The Hanged Man: Part 7: Beltane
Post #57: In which a man and two women start picking up the pieces ...
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RADULF
Radulf was watching the first stars prick into light when he heard it. It had been a long day. His destination was a river, not far ahead now. He’d stop for the night when he reached it. He heard a low, desolate sobbing, nearly a keening. No animal ever made a sound like that. The anguish of it made him feel panicked. He stood still, listening, feeling his pulse beat rapidly in his throat. Was it a death cry? No, he decided, it was a sound of unutterable grief. It was not the bright, easy scream of physical pain but something much, much worse, much deeper, an endless spiritual suffering without hope of healing or respite. He felt appalled by it and part of him wanted to turn away, avoid it, pretend he hadn’t heard.
Instead, he moved forward. He couldn’t ignore such suffering.
He heard the sound of the river before he came out of the trees and saw it. The sobbing continued but the silver sound of water cleansed some horror out of it. The river’s breath cooled the evening.
A figure in a hooded cloak paced alongside the river. Radulf’s gaze swept up and down, but he found no camp, no signs of a disturbance and no one else. Just this lone woman, and he knew it must be a woman because no man could make such a dreadful sound.
He must make her stop. He dropped his bundle, strode toward her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You must stop,” he said with firmness.
She turned to look at him. Her face was invisible under the hood and he reached forward, impatient, and twitched it off. Her sleek dark hair was knotted up behind her head. He couldn’t make out her features. He didn’t think she was old, certainly no older than he was. She didn’t seem afraid or surprised or curious. She reminded him of a suffering animal. She’d ceased wailing when he spoke, but her breathing sobbed. Her soundless grief was nearly as bad as her keening.
He tightened his grip on her shoulder and gave her a shake. “I’m Radulf. I won’t hurt you. Are you alone? Do you need help?”
She shook her head but didn’t speak.
Radulf was hungry and worn out. He wanted a fire, a meal and his bedroll. He didn’t want to play games with a strange and evidently heartbroken woman, but he couldn’t leave her to her own devices. She was in no state to take care of herself.
“What’s your name?”
“Maria.”
“Maria, do you mean no, you aren’t alone or no, you don’t need help?”
“I don’t need help.”
He sighed.
“Well, I do. I’ve been afoot all day and I’m tired. It’s time to camp for the night. I want you,” he slid his hand down her arm, turned her away from the water and headed to a spot he’d marked as a good camping place, “to come with me. We need firewood, and some water. I have food.”
She didn’t resist him.
Silently, she gathered firewood while he built a ring of stones. He unpacked a pot and she knelt at the river and filled it. He watched her splash water on her face and wipe it with the edge of her cloak.
He was relieved to see she possessed her own bundle. She pulled it out of a clump of grass, unrolled a blanket and took out some food.
“Maria.”
She looked at him. Her face in the firelight was still and rather beautiful. Not pretty but with quiet strength and strong bones.
“You don’t need to stay with me. You’re welcome but you’re not a prisoner. I don’t like for you to be alone with such grief, is all.”
“I’ll stay,” she said.
She remained silent while they ate. After the meal, she wiped out the pots with a handful of grass, used a spoon to scoop ashes into them and took them to the river. She took his knife from him and cleaned that, too. The fire burned in a good bed of coals. He added wood and stretched out on his back, his head on his pack.
“Will you tell me about it?” She was so self-contained he didn’t think she would. In truth, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. It would be pleasant to lie watching the fire, belly full, and think about where he’d been and wonder where the hell he was going to end up. But he knew the relief to be found in sharing one’s story, and she was alone.
Without preamble, she told him of Juan and her sons, the dark time in Hades, and another life of searching, always within the scent of water. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but into the fire.
“I don’t honestly expect to find them, but I always hope somewhere deep down. This is a small, joyful river, far away from the wide, lazy sun-baked one where they…where I…”
“Of course,” he said. “Of course, you would always hope.”
“It was getting dark,” she said, “and the first stars coming out. The water smelled so fresh and cool … They aren’t here. They aren’t here, my sons, not here, not anywhere. There isn’t water enough in all the worlds to wash away the stain of what I’ve done. I can never make it right. There’s no forgiveness.”
The old wound opened in Radulf as though it had never healed, and he saw in memory Marella’s face, her sea-colored eyes, her look of love for him, her funny smile with one corner of her mouth turned up and one turned down, as though in some hidden pain. He felt sick and ashamed.
Her gaze rested on him now.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked.
He felt bewildered for a moment and then realized she thought he was so disgusted that he’d send her away.
“No. I want you to listen,” he said.
When he’d told the tale of Marella, his heart felt lighter and it was his turn to wonder if she would turn away.
“How long?” she asked.
“Oh, twenty years,” he said. “For twenty years I’ve roamed here and there, trying to forget, or understand, or find forgiveness. Looking for some kind of peace. I didn’t know the whole story until a few weeks ago, but even without that I can’t forgive myself for leaving my family, my wife and my responsibilities. Now I understand I murdered Marella as surely as if I drove a knife into her. Thoughtless, blind, stupid…” But even as he castigated himself, he remembered the wolf with its pitiful courage, gnawing off a leg to escape a trap.
“Radulf.” Her voice sounded sharp. “You were young. You didn’t know. You couldn’t know.”
He returned her gaze. “You, too.”
She dropped her eyes and slumped.
“I should have…”
“So should I.”
“But…”
“No. If I’m absolved in some measure, you are too.”
They remained quiet for a time.
“How would it be,” he asked, “if you found forgiveness? Then what?”
“No,” she said. “There can be no forgiveness.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t choose for other people, Maria. What if I forgive you?”
“I don’t forgive myself.”
“Do you ever intend to forgive yourself?”
“No.”
“You refuse to forgive yourself.”
“Yes.” But he thought she sounded less sure.
“If you forgave yourself, you might be able to stop searching, to make a home and begin weaving again.”
“I don’t deserve life. I’ve taken it away from my sons.”
“It’s too late. You are alive again. Will you destroy yourself a second time? How does that help?”
She turned on him like a cornered cat. “What about you, Radulf? If you forgive yourself you can do something with your life, stop feeling sorry for yourself and running away from youthful mistakes, start a family, be a real man!”
He laughed. He held up his hands, palms towards her. “Peace, peace! Don’t hurt me!”
“It’s not funny,” she spat.
“No.” He sobered. “It’s not funny. I’m not mocking you, Maria. You’ve made me see something, though. My guilt and shame shape my life and some part of me is unwilling to change that. If I forgive myself, the meaning of my life is gone. I’d need to live more…honestly.”
“You must go back,” she said abruptly.
“I think maybe I must,” he responded heavily.
“You must make a descanso.”
“What’s a descanso?”
“It’s a resting place, a memorial. It’s a place of recognition for something lost or an important event.”
“Descanso,” said Radulf thoughtfully.
“It’s a way of taking time to honor someone or something. The old people say if you don’t make a descanso for the important events in your life, they haunt you, skulk behind you like snarling dogs and bite you when you’re not looking.”
“That’s true. Every day I think of my wife, Marella and my parents. I don’t want to feel my guilt and shame, or my grief, but I can’t help it.”
“I think about making a descanso too. Someone told me I murdered four times. My sons, myself and my creative life. She said I’d made my choice about my sons but I still possess the power to choose about myself and my weaving.”
He considered. “All I’ve thought about is that Marella’s dead and I can’t bring her back. I don’t look for places where I retain the power to choose. I only stare at the places I don’t.” He sat up abruptly and fed the fire. “I could go back to my people and my place and try to explain. It won’t be easy. I don’t want that life and my marriage is long over. But I could go and tell them how it is with me, say goodbye, tell them I’m sorry.”
“Will they forgive you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Will I forgive me? Isn’t that what we’re talking about — the place where our power is?”
“Will you forgive you, then?”
He poked at the fire with a stick. “I didn’t mean for it to go so wrong.”
“No,” she agreed quietly. “Nor did I.”
“If I could go back and do it again, knowing what I know now…”
“It would be different,” she finished. “I wonder, if you could ask your little mermaid, would she say the same thing?”
He was surprised. “I suppose she would. To give up everything for infatuation of a strange young man, especially a young, pretty and not very smart young man!” He made a rueful face.
“If you make a mistake on the loom, you go back, take out what you wove, correct the mistake and go on. If it’s a small mistake, the old ones say you leave it in as a sign of humility. Every piece of weaving, properly done, should contain some small imperfection, because something slightly flawed honors life better than perfection.”
“Oh, I like that!” he exclaimed, smiling.
“When I begin a design or pattern I’ve never tried before, I often make a mistake early in the weaving, so small I don’t notice. It’s only later I see I’ve gone wrong and then sometimes I must take most of it out to correct the beginning mistake. I learn, though, every time, what the loom and the wool will do. I learn to recognize those tiny early mistakes and correct them quickly. I learn to read the signs in the pattern when something is beginning to go wrong.”
“Ah,” he said, an arrested look on his face. “It’s like…traveling in a strange place and seeing signs, but not being able to read them. Then you get in a mess, take a wrong turn, and you figure out the signs you couldn’t read. The next time you see those signs, you know what they mean and do better.”
“We see signs that try to tell us something, but we can’t always read them…” she repeated.
“I suppose that’s how we learn,” said Radulf.
“If a handsome young man on a horse with a silver and turquoise bridle stops at my stall, lays his hand on my blankets and gives me a mouthful of honeyed words,” she said with quiet passion, “I’ll spit in his eye!”
Radulf laughed, and on the heels of it yawned. The river flowed. Dark had fallen and stars pinned the night sky.
“I’m ready for sleep,” he said.
For answer, she shook out her blankets and lay down by the fire. He lay down across from her and soon they both slept
EURYDICE
Eurydice put her hand on the thick ridged bark of the ash tree and closed her eyes.
She’d left the timeless winter sleep of Janus House and traveled alone through the ebb and flow of early spring, always making for this tree and this place. She hadn’t hurried. Spring was raw and heady, enticing her onward and then blocking her way with storm. Eurydice walked and sought shelter, walked and sought shelter. Often, she thought of Mary, Molly and Kunik. Once or twice, she’d risen to the silver surface of deep sleep and thought she heard the thin green sound of the flute, as though cold waking trees sang, far away.
She carried the key in her pocket.
She’d left Janus House on an unfriendly day of sleet and storm after a dream. In the dream it sleeted too, a night storm that slapped her cheeks and stung. She walked, feeling cold, wet and miserable, longing for her old home among the dusty, sun-soaked olive trees. A light flickered ahead, like a lantern or a fire, held some way off the ground. It seemed impossible for any kind of flame to stay lit in such a storm. Curious, she made her way toward it, her feet slipping and crunching in heavy wet snow. The source of light was a torch, held by an indistinct figure swathed heavily in a cloak and hood. At her feet sat a large dog, ears pricked alertly. Eurydice approached cautiously.
“You stand at a crossroads, my daughter,” said the figure. Its voice was sexless, strong, and shot through with the hiss and spatter of sleet. “You may go home, to the place where you started, find a mate, take care of your tree and your children. You may grope your way forward into something new. That choice will make you big, but you’ll pay a price.”
Eurydice didn’t hesitate. “I want to be everything I am,” she said. “I want to open the way.”
The torch went out abruptly, leaving only the hiss of sleet. “The way is open, then. Take the path to Yggdrasil.”
She’d woken, hearing sleet rattle against her window. She lay in her warm bed under the roof of Janus House. At dawn, she packed, said good-bye to Hel and stepped out of the door onto the path beneath her feet.
She was going to the edge of the world, where Yggdrasil stood, three pillared, spanning worlds of stars, green air, and roots and bones. She went to meet the Norns, see the Fountain of Urd and its Keeper, but most of all she went to be with Yggdrasil, King of Trees, Tree of Life, and retrieve her discarded skin of bark, twig and leaf.
Hades had told her the truth. There were trees at Janus House, tall stately evergreens with wide boughs, wrapped in snow and winter sleep. She’d longed for trees in the shadowed rock of the Underworld, though she’d left behind the olive trees of her family gladly enough when Orpheus’s music enchanted her. But Janus House guided her away from the evergreen forest, giving her a path down a steep bluff to a cold northern sea, and to friends. She’d walked among pine, spruce, fir, cedar, and hemlock, but they were alien and didn’t respond to her touch.
Now Janus House was a long way behind and Eurydice had laid her hands on hundreds of trees. Oak and maple, birch and beech, ash, poplar, nut and fruit trees, and some she couldn’t name. She’d passed through grove and stand, clump and large swathes of forest, and the trees, waking under the chill caress of capricious spring, welcomed her passing with supple twigs, a spray of cold dew, and the damp, woody smell of roots waking into activity.
As she neared Yggdrasil the wheel of seasons turned and she laid her hands on trees with sticky new leaves, budding and blossoming trees, and finally fully-leafed, fully-wakened trees cupping birds’ nests and gestating fruit, nut, catkin and cone.
“I’m Eurydice. I’m a tree nymph,” she murmured over and over, introducing herself, giving and receiving patient, rooted energy, reclaiming herself.
Now, with her hands pressed against Yggdrasil at last, she said it once more. “I’m Eurydice. I’m a tree nymph.”
She felt movement at her feet and looked down. The world seemed to tilt. She pressed her palms hard against the tree to steady herself and the world righted. Coils of a snake flowed around her feet, not touching her. Neither head nor tail was visible, but the snake wreathed and twined around Yggdrasil’s three wide trunks. The ground was dotted with morel mushrooms, which liked to grow with ash trees. This, she knew, must be Mirmir, guardian of the Fountain of Urd and Yggdrasil’s roots. Hel had told her about Mirmir, saying some called it demon and some serpent, but Eurydice hadn’t expected the endless undulating coils of dull green.
“Yes, yes, I know, you pest! I don’t need you to inform me of what’s going on, you know! After all, I’m in charge of that. Be careful, now. Move! You call me and then you get under my feet! Are you twined around that poor girl as well? She must be terrified! Don’t you know she’s had previous trouble with a snake, you fool? Go away! Go find Urd and Skuld, like a good fellow. Watch out! Stop! All right. This is ridiculous. I’ll stand still and you take yourself off. Don’t knock the poor girl down!”
The snake moved, flowing body diminishing in width until she saw nothing but a flicker in leaf shadows. Eurydice found herself looking into the eyes of a round old woman with a puff of white hair. Glasses sat on the end of her nose.
“Oh, my dear! I hope Mirmir didn’t terrify you! When I realized he was the first one you were meeting, I felt so distressed. Not sensitive. Not sensitive at all! I can’t imagine why Skuld didn’t tell me!” She put her arms around Eurydice and kissed her cheek. Eurydice thought it was like being embraced by a feather pillow. “I’ll have a thing or two to say to her, don’t you worry!”
Still talking, the old woman led Eurydice around the three massive trunks of Yggdrasil.
A neat wooden house sheltered under the enormous tree’s canopy. A spinning wheel sat next to a trunk of Yggdrasil. A scarf of fiber wrapped the trunk. Eurydice thought it looked like animal hair of some kind. She remembered the three Norns used Yggdrasil as a distaff. One Norn spun, one wrapped the distaff and one cut the thread. A basket full of spun yarn sat on the ground next to a chair at the wheel.
“Will you sit here? Shall I bring out another chair? Are you hungry, my dear?” The old woman paused, poised between the chair and the house, looking at Eurydice expectantly.
“I… No, thank you, I’m not hungry. Please sit down. I’d like…” Eurydice gestured to a trunk of Yggdrasil.
“Of course. How silly of me! Make yourself comfortable, then. I haven’t introduced myself properly yet. I’m Verdani.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Eurydice politely. She settled herself on the ground with her back against the tree. She felt cradled between roots, branches and trunk and relaxed with a deep sigh.
“Like coming home, is it?”
“It is,” said Eurydice, and, without meaning to, began to cry.
The old woman took up a trailing gauzy end of the fiber wrapped around the trunk, started the wheel turning and began to spin, her hands moving deftly.
Eurydice felt oddly comforted by this. She allowed tears to come as they would and when they slowed and stopped, she took the scarf from her head and used it to wipe her face and blow her nose. The scarf trapped heat and she ran her fingers through her hair, letting cooler air touch her scalp. It seemed like too much trouble to cover her hair again. Here in the shade at Yggdrasil’s base no one would be able to see the true color of her hair, and was it so terrible if they did?
(This post was published with Edition #57 of Weaving Webs and Turning Over Stones.)