The Hanged Man: Part 6: Ostara
Post #50: In which men make choices ...
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CHAPTER 20
ARTYOM
The Firebird stayed on Artyom’s shoulder as he walked under Baba Yaga’s hovel and joined the men.
The fire was a large bed of glowing coals, as though it had been burning for hours instead of minutes. Here, too, was the strong scent of herbs. Artyom stood looking at the sullen embers, aware only of his anger.
The hag! The old bitch! She’d humiliated him, made him look despicable in front of the others. He wasn’t responsible for the small cruelties and sins of his childhood. If one person had cared! If one person had loved him or wanted him! How dared they judge him, when they’d all possessed loving parents and happy homes! No one could understand the barren desolation of his childhood, the loneliness of being groomed for power and responsibility! How could he possibly know the frog was an enchanted girl?
And Vasilisa. Her white face. Her ragged, ugly foot. No one must ever see that! The King’s wife mustn’t reveal such a blemish. Still, she’d forgive him. She must forgive him. He needed her, and somehow after this night he needed her more than ever. With her beside him, everything would be all right. He’d work hard, be a good leader and a good husband. He’d be honorable and strong and wise. She’d save him.
He wouldn’t allow Baba Yaga to destroy his hopes and dreams. He wouldn’t be her victim, or her puppet.
Artyom lifted his head defiantly. The Firebird, with a soft noise, took off. Dar was walking thoughtfully around the fire, softly beating a pair of small drums hanging at his waist on a leather strap. He used both hands, settling into no particular rhythm. At first the sound soothed, but then it began to wear at Artyom’s nerves. He wanted Dar to find a rhythm and stay with it. Damn the man! What did this wandering, meaningless jumble mean? Where was it going? The herbal smell in the air pressed unpleasantly against him.
KUNIK
Kunik couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger Morfran’s connection to Vasalisa and, more remotely, Radulf. He’d traveled for many years. He was naturally quiet and always conscious of being a stranger. He’d perfected the trick of being just pleasant and friendly enough to disappear entirely in company, always sitting at the edge of gatherings, listening and observing. He’d heard a lot of stories. He’d heard of Vasilisa and the fiery skull. Now characters from stories lived and breathed around him, as the stories of his own life lived and breathed within him.
His greatest wonder, though, was for the series of hidden connections. Vasilisa — not the daughter of a peasant but the daughter of a King of the Sea! Morfran — son of a sea princess! Radulf — beloved by Morfran’s aunt! Family. Kin. Tribe. One connection linking with another and then another. Belonging. Hidden secrets and liaisons out of the past echoing in present lives. His chest ached with longing.
Still, he comforted himself, I’m whole in myself. I know who I am. I feel adrift in the world, it’s true, but I’ve survived and I’ve healed myself. I uncover shape within shape. There’s good magic in my hands.
But Baba Yaga told no story for him.
Dar walked around the fire playing a pair of drums. It wasn’t rhythmic but irregular and somehow disturbing. Artemis had thrown something on the fire — some kind of herb — and melted away again into shadows. A strong musty green smell filled the air. Kunik wandered to the edge of the fire and looked down. The pieces of wood looked like bones and the consuming fire revealed the hidden heart of each stick. He watched, fascinated, seeing shapes and stories, watching thin sticks fall gently into grey and white ash. The ash made him think of snow, the starry snow of his childhood under a dim noon sky. Of course, snow looked white in sunlight. Old snow might look as grey as this ash.
He thought of snow and ice — all the textures and ways of it. New snow, thin ice, solid ice, falling snow, fine snow, coarse snow, rotten ice. Snow and ice and cold and endless night sky filled with stars like snowflakes hanging suspended, frozen, gleaming in night’s dome.
Dar began to speak.
“There’s a land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color. In this land live the ice bears. They’re born. They grow and learn to fish and swim. They play and mate and walk on the ice. When their time is over, they die.
There lived an ice bear called Nanuk, and the first time he came out of the cave where he was born, he discovered sky and snow and sea and he smelled another. It wasn’t the familiar scent of his sister or his mother. It wasn’t the scent of seal or walrus or fish or any other wild creature living with and around the ice bears.
It was a female scent. It was named Tapeesa.
Nanuk grew and learned to fish and swim. He played with his sister.
Always, there was the scent of Tapeesa.
He reached adulthood and his mother and sister were gone. He was strong and powerful. It was time to find a mate.
Always, there was the scent of Tapeesa.
Sometimes he saw her. She was a round shape in her parka with its fur hood, but once the wind caught at her hair and it looked like a raven’s wing sweeping around her face.
Nanuk began to follow Tapeesa’s scent. He discovered the places where she hid and watched him. He followed her tracks back to her people, but he didn’t go near the village. He knew human hunters killed his kind.
Sometimes Tapeesa came a long way over the ice to be near him.
He began to wait for her. He didn’t hide himself but stayed in the open, thick white fur on his legs ruffling in the wind.
Gradually, she stopped hiding, too.
They looked at one another across the ice and snow, Tapeesa and Nanuk.
Every day they drew closer together. He stretched out his neck and black muzzle and drew in her scent.
She threw back her fur-fringed hood.
One day they touched.
Nanuk’s people drove him away. They could smell Tapeesa on him. He took the form of a human man.
Tapeesa’s people shunned her. She was a danger. She was unnatural.
They found a village and settled on the edge of it. There was a child.
One day, polar bears dragged Tapeesa and Nanuk onto the ice and ate them, but not before Tapeesa hid the child, wrapped in sealskin, behind a ridge of ice.”
Kunik wept. As Dar spoke, he watched fire burn away logs of wood and he saw the young ice bear and the young woman. He saw his mother’s wide hips and round cheeks. He saw his father’s powerful curved claws, his half-moon ears and his strong legs. He saw them stand on the ice, facing one another across their people and the rules of their tribes. He tasted the bitterness of their exile and the sweet musk of their love. He saw himself between them, love child, child of neither one tribe nor another. He saw their torn bodies on the red snow and he saw himself, drifting on an ice flow in the arctic night.
He wept in great, heaving sobs, making no effort to control his tears or the mucus dripping from his nose. He didn’t cover his face, but turned it up to the night sky and sobbed. He didn’t know if he wept for relief or grief, for rage or peace. He didn’t know if he was torn in pieces or healed. The pain was too great. He merely wept because he must.
ARTYOM
In the silence following Dar’s story, Artyom heard the flute. In fact, he realized he’d been hearing it vaguely for some time, coming from the women’s circle, but now it approached their own fire. He didn’t like something about the melody. It teased at him the way Dar’s random drumming had before he began to speak the story and his hands fell into a steady rhythm.
The flute sounded sly and somehow greedy. It was a thoughtless sound of desire, even lust, a raw sound. It was…Artyom groped for the right word…uncivilized. It made him uneasy and feeling uneasy fed his anger.
The piper came out of the shadows into the firelight. His crimson cloak was encrusted with points of light picked out by the flames. Over the left shoulder, high on the back, glowed a large golden feather that obviously came from the Firebird. Glancing around, Artyom realized the Firebird itself had disappeared. Looking back at the piper, disgust rose in Artyom at the sight of his animal legs, covered with dark hair and ending in split hooves. There was something obscene about the piper, half man, half beast, as he danced and turned lightly on those legs. Two short, thick horns thrust out of the curly hair on his head.
The piper and Dar faced one another, each straight and tall with his cloak in graceful folds around him. The cloaks were clearly made by the same hand, but Artyom thought the two figures were alike in some deeper way, although Dar was a real man, not a half beast. He saw the piper’s erect phallus silhouetted against the fire, thrusting up obscenely as though relishing the firelight. Dar’s hands fell, relaxed, to his sides and the piper took the bone flute from his lips and held it loosely by his own side. They smiled at each other and then leaned forward and kissed one another on the mouth.
Dar reached under his cloak for a goblet that shone silver in firelight and handed it to the piper. The piper produced a corked bottle and poured the contents into the cup. Dar took a sharp looking knife from a sheath at his belt, extended his left hand and drew the blade across his palm in a quick, casual gesture. Artyom watched the dark line of blood follow the blade’s path. The peddler held his hand over the goblet so blood dripped into it, then bound up his hand neatly and quickly with a strip of cloth. The piper extended his own hand and Dar repeated the gesture without hesitating. The piper’s blood joined the contents of the cup.
Dar gestured to Radulf and Artyom. Kunik had already approached, his round face still washed with distress from the story. As the group of men came together, Dar said, “Brothers, we’re come together on this night to walk forward, shoulder to shoulder, into the next cycle. Initiation is a threshold between one thing and another. Tonight, we bear witness for one another. Many in the world are exiled from family and home but kinship is a wild, flexible connection with many aspects. Tonight, you may become a member of a tribe. You may have a place and a voice. Your strength may sustain others and your weakness be strengthened. Tonight, you stand at a crossroad. Will you be present with us? Will you consent to membership in the tribe?
“I will,” said Kunik, and held out his hand, palm up. Dar made the cut and Kunik let drops of his blood fall into the goblet. The peddler deftly bound up his hand.
“I consent,” said Radulf quietly.
Again, Artyom watched the ritual cut, the shedding of blood into the goblet and the binding of Radulf’s hand. When the eyes of the others turned to him, he said, “I’m not interested in having a ‘tribe’ that answers to that old hag!” He gestured towards the women’s fire on the other side of the motionless chicken legs. “You may not mind having your privacy invaded but I do! I’m an important and powerful leader and I’ve already proved my strength. I can’t afford to make alliances with witches and…animals!”
Radulf made a sound in his throat as thought to speak, but Dar cut in. “Animals…like frogs?” he asked quietly.
Artyom felt his face flame. “How dare you speak to me of that?” he asked through rigid lips. “What kind of woman would trick a child so, and then drag it out years later, and jeer and gloat? She’s responsible for Vasilisa’s hurt, not I!”
“Artyom,” said Radulf, “this is not about blame, but understanding. You’re not the only one uncomfortably exposed this night! You once extended the hand of friendship to me. Can’t we now accept other hands from other friends?”
He gestured with his bound hand. For some reason, the sight of it made Artyom desolate. “I don’t need friends. I suppose the next thing is you drink from that mess,” he sneered, pointing at the cup in the piper’s hand. “Then you sit around and tell your secrets! Count me out. I don’t need this. I’ve more important things to do.”
He strode purposefully past the group to the bone fence. He thought he remembered a gate…yes, there it was. He could see the arched top, made out of four rib bones bound together. At the top of the gate sat the fiery skull. He remembered he and Vasilisa putting it there together and the memory seemed years old. As he approached, the skull burned more fiercely than he’d ever seen it, glowing red hot. His steps faltered and he stopped. He felt afraid to get too near, in case the skull exploded with its own heat. Doggedly, he turned away and walked past Baba Yaga’s house, following the fence. There was a gate near the women’s fire.
He stayed well out of reach of firelight. As he left the men’s circle behind, the cool, fresh air cleared his mind. He’d be glad to leave this place. It had been a mistake. He’d thought this would help him prepare to go home and be a good ruler, but nothing here helped with that. He glanced around the women’s circle in search of Vasilisa.
The Firebird caught his attention. It danced with Jenny, rising and falling, turning and whirling in the air around her head. Jenny danced naked and her hair fell around her, mingling with the Firebird’s long tail. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. They weren’t two but one, the fantastic bird and the lovely girl, a unity of such beauty and grace he found unwilling tears on his cheeks.
Then Death appeared and the dance broke apart. A gossamer shimmer of gold floated in the air above the Firebird. It fell gently around it, looking as light and insubstantial as dust but dragging the bird down, making clumsy the lines of wing and tail. He watched in horror as Death gathered up the folds of net, tightening it relentlessly, twisting the rope around his bony hand and wrist.
Artyom heard Jenny’s shriek and it was the sound of his own anguish. The glowing bird grew smaller and smaller in the strangling folds of net and then it disappeared in a puff. A few golden feathers wafted to the ground like sparks.
Artyom stood, dumb and cold in the shadows. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Jenny fell to the ground in what looked like a faint and Death stood over her with the golden net in his hands. Nothing remained on the ground where the Firebird had struggled except a few pathetic feathers.
So much for the fiery skull and the Firebird, he thought savagely. So much for my talismans! So much for the fairytale I believed about love! The fabulous Firebird led one to treasure — and yet it had come here to its own death. It was all Baba Yaga. Everything she touched became evil and grotesque. How did he know Vasilisa wasn’t tainted too? Perhaps he’d had a narrow escape!
He found the arched shape of the gate. It opened easily under his touch and he shut it quietly behind him with a ‘snick’ inaudible to those around the fire. He went to the place where he’d camped with Radulf and Kunik and hastily gathered his belongings, putting his weapons back on his belt and rolling his blanket.
He walked into the night, removing his over shirt as he strode along and unbuttoning the linen shirt Vasilisa had made. He took it off impatiently, balled it up and threw it to the side, shrugging back into his over shirt. It felt rough against his skin after the fine linen.
(This post was published with this essay.)