my garden. I often saw the young wife there. She appeared idle and pale and they’d no garden, made no home against the earth. My cats were my constant companions, but I never saw any creature next door but the man and his wife. Candlelight glowed dim in the nighttime windows and her face looked out nearly every day. I pretended not to see her and never exchanged a look or a word with either of them. They were afraid of me and kept a safe distance.
My garden grew happily, for I know the secrets of sowing and harvesting with moons, tides and seasons. One morning when dew lay heavy, I realized some other hand had picked the rapunzel greens. I thought this strange. Some person had climbed the wall in the night and risked who knew what fearful rumors to steal a common wild herb.
The next night I waited and watched and when the intruder let himself down into my garden I appeared before him. ‘How dare you come into my garden and steal my greens?’ Of course, he turned white and trembled and shied like a miserable, downtrodden horse, and begged my pardon. ‘My wife is expecting a child,’ he said, ‘and she saw your bed of rapunzel and felt she must taste it or die. She made a salad of the greens and found them so delicious she begged me for more.’
A child. His wife carried a child. That which my life had denied me was to be hers. Before the child was even born these two couldn’t take care of her by digging and planting a garden or making friends with the earth and gathering their own greens and many other herbs to make mother and child strong.
‘You may pick all the rapunzel your wife desires,’ I said, ‘but in exchange you’ll give me the child. I’ll raise it and love it like a mother. You needn’t fear.’ I looked into his eyes with all the force and power at my disposal. He was weak and afraid, conscious of his wrong. He didn’t fight. I knew he wouldn’t.
After the birth, I brought the child away. She was a beautiful, strong little girl, thanks in part to the goodness of the herbs from my garden, and I named her Rapunzel.
How shall I tell you, then, of years of joy? What do I say of laughter, play, life shared? Do you know hours in which sleep mingles, garden days, picnic days, walks in rain and snow? I taught her everything I know of the living earth. I taught her strength and wonder and how to read skies and seasons and hear the winds whispering.”
Demeter’s tears fell, hot and painful. Her hand trembled and she set her cup down.
“The years passed by and she became a woman. She had golden hair which I never suffered to be cut and my happiness was perfect.
But change came and stole away my happiness a drop at a time. As she grew up, she began to wonder about the wider world. She became restless and bored. She asked questions she’d never asked before.
A day came in which I decided I must shut her away.
It did it for her own good. She was so beautiful and so innocent. I couldn’t bear her to be shunned as I’d been. I couldn’t bear her to be spoiled or used or broken. I wanted to keep her safe from hurt and harm. I shut her in a tall stone tower I’d built nearby. The tower contained no ladder, steps or door, and she lived in a room at the top. Her room was filled with light and air and every luxury I could provide. Outside a window was an iron hook mortared into the stone wall and every day when I visited her I stood below the window and called up to her, ‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your golden hair!’ She unbound her braid, twisted it around the hook and let it fall down the tower wall. I grasped it and climbed the thick, shining rope until I was with her again.
I thought I’d found a way to keep her safe forever. Every day I visited her so she wouldn’t feel alone. Sometimes she seemed quiet or cross, but I took no notice. Over the years I’d continued to teach her and her power grew at least as great as mine, though she lacked the experience to master it.
One day at the base of the tower I found her braid, shorn from her head and curled up like something dead, and I knew she was gone. The rope of hair felt lifeless in my hands. I entered the tower for the first time without the golden ladder I’d used with such love and pleasure, and my power felt like black and bitter wings. The empty room mocked me. She’d flown away and been lost in the harsh world. I was alone again, I sat grieving while hours passed. At dusk, I heard a voice below.
‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your golden hair!’
I’d never felt such terrible anger. I wound the plait of hair about the hook and kept out of sight. He came up as though well accustomed to such a ladder. As his face rose above the window sill, I loosened the plait, summoning every power I knew for hate and harm, and hurled it out the window at him. He fell backward from the tower with a scream of terror and surprise. He landed in a thicket of thorns and thrashed, screaming with pain and bleeding in a dozen places. I was glad. I felt no mercy.
What I most longed for, to love and be loved by a child, broke me.”
Her rough sobs were like retching and she hid her face in her hands.
“I descended from the tower, and I ran,” she said. “I ran from what I’d done but I can’t run fast enough to get away from myself. I’ve betrayed my craft, misused my power, killed a human being, and she’s …she’s gone. My girl is gone!”
Demeter clenched her hands into fists and they wept together, two strangers with a single rage and a single grief.
(This was published with this essay.)