The Hanged Man: Part 3: Samhain
Post #21: In which the dead return through story ...
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The following dawn was clear. Morfran awoke feeling rested and well, eager for the day. He mended the fire and took a walk, gathering more firewood. He heated water and ate breakfast. He was glad to start his day in solitude, but when his grandfather stepped out of the surf, he met him eagerly, embracing him without reservation.
They approached the rock pool. The tide had peaked and was on the ebb. Morfran stripped off his clothes and dove cleanly into the water. The rocks protected the pool from currents and the surge of waves and Morfran realized fear and shock had made the waves seem more threatening and higher than they actually were the morning before. Now, understanding himself as a child of this watery world, he felt no fear, only a wish to make friends.
He floated on his back, squinting at the bright sky and letting waves rock him. He swam underwater, listening to the unending sound of water moving against land. He trod water, letting waves lift and release him, lift and release him. Then he swam, learning quickly to feel the waves’ rhythm so he didn’t get slapped in the mouth with water when he took a breath.
His grandfather stayed close or swam companionably beside him, but let him explore in his own way. Before they left the rock pool, Morfran shyly examined his grandfather’s form so he could understand how to shapeshift into it. The tail grew in proportion to the body, both in thickness and length. It was covered in scales, bronze and dull green. The tail’s end divided into two broad fins in the same way the tail of a whale finished. Morfran, passing his hands over it, felt solid muscle. Marceau propelled himself effortlessly through the water with lazy, powerful undulations.
Outside the rock pool the sea became more challenging and Morfran could feel a current. His grandfather taught him how to swim with it until he swam out of it. “The sea is like life, Grandson,” he said. “You may have a plan and a destination, but tides and currents can suddenly take hold of you and send you in an entirely different direction. If you fight against a sea current, you’ll become exhausted and if you persist, you’ll drown. Relax. Let it take you where it will.”
When Morfran felt ready to shape shift, he trod water, relaxing and breathing, letting his gaze blur across the wave tops. His grandfather stayed beside him, keeping his head out of water with lazy thrusts of his tail. Morfran reached down and clasped his hand, using the other to keep himself upright and afloat. He breathed with the sea and shifted.
With the shift, a kind of wild joy took hold of him. He let go of Marceau’s hand and dove, feeling his tail come up out of water and then slide down after his body. He felt weightless, as though he’d never tire. He dove to the sea bed, listening to the clinks and clicks and rattles the moving water made. He turned his head and found his grandfather there beside him, smiling. They swam a few feet off the bottom, Morfran exploring every feature they passed. His grandfather pointed out fish and other sea life.
All that morning they swam together through layers of water and light. Morfran’s favorite shape had always been that of a crow, but this felt even more natural to him, as familiar as his real shape. Perhaps this was also a real shape. Who could say?
Midday they stopped their play and left the sea. Morfran was hungry and thirsty and tired of water for the time being. They ate and drank under the cliff and Marceau proposed they go up to the ruins for the afternoon. They went around by the rock pool rather than using the steps. Morfran was tired and didn’t trust his twisted leg on the stairs.
They settled themselves with their backs against a stone wall in the sun. They sat in tall grass and Morfran remembered the grass under the fruit trees in Juliana’s orchard.
“Now it’s time to speak of your mother. In this place, my memories of her are strong. She and your father were happy here, for a time.”
“My people — your people -- are storytellers. When we begin a story, we say, ‘Once upon a time, before the moons and sea found one another and the silver tide ebbed and flowed with their passion…’ there was a young woman of the sea, a merwoman. The merpeople, it’s said, come from the Faery folk. Long ago, one of these entered the water and made a home among coral and pearl, storm and wave, reef and rock. That was the beginning of the merfolk.
This young merwoman possessed a special gift. She discerned the hidden hurts of heart and mind. Her mother was killed when she was a child, but she and her sisters were beloved, and their father gave them into the care of their grandmother to raise.”
Marceau’s voice wavered and he fell silent. Morfran didn’t hurry him, but waited in quiet sympathy, building in his mind’s eye a picture of his mother.
“Her name was Melusine. As a child, her greatest challenge was her recognition of suffering in others. It seemed to her if she knew of it, she was responsible to somehow heal it. I tried to teach her how to keep boundaries in place between herself and others and how to call herself home when she strayed into dark places others held within themselves. I tried to help her understand all beings make a journey and it often involves pain. She was young, though, and it’s hard to understand the gifts pain can bring when you’re young. She understood suffering as an enemy, a thing to be cured. She couldn’t perceive the value of it, or that some people prefer to suffer and choose it over healing.
Melusine grew into a lovely and compassionate young merwoman and I knew the time approached when she’d want a mate and family of her own.
Most merfolk live well away from land and avoid humans, hardly seeing one all their long lives. Others are drawn to land and fascinated by humans, watching them at work and play from behind rocks and sea walls. Many a solitary fisherman has been followed with great interest by one of the merfolk, and many a solitary walker along the shore closely observed. Melusine was curious about life on land. I occasionally go onto land and don’t fear humans, though I’m wary of being seen. She and I swam along the coastline, watching rocking lanterns in boats and lit windows of harbor buildings at night. Now and then we’d see a pair of lovers, or a group of children playing in the surf.
Your father spent hours on the stony shore, walking, exploring the tide’s leavings in rock pools, or simply sitting and gazing out to sea. We saw him often. Melusine felt his sadness, and her compassion awakened.
She became more and more drawn to him. She grew familiar with his habits and waited for him, spending patient hours in some hidden place in order to watch him. She withdrew from her own people and spent longer and longer hours at the shore, fascinated. Inevitably, she considered revealing herself to him. One night as Noola waxed, she spoke to him from her hiding place among rocks just offshore.
That began it.
Melusine, in the ecstasy and passionate trust of love, revealed herself, both in the sea and on land. She gave herself to him.
Marceau looked at Morfran. “How is it for you, to hear about your mother?” he asked.
Morfran met his gaze and let him see his tears. “I’ve imagined what she looked like,” he said. “You’ve made her real, flesh and blood, a woman who loved and lived in her body. She lived here,” he gestured around the ruins. “She swam in the water I swam in this morning. She had long dark hair. Were her eyes grey too?”
“No. Her eyes were green, the green of the cold sea. She had beautiful eyes, like jewels in her face, but you inherited my eyes. Your father’s eyes were dark, like the eyes of seals. She used to plait her hair with pearls and bits of shell.”
“What happened to them? Why did it go wrong?”
“Grandson, has love come to you in this way yet?”
“No,” said Morfran, remembering Juliana with gratitude. “I haven’t known what my parents shared.”
“You will. And when you do, you’ll discover the joy we give and receive with our bodies isn’t enough to forge a lasting union by itself. Your mother and father were young and hot blooded. Your mother believed she could help your father heal, take away his suffering with her love. I fear it’s never so easy between a man and a woman, and these two weren’t man and woman. He was half selchie and she wholly of the merfolk. There’ve been those who take lovers from other tribes and peoples. Such unions are particularly magical, I think, but they come at a high price, as your grandparents found out.
In the time since your grandmother had returned to her island and left Guy here, he’d naturally thought a great deal about what she’d revealed. It’s strange, Morfran, but some people, no matter how old in years, are never quite able to allow their parents or their children to become themselves. A healthy love between parent and child at some point adjusts away from ‘my parent’ and ‘my child’ to recognizing an independent person. Sadly, Guy was one of those who doesn’t make the adjustment. He was a man in years but he refused to accept that his mother took a selchie for a lover. It disgusted him. He didn’t want to think of her as a woman with a woman’s rich desire and capacity for love.
Your mother understood clearly how this conflict tore him in pieces. He was half selchie and half human, your father. No amount of denial could change it. He hated the selchie part of himself and hated his mother and her passion and love for the selchie man. He refused to forgive your grandmother or your grandfather, and so could not forgive himself. He spoke of his pride about killing his father, but I didn’t believe him. I think the truth was he felt stricken with guilt and horror, though it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t possibly have known.
Because of my love for your grandmother, I’d made myself known to Guy. I’d promised her to keep an eye on him and help him if I could. He was lonely and he talked to me, out of desperation, I think, more than any sense of friendship. It eased him to talk and he had no one else.
Your father was deeply unhappy, Morfran, deeply anguished. He clung to bitterness and judgment. But Melusine loved him, and gave her life and heart into his keeping.”
“They were doomed,” said Morfran quietly.
“Yes,” said the Marceau sadly. “They were doomed. Love and hate…” he plucked a blade of grass and held it up in front of his eyes, gazing at the nearly invisible edge. “Love and hate are separated by only the thinnest eyelash. They dance together, inseparable, forever bound. We use the word passion and think only of desire, of joy, of light and laughter and a warm tropic sea. But passion is darkness, too. Passion is hatred and rage, violence of sea and storm and wind. Guy was compelled by his recognition of Melusine. He was irresistibly drawn by her passion and sensuality, fascinated by her otherness, if you will. She woke in him his own passionate nature, inherited by both parents, and his own otherness. She brought to life in him the aspects he most hated and rejected in his parents and in himself. He loved Melusine for a time, but then he hated her. In destroying her he destroyed himself. In destroying himself he destroyed her.
“How did they come to Bala Lake?” asked Morfran.
“Ah, yes. I haven’t finished, have I?”
“In the early days when love grew between them,” said Marceau, “they married in a stone church in the harbor where Guy lived. Guy wasn’t a rich man, by any means, but the sea is full of treasure. They chose this cliff, overlooking the sea, to build a castle. Some of us can go about on land like a human, as you’ve seen, but we must stay close to the sea and return home often.
We built the rock pool for Melusine and cut stairs into the cliff. Even in the beginning she was anxious to show Guy how nimbly she could use her human legs. The tide cleanses the water in the rock pool, and no matter what the weather it stays calm and safe. Melusine intended to coax Guy into the water, in hopes that the selchie half of him would heal. She knew his story, of course. She was confident the sea would reclaim him and he’d learn to embrace it. But he refused. He never once came with her, even to sit on the cliff or on the beach. She told me after a while he flew into a rage if he saw her with her tail. He called it a deformity, said it disgusted him to look at her. It broke her heart. She became ashamed of her true form. In the end, she only came into the rock pool at night, her joy in the water destroyed. Her need for her own place became a matter of shame and guilt.
They only lived in the castle for a year or so. I could see Melusine’s unhappiness. Her beauty faded and her joy vanished. She didn’t complain or speak ill of Guy. She loved him in spite of everything and remained convinced their relationship would get better if she tried hard enough. She still hadn’t accepted she couldn’t help him, all the love in the world couldn’t help him because he was determined not be helped. The more she tried the more he hated her.
After they married, Guy and I never spoke. I came to swim with Melusine and watch over her as best I could. I didn’t know she was with child. I longed for her mother in those days. I failed her, and watching her fade, day by day, filled me with fear and anger. I felt as helpless to help her as she did to help Guy. It was a terrible time.
One night in the rock pool she told me she and Guy were going far away, to a place in the Northwest. They intended to live inland and forget the sea, live as humans should. They’d build another castle and they hoped to start a family.
I protested, of course. I knew if she left the sea she’d die and I suspected the same was true for Guy. But she’d made up her mind. They’d make a fresh start and be happy, she said. There was nothing I could say or do. We parted that night and I never saw her again. For sixteen years, I’ve grieved. And then one day a young man limped along the beach, climbed the cliff steps, explored the ruins, found the rock pool, and camped here. And I came to the fire and spoke to him and found my own eyes in another face. Melusine, at last, has come back to me to say goodbye.”
Morfran reached out and clasped Marceau’s hand. They were alike in shape, strong hands, not large, with long graceful fingers. Morfran shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone wall so the warm sunlight fell on his face. In the shelter of the ruins there was no breeze. He felt soothed and relaxed, filled with both sadness and relief. At last, he knew the story of his beginnings.
“You were touched by Ceridwen and the unwanted child,” said Morfran.
Their hands parted. Marceau pulled his knees up and locked his hands around them.
“Your foster mother did what Guy couldn’t,” he replied. “In spite of her disappointed hopes and anger, she accepted what was. She felt her bitterness and rage and acknowledged her desire to destroy the foundling — what was his name?”
“Gwion.”
“Yes, Gwion. When she discovered the destruction she intended provided him with a new beginning and she would be the vessel allowing it to happen, she accepted and nurtured the child. This is an act of great courage, to look within oneself and acknowledge shadows. It’s so much easier to deny and refuse, turn away from what we don’t wish to admit or take responsibility for. Think how it might have been different if your father allowed himself to be who he was.”
Morfran thought. His mother might have lived to raise him and he’d have known more about his own shape sooner, perhaps. But no Bala Lake! No Bald Tegid or Ceridwen or Creirwy! The man with the blue beard, the feather, the key, the journey, Dar — all would not have been or would be different. He couldn’t truly be sorry. Except his mother might still live. He shook his head. “I can’t think about that,” he said. “It’s too big to think about. It happened the way it happened and can’t be undone now.”
“True,” said Marceau. “And I don’t carry a burden of bitterness on my shoulders about the past. We’ve found one another and that’s a matter for joy. I’m content.”
(This post was published with this essay.)