The Hanged Man: Part 3: Samhain
Post #12: In which some things become clear and an evil dream sends warning ...
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JENNY
The falling leaves looked like papery golden tears, Jenny thought, weightless and swirling in the restless breeze. All their green moisture had vanished, and they whirled around her feet, as rootless and inconsequent as she felt.
Her companion, the Dwarve Rumpelstiltskin, seemed the only solid thing in the world. Since leaving the mill in the town she’d called home, she felt adrift, with no desire except, step by step, to leave the place where her father tried to sell her to a king with a lie that nearly cost her life. She wondered why she wasn’t more worried by her purposelessness. She’d surrendered herself completely to Rumpelstiltskin, only putting one foot in front of the other until the Dwarve told her to stop, to eat, or to sleep.
Her mind was filled, not with the remarkable fact that she’d spun gold out of straw, but with her father’s betrayal.
Her mother had died when she was little more than a baby. Her father, perpetually dissatisfied with life, looked after her carelessly, but she’d never questioned his love for her, and she’d done her best to manage the meagre household and support his business at the mill.
Then, one day, her father enticed their greedy king with a lie, saying Jenny possessed the ability to spin gold out of straw. No doubt her father, never an intelligent man, failed to foresee the risk to her life, but he certainly conspired to sell her, like a good milk cow, to a man whose interest in her was limited to her supposed ability to enrich him. That she, in fact, learned to do such an unlikely thing was only due to Rumpelstiltskin’s timely intervention, which saved her life.
She faced the truth of it clearly and unflinchingly, but her heart felt numb and distant, as though it had slipped away on the night in the cell in the king’s castle where she’d first met Rumpelstiltskin and spun straw to save her life. Perhaps her heart lay there still, on the cold stone floor, and every step she took away from her father included a step away from herself. Without her heart, she had no tears, no wet comfort on her cheeks, no well of healing within herself. Perhaps, she thought as she walked, her tears floated behind her, released one by one in a dry whisper of gold, mingling with the fallen golden.
One day, in a little town, they heard gossip about a miller who’d died, alone and abandoned by his only daughter. The girl had offended the king and fled, and the father bore an unjust punishment for his daughter’s wickedness. It made an ugly story, embellished inventively by the townspeople. It hardly touched Jenny. Her father was dead and she felt the loss no more than the trees seemed to feel the loss of their bright colors.
In another town, they stopped at an inn and ordered a meal. While they ate, they overheard a conversation at the bar, punctuated by sniggers and winks, about the town baker, who sought a wife. No ordinary woman would do, however, and the baker designed a test that only a woman of good birth and breeding could pass. Not for him the ordinary trollop or unattractive wench! He’d accept only the best, the most graceful and accomplished for his wife. She’d bring him success and esteem. With such a wife, he’d live a life of ease and plenty.
Jenny listened without seeming to, watched without ever taking her gaze from her plate, and made no comment.
The next day she found the baker’s shop, Rumpelstiltskin reluctantly accompanying her.
“After all,” she said quietly to Rumpelstiltskin, “we need bread for the road.”
The baker was called Hans, and Jenny, without the slightest effort, immediately caught his eye. Ingratiating and curious, he questioned her. Jenny knew nothing of coy artifice and gave her name and the name of the inn where they stayed plainly and directly.
Unsettled weather conspired to keep Jenny and Rumpelstiltskin in town longer than they had planned. The Dwarve grew restless and uneasy, wanting to be free of streets and houses and away from crowds of people. Jenny, who up to this point had taken no interest in where they went as long as they kept moving, turned suddenly stubborn.
“What does it matter?” she asked. “It’s not as though we have anything important to do, or anyone who expects us. This place is as good as another.”
She returned to the baker’s shop every day for bread.
“How are you?” Hans asked eagerly when she appeared.
Every day she replied, “I’m well, thank you.”
One day he said, “You look tired, my dear. Aren’t you resting well at night?”
“Oh yes, very well,” she said, remote as ever.
“Good, good,” he said heartily.
Rumpelstiltskin protested. “I don’t like him,” he told her. “Why are you encouraging him? He’s beneath you.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she said. “He wants a wife, doesn’t he? Why not me? It’s what young women do — get married, start a family. What else is there for me? He has a business. I’ll have a roof over my head. He doesn’t want much, just for me to take care of his house and his meals and look well on his arm. This man or another like him — what does it matter?”
A few days later, when Hans proposed, Jenny accepted him and told Rumpelstiltskin he need not stay.
After the wedding, Jenny moved into Hans’ house and began cooking his meals and doing his laundry. When she and the baker went out, she recognized envy on other men’s faces without being much interested. She lay next to Hans each night and made her body available, as though renting an empty room.
Jenny’s life became a series of choices governed by what a good wife would do. She tried not to think of spinning. She had no money to buy wool or flax or hemp, and Hans had no idea she possessed this skill. He gave her money for housekeeping and kept track of every penny. She put away thoughts of Rumpelstiltskin and the past. She told no one of her ability to spin straw into gold. Living with Hans reminded her of living with her father. Hans was a vain man who wanted an easy life. She’d have no peace if he knew what she could do, and she’d no desire to feel again what she’d felt the night in the castle cell with Rumpelstiltskin.
As weeks and then months passed, she tried to be content. She’d followed the rules. She had a husband, a home to keep. Her life was full. There would be children.
She was aware of Hans’s anger, for it fed her own. When he invaded her body, laboring over her, his hot breath in her ear, she took his anger with a kind of fierce greediness and added it to her own. She made a stone cell in her mind like the cell where she’d spun straw into gold. In this cell, she secretly stoked her rage. Here she hoarded herself, spinner, maker, creator. Here she kept the memory of a cradle song her mother had sung to her before she died.
Hans began to berate her. She was cold. She was hard. She was high and mighty. She was an imposter, with her fine speech, her manners and her dignity. What was she, after all? She was no lady. He’d heard rumors she had been the plaything of some king, and he had cast her aside. And what of her people? Who was she? Where did she come from? Why was she alone in the world?
In time, he grew incapable of using her body and he blamed her, calling her unfit to be his wife. “I knew you weren’t good enough for me! I knew it! But I let you get around me with your looks and your false pretentions! What a fool I am! You couldn’t even pass the test!”
Generally, she ignored this kind of talk, but the last thing he said caught her attention. She remembered the overheard conversation in the inn, the snickers, the nudges.
“What test, Hans?”
“The test! The test of a true lady, a great lady. The kind of lady I deserve!”
Patiently, “What kind of test?”
“The maid at the inn hid a pea in your bed! A hard pea laid under your mattress and feather bed and you never even felt it! You slept every night like the coarse peasant you are on top of that pea. Why, a true lady would be black and blue! A sensitive, fragile-skinned lady would be unable to endure such a thing!”
Jenny actually laughed. “How ridiculous you are! Who told you that? I thought you were looking for a wife, not a fairy princess!”
He struck her across her laughing mouth.
Jenny found herself on the floor. She didn’t remember falling. She’d been laughing, laughing for the first time in months, and then something had happened. Her face felt funny. She put a hand to her mouth and it came away bloody. Hans stood over her. She saw his face clearly, so clearly it almost hurt, like a too bright light. She’d never seen him so clearly before. She felt as though she’d suddenly stepped out of a numbed and foggy dream into bright daylight.
She thought, so my heart is still with me, and alive!
And then, where is Rumpelstiltskin?
And then, what am I doing?
“How dare you laugh at me, you bitch?” roared Hans. “Who do you think you are?”
I’m a woman, thought Jenny. She regained her feet and stood facing her enraged husband. I’m a spinner. I can spin straw into gold. My mother loved me. Rumpelstiltskin loves me. I’m Jenny. She wiped blood off her mouth with the back of her hand.
He raised his hand again and her own shot out like a snake and closed around his forearm, halting the blow. She looked into his eyes without speaking. He glared, and then his gaze dropped. He pulled out of her grasp and turned away, head hanging.
Jenny sponged blood off her face and gathered up a bundle of clothes. She knew exactly what to do — what to take and what to leave. She’d done it all before. She made no effort to hide her activity. Hans sat moodily in his chair in front of the empty fireplace. She took a loaf of Hans’s indifferent bread, some fruit, some dried meat, and packed them in her bundle. She took a long drink of water, dribbling some down her chin because of her swollen lower lip. Drinking made the cut open again and she tasted blood. She folded a clean handkerchief and held it against the wound.
In the doorway, she turned to the brooding figure in the chair.
“Goodbye, Hans. I did wrong to marry you. I won’t be back. Perhaps you’ll be able to find someone else.”
She left the house, left the town, chose a road and began to walk. She was alone and free. She didn’t need to try to be a good wife any more. She heard Hans’s question again in memory. “Who do you think you are?”
The old cradle song rose out of the stone cell in her memory (had it lurked in her heart all the time?), crept up her throat, lingered under her tongue, and pressed tentatively against her lips. She hummed. Her lip throbbed. She sang, releasing each word as though it was a captive bird.
CHAPTER 6
MORFRAN
Winter approached Bala Lake. One day, Morfran packed some food and set out on his own. Ceridwen needed certain roots growing wild on a distant hillside. It was a beautiful day and Morfran enjoyed himself, relaxing into solitude, walking strongly with his odd, lurching gait, keenly aware of life all around him. Now and then he stopped to more closely examine a plant or an insect. At noon, he found a sunny place in the heather and ate next to a clump of grey-violet mushrooms, listening to the bees in the purple blossoms. He shape-shifted and joined them for a time, flying from flower to flower and listening to their talk.
He reached the place where the roots grew, took out a spade and carefully lifted a few for Ceridwen, wrapping them in wet grass. That done, he turned for home.
As he walked along a ridge of rock, he spied the solitary figure of a man in the distance. It was rare to see others walking in this country. This was no shepherd or hill man, but a visitor of some kind. Something about the figure roused his curiosity and he chose a path that would bring him closer. Staying on high ground, he lengthened his stride. He wanted to see but not be seen, so when he came to an outcropping of rock, he set down the roots in the shade along with his bundle and shifted into the form of a black crow.
He flew up in clear air, feeling heat radiating from rocks and slopes below. He circled lazily, watching the man. A twisted tree grew nearby, a natural perch, and he made for it, cawing harshly, feeling no need to hide in this shape. As he landed in the tree the stranger looked up and Morfran saw, with a twist of shocked nausea, the stubble on his face was blue. Blue! The blue of a jay’s wing, the blue of the sky as a stormy night fell. It was like a deformity, although Morfran, wrenching his attention beyond it, noted otherwise a good-looking well-built man, strong and slim, with thick straight black hair falling over his forehead. He carried a pack on his back with a bedroll and had clearly been in the hills for a few days.
A crow doesn’t linger in a tree to examine a human being and Morfran, with another harsh cry, took off again, climbing back up into the sky. What did this mean? He was shaken by the wrongness of that blue beard. He emptied his mind, breathing from deep within his bird shape, being with moving wings, air combing through feathers over their framework of bones. When he felt calm again, he looked down at the walking figure, holding in his mind the shape of his own experience and breath, and letting his gaze soften and blur, soften and blur, looking beneath the form, looking within.
He peered into a dark voracious abyss. It muttered with a sound of grinding bones, demanding to be fed, and Morfran gagged on the smell of old blood. It lusted for the orgasmic pleasure of feeding, and its food was round and warm, peach fuzzed and smelling of thin skin, flushed with life.
Morfran, sickened and appalled, hurled his consciousness out of the creature below and found himself back in the crow’s form, flying with trembling wings. He flew back to the outcrop of rock, took his own form, and sat in the sun with the rock to his back, trying to calm himself.
Ceridwen had warned him of evil in the world, but he’d taken the warning lightly, thinking it a mother’s fearful caution, natural but unnecessary. As an experienced shape shifter, he’d looked into many creatures, prey and predator, clever and dull. Every creature expressed its role in life, and he accepted the instinct and experience of each without discomfort.
This thing, though, in the shape of a man, was a monster. The blue beard hinted at what lay within, but he hadn’t imagined how bad it was. How could anything live with such devouring hunger? And what could it possibly be hunting here, in the remote hills and mountains? He hadn’t been able to grasp what it hungered for, exactly—just the all-consuming, unending need to feed.
Gradually, his pulse and breathing slowed. It seemed his mother had not exaggerated. Evil did walk in the world. He’d been unprepared, but now he knew. He wouldn’t forget. Still, the creature pretending to be a man had nothing to do with him. As far as he could see, it threatened no one at the moment. He’d no right or desire to interfere with it, and it was obviously just passing through. He would leave it alone, let it go on its way. Perhaps its hunt for food would take it far away from here.
After a time, still troubled but resolved to say nothing, he picked up his bundles, and staying on the high ground, made his way back to Bala Lake.
***
One week passed, and then another. Word came of a peddler making his rounds in the region and as a matter of course, Creirwy made ready to go and meet him with a list of needed supplies. Bald Tegid was away helping repair some rock walls before winter and Ceridwen was pressing apples. One bright fall morning Creirwy set out on her errand, telling her family of plans to visit this croft and that farm and several villagers.
Morfran, at work on the shore of Bala Lake, saw her leave. He called to her and she came across the thick short grass, eyes alight with happiness and pleasure in the day. She was so beautiful it hurt him to look at her, but once again he noted a strange flicker within her, like a candle in a draught. The impression came and went quickly and then he forgot about it.
“Is there anything you want me to get from the peddler?” she asked, smiling at him. “I’ve a long list of winter supplies from Dada. If the peddler is well stocked, I’ll never be able to carry it all home!”
“No,” he replied. “I’ve all I need. Shall I walk with you for a bit?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Don’t leave your work.” She gestured at the basket of fish he’d pulled from the lake at dawn. “I’ll make visits and find company along the way.”
“Creirwy…” Morfran began, troubled, but then didn’t know what to say. “Take good care of yourself,” he finished at length.
She laughed. “And you, brother! It wouldn’t hurt you to smile a bit now and then! Life is not always so serious!”
He did smile then, and she kissed his cheek and walked away along a path that cut across the flank of a low hill above the lake. He watched her until she moved out of sight and then turned back to the fish, unsheathing his sharp knife.
***
That night Morfran had a dream. He sat in the fishing boat on Bala Lake. Noola was full, a silvery globe high in the sky, and the huge curve of Cion loomed over Webbd, like a mother bending over her child, in the eastern sky. He looked down at the drowned turrets and towers of his father’s castle. Many windows were lit, as always, though he knew the castle contained no living soul to light them. As he floated above on the surface, the light in one window went dark. In his dream, he realized then that he did dream, for this had never happened before in his waking life. The lights in the windows were lit and stayed lit when the castle was visible. A terrible foreboding filled him as he watched other lights in other windows flicker out. As each light blinked out, he felt as though a part of himself died and became dark. He gripped the sides of the boat, praying that some windows would stay lighted, but inexorably, one by one, every light extinguished until the castle was a dark shape in dark water, moonlight tracing only the tops of towers and roofs. He groaned aloud with horror and woke himself up. He thought wildly to himself, the light has gone out! The light has gone out!
He found himself sitting on his bed with his feet on the floor. The room felt cold and utterly dark. Noola wasn’t full, as in his dream, but an eyelash that shed no light, and Cion’s silver curve was dim. He hardly dared look for stars, in case they too had been snuffed out, but no, they were there, the constellations in their familiar places. The night was quiet except for a whispering breeze. He lit a candle and the flame glowed reassuringly. The light hadn’t gone out. Not all light.
He dressed swiftly. Lamp in hand, he let himself out of the house and made his way down to the lake. He set the lantern down in the bottom of the boat and took up the oars.
It felt colder on the water. Stars glittered sharply and Noola hung like a piece of broken glass. He floated over where he knew the drowned castle stood, but the black breeze-stirred water remained impenetrable to his eye. Of course, the castle never showed itself except under a full moon, he reminded himself. The moon wasn’t full. He could go down into the dark water in the shape of a lake creature and look. He could find the ruins and swim in and out of windows and doors, but it would mean nothing if the windows weren’t lit. It would mean nothing because Noola wasn’t full.
He found he couldn’t go down. Horror gripped him at the thought of entering that cold blackness. He picked up the oars and rowed back, lying awake and chilled until dawn.
(This post was published with this essay.)