The Hanged Man: Part 5: Imbolc (Entire)
In which you can read without interruption ...
Part 5: Imbolc
(i-MOLG) February 1; strengthening light, fertility and creativity. Awakening of youthful, chaotic energy. Midway between Yule and spring equinox.
The Card: Strength
Fortitude, passion, self-empowerment and initiation
CHAPTER 15
MIRMIR
“In a time long passt and coming again ssoon, in the dessert hidden under a falcon’ss wing, Nephthyss and Minerva select boness, boness that might be shaped to ssing, to carry the wind, to press against lip and finger pad in ecsstatic voice, boness ridged and cracked, folded, curved and knotted.”
“Our flutes,” said the Hanged Man dreamily, earlier irritation forgotten in the absorption of Mirmir’s story.
“A courier comess with lambent wingss, dark eyess and a long golden tail, flashing through the dessert night, trailing a shower of ssparkss. He flies with the bones to a land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color, and lays them before a man with small shining dark eyes and hands that find shape within shape. In hearth light, his wife sews skins together and his baby son crawls around his feet.”
“The baby was Kunik, and his father the maker, whom the ice bears ate.”
“The ice bearss ate Kunik’ss father and mother, yess,” said Mirmir. “Now the one you call Kunik is the maker.”
“The Firebird carries the flutes?”
Mirmir smiled. “Later, the courier returnss out of flickering curtainss of northern lightss and collectss two bone flutess, pierced, polished and carved. He carries the flutes to an underground cavern where Dvorgs give lives and love to stone and mineral. They inlay and band, adorn and embellish with citrine and copper, topaz and brass, gold and amber for one, and moonstone, pearl, turquoise and silver for the other.”
“Finally, the courier carries the finished flutes to Minerva in her workshop above the sea, and she makes a careful note, tells the courier they will do, and wraps them tenderly until their next journey to a warm-windowed house in the dark of the year, where miracles happen.”
“And so the wheel turns. The body of the man who found shape within shape feeds his brethren, the ice bears, along with his wife, but his child survives and wanders sea, forest and desert, far from the land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color, and his hands too find shape within shape. Lady of Bones meets him and knows him. She passes word to Minerva, the courier and the gem masters.“
“All shall be well for the next cycle.”
“Yes,” said the Hanged Man ruefully, “everything is bound to the cycle. I know. Go on telling about Mary. What happens next?”
“The wild maiden returnss,” said Mirmir. “The aspect that cannot be brought to heel.”
“Something wild always looks out of the maiden’s eyes…” said the Hanged Man, musing. “It should be so.”
“Nephthyss ssmelled water in the desert and made preparationss for a journey,” Mirmir resumed. “The dwarve Rumpelstiltskin dreamt of thawing stone and woke with an old cradle song in his mouth, knowing the greatest test of his love approached. Trees dripped in the forest and Artemis and the White Stag turned together within the cycle. Snow melted into slush and the child Molly became the woman Mary without noticing. Mirror’s power cracked like a thin skin of ice, and Baba Yaga played marbles while the chicken legs under her hut stretched and flexed in preparation for the road.”
MARY/MOLLY
Day waned. Morning wore a fine green mist draped over trees and hills, but as the sun dimmed the hint of green turned chilly and grey. Mary heard no piping that day. On some days, it threaded along her path, now near, just around the curve, now far in the distance, beckoning, beguiling, teasing. She had yet to see the piper but the sound of his music was companion and reassurance. If she heard it, she went in the right direction. Other days there was nothing but the path and the slowly awakening spring around her, and she felt full of lonely doubt.
She walked through a forest on last season’s leaves. Trees showed budding growth but no warmth of green. She felt tired and hungry and remembered with longing the comforts of Janus House and her mother-friend’s arms, so many miles and days behind her. She nurtured a vague hope she would meet Mary in some unexpected place. Hadn’t Mary implied they’d be together again? She hadn’t expected this endless lonely traveling, following the sound of pipes, watching the painfully slow advance of spring around her, but having no goal, no fixed point ahead to walk toward. The path unrolled before her and she walked it. That was all.
She caught movement out of the tail of her eye. The forest grew on gently rolling hills and something moved between the trees on a slight slope. She looked carefully for the brown shape of a deer. It would be hard to see in the grey and brown of the evening wood. Ah! There it was. Not brown but light grey—a horse, perhaps? Why was a horse loose in the woods? She saw no saddle or rider. It stepped into a clear place and it was white, a glowing warm white, antlers branching from its head. It was the white stag she’d seen on a night of fire and frost, in a circle of resurrection.
For a moment, Mary didn’t believe her eyes. The dreamlike quiet wood gave her a feeling of being in a suspended interval between one thing and another. The stag watched her out of dark eyes, majestic and confident, and without thinking she left the path and walked slowly toward it. It watched her coming as though it had been waiting for her. As she drew closer, her steps slowed. She didn’t dare get too close. She hesitated, stopped. Delicately, it stepped toward her, lowering its antlered head. She let her mitten drop onto a damp mat of leaves and held out her left hand, palm up. The stag pressed its muzzle into the cup of her hand. She had a brief impression of warm breath, the prick of coarse hair. Then it was gone, yet she felt as if the stag had touched some deep, intimate place that had never been touched before. Painful tears welled and she gasped, choking. The hairs on her body stood erect in a ripple of gooseflesh. The stag turned unhurriedly away and moved off through the trees. Mary picked up her mitten and followed.
They walked up a gentle slope. Above the trees, light dimmed. Mary wondered in a distant sort of way where she would shelter for the night. After a time, the stag turned suddenly into a cleft that went down between trees. In the steep cleft walls, she could see layer upon layer of tree roots, earth and leaves. The cleft widened out into a narrow valley and the stag led her to a high jutting ledge of woven roots and earth. Under the ledge, she found a hollowed-out shelter. She heard the trickle of water and discovered a spring flowing into a natural stone basin. Against the wall the ground dipped into a depression filled with dry leaves and bracken near a neat stack of furs. She looked up at the White Stag, but it wasn’t there. She was alone.
The cold water in the stone basin smelled of leaves and growing things. She drank thirstily and splashed her face. Against the wall of the hollow leaned a silver bow and a pouch of arrows. The bow curved in a delicate half-moon, giving off a gentle silver glow. Mary could see intricate carving. She touched neither bow nor arrows, feeling their power was not for her hands. She took food from her bundle and ate, taking another long drink at the stone basin. She felt tired. She laid a fur on top of the piled leaves and boughs. They made a comfortable mattress, whispering and rustling with her movement. She took off her shoes and outer clothing, covered herself warmly with more furs and laid down to sleep.
She dreamed. She dreamed of ivory-colored antlers, twined and woven into an intricate pattern and holding a wreath of flowers, yellow and white and fragrant… She dreamed of walking down into the earth’s body, past layers of green moss and rich dark earth, layers of crumbling bone with fronds of fern growing up around them, brown roots stretching and swelling with life, and rock and shells, the salty litter of an ancient beach. She dreamed of a handful of black seeds. They felt warm, like little embers. They hummed and vibrated with sound she couldn’t quite hear but rather felt in the small bones of her hand as she held them.
Then she heard the familiar, haunting sound of piping, and threads of fragile golden light began to radiate out of the black seeds. Silently, the seeds split open, one by one, and her hands filled with golden light, touched with green and blue and violet. Gently, she spread her fingers wide and released the handful of light and seeds. They fell softly to the ground in a shower of sparks. She looked down, watching them glow against the dark earth, watching to see if they would take root and live. In their midst, the cloven foot of a goat appeared, pressing the glowing seeds into the ground, and the earth under the hoof begin to glow and pulse with a web of light spreading in every direction. The piping grew louder, more insistent, and she tried to let her eyes rise up the leg, wanting to see the rest … but her eyes would not obey… The sound of flowing water ran over her skin with wet warmth, touching her, dripping into every hidden fold and cleft of her body. She realized she stood naked and ran her hands voluptuously over her breasts and hips, appreciating the strong muscles of her thighs. Her nipples hardened and she felt slick moisture between her legs…
Mary stirred, turned over, threw back a fur as though too warm in her sleeping hollow, and quieted once more into deeper sleep.
The next morning, she washed herself at the stone basin, drank, shook out her clothes and dressed. She picked up the seed pouch she’d set aside while sleeping and washing, its familiar weight comforting in her hand. On a sudden impulse, she took it out into the early sunlight and unknotted the drawstring carefully, emptying it out onto a flat rock. She stirred the packages with her fingers. She wanted to plant a few seeds here for the White Stag, or whoever used this place and kept it. Her eyes fell on a bundle of seeds tied in a twist of pale green linen. The label said, “Forest (White Stag).”
Mary caught her breath. She thought she’d seen every package in the pouch, not once but many times. Evening after evening, she and her mother-friend, Mary, bent their heads over the seeds, Mary teaching her their names and where best to plant them. She’d never seen this package. Mary must have put it in the pouch before she left. But how did her mother-friend know Mary would meet the White Stag and come to this place? It seemed incredible.
Carefully, she untied the thread around the package and spilled seeds into her palm. She brought her cupped hand to her mouth and breathed over them, closing her eyes, remembering the touch of the White Stag’s muzzle. Closing her fingers loosely over the seeds, she walked up and down the narrow valley, choosing places where sunlight touched the moist ground, and scattered the seed.
One morning, some days later, she found herself on a track too wide to be called a path. Spring advanced, and on this day she appreciated the lighter weight clothing Hel had given her before she left Janus House. The sun warmed her bare arms. She hadn’t heard piping yet, but it had played in her dreams.
She heard voices behind her and turned to look. Two women of late middle age walked along, laughing together like young girls. One of them was generous bodied with wide hips, heavy breasts and thick hair the color of faded wheat, loosely plaited. She raised a hand to Mary in greeting when she noticed her looking back. The other was thinner, leaner, not so abundant. As they came closer, Mary thought the second woman looked rather careworn. Grey frosted her dark hair. Her smile emphasized lines in her face. Mary waited for them to reach her, feeling shy. She smiled in greeting and held out a hand as they came up to her but the woman with the plaited hair took her unhesitatingly into her arms. Mary felt enfolded in affection and reassurance and resisted the impulse to cling and rub her face against the woman’s bosom like a young child. The woman took her by the arms and looked into her face.
“Mary,” she said with joy, “I’m Demeter.”
Mary knew the name. Eurydice had spent many evenings telling stories to Mary and Molly in front of the fire at Janus House, and she’d told of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. Mary bowed her head, not knowing what to say or how to address the Corn Mother.
Demeter laughed and put a callused hand under Mary’s chin, raising it until their eyes met again. “No, Lady. I’ve come for your blessing. You mustn’t bow before me!”
The other woman stepped forward, distracting Mary’s attention from this remarkable statement. “And I’m Elizabeth, Mary. We’ve been watching for you. Will you walk with us?”
“Of course,” said Mary automatically. The three of them fell into step together and Mary tried to gather her scattered thoughts.
“I … how do you know me?” she asked.
“We know Hel,” said Demeter simply. “And we know Mary, the older Mary, I mean!” She laughed. “Spring is wakening again and we’re gardeners, like you. We’ve brought seed to give you, and we came for your blessing on our seed.”
“My blessing?”
“Yes, my dear. The blessing of your hands, your breath and your passion.”
Mary felt like an imposter. “I’m really not a gardener,” she said. “I mean, I’ve not done it before. Not like you! I’m just … I just love the seeds …”
“Perhaps you underestimate yourself,” said Elizabeth.
As they walked, Demeter talked of the corn, the wheat, the barley and oats, how each grew and what each needed. She pulled out bags and bundles of seed, showing them to Mary. She talked about her own vegetable garden, tea herbs, tall grass for the horses. Gradually, Elizabeth joined in, she in her turn showing Mary tiny seeds of herbs and salad greens. They stopped at midday to eat. Demeter provided barley bread and honey, cheese, olives and dried fruit and meat.
“Greens and many herbs can be planted now,” Elizabeth continued as Demeter passed out food. “They like cool weather best.” She handed Mary several packages. The largest was labeled “Rapunzel.”
They sat in a depression near a cluster of trees just coming into leaf. Grass and other plants greened and grew where the sun struck. Demeter, moving around to look at new growth, gave a pleased exclamation.
“I thought so!” she said with satisfaction. She raised her eyes and looked around. “Anemone! Come out, my dear! I know you’re here! She’s come!”
From around a large rock stepped a young woman who instantly reminded Mary of Eurydice. She had thick dark hair and olive skin with big, dark eyes. She wore a gauzy dress of deep red and her feet and head were bare. She smiled at Demeter and then looked at Mary with something like awe mixed with curiosity. Mary gave her a shy smile.
“Hello,” she said softly. The girl in the red dress looked fragile and wary and Mary didn’t want to frighten her. Elizabeth sat quite still, saying nothing, watching the scene. Mary, glancing at Demeter, noticed a clump of red color exactly the same shade as the dress Anemone wore at her feet. She gave an exclamation of pleasure and dropped to her knees in front of it. It was the first flower she’d seen in bloom and the color glowed like a pulse of joy.
“The anemone,” said Demeter quietly. “Some call them wind flowers. They say the spring wind blows the petals open, and then blows them away.”
Mary looked up at Anemone from where she knelt. “There’s a story! You know a story! Please tell it!”
They sat down with Elizabeth. Mary stretched herself out full length in the sun, feeling like a child again. Anemone began:
“Beautiful Adonis, whose name means “lord,” ruled the earth. He loved the excitement of the hunt.
Aphrodite, goddess of love, conceived a passion for Adonis. As is often the way with lovers, she became possessive. As her love for him waxed hot within her, she discouraged him from pursuing wolves, bears and boars—all the dangerous creatures of field and forest—lest he come to harm. Dressed in a short tunic and leather boots, she strode over the hills with him, calling to her dogs, pursuing stags or hares or other, safer game.
But one day she was absent and Adonis, chafing under the burden of her love, went hunting wild boar. He brought one to bay with his hunting dogs. He hurled a spear at it but missed the vital spot, and the creature charged, maddened with pain. It buried its tusks in his side.
Adonis lay groaning, stretched dying on the ground. Aphrodite heard his distress and found him there, bright blood from his wound spilling on the grass. Gasping, he breathed his life away, dark blood against his skin like snow, his eyes heavy and dim. She kissed him but he didn’t know it. She wailed and tore at her hair, and in her grief, she turned the scarlet splashes into delicate flowers, and I was born.”
They call me wind flower, for I’m born out of spring winds, bloom, and then the same winds tear my petals away …”
“The first anemones possess great healing powers,” said Elizabeth softly. “In this way Aphrodite sought to save others the grief she felt.”
Anemone reached between her breasts and brought out a red silk bag. She handed it to Mary. “Here are my seeds. Scatter them where sunlight falls in early spring and the ground is damp. They’re delicate and need shelter. Their flowering is swift, but they’ll announce spring every year and gladden winter-weary hearts.”
“I’ll plant them,” said Mary. “Thank you. I won’t forget.”
Anemone rose gracefully to her feet. “Will you bless me, Lady?”
Mary stood too, looking bewildered, bag in hand. “What blessing could I give you? You’re already blessed in your beauty!”
Anemone held out her hands to Mary. Dropping the bag into Demeter’s lap, Mary took them. Anemone turned Mary’s hands over, palms up. “Without you, I’m not,” she said simply. Impulsively, Mary pulled her forward and embraced her. “Grow and bloom and gladden our hearts, beautiful one,” she said. She felt Anemone’s warm lips on her cheek and then the girl stepped away, turned, and disappeared.
Elizabeth, Demeter and Mary walked together the rest of the day. As evening neared, they came to a crossroad. Demeter appeared to know the place. A few yards off from the meeting of roads sat a rough wooden bench, wide and long enough to lie down on. Here they sat and ate again.
“Why do you ask me for my blessing?” Mary asked, troubled, as they finished eating. “How do you know me?”
“Mary, you’re the Seed Bearer,” said Demeter.
For a fleeting second Mary glimpsed meaning and felt recognition, sensed something wheeling slowly around her. She glanced up at the sky, half hopeful, half apprehensive, but saw only sunset painting a series of thin, narrow clouds.
“The Seed Bearer,” she repeated.
“You bear the seed. You help waken winter into the season of growth.”
“I thought you and Persephone did that!”
Demeter laughed at her indignation. “We do! And Anemone and so many more! We do it together. Everyone is needed. We can’t do it without you and you can’t do it without us. We all serve the cycle. Your role is Seed Bearer. You collect, sow and reap. You’re a vessel of life. You’re even now standing on the edge of undreamt passion and wild power.” For a moment Mary saw a kind of fearful envy in Demeter’s eyes. “Many will seek your blessing and many will bless you in return.”
Demeter turned away, tidying up the remains of their meal and packing it neatly in her bundle. Elizabeth kept silent but met Mary’s glance with a smile and touched her hand reassuringly.
“Are the seeds safe?” Demeter inquired. “It’ll be dark soon.” Mary nodded, feeling for the pouches and bags tied around her waist. She’d hung the red silk bag around her neck so it nestled between her breasts.
“Will you hear another story, then, before sleep?” asked Demeter. “This is a good place to rest for the night.” She raised her head, listening. “Do you hear them?” she asked.
Mary and Elizabeth stilled and listened. A rising chorus of frogs swelled in the evening air. Mary smiled.
“Is there a pond?” she asked, low voiced.
“Over there,” said Demeter, waving her hand.
They settled together on the bench.
“Long ago, a maiden gave her heart to a wayfaring man. She met him at the crossroad on a market day. Oh, he was a long, lean, weathered devil, with a gleam in his eye and a smile on his lips! Many a song could he sing, many a tale could he tell, and he knew the lanes and towns for miles around. Every spring he appeared with his cart.
One spring, the maiden gave herself to the peddler and knew joy with him. They made plans for the future, and the peddler promised to take her away with him the following year.
The maiden spent the winter dreaming and waiting. He was her first thought in the morning and her last before sleep. As birds began to mate and build nests and the land stirred with spring, she left her village and went every day to the crossroads. Day followed day, and he didn’t come. One day, as the maiden sat weeping, an old woman with a wolf dog at her heel walked by and heard the maiden’s story.
‘And would you travel, and follow his footsteps, and find him again?’ she asked the maiden.
‘Oh, yes!’ said she, ‘but how can I, a young woman alone, hope to travel in safety until we’re reunited? I’ve no choice but to wait and hope he returns to me.’
‘Daughter, on this night don’t return home, but stay and keep watch, and see what happens,’ the old woman said, and walked on.
The maiden waited, hoping in vain for the sound of her lover’s approach. All afternoon she waited, and the sun went down. The spring night passed with frog song and owl talk. In the small hours, she grew so weary she lay down to rest as best she might.
The sun rose and the maiden slept. Around her body, green shoots began to grow. Pale flowers threaded through the dark strands of her hair. By noon, the maiden’s body had vanished into a mass of tiny white flowers and broad green leaves.
And so, the plantain was born, always underfoot and in danger, but made immortal. She crept along the world’s roads, setting out from this crossroad, searching for her lover. Wise women greet her with joy, for she’s a sacred, healing herb. She haunts fields and waysides everywhere, in many forms, keeping vigil for her lover, who never appears.”
Demeter knelt next to a greening mound of broad leaves as she finished, running her hands gently through them. Elizabeth and Mary came to kneel on either side of her.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth in wonder. “I know the plantain, of course. The plant I know has narrower leaves, though. It is indeed a powerful healing herb, easy to grow and impossible to get rid of!”
Mary caressed the cool leaves. “It was born right here? This is the first place it grew?”
“Yes,” said Demeter, half sad and half smiling. “This is where it started and ended for that poor girl. Now she can wander and search at will, stretching out in every direction, immortal and beloved by many, if not by him, the wretch! Poor thing!” She sighed. “I wanted you to see this place and hear her story,” she said to Mary. “Spring is rousing her for another season of searching. Now you’ll know her when you see her. Will you bless her, my dear? She’s a great healer. We can sleep here tonight and she’ll guard and keep us until morning.”
They unrolled their blankets and lay down together, and the frogs sang them to sleep.
***
When Mary woke in the morning, she found herself alone. She lay quiet, watching the day dawn. She reached her hand out of her cocoon of blankets and let it lie among the chilly, dew-wet plantain leaves. The frogs had gone to bed but birds warmed the cool morning with their song.
After a bit, she rose and folded her blankets. Demeter and Elizabeth had left her the last of the food. She sat on the bench and ate and then went and knelt in the clump of plantain. “Safe journey, my dear,” she said, resting her hands among the leaves. “Go well and find happiness.”
As she knelt there the sound of piping threaded through the morning the way the pale flowers threaded through plantain leaves. Mary rose and followed it.
RAPUNZEL
Rapunzel tucked Alexander’s eyes away. Though lidless, at times the eyes were clearly visible and alert. At other times, there was no sign of a blue eye in the white marble, and she thought of the eyes as closed. She made a game out of navigating according to whether the eyes were open or closed. If closed, she chose another direction. If open, she stayed on course. She had no fixed destination and wanted only to keep moving freely through the world.
Alexander was safe, settled in a small lake town. Family money provided him with a luxurious house, servants and a stable. He’d recovered his health but would never recover his looks or his sight. She felt thankful he couldn’t see the damage himself. It would hurt his vanity terribly. As his strength returned and visitors and family came and went, she grew more and more restless. The day he mounted a horse again in the company of a friend, she knew she was free.
It was winter, but that didn’t dismay her. She’d been locked away from the world’s seasons for so long, even winter was a welcome companion if she could be unconstrained. She walked through short days and sleeping landscape, greeting wind by name and playing in the snow like a child. The blue eyes showed her the way. She wanted nothing else.
Now early spring stirred, fierce and winter cloaked. One day caressed, the next day bit. Rapunzel gloried in it all. She wondered vaguely if the eyes truly led her, or merely opened and closed at random, but it didn’t matter. The game was good and she felt content.
For several days, the temperature had been low, and a sour wind scoured patient trees, sculpted snow into hard edges and sanded Rapunzel’s cheeks. She’d woken to clear, glassy light from a winter white sky. The wind was quiet.
She thought of food and fire, and paused to check the eyes, hoping they’d steer her to shelter before night. She walked on a road, but crusted drifts weren’t quite strong enough to hold her weight, so every step broke through sharp edges into cold, grainy snow beneath.
“Ha! You lose, you withered windbag, you lose! Now I’ll take my own back! Now my pretties come home to me!” The voice was shrill, gloating and cracked.
Curious, Rapunzel stepped off the road, slogging through thin trees toward the voice. Ahead she saw two yellow scaly legs, fifteen feet tall, like young trees. Yards and yards of gay crimson swathed each leg, like the longest scarves in the world. The legs ended in naked three-toed feet. They carried a small house. She approached it from the back.
She knew what this was. Her mother had spoken of Baba Yaga. Rapunzel was determined to have a look at the old hag from some place of concealment.
Feeling if she didn’t make a noise the legs wouldn’t discover her, she began to pick each step carefully, avoiding branches that might snap or crusts of snow that might crunch. Beyond the motionless feet she found a wide, treeless, flat expanse. Two figures bent over something on the ground. Her better judgement told her firmly to stay out of sight or, better yet, go on her way, but her feet took her straight toward the two figures.
She reached the edge of a frozen pond. Cleared ice lay in a smooth opaque sheet. Nervously, she kept her eye on the legs and the house. The front door looked like a mouth and two windows above and to either side of it like eyes. She felt sure it watched her, but shrugged the feeling away.
Under her feet, ice felt as solid as stone.
Being afraid stiffened her back and raised her chin, but her curiosity was irresistible. What could they be looking at?
It was a heap of shining ice crystals. Rapunzel blinked. No, not ice crystals, something like fallen stars. She blinked again. Sparks? Tiny blossoms? A mound of insects with jeweled wings? Gemstones? Embers? All of these. None of them, but something more beautiful.
Then she saw an open eye looking up at her.
She gasped and her hand went to the pocket where she carried Alexander’s eyes.
Marbles!
“Would you like to play, my little tanglenit?” inquired Baba Yaga sweetly.
It could be no one else. Rapunzel saw at a glance the white whiskers, grotesque curve of chin and nose, teeth like tusks. The witch’s eyes were cold as iron.
The man stood up, sighing as though in irritation. He wore a soft brimmed hat shading his eyes, and white winter light showed an empty eye socket. He turned his back on them and looked across the pond toward the other side. Rapunzel heard him take a deep breath and when he exhaled a breeze with a frosty tooth swirled across the ice, sweeping away hard grains of snow with a whishing sound.
“Oh, keep your hair on,” Baba Yaga snapped at his back. She grinned, showing iron tusks. “Not like this glabrous girl! What’s your hurry, old man? You’ve nothing better to do!”
Rapunzel, not trusting herself to speak (how did one speak to such a hag?) held Alexander’s eyes out wordlessly in her palm.
Baba Yaga delicately extended one iron-tipped dirty finger. Rapunzel bore the touch, shuddering inwardly. The nail tapped against one eye, then the other, making them roll and look in different directions. Looking thoughtful, she dragged the nail across Rapunzel’s palm, digging a narrow bloody furrow.
Rapunzel remained stoic, refusing to drop her gaze from the Baba’s.
“You’ll play!” said the old crone, and thrust the nail into her mouth, sucking loudly and luxuriously, like a baby at the breast. Her words were playful but her look was dangerous.
Rapunzel didn’t want to play. She’d played marbles as a child, but never with any skill. She’d sooner play a game with a bear or a snake than the Mother of Witches. She opened her mouth to say no, but found she couldn’t form the words.
“Odin, my dearie, shall we let the hairlet play? Shall we be nice to the pussy?” jeered Baba Yaga.
He shrugged his shoulders without turning around, as though to deny any responsibility in the matter.
Rapunzel, quite against her will, found herself kneeling on the ice playing marbles with Odin and Baba Yaga, pitching Alexander’s blue eyes against the shining heaps of treasure each of the other players possessed. Her hand was poised to shoot when Baba Yaga leapt to her feet, called “Elephant stomps!” and brought one foot up and down on the clustered marbles, driving them into the ice so not a single round side protruded above the surface.
Before Rapunzel could stop her shot, one of Alexander’s open blue eyes skidded across the surface of marble-studded ice, sliding to rest near Odin’s foot.
Baba Yaga’s hand swooped down and seized the marble.
“You lose, I win. I win, you lose,” she crooned. She held the marble up to eye level. “Bonny boy! Pretty boy! Come and live with old Baba! I’ll show you a thing or two! I’ll give you split ends and cherry breasts! I’ll give you something better than a witch’s brat!”
“You cheated,” said Rapunzel heatedly. “I don’t want to play with you!”
“Manners, moppet!” screeched Baba Yaga. “You forget who you’re talking to! Elders and betters, my dear! Elders and betters!” Her eyes mocked.
Rapunzel clenched her jaw. “You forced me to play! That’s mine. I want it back.”
“I won it, fair and square. Fair and round, hee, hee, hee! I have a fancy for it. I want it, and I can take it.”
Rapunzel stood up slowly. Her knees felt numb but her temper simmered. She looked down at the marbles embedded in the thick ice like so many jewels and focused her power on heat, on sparks budding and blossoming into embers, violet and green and red and orange, glowing and pulsing in a bed of ice. Thin tendrils of steam rose up from the ice-encased marbles. They shifted and sank through melting ice, leaving perfect round tunnels and dropping into the water several inches beneath.
Baba Yaga shrieked and cursed. Odin, who’d been watching, turned his back again, hiding a smile in his beard. Baba Yaga danced in fury. Rapunzel, already regretting her temper but refusing to be cowed, glared into Baba Yaga’s red eyes, turned on her heel and walked away.
She would not run. There was no need to. Three steps to shore. Two steps. She left the ice. She wouldn’t turn around. She wouldn’t look afraid. She stiffened her spine and walked, firmly and with assurance. She hoped.
She went past the immobile chicken legs without looking up at the house, through the grove of trees and back onto the road, her fingers tight around the remaining blue-eyed marble.
She strode through the snow, furious. The crust held her weight until just before she took the next step and then broke, leaving her wallowing. Powdery snow sifted between the fastenings of her boots and melted until her socks felt like they’d been soaked in ice water.
She knew enough about Baba Yaga to be unsurprised by the hag’s jeering and treachery. What irked her most was the loss of her will. It had filled her with fury to find herself kneeling on the ice playing marbles, of all the stupid games in the world, when she hadn’t the least intention of doing so. She believed herself to be powerful, independent and skilled, but she’d not been able to say no. The eyes belonged to her, bought with hard experience. They were part of who she was. Yet she’d allowed Baba Yaga to steal one.
She began to see farms and houses, windswept and hunched against the cold. Other tracks defined the road, and walking became easier. Soon she was in a town and thankful to see an inn. She needed a good meal and a warm bed tonight.
The innkeeper greeted her pleasantly, but his eyes skidded off her face and he didn’t look at her again. Cold and wet already, his attitude further piqued her. She knew she looked bedraggled but she was used to men responding more favorably to her youth and unconventional cap of short hair.
Key in hand, she went up the stairs and found her room. Thankfully, she shut the door hard behind her, shedding pack, scarf, cloak and gloves carelessly onto the floor. A fire was laid ready and she lit it and began to work on the wet lacings of her boots.
The room warmed. She hung her wet clothes on a couple of chairs in front of the grate, rubbed her feet and put on dry socks. Her hair felt matted and snarled. She tried to run her fingers through it, but it was too tangled. It was getting too long again. She rooted for a comb and went to stand in front of a mirror propped against the wall on the top of a chest of drawers.
In the mirror, looking back at her, was the ugliest woman she’d ever seen.
Rapunzel flinched back and turned aside, as though to escape a blow. She looked wildly around the room. The fire burned cheerfully. Her own clothes dried on chairs. Her pack lay on the bed, making a deep dent in what looked like a feather comforter. She recognized the comb in her hand, but the hand was rough, knuckles lumpy, nails ridged and discolored. She dropped the comb on the floor and spread out both hands, turning them front to back. The skin over the backs was puckered and scarred, knotted with blue veins. A deep fissure grooved her thumb, looking sore and dry.
Not just looking sore. It was sore.
She went back to the mirror, still disbelieving but beginning to understand.
Baba Yaga.
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.
CHAPTER 16
ROSE RED
Rose Red lay sleeping, her black hair tumbled on the pillow. In her dream, she listened to piping, a beautiful, elusive, beckoning sound that called irresistibly for her to follow … She smiled in pleasure and wonder as the sound slipped over her, cool and refreshing. Her lips moved as she dreamed her own smile and smiled at her own dream.
Then, in the midst of tantalizing wonder and pleasure, a screaming shriek rent the dream into fragments, like thin cotton cloth torn on an iron nail, and the dream fell into burning pieces shaped like autumn leaves but holding a world of swelling green and summer gold.
Her mother, Queen Snow White, feared sunlight and never went outdoors, lest her white skin be coarsened, but that morning Rose Red lingered at her window, looking out at the silvery spring morning. She longed to go out into the awakening gardens, walk over the muddy soft earth and feel the damp air against her cheek. Yet time was passing. Even now, the queen would begin to wonder why she didn’t come.
Resolutely, Rose Red left the window and went to her mother’s rooms. The queen, unsurprisingly, was seated in front of her mirror. Rose Red noticed one of the queen’s elaborate gowns laid ready on the bed, and next to it a smaller, matching dress, slightly less elaborate and more modestly cut. Firmly, Rose Red put a smile on her face and went to stand behind her mother’s shoulder.
Rose Red looked like the queen in lovely miniature and innocent immaturity. The queen gazed hungrily at the girl, feasting on the rich careless abundance of black hair, the generous-lipped red mouth and white skin. Rose Red’s day had begun.
The morning slowly wore away as Rose Red posed with Queen Snow White, holding a flower, hair painstakingly arranged, every detail intended to complement the queen’s toilette.
“Your beauty is your greatest asset,” Queen Snow White said seriously. Rose Red nodded and tried to look interested, pushing away her shameful boredom. She’d heard this so many times before!
“You must guard your looks carefully from any harm. Guard your skin and hair. Keep your expression calm and serene so you don’t develop wrinkles and lines. Women without beauty possess no power. Never forget that.”
“No, Mother,” said Rose Red automatically.
The terrible truth was Rose Red wasn’t interested in the way she looked. She knew it would hurt the queen to say this, so she didn’t. But she thought it.
She wanted to know her mother, not the carefully created reflection in the mirror, but the real woman. Sometimes she asked her mother for stories about the world outside the castle, about the queen’s childhood and parents. But all the stories were about her mother’s beauty. She couldn’t talk about anything else and Rose Red struggled increasingly to hold back her impatience and restlessness as the weeks passed.
One morning, feeling scratchy and rebellious and determined to provoke some kind of a genuine response, Rose Red picked up a pair of scissors and raggedly chopped off her long black hair.
There was a terrible scene. First Queen Snow White raged and then she wept, saying she knew she was a bad mother, if Rose Red could behave so! Rose Red, stricken at the hurt she’d caused, apologized over and over, but the queen refused to be comforted. What would people think when they saw her? What would her father, the king, say?
“You’re bad!” the queen sobbed. “You’re bad! How could you do such a terrible thing?”
Rose Red turned and left the room. With no thought or plan, she went down the long hallway, down the stairs and out the nearest door. The sun was shining and it fell onto her face in welcome. Rose Red moved into the shrubbery so she couldn’t be seen from the windows. She moved cautiously through trees and bushes, staying out of sight, her chest so tight she could hardly breathe, and passed through a gate in the wall surrounding the castle and into the woods.
Here she felt safe. She made her way along a narrow path winding through trees until the castle wall dropped out of sight behind her. The path passed near a clearing. Grass grew thickly, scattered with early flowers. Rose Red left the path, chose a grassy spot in the sun and lay down on her back, closing her eyes.
She took a deep breath. It felt like the first breath she’d taken since the scene in the queen’s room. With the breath, her chest loosened and she began to cry. Tears ran down her cheeks, wetting her ears and falling into the grass.
She knew she was bad. She’d known for a long time. She wanted something more than to be beautiful, and that was bad. She’d hurt her mother, and that was bad. She wanted, sometimes, to be alone and private or even make a friend, and that was the worst of all.
Her mother wasn’t happy, and it was her fault. She’d tried and tried to make her happy, but no matter what she did, it wasn’t good enough. She couldn’t be what her mother needed. There was something wrong with her, something ugly beyond hope or help.
Gradually, she came to the end of her tears. She wiped her face and rubbed at her wet ears with the sleeve of her dress. The sunlight felt comforting. She pushed up her sleeves as far as she could. She put a hand on her belly and let it rise and fall with her breathing. She could hear birds, and a bee buzzed over her head. Heat and emotional exhaustion made her drowsy. It was bliss to be alone.
Just as she thought that, she heard a soft sound of singing. She sat up quickly, feeling guilty. The singer came into sight, walking along the path. Rose Red saw a girl a few years older than she was. She wore a black skirt, white apron, and a vest embroidered with leaves, flowers and animals.
“Hello,” the stranger said, smiling. She sat down, looking curiously into Rose Red’s face. A dark fleck marked her cheek under her left eye.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Rose Red politely.
“You look as though you’ve been crying. What happened to your hair?”
“I’m all right. I…I cut my hair.”
“Why? Was there no one to help you with it? It’s hard to cut one’s own hair.”
“I wanted it to be different and no, there was no one to help.” Rose Red turned her face away, feeling tears well up again.
“I’m Vasilisa,” said the other. “What’s your name?”
“Rose Red.”
“Would you let me help you tidy your hair? It’s beautifully curly. It only needs to be trimmed. I wish my hair would do that, but it’s straight, so I keep it plaited.”
“It’s…you don’t think it’s ugly?”
“Ugly? Of course not! You’re beautiful, far prettier than I am.”
“Don’t we need scissors?”
“Yes, and my friends live nearby. We’ll go there and I’ll do your hair.”
Rose Red couldn’t face going back to the castle. Not yet. She knew her mother would be looking for her, but she couldn’t bear to go back. She stood, brushing at her skirts, and followed Vasilisa across the clearing and along the path.
After a few minutes’ walk they came to a stone cottage. Rose Red saw a neat garden inside a fence. A well wore a peaked roof like a cap. A cat watched from a window ledge. The roof echoed the inverted V shape over the well, a window under the peak. Outside the house stood a slab of stone that served as a table. The chiseled base formed a single supporting pedestal and several chairs sat around it. No one was in sight. Vasilisa opened the unlocked door, disappeared for a moment, and returned with comb and scissors. Rose Red sat in one of the chairs and Vasilisa stood behind her. Gently, she combed out the tangles, making no comment on dampness around Rose Red’s ears. She began to snip away with the scissors.
It was peaceful. The cat watched lazily from its perch. Rose Red saw a beehive in a small orchard behind the garden. “Who lives here?” she asked.
“My friends are dwarves, small men, you know?”
“I’ve read about them in stories.”
“Yes. They’re guardians. They love rock and wood and plants. They’re wise and good teachers. They possess clear sight.”
“You don’t mean they see well, do you?”
“You’re quick! No, I mean they see the truth in things — and people.”
They’ll see I’m bad, Rose Red thought, and fell silent. Perhaps Vasilisa would finish and they’d leave before the dwarves came home.
They came so silently that Rose Red, lulled by the feel of Vasilisa’s hands, wasn’t aware of them until they stood before her. She started and Vasilisa’s hands dropped to her shoulders, comforting.
It was as though the orchard trees or stones from the wall became animated and friendly. Their brown faces were seamed above beards in shades of brown and russet.
“This is Rose Red,” said Vasilisa. “She needed help with her hair but we had no scissors, so I made free with yours!”
The dwarves laughed and went to the well, pulling up a bucket of water. They washed their hands and faces and some went to the orchard, some to the garden and some into the house. In a few minutes, they had set the stone table with cold chicken, a basket of fruit, a fresh salad, bread and cheese.
“All finished,” said Vasilisa. She ran her fingers through Rose Red’s thick black hair. “You’ve the blackest, thickest hair I’ve ever seen. Bend over and shake your head to get the loose bits free.”
Obediently, Rose Red did so, shyly putting a hand up to feel her head. The air felt strange on her bare neck.
“Now wet your hands and run them through your hair to make the curls spring.”
The water felt cool on her tearstained face and she bathed it gratefully. She dampened her hair with her wet hands and turned to face Vasilisa.
“You’re beautiful. You look like some wild young forest creature. The sun has kissed you and your hair curls around your face as though it loved you!”
It was the first time anyone ever praised her looks without reference to the queen. Rose Red was speechless with self-conscious embarrassment. She groped for Vasilisa’s hand and squeezed it.
Vasilisa squeezed back. “I hope you’ll let us be your friends,” she said softly. “Go sit with them. There’s a chair for you — see?”
When she thought of it later, that afternoon seemed like something out of a fairy tale. Rose Red ate and drank, her shyness gradually melting away under the gentle questioning of the dwarves. She told them more than she knew of the queen and her life in the castle. She told them about the queen’s mirror and long hours spent in front of it. She knew nothing except what she’d read of the forest and world outside the wall. She knew little more of the castle gardens and grounds, having only been allowed to go outside for short periods of time when her mother could spare her.
The day waned and Rose Red felt increasingly anxious about her long absence. Queen Snow White would be frantic by now. She must go home. She thanked the dwarves and they invited her to return whenever she wished. If only I could! she thought. But they’ll never allow it. She watched wistfully as Vasilisa hugged each dwarve in turn with obvious and easy affection, and then the two girls set off together for the path and the castle.
Rose Red expected Vasilisa to part from her near the clearing where they’d met. She protested when Vasilisa insisted on accompanying her all the way to the castle. She didn’t know what kind of a scene waited for her and wanted no witnesses to the queen’s hysteria or her own punishment. But Vasilisa refused to be put off.
“As a matter of fact, I hope to speak with the king, if he’ll see me,” she said. “I want to introduce myself and explain that you’ve been with me this afternoon. He’s likely heard of my…grandmother.”
Rose Red couldn’t dissuade her, but as they neared the castle, she became more and more anxious.
Once inside the walls, Rose Red directed Vasilisa to the front gate to request an audience with the king. She squared her shoulders and went to the queen’s rooms.
It was better than it might have been. The queen cried over her hair and the terrible damage the sun had done to her skin, but she’d already worn herself out and she sent Rose Red away, complaining of a headache. She allowed herself to be hugged and apologized to for the twentieth time and then, gratefully, Rose Red crept quietly away from the dimmed room and tragic figure on the bed. In the hall, she met her father. He snorted, looking down at her with a frown.
“Silly girl. What a fuss over nothing, eh? I’m ashamed of you. You women are all alike. I suppose she’s in a state?”
“Yes, Father. She has a headache and is resting.”
“I’m not a bit surprised. I’m told you were with the girl Vasilisa this afternoon?”
“Yes, Father. She was kind.”
“No doubt, no doubt. Well, it happens she’s asked if you might spend some time together now and then. She comes from powerful people in the North and I’ve given my permission. She’s a fit companion for a princess. Mind you, don’t run away again! It upsets your mother and you know what she is when she’s upset! Ruins her looks!”
“Yes, Father.”
“Very well. Be off with you.”
Rose Red went, head bowed respectfully, but rejoicing in her heart.
Hardly a week went by that a note wasn’t delivered from Vasilisa asking for Rose Red’s presence. The king made it clear to Queen Snow White that Rose Red was to be permitted to leave the castle on these occasions.
Rose Red turned thirteen. Her life now divided in two parts. In company with Vasilisa, she climbed trees, explored the countryside, laughed, ran, spun in circles, napped in tall grass, waded streams and learned something about the kingdom of caverns, caves and mines that belonged to the Dwarves and their brethren, the Dvorgs. The sun turned her white skin the color of a brown egg. She ate enormously, slept well and grew like a young, slim sapling. Vasilisa and the dwarves called her Rosie.
The Queen waited longingly for Rose Red’s hair to grow back, not knowing Vasilisa regularly trimmed it. Rose Red liked the freedom of her short curls. She needed do nothing more than run her fingers through her damp hair to produce waves requiring no other attention.
The second part consisted of her life with her mother. It seemed to Rose Red the price of her joy was her mother’s health and happiness. Rose Red possessed no memory of Queen Snow White being truly happy. She’d never been playful or affectionate. But as months went by, she seemed ill. Sometimes she smiled and become animated when looking in her mirror, but even that started to fail. The mirror became terrible to Rose Red. She could hardly bear to look into it.
The queen had headaches. She didn’t sleep well. Her appetite failed. Rose Red spoke too loudly. Her clothes were rough. Her hair fell in her eyes. Her skin looked terrible — like a peasant’s. Her fingernails were dirty.
All of this was hard enough, but the worst times were when the queen wept, saying she knew she hadn’t been a good mother. She knew she was a failure. She was a burden, a bore. Rose Red would rather be playing with her friends and didn’t care if her mother was ill and needed her.
Rose Red held fast to thoughts of her time away and tried to be patient. Over and over, she told the queen she loved her, she was a wonderful mother, she wasn’t a burden and how could she, Rose Red, help? Would her mother like to hear about the doe and fawn Rose Red saw in the woods? Would she like her temples rubbed with lavender water, or for Rose Red to comb out her hair in front of the mirror?
At the end of these days Rose Red left her mother’s rooms feeling drained and exhausted and knowing she’d failed again. Her mother was ill and unhappy and it was her fault. Yet she couldn’t — she couldn’t — give up her life outside the castle. Not now.
She saw little of the king. Now and then an occasion like a festival or a holiday required them to appear as a family. People gathered to cheer and throw flowers as king and court went by in colorful procession. On these days, people paid homage to Queen Snow White’s beauty. She spent hours in front of the mirror readying herself. Rose Red usually had a gown to match or complement the queen’s, although little could be done with her hair.
Rose Red felt more confident in public than she’d been before she made friends. She waved and smiled to the crowds. The royal family was well liked. The king wasn’t warm, but he was just, so people respected him. The queen was, of course, the most beautiful lady any of them had ever seen, and surely a benevolent, kind, wise queen, if ever there was one! Rose Red often heard how lucky she was to have such a great lady as a mother.
The family dined together formally once a week. One evening Rose Red chattered happily about a nest she’d found (she didn’t mention she’d climbed a tree), the speckled eggs, the behavior of the protective parent birds, until she noticed the queen sat tense and miserable, not eating, and the king looked impatient.
“For heaven’s sake, girl, be quiet!” he said sternly. “What is this nonsense? You talk too much!”
Mechanically, Rose Red ate the rest of her meal without saying another word.
Summer waned. Vasilisa and Rose Red would still enjoy their time together in the winter. They planned to go to the dwarves’ stone cottage if the weather prevented them being outside. As leaves began to turn colors and farmers harvested their fields, Vasilisa brought a friend to meet Rose Red.
Her name was Jenny. Rose Red’s first impression was of brown and gold. She wore a plain dress of natural linen and her hair was plaited in a thick tail down her back. Her eyes were a soft brown and warm with her smile. She embraced Rose Red with quick affection, as if they’d always been friends. A thin thread of gold wove through her hair, and she wore a belt of braided leather with the same gold thread.
Jenny was visiting the dwarves. Her companion was kin to them and went by the odd name of Rumpelstiltskin. Her father had been a miller and Rose Red thought she resembled a sheaf of wheat herself, earthy and quiet, brown touched with gold. She possessed a quality of deep rootedness and steady confidence, as though nothing in life could ever disturb her for long.
The year turned towards winter sleep. For several weeks, bitter weather forced the three girls to spend their days together in the stone cottage. The dwarves’ work was unaffected by weather, as it took place underground, but they often took a day off and joined the girls in front of the fire. Rumpelstiltskin was nearly always there, sitting quietly in a corner listening, but so silent Rose Red often forgot his presence.
It was in front of the fire Rose Red heard her friends’ stories.
One day snow flew outside, large, feathery flakes filling the grey air and clinging to every branch and twig. Rumpelstiltskin sat in his usual place in a corner with a large basket of apples at his feet, cutting them into pieces for drying. Rose Red watched him, enjoying the deft brown hands wielding the sharp knife. He weighed each apple in his hands, smelling it and turning it over. Some went into a smaller basket whole and others he cored and cut.
“How do you decide which ones to keep and which to dry?” she asked him.
He looked up from his work, knife stilling. His eyes were dark moss green. He smiled at her.
“Everything has itself to be,” he said. “Each apple, like each creature, is important and has some place in the scheme of life. Part of what we do in a life well lived is learn what we’re for and where we belong. Some of these apples are for eating whole and sweet. Some are for drying. I hold them in my hands and they tell me what they’re for.”
Rose Red thought about this. “In the woods,” she said slowly, “every separate piece is part of the whole thing. Birds, trees, ferns and flowers, deer, streams. They’re each themselves and each a piece of something larger. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. A bird is not a flower. A leaf is not a berry bush. A doe is not a trickle of water.”
“I wish I could be a part of the woods,” said Rose Red in a low voice. “I wish I could be some beautiful small thing like a leaf, or a berry or a snail.” She looked down, twisting her hands together.
“I had a teacher who taught me to know one thing from another,” said Vasilisa. “It wasn’t apples, though!” She laughed, remembering. “Shall I tell you about it?”
“Yes!” Rose Red turned to her eagerly, relaxing her hands.
“When I was a child my young mother died. At the end, she beckoned me to her side as she lay in bed.
‘This is for you, my love,’ she whispered, and gave me a tiny doll dressed as I was, in white apron, black skirt, and vest embroidered with colored thread.
‘I must leave you soon. When you need guidance after I’m gone, ask this doll what to do. She’ll help you. Keep her with you always, but keep her secret. Give her food when she’s hungry. She’s made with blood and tears and my love for you.’ With that, Mother’s last breath left her body and she died.
My father mourned for a long time but life always begins again, and after a time he chose another wife, a widow with two daughters. In the beginning, they were nice to me and always smiled.
I missed my mother. For Father’s sake, I tried to please my new stepmother and stepsisters, but I often disappointed them and sometimes they were cross with me. My father was frequently gone and I didn’t like to bother him with my troubles.
One evening the fire went out. My stepmother and stepsisters sent me into the forest to beg Baba Yaga, the witch, for fire for our hearth.
Do you know Baba Yaga? She travels in a flying cauldron, steering it with a pestle-shaped oar and sweeping out her tracks with a birch twig broom bound with human hair. Her white-whiskered chin curves up and meets her down-curving nose, so nose and chin hairs knot together. Iron claws tip her hands and her teeth are of iron, too.
Baba Yaga’s house sits on huge chicken legs that walk around and sometimes dance. A palisade of bones guards the house, and fiery skulls sit atop the palisade. Pointed teeth and finger bones lock and bolt the doors.
It was dark when I set out and I was terrified, but I reached down and patted the doll in my pocket and felt better.
The doll guided me through the dark forest. Sticks broke under my feet and twigs scratched my face. The forest was full of footsteps and shadows and peering eyes, but I fed the doll some bread as I walked and followed her direction, trusting my mother’s love.
After a long time, I came to the hovel of Baba Yaga. The fence made of skulls and bones surrounding the hut began to blaze with an inner fire as I came near, so the clearing glowed with eerie light.
As I stood hesitating outside the fence, the dark trees groaned and tossed as though in a fearsome gale, and Baba Yaga in her cauldron suddenly descended on me and shouted, ‘What do you want, frogling?’
She was a terrible sight and I trembled, but I tried to be polite.
‘Grandmother, our fire is out. I’ve come to ask for a coal for my family.’
Baba Yaga snapped, ‘Why should I help people stupid enough to let their fire go out? Good riddance, I say! You’re too useless to live, toad spawn!’ She sucked loudly on a tooth, glaring at me. Then her expression softened and she grew coaxing, and I was more frightened than I’d been when she was nasty. ‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘Why not leave your stepmother and stepsisters to die in the cold dark, hmmmm? They’re no friends of yours. Walk away! Leave them to their fate!’
‘My father—‘I began.
‘Oh yesss, I know, you couldn’t let down dear daddy, could you? Though he’s made your life a little hell, hasn’t he? Well, if that’s the way you want it…’ she trailed off, mumbling, then shot out, ‘So you want my help, do you?’
‘Yes, please, Grandmother.’
Baba Yaga said, ‘If you want a coal, earn it! I’m a poor old woman and I need some help around here. If you do your work well, which I doubt, you’ll have fire. If not…’ Baba Yaga’s eyes were like red hot iron, and I shuddered.
So, she lay down on her bed and ordered me to bring her breakfast. I cooked meat and eggs and more meat and more eggs until she’d eaten everything except a crust of bread I found on a shelf.
I shared the bread with my doll and fell asleep against the kitchen wall while Baba Yaga snored, but soon she woke and pulled me up by my hair.
‘Wash my clothes, sweep the yard and the house, prepare my food, and separate mildewed corn from good corn. I’ll be back to inspect your work later.’ She flew off in her cauldron, cackling.
The clothes lay in a fetid tangle in the yard, each garment big enough for a giantess. It would take three women a day to wash even one. The floor of the house was littered with gnawed bones, mouse tails, hairballs, toenail clippings, beetles, clumps of earwax, gobs of mucus and greasy soot. The yard was worse than the house. Next to the bone fence a pile of corn stood as high as my shoulder, mildewed mixed up with wholesome.
As soon as she’d gone, I took out my doll. ‘What shall I do? How can I do this work with no food and no sleep?’ The doll told me to do my best with the laundry, so I chose a pair of stockings twenty feet long, striped in purple and green, heated water, found the washboard and soap, and began to scrub. I changed the water and scrubbed, changed the water and scrubbed, rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, and when I was finished the stockings were a lovely violet and pale green. By then I felt so tired I staggered. The doll told me to sleep, and I crawled under the table and did so.
When I woke the work was done except to cook the meal, and I found fresh provisions in the kitchen. I cooked, and when the Yaga returned she found nothing undone. Pleased, in a way, but not pleased because she couldn’t find fault, she sat down grumpily to eat. She ate and ate and ordered me to again clean the house, sweep the yard, launder her clothes and separate a pile of wheat from chaff the next day. When I looked around me, it seemed as if these tasks had never been done before.
Night fell and she began to snore. I lay down on the floor under the table and slept, but it seemed I’d hardly closed my eyes when I woke to find her pulling me to my feet by my hair and it was morning again.
Off she went in her cauldron, screeching as though to split the sky. I took out my doll. ‘What shall I do now?’ I asked it. It told me to sweep the floor and I found a rake and shovel, a broom and a scrub brush and set to work, pushing trash and litter out the front door and into the yard below. When the floor was bare, I tucked up my skirt and scrubbed it with a stiff brush on my hands and knees. While I worked, the doll did the laundry, swept the yard and separated the wheat from chaff. Together, we made a meal.
When Baba Yaga returned, she found nothing undone. Pleased, but not so pleased, she settled down to eat, throwing bones on the clean floor and belching. When she was finished, it was nearly dark. She pointed to a pile of dirt inside the bone fence. ‘That pile of dirt contains poppy seeds. In the morning, I want a pile of poppy seeds and a pile of dirt, all separated out from each other.’
I knew I could never complete such a job, especially in the dark, but the doll reassured me. Baba Yaga fell into bed and began to snore, and I went out and started to pick poppy seeds out of the dirt as best I could in the light of a fiery skull on the fence. I fell asleep there, in the Baba’s yard. When I woke in the morning, I found a pile of poppy seeds and a pile of dirt.
‘Well,’ sneered the Yaga after she’d woken up, ‘it appears you’re not so stupid after all. Tell me, my sticky sweetling, how is it you accomplished these tasks?’ She smiled unpleasantly under her down-curving nose. ‘Someone has given you power!’
‘Grandmother,’ I replied, ‘my only power is the love of my mother, made of blood and tears.’
‘Love?!’ screeched Baba Yaga. ‘Love?! How precious!’ She spat on the ground. ‘We need no stink of love in this house, girl. It’s time you were off!’
She took a skull with fiery eyes from her fence and put it on a stick. ‘Here! Take this home with you. There! There’s your fire. Be off!’
I began to thank her, but the doll in my pocket pinched my leg, so I took the stick and skull and left without another word. Once again, my doll guided me through the forest. I walked all day and it was night again when I returned home. The fiery skull blazed with light. My stepmother and stepsisters ran out to greet me, saying they’d been without fire since I’d left. We kindled a fire with the skull and I left it in the corner of the room and went to bed.
In the morning, I found three piles of burnt cinders on the floor. My stepmother and stepsisters were gone, and the skull was cold.”
Rose Red came slowly out of the story to her place in front of the fire in the dwarves’ stone cottage. She’d never heard anything like it before. Questions bubbled up in her mind, but she was reluctant to leave the spell of Baba Yaga and the fiery skull and the doll, and didn’t break the silence, letting the story ebb out of corners and shadows, leaving them in the firelit silence of the present moment.
“Do you keep the doll safe?” asked Jenny.
Vasilisa patted the pocket of her apron gently. “Right here,” she said. “It’s my way of keeping my mother always close by me,” she said to Rose Red in explanation, “but the doll is only a symbol for what I carry in here.” She laid a hand on her chest. “This is where I hear the voice that tells me what direction to go and this is the place that tells Rumpelstiltskin which apple to cut and which to keep whole.”
Rose Red suddenly felt her friend was a stranger. She’d faced a terrible, monstrous figure and somehow accomplished impossible tasks. What would she say if she knew Rose Red couldn’t even love her own mother properly?
Shame swelled within her, making her feel as though she would vomit. Her hands felt cold and she swallowed hard, trying to control herself. She wanted to run away, to disappear. She didn’t belong with these people. They were brave and wise and…good.
In her distress, she lost track of the conversation around her, but the sound of her name recalled her from her private misery.
“…Rosie home before the snow is worse,” said Rumpelstiltskin, putting aside his knife and board. “The others will be home from the mine and workshop soon, hungry as hunters. They probably don’t even know it’s snowing.”
“Next time I’ll tell how to spin straw into gold,” said Jenny, smiling. “Much more useful than separating poppy seeds from dirt!”
“Oh, never mind!” replied Vasilisa, tossing her head in mock disdain. “I’ll bet Rosie will do something even better than that!”
Rose Red gaped at her, pausing as she put on her outdoor clothes. “Me! But I couldn’t…I don’t…I could never be like you! I couldn’t do what you’ve done! I’m not brave! I’m not…I’m no good at all!”
The raw pain in her voice vibrated in the room. The smile slipped off Vasilisa’s face. Jenny stepped swiftly to Rose Red’s side and put her arms around her. “You’re wrong,” she said, stroking the dark curly head. “You are like us and you are brave. Don’t you see, your story is now! You’re living it now. You can’t tell it yet because you’re in the middle of it!”
Rose Red shook her head, a sob catching in her throat. She pulled up her hood, letting it shadow her face, wrapped a scarf around her neck, pulled on mittens and went out the door past Rumpelstiltskin, stumbling. He shut the door firmly, leaving Vasilisa and Jenny in the apple-scented warmth of the stone cottage behind him.
RAPUNZEL
Richard leapt out of bed and lit a lamp. Rapunzel wanted to giggle. She’d lain waiting for him in the darkened room, guessing he lingered in the bar to put off having to get into bed with the ugliest women he’d ever seen. She thought his resolve might fail him and half expected he’d slipped away in the night. Marriage is one thing, but consummation quite another. She was certain Baba Yaga’s spell would not be broken by a runaway groom. When she at last heard his slow reluctant footsteps on the stairs, relief washed over her, along with respect and liking. This man was made of better stuff than Alexander was, and his integrity had given her back her own body.
She knew he shrank from his duty and took mischievous pleasure in presenting various parts of her supple form to his hands and pressing herself, beginning with her lips, against him. He’d bounced out of bed like a scalded cat.
He held up the lamp and inspected her. His stunned look was too much, and she began to laugh.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What is this?”
“I’m your wife,” said Rapunzel, controlling her laughter, sitting up and letting the sheet fall. “I, uh…did something wrong and my punishment was to take on the appearance I had when you met me until a young man agreed to marry me. When you did so the sentence lifted. But, there’s more…”
“What more?” he inquired cautiously.
“Well, now you must make a choice. You must choose whether I’ll be as you see me now by day and ugly by night or beautiful by night and ugly by day.”
Thinking of the night ahead, he said, “Ugly by day and beautiful by night!”
“Yes,” said Rapunzel, “but think for a minute. During the day, everywhere we go, people will laugh and jeer. Young children will run away in fright. You’ll be shamed in front of others.”
“Oh,” he said, picturing it. “Well then, ugly by night and beautiful by day!”
“Think another moment,” she said. “Every night for as long as we live, you’ll get into bed with the woman you met on the street.”
“Wait,” said Richard. “Wait a minute. This choice shouldn’t be mine. You’ll bear with it more than I. I’ve learned what a woman desires most is to stand in her own power. I think this choice should be yours, and I’ll abide by it.”
“A good answer,” said Rapunzel. “Then I choose to be beautiful by day and by night.”
She hadn’t known she was going to say it, but as she spoke the words, she recognized the Baba had not in fact taken Rapunzel’s power to choose, and the choice of appearance was the least important of the choices before her.
Richard smiled at her and she recognized respect and affection in his face. He was a good friend. He’d kept his word to her.
She didn’t want to be married to him.
“Richard,” she said, hesitating.
He took her hand. “Yes, my dear?”
“Richard, you’ve helped me learn important…things,” she said, picking her words carefully. “I needed you and you were there. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”
He squeezed her hand.
“I know we’re married now, but I wonder, before this happened did you want to be married? Were you looking for a wife?”
He thought about that. “Well, to tell you the truth, no,” he said, “I wasn’t. I’m not very old and I liked my freedom. Of course,” he said hastily, “I’ll do my best to be a good husband to you.”
Rapunzel, impatient with circumlocution, said, “I don’t want a good husband!”
“What?” he said, astonished, dropping her hand.
“I’m sorry, Richard,” she said more gently. “The truth is I didn’t want to be married, either — before. I like you. I like you very much, but I don’t want a husband, good, bad or indifferent!”
“But we’re married!” he said, as though that settled it.
“So what?” she asked. “Here’s a piece of paper saying we’re married, but that doesn’t make a marriage. A marriage is two people building a life together, isn’t it? Is that what you want?”
He grinned suddenly. It made him look very young. “I like you, too. And in a word, no.”
“It’s not what you want?”
“No. I want to honor my word to you, though. Rapunzel, men want what women want — the right to stand in our own power and make our own choices.”
“Then we might choose not to be married?”
“It appears we are choosing that!” He laughed and for a moment she did love him enough.
“Are you sure, Richard?” she asked. “You’re not upset?”
“No,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “I think it’s the right thing to do. Or not to do, in this case.”
Rapunzel took the marriage certificate off the table next to the bed, held it over an unlit stub of a candle on a pottery plate and spoke a word of command. The paper burned with an orange flame and in seconds became a few flakes of ash on the plate.
Richard watched, eyebrows raised in astonishment. He looked speculatively at her as she set the plate back on the table.
“Maybe someday you’ll tell me exactly what you did — and to whom,” he said.
ROSE RED
Rose Red was determined to do better with her mother. She spent hours with her every day, encouraging the queen to try on her jewels and gowns, combing scented oil through her ebony hair and dressing it, standing in front of the mirror. There were moments when the queen appeared content in their companionship, but soon her unhappiness returned. Nothing helped her distress, though Rose Red tried everything she could think of. At last, the queen would bid Rose Red go. “You weary me! You make my head hurt!”
Dismissed, Rose Red went thankfully to her rooms, relieved and guilty. But she knew soon a servant would come with a message and it would begin again — trying and trying and failing to make her mother happy and healthy. She’d intended to make some excuse when the next invitation came from Vasilisa and not see her, for her mother’s sake, but when the queen unwillingly put the note into her hand and she noted her mother’s compressed and trembling lips and her hurt, betrayed expression, a kind of desperate rage boiled up within Rose Red and she felt she must get out of the castle and into the winter woods or break into pieces. In a blind need to escape she threw on her outdoor clothes and ran from the castle, furtive, hating herself, but free.
The woods were quiet and still. Chill air soothed her hot face. She threw her hood back impatiently. The path was imperceptible under snow but she knew the woods so well now she didn’t need it. She recognized trees — a tight clump there, a strangely twisted trunk here, the wound from a fallen branch on a trunk ahead. Gradually, her steps slowed and the peace of stark trees and leafless twigs began to calm her. Snowy lace made of ice crystals like fallen stars covered briars. A chickadee called cheerfully overhead and she looked up, finding the fluff of black and white feathers hopping busily among branches. She discovered the tracks of a hare and delicate vulpine prints. Her heart lifted at the thought of the stone cottage ahead.
Nothing was said about Rose Red’s precipitous departure the week before. Today three of the dwarves were at home, along with Rumpelstiltskin, Jenny and Vasilisa. The fire burned bright and the scent of baking bread filled the stone cottage. The dwarves sat around the large table at which they ate, sorting heaps of pebbles. Rose Red took off her winter clothes and went to see, curious.
“Sit down,” said one of the dwarves, patting the chair next to him. “We need another pair of hands for this work.” Seeing her puzzled look, he smiled. “Here,” he put into her hand a small stone, cut and faceted, the deep red color of a ripe raspberry.
“Oh! It’s beautiful! What is it?” She closed her fingers over the stone and it seemed to glow in her hand.
“It’s a garnet. So are these.” The dwarve gestured to a mound of pebbles in front of him. They’re not cut yet. Sit there, Rosie, and hold it in your hand a minute. Warm it into life.”
Rose Red relaxed against the back of the chair, looking with pleasure around the room. Vasilisa and Jenny talked quietly by the fire. On the table sat a large earthenware teapot and several cups. Loaves of brown bread cooled on racks on the counter next to the oven and another sat on the table, sliced, with a bowl of honey and a bowl of bramble jelly. She closed her eyes, absorbing the fragrance of firewood and bread and an under note of apples. She opened her eyes and saw a shallow rack of them on top of the stove drying. She shut her eyes again. The fire murmured softly to itself in the hearth. Jenny laughed quietly at something Vasilisa said, and Rose Red smiled in sympathy, though she couldn’t hear their words. On the other side of the table, Rumpelstiltskin and the dwarve next to him bent their heads together.
“…seam today. They’re fine stones, but not so fine as the ones we found three years ago…”
“… my idea is to make it out of gold —see? It’s more delicate and lighter…” came from the end of the table where the two other dwarves were deep in conversation over a drawing.
The cushion against her back felt comfortable, like a firm embrace. The last of the winter chill on the skin of her face warmed. After her walk, she felt relaxed and comfortable and…somehow open. The opening filled with warmth and scent and familiar voices… “Love,” she thought. “I feel love — and loved.”
She opened her eyes with surprise at the thought. As though he heard her eyes open, the dwarve next to her looked up from the rough garnets he sorted. His eyes were a warm hazel and his beard and hair brown, tied neatly with leather thongs. He smiled, studying her face.
“I thought so,” he said, pleased. The others at the table looked up from their conversations. “Garnets,” said the hazel-eyed dwarve with satisfaction.
“Try this one, child,” said the dwarve sketching the design. He reached over the table and dropped another pebble into her hand. “Hold it for a minute, like you did the garnet. Warm it.”
Rose Red looked at him uncertainly but closed her fingers gently around the stone. She felt self-conscious with the others’ eyes on her. The dwarve next to her went back to his work, brown fingers stirring gently among the stones. The others, too, returned to what they’d been doing, and she relaxed. This time the stone didn’t warm. It felt like a stone, rough and unpleasantly hard. It was the same size as the garnet she’d held but it didn’t fit so comfortably in her hand. She opened the loose fist she’d made around it and rolled it in her palm with her forefinger. She didn’t want to hold it in her closed hand. She looked up, feeling as though she was failing, braced for disappointment or disapproval.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the dwarve who handed her the stone. She reached out and gave it back. “Nothing happened. It didn’t get warm like the other.”
The dwarve smiled into his beard. “Very good,” he said with approval. “It’s not you.”
She looked at him, mouth open with surprise.
He laughed. “The garnet is you. It speaks to you. Garnets are for passion and sensuality. This,” he held up the rough stone she’d returned to him, “is a diamond. Diamonds are valuable and this is a fine one. When it’s cut, it’ll be clear and bright with fire in its heart. We’ll make a heavy gold necklace or an elaborate ring with it, and a rich and powerful and probably beautiful woman will wear it. But it’s not you.”
“My mother wears diamonds,” said Rose Red, who rarely mentioned her parents in the company of her friends.
“Naturally. I haven’t seen her but I understand she’s very beautiful, and a much-loved queen.”
“Yes,” said Rose Red briefly. But, she thought to herself with a burst of pleasure, I like the garnet better than the diamond.
Jenny came to the table and poured out tea, passing plates of new bread spread with honey and jam.
“Let’s hear a story,” said Rumpelstiltskin.
“Show off,” said the dwarve next to him. “You just want some attention!” He shook his head censoriously at Rumpelstiltskin.
“I want a story,” said Rumpelstiltskin in a louder voice. “And I want Jenny to tell it! And I want another piece of bread!”
Jenny laughed, spread another piece of bread with honey and brought it to him. Rose Red saw them smile at each other and Jenny brushed his bearded cheek with her hand in an affectionate gesture.
Jenny curled up in a chair set sideways to the fire so she could see Vasilisa on the rug at her feet and the others around the big wooden table.
“Once upon a time,” she began, “there lived a miller who had a daughter.”
“A beautiful daughter,” interrupted the dwarve next to Rose Red.
“A beautiful brown and gold daughter,” said another.
“A beautiful brown and gold daughter with hair like plaited wheat,” said the third.
“Do you want to hear the story or not?” demanded Jenny, color staining her cheeks.
“Be quiet!” demanded Rumpelstiltskin, glaring around at the others. He winked at Rose Red and she giggled. Vasilisa laughed.
“Once upon a time,” Jenny began again, “there lived a miller who had a daughter, but his wife was dead. He was poor, this miller, and thought a great deal about how to get more money. He longed to be a rich and important man. He wasn’t happy in his work, so he didn’t try to become a better miller and earn a living that way. He wanted to find an easier way. One day he realized his daughter was old enough to be married, and he made a plan.
The miller ingratiated himself with the kitchen servants of the king by selling them his best flour (which wasn’t very good) for the cheapest price in the kingdom. Occasionally he made bold to visit the king’s court with oily words of flattery in his mouth and in this way the king himself grew to recognize the miller and know his name. The king was also interested in ways and means of collecting and possessing money, and he was unmarried and in need of sons.
One day, the miller, finding the king momentarily alone, whispered in his ear that he knew of a beautiful young woman who could spin straw into gold.
Naturally, the king was interested in such a young woman! The miller pretended to be uncertain and hesitant about revealing the identity of the girl, but dropped hints here and there until the king was in quite a frenzy of curiosity and greed and demanded to know who the young woman was. The miller, with much humility, admitted the girl in question was none other than his daughter.
The king demanded to see her at once and that night her father presented her to him.
Now, the miller’s daughter had no idea in the world what her father had said about her. She kept herself neat and tidy and did her best to take care of her father and help him with his business, but no thought of marriage had entered her mind, and she couldn’t imagine why the king should take any notice of her at all.
Imagine her surprise when the king showed her to a room filled with straw and containing a spinning wheel and a stool!
‘Your father tells me you can spin gold out of straw,’ he said, lighting a candle. ‘Set to work and prove your skill. If you don’t spin this straw into gold by dawn, you’ll die.’ Without another word, he went out the door, and she heard the key turn in the lock.
Well! The miller’s daughter understood at once that her father sought to enrich himself at her expense, and with this ridiculous boast to the king had caused her imprisonment and likely her death, for she’d no hope of spinning straw into gold. Her foolish, greedy father had murdered his only daughter and probably destroyed himself in the bargain, for the king would find out he’d been fooled.
She could do nothing to help herself, and she resolved to wait quietly and patiently until morning and face whatever might come. She couldn’t help weeping, though, for she felt afraid and alone and didn’t want to die.
Suddenly the lock turned, the door opened and a little man appeared. He wore clothing of muted colors with bright touches of lichen orange and green. He had a russet beard and hair and green eyes. The top of his head reached just above her waist.
‘Good evening. Why are you locked in a room full of straw, weeping?’ he inquired.
‘The king has ordered me to spin gold out of this straw by dawn or lose my life and I don’t know how to do it!’
‘Very well. I’ll teach you to do it, but it will do the king no good at all!’
The miller’s daughter didn’t pay much attention to the last part. Hope welled up in her heart.
‘You can teach me to do this?’
‘Oh, yes. Sit yourself down. I’ll stand.’
The miller’s daughter, with some trepidation, made herself as comfortable as she could on the stool.
‘Take up a handful of straw,’ said the dwarve, standing at her shoulder, ‘and look at it. Make friends with it.’
She took up a handful of straw. It was fresh, golden and smelled of field and sun. The dwarve lit a candle and the straw glowed in its light. The sheaf felt weightless in her hands, whispering as she stirred it.
‘I watched them plant it,’ the dwarve said in a low voice. ‘I watched them plow the field and clods of earth broke up under the plow. The horses left hoofprints in the soft earth and it followed the blade like a curling brown wave. Then I watched them sow the seed and Yr the sun and the moons looked down and the maiden came, she who is Ostara, she who is Mary, and she blessed the seed. Behind her came he of hooved feet with his flute and he fertilized the seed and played over it, calling it into life.’
The miller’s daughter found herself gathering the sheaf tightly together, binding it, her hands knowing what to do as she listened. She felt she was in a dream.
‘Then I watched the first green break through the earth and I heard roots stretch their way down. I watched rain come, and dawn, fresh and cool, and dusk. Birds flew overhead and insects crawled among the seedlings. Day followed night and night followed day and the seedlings strengthened and reached up, and roots climbed sideways and down, weaving together.’
The dwarve stopped speaking but the miller’s daughter watched her hands at work and the spinning wheel began to turn. The dwarve began to sing in a low voice, like water running over gravel, and the miller’s daughter gasped, hands stilling.
‘I know that song!’ she said. ‘My mother used to sing it to me. It’s a cradle song!’
‘Your mother sang it to you before you were born,’ said the dwarve. ‘It’s a song of quickening seed, birth into light and growth.’
The miller’s daughter began to sing too, hesitantly at first as she searched her memory for words, and then with more confidence. Song mingled with hum of spinning wheel.
The dwarve began to speak again but the miller’s daughter continued to hum, feeling the song vibrate in her throat.
‘Then the grain ripened, with heavy heads, and I watched reapers come. The green and gold man and his lady, maiden no more and big with new life, were there, and the reapers harvested with sharp curving blades, sweating in heat, hands callused and muscles supple. At noon they rested in shade, drank and ate and dozed. And then women came and gleaned straw from the fields. They bent and gathered, bent and gathered, binding sheaves together until their backs ached and their hands blistered so animals might be bedded, corn dollies made, bee skeps woven and baskets fashioned. And so you might take dead stalks of life and spin straw into gold…’
He stopped speaking and joined her again in song. Underneath her hands the gathered sheaves of straw spun into a fine gold thread. Straw whispered in her hands and song swelled in her chest. The wheel spun. Straw and thread showed the same gold in candlelight.
‘Life and death,’ she whispered.
‘Death and life,’ the dwarve replied. ‘End and beginning. Anyone can turn gold into straw. Few can spin straw into gold.’
Hours passed. The miller’s daughter relaxed into the scent, texture and sound of straw, and into the old cradle song her mother had sung to her. The dwarve stood quietly at her side, gathering armfuls of straw and handing them to her as he hummed and sang.
As though waking from a long dream, she realized the room was empty and the dwarve held the last sheaf of straw. Dawn showed at the high narrow window. The dwarve blew out the candle.
The miller’s daughter spun the last of the straw and then turned to the dwarve. She took his hands in hers, palms up, and kissed them, first one and then the other. Her tears fall onto his palms, as though watering her kiss.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘My name is Rumpelstiltskin, my dear.’
‘I’m Jenny.’
‘I know.’ He smiled at her, green eyes gleaming. ‘It’s not over yet, but now you can manage on your own,’ he said. ‘Don’t fear!’ He turned on his heel, opened the door and shut it gently, and she heard the key turn.
She was winding gold thread into skeins when the door opened a while later. The king stood in the doorway, freshly washed and clothed, and looked in amazement at the empty room and skeins of golden thread. Jenny stood, curtseyed, and waited with bowed head.
The king plainly didn’t believe his eyes. He walked around the room as though expecting to find the straw hidden in a corner. But the room was bare, containing only spinning wheel, stool, candle stub and neat skeins of gold. He himself had locked the door with the only key the night before. He’d slept with the key under his pillow and the door had still been locked this morning. He could hardly believe his luck. This girl — not beautiful but young and no doubt capable of bearing children — this girl could spin gold out of straw! He’d be rich! Rich beyond his wildest imaginings! He went to the door and called for a servant. One appeared immediately and the king ordered him to take the skeins of golden thread to a storeroom, the most secure in the lowest cellar of the castle. The servant, looking amazed, disappeared with his arms full of gold.
The king peremptorily dismissed Jenny from his presence. ‘Go home to your father. Tell him I’ll send for him later this morning to make arrangements.’ With that, he turned her over to another servant to be escorted out of the castle and took himself off to breakfast.
He could hardly eat for excitement and after a few hasty mouthfuls he went down to the storeroom to gloat over his gold. He unlocked the door with three keys, flung it open and found before him the storeroom — filled with straw!
Jenny was exhausted and hungry. She made her way home and found the miller anxiously waiting. During the night, he had considered the consequences of his boast and was in great fear for his life by the time the sun rose. He wasted no joy on Jenny’s safe return, but at once began to question her.
‘What happened? Why are you home? Is the king angry?’
Jenny moved neatly about the kitchen, bundling together a loaf of bread, some fruit and water. The pot still held tea. She poured herself a cup and cut a thick slice of bread for her breakfast. She looked at her agitated father and saw an aging man who had never been satisfied to do an honest job for an honest living.
‘I spun straw into gold. The king sent me home with a message that he’ll speak with you later this morning.’
‘You did what? But…I made that up! No one can spin straw into gold! You can’t do that!’
‘I can. I did. Ask him. He saw it.’
He gaped at her.
‘You sold me, Father. You sold me to that greedy king who loves no one and nothing but his wealth and cares only about increasing it. I won’t marry him and I’m leaving this place today. Now.’
‘You can’t leave, you chit! You ungrateful brat! What about me? What about the business? You’ve no place to go — no friends. What about the king?’
‘You explain to the king. You take care of yourself and the business. You have nothing I need. I’ll make friends and find a place in the world.’
She left the kitchen, went to her bedroom and swiftly packed a few possessions. She tied her bundle together, took a last look around the house, nodded to her father, and left, taking the path by the mill stream where the big wheel slowly turned.
Rumpelstiltskin sat on a rock in the middle of the stream with a fishing pole in his hand and a string of fish tied to his belt. He wound up his line, hopped nimbly from stone to stone across the stream and fell into step with Jenny on the wide path.
‘Do you know any other songs?’ she asked.
And so it was the king discovered everyone must spin their own gold from their own straw. The skill is not a gift that can be taken or given…or stolen or sold. It might be learned, though, from the right teacher.”
Jenny’s voice stilled and into the silence a low, gentle melody unfolded. It was tender and sure, deep and rooted, like an old apple tree that’s blossomed and borne fruit and stood naked in the winter for uncounted seasons. The song flowed into the stone cottage, joined by the brighter, sweeter tone of Jenny’s voice. Her singing wove in and out of the dwarve’s deeper song and Rose Red’s eyes filled with tears at the supple beauty of it.
That evening Jenny walked Rose Red home through the early winter night.
“Jenny, what are the dwarves? More than little men who mine!”
“Oh, yes,” Jenny thought a moment. “Well, they’re actually one branch of a larger family, the Dvorgs. They live deep underground, in the roots of the world, and never come into the sunlight. The Dwarves branched away from the Dvorgs and possess the same skill and wisdom, but they can tolerate sunlight. They’re great craftsmen and smiths. No one has such skill with metal and gemstone as the Dvorg families. But I think you mean something more than these facts?”
“Yes. What are they to you and Vasilisa?”
“There are no women Dvorgs.”
“Really?” said Rose Red in surprise.
“No. Young Dvorgs are born in the earth underground. The Dvorgs say there’s no need for women and don’t like them. Yet dwarves are spirits of fertility and they understand primal forces of life. In many ways, they represent female energy. They’re great and wise teachers. A long time ago one of the first Dvorgs who ventured above the ground, Jasper, met a young woman who was alone and possessed no parent or guide. He took her under his protection, like a foster father. That was the beginning of the Dwarves, and ever since then, Dwarves have been helping and teaching girls who are alone.”
“Like your mother?”
“Yes. I don’t remember her. I was a very young when she died. But Rumpelstiltskin loved her and watched over her…and me, though I didn’t know it. He’s kin to these dwarves and Vasilisa knew them, so we became friends together. In a strange sort of way, the Baba and the dwarves are alike. The Baba sounds horrifying to me — I’ve never met her — but she has a kind of primal wisdom that she teaches to some few who dare to learn from her. Vasilisa is one of those. I’m not that brave. Rumpelstiltskin is a gentle teacher.”
“Do you think the dwarves want to teach me?” asked Rose Red in some consternation.
“I think we’re all fond of you,” said Jenny with a smile in her voice, though her face was invisible in the darkness. “What if they did want to teach you?”
“What if I can’t learn?” countered Rose Red. “What if I fail? I’m not like you and Vasilisa.”
“No. You’re like your own dear self, Rosie,” said Jenny. “Evidently, the dwarves find something good and valuable in you, something worth nurturing. They’re hard to deceive. I think you can trust their wisdom.”
She reached down and took Rose Red’s hand in her own and they fell silent, walking.
“I’m fond of you, too,” said Rose Red in a small voice after a time.
Jenny laughed and squeezed her hand. “I wish you wouldn’t doubt yourself. I wish I could make you see yourself the way I see you — the way we see you. During those days and nights with the Baba when Vasilisa learned how to wash things clean, how to sift and sort one thing from another and how to hear the voice of her intuition, she didn’t feel brave or strong or beautiful. She felt scared and alone. That night I spent learning how to spin straw into gold I wasn’t doing anything special or brave. I just didn’t want to die in the morning! I was angry and hurt and frightened. Our teachers found us and found something worthy in us. The gifts of wisdom they gave us were not like a lesson learned well and repeated. They were an experience of life. If they choose you as a student you won’t even know you’re being taught until the wisdom is yours. You can’t fail. You need only be.”
The castle wall loomed before them. The girls embraced and Rose Red felt Jenny’s lips on her cheek and then against her own lips. They held each other for a moment and then Jenny turned away, back into the wood, and Rose Red lifted the gate’s latch and went into the castle grounds.
CHAPTER 17
Winter again woke into spring and Rose Red turned fifteen. The queen proudly laid out a gift of new clothing on Rose Red’s bed. The dresses were elaborate confections of lace and ruffles in pastel colors of ice blue, pink and violet. Rose Red’s heart sank as her mother showed her fine sewing and embroidery and elaborate, fiendishly tight undergarments that held her in a steel embrace and reduced her waist to a stalk. The queen picked up a flowing gown in pale lavender and excitedly led the way to her own rooms. There, a matching gown in a stronger, deeper color of lavender lay ready, and the Queen stripped off Rose Red’s comfortable old clothes and demonstrated how to wear stays, lacing her tight. Carefully, she fastened Rose Red into the gown, then swiftly dressed herself. They stood before the mirror.
Rose Red hardly recognized herself. Only her hair seemed familiar. The stays crushed her ribs and made her breasts swell. The deep lavender color suited the Queen well, with her white skin and black hair, but the lighter shade of Rose Red’s dress stole color from her tanned face. The exposed skin of her throat and neck was brown, as were her forearms, contrasting oddly with white skin revealed by the low cut of the gown. She would have laughed at the sight of herself if she’d possessed breath to do so. Queen Snow White frowned at their reflection.
“You see now what terrible damage the sun does to one’s skin? You must stay out of it, my dear! This dress needs the whitest skin. It makes you look like quite a young lady! I think perhaps…mmm…yes, pearls, I think. Would you like a pearl necklace, Rose? Very suitable for a young girl! You’ll look wonderful in diamonds later, but for now…”
Rose Red looked into the mirror and saw a girl she didn’t recognize moving inexorably into a future she didn’t want. The dress encased her in a cruel grip. She couldn’t breathe well and she could hardly move. Yet her mother sounded pleased and happy as she talked of pearls and dances and shoes to match the dress. This girl, this stiff, uncomfortable doll, was who she wanted Rose Red to be.
She stood obediently, saying nothing, turning this way and that and even taking a few dance steps across the floor to please her mother and show the skirt’s flare. In the mirror, she watched herself smile for her mother, properly pleased and modest, shy at the idea of her first dance. Her heart beat heavily.
My mother doesn’t know who I am, she thought, while the queen prattled on. She doesn’t want to know.
Later, when she went back to her rooms, Rose Red found her old clothes gone.
When a note came from Vasilisa a few days later, Rose Red left the castle in one of her new dresses. It was a day dress, not so fine as the lavender gown, in pale pink. It was completely unsuitable for walking through woods, as were the delicate slippers that went with it. It made the walk she so looked forward to, wandering here and there among trees, watching birds, looking for animals, a breathless ordeal. Even keeping to the path, she felt anxious about tearing or dirtying the dress because she knew it would upset her mother. By the time she reached the stone cottage she was exhausted and near tears.
Vasilisa waited for her, sitting on the sunny stone wall with the cat beside her. She ran to Rose Red, exclaiming in surprise at her dress, and then, when she noted her friend’s face, in concern. Rose Red tried to draw a deep breath and couldn’t — tried to stop her tears from falling and couldn’t — groped for words but possessed no breath to speak them. Blackness seeped into the edges of her vision, she felt her face flush with heat and the ground tilted and came up to meet her.
When she opened her eyes again, she lay with her head in Vasilisa’s lap. The constriction of her clothing was loosened and she could breathe. She took a deep breath and began to cry, turning onto her side and hiding her face in the folds of Vasilisa’s black skirt. Vasilisa’s hand stroked her head and another hand patted her back — Jenny’s hand.
Gradually, the storm of weeping passed and she quieted. It was bliss to be able to breathe! She’d never appreciated freely breathing before. Her nose ran and she sniffed hard. Jenny handed her a handkerchief and she took it and sat up. The unfastened gown fell off her shoulders.
She told them about her birthday and the queen’s presents. “I know she wanted to give me something special,” she finished dully. “I know I’m ungrateful. Most girls would love such fine clothes. But I can’t do anything when I’m wearing them! Nothing I love to do! Can you imagine climbing a tree in this?” The other two laughed and Rose Red smiled sadly and blew her nose.
“They took away my old clothes,” she said, twisting the handkerchief in her hands. “It feels like they took me away, all I love, all I truly am.”
“Rosie,” said Jenny. “We’ve a birthday gift for you, too. It’s inside. Can you stand up, now you’re unlaced?”
Rose Red stood, shaking out her skirt. “Is it all right?” she asked anxiously, twisting and trying to look at the back of the dress. “Did it get dirty when I fell?”
“Don’t worry,” said Vasilisa. We’ll take care of it when we get you out of it. You can put a blanket around you inside.”
The dwarves weren’t there. “They went out with Rumpelstiltskin. They’ll be back in a bit,” Jenny told her. “Let’s get you out of this dress.”
The dress had suffered no great damage. They shook it, smoothed it and carefully hung it out of harm’s way. Vasilisa produced a neatly folded bundle and gave it to Rose Red. A posy of flowers lay on top. Carefully, Rose Red unfolded the bundle.
She found a skirt of serviceable cotton and hemp, sturdy and tough, light brown in color, and a tunic the same color but embroidered with Vasilisa’s delicate work in shades of green and grey with touches of orange and red. She saw vines and leaves and forest flowers, trees, birds on the wing, a fox peering out of a thicket, a delicate doe and fawn, and a line of rabbits, one following another, through a patch of wild strawberries. Collar and hem were worked in a scalloped interlocking pattern with gold thread. She also found leggings.
Rose Red was speechless. “You made these for me?” she whispered at last, “for me?”
“Yes,” said Vasilisa. “We thought the colors would suit you and you could wander in the woods — and climb trees — in such clothes.”
Rose Red stood up, dropped the blanket, stepped into the skirt and pulled the tunic over her head. She ran her hands down the front of the tunic and then down her sides and over her hips. She looked from Vasilisa to Jenny. “Really for me?” she asked.
“No one else in the world but you! You look beautiful, Rosie, like a tree dryad!” They smiled at her with such pleasure and love Rose Red’s eyes overflowed again.
“Very nice! But not quite complete!” came a voice from the door. The dwarves stood there, Rumpelstiltskin smiling in their midst.
One of them came forward and handed Rose Red a pair of low leather boots, supple and with sturdy soles. Coiled in one of the boots she found a belt of braided leather and a thin strand of gold with a bronze buckle. A light scabbard on the belt held a knife.
Rose Red was simply overwhelmed. Seeing this, Rumpelstiltskin demanded, “What about lunch? I thought you were making lunch?” He fixed Jenny with a severe eye.
She laughed at him. “Oh, all right! But now you’re here you might as well help!” In a moment, the kitchen was full of the sound of chopping, the table outside was being set, salad mixed, bread sliced and cold meat set out. Rose Red went to a chair by the empty fireplace and sat down. The boots fit perfectly. The belt buckled around her slim waist comfortably and the gold in the belt complimented the gold worked into the tunic. She knew this must be more of Jenny’s work — gold spun from straw. The clothes fit her as comfortably as her own skin and she felt completely at home in them. They were clothes for the life she wanted. After a bit, she went to the kitchen, picked up a stack of plates and took them out to the table, feeling self-conscious and beautiful and…proud.
After the meal, Jenny brought out the dress and showed it to the dwarves. They bent over it, admiring the fine work and material. Rose Red sat in their midst, sore and ashamed. She hated the sight of the dress.
Suddenly Rumpelstiltskin said in a loud voice, “Take this frippery off the table! It’s time for the game!” He produced a leather bag, unlaced it and emptied it onto the table. A heap of pebbles spilled out. He reached out a hand and stirred them, spreading them.
The dwarves mined pounds and pounds of gemstones in their caves and caverns and tunnels. In their workroom, they cut and sorted the stones before fashioning the best into beautiful objects. There were always stones left over — too small to cut or of inferior quality in some way. These the dwarves collected and brought back to the cottage. The game arose out of the day Rose Red held the garnet and diamond, and was called “Me! Not Me!” It consisted of picking through the anonymous pebbles one by one, holding them and allowing them to speak. If a pebble didn’t speak in the hand it was discarded. If it did it was kept. At the end of an afternoon each player had collected a little pile of pebbles. The dwarves then identified them, sharing the lore and story of each gem. In this way, Rose Red had collected garnets for passion; agates for strength, courage and protection; jasper for health; and sodalite for healing and wisdom.
After the game, while the others put away stones and cleared the table, Rumpelstiltskin took Rose Red by the hand and led her to where the dress hung from a rafter. He took one of her hands and laid it on the hem of the dress and placed the other on her chest over Vasilisa’s embroidery.
“Me! Not Me!” he said quietly.
She looked at him in surprise but didn’t hesitate.
“Not me,” she said, shaking her head at the dress and taking her hand away. She covered the hand on her chest with the other and said, “Me.”
He smiled at her. “’Me’ is where your power is. Stay there.”
When it was time to go, she put on the dress without protest. Vasilisa laced her up. Rose Red walked home alone, slowly and carefully. She left her own clothes in the stone cottage. Shame and anger were gone, sadness in their place. It was a beautiful dress. But it wasn’t a dress for her. For now, she must wear it, but it could never be hers. No matter how much she wanted to please her mother and make her happy, no matter how much Queen Snow White tried to make her into somebody else, she was always going to be “me.” She could never be “not me.”
Winter came again. Nothing changed but everything was different. Every day Rose Red spent time with her mother, reassuring, coaxing, listening, trying to fill her emptiness and calm her anxiety. It was exhausting. It was draining. Her heart felt heavy with pity, frustration and a kind of resigned love for the queen, but she had stepped back. Rose Red could now discern a boundary between herself and her mother. The queen’s unhappiness no longer felt like her own. Many, many times a day she evaluated her experience through the filter of “Me! Not Me!” The feeling of her own badness weakened. Indeed, when she heard herself think, I’m bad! it sounded childish and rather silly. “Bad” became “Not Me,” a place of no power.
She began to know herself. She knew the queen wanted her to marry a powerful man, have children and live the sort of life Queen Snow White herself lived. Rose Red attended dances and feasts, riding parties, picnics, trips and all kinds of social activities in which the queen proudly presented her to appropriate young men. Rose Red obediently dressed, danced, made conversation, sat with her knees together and observed the conventions. She was young and beautiful, moved with an athletic grace, and looked healthier than the other young women in search of a good marriage, due to her time outside. She had no lack of admirers.
The problem was she didn’t want admirers, wealth, power or a fine marriage. The whole business bored her dreadfully. She hated restrictive clothing, artificial manners and conversation, rigid dance steps. She went along with it because it was easier than fighting her parents and enduring her mother’s recriminations and self-blame. She went along with it, but she knew it was all wrong, all false, all meaningless. Whatever she did with her life, it wouldn’t be a fine marriage!
She waited for another way.
One day late in February she left the castle grounds to go to the dwarves’ cottage. She expected to find Vasilisa there. Jenny and Rumpelstiltskin were not presently staying in the area, though they visited often.
A wild wind blew erratically, as though it couldn’t make up its mind which direction to go, or how hard. The sky was choppy with grey and white clouds pushed quickly along by what looked like more organized bluster overhead. Weak sunlight gave way suddenly to dull cold cloud and a spatter of sleet. Sleet softened to rain for a few moments, and then sun shone again, briefly, making diamonds out of wet drops. Trees were beginning to bud. Birds talked of nests. The forest was waking.
As she walked, she thought she caught a thin thread of music. She stopped, listening. She heard the sound of piping, quite far away. Or was it only muffled by trees? She couldn’t tell. The sound made hairs rise on her arms. There was something haunting about it, something entirely wild. It made her catch her breath and her pulse quicken, but she couldn’t say if she felt excitement or fear. Perhaps both, and something else, too. Something warmer, more urgent. She became aware of the texture of her clothing against her skin. She began to walk again, wanting to be safe at the stone cottage. Trees around her listened…watching…waiting.
Slowly, she went forward. The piping went on, a thin thread creeping into her ears and winding through her body. The birds had ceased their activity. Wind and clouds moved restlessly, but everything else was caught in a strange frozen stillness.
A woman stepped from behind a tree. Rose Red stopped abruptly with a gasp of surprise. The stranger wore a tunic of soft-looking deerskin belted with a wide strip of leather. Her hair was curly and short, blowing free in the gusty wind, a rich brown. She had a bag of arrows slung over a shoulder and carried a bow, a gracefully shaped curve that radiated soft silver light. She wore leather boots on her feet. She looked steadily into Rose Red’s face.
Something moved behind her, and a huge animal took shape in the pale shadows. It stepped to the woman’s side and Rose Red saw magnificent intertwined antlers. The stag shimmered with white light, glowing the same way the bow did.
Without thought, Rose Red bowed her head in submission. She touched the cold, smooth bark of a nearby tree trunk to steady herself. She found she’d closed her eyes and at the same time realized she no longer heard the piping.
“Rosie.” The woman’s voice was deep and clear, commanding response.
Rose Red opened her eyes and looked up.
The woman smiled. “You’re brave,” she said simply.
Thinking of her mother and the daily struggle of her feelings, Rose Red shook her head. “No,” she said sadly. “I only do the best I can.”
“You’re brave,” the woman repeated firmly. “Your life is calling to you.”
Sudden tears welled up in Rose Red’s eyes. Yes. Her own life. A life she recognized and felt at home in. She longed for it, but it seemed so far away.
The stag moved forward, looking at her out of large, dark eyes. She reached out a tentative hand to touch its neck, feel the texture of the strange glowing white coat. The antlers looked immensely heavy. The stag put out a rough, large tongue and licked her tear-wet cheek. The touch was so unexpected she hadn’t time to flinch. The touch went through her, sinking into her deepest, most private self. The stag swung around and stood beside her, facing the woman. She felt the brush of its muscled shoulder.
“My name is Artemis. I need someone to help me,” said the woman. “I need someone who isn’t afraid of wild places; someone who isn’t afraid to be alone; someone to protect, defend and nurture life. I need someone who’ll learn the secrets of each stream, tree and bird’s nest. I need someone fierce and wild who knows how to love. Rose Red, are you the one I need?”
Tears burned in Rose Red’s eyes. She couldn’t speak. A feeling of relief so great she thought she might lose consciousness swept through her, as though a terrible burden had been lifted. She turned her face into the warm coarse hair, slightly oily, of the white stag, and wept.
MIRMIR
“Her mother ate her alive,” said the Hanged Man. “My mother left us when we were still children. Does anyone have a good mother?”
“Your mother ssurrendered hersself to turning the wheel,” said Mirmir. His sibilant words hissed like dry leaves in the wind.
“Hmmph. She surrendered us to the wheel, too. That hardly seems fair.”
“No? Yet you left your mate and unborn ssonss to hang around with me and lissten to sstoriess,” said Mirmir with a sly smile.
The Hanged Man fired up at once. “I had to leave, you miserable reptile! Mary understood. She knew I poured everything I was into harvest.”
“Jusst as your mother poured everything she wass into giving birth to you.”
“Never mind,” snapped the Hanged Man. “Go on with Rose Red.”
“There came a day of weak ssun and dissorganized wind; a day of tentative birdssong and sswift-moving cloudss; a day when winter-bound sstreamss began to trickle and ice thinned to clear glass over living water; a day when the treess’ sslow heartbeat quickened and they began to wake, sstretching out their bodiess, and the green ssound of piping drew ssap up through their flesh like tendrilss of clear fire; a day of relief, of releasse, of recognition; a day when the flute called in a voice of ssilver and bone, ssilver and bone, and the ssound of drip, of drop, of sseep, of sspurt, the ssound of running water, the ssound of life, ressponded.”
“Imbolc,” said the Hanged Man. “The wild maiden returns.”
ROSE RED
With stony inevitability, Rose Red’s last week at home arrived. Each passing hour carried her further over the threshold into a new life. She knew the king and Queen Snow White couldn’t understand and gave up any attempt to explain herself. She didn’t ask permission, cry or plead. Artemis had spoken with both her parents and the king was resigned, indifferent.
“It appears I have no choice,” he said. That was all. Rose Red thought he wouldn’t miss her. She was no longer an obedient prop in his life. He was finished with her.
She spent time every day with her mother. One morning she drew a comb through the queen’s black hair with long, smooth strokes, soothing and gentling, feeling the bones of her mother’s skull with her other hand. Morning sun came in the window. The queen looked at herself in the mirror. Rose Red stood behind the stool her mother sat on.
“I know you hate me,” the queen’s reflection said to Rose Red’s.
Rose Red’s hands stilled, one on the comb and one on her mother’s shoulder. The queen spoke conversationally. Rose Red felt a sudden severing, as though she’d been divided deeply and part of her fell away. Queen Snow White turned away from the mirror, standing abruptly. She faced Rose Red like an adversary. Her eyes filled with tears and her white, smooth face cracked into angles and harsh lines.
Rose Red looked into her mother’s face and then over her mother’s shoulder into the mirror, that inexorable mirror. The room was reflected in the cold glass; the sunny window and herself, standing as though struck to stone with comb in hand. Her mother’s reflected back was rigid with tension, cloaked in black hair. Rose Red’s reflected face looked as white as the queen’s. Carefully, holding her own gaze in the mirror, Rose Red laid the comb down as though it was an object of unutterable fragility that might shatter into splinters. It made a click in the silent room. Her mother’s face was now streaked with tears, naked and vulnerable as a child’s.
“You hate me and the sooner you leave, the better! I don’t know how much longer I can bear this.”
Rose Red looked at her own face in the mirror and thought about the hours and days and years she’d spent in this room. She looked in the mirror and thought of the inescapable trap of her mother’s devouring need, and her own desire to be loved, to be good enough, to please. She looked in the mirror and remembered combing and brushing her mother’s thick dark hair until her wrist ached, remembered endless boredom of gowns and jewelry and hair ornaments. She looked in the merciless mirror and it reflected tragedy and futility.
“You hate me,” the queen repeated.
No, Rose Red said silently to the mirror, every day of my life I’ve tried as hard as I could to please you, and every day I’ve failed.
“You’ve torn my heart apart.”
No, thought Rose Red. I gave you everything I could.
“I’ve lost you!” The queen’s voice broke. More tears fell down her face. Her nose ran.
Rose Red understood her mother still wanted something, some response, some reassurance, something big enough to fill her emptiness, even as her words set Rose Red brutally and inexorably free.
No, thought Rose Red. You’ve thrown me away. In the mirror, she saw an expression on her own face she’d never seen before, an expression the dwarves and Vasilisa and Jenny would have recognized. It was a stoic expression of pain, betrayed by a grim quirk of lips. The queen, however, made no effort to hide her anguish. The mirror showed -- Rose Red saw — Oh Gods! — I am the mother and she is the child — and that’s how it will always be …!
“No,” she said to her mother in the mirror. “No.” She turned and walked out the door.
After that Rose Red was respectful and pleasant to both her parents and went steadily about the task of turning out her room. She discarded nearly everything. The few possessions she kept went into a pair of stout wooden crates, to be stored with the dwarves until wanted.
She was to go to the dwarves for a time, while she studied with Artemis. After a period of training, she’d take her place as Artemis’s handmaiden.
When the moment of leave-taking came, she said good-bye to her father, who didn’t touch her. She hugged her mother, who stood stiffly in her embrace, told her she loved her, turned and walked away. That was all.
Blind with tears, trembling, she made her way through the grounds for the last time. Outside the gate, the White Stag waited. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. The musky scent of him and the warmth of his body comforted her. He stood quietly, patient and untroubled, and after a time she found herself breathing with his breathing, the tumult in her heart lessening. She straightened up and they fell into step together. He stayed beside her all the way to the dwarves’ cottage. As they drew near, Vasilisa opened the door and came to meet her. She kissed the stag on his soft nose and he walked away between trees. Vasilisa took Rose Red’s cold hand in her warm one.
***
On the first day of her training, the White Stag met her. Rose Red greeted him, laying a hand on his muscled neck. He looked into her eyes before leading her through the woods. It was a cool, cloudy day. Everywhere she looked she found the repeated intricate knotted pattern of the stag’s antlers, in the bare branches overhead, leafless rose and berry bushes and a woven magpie’s nest. They climbed a rise and descended the other side into deeper, dimmer woods where trees grew close together. The stag led her to a narrow cleft in the forest floor. The cleft widened into a small valley. The descent was steep and banks rose on either side as she followed the stag. Bare banks showed layers on which the forest stood, layers of stone, of something that looked like bones — or was it antlers? — of earth, of matted roots and a damp layer on top of rotting leaves and wood. She’d never thought about the ground beneath her feet before. It was something she walked on and the forest was planted in — that was all. But here the earth opened before her eyes like a book. It lived and breathed and told an old, old story.
She stopped and reached out a hand, touching the exposed forest floor. Life of roots, grace of hidden water, musky scent of dark places, all spoke to her. Her flesh thrilled, as it had to the sound of the piping. What of her own structure of bone, blood and tissue? What of the smell of her own roots? She shuddered, uncomfortably aroused, and took her hand away, turning to follow the White Stag.
It led her to a hollowed-out place beneath a ledge of forest floor. A spring bubbled to itself, falling into a stone basin. She saw Artemis’s silver bow and a pile of skins. A young woman stood with her face turned up to the sky and her eyes closed. Her hair, the color of honey, swung in a thick long plait. She wore a plain linen robe and her face wore an expression of joy. She opened eyes the blue green of a shallow sea.
“It’s good to be under the sky again!” she said with such pleasure that Rose Red smiled in sympathy.
“I’m Persephone. Artemis is a friend of mine and now a friend of yours, I think?”
Rose Red didn’t know what to say. Artemis filled her with awe, certainly, awe tinged with reverence and not a little fear that she wouldn’t prove an adequate student.
Persephone laughed. “Well, no, probably friend isn’t the right word just now! She’s intimidating at first, don’t you think?”
Rose Red relaxed slightly. “Yes, she is. I’m afraid of letting her down,” she said candidly, giving voice to this fear for the first time.
“Oh, no,” said Persephone. “You won’t. You’re the right one—the only one—for the time and place. If you weren’t the right one, she wouldn’t show herself to you, and neither would he.” She bowed her head briefly in front of the White Stag in acknowledgment, then leaned forward and kissed him between the eyes.
The stag turned and made its way out of the sheltered hollow, moving out of sight along the valley floor. Persephone caught Rose Red’s hand.
“Artemis asked me if I’d meet and talk with you. She thought we might find things in common. Will you hear my story and then may I hear yours?”
They made themselves comfortable, piling up bracken to lean against and draping animal skins around their shoulders against the chill of the sunless day. Persephone talked of her girlhood, her mother and her journey to Hades while Rose Red listened in wonder. Persephone had brought food with her and they ate, and then Rose Red, for the first time, told her full story from beginning to end. Under Persephone’s gentle questioning, she allowed her feelings to surface, guilt and shame, anger, frustration, and the hollow knowledge that nothing could be fixed or changed, not herself, not the queen, not the king.
When she ran out of words she leaned against the cushion of bracken, feeling empty and peaceful. The two sat in silence for a time.
“Do you know who Artemis is?” asked Persephone at length.
“She watches over woods and wild places,” said Rose Red. “She protects the wilderness.”
“Yes. She also teaches us about autonomy and independence. She’s a doorkeeper between life and death, and in this role, she works with Hades and me. But here in the upper world she aids young women and men as they come into adulthood. Artemis initiates us into our own individual power.”
Rose Red looked away, uncomfortable. Unconsciously, she passed her hand over and over the grey wolf skin draped over her knees.
“I don’t feel powerful,” she said quietly. “I feel a failure. I feel ashamed I’m so happy to have left my parents and I can’t convince myself my mother’s unhappiness is not in some way my fault. I don’t know how I could’ve made things different, what other choices I could’ve made, yet I keep thinking there must have been a way.”
“How would you know if you’d done it right?” asked Persephone.
“Oh…” Tears thickened Rose Red’s voice. “If I’d done it right, they would have been happy. They would have loved me.”
“How do you know they don’t love you?”
“They don’t know who I am,” said Rose Red simply. “They don’t care who I am. My father only wanted me to make him look good and my mother wanted me to be her. She didn’t want me to be anything separate. I felt so…devoured!” Angry tears fell down her cheeks.
“Do you think your parents were happy before you were born?”
“No,” said Rose Red. “I don’t think they’ve ever been happy. But I think my mother thought I would make her life better — and I wanted to, but I didn’t. I can only be myself and that’s not who they needed me to be. The dwarves helped me see that.”
“’Me! Not Me!’” said Persephone, smiling.
“Yes. Now I recognize what is me and what isn’t, but most of what is truly me seems to be…unlovable.”
“Yet the dwarves love you, and Vasilisa and Jenny and Rumpelstiltskin.”
“Yes. They do. And Artemis seems to think I can do and be something important for the forest. I want so much to be something good in the world!” Her voice rose passionately.
Persephone wrapped her fingers around Rose Red’s wrist. “You already are!” she said with some force.
Rose Red quieted under Persephone’s grasp and took a deep breath.
“So,” said Persephone, “let me see if I understand. Two unhappy people came together in an unhappy marriage, had a child, and went on being unhappy — and it’s your fault?”
Rose Red smiled in spite of herself. “When you put it like that it sounds ridiculous. But yes, that’s how it seems.”
“Very well. And you believe each of your parents wanted something from you that you can’t give, and aren’t interested in what you are able to give, right?
“Right.”
“And your conclusion is you’re unlovable. You see your parents loving others?”
“No,” said Rose Red slowly. “I haven’t thought of it before but no, I don’t know if either of them loves anyone, or even themselves.”
“Including you.”
“Including me. But if they can’t love anyone, then being unable to love me isn’t about me at all!”
“It’s about their own limitations, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Rose Red in wonder, and she fell silent, turning this over in her mind.
“It’s not my fault,” she said slowly to herself.
Persephone smiled, loosened her grip around Rose Red’s wrist and slid her hand down to interlace their fingers.
“I’ve heard so many stories,” she said musingly. “Hundreds. Thousands. Each one is different because each person is different. But every single story is about relationship with others. The souls who’ve lived a full life, a healthy, vivid, engaged life, talk about what they learned. In order to find and open the kernel of learning they needed to let a lot go.”
“Like what?” asked Rose Red.
“Like blame and bitterness, anger, taking on the role of victim, being afraid to see clearly. What we do in Hades is part of an ancient piece of wisdom that’s everywhere at work in the world. It’s an essential but difficult aspect of balance. As you care for the earth, you’ll join us in keeping this wisdom.”
“And what is it?”
Persephone met Rose Red’s eyes directly. “Let die what must,” she said.
***
Rose Red, if she thought about it at all, assumed her training with Artemis would include caring directly for the forest and life within it. She expected to leave her sense of failure behind, to lose herself in a new life and forget the past.
The reality was quite different. In Persephone, she found a peer, another young woman who’d left home and parent to make a life for herself. They explored, not life, but death and decrease. They hunted fungi and excavated insects from rotting trees and mats of leaves. They identified sick trees, and hollow trees sheltering birds and animals.
“You’re like the forest,” Persephone told her. “Your feelings of anger and grief, the tension of being who you are instead of who you — and others — think you should be — all this makes up a whole person. Those parts of you are important. They’re part of your balance. What’s over, or not useful, will break down to feed the rest. New things will grow in you. Old things will weaken and die. Be a good guardian. Be an observer. Let it all happen. Hold space for the forest, and for yourself. Neither of you need interference.”
Persephone raised rabbits for meat and fur. “Hades and I built a big barn for other animals, and I wanted to try rabbits. I love working with them. They have more personality than you’d think. They feed us and we can trade with their fur as well as their meat.”
“Is it hard to see him kill them?” asked Rose Red, imagining it.
“Oh, Hades doesn’t kill them,” said Persephone, amused. “He hates blood and gore. I’m the one who harvests them.”
Rose Red was taken aback. “And you don’t…mind?” she asked cautiously.
“Killing is a hard thing to do. But our rabbits aren’t pets. We need them and I take their lives with gratitude and respect. Until the moment of death, they’re lovingly cared for, handled, fed and allowed plenty of room to run around and be a rabbit.”
“Let die what must?” asked Rose Red.
“That’s it. Their lives aren’t wasted.”
One day Persephone introduced Rose Red to an old woman shaped like a ball of dough. She beamed at Rose Red as though she were the one person in the world she most wanted to see. A few grey curls stirred on her scalp and her wide smile was nearly toothless. She radiated joy and humor.
“This is Baubo,” said Persephone. “She’s come to teach you how to dance.”
Rose Red tensed at once. She didn’t want to dance. Part of her education as a princess included learning formal dances. Being athletic and graceful, she’d mastered them, but she found the movements rigid and limited; the close proximity of a partner often distasteful; and the clothing involved extremely uncomfortable.
Persephone unwrapped her dumbek.
“The Cordax is an erotic dance sacred to Artemis,” she began.
“How is this caring for the forest?” Rose Red interrupted. “I’m not a dancer!”
“It has nothing to do with caring for the forest,” Persephone responded levelly. “It has to do with uncovering, shaping and taking responsibility for your own power. Think of love as a circle, and you a part of it. If your love only goes outward to the people around you, the circle has a gap in it. It can’t hold together. Only in loving yourself can you truly love the forest — or any other place or person. In dance, you’ll meet parts of yourself you meet nowhere else. Erotic dance acknowledges the totality of your female power to conceive, create, give birth and allow death. You know earth is a living being, made of blood and bone, life and death, endless cycle of transformation and renewal, just as you are. Passionate life must balance with inevitable death. Dance is a threshold into that awareness.”
“Everyone’s a dancer, my dear,” said Baubo. “Everyone has their own unique dance, waiting to be discovered.”
Rose Red shook her head wordlessly in rejection.
Persephone glanced at Baubo, who nodded. She put the drum aside and held out her hands to Rose Red.
“Come here,” she said.
Reluctantly, Rose Red gave Persephone her hands.
“You aren’t required to do this,” Persephone said to the younger woman. “Not unless you want to. But if you want to become a student of Artemis you must learn to dance. It’s a great pleasure and gift to be with yourself in this way. Why does it frighten you?”
“It’s not for me,” muttered Rose Red.
“It’s not for you,” repeated Persephone.
“This kind of dance is for girls with lovers, beautiful girls who want to attract a mate! I’m not that! I don’t know how to do that! I don’t want a lover! I only want to be left alone and quiet … and alone.” Her voice dropped.
Persephone cupped the other girl’s chin in her hand, forcing her head up to meet her gaze.
“Dance is an expression of self,” she said. “It’s a journey you take into yourself, like walking into deep woods alone at dawn with no path beneath your feet. It’s a private dance of personal power and love for yourself. Rose Red, it’s time for you to allow the love of your friends to teach you how to love yourself. The love of your friends is your dance floor. It supports you as you dance your way to self-love and true freedom. I can understand why you feel you only want to be left alone, but if you want to work with Artemis — and me — it’s too late for isolation. We’re here to help you enter into a life of your own — your own joy, your own strength, your own power. Do you want that?”
Rose Red met her gaze steadily, though tears slid down her face. “I want it,” she said. “I’m sorry,” she said to Baubo, so wretched about the impression she was making she missed the compassion in the old woman’s eyes.
Pull yourself together! she thought to herself sternly. Stop acting like such a coward! You’re going to ruin everything! She wiped her nose on her sleeve and rubbed tears off her cheeks, put on a smile, straightened her shoulders.
“I’m ready now,” she said.
To her relief, they taught her to play the drum first. She relaxed enough to make friends with it, and later to express the beat tentatively with her body while Baubo played. But when she watched Persephone demonstrate, her beauty and passion made Rose Red feel colorless and stiff. Silently, she despaired. She could never be so self-forgetful, so utterly at one with the drumbeat, so graceful and flowing, as Persephone. She was failing. Artemis, after all, had made a mistake choosing her.
For several days, they worked together, but neither Baubo’s earthy humor and affection nor Persephone’s encouragement could reach Rose Red in her miserable sense of failure.
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.
Came freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw, and then a warm night during which the sound of flowing water filled the forest. The next morning Artemis told Rose Red to make herself ready for a journey.
“There’s nothing more I can teach you, my daughter. You’re ready. We travel now to a place of initiation. We’ll meet Rumpelstiltskin, who will bring Vasilisa and Jenny, and go on together.”
“Initiation?” asked Rose Red nervously.
“Yes. A formal ritual between one level of growth and another. You, Jenny and Vasilisa are part of a group invited to come together to honor your journey thus far and make choices about going forward. The group consists of three men and four women, as well as those who help turn the cycles. There will be guides. I’m one of them.”
“But why am I chosen?”
Artemis looked into her anxious face. “Be easy, Daughter. You’re chosen because you’re ready. Each of you is chosen because each of you has broken away from his or her tribe and goes forward out of the tribe’s knowledge and understanding. In order to fully claim your own life, you must fully understand your past and come to peace with it. Hidden information will be revealed, secrets exposed, feelings and emotions faced and given expression. Understand, though, you’re invited. You need not participate unless you want to. No one is coerced. Will you travel with us? I give you my word you’ll be free to leave if you want to.”
Rose Red assented, with many misgivings.
Three days later, she threw her arms around Jenny and Vasilisa in turn.
Neither Jenny nor Vasilisa knew much more than Rose Red about the initiation, neither where it would take place and who else would be there, nor what kind of rites and rituals it might involve. Rumpelstiltskin, when questioned, merely smiled. Jenny’s trust in Rumpelstiltskin was such that her curiosity was not mixed with real worry. Vasilisa hardly seemed to care. She was quiet and distracted, but possessed an air of joyous anticipation. Rose Red wondered what was in her mind.
As they set out, the forest was alive with birds and moving water. Rose Red thought of the Night of Trees under the full moon. The feeling of green power hadn’t left her palms or her nerve endings, nor had her body forgotten the fox’s thick brushing tail. She wondered what lay ahead.
For two days, they traveled together, moving steadily through springing woods and birdsong. On the second day, they met a strange child with ancient eyes and gold earrings. A beautiful young woman with thick honey colored hair traveled with her, and told them her name was Mary, saying it hesitantly, as though unsure it belonged to her. Together, Mary and the child pulled on a cloth knotted around a lumpy burden, dragging it on the ground behind them. It was a strange encumbrance and they made a strange pair.
Artemis and Rumpelstiltskin greeted the child with a surprising degree of respect, and the two groups joined.
The next day the piping started, fresh and flowing, green fire and dripping ice, and led them to the threshold of initiation.
MIRMIR
“Baba Yaga,” breathed the Hanged Man, “and that foul cauldron of hers! Gods know what’s in it!”
Mirmir’s mouth stretched in a thin-lipped smile.
“Within the cauldron, tangled up with drumsstickss, greassy bones and malodorouss clothing, liess a ssmall pouch of wrinkled skin with a few coarsse, curly hairss attached. Once, the sac contained a man’s swimming seed in a thick, salty colorless sea. Now it contains sleeping marbles, quiescent, waiting, clicking gently together, murmuring an inaudible song to themselves in their dark, soft sac. Waiting to see. Baba Yaga gloats over them, shooters and ducks, swirlies and steelies and puries. “Soon,” she whispers to them, “soon, my dearies, you’ll have friends. I’ll show him how to play keepsies! I’ll show that miserable mibster what a champion is!”
“Of course,” sighed the Hanged Man ruefully. “I might have known!”
(To read Part 6 in its entirety, go here.)