The Hanged Man: Part 2: Mabon
Post #5: In which marbles are collected and joy soothes grief ...
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RAPUNZEL
Something called Rapunzel back to the tower. She didn’t want to go but she was wise enough to obey the call. She stayed out of sight. She found her hair flung on the ground below the window. She felt certain the tower was empty, but she tasted a bitter residue of grief and violence in the air. Had her mother been there?
Something moved in the forest with an incautious, clumsy sound, and Rapunzel saw a figure.
Alexander was no longer handsome. His skin was scratched and bloody and both eyes were torn out by thorns. Rapunzel gathered him into her arms. He groaned and trembled, no longer able to weep. He talked brokenly of falling from the tower into a thicket of thorns. She made him sit down with his back against a tree. He clung to her, but she put his hands firmly away and talked soothingly as she moved about so he’d know she wasn’t leaving. The horse, which she saw now was not white but cream with smudges of grey, stood nearby, ears pricked and nervous. Still talking, she approached it with slow friendliness, gathered up the trailing reins, and led it back to Alexander, putting the reins in his hands.
The thicket of thorns was broken and crushed. It grew thirty feet from the base of the tower and Rapunzel realized Alexander couldn’t have landed there in a simple fall. He’d been pushed—or flung. Broken thorns were sticky with blood and she found Alexander’s blue eyes, now wet and bloody globes, impaled on thorns. The sight made her wince, and her stomach twisted. She breathed slowly in and out her nose and felt better. She must take those eyes with her. Clear sight was deep magic. How could she preserve them? Perhaps she could wrap them in damp leaves or grass… Steeling herself, she reached forward, expecting to feel jelly within a thin skin, like an undercooked soft-boiled egg. The eye came smoothly off the thorn, soft and round at first and then subtly rounder, firmer, smaller and heavier. She opened her palm to see a milky hard sphere. Turning it, she found a blue eye looking out of one curved side. Now the eye felt and looked like a large marble. She closed her own eyes and carefully plucked the other off its thorn, felt again the transformation in her hand. She opened her eyes to see a marble like the first. Her hands were slimed with fluid and blood and the marbles filmed with the same, but they were no longer organic tissue. The fluid would wipe away. She knelt, wiped her hands on the grass and rolled the marbles in a patch of wild plantain near a clump of purplish-brown mushrooms to clean them before dropping them in her pocket.
She returned to Alexander and took his hands in her own. He clutched at her, trembling. She urged him to his feet and helped him onto his horse. Reins in hand, she headed towards the nearest town.
DEMETER
One night, Demeter slept for a little and then woke. It was a summer morning and Persephone moved about the kitchen, setting out breakfast. The door stood open and sunlight came in with birdsong. Demeter had overslept and the new day called to her in a glad voice to rise, eat and go out into the world to wake seed. She sprang out of bed before realizing the cottage was dark and she alone. She built up the fire and sat in front of it, wrapped in her shawl, waiting for grey dawn.
She heard a sound at the door. The handle turned and in walked Baubo. She looked wide awake, her face rosy and smiling. Scant curls bobbed on her head. She moved with a strong, light step in spite of being as wide as she was high. She greeted Demeter gaily, took off hood and cloak and laid them across the back of a chair. Demeter didn’t rise from her place in front of the fire. She didn’t want company. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
Baubo took no notice of Demeter’s coldness. She moved around the cottage, opened every window to its fullest extent and left the door wide. Air flowed in, too cold for comfort. It was the still hour before dawn. Baubo threw wood on the fire and it flowered into enthusiastic flame. She lit kitchen lamps and began heating water. From a cupboard, she took mixing bowl, wooden spoon and yeast. She stirred yeast, a spoonful of honey, and a pinch of salt into the bowl. She warmed some milk and stirred it with the rest, covered the bowl and left it on the counter. She pinched up tea leaves from a wooden box and brewed tea in a brown teapot, setting cups ready.
Demeter pretended to ignore this activity. One of the logs Baubo threw on the fire wasn’t dry and sap boiled and popped, sending sparks like flowers onto the hearth and up the chimney. They danced, red, gold and orange, and Demeter fancied they made a sound like diminutive cymbals.
An owl called from outside, repeating his reedy two notes. Baubo tapped her foot. Persephone’s rocking chair in front of the fire creaked and rocked slightly, although no one sat there to move it. Baubo clapped her hands, once, twice. Water bubbled and boiled and Baubo filled the teapot. Tea leaves unfurled with a rustle and the earthy smell of tea filled the room. As though answering, braided bunches of garlic and onions hanging from a beam in the kitchen ceiling swayed together with gentle susurration. Baubo laughed. Yeast bubbled and frothed in the bowl under the towel. The rug in front of the fireplace vibrated like the strings on which it was created, and a cascade of notes floated up from it, echoed by the shawl of grey and amethyst draped about Demeter. She rose to her feet and dropped the shawl onto the floor.
From outside the opened door, joining the owl, came the first birdsong, a tentative note dying into silence. Demeter could see the eastern sky turning from black to navy blue. Another bird fluted in answer to the first. Baubo put a spoonful of honey in the tea and honey dripped from the spoon in a golden sound like a harp string. Baubo danced across the floor and put a hand under Demeter’s elbow. Before Demeter knew what was happening, Baubo had steered her across the patch of grass in front of the door. The willow chair outside the door creaked. One after another, birds took up the song. The owl fell silent. A streak of pale color announced itself in the sky like a ripple of piano keys. Baubo took Demeter by the hand and she walked alongside the dancing, laughing old woman. The barn doors were flung wide in welcome and the horses joined their neighing and stamping to the morning. Cats mewed, weaving back and forth under their feet and Baubo stooped and picked one up. She held it under her chin and the cat closed its eyes and vibrated with purring.
Baubo stood with the ecstatic cat in her arms looking into the eastern sky as it grew lighter and lighter, Demeter beside her. Trees stirred around them. A chorus of birdsong rose and rose in a great crescendo and the sun showed itself above the horizon in a blare of trumpets. Baubo set the cat down and flung out her arms. Her feet moved in the dusty yard and she danced. Demeter smiled in spite of herself to see her bobbing and turning in the first rays of sunrise. Everything bounced, from her curls down to her heavy thighs. The smile felt strange on Demeter’s face.
Together they entered into the barn. Every creature and object sang its own note in the day’s song. Pitchfork tines twanged and vibrated. Flakes of hay and straw fell in fragrant heaps like spray. Grain scoops and grain sang together of harvest and plenty in a dusty golden song. Cats were here, there, everywhere underfoot, mewing, rubbing against legs of horses and the two women. Swallows nesting in barn rafters flew in and out, adding their calls to the song. Water splashed in buckets. Flies buzzed about in shafts of sun, warming for the day’s work. Short Baubo bounced and danced around the horses with brushes and they stretched their necks and drew back their lips as though laughing with her. When they turned the horses out, Baubo laughed to see them kick and rear like yearlings.
They returned to the kitchen. Baubo kneaded flour into the yeast and set it to rise while they drank tea and then made another pot and took it outside into the sun. The morning settled into quiet joy, like music heard from a distance, as though underground the roots danced.
Baubo didn’t burden Demeter with words. Demeter drank her tea and felt sunlight on her face while Baubo baked bread. Tea drunk, Demeter made her bed and tidied her room. She felt glad, after all, for companionship, but she didn’t want to talk. Everywhere were threads of music and Demeter’s heart weighed lighter than it had in a long time.
As morning ripened toward noon, Baubo took Demeter’s hand. “Come,” she said, “walk with me to the top of the hill.”
They walked through trees and then onto the bare flanks of the hill. They strode along without speaking and Demeter felt the pull of muscles in her calves and the rise and fall of her breathing. How long since she’d walked like this? It seemed a long time. The leaves on the trees were stunted and scanty, filmed with grey. Grasses on the hillside were sere and dry, and when she paused and looked back the way they’d come there wasn’t a flower to be seen. As they crested the hill Demeter saw a large dog sitting watching them. Coming closer, she recognized a wolf with amber eyes. She turned to Baubo with words of reproach on her tongue for this trick, but Baubo smiled and embraced her before she could speak.
“All shall be well, my dear,” she said into Demeter’s ear. She released her, and with a wave of her hand, walked away down the other side of the hill.
Demeter faced Hecate. The old woman’s face was stern but not unkind. “You’re beginning to live again,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Demeter bowed her head but didn’t speak. “Come,” commanded Hecate, and Demeter moved to stand beside her. “Look,” said the old woman, pointing. “What do you see?”
“The fields are fallow. I see no people working in them.”
“Yes. And there?” Hecate turned to face a new direction.
“The forest isn’t green. It’s dusty and still. I see no flowers and no fruit. Birds don’t sing or move among trees.
“And there?” Hecate turned again and pointed.
“Where are the sheep? They’re not on the hills.”
“Listen,” said Hecate. Demeter listened. She heard a thin, far away piping. It wound in and out of trees and combed through grasses on the hillside. It came from far away and from every direction. It wasn’t a robust sound. It faded in and out, dying away to nothing but a shadow of itself, and then gaining, weak but insistent. It insinuated itself into Demeter’s heart and pierced her with grief, not the dull heavy ache she’d lived with for so long, but sharp, like a blade.
Hecate’s grey eyes were cool and ageless. “The sheep are dead. Fields are fallow because seed lies sullen and cold in the soil and doesn’t grow. Orchards don’t bear and trees only put forth a few weak leaves. Birds and animals are dying. Famine is in the land. Baubo came to you in the midst of many weeks of work with souls of dead children. You keep your daughter busy these days in the Underworld, Demeter.”
Demeter put a hand out to stop Hecate’s words.
“Demeter,” said Hecate relentlessly, “you’ve asked in the privacy of your heart who you are now your child has become a woman. I’ll tell you. You’re the Corn Goddess! You’re mother to uncountable seeds! You’re nurturer of man and beast! Your usefulness didn’t end with Persephone’s maturity. Demeter, the Green World dies and still Persephone doesn’t return. You must go back to work!”
The wolf rose from his place, stretched, and came to where the two women stood together looking across the land. He sat at Demeter’s feet and looked into her face. His eyes glowed in the blurring of her tears. He stretched his neck forward and laid his nose in the palm of her hand. She rested her fingers on the dark grey of his ruff in brief caress. She found her voice.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re right… I’ll go back to work.”
They stood, side by side, the wolf at their feet, and tears ran down Demeter’s face.
CHAPTER 3
HADES
Hades sat at breakfast and reflected. He’d previously not been a reflective man. Resentment, anger and impotence filled his mind to the exclusion of any quiet place in which to be calm with himself. As he began to engage with his place in the Underworld, the feeling of having no power in his life gave way to curiosity about what he might do and learn. He considered the place as a threshold and thought about ways to shape it to serve those who crossed it. He felt inadequate to the task. He was a young man. True, he was high born, of the family of the Gods, but he’d been carelessly educated and was never a scholar at any rate. He knew nothing of self-discipline; had always taken what he wanted at the moment of wanting and counted no cost. As younger brother to Zeus, few considered him or even noticed him. His scowling countenance and fearsome temper, strength and size were all he knew about himself.
Having finished breakfast, Hades left his chamber. Today the workmen had asked him to view the results of their labors in a new room.
He walked through the Underworld, returning to his thoughts.
No, he wasn’t fit to be king of this place or any place, he thought with humility new to him. Yet it seemed his fate. All these souls looked to him for guidance and direction. He’d learned much in the last months. Still, he hadn’t the wisdom or experience to lead this unceasing river of souls anywhere. He was just beginning to be familiar with the mysteries of the Underworld, let alone understand the ways and places beyond. What he’d learned and what change had occurred, he admitted to himself, were because of Persephone.
Persephone. Of all the daughters of the Green World, she must be the most vivid and beautiful. Yet she remained here with him, learning, asking questions, challenging, delighting and infuriating. It was she who understood part of what must be done was to listen to every soul’s story, and weary, endless work it seemed! Yet he’d drawn closer to himself as well as others as he listened to the life stories of servant, soldier and slave. Their lives were after all not so different from kings and rulers, politicians, scholars and philosophers, playwrights and poets. The lives he heard about were not so different from his own, in fact.
Persephone. He couldn’t now imagine his life or the Underworld without her. If he was to be king, though unfit and unwilling, he wanted no other for a queen. But was it fair? Was it right to ask her to condemn her bright beauty to this place forever? The Underworld. A threshold, perhaps, a place of power, but a place of death too. Always a place of death.
Yet he watched her as they listened to the dead together, as they ate and planned and talked together. He watched her as she moved about the Underworld and those with form smiled and saluted her. The souls gathered about her as though to warm themselves. She looked thinner and paler now, but that enhanced her beauty. He wanted her and his lust made him ashamed of himself. But he also wanted to protect her, to keep her safe and happy, to let nothing hurt her.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to speak words of love to her. His self-doubt kept him ashamed and his fear she would recoil from him (and who could blame her?) silenced him in her presence.
The passage widened out and warm color and the sound of water greeted him as he stepped into a room. Carnelian seamed the wall ahead. It glowed with an earthy red orange color touched with brown. Dvorg craftsmen had polished the exposed surface of the gems embedded in the rock wall. To one side stood a stone basin, carved with lotus flowers and fish, and a spring, freed from the rock, splashed in the basin. Cushions and sheepskin rugs were scattered on the smoothed and leveled floor and lamps glowed in brackets set into walls. The room soothed and welcomed.
He wasn’t alone. As Hades drew near to the fountain to feel the cool water on his hand, he realized the presence of one of the dead.
“My Lord Hades, I heard the sound of water.”
Pain and longing in the faint voice, whisper though it was, touched Hades’ heart.
“I found this room and I’ve been remembering …”
“You’re welcome here,” replied Hades. “Will you tell me something of your story? What in life does this room bring back to you?”
Hades sat down on a thick sheepskin and made himself comfortable with cushions.
“It’s time, then,” said the soul, as though to itself. It remained silent for some moments. Hades relaxed into his own breathing, holding himself receptive but not hurrying the other.
(This was published with this essay.)