The Hanged Man: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #41: In which a young woman reclaims her feelings ...
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Persephone was unexpectedly called back to the Underworld, and a day later Baubo departed on urgent business as well. They hastily and apologetically said good-bye, promised they’d see Rose Red again, and told her to take a few days for herself.
Gratefully, she lost herself in forest peace. Trees leafed out to the sound of running water. Ferns uncurled from leaf mould and birds busied themselves in trees. She wandered silently, watched nests under construction, discovered animal tracks in mud, spied new growth on bramble bushes and the first shy anemone buds. Black and yellow morels grew under the trees, especially elm and ash.
She awoke one morning to find the world shrouded in wet, chill fog. The sound of dripping water was everywhere. In a few minutes, her cloak hung wet and heavy. Moisture beaded her eyelashes and each breath she took was rich with the smell of new growth and wet earth. Wisps of fog moved in and out between tree branches, coating each leaf with a film of water. Rose Red raised her face to the sky, smiling under the gentle mist. The sodden hood of her cloak fell back, her hair a curly riot around her face and neck.
She heard the sound of piping.
Rose Red lowered her face and stood, alert and watchful, listening hard. She couldn’t tell which direction it came from. She saw only grey-swathed trees around her, their top branches lost in fog. She found herself looking at new leaves on a nearby tree. The piping was like the tender spring green of the leaves. Or was their green like the leaping, vivid sound of the pipe? The tune rose and fell and her eyes rose and fell with it, moving from branch to twig and back again as green fire sparked out of brown wood and grey fog. She felt movement under her feet and looked down. The forest floor was soft and wet with a layer of old brown leaves but green shoots and fronds and pale fungi unfurled in response to the piping.
She was possessed by a sudden feeling of joy welling up from her feet, a feeling of life. The hem of her cloak was wet and beaded with mud, brown beads like gems on the dark green wool. The piping pulled at her, insistent, compelling, and she reached down, pulled up the edge of her cloak in one hand and, following the tune, feet light and eager, danced a few steps. The piping rippled as though laughing in joy and she smiled in response. The melody quickened and she responded, moving gracefully between tree trunks, drops of water splashing down on her as she passed.
This was not like the heavy, grounded beat of Persephone’s dumbek. The pipe laughed and played, coaxing, holding out its hand, now a thin silver sound of rapture and a moment later a leaping green fire. It was utterly wild and free, changing from moment to moment. It was as though the forest played itself, grey and brown, cool and wet, everywhere green life springing into being. On and on it led her, through flowing rivulets, under trees, across clearings where thick new grass bowed with drops of water. Her wet curls clung to her cheeks, her boots were mud to the ankles, her cloak splashed and streaked. She smiled but tears mingled with drops of water on her face. There wasn’t a thought in her head. She was filled with a kind of wild exultation, at one with the music and forest.
Suddenly the piping paused, leaving deep, listening stillness among the trees like an indrawn breath. Rose Red stilled, poised on dancing’s edge, waiting … A single note played like a cry, a lonely, aching sound, lost and despairing. The note died away into infinitesimal whisper of mist and breathing trees. Again, the single musical cry, solitary and heartbreaking. It went straight through her, cold and sharp. Hair stood up on her body and her heart beat heavily. She wanted to run away from the sound, never hear it again. She was lost, alone, cold, wet through and suddenly terrified. She turned to flee from the heart of the chilly, wet, silver wood where only moments before she’d felt so at home and joyous.
She looked up and met the stern, wide-eyed gaze of a white owl. It glared down at her from a branch. Its eyes pinned her, commanded stillness.
Silence. Drip of water onto forest floor. No movement. No piping. Waiting, watching, listening silence. Her heart beat hard in her chest. Surely it was audible to the listening trees? Her breath came in hard gasps, and she tried desperately to force herself to silence. She mustn’t run. She mustn’t panic. If she ran, she’d unleash the listening, waiting spirit of the wood. The owl would swoop down and consume her.
The owl turned its gaze away, then, suddenly indifferent. She was, after all, beneath notice. She felt released. Carefully, she took a step. Nothing happened. She took another step, and another. Her terror receded with movement. She was allowed, then, to move among the trees. They watched her but wouldn’t try to stop her — yet.
She walked. She had no purpose, no goal. Deliberately, she took each step in the easiest place to set her foot, keeping to open ground between the larger trees. She strained to hear the sound of the flute. She knew it would come. The whole forest waited expectantly for the thread of music to be taken up again.
The ground sloped and a creek flowed, ice bound at its rocky edges. She looked down at it, the rush of running water distracting her from the need to listen. The ice looked clear as glass, a thin skin between rocks and over water.
Suddenly, from close by, she heard the flute again. A series of quick, demanding notes played and the ice at her feet cracked with a sharp sound. Water pushed at broken edges, thrusting them up into splintered pieces like glass. Again, the piping struck and ice cracked. She flinched, feeling it like a blow. Shards of broken sound pierced her.
It looked like a broken mirror. Ice reflected soft white light, growing stronger as she gazed down at it, disturbed but unable to look away. She realized the fog was burning away, the forest bathing in muted sunlight. Again came the series of notes, a cluster of delicate, inexorable blows shattering the silent icy skin over the living water. A dead branch lay at her feet. She picked it up. It felt rough and wet, colder than her cold hands. She experienced a hot desire to break the ice herself, feel it shatter and splinter, make her own sound of destruction. She raised the stick and brought it down. The impact made a satisfying crunch and water splashed. The current swept pieces of broken ice away. She struck another blow, and another. She would smash ice, glass, mirror, smash it into splinters, smash it into dust until nothing was left, let the water wash it away, cleanse itself, run free and wild, unlimited, unhindered!
She was weeping. Her throat hurt and she realized dimly she was screaming. The piping came from somewhere close. Perhaps if she looked behind her, she’d see the piper, but she was caught in a sensual red anger and lust for destruction. The music fed her rage, supporting it, holding it, opening it up like a fiery flower, and she beat at the ice with the branch, moving up and down the banks of the creek, beating and smashing, crying and screaming, and ice broke free and whirled away, broke free and lay melting in the mud, broke free and released water, revealed roots of rocks in the bank, broke free, melted, released and left her clinging to a tree trunk with torn, muddy, bruised hands and sobbing harshly in a foul torrent of grief and rage and pain.
After a time, she became aware of warmth at her side. She still clung to the tree, pressing her forehead painfully against it, eyes nearly swollen shut with crying. She felt cold through, stiff and aching, trembling with the purging of emotion. She felt utterly desolate, naked and vulnerable and broken. For some reason, the comforting sense of warmth made her angry again, but she was too drained to really feel it. She looked, and there, standing so close his shoulder brushed hers, was the White Stag.
She released her grip on the tree with stiff fingers. Her hands hurt. She laid one on the White Stag’s warm silvery coat. He looked at her out of huge dark eyes and she thought she recognized wisdom and something like compassion in them. She turned, then, from the tree and leaned tiredly against the stag. His coat was coarse and oily against her cheek and his warmth comforted the palms of her hands. He was solid and strong and he stood quite still, supporting her.
She became aware of his breathing and her own ragged breath smoothed out, quieted and fitted itself to his rhythm. He was warm, so warm! She was unutterably tired. The forest filled with afternoon shadows. The fog burned away and the sun shone. She suddenly realized the piping had stopped. Really stopped now — the forest no longer seemed expectant and watchful. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in some safe place and sleep.
The stag turned his head and she felt his breath on her ear as he nuzzled damp curls near her cheek. She stood up, wiping her face with her hands, and then gathered a handful of new leaves, fresh and cool and wet, and cleaned her hot, swollen face.
The White Stag took her back to the cleft in the forest floor and the hollow under the ledge where she’d first met Persephone. She shed her cloak and lay down on the bed of bracken, drew a warm fur over herself, and fell into sleep.
***
“Rosie!”
Someone was calling her.
“Rose Red! Wake, daughter!”
A hand at her shoulder. Rose Red opened her eyes. It was dark but the graceful curved shape of Artemis’s bow gave off a silvery glow.
“It’s time to wake now,” said Artemis, but not with impatience. Rose Red heard a smile in her voice. “Come with me.”
Rose Red was stiff and her eyes felt puffy but she felt rested. She dressed herself swiftly, bathed her face and sore hands in the stone basin that caught spring water and ran her fingers through her hair, finding it tangled and curly from rain and mist, dance and sleep. Artemis handed her cold meat and a lump of cheese wrapped in leaves and, ravenous, she ate.
Food put new life into her. She took a long drink from the basin and was ready. Artemis eyed her with approval.
“You’ve done well. I’m proud of your courage.”
Rose Red met her eyes, and for the first time wasn’t ashamed. The fear she wouldn’t prove good enough had receded.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
They made their way up the narrow path climbing out of the cleft. The evening forest was cool and damp, scented with fresh new growth. Artemis chose a path invisible to Rose Red. Her bow gave a pale light and they walked silently, Artemis a step or two ahead.
They came out into a clearing on a hilltop. Cion loomed in the southern sky, a silver shadow. The dark eastern sky glowed and Rose Red realized Noola was rising. Artemis leaned her bow against a tree trunk and stood in the clearing, facing the strengthening light. She raised her arms in a graceful gesture of reverence and surrender, palms up.
A sound of piping curled through the shadowed forest.
Noola began to rise, more golden than silver, huge and luminous as it came into view above the horizon. The vast curve of Cion was a pale arc overhead. The flute played an expectant series of notes, an unfinished melody that slowly, slowly rose and gathered strength and then hung, suspended, while the full moon came into view. Rose Red stepped back into the trees, wanting the feel of them around her. Artemis stood without moving, hands raised in that peculiar gesture of something like worship, Rose Red thought, or perhaps command. It was as though the piper, Artemis and Noola worked together in the still spring night. Rose Red laid the palm of her hand on the smooth white trunk of a slim tree.
She had a sudden feeling of warm shock when her skin came in contact with the bark. It surprised her and she flinched, though it didn’t hurt, exactly. Hair rose on her arms and her nipples hardened. She became aware of her feet inside her leather boots and the soles of the boots pressed into the damp living earth. She took a deep, slow breath, tasting wakening woods. Wet leaves, icy water, a hint of peppermint and fresh growing herbs with an undernote of musk and rot filled her — not quite taste or smell, but something larger, more complete, that she couldn’t name. She looked out past Artemis at the horizon. Even as she watched Noola sailed higher, paling from gold to silver.
She looked back at the tree she was touching and gasped.
Under her hand, it shone as though illuminated by candlelight from within. She snatched her hand away. The light flickered out. Cautiously, tentatively, she laid her palm lightly against the bark again. There was a tingling shock and a growing feeling of warmth. The light sparked, went out, then glowed again, steadily increasing. She could feel it moving up the trunk of the tree under her hand. Branches over her head murmured and swayed slightly, though the night was still.
She became suddenly aware of piping again. Had it stopped and restarted or had she not been hearing it? She recognized the melody. She’d heard it earlier in the day, a sound of green fire. Light flared up the tree and out along a thick branch and, by the light of the moon, she watched buds form and swell, transforming from hard knots to tiny crumpled leaves slowly opening to cup the silver light.
A swift current of power moved up her legs, then down her arm and into her hand. Did the piper call it and push it through her? Or did Noola send it in light? Did Artemis command it? Or did Rose Red herself possess it — and unleash it?
Suddenly afraid, she again lifted her hand away from the tree. The light died away and the tree became still and quiet and, somehow, hard. Again, she pressed her palm against the trunk and the vivid feeling of life flowed through her and into it, pushing light higher and higher into the web of branches and twigs, pushing out leaves like green sparks. The tree breathed and lived under her hand, pliant as flesh, and then shimmered as a figure stepped away from it.
It possessed a human form but Rose Red couldn’t assign a sex to it. It wore a gauzy robe that caught moonlight in glints of silver. Long hair fell from under a crown of leaves, thick and wild and dark in moonlight. It reached out a hand to her and her own hand rose to meet it, finding an insubstantial cool grasp feeling like a handful of twigs and leaves. It tugged at her and she took her other hand from the trunk. This time the light didn’t die away but glowed and rippled throughout the tree’s body.
Artemis lowered her hands and faced Rose Red, who stood hand in hand with the tree spirit. Noola rode low, white and silver, fully rounded. The dryad held out its hand to Artemis and she came at once, graceful and confident in her short tunic and boots, and took it.
“The trees may be wakened under this full moon,” she said to Rose Red, “but there are few with the ability to do it. Only a true guardian, one who retains a certain wild spark of their own, has the power. You’re such a guardian. He with the flute,” she gestured vaguely at the woods around them, where the piping still played, a complex melody that made Rose Red think of wind and water, silver and gold light, the shadow dance of leaves. “He calls them out of deep sleep, and she,” she gestured up at Noola with her free hand, “she lights the way.”
They came across the clearing to a tall evergreen. The dryad stopped under the sheltering canopy of branches and needles and lifted the hand linked with Rose Red’s, pressing her palm against rough bark. Again, Rose Red felt the electric warm shock and the trunk began to glow with light. Artemis too laid her palm against the tree.
“Do you know why I carry my silver bow?” she asked.
Rose Red was surprised by this apparently inconsequent question.
“No.”
“It’s a symbol of focused intention. When I look at it and feel it in my hands, I remember who I am and what I’m here to do. My physical body mirrors my spirit.”
Rose Red flinched at the word ‘mirror.’
The evergreen glowed now with dim internal light that moved out into the needles. Artemis smiled.
“Yes. Mirrors. Rose Red, my daughter, a mirror is neither good nor bad in itself. It’s a neutral thing. You understand that?”
Rose Red did understand it. She nodded.
“You’ve freed yourself this day. Now, for this night, free the tree spirits into the world. They await your touch. Lay your other hand on the trunk.”
Rose Red did so.
“Now, daughter, open yourself to the current you feel from Noola’s light, the earth beneath your feet and the piping.” Artemis stepped away from the evergreen and her voice strengthened, became commanding. “Open yourself as widely as you can. Soften yourself. Let your defenses fall away. Push the life that runs through you into this being beneath your hands. Push it out until the farthest needle tingles with life. Wake the tree, Rose Red. Call forth the dryad into the world. It’s the Night of Trees.”
Rose Red breathed. With each breath, she relaxed, opening herself. She widened her stance, moving her legs apart, feeling her feet firm on the ground. She breathed, felt her belly loosen and her ribs flex. Her nipples tightened and hardened, tightened and hardened, and the feeling made the flesh between her legs swell and moisten. She breathed. Muscles in her back relaxed. Muscles in her shoulders loosened. She opened, feeling afraid and naked but exultant. She opened and the piping pushed life through her, silver and grey and wet, icy and sparkling, a cold green fire. She directed it through her hands into the tree, and under her hands the tree opened itself, becoming pliant, breathing, accepting.
A form stepped away from the tree, human shaped, with a wreath of evergreen boughs around its head. A white owl swooped down from some hidden perch in the bushy branches, soaring silent around the crowned figure, rising and falling like white ash. Was it the same white owl Rose Red had seen earlier?
“Welcome, White Lady!” said Artemis, and the owl screeched, eyes glowing.
Night of Trees. Night of Trees. Time was elsewhere. Round Noola glowed in the sky and saw herself, waxing and waning, in Artemis’s silver bow. The Night of Trees was suspended in the breath of the unseen piper. Rose Red moved from tree to tree, laying her hands against trunks. Green and silver notes warmed her, licking along nerve endings and skin. She loosened her tunic and let it fall away. She stepped out of her skirt.
Moonlight flooded down, throwing shadows under her breasts, into her groin, beneath her chin and under the firm curve of her buttocks. The dryads, released to revel in this night of nights, joined hands and danced, weaving in and out of their companions’ rooted bodies. Some followed Rose Red, murmuring with pleasure and gratitude, caressing her with fresh, cool fingers, greeting each newly released dryad with soft cries. They made obeisance to Artemis, and she to them, inclining her head with a smile. She and Rose Red wore garlands of new leaves.
Then there were no more trees to waken. Noola floated overhead, riding high above silhouetted branches swelling with buds even as she watched. The piping changed. No longer earthbound, now it threaded through stars, as though the vast night breathed green and silver notes for planets and suns and unimaginable worlds beyond. Night contained them all, dryad, huntress, tree, moons, White Lady, piper and herself. Or was the piper in fact the night, come to walk Webbd’s hills and forests?
Around Rose Red dryads stood still and silent, faces tilted up to look at the budding forest canopy and moonlit sky. Silver light bathed Artemis’s face as she stood with one hand resting on her curved bow. Piping overflowed the cup of night.
Then it changed, the melody becoming teasing, beckoning, seductive. The pipe called, commanded. Noola glowed, suspended. The piping wove an invitation of longing, of desire. Rose Red felt her body’s arousal. The forest throbbed around her, breathing musk. Dryads sighed and a thousand new leaves moved sensuously, black and silver in moonlight. The forest hummed and vibrated as though an unseen wind swept through its roots. Rose Red smelled crushed green leaves and wet fern. She smelled rotting wood and loamy earth, the scent of dark hollows and fungus and old leaves, the scent of bone and blood and musk. She saw moonlight on pale skin, flowing hair, a cheekbone thrown into sharp relief in silver light, an outstretched arm, a head thrown back in ecstasy, offering the stem of a neck to the night. Artemis was gone. The place where she’d stood was an empty shadow between trees.
A great longing rose within Rose Red, a tide of desire, a sense of pent-up power. She heard piping at her shoulder, realizing it had stopped and now started again. She turned, graceful and swift, moonlight silver on her bare flesh, breasts high and full and firm. Behind her stood the piper, and moonlight picked out the curved tips of horns among his curly hair; a hard, hairy flank; a sculpted arm, raised to hold his flute; the shadow of his navel. At his feet crouched a fox. Its moonlit coat had no color, but she saw the erect bushy tail, the vulpine silhouette of the face and the gleam of an eye.
Rose Red stepped forward and the piper stepped back, but the fox remained. It sat on its haunches with its thick tail covering its feet and looked into her face. The notes played the gold and silver moon, the budding trees, the green fire in her hands, the timeless night, cool breast and belly and thigh. The forest awoke and lived, twining and sighing in ecstasy, because she’d made it so. Silver light dripped from the hard points of her breasts. She took another step forward and the fox rose with a graceful movement and came to her. It raised its muzzle and sniffed delicately at her leg. Rose Red trembled. Singing energy, green and silver, blue and violet fire, rose from the forest floor, passed into the soles of her feet and traveled up her body in a torrent. The fox circled her and she felt its whiskers brush behind her knee, and then further up the back of her thigh. It came to stand before her again and moonlight shone on a white tooth as it lifted its muzzle and took in her scent. She opened every nerve, every muscle and cell, pushing energy into the deep cup of her belly until it swelled within her, swelled and moistened, and the fox paced in front of her, sniffing, brushing his thick soft tail against her thighs. Silver shadows leapt between its neat pointed muzzle and her flesh. The piping stopped. The forest drew in a breath and the star-studded wooden cup containing Night of Trees overflowed. The forest gasped, and the white owl launched itself with a fierce screech. It swooped and circled, rising up and down in its own primordial dance.
(This post was published with this essay.)