The Hanged Man: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #35: In which the Lady of Bones meets the Seed-Bearer, who draws closer to the piper ...
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In the end, there was nothing to do but go on. With the help of the mirror, she’d examined every part of her new body, twisting and turning in front of the fire. She’d found coarse hair, fish belly skin, asymmetrical limbs and features. Her hair hung in dreadlocks. She was lumpy and bumpy, scarred and puckered.
She was also hungry.
She donned her clothes. Going to the fire, she spoke a word. The hearth sat cold and empty. She spoke another word and fire returned, burning as brightly as ever. Her power, then, remained intact. She laid the eye in her palm and it looked up at her, blue and expressionless. She thought with some amusement of what Alexander would say if he could see her now. He wouldn’t be so anxious to climb up the tower if this woman waited at the top! For some reason, this thought made her feel better.
She went downstairs to find a meal.
“Your grandmother is waiting for you,” said the innkeeper, directing her to a table near the fire in a common room. A few solitary people sat at a high wooden counter drinking. Rapunzel made her way between occupied tables. The smell of lamb stew made her mouth water.
She pulled out a chair and sat. “Grandmother,” she said demurely in greeting.
Baba Yaga grinned at her from the shadow of her hood.
“Bold hussy. You’ll put them off their food.”
“Good. I’ll eat their portions and mine, too. I’m starving.”
“Hmmmph.” Baba Yaga looked both pleased and not so pleased.
A servant plunked a bowl down in front of Rapunzel, a board with a round loaf, a knife sticking out of it, and a chunk of farm butter.
“Bread?” offered Rapunzel, sawing at the loaf with alacrity.
“No,” said Baba Yaga, watching her speculatively.
Rapunzel crammed bread into her mouth and applied herself to lamb stew, aware of the other’s iron gaze. She kept her own face serene. The food heartened her and she began to feel better. Baba Yaga, she well knew, used her own methods of instruction. She disdained weakness but respected strength. Rapunzel refused to give her the satisfaction of falling apart. She’d learn to live without her beauty rather than beg for its restoration.
When she’d consumed two bowls of thick stew and the entire loaf, she asked for a pot of tea and sat back in her chair. She belched, making no effort to hide it. An ugly woman could get away with a belch like that when a pretty woman couldn’t. She wondered what else she might get away with, having a face like this.
The tea came and Rapunzel poured it out, Baba Yaga again refusing any.
Rapunzel held the cup between her palms. The cracked thumb certainly felt sore. Perhaps she could find goose grease in the kitchen.
“Very well,” said Baba Yaga. “You’ll wear this face and body until you find a man who’ll marry you. On the night of your wedding day, he’ll choose if you’ll be ugly by night and as you were by day, or ugly by day and as you were by night. The rest of your life will be in his hands, always assuming you can find a man willing to settle for such as you — which I doubt. Men like their toys to be somewhat more attractive!”
Baba Yaga stood. “Good luck to you, Granddaughter,” she said sweetly, and stumped away. Rapunzel noted everyone gave the hooded figure a wide berth on her way out.
***
The comfortable-looking bed lied. Rapunzel lay on her left side and then her right. She drew her knees up and then stretched her legs out, trying to relax. She stared at the ceiling, then flopped over and stared at the wall.
She’d done well, eating heartily, pleasant and unruffled, but her victory was hollow. She’d not anticipated the extent of Baba Yaga’s cruelty.
It was not so much the loss of her looks. The world thought too much about looks. Alexander did, and she hadn’t respected him for it. She’d already seen for herself the life of a pretty girl was different than the life of an ugly girl. The Baba hadn’t stripped her of power or skill. Being ugly might be an interesting invisibility. Being underestimated always presented an opportunity.
No. She could learn to go through life ugly, if she must. The bitterness of the thing lay in her powerlessness. Rapunzel wanted to be free. She liked her independence. She didn’t need or desire connections, be they parent, friend or lover. She wanted the open road and no ties.
Baba Yaga took that away. If Rapunzel wanted to reclaim even part of her life in her true body, she must depend on another, make a commitment she didn’t want to make and put herself in another’s power. A man’s power.
Horribly, it made her wonder if her sense of self-sufficiency and independence were real in the first place, or a happy delusion.
She turned over again. No. She wouldn’t think about that. Everyone knew how important it was to take care of yourself, not depend on others. It was especially important for women. This was merely an example of Baba Yaga’s mischievous malevolence. It was a test, perhaps, of Rapunzel’s strength.
She’d pass the test. She believed in her own strength—as long as she could be free. But now she couldn’t be free. Now she must deliberately seek dependence on someone else.
She flung herself onto her back and looked at the ceiling again.
***
The next morning, having dressed her unfamiliar and unlovely body and begged a jar of goose grease from the kitchen for her sore thumb, Rapunzel sought the road again. Wind had blown in the night, wearing away the snow. She’d heard it as she lay trying to find a way out of Baba Yaga’s trap. Patches of the road were nearly clear and the going became easier.
A few miles on, the road forked and she paused to consult the eye. She held it in her hand and walked a few steps along one path. When the eye closed, she went back and tried the other fork. The eye stayed open.
She wouldn’t try to meet a man. She refused to do that. Even if she wanted to, how in the wide world did a girl begin to look for a man who’d marry her? Rapunzel possessed no family, no history, no social life, no friends, no work and no community. She could imagine Baba Yaga’s glee if she threw away her dignity in a desperate search for a husband. No. She wouldn’t pay such a high price for the return of her beauty. Instead, she’d trust, in the tradition her mother taught her, everything she needed was already hers, or would come to her. After all, Alexander had found his way to her when she’d been locked in a tower!
The decision made her feel better. She’d followed the eye to the fateful encounter with Baba Yaga. Now perhaps it would lead her to some kind of solution to her dilemma.
Some days later she found herself in a busy town. She held the eye in her hand so she could glance at it at each corner. Left to her own devices, she would have shunned the place entirely, going around or turning away at the edge of it, but as the eye’s guidance became more and more exacting her curiosity grew. Clearly, it led her somewhere. Where? And why? And to what?
She came to a block of buildings, some looking quite old. She thought this must be the center of town. She stood on a street of shops and businesses. People came and went. At the end of the block, she tried left, right and straight ahead, but the eye remained closed. She turned and walked back down the street in the direction from which she’d come and tried left, right and straight ahead. The eye refused to open. She turned and looked back down the street.
It was ridiculous. She’d reached a dead end in the middle of a town she couldn’t even name, filled with business buildings and too many people — all of them strangers. There was nothing here for her. Perhaps the eyes, too, were some sinister device of Baba Yaga’s.
A young man walked by her. He carried a pack, as she did, but he took no notice of his surroundings. His shoulders hunched and he gazed at the ground, as though deep in thought. He radiated hopelessness. She watched him trudge to a low stone wall in front of an imposing building. He sat down and put his head in his hands.
He looked the way she felt. He looked the way she might have looked if she hadn’t been too proud, in fact. It made her curious.
She approached him. He didn’t even look up.
“Are you in trouble? Can I help you?” she asked.
“Tomorrow I’m to lose my freedom forever,” he said, “unless I answer a riddle.”
Rapunzel gave him a look of polite inquiry.
“I thought it would be so easy,” said the young man miserably. “I…I did something wrong and the judge sentenced me to answer a riddle correctly. She gave me a year to find the answer. Today is the last day of the year and I’ve filled three notebooks with answers to the riddle but not one answer is the same as any other.”
“What’s the riddle?” asked Rapunzel.
“What does a woman most desire?” he said dully.
“Oh, that’s easy!” said Rapunzel. “I know the answer.” She had a sudden idea. “I’ll tell you, but you must do something for me in return.”
“You know the answer?” the young man said in disbelief. “Are you sure you know the correct answer?”
“Absolutely,” she said with great confidence. She could see he believed her.
“I’ll do anything if you’ll give me the answer,” he said, as though hardly daring to hope. “Anything is better than losing my freedom.”
“Ah, don’t promise so quickly,” said Rapunzel. She took a deep breath. “What you must do is…marry me.”
The young man stared at her, and she knew she was the ugliest woman he’d ever seen.
“Marry…you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll tell you the answer to the riddle. You’ll go to court and finish your business and then meet me and we’ll be married. We’ll find a place where we can spend the night together. My name is Rapunzel, by the way.”
“I’m Richard,” he said automatically. He hesitated, and she held her breath. Would he do it?
“Agreed,” he said at last.
MARY/MOLLY
Mary woke with the feeling something came swiftly toward her, some change, some awaited person or event. Something. She felt strange, like herself and yet with new energy and determination. It was like the sun shining after days of being shrouded in fog, or waking feeling well after a long illness. She hadn’t been unhappy, following the path that sometimes became a road and sometimes a narrow track and sometimes a faint animal trail. She’d met and traveled briefly with several people, collected seeds and sown a few as well. Spring advanced and retreated, shy and wild, sullen and bitter and then boisterous and rough, with now and then a day of sweetness and sunshine. This morning she awoke to the liquid trilling of thrushes and excited chatter of other songbirds, busy everywhere in thickets, trees and amongst growing grass and grain.
As she walked along, she explored with part of her mind her feeling of change, savoring at the same time the sunlight, the sound of the birds and the feeling of leaping potential and growth from every side. The path under her feet took her through fields and meadows, gradually straightening out.
Some way ahead a strange figure caught her attention. A child-sized figure, wearing a sand-colored cloak, moving slowly but steadily, dragged some kind of a large piece of cloth or carpet behind it. Mary didn’t hurry, judging her usual pace would soon overtake the slower traveler. As she drew closer, she saw the cloth was a dull green color, corners knotted together to form a rough pocket. The child gripped it with both hands extended behind so the cloth slid along over the greening ground. It looked strange and rather awkward. Evidently the load was weighty, for the child leaned forward, pulling hard.
Mary walked up beside the figure, humming a tune under her breath so as not to startle him — or her. Her, she realized, as she looked sideways with a polite greeting. Dangling gold earrings swayed against the child’s neck under thick, tight black curls. A snakelike tattoo of dots, dashes and flat ovals twined up her bare arm.
The girl stopped, raised her gaze from the ground and gave Mary a smile.
“That looks heavy,” said Mary. “May I help you with it, as we’re going the same way?”
“Oh, bones are never heavy unless you try to lose them.” The child straightened her back and the cloak fell slightly open. She wore nothing underneath it except a ragged strip of cloth about her middle. Her bare chest revealed undeveloped breasts. She was barefoot and her fingernails and toenails were long and dirty. Her eyes were black. She was one of the strangest figures Mary had ever seen, attractive and somehow frightening at the same time.
“Aren’t they?” she said weakly, unable to think of any sensible response to this remarkably unchildish statement.
The girl laughed, showing strong teeth. “No! I’m Nephthys. I’ve been waiting for you so we could walk together. You’re carrying things, too. We’re invited to a party for spring!” She gave a skip of joy. “You with your seeds and I with my toys!” She jerked at the corners of the oiled cloth in her hand and the contents rattled.
“I’m invited?” said Mary, taken aback. “Are you sure?”
Nephthys turned dark eyes on her, and Mary felt sudden awe. They were not the eyes of a child.
“Are you the Seed-Bearer Mary, who was once Molly?” asked Nephthys. “Do you carry seeds?”
Mary did indeed carry several bags and bundles of seeds, some tied around her waist and some hanging around her neck. She preferred to keep them against her skin. “I am,” she said simply.
“Then you’re the right person, but you don’t need to come if you’re going somewhere important.”
“No,” said Mary. “I’m following…” she paused, not knowing how to explain to this strange child that she followed an unseen piper.
“Oh, yes, he’ll be there, too,” said Nephthys unconcernedly, “and others.”
“I’ll come,” said Mary.
Nephthys handed a grubby bag to Mary. It appeared to be made of some kind of animal hide and felt gritty.
“These are desert seeds,” she said. “Desert plants grow deep roots, but are small above ground. They grow best where nothing is easy or gentle.”
“Thank you,” she Mary. She’d received seeds from so many different hands she no longer felt surprised.
Nephthys allowed Molly to take an edge of the cloth she dragged and share the burden. Side by side, they walked on.
As day became dusk, they moved along the broad flanks of rolling hills. Young grass grew thick and green, starred with early wildflowers. Their path took them near a stand of trees and they stopped there for the night. In a crease between the hills a creek flowed noisily. They shared a meal. Nephthys was not talkative, but her silence was comfortable. Slowly, light went out of the sky. The child rolled herself into a blanket and went to sleep with her head pillowed on her cloth-wrapped burden.
Mary lay down too, lying on her back and looking up at budding branches overhead and the stars beyond those. The sound of the creek intensified. She laid a hand on her belly and then lifted up her shirt and laid it on her bare skin, feeling her abdomen lift and fall with her breath. She cupped her other hand around her bare breast. It filled her palm with soft warmth, nipple hardening at her touch. Her heart beat strongly under her breast, and her pulse throbbed under the hand on her belly, too. She felt intensely alive in the silent cool night.
She thought she heard the sound of piping in the flowing water. She listened hard, closing her eyes in concentration. Water chuckled and splashed over its rocky bed. Just water. Nothing more. She relaxed, realizing she’d held her breath as she listened. Then it came again, clearer this time, closer. She propped herself on an elbow, listening. It faded away, then began again, even closer. It became an unbroken melody, inviting, beckoning. A breeze suddenly stirred among the tender branches overhead. Her heart beat heavily, not a trip hammer flutter of fear, but a fierce pulsing, hot and heavy in her throat. She rose quietly to her feet. Nephthys lay on her side with her back to Mary. She didn’t stir.
Mary took a few steps to a nearby tree and laid her hand on it, listening. The tree shuddered under her hand, and a caressing wind stirred among the branches. Mary stood with her chin raised, eyes shining. She swept a hand from her throat down over a breast, over her belly, across the soft hill of mons and wing of hip.
The wind blew more strongly out of the sheltering trees. It swirled around her from every direction, chaotic and exuberant. It lifted the hem of her shirt and blew across her bare skin and her flesh rippled with goose bumps. Impatiently, she tugged at the leather thong that bound her hair and let the wind comb it into a honey-colored tangle. Grass rippled like fur on the flank of a great animal, and under the sound of wind, or maybe through the soles of her feet, she could hear or feel — it seemed almost the same sense — the night’s heartbeat.
She walked through grass and wildflowers, and they brushed against her, rising and falling like water as they blew in the wind. She paused, and with a quick movement released the sturdy linen skirt she wore and let it drop. She bent and took off her shoes and socks, one after another. Grass brushed her bare calves and she felt stems and earth under her feet. She walked, following the pipe, through a dark rippling sea of leaf, blade and stem. Stars shone like sparks in the sky. Noola was dark, and Cion a silver curve low on the horizon, giving scant light. As she walked, she unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall open. Following the pipe, she made her way down to the shallow creek, gleaming and flowing in its dark seam between hills.
He was there, on the other side of the creek. He held the flute to his lips with both hands, and as he played, he danced, elbows outthrust, moving his body and head together, the dark shape of a cloak swaying around him…but there was something wrong about his legs. The piper’s shoulders, chest, belly and arms were palely visible, like her own skin. She saw the dark dimple of belly button, and then a gradual blurring into shadow below that. She could make out the shape of strong flanks, but they were dark, lost in shades of night. He moved delicately, the piping dancer, too light-footed to be a man. Yet he was powerfully male, and even as she hesitated, puzzled, trying to make out his form, her body responded, nipples tightening, moist heat between her thighs. Her breasts ached for touch. The flute’s melody insinuated and aroused. She made her way to the creek and stepped in.
It was fiercely, painfully cold. She gasped, feeling the contrast to the liquid heat in the rest of her body. Her legs trembled. He stepped closer to his own side of the water. Now he stood no more than feet away from her. She caught a scent of musk. She realized suddenly the wind had lessened to a breeze.
Then, as she stood there, the creek stopped flowing. She looked down, incredulous. Water lapped against her lower legs, glittering and gleaming, but the sound of flowing had quite ceased. The whole night held its breath, leaning around her in amazement. The flute! The flute! It felt like a green thread of fire drawn through her body, part agony, part vivid, overwhelming excitement. She couldn’t bear it and at the same time she wanted it never to stop. Tears ran down her face and a trickle of moisture moved down the inside of her thigh.
Then the water, slowly, began to speak again, sliding and murmuring, chuckling and flowing, but now running in the opposite direction while the piper wrung music from his flute. Now she could see a silhouette of short pointed horns jutting out of the smudge of hair on his head. A gleam of moisture low on the pale skin of his belly caught her eye as he turned in his dance and the open cloak swirled around him in small points of light. The stiff phallus rose out of darkness at his groin, thrusting high and swollen against his belly. She groaned, a wild sound of lust she’d never heard herself make before. Into her mind came a name.
Lugh. Lugh. It filled her mouth like sunshine, soft and throbbing. Lugh. She’d never heard it before and yet…and yet…she recognized it. It pushed against the back of her throat, parted her lips. With sudden realization, she recognized he possessed the legs of an animal and hooves rather than feet. Of course! She’d forgotten. But now she remembered the smell and texture of those flanks, the bunch of his muscles under her hands…But no! What was she thinking? She couldn’t possibly know…
She put up her hands to cover her face and cried out, a raw cry like a woman in climax; like a vixen’s sobbing cry in a long cold February night, calling for a mate; like the hunting owl’s shriek. She cried out in the voice of a wild, passionate, chaotic night of wind and water and springing green growth. The piping stopped. Water flowed around her numbed feet. And from somewhere — from everywhere, came a triumphant eldritch shriek that tore through the night as though in answer.
She dropped her hands, stunned with terror. The piper was gone. She heard no sound but water flowing. The terrible shriek didn’t come again. The air was still. Stumbling on numb feet, Mary stepped out of the creek. She doubted her own senses. Was the creek flowing the opposite way? Had she been confused — imagined it? But the piper was real. She’d followed him for days — for weeks. She crouched, afraid to move. She longed for the safety of the grove, the company of the strange child, but she huddled on the creek bank, frozen with fear. Who knew what lay in the darkness between their camp and the stream?
Water flowed. Grass stood undisturbed. Stars shone steadily. Gradually, her fear ebbed. The night was quiet and serene now. At last, she stood up, alert, listening. All was peaceful. Her feet were cold. Wearily, she made her way up the slope, the grass brushing against her legs, feeling again the pliant tough stems under her feet. She didn’t try to find her discarded clothing, but walked straight to the clump of trees, found her blanket and lay down in the hollow left by her body.
She didn’t feel cold, except for her feet, but she trembled under her blanket. She drew up her knees and comforted her feet in her hands. After a few minutes, she stretched out her legs and rolled onto her back. She closed her eyes and saw the piper again, the wet gleam on the end of his erect phallus. She put a hand to her labia.
(This post was published with this essay.)