The Hanged Man: Part 7: Beltane
Post #68: In which there is water in the desert ...
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Later Kunik couldn’t say how much time he and Nephthys spent with the water bones. She was always there when he returned to the center of the circle, tending a fire, ready with a drink or something to eat. He was fuzzily aware she engaged in her own work of sifting the desert for remnants of life, as small piles of fragile bones appeared around the camp. They hardly spoke at all.
He spent hours in wordless, thoughtless communion with the trees and cacti, following hidden dry waterways through root, pith and trunk. Empty and echoing, sterile and desiccated, the waterways beckoned him on, and the memory of threads of water, silver and gleaming, murmured just below the level of his hearing, stirring the hairs in his inner ears.
Water. How to find water in the desert? He didn’t know, couldn’t imagine. But the hidden thing, the shape within the shape, the life within the husk of death waited for water. Water would wake it, shape it, be contained by it, flow through it and open the way. Open the way to what? For whom? He didn’t know. In this his clever hands, his knife, were useless. He never even took the blade out of its sheath. He could name the use, the shape, but he couldn’t do more by himself.
In the dark night hours, he sat up. The blanket slid off his shoulders and cold night air flowed around him. Starlight trickled in his dazzled eyes. “I need help,” he said. “Of course. I can’t do it alone. That’s what you wanted me to see. I need help.”
Nephthys sat by the fire, a blanket around her shoulders, and firelight reflected in her eyes as she turned her head to look at him.
“We must go back to Maria,” he said with certainty. He lay down again on his side, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder. “It’s time to go back to the cave…”
“…To She Who Weeps in the red desert’s navel,” said Nephthys quietly. “The Weeping One…”
The lovely sound of the name followed him back down into sleep. “She Who… Weeps…. She…Weeps…”
The next morning Kunik didn’t wander among the trees and Saguaro but helped Nephthys safely wrap brittle bones, rolled up his belongings, ate, drank, and they set off across the desert, finding their way home.
Maria met them at the cave entrance, holding out a hand to each of them, and spoke the words waiting in his own mouth.
“I know what to do, and I need help.”
MARIA
Maria had strung the loom. She and Kunik gathered and bundled their few possessions, Maria carefully wrapping the bones unused in constructing the loom. Kunik gathered a large pile of fuel for the fire while Maria shook out skins and blankets, sending gritty showers of sand to the bottom of the canyon as she stood in the cave entrance, and swept the floor smooth.
When everything was ready, they left the cave. Maria looked back once from the bottom of the canyon, seeing the dark blob of the cave entrance high above. It was like a navel, she thought, a hidden indentation in the body of the red desert, an old portal to…elsewhere. She turned away and followed Nephthys and Kunik into the desert. The sun cast her shadow onto the sand, distorted and top heavy because of the loom on her shoulders.
The ragged clump of trees remained the same. Kunik wouldn’t have been surprised to discover it was gone, a dream or enchantment fallen to dust. But the trees still stood, dry and stark, and the fire ring showed signs of their recent fire. Maria set the loom down and looked around with wonder.
“What is this place?” Her voice was low, as though she was afraid to be overheard.
“This is the Well of Bones,” replied Nephthys.
Kunik was surprised. He hadn’t heard her call it that before. “There was a well once, then?” he asked.
“There still is,” she said simply.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” he asked, exasperated.
“You didn’t ask,” she replied grinning. “You know the water is gone. There are only bones here now.” She busied herself unpacking two pots, a spoon, the water skins, and her bedroll. She wandered away beneath the trees, probably, Kunik thought, in search of firewood.
“What are we doing here?” asked Maria, searching his face.
He’d explained nothing, only asking her to trust him. He looked at her, wordless, trying to frame a sensible explanation. He made a sound of frustration, dropped his bundle, and took her hand.
“Come. I’ll try to show you.”
They approached a towering Saguaro. The top third branched into jutting appendages, smaller than the main trunk. As they neared, a bird flew out of a hole near the top, twittering with agitation.
“Be careful,” he said, guiding her hand. “Touch here, with your fingertips, between the spines on the ridges.”
Tentatively, she ran her fingers up and down the waxy, fleshy trunk in the valley between the neat rows of spines growing at the top of each vertical ridge. He laid his own fingers on next ridge over, about an inch and a half away from hers.
“Everything here is like a dry streambed,” he said. “I can feel hidden places where water once ran. They still remember scent and feel and sound of water, these waterways. They’re waiting for water to return. They’ve waited a long time. They’re waiting to once again be what they’re for, do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I understand.”
His voice became less urgent. “I can feel what they are — what they need. But I can’t give them water. I can’t make water. I can only speak for them and I’m no good with words, Maria. I’m good with my knife. But I can’t make water with my knife!”
She took her hand off the cactus and laid it on his shoulder. He took a deep breath.
“It’s not only that — the water. I want to find a way to bring water back here — to the well. I think, if we do that, we might find something to help us, too, to help us find our place, a home. But I can’t do it alone. Like you couldn’t make the loom alone. And I thought of you…She Who Weeps…and the eyes…and water…” he trailed off.
“You think somehow I can help you bring water here, that together we can find a way forward?”
“Yes. With the loom. I keep thinking about what you told me about a resting place — what’s the word?”
“Descanso.”
“Yes. Somehow there’s a way to fit it all together and make something, weave something, open some kind of a way, but I can’t see it clearly and I can’t find the right words to talk about it.”
Nephthys released an armful of dry wood behind them with a clatter. They turned. Late afternoon sky arched above her, cloudless, glazed with sun to a hard, pale blue. She dusted her palms together and looked around at the ground, searching for something. She darted around the space surrounded by the patient standing bones of water. She wiggled her toes in the sand, sweeping with the side of her foot, pausing now and then to stand with her eyes closed as though listening. She hopped on one foot, then the other. She looked ridiculous, like a half-mad child, and at the same time rather powerful.
Nephthys’s wandering course tightened, became more purposeful, until she was focused on an area about three feet square looking, to Maria’s eyes, identical to the rest of the ground. Nephthys knelt and used her hands to brush away sand, scooping it aside.
Maria and Kunik, kneeling on either side of her to help, discovered a curving line of flat rocks, concealed under six inches of pebbles, sand and the ghost of earth that had once nourished and supported the trees.
Moving on their knees, they gradually uncovered a stone circle about three feet in diameter.
“The Well of Bones?” ventured Maria.
“It once possessed another name,” said Nephthys. She rose to her feet and stood, looking through the trees and into the red desert beyond. “Now the bones wait for water to come again.”
She strode to the fire ring in her bare feet, bent over an untidy pile of kindling, and the smell of smoke came to Maria’s nose, choking in the hot air.
“Maria,” Kunik said, “put your loom over this. I think it’ll rest perfectly on the stones.”
They set the loom across the stone circle. “Be careful. Don’t step in the ring,” he cautioned.
“But it’s filled in with sand,” she said, amazed.
“For now,” he said.
Kunik took off his shoes and then his shirt. The sky glared down at his smooth, hairless chest. His shoulders looked broad and powerful. Sun beat down on Maria’s black head and she felt glad of her shingled hair. She kicked off her own shoes.
The fire blazed, radiating shimmering heat waves nearly invisible in the afternoon glare. The air was breathless and still. Under the trees the shadows were lean and hot.
Next to the fire, Nephthys began to chant in a childish voice. It sounded like a skipping rope rhyme. She chanted faster and faster, her face gleeful, and suddenly stooped and threw a small drum at Kunik, which he deftly caught out of the air. He tucked it between his knees and picked up the rhythm of the chant easily. He’s done this before, Maria thought. How little she knew about him, this new friend!
The earth beneath her feet was hot and gritty. She wiggled her toes, working her soles into a cooler layer below the surface. She stood looking down at the loom, strung with her own black hair. She ran her hands up and down the bone frame, feeling Kunik’s fine carving and delicate shaping. The sun beat down, throbbing against her the way the drum throbbed under Kunik’s hands. Nephthys’s incomprehensible chant filled her ears. Sweat wet her forehead and the back of her newly exposed neck. It ran between her breasts. She looked down and found a dark wet patch on the front of her dress. She reached for the bag hanging around her neck. It felt wet. She loosened the neck of the bag and tipped the eyes into her hand.
The brown eyes wept. Tears made a puddle in the palm of her hand, found the creases, and dripped onto the hair-strung loom. The teardrops clung to the hairs momentarily, then dripped onto parched sand inside the stone lip of the Well of Bones.
The eyes cried, soundlessly but steadily, and she could give no comfort. No body to hold, no head to cup, no round back to pat. She couldn’t run her thumb over a soft cheek and blot the tears away. The eyes looked into her own out of the palm of her hand, weeping, weeping, wide and unblinking, and tears dripped from her hand to the loom and from the loom to the ground. Her own eyes burned and overflowed, her tears falling onto the brown eyes in her hand. She Who Weeps stood in the desert hidden under a wing, stood with her life and love, guilt and shame cradled in her hand, and wept with the sons she’d murdered.
A smell of burning mesquite filled the air. Nephthys, nearly naked, gleeful, an ancient desert child, began to dance, raising each knee in exaggerated movement and stamping hard as she circled the fire. Kunik’s drumming was insistent, demanding movement, demanding obedience. The sun beat down.
Maria wept. Her cupped hand overflowed. Drops hung on the hairs of the loom like stars, like jewels, like candles made of mesquite-scented sun. The drops merged together into a trickle. Maria remembered the sound of water, the sound of rivulet, stream, river, gurgling spring. She remembered the cool glug of a stone dropped in a well, the green frog scent of moss and shade and hidden water. She remembered the feel of the surf on her feet, lapping, and the way the sand under her moved as waves washed over her toes. The memory grew until it wasn’t a memory. The harsh, dry earth under her feet moved, here, now, as though something writhed within it like a snake. The lip of the Well of Bones was clean and wet. A little fountain spilled from her palm and the eyes bobbed and clicked together as water bubbled in her hand, fizzing and tickling. A damp spot grew in the circle of stones. The sand sank.
Kunik’s hands made the drums speak of firelight, starlight, sweating bodies, flesh and bone, pulse and breath. His dark eyes blazed. The drum filled her head. The sound and scent of water filled her ears and nose. She looked up and saw smudged clouds, heavy and sorrowful. She looked down at her feet, where sand and soil rippled.
“It’s the roots, Maria. The roots are dancing. There’s water in the desert.” Kunik’s voice sounded exultant.
Roots reached for the Well of Bones.
She felt a tiny wet kiss on her nose, and then on her cheek. A cool current of air stroked her bare arms. Kunik’s dark hair was spotted with damp. She felt pattering drops on her own head. The fountain in her hand spilled. She’d forgotten to weep.
It rained.
The fire hissed and popped. Nephthys threw more wood on it and flames roared in the fresh dry fuel. Maria shut her eyes, tilted her head up and felt rain on her face. She began to weep again, now with joy. Her tears mingled warm with the cool rain on her cheeks. She held out her palm full of marbles and water fell from it. The loom was strung with drops of water like a cobweb on a misty morning.
Something slid over Maria’s bare foot and she looked down. A snake slithered over the stone lip of the well and fell onto the sinking damp sand, circling and spiraling gracefully in a sinuous dance. Kunik’s hands stilled and the drum’s voice fell silent. Maria saw, lining the well, knotted roots swelling and bulging as they drank water.
Kunik made an inarticulate sound she heard clearly over the pat pat pat of falling rain. He was looking over her shoulder. His face looked shocked. She turned her head, still holding her hand over loom and well.
A woman came striding toward them, a short woman with broad hips and loose black hair in damp waves over her shoulders. She smiled with unconcealed joy at Kunik. Raindrops dappled her bare arms and legs.
“Kunik!” She embraced him. For a moment, he stood frozen and then his powerful arms tightened about her and one hand cupped the back of her head, her hair clinging to his wrist and forearm in wet tendrils.
“Eurydice!”
She laughed, gently released herself, and came to stand next to Maria, looking down into the ever deepening well where the snake slid in endless spirals.
“Oh, my friend,” she said to Maria, “you’re so beautiful! It’s been a long time since Hades. Are you ready?”
Maria looked into her joyous face, wordless.
“I’m Eurydice.” Eurydice held out her hand to Nephthys, who took it, swinging their linked hands, laughing.
Hand in hand, they came to stand with Maria and Kunik. Nephthys held out a hand to Kunik and he put the drum into it. He picked up his bundle and handed Maria hers.
The rain fell, pattering like a thousand small feet, and a smell of cool, wet earth came to Maria. She looked up and gasped.
“Kunik! Look!”
The trees were covered with leaves, reaching out and cupping the precious rain, murmuring and whispering.
Nephthys dropped Eurydice’s hand and stepped back.
“Behold, children!” Her voice sounded deep, old as stone and sand. “The Womb of the Desert! Life becomes!” Nephthys spread her arms wide and began to sing in an unchildish voice full of sand and small stones. The earth under their feet vibrated. Maria wondered if it responded to Nephthys or roots really danced underground. In wonder, she watched Nephthys’ arms become pointed wings.
Rain fell more steadily and the pattering grew to a roar. Nephthys’s song swelled, rain drummed, and sand and earth in the center of the well fell away, the snake going with it, in the sound of water gurgling and bubbling, rising nearly to the well’s lip. Then it began to sink steadily, as though draining away, and roots snaked across the surface of the ground, reaching, trailing into the water in brown gnarled ropes, lining the sides of the well in the same sinuous movements the snake made, and the roots already there swelled and bulged, swelled and bulged, lifting and cracking rocks.
“Take the loom, Maria,” called Kunik over the sound of falling, soaking, hissing, splashing, gurgling water in the desert. Maria closed her fist tight over the eyes in her palm, took the loom in her other hand, felt Kunik take her arm and watched him reach for Eurydice’s hand.
Nephthys’s chanting voice shook the desert, the womb opened wide to receive them, and they stepped into it and left the desert hidden under a wing behind.
(This post was published with Edition #68 of Weaving Webs and Turning Over Stones.)