The Hanged Man: Part 8: Lithia

Post #72: In which all paths take us where we need to go ...

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PART 8 LITHIA

Summer solstice; balance point between the culmination of fertility and growth and the beginning of diminishment. Maturity, fulfillment and consummation.

The Empress

Growth, fertility, personal power

ARTYOM

Artyom followed a fugitive shimmer of gold that appeared and disappeared through the concealing canopy of trees. He glimpsed it often enough to steer by. Once or twice, he’d woken in the night, feeling the brush of a soft wing across his cheek. It couldn’t be the Firebird, yet it must be.

The first time he glimpsed the flicker of glowing color he didn’t believe his eyes. It was like the Firebird, but he’d watched that die weeks ago during the initiation.

Weeks ago. Miles ago. It seemed like lifetimes ago.

That dark night he left the fence of bones and initiation rites, he cast away, one by one, the linen shirts Vasilisa made for him. He took bitter pleasure in releasing them from his hand and watching them fall. In the following days, as his anger cooled, he began to regret his haste. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Perhaps Vasilisa, too had regrets. After all, he was prepared to offer her a life of wealth and power she could never aspire to, given her circumstances. If she truly loved him, she couldn’t possibly hold his childish brutality against him.

He was a ruler, a father to his people. Wouldn’t a true ruler give one of his subjects the benefit of a doubt, a second chance?

He resolved to find her — but how? Where would she go after initiation? The Firebird was gone and could no longer guide him.

It seemed an unsolvable problem, and he turned it over in his mind while he traveled, going nowhere in particular, avoiding any possible contact with others, unable to bear more than a short pause for food and rest.

Somewhere in the edges of his consciousness he knew he must rejoin his traveling entourage and go home to his responsibilities. He’d been gone too long already. He’d hoped initiation and Vasilisa would give him the desire and confidence to take his father’s place as the leader of his people, but Baba Yaga had ruined all that.

He knew he must go, but he didn’t see how he could bear to. When he pictured himself rejoining his countrymen and servants, returning home and taking up his responsibilities, it seemed unreal, as though he visualized a stranger’s life.

He must find Vasilisa before he did anything else. He thought of how long the search might be with something like relief. He needed time, time to think about things. He might never again be alone and free.

He longed to become anonymous, unknown. After a month on the road, his gold ring was gone and his clothes looked as common and rough as any other traveler’s. His only weapons were a well-used sharp knife with a wooden handle that had belonged to his grandfather and a thin rod of iron with a sharp trident at one end -- an old frog gig. He wore both at his belt, his knife at his right hand in case of sudden need, the gig at his left. He could no more have shed them than his skin.

He resolved to walk away from the young ruler who’d been trained and educated from childhood to assume responsibility of rule. He’d walk away too from the child Baba Yaga had pulled out of a shallow grave and revealed in all his ugly pain and loneliness.

Then he began to see the flashes of gold among the trees ahead, and in spite of knowing the Firebird was dead he felt hope and a measure of comfort, as though he was not utterly alone and outcast. He might as well follow, he thought, as he had no other plan or guide.

Image by Igor Lukin from Pixabay

The golden glimmer wasn’t Artyom’s only companion. At first, he’d thought wild rabbits lived in the area, but he began to realize he was seeing not many but one rabbit over and over. It didn’t come too close but browsed along his path, regarding him from time to time out of shining black eyes. He suspected it was the rabbit Surrender, but he couldn’t imagine why the creature followed him.

He didn’t want it. It was somehow unbearably irritating to have a rabbit, of all things, attach itself to him. Especially a rabbit associated with the initiation. He felt an almost frantic desire to be free of his past and left alone.

He tried to drive it away. He chased it, yelling. He threw rocks or chunks of wood at it, clapped his hands, growled. When it vanished into the undergrowth with a flirt of its white tail, he felt meanly triumphant.

But it always came back.

“You should stay away from me, you stupid thing!” he shouted at it one day. He pulled the gig out of his belt and brandished it. “You don’t know what I can do with this!”

The rabbit crouched within easy reach in deep summer grass, nibbling, paying him no mind.

Sickened with himself, he thrust the gig back under his belt and turned away. He walked far into the night that day. He glimpsed the golden bird intermittently, shining like a candle in the distance, and only stopped when the flame blew out.

Midsummer passed. Dust from the road sifted into his hair and the sun coaxed sweat onto the surface of his body. He still followed the shining bird. He did his best to ignore the rabbit.

Enjoying the cool night air one evening, he saw ahead not one but two patches of flaming color. The smell of wood smoke hung in the air and he strode ahead, watching a golden glimmer rise and fall in a graceful dance above a campfire. It couldn’t be the Firebird! It couldn’t be!

But it was. He saw the same jeweled wings, long graceful tail and melting flame of color. The sight of it brought back bright dreams of a life with Vasilisa, his friend Radulf, himself walking away from initiation, Jenny’s dance. The Firebird had died, but now it lived. He stood quite still, watching it in absorbed wonder. The Firebird leads you to your treasure, he thought. Had the Firebird led him to initiation, or had that been the malign influence of Baba Yaga? Treasure or trick? Was it possible this was Vasilisa’s fire? Is that why it had led him here?

A thin piping began. The Firebird lifted and swirled over the sparks of the fire in response. Artyom felt rooted to the spot. He knew that piping. It belonged to the night of initiation too, Kunik’s mad dance with Death, Radulf’s kindness and gravity. He remembered the goat-footed piper, engorged with life, and the peddler, Dar, with his drums.

Kunik hadn’t wanted Artyom to leave. He’d cried out his name, again and again. Artyom wondered what had happened there by the men’s fire after he left. What had they said about him?

The piping stopped. The Firebird flew to a branch and began to preen its shining feathers. Still, Artyom stood without moving. Firelight fingered his face and the night forest stood cool at his back.

“I’m glad to see you, my friend.” The voice sounded calm and unsurprised. Artyom suddenly smelled horse. In shadows, he made out the shapeless dark blot of the cart, and he knew it was gaily painted with the words “Come and be welcome. Go and be free. Harm shall not enter.”

“Do you suppose the Firebird has led me to the treasure of you or you to the treasure of me?” asked Dar.

Nonplussed, feeling manipulated, Artyom snorted. A dart of white movement sped right over his feet and sprang into Dar’s lap. Dar, sitting comfortably away from the heat of the fire with his back against an old fallen tree, twitched and grunted in surprise. His bone flute fell out of his lap, silver banding and gems shining. Lightly, the shape sprang back to the ground and ran to the horse, who grazed peacefully near the cart. The rabbit paused under the horse’s belly, shook itself, scratched an ear with a hind leg, and began to nibble the grass.

“Friend of yours?” inquired Dar dryly.

“No,” replied Artyom shortly.

“Surrender, I presume?”

“Yes. What a stupid name for a rabbit! I’ve tried to drive him away but he’s a persistent devil.”

“Ah,” said Dar noncommittally. “I wondered what had become of him.”

Artyom tensed at the reference but Dar left it there.

Artyom refused food. He felt reluctant to join Dar, but the Firebird had its head under its wing and clearly had no intention to travel further that night. Having followed him for so many weeks, Artyom felt incapable of leaving him. In grudging silence, he unrolled his bedding and settled down to sleep.

Sleep was long in coming. He lay on his back looking up at stars in the dark, moonless sky. Gradually he relaxed. He’d been afraid of Dar’s talk. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to be left alone, not poked at. But Dar wasn’t going to talk. Artyom felt grateful for his quiet self-containment.

Dar began to play the flute again. The music sounded infinitely tender and gentle. It made Artyom think of a child, a blond, stocky child with blue eyes wrapped around a vast emptiness. The flute wept for the child, compassionate and loving. The stars blurred. Artyom turned on his side at last and slept.

***

Dar caught fish in a nearby creek for breakfast. Preparing these for the pan and building a bed of coals distracted Artyom. Falling into easy male companionship, Artyom gutted the fish with his knife while Dar tended the cooking fire. Artyom shook out his bedding and hung it in the sun to air. He spoke to the horse and spent some time brushing its hide with a handful of grass, more for his own pleasure than because of any necessity. The horses in his father’s stables were a good memory from his boyhood. Surrender hopped in a desultory fashion from patches of flowers to grass and back again.

The smell of frying fish and mushrooms brought Artyom back to the fire. He squatted next to Dar and gave in to his curiosity.

“I watched the Firebird die in a net. At least I thought I did. How can he be guiding me? And where is he this morning? I haven’t seen him.”

Dar shrugged, smiled and handed him a tin fork. They bent together over the pan, eating the hot white flesh carefully, blowing to cool each bite.

“Life-Death-Life-Death,” Dar said when he’d dealt with a mouthful.

Artyom raised an eyebrow at him.

Dar speared a mushroom with his fork. “Baba Yaga, I mean. She’s a Life-Death-Life-Death figure. The Firebird was reborn from her cauldron.” He blew, popped the next bite into his mouth. “An old piece of wisdom, that, the ability to let die what must.”

“I was thinking of something like that,” said Artyom, interested. He used his fingers now, the pan and its contents having cooled. “Surrender should have stayed close to his burrow instead of wandering. He’s a rabbit. Everything wants to eat him.”

“Well, death is inevitable, isn’t it? The only thing we can do is decide to live our lives fully or not risk it. Whatever we do, we’ll die in the end. The question is how we want to live.” He gestured toward Surrender in a patch of sunny grass. “He wants to live. Me, too. I like life — when it’s real. I insist on things being real. You might say it’s my mission in life. Makes me unpopular at times.” He grinned unrepentantly.

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

Artyom picked up the fork again and began to scrape out the bottom of the pan where a thin blackened skin of trout had adhered. “Maybe some people aren’t good enough to be real.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said Dar easily. He laid back on his elbows, chewing on a grass stem. “Take me, for example. He bared his teeth around the stalk. “I’m not a bit good. Women think I’m dark and mysterious and I take shameless advantage, secure in the knowledge that I’m a traveling man and thus free of consequences. I’m impulsive and impatient. I’ve a temper of the cold variety, not the fiery kind. I never met a rule I didn’t want to break in the most insulting way possible. I hate stupid people and don’t care if they know it! Oh, me, I’m a devil!”

Artyom was taken aback, but silent. He’d looked upon Dar as a leader, full of power and wisdom, belonging with Artemis, Death, the goat-foot piper and even Baba Yaga.

“But…I thought you were good,” he said tentatively.

Dar chuckled. “Good, bad or real, eh? They’re not mutually exclusive, my friend. I can be good, too. Usually it’s the most boring option, but occasionally I do it, just to stretch my act a little! No, I don’t concern myself much with good or bad, right or wrong. I only try to be real. Occasionally that means a real bastard and occasionally it means a real nice guy. Depends.”

Artyom thought about this. “But there are right and wrong ways to act. I mean, we make mistakes — do things that are…wrong.”

“Some choices lead to effective results and some don’t,” observed the peddler. “I don’t use the word wrong. It’s all just learning. Everyone,” he fixed Artyom with a steady grey gaze, “has done things they’re ashamed of.”

Artyom looked away. “You, too?”

“You should talk to my brother sometime,” said Dar, with feeling.

Artyom let that pass.

“Why did the Firebird bring me to you?” he asked abruptly.

“No idea,” said Dar laconically. “I suspect we have something to give one another. Perhaps if you join me for a time we’ll find out. I thought he was bringing me to you, by the way. I’ve been following him, too.”

“Where were you going before that?”

“Nowhere in particular,” said Dar. “Following my nose. Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” said Artyom shortly. He stood up, picked up the pan and crouched by the creek to scrub it out with a handful of sand.

When they broke camp Artyom threw his bundle in the back of the cart and walked alongside a wheel, within easy conversational distance but not up on the seat. Gideon ambled. The sun rose. It began to get hot. Artyom was glad to be unburdened. The peddler whistled snatches of music now and then, spoke a few words to the horse, and appeared perfectly content to travel silently. His face in repose looked good humored and alive with intelligence and curiosity. Artyom, perversely, found Dar’s silence irritating after a mile or so. He stole sideways glances at the faintly smiling face and wondered what was in Dar’s mind. He began to worry one of his fingernails.

Surrender streaked along the side of the road in the grass, showing a flash of white tail before disappearing in a thick patch. Artyom scowled.

Dar had seen him too. “Why do you think he follows you?”

“I don’t know,” said Artyom irritably. “I don’t want him. Why didn’t he follow one of the girls, or Radulf? What an idiotic thing, to have a rabbit attach itself to me! I’m glad my people can’t see me now!”

Dar’s lips twitched. “Not very dignified,” he said gravely, “for a ruler.”

Artyom laughed in spite of himself.

“Oh, what a ludicrous situation! Dar, I’m not a ruler. I don’t want to be a ruler. I’m not sure I could be a ruler, even if I did want to. But I must be a ruler! It’s what I was born to do! I can’t wander the roads forever! I must go back and face my life, but I don’t know how to do it!”

Artyom ran his hands through his dark blond hair distractedly. “That rabbit is right under my skin because he reminds me about surrender — and not surrendering — and I don’t know what surrender even means anymore! Am I to surrender to a life I don’t want? Am I a ruler? Am I a bully and a brute? Oh, I know who I am! I was forgetting! I’m Artyom, the one who didn’t go through with that asinine initiation!” He ended on a savage snort.

“Oh, you are,” said Dar instantly.

“What the hell do you mean?” asked Artyom heatedly. Gideon twitched his ears and laid them back.

“You said you didn’t go through with initiation. You are. Your initiation is taking place now, on the road, with the Firebird and Surrender and me for company. What you needed wasn’t only waiting for you by the men’s fire. It’s been walking beside you every day.”

This take on the situation so surprised Artyom he was distracted from his irritation.

“You make it sound as though I don’t have a choice.”

“Do you think you can avoid learning what you need to, and growing through it?” inquired Dar with interest.

“I left,” insisted Artyom.

“Well, initiation didn’t leave you,” retorted Dar.

Artyom started to say several things at once, got tangled up and stopped. The cart rolled down the road, Gideon patient in the dusty sun.

“I’m ashamed of myself,” Artyom muttered at last.

“Your pride got hurt,” Dar said baldly. “Your cover got blown, you got mad and you left. Things arranged themselves around your choices and here you are, back again at initiation, which, I might add,” he said relentlessly, correctly reading the beginning of Artyom’s heated protest, “is about independence, interdependence, and sexual energy!” He rattled these off loudly, as though reading from a textbook. “But that’s inside information for initiation leaders and I’m not supposed to reveal it to initiates. Ha! Another rule broken.” He grinned down at Artyom.

He looked so like a wicked boy Artyom couldn’t sustain his bad temper. He threw up his hands, half smiling, half resentful. “All right. I admit my pride is hurt. But why don’t I recognize my own life? Why don’t I know who I am?”