The Hanged Man: Part 4: Yule
Post #25: In which twins are born on the cusp of the new cycle ...
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CHAPTER 12
MARY
The pains began at twilight. In the light of candles, she sat at the window and watched night bid farewell to day. It was the longest night of the year. Deep within her, more powerful than her own will and strength, a great clenching pain gathered and rose and then broke, receding. It left her breathless, sitting quite still as though afraid if she moved it would find her again. It didn’t immediately return and she consciously relaxed, moving her hands over the taut skin of her belly, breathing as deeply as she could. She felt the chair supporting her, the floor under her feet, the fire’s heat pushing against her legs. Drops of water beaded the curved lip of a pitcher on the table. She’d always liked the shape of that pitcher with its graceful handle, glazed an earthy brown. She thought of the water it contained, cool and clean. In a minute, she’d pour some into a cup and drink. Then she’d begin to walk. In a minute. Now, though, she felt she could fall asleep, doze here in firelight with night’s elbows on the window ledge, breathing its cool breath into the room.
Hecate came in. Mary looked up and their eyes met. Hecate left, returning in a moment with an armful of fresh linens. She set them down and pulled the low birthing stool from against the wall to a place nearer the fire. She poured water and handed the cup to Mary. It tasted just as she’d imagined, cold and sweet. She drank thirstily. Hecate helped her out of the chair.
They walked. The moons rose. Hecate spoke, her voice ageless, sexless, like the voice of eternity. She spoke of cycle and wheel, the rise and fall of stars as seasons came and went and came again. Now and then pausing to add wood to the fire, she spoke of seed in dark ground, quickening, growth, bud, leaf, flower, fruit, falling leaves, harvest and seeds falling again to dark ground. They passed the loom in the corner and Hecate spoke of wool, flax, linen, hemp, spindle and distaff, loom’s warp and weft, dye, needle and silk. She spoke of inexorable tides ebbing and flowing, and Mary felt the echo within her and thought of two little fish caught in that tide, silver and gold, pulled irresistibly into life by birth’s current.
Night paused at the open window to be with her, cooling and comforting her labor. Stars were silver flowers of frost in the dark sky. Resting on the birthing stool, Mary looked up and saw a white owl at the window. Hecate welcomed it, inclining her head, and told its story as Mary labored.
“A tale is told of Llew, a mighty man, the son of kings. Llew couldn’t take up his mantle without a wife. It happened that Llew was cursed, so he was unable to possess a human wife. His two uncles, Math and Gwydion, were magicians. They were determined he should fulfill his kingship, and so together took the nine sacred flowers of primrose, cockle, bean, nettle, chestnut, hawthorn; the blossoms of oak, broom and meadowsweet, and created from them the fairest maiden man ever saw. They breathed life into her and called her Blodeuwedd, or Flower Face.
At the same time, they cast a spell to keep Llew from death, as they feared misadventure and treachery when he took his rightful place as king with a wife by his side.
The two magicians were proud of their work and instructed Blodeuwedd carefully in her duty as a fitting wife to Llew. But their pride was at once too little and too great, and they were careless of the power of the nine sacred flowers. Strength of oak; life of primrose; earth of bean; wild protection of nettle; love and magic of hawthorn and the sweet, healing scent of meadowsweet — all these created a Goddess of Spring, a woman entire, a wild woman, the White Lady, and she was not theirs to control and command. Her destiny was far greater than wife or lover.
So, Blodeuwedd did not love her husband, Llew.
She caught the eye of Goronwy the hunter, handsome and treacherous, and he desired her. She made him a tool with which to gain her freedom.
Blodeuwedd coaxed from Llew the secret of his protection from death, and so overcame the spell with the help of Goronwy.
She and Goronwy tried to kill Llew, but failed. Gravely wounded, Llew turned himself into an eagle and disappeared. As an eagle, he suffered until found many weeks later by his Uncle Gwydion, whose eyes looked past his shape and recognized his nephew, the king.
For many months Llew lay ill, passing death’s borders and then wheeling back into life. In the end, the king rose from his sickbed, made greater than whole by his dark journey, and ruled again.
Then Gwydion turned his thought to Blodeuwedd and punishment for her treachery.
A great chase began over mountains and rivers, until at last she stood at bay, proud and lovely.
Gwydion, terrible in righteous anger, said, ‘Be now a bird, and for shame you shall not show your face in the light of day. You shall keep your name, that all shall know you and your faithlessness and treachery!’ With his staff, he struck her and she flew up as an owl.
She rose in the air, heart bursting with joy. Free! Free from Goronwy and his weakness! Free from Llew, whom she had made a king among kings! Free in darkness and moonlight!
And so Blodeuwedd brushes the night with silent wings, communing with waxing and waning moons and tides. She is wisdom and fertility, mystery and prophecy of flowers in frost and frost on flowers.”
As the story ended the owl spread its wings in a soundless silver sweep and floated away, but Mary didn’t forget its queenly regard and the next day found a shining feather on the sill.
Now Hecate spoke to the unborn ones, little fish, silver and gold, calling them forward. Mary groaned, panted, breathed, drank cool water, felt held and comforted in Hecate’s words, leaning to rest in the old woman’s arms when rest there was.
Then there was no more rest. Pain held her, inexorable, huge. She pushed, felt herself stretch and open, stretch and open. In a pause, she opened her eyes and realized night had passed on, was even now embracing day. Pain once more took her in its own embrace and she pushed with all her strength and felt the child slide out of her into Hecate’s hands. The child was silver and shadow, grey eyes wide as though with wonder. Hecate tied off and cut the cord and wrapped him in clean linen. Mary held him, warm and slippery, against her. His heart beat quickly. She rested her cheek on his damp head, smelling the place within her whence he’d come. Once more pain clasped her and, holding her dark little boy, fresh from the water of another world, she gave birth to his brother, fair and ruddy and green eyed, and he roared with a sound like triumph with his first breath.
In the following days, Mary rested and her sons fed and slept and throve. Hecate cleaned and polished the birthing stool, blessed it, and took it away. A wide cradle stood in the room. Winter enfolded Yule House, where loom waited, fire burned, babies slept and nursed and slept again.
***
“Visitors,” said Hecate one afternoon. She stood aside for a brisk, elderly woman with a cap of short white hair and an armful of packages. A younger, smaller woman followed her. “Put those on the table, Minerva.”
As the newcomer did so, Hecate said to Mary, “This is Minerva, and this is Cassandra.”
Haunted brown eyes in a gaunt face framed by a riot of luxuriant brown hair met Mary’s for a moment before the woman looked away, managing to convey a flinch without moving a muscle.
Minerva’s sharp eyes were grey behind her spectacles. Dar looked up at her solemnly as she bent over Mary to inspect him. Minerva offered him a finger, and at once the tiny starfish hand grasped it. Minerva laughed.
“Congratulations, my dear. He’s beautiful. Come and see, Cassandra.”
“Deep-drinking roots where fish perch, silver and gold, silver and gold,” said Cassandra. “Mirmir whispered it to me.” She stood awkwardly, as though afraid to approach Mary.
“Mirmir knows all stories,” said Minerva.
“It’s not bad. I don’t need to stop fish swimming or roots drinking, do I, Minerva?”
“No, my daughter. You don’t need to stop anything, even if it is bad. I think you know you can’t always stop bad things.”
Cassandra’s face crumpled in bewilderment. “I do need to. If I know about something bad, I need to tell and try to make it stop. I must make them believe…”
“I know a wonderful story about that,” Hecate interrupted.
“Oh, I like stories!” Cassandra was diverted. “It’s not a bad story, is it?” she asked, frowning again.
“Shall we sit down? The babies might like to hear the story too.”
“Yes,” said Cassandra uncertainly, still motionless. Mary pulled herself to her feet, her deflated body awkward and sore. “Come and meet Lugh,” she said, taking Cassandra’s hand and leading her to the cradle.
“Silver and gold, silver and gold,” crooned Cassandra as Mary pushed the blankets aside.
“We call the silver one Dar and the gold one Lugh,” said Mary.
For a long moment, hazel eyes met brown in perfect understanding.
***
While Minerva strung the loom and unwrapped hanks of wool she’d brought, Cassandra had a hot drink and something to eat with Mary, who ate frequently throughout the day. Hecate poured a cup of tea for herself and settled into her chair by the fire.
“Were you going to tell a story, Hecate?” Minerva asked from the loom.
Hecate’s lips quirked. Cassandra put her hands in her lap like a good child. “It’s a small story about a magic man like you, Cassandra.
“There lived a man who was so good the Gods offered him the gift of miracles. Humbly, he refused the gift, but when pressed he asked that he be allowed to do a great deal of good without ever knowing it.
So, the man went about his life as he always had, doing each day’s tasks, and wherever his shadow fell behind him, it cured illness, soothed pain and comforted sorrow. His shadow brought green life to arid ground and springs of fresh bubbling water to the earth’s surface. He trailed joy wherever he passed, but he never looked back, so remained unaware of the blessing of his passing.”
“He trailed joy wherever he passed,” repeated Mary. “I like that.”
“He made things good and didn’t even try,” said Cassandra.
“They called him the Holy Shadow,” said Hecate.
***
“What are you making?” Mary asked Minerva respectfully. Hecate had told her of Minerva’s skill, her school and her business, but refused to say why she came to Yule House.
Minerva looked up from the loom, though her hands continued to weave. Her gaze sharpened over the top of her spectacles, which perched halfway down her nose.
“Every cycle I weave cloaks for twin boy babies born at Yule,” she said. “The Norns — you know of them, the three Fates who spin, wind and cut the fiber?”
“Yes. Cassandra mentioned Mirmir. Doesn’t he guard the well at Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, where the Norns live?”
“He does. The Norns and Mirmir are great friends. Well, the Norns prepare the wool and I weave it. Then we dye it and make the cloaks. It’s a kind of ritual, and it means I can take a vacation, play with babies, see old friends and students.”
“Lugh — I mean their father, Lugh,” Mary said, indicating the sleeping twins, “and his brother wore cloaks. They were beautiful. I wonder if you made those?”
“I did,” said Minerva.
“Oh,” said Mary, rather blankly. “Well…thank you.”
Humor gleamed on Minerva’s face. “My pleasure,” she said seriously.
While Minerva wove, Mary rested, rocked with a child at her breast or on her shoulder, half listening and half dreaming as Minerva and Hecate talked. Cassandra, on good days, helped Hecate with household work. Other days she clung to Minerva or Mary; Mary found an odd comfort in Cassandra’s presence.
Mary dozed, dreaming of wool woven out of firelight, frost and flake and star, cool taste of water, scent of baking bread, tart pomegranate on the tongue, the smell of baby diapers, thin sticky milk gulped eagerly from her heavy breasts and the feel of clean linen against her skin.
Cloth grew on the loom. Mary’s torn body healed. She ate with appetite. She felt content to drift and do nothing. Her mind felt weary. Something of herself had moved into the children as their lives were cut from hers. It wasn’t love. Love, a separate thing, rose endless within her for each babe as she held him, nursed him, noted the awakening of awareness. Not love, but some other vital essence of herself they’d taken into themselves. She no longer felt whole in the way she’d felt before. She felt a deep weariness and longing she couldn’t define or name. She wondered if the babies’ father felt this way before he and she parted, depleted even beyond the ability to care. She wanted to step back, step away, be still and quiet.
Her body, too, seemed no longer quite her own, no longer the familiar and trusted place she once knew. Silver threaded her hair and her skin would forever bear marks of childbearing and nursing. Back, hips, belly and thighs were suddenly strange to her. She understood for the first time the sacrifice demanded for new life.
She sat cradling the dark head and then the fair one at her breast and looked out the window, thinking about increase and decrease.
Into this time came Baubo, arriving on a sunless winter day. A second piece of cloth grew on the loom. Dar had nursed and rested against Cassandra’s shoulder, and Lugh nursed. The door opened and Baubo came into the room.
She was a figure to smile at, nearly as wide as she was tall. She wore shapeless and not very clean clothes, a skirt of rough homespun in drab brown and a tunic of grey. A tangle of curls grew from her pink scalp and she wore stockings, having left her cloak and boots at the door when Hecate welcomed her into Yule House. A hole in her left stocking revealed a dirty toe with a yellowed nail, much too long, poking out.
She walked straight to the rocking chair by the window and looked down at Lugh where he nursed. He’d just latched on and his greed had released the milk, but when he saw Baubo’s homely face and wide smile, he let go of the nipple and grinned up at her. Milk squirted against his cheek, wetting his mother’s clothes as well as his own gown, but Mary could do nothing about it. The sight of the old crone and the new babe, one so homely and well worn, one so fresh and new, grinning at one another was so ridiculous she snorted with laughter. The babe then transferred his gaze to his mother and chuckled, waving an arm towards her face, and she laughed harder, feeling the milky damp patch growing. She realized as she bubbled with laughter it had been a long time since she’d laughed. Baubo reached down and scooped the babe in his sticky gown into her own arms and Mary, now quite helpless with mirth, took a piece of linen from her shoulder and held it against her squirting breast to stop the flow of milk. She laughed and laughed and felt her breasts quiver and jiggle, one empty and slack, drained by Dar, and one heavy and uncomfortable with milk, felt the loose skin of her belly and the fat under it shake, and she didn’t care. She laughed anyway. Baubo and the babe laughed with her and then they were all laughing. Dar, held in the crook of Cassandra’s arm, looked around at the hilarity and joined in with his own chuckle, waving a fist in the air.
Order was restored. Hecate brought fresh tea, new bread and butter and soup. The unfed twin returned to the breast and this time drained it before joining his brother in slumber. Mary sponged herself clean and put on a fresh gown. Minerva showed Baubo her work on the loom.
Evening fell and Hecate lit candles and put more wood on the fire. Minerva left her weaving and joined the others by the hearth. Silence fell, content and easy.
“Tell a story,” said Cassandra to no one in particular.
“Yes, do,” agreed Mary.
“What about?” asked Minerva.
“Singing bones,” said Cassandra.
“Oh, yes,” said Minerva. “I haven’t shown you yet.” She groped under skeins of raw wool near the loom and came back to the fire with two objects in her hands.
“Oh,” said Mary in wonder.
Minerva handed her a bone flute, slender and curved to follow the original shape of the bone. One end blossomed in an ivory sculpture of petals, pierced with holes. The other end was cut off cleanly, bone end smoothed and plated with a collar of gold. There were bands of gold, too, down the length of the shaft in between regularly placed holes. Gems were inset in the thick end, topaz, garnet and tiger’s eye.
Cassandra examined the other flute. The bone was similar, but the mouthpiece and banding were of silver, and the gems pearl, crystal and moonstone. “Singing bones,” she said dreamily, “sand and ice and cavern.”
“That’s right,” said Minerva. “Nephthys began it.”
“Lost and found, lost and found…” chanted Cassandra to herself. Then, to Minerva, “Tell about Nephthys.”
“Yes, please do,” said Mary, wondering who Nephthys was.
The others murmured assent. Hecate rose from her place and fed the fire. The women watched in silence as fresh logs caught and burned. Minerva began to speak.
“Like a pimple on a flat cheek, a ruined stone cistern erupts from horizontal, featureless desert. It’s been there a long time. Sun bleached and crumbling, part of a rounded side still stands amid fallen rubble, creating a rough cave.
Nothing moves in the sky over the cistern. The desert exhales in shimmering waves.
A woman sits in the shade of the curved wall amid the fallen blocks of stone. Her eyes are empty. The place stinks with the eye-watering smell of urine and feces. The woman has sores around her lips and her hair is a dirty no-color snarl. Her shapeless clothing is the same color as the desert. Sun glares like a hot, hard headache. For a long time, nothing changes.
Then, a vulture wheels a long way above the desert. A long way distant in that blank landscape an upright figure makes its way slowly toward the tank.
An hour, a day, three days later, a vulture floats in the sky on the desert’s warm breath. The approaching figure is a female child, breasts just beginning to bud. Her hair is a thick dark cloud. She’s creased with sand and wears nothing but a ragged strip of cloth about her middle and dangling gold earrings. A tattooed series of dots, dashes and lozenges curls about her left arm like a snake. She’s dried and hardened by the desert, an old woman child with ageless eyes that are black as the life-growing earth of the flood plain. She carries a bundle strapped on her back and a grimy bag around her neck.
She reaches the ruined cistern. Inside it, Lost Woman goes on being lost. Nephthys reaches in, takes her by the arm and hauls her onto the sand. Lost Woman stands there, caked in her own filth and wrapped in stench. She says no word, makes no move. Her gaze rests incuriously on the child.
Nephthys doesn’t speak, for Lost Woman is lost and can’t be found with words. They’ve lost their power to call her.
With a few deft movements, Nephthys releases Lost Woman from her clothing and lets it fall onto the clean sand. She sees scars, foul open sores, shrunken withered breasts, a fleshless scaffold of bones. She pulls Lost Woman down to kneel, stoops and fills her hands with clean, bright sand and begins to wash Lost Woman gently. Starting at her neck, she rubs in slow, delicate circles with handfuls of sand. It falls down Lost Woman's thin back, sifts into the cleft of her buttocks, dusts fine hairs on her body. As Nephthys works down her body, she pulls Lost Woman back to her feet. The child rubs away filth from hips and buttocks and legs. She polishes scars. She rubs every crease and sag and fold of skin. She washes elbow creases and under arms. She cleanses inner thighs, behind knees, around delicate ankles. She rubs between each toe, the arch of each foot, between each finger and around brittle wrists. It takes a long time. She rubs away all that’s come before. She goes carefully around each open sore.
Once again tugging on Lost Woman’s hand to make her sit in the sand, the child rubs Lost Woman's face. With the lightest touch, she rubs forehead, temples, nose and cheeks. She rubs around sores about the mouth. She rubs the lips themselves, behind the ears, the chin. As she works on Lost Woman's face and looks into her eyes, something quickens in their empty depths. Something fragile looks out and Lost Woman’s eyes are no longer quite so empty.
Nephthys steps away, dusting her hands together and then clapping with satisfaction. Lost Woman stands obediently at the child’s gesture, and Nephthys drops to her knees in front of Lost Woman and puts her mouth to a sore above her right knee. Her mouth is as gentle and cool as a river in the sore place. She licks the wound. She moves around Lost Woman's body, first on her knees and then on her feet. She searches for every sore and scar and puts her mouth on each in turn, kissing, licking. It takes a long time.
Lost Woman, utterly naked in the foulness of her wounds, begins to weep. She weeps without sound and tears fall down her face, drip from her chin, fall onto her withered breasts, and fall onto the child. And there’s water in the desert as Nephthys cools the lost one's wounds, holds them in her mouth, licks them with long strokes, bathing each hurt in attention and reverence.
An hour, a day, three days later, a vulture flies high above on the warm desert’s breath. Lost Woman is sand polished and kissed back into the possibility of life. The white sky blazes. Nephthys reaches into her bundle and brings out several cooked eggs, wrapped in cool, moist leaves. She gives the eggs, one by one, to Lost Woman, who peels them and eats.
Nephthys takes from her bundle a folded square of stiff cloth, olive green, and hands it to Lost Woman, and then she turns her back on the empty tank and walks away. After a moment, Lost Woman follows her.
As they walk, the old cistern falls farther and farther behind. Once more, the desert looks empty. Neither looks back. The child walks steadily, strongly, as though on a path instead of endless sand. Lost Woman feels sun and air on her new skin, on open sores. She feels muscles stretch in her legs and feet as she walks in the sand. She feels herself breathing. Nephthys walks on and the lost one follows her.
An hour, a day, three days later, nothing stirs in the white sky. Nephthys is on her knees, scooping away sand with her hands. Lost Woman crouches beside her and puts out a tentative hand to the uncovered shape. It’s a bone, gently curved. Lost Woman picks it up and feels its strength and lightness. It’s cool from lying buried in sand. The shape of it in her hand reminds her of an old memory of cupping her own breast, firm weight of her flesh, nipple thrusting against her palm. The child unfolds the green square of cloth and knots three corners together. She gestures to the bone. Lost Woman puts it into the knotted pouch. Nephthys hands her the unknotted corner and walks on.
An hour, a day, three days later, two upright figures walk in the desert. Each drags behind her a rough pouch of heavy olive-green cloth loaded with bones. The bones are of every shape and size, some old and brittle and some new and hard.
Sometimes there’s been food and sometimes there’s been water. Sometimes there’s been sleep and dark desert sky. Sometimes a vulture circles lazily high above them in the white sky on the desert's breath.
Lost Woman sees life in the desert. The sand tells the stories of those who move upon it. Delicate footprints, beautiful curved trail of a snake and drag of a lizard’s tail whisper of life in this place. Sometimes a trail of footprints ends with a wing’s brush mark.
The child sees every trace of movement recorded in the sand. She reads a dropped feather, a shed skin and a tuft of hair caught on a thorn like a map. She collects seeds when plants offer them and puts them carefully into the bag around her neck. She follows the high paths of kite and vulture. A woodpecker drumming in cactus, the place where the grouse has taken a dust bath and the harsh language of the raven speak to her. The desert is utterly trackless to Lost Woman's eyes, but Nephthys moves over it with confidence and familiarity.
Lost Woman has watched Nephthys play with desert dogs and sand cats, dance with spiders and race snakes. She’s watched her gold earrings sway, glinting and shimmering like warm stars as she skips over the desert. She’s seen the smooth childish back with its round bumps of spine under a thick wiry tangle of dark hair and pointed wings outspread like arms over the desert, then woken from a sun-drunk doze and thought the vision for a dream.
On some nights, clear and cold and crowded with sharp stars, Lost Woman awakens and Nephthys isn’t there. The fire burns low and she feels safe. The night desert vibrates with life. A great heart lies underneath the smooth flanks of sand, beating steadily and slowly, intermingled with light, rapid pulses of many other lives. Movement and breath are about her. Sand shifts and murmurs. Wings are in the air. Coyotes howl in the distance. Her breath and heartbeat are part of the night song. She’s alive. She’s in the desert. She’s alive in the desert.
Every place they go there are bones. Some lie clean and bleached in the sand and some are buried and hidden. Many are broken and many are so small Lost Woman wonders how they ever came to be found at all. Most of the bones go in Nephthys’s pouch but now and then she hands a bone to Lost Woman and with each one Lost Woman is a little more found.
A finger bone reminds her of picking pine nuts. She puts the bone in her pouch and all morning, as she walks, she remembers the smell of dusty hot pinons. She can see their squat bushy shapes, feel the smooth small nuts in her hands.
The memory is like water in the desert.
A hip bone like a wing tells an old story about a strong young woman who stood upright with shoulders back. She remembers the stretched feeling after a night of love a little too big to be held between her thighs. She remembers the ache of a long walk in the autumn and the smell of leaves underfoot. She remembers a loose tired feeling of pain wrapped about her body like a blanket, the smell of blood, the weight of a baby in the crook of her arm.
They gather bones. Lost Woman learns how to sieve desert sands. Bones call out to her and she hears.
An hour, a day, three days later, the land changes and they come to a winding canyon. They walk along its floor, dragging their knotted pouches of bones behind them. Canyon walls rise gently as they walk, giving shade. After a while they climb, hauling their pouches after them. Nephthys leads them to a dark slit in the canyon wall that seems too small to enter, but enter they do, the child and the other behind her.
The cave widens out. A rough fireplace lies under a hole in the rock roof where a shaft of light comes in. A heap of skins nestles against a wall. Water from a spring trickles into a natural stone basin and drains away again.
There’s water in the desert.
They work together, and an hour, a day, three days later, a fire burns. There’s been food and drink and the blessing of bathing. Lost Woman’s sores are nearly healed and tell an old story now. She sits on an animal skin with another draped over her shoulders.
Nephthys unknots her pouch and spreads its contents on the floor, revealing her collection of bones. She smooths a large area of sandy floor with a twig broom and begins to lay out the bones. Fire burns. Night desert sky looks down. Time is not present. Nephthys murmurs, a child at play. She hums a lullaby, a prayer. She chants in a low whisper. Beneath her small, callused hands, white landscapes begin to take shape. There are what might be a mouse, a wild dog and the slender, weightless frame of a bird. Watching her, listening to the sound of her voice, Lost Woman sinks into a kind of dream.
Without thought, she goes to the pouch she’s dragged through the desert. She smooths another place on the sandy floor with the twig broom, and then, one by one, she puts the bones down and builds…she builds…oh, she builds…
Everything lost is found again. Her voice is found again. She lays out her vibrating bones and, to help them, to call and claim them, she takes a breath and sound flows through her and hums out her mouth, out her nose. The joints in her body loosen and sound fills her. She opens her lips and song swells and overflows, rising up her throat. Shapes under her hands tell her where the bones belong and she lays them there, one after another. Her song fills the cave and Nephthys picks it up, joins with it, supports it and lifts it, and they sing, Lady of Bones and Lost Woman, and the bones under Lost Woman's hands bind themselves together with cartilage and tendon and muscle.
The song goes on and deepens and the bones cover themselves with flesh and then skin, and there are breast and belly and hip and moist cleft between the legs. There is thick cinnamon hair and beauty and strength. The song beats like great wings against the ceiling and walls while Lost Woman puts her mouth to the mouth of the creature she’s made, presses herself against her and into her, and the woman opens her eyes, chest rising and falling with breath. The song finds the cave entrance and rushes out on falcon’s wings, wild and free, holding the women within it, and Lost Woman is found, soaring back into herself, into life.”
They were singing, a wordless tumult of passionate sound rising slowly to a triumphant crescendo of clapping and stamping and full-bodied voices holding nothing back. Mary saw tears on Baubo’s face. Gradually, the song fell away, quieted, softened, until it sheltered under their tongues and in the back of their mouths, humming and ebbing and then drifting into rich, firelit silence.
That night, when Mary slept, she dreamt of singing bones.
(This post was published with this essay.)