The Hanged Man: Part 4: Yule
Post #27: In which a woman begins to find herself ...
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MIRMIR
The Hanged Man rocked in Mirmir’s sinuous grasp while a grieving wind wound among Yggdrasil’s branches. “Dar! You tell of our birth and his death in the same story?”
“Birth and death are the ssame sstory,” said Mirmir, his golden eyes gleaming.
“When did it happen?” demanded the Hanged Man. “When I left him, Dar was not old and worn out. We’re not old! It’s not time for us to die! My children are still infants!” He glared at Mirmir.
The snake coiled his muscular body into a spiral and swayed next to the Hanged Man for answer.
“Damn the circle!” said the Hanged Man. He kicked furiously at Mirmir with his free foot. “Damn the cycle and the wheel, and damn the spiral! I’m tired of turning your stupid wheel! Why me? Why Dar?”
Mirmir uncoiled, paying no attention to the Hanged Man’s ineffectual kicks or anger. “Increasse and Decreasse. The cycle does not stop. Birth and death allow each other. Your mother accepted this.”
“It’s cruel.” The Hanged Man sulked. “I suppose you’ll tell about my death, too, as long as you’re ruining our birthday story. Go ahead. Get it over with. Tell me what I have to look forward to. It’s a good thing you haven’t anything to do with children. You’d give them the horrors with your stories. You’d make a rotten babysitter, Mirmir!”
The snake wheezed with laughter. “Every sstory in itss place. Your rebirth is yet to come, unless you want me to stop?”
The Hanged Man snorted and closed his eyes.
MARY
Days passed. From time to time Baubo and Hecate were absent, gone into the world on their own business, but Minerva, Cassandra and Briar Rose stayed with Mary. The children grew and throve. Winter passed into spring and then, imperceptibly, into summer. Bent over the cloaks, now sewing beads and gems into a swirl of water along a hem of the dark cloak and now embroidering sheaves of grain and poppies on the red one, Mary felt each stitch bring her closer to an ending.
The babies ceased to nurse and her breasts regained their shape, though not their firmness. The skin on her belly and hips tightened, but silver lines stretched from pubis to navel. The children crawled and then toddled about, playing, exploring, fighting, laughing, a constant source of amusement and anxiety. The women talked and laughed, minding the children, fashioning the cloaks, working together. Mary felt silent and faded beside their vitality. Hecate often sat with her, reassuring in her acceptance.
Mary felt a growing detachment. Her whole experience consisted of nurture, shaping herself around life so it could be born and grow. She’d gathered, sown and received seed. She’d prayed and danced and poured herself out in an abundance of passion and love so life might continue. She’d lain on rich earth and opened her body to a lover, a vessel for the cycle to which she’d surrendered herself. Yet increase always moved hand-in-hand with decrease. Seed didn’t grow unless the mature plant fruited and dropped it, dying. Were these children, her beautiful little silver and golden fish, her ultimate and final gift to the world?
Long ago she’d been given a seed pouch. Now and then she took it out and fingered the worn cloth. It wasn’t quite empty. A few seeds remained, yet planting seasons passed and she didn’t scatter them. She let other hands plant the garden. Her spirit felt worn and thin, without the vitality to nurture even a single seed. She’d known joy but it wasn’t with her now. Memories drifted around her like leaves falling from trees in autumn. What would happen to these seeds? She must find a safe place for the seeds.
They were not for the twins. They had no need of seed pouches. These seeds were her responsibility and she must find a way to send them forward with a new Seed-Bearer.
She sat with the others and stitched the cloaks, feeling like an empty room. With every stitch and passage of thread through wool, what had been was leaving. With every bead sewn in place something new approached. She’d given nearly everything she could give, stitching the last of herself into the cloaks. When they were complete, there’d be rest and silence. She longed for no one to need anything from her.
One evening Briar Rose set a last linen-wrapped package on the table. Minerva opened it carefully. As thin layers of linen were removed, they could see a glow. The last folds revealed two large golden feathers.
“The Firebird,” said Mary. She turned one in the light, now orange, now gold, now red, with flashes of blue and green like a dragonfly’s wing. The purple cloak looked like a flowing shadow in Briar Rose’s lap. She’d been embroidering the hem with a pattern of fish picked out with silver and crystal beads. She spread it across her knees, exposing the shoulders of the garment.
“Here,” she said, laying the feather across the back of the left shoulder, ‘as though it dreams of being a wing,’ like the story.”
Minerva, at work on the crimson cloak with tiger’s eye beads and charms, draped it so as to expose the same spot. It too showed no adornment. Hecate nodded in silent satisfaction. Mary handed the feather to Minerva, and she laid it against the crimson wool.
“That’s right,” said Mary. “That’s where their father’s feather lay on his cloak.”
Baubo smiled at Briar Rose. “The final touch. Thank you, my dear.”
CHAPTER 13
One day in late autumn the finished cloaks lay side by side. They seemed to gather light into themselves, one the warm light of sun and the other the cool light of moons and stars.
Hecate came that night into Mary’s chamber and quietly packed a few of her belongings. Mary didn’t ask what would happen to her now, but knew the end she’d felt approaching was upon her, and beyond that a door would open. She hoped wherever her journey took her it would be to rest and, filled with that longing, she slept.
In the morning, she bade farewell to her sons. She didn’t weep. They each gave her an affectionate hug and scrambled down out of her lap, eager to be away on their own business. Hecate took up Mary’s bag on a strong arm and they set out into a day of cloud and sun and silver wind. They traveled silently, Mary glad to be moving quietly through landscape that asked nothing of her but to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
They came at last to a weathered house with many chimneys above an ice-bound sea. Dusk drew near and lights shone warmly in windows. A forest flanked the house. Mary felt cold and weary and wanted nothing so much as a hot drink and a warm bed. Hecate rapped on the door, which immediately opened and revealed a tall, vigorous woman with a strong face who might have been any age past fifty. She stood aside and they entered on a gust of icy wind off the sea. Hecate set Mary’s bag down on a floor of red tile. Mary saw a staircase with carved banisters ascending into shadows. The house sounded quiet. She smelled newly-baked bread, lavender polish, fresh linen and burning wood.
Hecate helped her off with her cloak and hood, and as warmth and quiet engulfed her Mary felt such a wave of fatigue it was like losing consciousness. Hecate murmured words of farewell and left before Mary became aware they were parting. The strange woman took her arm firmly and guided her up the stairs.
The woman took Mary down to the end of a long hallway lined with doors. The room struck warm with velvet drapes drawn across windows, but all Mary was really conscious of was the bed, looking soft and deep and smelling of cold sun and pine sap. The woman sat her on a chair like a child and divested her of boots and socks and clothing. She pulled a soft cotton nightdress over Mary’s head, flung back the bedcovers and Mary crept in, feeling the covers laid across her shoulders and a hot water bottle at her feet, and was asleep.
For three days, she hardly left the bed. The woman, who introduced herself as Hel, brought her meals on a tray, made up the fire and tidied the bed if Mary wasn’t in it. She moved quietly and efficiently and didn’t bother Mary with chatter or questions. Now and then Mary heard sounds in the hall, but no one disturbed her. She slept for long stretches in the comfortable, deep bed. No one knew where she was. She didn’t know where she was. No one could find her. No one wanted her. No one needed her. She had no responsibility. On shelves near the windows she found books of the kind she most liked to read. One or two were familiar old friends but many were new to her. As her desire for sleep became satisfied, she lit her bedside lamp, pushed pillows behind her and read for hours at a time, dozing off and on and letting the book slide out of her hands. A comfortable wide chair next to the fire with a hassock for her feet proved a good place to sit and eat or drink a cup of tea. She sat with a cooling cup in her hand, looking into the fire, thinking of nothing, making no plans. Time had stopped altogether. There was no clock in the room. She didn’t know what day it was. Nights were long, dawns frost and silver, the sun low in the sky. Snow fell outside her window.
When she pulled aside the heavy wine-colored velvet curtains, she discovered a landscape of gently undulating white, and in the distance mountains, also blanketed with white. Even when the sun shone the view showed white and pale grey, shadows like smudges. Some way beyond the house stood thick forest, trees standing tall. The snow lay smooth and undisturbed. Gratefully, she surrendered to quiet.
One morning she woke abruptly. It was dark; the fire burned to ash and the room chilly. Her body, warm and cushioned, felt heavy and soft. As she lay, drowsy and quiescent, she felt the first stirring of curiosity about where she was. This comfortable, warm shelter in the winter landscape — where was it? Why was she here? What lay outside her room?
She threw back the cover and put her feet on the cold floor. She lit a lamp and draped a red wool throw around her shoulders. Her hair felt tangled and heavy against the back of her neck. How long had it been since she’d washed with more than a cloth and a bit of warm water? She knelt in front of the fire and rekindled it, making sure small pieces burned well before putting on a larger log. She drew the curtains and cold air pressed in against her. The sky began to lighten into dawn but it was still too dark to tell if the day would be clear or cloudy. Only the first pallid light tinged the horizon.
She stood with her back to the fire, which began to send warmth into the cold room, curling her frozen toes into a deep sheepskin on the floor, and let her gaze wander. To the right of the door stood the bed with a table next to it. On the table lay a couple of books and a lamp. The bed was tumbled and disordered, pillows flattened and the impress of her body a hollow in the feather mattress. At the foot of the bed, against the wall, stood a wardrobe, solid and imposing. She opened it and found the clothes she’d worn — it seemed so long ago — on the journey to this place. They were clean and folded. She put on heavy socks and thought about dressing herself but decided she wanted to wash first. Her comb and brush were there on a shelf but her hair was such a tangle she couldn’t be bothered and left them there. Fastened inside the door of the wardrobe she found a piece of paper that read:
Janus House
Dark December…
Inscrutable Janus stands in fallow Between,
Hearing distant ebb of Fall’s bright breath
And far-off rumors of gathering Spring.
He looks back…
When Earth exhaled into sensitive folds of Sky,
When trees, trembling and hesitant, released concealment,
Uncovered stood, afraid,
Stood knee deep,
Knee deep in yesterday,
But whispered dreams of the future among bare branches.
He looks ahead…
Over what thresholds…?
Into what seeds, brooding at Winter’s breast…?
Oh Janus, God of memory and hope,
God of door, gate, suspended interval,
Key-Keeper,
Only grant me courage to open each door.
Only grant me courage to accept each outcome…
Courage for the next waxing…
And waning.
TIME IS NOT HERE
The poem struck a deep chord in Mary and tears came to her eyes. She’d seen a carving of Janus once over a gate, one face looking left and the other right. She’d forgotten until now. So, she’d come to Janus House in this time between one thing and the next, and Hel ran the house. But where would she go from here? Was her waxing finished and now only waning left? I’m in the suspended interval, she thought with some sadness. She remembered her impression of an enormous house on the night of her arrival with Hecate. Were there others in other rooms like this who were in their own suspended intervals?
“Time is not here,” she read aloud, puzzling. What did it mean, time wasn’t here?
She shut the wardrobe door and sat in the chair by the fire, tucking her feet underneath her and gazing into the flames. Behind her, dawn slowly crept into the room. It was a clear morning.
The risen sun was throwing long shadows across the snow when Hel knocked and came in with a laden tray. She showed no surprise to see Mary up and the fire burning. She set the tray down and Mary saw a golden stack of thin pancakes, butter melting on top. A dish held some dark purple berry in its own runny syrup to spoon onto the cakes.
“Thank you,” said Mary. Hel knelt and added wood to the fire.
“You’re welcome. You begin to feel rested now.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. And I found my clothes — you washed them for me. Thank you for that, as well. Is there somewhere I can bathe and wash my hair? I’m sorry, I don’t know exactly where I am or who you are and you’ve given me what I most needed …”
Hel stood quietly in front of the fire, smiling faintly. She wasn’t unfriendly, Mary thought, but somehow grim. It seemed a strange attitude for the keeper of a guest house.
“This is Janus House. It’s a place where people come to rest. Time is of no consequence. Those who are ready find us. Whatever they need to heal and rest and renew is given for as long as they need it.”
“It says on the wardrobe door, ‘Time is not here.’”
Hel stooped and reached into a basket of pinecones on the hearth. She lay them in a straight line across the floor. “We think of time as a straight line, like this. It’s a rule, no? Events happen one after another, in their turn. But here,” she swept up the pinecones and dropped them on the floor in a bunch. They bounced and rolled and came to rest where they would. “Time is like this. There’s no line, but circles and patterns overlapping. Janus looks two ways. He sees what has been and what might yet be. He closes the circle but it’s flexible, not rigid. Points on the circle might move together and meet, or intersect with other circles. Time, in the limited sense of a rigid line, isn’t here. Do you see?”
“Yes,” said Mary slowly. “I see.”
“Here at Janus House there’s only now. Your history is a place in your circle that might not yet have happened, or might have happened unimaginable ages ago. Your future may already be here waiting for you, or it may arrive behind you. Here there are no rules and no limits. You’ll eat, sleep, play, laugh, weep and heal as the moment for each thing arrives. There’s only what’s now.
“Are there are other guests?”
“Oh yes. There are always guests.”
“I don’t know where I’ll go from here. I’ve no place to go. I’m alone now.” Mary looked away from the tall, remote figure, ashamed of welling tears. She felt used up.
“You’ll stay until you’re ready for what’s next.”
She wasn’t unkind, but Mary felt humiliated. What a pitiful contrast she made to Hel’s calm, clear presence, her chilling competence! She felt disheveled and unwashed. She’d lost her mate and left her children, and hardly felt capable of leaving her room, let alone considering the future.
“There’s a room downstairs next to the kitchen for bathing. You’ll find it well equipped.” Again, the slight smile. She gave Mary directions to the room and invited her to join other guests at meals downstairs or use the common rooms if she felt inclined. “You may like to go out, as well. It’s cold here but we’ve plenty of warm clothes for you to use.” She glanced out the window. “Don’t go far today. This afternoon there’ll be snow.”
Mary ate her breakfast with appetite, dressed and cautiously opened her door, looking down the quiet, empty hall. Her room lay at the end of the corridor. A window looked out at the same view she enjoyed from her room. A few steps along the hall, on the opposite side from her own, she found another door, and then another and another. She lost count as she followed Hel’s directions, found the huge staircase she remembered from the first night, and descended. The kitchen proved easy to find because of cooking smells and the chatter of women working there.
Mary returned her tray and thanked them, praising the food. One of them took her out of the kitchen and into a hall, opening a door and revealing a large room, as large as her bedroom, with a brightly burning fire, a narrow high table with a padded top, a shelf of thick towels with robes hanging on hooks beneath it, a round table with bottles and jars on it and, most welcome of all, a deep bath filled with steaming water.
“Oh!” exclaimed Mary in delighted surprise. “How beautiful! Thank you!”
The woman smiled and left her and Mary shut the door, shed her clothes, letting them lie where they fell, and moved to the table. There she found what she needed for her hair, smelling of rosemary. She set the shampoo, a cake of soap and a pitcher on a low stool next to the tub and climbed in.
It felt blissful. She rested her head on the tub’s rim and slid down, her hair floating around her. For some reason the touch of the warm water, the embrace of it, made her want to weep. Her body felt lonely. She thought, am I lonely?
I can’t take care of anyone else, she answered herself immediately. But am I lonely for someone to take care of me? She didn’t want to entertain the question. She sank below the surface of the water, wetting her hair.
She heard a knock on the door. Thinking someone brought more hot water, she called out “Come in!”
The door opened but it wasn’t a kitchen woman carrying water. An old woman she’d never seen before stood there, yet she seemed somehow familiar. She had warm hazel eyes, a generous bosom and hips, hair a faded dun color but still quite thick and pinned in a knot. She smiled at Mary with such warmth and affection that again tears were in her throat.
She shut the door behind her, took the things off the stool and sat down with the pitcher on the floor at her feet. She filled her palm with shampoo and began working it into Mary’s honey-colored wet tangle. “I thought you might like some help,” she said in matter-of-fact tones. “My name’s Mary, too, but that’ll be confusing, won’t it? Here at Janus House they mostly call me Mother, anyway.”
Mary could see why. Mother’s hands were strong, gentle and soothing against her scalp. The smell of rosemary, comforting and clean, filled the air. She closed her eyes against the suds sliding down her face.
“Thank you,” she said. “I did want… I did want…”
“Yes. It’s hard to wash one’s own hair when sitting in the bath. I usually slop water all over the floor when I try it!” The older woman laughed. “And your hair is beautiful, my dear. Mine used to be this color when I was younger.”
She was so warm and easy to talk to that Mary dropped her guard at once, not realizing until she did so how isolated and disconnected she’d felt for…how long? The older woman rinsed her hair, worked in a moisturizing crème, and rinsed again. Seeing the signs of childbirth, she asked about the child and Mary told her about the twins and the deep winter night of their birth.
“I left them to come here,” she said and felt a terrible unacknowledged shame rise up within her. “I needed to leave. I felt so tired. I feel as though I’ve nothing left to give anyone, so I left my boys. What a terrible mother I am.” Her voice broke.
“Now, my daughter,” said Mother, passing her a clean cloth to wipe her face and blow her nose. “They’re well cared for. Baubo herself is with them, she who laughs from the belly, looks out of her nipples, and loves children above all others, isn’t that true? And others besides her, yes? And you know those two children of yours have their own place in the world, as do you. Do you forget the turning wheel of increase and decrease? You’re bound to it still, you and your man.”
Mary couldn’t bear to talk of Lugh. “How did you know Baubo was there?” she asked hastily, “I didn’t say so.”
“No. You didn’t. But I’ve heard things. It’s not important. What is important now is you, yourself. You’ve done well, but for the time being you’ve given everything you can. We who nurture life must learn we can’t do so indefinitely. At some point, we run out of love and if we don’t step away, run away, even crawl away and find some path to replenishment and renewal, we die. That too is part of the cycle, but a difficult part, for it means coming to terms with our own needs, and we’d rather be meeting the needs of others!”
Mary, having mopped her face and then rinsed it in the sweet-smelling water, leaned back again. “Yes. I was thinking that when you knocked. That I want someone to take care of me now, I mean. But people did take care of me, during my pregnancy and after. I’m ashamed to want more. It’s ungrateful, isn’t it?”
“No. We all need someone to love and care for us. Come out now. The water’s cooling.”
Mary stood and Mother enfolded her in a capacious bath sheet. Mary sat on a stool in front of the fire, wrapped in the towel, and the old woman stood behind her and patiently combed out her tangled hair.
“Hel said everything I needed was here. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how to help myself. Yet I know I need help.”
“Yes. Everything you need is right here, right now. Janus House is a place where all is allowed. Whatever you do here will be the right thing. Whatever engages you will be the thing you most need. You don’t need to make a plan or work at anything. Just be. Allow your experience to be. Don’t try at anything.”
“Surrender.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. Surrender.” As she talked, she lay a sheet that had been warming in front of the fire on the narrow, padded table. “Come here, now.
Mary lay down on her belly, putting her face into a cushioned frame so she looked down at the tiled floor. The old woman gently brushed her hair away from her neck, letting it hang in a scented curtain. Mary smelled lavender and felt strong hands against her back. She closed her eyes. She was touched. She was touched and the touch asked for nothing in return. It seemed to her every pain and strain and overworked muscle in her body was summoned, revealed and comforted. The life her body had been living was uncovered, and as Mother’s fingers worked in her tissue, she remembered stooping to plant seeds under the sun’s warmth, kneeling, bending, saying a blessing over each new beginning. She remembered hauling water, raking, hoeing, weeding, pruning, staking, the feel of earth against bare feet. She remembered the wild, vibrant dance of mating, musk, stretch, passionate pleasure. She remembered sun, starlit nights, rain, and then more sun, sweat between her breasts. She remembered ladder, baskets, shapely weight of fruit in her palm. The old woman’s fingers found the ache between her shoulders that was the memory of the sharp curving scythe and rhythm of bend and swing, bend and swing. Muscles, ligaments and tendons in her hips and pelvic girdle remembered the long weight of the twins and then labor. Her body gave up its story to Mother’s listening hands.
(This post was published with this essay.)