The Hanged Man: Part 6: Ostara
Post #52: In which two characters dare to look ...
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RADULF
When Radulf looked into the cauldron he saw black liquid with an oily sheen. The fiery skull revealed swirling patterns on the surface. Unexpectedly, he smelled blood, and nausea twisted in his stomach. He swallowed, his mouth flooding with saliva. The swirling pattern grew into shapes and the fiery skull burned brighter and brighter until it was reflected on the surface like a candle…
There were many candles lit, and lamps as well. He was looking into the ballroom at home. There was a dance. He remembered the evening well. There he was, in his formal clothing, revolving to the music with his wife. Not yet his wife, though, for this evening had occurred before his marriage. He saw a long table set out with food and wine, and everyone in elegant dress. He saw his parents, waltzing decorously. Face after face passed by, each belonging to someone of power and wealth. He watched himself, smiling, chatting, dancing gracefully, offering his wife-to-be a glass of wine. His face looked untroubled and young.
But where was Marella? He couldn’t see her, and he remembered she’d been there as well. She’d been at all the dances, had been much admired for her grace and beauty. She’d so loved music. For the most part, he could only see himself. Other faces came and went, but his remained central.
Then the view changed and he moved. No, he wasn’t moving. The viewer moved. The owner of the eyes watching him moved. He felt a sudden stabbing pain, lancing up from his foot and burning all the way to his hip. He groaned inwardly, holding tightly to the sound so it wouldn’t escape. He felt his face — no, the viewer’s face — set in a rigid mask of a smile. Another step and again the pain, this time in the other foot and leg. He looked down and saw his feet in delicate dancing slippers under a skirt of pale blue green and ivory lace. He remembered that dress. All Marella’s dresses had been in the colors of the sea.
Images came and went swiftly before his (her) eyes. He (she) danced, swaying and whirling, and the pain felt like ground glass in every joint of his (her) legs and feet.
The pain was so large it muted and muffled his other senses. It seemed impossible to function over it. Through it? With it? He couldn’t think clearly, but he knew he mustn’t betray the pain. No one must know. Nothing was more important than that.
As familiar faces passed before his (her) eyes, Radulf noticed expressions he’d never seen on them before. Here he noted a hint of slyness in twist of lip and glance of eye. On another face, an instant of unguarded despair and unutterable fatigue before the pleasant mask was resumed. On a woman’s face, he caught a malicious raised eyebrow and watched a word whispered behind a fan. A young male friend of his partnered him (her) in a dance and he (she) saw hot lust in his eyes before he (she) dropped his (her) own and kept them on the youth’s chin. His lips were red and full and he wet them repeatedly with his tongue.
Faces passed in front of him, but the pain remained constant, a fierce clamor, and all other faces remained peripheral to his own young, handsome face. He saw the thick dark hair of his youth, a little long, so he swept it out of his eyes from time to time. He saw his deep-set hazel eyes, the smooth clean planes of his face. He watched himself, gallant, pleasant, witty and poised, kissing a white ringed hand, listening to an older man with alert interest, dancing gracefully with a dowager, offering a glass of wine and a tempting plate to an overweight gentleman with a red face sitting in a chair. Now and then he threw a tender look towards the young woman who would become his wife, and she returned it eagerly, adoration and uncertainty in her eyes. His parents watched him unobtrusively, his mother with magnificent calm authority, indulgent, sure of his good behavior, and his father with the wrinkle of skin between his eyebrows that made him look slightly anxious.
He (she) turned in obedience to the dance, revolving gracefully on knives of pain, and as his face came back into view he (she) looked up and met his own eyes. For a moment his face was unguarded, naked, and he (she) saw something caged, something chained in the dark, something wild that lay dying, and he thought, I remember this! I remember! I looked at her and thought, I’d rather be riding under the sky, I’d rather be standing at the rail of a ship listening to the hiss of waves, I’d rather be walking with you through the gardens. Walking! He groaned aloud. She had walked with him and endured this hidden pain!
His mother laid a fat beringed hand on his arm, claiming his attention, and he turned at once, deferential, courteous, affectionate, and bent to hear what she said in his ear.
The contents of the cauldron stirred and shifted, darkened, and he saw a dark dog-like shape. The dim figure grew gradually clearer. The creature was caught in something, held fast by a leg. It bared its teeth and pinned its ears. He saw blazing amber eyes. It wasn’t a dog but a wolf, a dark grey wolf, and it was just on dusk or dawn, the greasy threshold where surroundings are only dimly seen.
Its front paw was in a trap, an ugly black iron thing with a fringe of sharp triangular teeth snapped shut on the wolf’s paw, crushing bones. The ground around the trap was furrowed and clumps of vegetation were uprooted. The wolf panted heavily, its long red tongue lolling, and then bent its muzzle to its injured leg and began to gnaw at it.
Radulf watched, sickened and horrified but unable to look away. Hard bones stood out under the wolf’s shoulders, every line of its body rigid. Radulf shuddered, imagining the creature’s agony, and realized in that instant he no longer felt Marella’s pain. His body belonged to him again, but he couldn’t enjoy it. He couldn’t be glad or feel relieved, imagining the pain of the trap, the shattered foot and the desperate severing of the limb. He felt faint and his gorge rose. His hands clenched on the iron rim. He tasted blood and felt shreds of his own tissue between his teeth. He wanted to scream, to close his eyes, to howl, and could do none of them. He could only watch as the wolf inexorably but delicately chewed through its own flesh and bone.
Then it was done. The leg stuck up out of the trap, paw crushed in its jaws. Shards of white bone and bloody tissue littered the ground. The wolf, panting heavily, lips smeared with blood, whined deep in its throat and backed awkwardly away. It bent and sniffed at the ragged stump of its leg, licking. Radulf, watching, felt the creature’s relief under a numbing blanket of shock. The wolf raised his head and sniffed at the air and then moved off, hobbling on three legs. It was gone. Only an oily swirl of liquid remained in the bottom of the cauldron.
Radulf straightened his head stiffly. His neck and shoulders felt like stone. He turned his head and spat on the ground, trying to rid himself of the taste of blood. The act of spitting made him gag and he went down on one knee, fighting the urge to vomit. As he knelt there he began to tremble and his head swam.
A hand came down on his shoulder.
“What can I do?”
“Water.”
Kunik helped him to his feet. Holding Radulf’s arm, he led him to the water bucket next to the fence. Radulf splashed water over his face, running wet fingers through his hair. He rinsed his mouth and spat again, this time without nausea rising. He drank cautiously. Water slid down his throat and into his stomach, clean and cold and sweet. He sat down on the ground, the strength draining out of his legs.
“Oh, Gods.” He put his face in his hands and gave himself up to a torrent of grief for Marella, and for himself.
Kunik sat beside him, his leg pressed against Radulf’s, and let him weep.
It took some time, but the torrent gradually ebbed to a trickle and the trickle gave way to sobbing breaths. Silently, Kunik passed Radulf a strip of clean cloth left over from bandaging their cuts. Radulf once again knelt before the bucket and rinsed his face and blew his nose. He stood shakily, reaching down to give Kunik a hand up. He turned and embraced the shorter, younger man.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Are you glad you looked?” asked Kunik.
“I am,” replied Radulf at once.
“Well then,” said Kunik, “it’s my turn.”
KUNIK
Kunik rested his hands lightly on the rim of Baba Yaga’s cauldron. It felt greasy. He expected to see some kind of dark liquid inside it, but the contents glimmered palely. There was a subtle disturbance and then a picture cleared and became more defined. Bones. He saw the reflection of the bone fence.
But no, that wasn’t right because he couldn’t see the reflection of the fiery skull. He frowned, trying to look more deeply. He certainly saw bones, bones set in a pattern with a central pale shape and spokes of long bones radiating out from it, those radiating shapes connecting one to another in a web of bones. A web of bones, he thought in some wonder. As his eyes followed the complexity of connection, he began to see shapes in the bones. He itched to reach down and pick them up, turn them over in his hands, search out the hidden shapes, but he remembered Dar warning them not to touch the contents of the cauldron and refrained.
He clenched his jaw in frustration and at the same moment hands — his own familiar hands — reached into the picture and picked up one of the bones. The (his) hands turned the bone this way and that. He saw the missing fingernail on his middle finger where once his knife had slipped and sheared off the dorsal tip, nail bed and all, yet he also felt the rim of the cauldron under his hands and knew he hadn’t moved them. As the (his) hands turned the bone and felt it, the shape spoke to him and he thought, ‘ice bear,’ at the same moment it turned into a beautifully carved ice bear. Its fur rippled with life, the shoulders powerful, one broad heavy foot with its curved claws planted forward and the head turned, as though listening. It was the finest work he’d ever seen, far finer than anything he was capable of. The (his) hands set the bear back in its place and picked up another bone.
As he watched, bone after bone was picked up, felt and turned, and transformed, each carving an exquisite piece of art. There were men and women and children, seals and walruses, snow geese, foxes, arctic hares, whales, ravens, salmon, ice houses, bows and arrows, cooking pots and bears. One bone became a flute, pierced, carved and set with bands of bright metal and gems. The web grew larger and larger, more and more intricate, until at last every bone was carved.
The (his) hands disappeared. Kunik looked at what he’d done. It was good. It was beautiful, nearly magical. He felt a shy sense of pride.
Then the (his) hands returned back to the first carving, the ice bear, and Kunik watched, disbelieving, as those skilled, tender, seeing hands used a sharp knife to cut away one of the ice bear’s soft, round ears.
The chip of bone fell into the web. Kunik let out a cry of dismay at the ruined figure. The (his) hands set the bear down and picked up the next carving. One by one, the (his) hands deliberately mutilated each carving, so what had been a marvelous web of intricate beauty became an ugly mess of broken pieces of bone and ruined figures, malicious and mocking. The bone flute was splintered lengthwise, metal bands broken.
Kunik wept as he watched. He’d made a perfect web of connection and wonder, life and place, and then he’d destroyed it. Was he maker or destroyer? Had his people been right to reject him? Had they seen him truly or utterly failed to see him?
The (his) hands withdrew from the picture. The broken bone carvings lay scattered. As he stood looking with sick despair, he noticed movement. The ice bear with the missing ear stirred. He lumbered to his feet. He raised his long muzzle into the air and sniffed. The figure of a woman stirred. Her left arm had been cut off. Awkwardly, she clambered to her feet. In her right hand, she held a spear. The ice bear and the woman approached each other, staggering as though exhausted or in pain. Together they picked their way through the field of broken carvings. The ice bear pawed at a jumble of pieces and the figure of a child came into view. The woman knelt, as though talking to it, and the child struggled to his feet. It was a round figure in a parka with a fur fringed hood, but part of the hood and the head it covered had been gouged away. The ice bear and woman stood back to back with the child crouched between them on all fours like a puppy.
Now Kunik noted slight movements throughout the field of rubble. The ruined carvings stirred, righting themselves, and moved toward the center, where the three figures waited. They limped and crawled and wriggled and squirmed, according to their shape and damage. There was something coldly inexorable about them. When they came in reach of the bear, he swiped at them with his powerful front legs, sending them flying. Many of them broke into further pieces. The woman used her spear bravely, piercing one and now another, beating them off, inflicting all the damage she could. None of the menacing animals or people came anywhere close to the child.
The battle unfolded in complete silence. Kunik knew that silence — the cold, dark silence of the long arctic night, the silence of snow drifted like fallen stars and the night sky rippling with color. The bones shone with a pallid light and everything looked dim white and stark black.
Kunik’s teeth drew back from his lips, his slanted eyes slitted with rage, and he longed to hear the sound of his father’s blows, hear the death cries his mother forced from the attackers. He wanted to see the blooming blood, smell the stink of spilled guts and emptied bowels. He wanted to bite, to strike, to crush, to kill. He wanted to wade in the blood of those who threatened him and his parents. He was not rejected and shunned. They were not worthy. Their hearts were small and weak and rigid. He rejected them.
Then it was over. The three figures stood absolutely still at the center of what had once been an intricate mingling of connection. His mother’s spear rested on the ground.
The figure of the child moved. He crawled out from between the ice bear and woman. He stood looking over the field of broken bone. He reached in his pocket and withdrew a tiny knife. The child stood in front of the motionless figure of the woman, reached forward with the knife and held the point against her belly. Kunik cried out. The child stood quite still, deadly knife poised, hood hiding his face. After a few moments, the child’s hand dropped away. He turned and looked out over the battlefield. He took a few steps and then bent and picked up a chip of bone. The child stood, turning the bone chip around and around in its hands, head cocked as though listening, and Kunik saw himself through the eyes of others, the intent posture, the delicate listening hands.
The child, still holding bone chip in one hand and knife in the other, moved in front of the ice bear. He looked up into the bear’s face. Once again, he reached forward with the wicked blade, but then the small hand slowed, wavered, and dropped. The child looked from the ice bear to the bone chip it held.
The child turned and looked up into Kunik’s face. He could see delicately carved eyes above round, firm cheeks. He could see the shape of nose and plump lips. The small face gleamed, catching the light, and Kunik realized the carved child wept, even as he himself wept. The child lowered its head and trudged through the field of bony debris, looking exhausted and disconsolate.
The little figure disappeared into the blackness at the edge of Kunik’s field of view, but Kunik knew where he was. He was alone in the dark, outcast, exiled, without family or kin. He was a loose, lost chip of bone, anonymous, splintered, hacked away from his place, without meaning.
Kunik closed his eyes in anguish. When he opened them again the cauldron was lightless and empty.
***
“I ran away,” said Radulf. He looked down at the trampled grass in front of his crossed legs. He took a stem between his index and middle finger. “I couldn’t stay. I had no words for it, no one who I could speak the truth to. One day it became too much and I left. For years, I’ve despised myself for it. What I saw in the cauldron, the wolf chewing off its own leg, the horror of it, the suffering …” He choked.
“Maybe you were just saving your own life, doing what you had to do,” said Kunik. “Maybe some unconscious part of you was as desperate as the wolf.”
“But it wasn’t that bad! It was a good life, an enviable life, really!”
“Do you want that life back?” Dar asked quietly.
Radulf hesitated.
“No,” he said dully. “No.”
In the silence, the fire bubbled and cracked.
“I never asked myself before if I wanted to go back,” said Kunik slowly. “I only told myself I was exiled; I was unwanted and couldn’t go back.”
“Do you want to go back?” Radulf asked him.
“No,” said Kunik, feeling surprised. “No, I don’t. My life lies ahead. It’s just that…” he trailed away, groping for the right words. “I want to know my family loves me, and recognizes me as one of them, even though my place isn’t with them. Is that wrong? To want to be a part of them but not want to be with them?”
“If so, then I’m wrong, too,” said Radulf.
“We all need love and connection,” said Dar.
“I had love and connection,” said Radulf, “and I walked away from it.”
“Why?” asked Dar.
“I was alone.”
“How do you know you had love and connection, then?” Dar’s voice held a faint hint of amusement. “If you had it, why did you leave?”
“I felt unseen,” said Radulf. “Nobody knew who I was. I didn’t know who I was. It was like playing a part and having a script to read.”
“Who directed the play?” inquired Dar, again with the tinge of amusement.
“My parents,” said Radulf unhesitatingly. “My parents,” he said more slowly, thinking aloud. “I knew exactly what they expected… and I did it.”
“How compliant!” said Dar.
“But no, I wasn’t compliant,” said Radulf. “That’s the problem. I wasn’t compliant at all!” He thought of watching himself in the cauldron. “I was good, but I wasn’t compliant. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t real!”
“Did you feel loved?” asked Kunik.
“I suppose my parents loved — love — me, but they didn’t care about who I was or what I wanted. Marella loved me and perhaps understood me best of all, but I loved her as a sister, a pretty little companion.”
“I wonder,” said Kunik, “if that’s how my parents felt, too — that they weren’t real. Perhaps they felt different or wanted something different from those around them. But maybe they felt seen by each other. Seen and known and real, and that’s why they made a life together, though it meant exile.”
As he finished speaking, Artemis appeared and motioned to him. “Come with me.”
(This post was published with Edition #52 of ‘Weaving Webs, Turning Over Stones.’)