The Hanged Man: Part 6: Ostara
Post #51: In which men bear witness for one another ...
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KUNIK
“No! Artyom!” Kunik sent an agonized cry after Artyom as he walked away from them. Once again, pain and grief rose in his heart in a shattering wave. He wanted to howl into the sky, howl and howl until his throat filled with blood and silenced him. He couldn’t bear it — that anyone should be exiled. He wouldn’t bear it! He took a step, intending to run after Artyom, to reason with him, hit him, drag him back to the others if necessary. He mustn’t be allowed to go into the night alone!
A strong hand closed about his upper arm and he turned, snarling.
“No,” said Radulf firmly, looking into his eyes. “Let him go.”
“No!” Kunik struck out clumsily, unable to see clearly through his rage and despair. His fist bounced off Radulf’s shoulder. The grip around his arm tightened and he threw another punch, better aimed this time, feeling the satisfying hard bone of Radulf’s jaw, the moist meaty give of his flesh. Radulf’s head snapped back but his grip, if anything, intensified.
“Let me go! I’ll kill you!” Kunik had never before said such words, but now something savage awakened in him, some red, primal, raging thing. He felt himself grow erect. He hungered for blood and bone, for crushed flesh, for warm copper spray on his face as he tore at a throat. He lusted to bite, to claw, to strike, to dominate and thrust and come! He threw back his head and bellowed, fully releasing his rage. He thrashed and heaved, spit and snarled and bit, kicked and clawed, seeing nothing, thinking nothing, only swept into a timeless red lustful river of passion.
Then, suddenly, he could hear again, only then realizing he had not been hearing for some uncounted period of time. He heard Radulf’s voice, right next to his ear, muttering over and over, “It’s all right. I’ve got you. It’s all right. I’ve got you.” Radulf was gasping. It sounded strange to Kunik. They laid on the ground but Radulf sounded as though he’d just run five miles. Radulf twisted Kunik’s left arm behind his back. It hurt. The cloth binding his cut was gone and he thought he was bleeding again.
Kunik lay on his side and Radulf lay behind him. Kunik could feel the whole length of Radulf’s body pressed against his own. They both trembled, shaking as though with cold, but he wasn’t cold. He was greasy with sweat. He could smell himself. Someone was close by his head. Kunik’s right hand was over his head, wrist clamped in a bruising grip. Suddenly, the grip released and the kneeling presence withdrew. Kunik could see split hooves a few inches from his face, standing in the grass. Above the hooves rose the hair-covered legs of an animal.
“Kunik?” Dar knelt at his feet, holding his legs down.
“Yes.” Kunik meant to speak but could only whisper. His throat ached, as though he’d been screaming. He desperately wanted a cool drink.
The grip on his left arm relaxed and Radulf rolled away. Night air felt good against Kunik’s overheated back, but he also felt strangely bereft at the withdrawal. Gratefully, he brought his left arm forward and sat up. Pain streaked fiercely through his body and then throbbed sullenly. He groaned before he could stop himself.
“What happened?”
But he remembered. Artyom. Artyom had walked away. He’d left the fire, the offer of brotherhood, the chance to be loved, and gone out into the night alone. Only it hadn’t felt like it was happening to Artyom. It was happening to Kunik again, and not just him, either, but to his parents. Outcasts. Exiles. Alone. Shunned because of what they were.
He sat there in the dirt, utterly exhausted, broken, silent tears falling down his cheeks.
Dar gathered up his cloak in one hand and sat down neatly, cross legged, in front of him.
“It’s not the same,” he said conversationally, as though Kunik had spoken his thoughts aloud. “Your parents couldn’t be true to both themselves and their tribes, and so they chose to live what they were, knowing the cost. You chose what to do with your exile, to endure and then to heal. You’re still making that choice. You’re here because of it. Artyom also made a choice tonight. Like you and Radulf, he’s traveled towards this initiation for a long time. He’s had guides and opportunities and freedom to choose. He’s had hidden things revealed on this night and before this night. It’s not our business to disallow choice. We who initiate hold space and extend invitation, but each initiate retains the power to consent or refuse. You only choose for yourself. You can’t choose for him.”
Kunik’s upper lip swelled. He tasted blood in the back of his throat.
“Was he right?” he croaked. “Artyom — was he right about drinking from the goblet?”
Dar threw back his head and laughed, and Kunik was glad to see his face remained smooth and unhurt. His teeth gleamed briefly in the firelight. He rose to his feet in a graceful movement, like a cat, Kunik thought hazily. The cloak fell in folds around him, spattered with points of light. He reached down a strong lean hand and Kunik took it with his own broad fleshy one. The peddler heaved him to his feet.
A wooden bucket of water sat against the fence. Kunik extended his arm in wordless invitation to Radulf, who followed after them. Kunik stood wearily, alternately wiping blood from his nose and from a cut on his forehead while Radulf knelt and sloshed his face and head with handfuls of water, rinsed his mouth, spat. He stood, turned aside, and blew his nose. Kunik smiled to himself at the homely sound, remembering Radulf had been a prince, once upon a time.
He followed Radulf’s example, drank thirstily and felt better. Dar handed him a handful of grass, green and rich smelling, and Kunik wiped his face.
Near the fire, the piper stood waiting, goblet in hand. The four them stood together silently.
“Will you drink?” Dar asked.
The piper handed the cup to Kunik, who put the cool rim to his swollen lip and carefully took a sip. The taste was unexpected. Mint, he thought, and something sweet like honey. It had a sharp but not unpleasant aftertaste.
“Will you drink?” he asked Dar, and passed the cup to him. The peddler drank.
“Will you drink?” Dar asked Radulf, who took the cup and drank.
“Will you drink?” Radulf asked the piper, who inclined his head wordlessly, took the cup, and drank.
“If we clean our cuts with a drop of that,” Dar said, gesturing to the goblet, “they’ll stop bleeding and heal without trouble.”
Kunik made a pad of a fresh strip of cloth, dipped it in the goblet and gently cleaned Radulf’s palm and then a cut on his cheekbone.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No matter,” said Radulf gruffly. “You were upset.”
Kunik bound Radulf’s hand and then, impulsively, kissed the other man. A feeling of tenderness towards the others pierced him. They’d held him, restrained him and cared for him in his madness. He’d hurt them, yet they weren’t angry and they didn’t turn away from him now.
“You’ve a fine rage,” said Radulf, “son of Ice Bear.” He leaned forward and returned Kunik’s kiss.
Kunik cleaned and dressed the piper’s hand and then Dar’s, finishing with his own. Radulf tied the bandage for him.
RADULF
Slow warmth bubbled in Radulf’s blood. A thousand insects buzzed between his flesh and his skin, trapped. He sweated. The hair on his body slowly stood up, each tiny follicle a separate sensation. Hastily, he unbuttoned and threw off his tunic. The sensation of cloth felt unpleasant against his singing skin. Was it warmth in his blood, or coolness? He couldn’t tell. It was honey. It was the smell of crushed spring grass. It was cool like water, like the sea at night after a hot day. It was hot and smoky like lanterns lit for a shipboard dance. It was wet marble with a film of salt. It was long, silky hair. It was a flash of white thigh in green water. He felt himself fill and rise until he was erect.
The piper played again, and this time the melody called to the very roots of him. His blood coursed, passionate and flooding. The air on his lips was a pleasure and a torment. His nipples ached. His testicles felt heavy and languorous on his thighs, pulsing. Saliva flooded his mouth and he could feel sweat, slippery and musky, between his legs. Moisture oozed out of the tip of his penis. Never, even as a boy, had he felt so aroused, so alive, so wildly excited, so blindly lustful.
The piper danced, hopping back and forth from one leg to another as he played, elbows outthrust. He swayed with the music, his engorged penis bobbing. He’d taken off the cloak and was clad only in skin, horns and pelt. He was elemental, primordial. He was beautiful and Radulf thought of green and gold, the heavy heads of wheat under a hot sun, the taste of warm purple grapes, dusty and bursting. For the first time, he understood the world as male, a thing of hard strength wrapped in green and gold velvet, a thing of horn and hoof, heat and harvest. He looked down in wonder at his own hands, strong, callused, with a scar across the base of his right thumb where he’d gashed it as a boy. Capable hands. No longer the pampered white hands of a prince but the hands of a man in the world. Beautiful hands, with their oval nails and jointed knuckles. Now he’d bear a new scar across his left palm, and he was glad. He clenched his hand around the wound, feeling the cloth tighten.
Wild power filled him.
Death came from under the shadows beneath Baba Yaga’s house. He danced the same wild dance as the piper, hopping from bony foot to bony foot, lifting his round knuckled knees high, dancing with sharp elbows outthrust and waggling his head with its insane, endless grin. Radulf wanted to laugh and howl at the same time at the sight of him. Death turned and danced in between the chicken legs. He jumped between the toes planted in the dirt. The legs stiffened but didn’t move. Death reached up a long thin stick-like arm and tickled as high as he could reach on the inside of one of the scaly yellow legs. The leg twitched. Now Radulf did laugh. Death danced round and round one leg and then another, reaching up to run his fingers lightly, teasingly, up and down the chicken leg. The feet remained firmly planted but the legs swayed away, flinching from Death’s touch.
Death left his play with the legs and danced to the piper, and the two faced one another, dancing the same exuberant dance. It was a macabre sight. Again, Radulf was struck by a sense of wild male power. Flesh and hair and bobbing erection of the piper and stark white, dry bones of Death merged and mingled in their dance until it looked as though one being had husked himself into two pieces. As though Death and Life were one separated into two.
But Death and Life are one, thought Radulf to himself with sudden clarity. They’re different sides of the same thing. They can’t be separated. For a moment, he discovered…something important. He discerned a pattern to life beyond guilt and shame and fear, a pattern so large it was invisible. But as he turned toward understanding it eluded him, disappeared from the corner of his mind where he’d glimpsed it.
Radulf watched the dancers. His skin twitched over his bones. Dar carefully and deliberately took off his clothes. One by one, he peeled them away, as unconcerned as though alone, folding them neatly in a pile against the bone fence. He slung the drums against his hip. His body was lean and finely made, not as broad through the shoulder as the piper. Muscles bunched in the piper’s strong haunches as he danced, but Dar’s strength was like a flexible young sapling. Dark hair grew at his groin. He joined the other two dancers, hands picking up a rhythm to support the piper’s melody.
Radulf, watching, felt a longing to join them. They were beautiful. They were strong. They were real. He wanted to be like them, to be of them. He wanted to smell them, to touch them, to feel their breath, to dance with them. He knew they’d make a place for him if he chose to join in. Yet he stood, watching.
“Who do you fear the most?”
Kunik stood beside him. Kunik, with sweat shining on his face and an ecstatic kind of smile on his mouth. He’d loosened his clothing and Radulf could see his strong, round body underneath it. His bare feet looked square and broad on the ground.
“Fear?” asked Radulf, confused. He didn’t fear them. He wanted to be like them with his whole heart.
Kunik’s smile widened. “Yes, brother. Are you more afraid of life — or of death?”
“Oh!” And Radulf thought, oh, yes, I’m afraid. I’m so afraid! He felt the fear then, coiled in his belly, in his chest, behind his eyes. Afraid to live, to be a blind fool, to fail to love, to understand, to see… Oh, yes, I’m afraid! I’m a stupid man, a weak man. I’m not a man like these. I don’t belong with men like these! And that thought was bitter, like salt in his throat and eyes and belly. Tears fell down his cheeks.
Kunik wasn’t looking at him. He was watching the dancers with a kind of hilarious, fierce hunger. “Me, I think I fear Death the most. It’s the end to everything. Love is death. Healing is death. Strength is death. Courage is death. What’s the point of anything, then? Why is life so futilely persistent?
“We can’t live if we don’t die,” said Radulf.
Kunik looked at him, pushing hair out of his eyes. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Radulf. “I can’t explain it but it feels true in my heart.”
“It sounds like you mean death makes life possible.”
“They make each other possible, don’t they?”
They stood and watched the dancers.
“I want to be like that…” said Kunik in a low, choked voice. Radulf saw he wept again.
“You are like that,” Radulf said firmly. “You are like that. Powerful, and beautiful and alive.” He remembered the feel of Kunik’s blind ferocity, his rage, his pain, the strength in his square body. “I think…I think there’s some of your father in you.”
“Baba Yaga called you Wolf,” said Kunik suddenly, still gazing at the dancers.
“Radulf means wolf.”
“Will you dance with me, then, Wolf? Will you chance life — and death?”
For answer, Radulf loosened his clothing, letting it fall around his feet. He and Kunik joined the three dancers at the edge of the fire, naked as they were naked, and they danced, piper and drummer, goat-foot, Ice Bear and Wolf, guides, outcast and exile, and Death danced around them.
KUNIK
Kunik danced. Drumbeat possessed his strong legs and he danced. He didn’t think. He was pure sensation. His skin felt exquisitely receptive, his hearing so acute he heard the thump of his heart and the fainter, threadier pulsing of blood through vessels. Every hair on his body stirred and lived. His testicles burned. He watched Rumpelstiltskin stride towards their fire. In his hand, he held two long sticks of wood. The Dwarve caught Kunik’s eye and threw one of them in a graceful arc, the stick revolving end over end. Kunik reached up and caught it with ease. Then the other flew into the air. They weren’t sticks but bones, long slender bones. Kunik held them uncertainly for a moment and then looked at Death. Were the bones his? Death grinned emptily.
With a whoop, Kunik sprang, twisting his body, and landed behind Death. He took a bone in each hand and began to beat on Death’s scapula. Bone on bone made a sharp tapping sound. Easily, he picked up Dar’s more resonant beat, and then he flowed away from it into a sharper, crisper counterpoint, and the piper’s melody wove in and out of both. He tried tapping on the spine, up and down, up and down, from skull base to sacrum and back again. Death arched his back like a cat, jigging in place, presenting one vertebra at a time to Kunik’s drumsticks. He tip-tapped against one curved ischium and then the other. Death rolled his hips in a bizarre imitation of a belly dancer. He leaned backward, jutting out pelvis and widening ribs, and Kunik, now in front of him, tried the rib bones, getting a subtly different sound with each. Kunik bent and tapped away at a long femur. He squatted in front of Death and Death squatted too, so they balanced on their hunkers a few inches apart. Radulf snorted with laughter at the sight of them. Kunik drummed on Death’s knees, his face stretched in an insane grin, hands and drumsticks blurred and flying. Tap-TAP! Tappity-tap-tap! Tapa-tapa-tappity! He reached up suddenly with one stick and tapped it on Death’s curved skull. Death jumped in surprise and Kunik fell back, laughing. They all laughed now, hilarious, breathless. The piper removed the flute from his lips and bellowed with laughter, and Kunik realized it was the first sound he’d heard him make that wasn’t the flute. Dar wept with laughter. Death slapped his own knee with his bony hand and grinned. Rumpelstiltskin chuckled with a sound like gravel in a bucket. He was the only one clothed.
Kunik’s mouth felt dry. He licked his lips with a thick tongue. He was naked. Odd to be naked in the company of other men. He looked at what he held. Bones or drumsticks? Bones or drumsticks? He felt confused. The laughter died away and the music stopped. In the silence, he could hear the fire burning. He felt let down, deflated. What was he doing? What did it mean? His injured hand throbbed.
Death stood across from him, perfectly relaxed, motionless, expressionless, unless you counted the death’s head grin. He’d danced with Death! He’d played on Death as though he was a drum! Was it a mad dream?
He looked at Rumpelstiltskin, who appeared entirely normal. A sudden harsh shriek tore at the night, and in the appalled silence that followed came a thud. Baba Yaga’s huge iron cauldron appeared between the fire and the bone fence. The pale glimmer of a skull on a fence post near the cauldron burst into fiery illumination.
Radulf walked to where he’d let his clothing drop and began to get dressed. Kunik did likewise.
Rumpelstiltskin moved toward the cauldron. The Dwarve’s seamed face was set in an expression of unwavering purpose, the laughter that had shone out of his eyes quite gone. Kunik felt a sudden impulse to call out and warn him from getting too near the cauldron. He didn’t like it. There was something fearful about its squat black shape, something menacing.
The Dwarve stood next to the cauldron. He raised his head, took a deep breath, and held his arms up as though in prayer. Kunik heard the murmur of his voice, but not his words. Rumpelstiltskin rested his hands lightly on the oily black rim and looked into the cauldron’s depths.
“He sees a hidden thing.” Dar spoke in a low voice to Kunik and Radulf. The piper and Death were gone.
“A hidden thing?” asked Kunik, his voice equally quiet.
“Yes. If you choose, you may look into the cauldron and it will show you a hidden thing. You mustn’t touch the contents of the cauldron, but you may look. You’re not required to do it. The choice is yours.”
Radulf asked, “Do you advise us to do it?”
“I can’t advise you. I only say if you consent to look, you’ll see something that’s been hidden from you.”
Rumpelstiltskin was absorbed and still. Firelight shone on neatly braided hair and beard. It picked out the rough planes of his face, and Kunik noted the shine of tears on his cheek.
It seemed a long time the Dwarve looked into the cauldron. He stood absolutely still, but tears ran down into his beard. The fiery skull burned above his head, illuminating whatever the cauldron held.
At last Rumpelstiltskin moved, fingers releasing the black iron rim. His wiped his cheeks on his sleeve, turning away. He took an audible breath, and made his way around the edge of the fire to where Kunik, Radulf and Dar stood.
“So?” asked Dar quietly when Rumpelstiltskin stood with them. The Dwarve’s face was peaceful.
“So, I know what to do now.”
“Are you all right?” asked Kunik.
“I’m well,” replied the Dwarve. “But thank you for your compassion. I can do what must be done and I’m glad to do it. Sometimes it’s hard to know what it is, that’s all.”
He inclined his head, turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows under Baba Yaga’s house.
“I’ll look in the cauldron,” said Radulf quietly to Dar.
Dar reached forward without speaking and laid a hand on his forearm, as though in benediction.
(This post was published with this essay.)