The Hanged Man: Part 8: Lithia
Post #75: In which if we'd known then what we know now ...
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Radulf took the horse back to nap in the shade. The tide flowed in until it reached its apex and Clarissa and Chris swam and splashed, their thin voices sounding above the boom of surf like birds calling. Radulf slouched on the shingle and talked with Irvin.
“Her name was Margaret. My folk warned me taking a human woman for a mate would be difficult. I loved her so much I didn’t care. I felt certain we could overcome any difficulty with our love and joy in one another. I spent the happiest years of my life with her. The children came, first Clarissa and then Chris. We stayed close to this coast and the harbor and I encouraged her to visit her family and friends whenever she wanted. I knew it was hard for her to leave everything she knew for my sake, though she loved the sea and appeared content at first.”
“One day, when Clarissa was six and Chris four, we heard the sound of church bells down in our cavern. It was a calm, sunny day and she was sitting with Clarissa on her knee, combing out her hair. The bell made a silver sound and the sea was green. I remember the way the sunlight quivered and gleamed on the cavern floor. She sighed, and talked about her soul, and I bade her go up into the town and church, and come home when she felt ready, so she went. The day grew old and a storm approached, but she didn’t return. The children kept asking when she’d come home again. We made our way up the creek that runs by the churchyard and empties into the sea.”
“I saw it,” said Radulf.
“The sea stocks were blooming,” said Irvin. “I remember the purple color of the flowers against their fuzzy leaves. We pulled ourselves up on the tombstones. A cold wind was rising. The hard stone made a good perch and I could see in through the window panes. Margaret sat by a pillar. An open book lay in her lap and her gaze was fixed on a man in the front, who was talking. Many people were there. Nearly every bench was full. The cold wind seemed to touch my heart, wrap it and sweep it away. She looked so serene and distant, there with her own people. The church door and windows were shut and Clarissa’s hair flew in the wind, getting more tangled by the minute. Chris held out his arms and cried for his mother, but the walls are thick and nobody heard. We returned to the creek and I took them down in the driving rain to the sea and home.” He remained silent a moment.
“She never came home again.”
“But you’ve seen her?” asked Radulf.
“Yes. In the evening, she walks on the shore. She comes alone after the lamps are lit in the houses. She has a dinghy in the harbor and I’ve seen her take it into the bay and drop anchor. I think she sits there, alone in the dark, to feel the movement of the sea under her. She sings the lullabies she sang when the children were babies and sometimes she weeps. I think she misses the children, but she wasn’t happy with us or she couldn’t have left like that. I don’t want the children to lose her all over again, so I never speak to her or show myself.”
Irvin looked at Radulf with troubled eyes.
“What is this thing you call a soul? Why does it demand Margaret choose one thing or another? Why can’t she live in her world and ours and be happy in both?”
“I don’t know, Irvin,” said Radulf. “When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous to me, too. Other people expect us to behave in certain ways. You said some of your folk advised against taking a human mate?”
“Yes. It’s been done now and then but it rarely turns out well.”
“Were you punished?”
“Punished?” Irvin looked surprised. “No, not punished, exactly, but I don’t see some of my old friends anymore and I’m not a part of the community the way I was. I didn’t mind. She was worth it, and I thought my people would come around when they realized we were making it work.”
“If you’d known when you met her what you know now, would you make the same choices?”
Irvin watched the children competing to see who could leap higher out of the waves. “I can’t regret loving her,” he said thoughtfully, “or the children. I might have tried to understand what she needed, though. If I’d known she had to follow rules about how to live it might have been different. But it might not.” He looked back at Radulf. “How can I say for sure?”
“You can’t. It’s a question I ask myself about my own past. If I’d known the right questions to ask, if I’d had all the information, would I make different choices? I might, but how can I say for sure?” He shook his head.
“I told you I’d known one of your people before. Her name was Marella…”
Radulf told the story of his little mermaid and recounted his return home. When he stopped speaking the two remained silent for a time. The tide had turned and ebbed in a low, soothing rhythm. The children scrambled among the rocks offshore now.
“I never thought about how important it is to know yourself before,” said Irvin at length.
“Which one of us are you talking about?”
“All of us. Take Marella, for example. I’ve no doubt her people warned her against doing such a thing, sacrificing so much for the love of a strange human man. Obviously, she thought it was worth it, but in the end she gave too much of her life away. She had nothing to rebuild with. She didn’t know who she was or what she needed, and so she didn’t think about what you needed, either.”
“And your Margaret? She needed to live in the faith of her church but she didn’t know until it was too late?”
“Yes. That’s the pity of it. We don’t know until we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t possess what we need. Only then do we realize something essential to our happiness is missing.”
“I couldn’t see I was trying to live a life that wasn’t mine,” said Radulf. “I was young and I just went along with the expectations. I didn’t know how unhappy I was until I ran away, and even then I wasn’t clear about why I had to do that. The truth is it’s just been in the last couple of months I’ve clearly understood how frantic I felt.”
“You’d never have married if you’d known yourself better.”
“No. I wonder if she’d have married me if she’d known herself better?” He thought about this. “Probably not.”
“I was willing for Margaret to be free to shape her life around the children and me and her own people. It didn’t occur to me it might not be possible. I also didn’t know I couldn’t respect the rules that were so important to her. I tried to respect that she respected them, but I thought them ridiculous and limiting and I had no intention of living with them myself or teaching the children to live by them. I want them to be free.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” said Radulf. “Knowing oneself, knowing where one belongs, is important. Do you think that’s something we’re always learning?”
“I suppose so.”
Radulf said, “I didn’t know life would take so much courage and endurance. Did you?”
“No. Do you think I should take the children and go somewhere else? The sea is wide.”
“I’ve been traveling, one way or another, for twenty years,” said Radulf. “The world is indeed wide, and deep and tall! I’ve seen and done extraordinary things. This will always be home to me but I’m too big for it now. Are you too big for this bay and the grey church on the windy hill and Margaret’s rules and needs?”
“I can do more than this,” said Irvin.
“Then do.”
CHAPTER 28
ARTYOM
“Do you play marbles?” Dar asked.
They’d stopped to eat. It was a soft summer day, filled with the sounds of insects and birds. Dar had pulled the cart onto an old track leading to a long-abandoned hut that was gradually sinking into the earth. Sunlight filtered through holes in the roof, showing part of an old floor. One corner of the place had been cleared of debris.
“Marbles?” For some reason, Artyom felt vaguely insulted. He remembered some reference to marbles as Baba Yaga and Dar bantered before the initiation.
“Yes, marbles,” said Dar.
“No, I don’t play marbles.”
“High time, then. I’m a good player and an even better cheater. I’ll teach you how to cheat, shall I?”
Artyom hunched his shoulders suspiciously. “I don’t cheat at games.”
“You should,” said Dar impudently. “Everyone should. Cheating is an inextricable part of playing games.” He’d been rummaging in the cart and jumped out of it with a brocaded bag in one hand.
“I like to stop here when I’m in the area,” he said. “It’s hard to find a good flat place to play on the road, but this old floor works fine, at least until the rest of the roof goes and the grass takes over.”
Dar crouched, hands moving over the ground. “Kneel there. I’ll set out the game, like so. Here’s your shooter, here’s mine, and the rest are ducks. Now, this game is called Corner the Cow, and the object is…”
Artyom, unwillingly fascinated, was taken through a game or two and then spent a half an hour learning the fine points of bombsies and fudging without getting caught.
It was the most fun he’d had in years.
MARY
Mary retched resignedly. For a few days after the nausea had started, she’d taken care to seek privacy behind a bush or tree, leaving Lugh to wait on the road. Now she made for the nearest clump of grass or growth, careless of his eyes or a chance passerby.
With some ruefulness, she’d realized it didn’t matter to Lugh. He roused her to pleasure and took his own, not the slightest bit put off by occasional bouts of nausea. She felt thick and bloated, but he reveled in her abundant flesh. The changes in her body unexpectedly triggered her own desire and made her want to rediscover their passion again and again.
Nausea receded. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and stood straight, Lugh’s hand under her elbow.
“Better?” he asked sympathetically. “Will you try a piece of bread?”
She nodded and he produced a piece of stale bread, which she began to nibble on.
They sat in a clump of daisy-starred grass.
“I’m starving,” said Lugh. He was always starving. His enormous vitality required constant fuel. She felt hungry too, now nausea had passed.
He took a vigorous bite off a strip of dried meat and fat, a mixture he’d perfected since learning to make it at Valhalla. She sniffed at a chunk of bread spread thickly with bacon fat to see what her stomach said. It growled. Happily, she bit into the bread.
“I wish I could do something for you,” he said, chewing, an anxious line between his brows.
“I know. It’s all right, Lugh. Women have been having babies for a long time. I’ll be fine.” Her reassurance was automatic. They’d had this conversation many times before.
Summer Solstice had come and gone. Seed was sown and harvest lay ahead. It was the pause between exhalation of full-lipped summer and inhalation of harvest.
“What if I can’t take care of you properly?”
Irritation rose in her and she took another bite to distract herself. All her emotions were easily triggered these days.
“We take care of each other. We work together, just as we always have. You know we must each tend to our own harvest, Lugh.”
He looked down, thick gilt lashes hiding green eyes.
They tightened their bundles. Lugh stood, brushing grass and insects off his clothes and running a tidying hand through his thick hair. “Do I look all right?”
Gravely, she nodded. He extended a hand and hauled her to her feet. She kissed him on the mouth in silent assurance and promise.
“Tell me about Valhalla,” she said as they resumed walking.
“Again? I’m bored with that old story.” He gave her a teasing sideways glance.
“You are not!” she said, loving every single thing about him, his childlike vanity, his uncomplicated good nature and his vigorous maleness. “Make it a story. I like to picture your life before we met.”
“They called me Billy,” he began.
She snorted with amusement.
“Whenever I heard, ’Hey, Billy! I suspected a trick and put my hands up. The first time it happened I was just in time to catch a half-frozen side of pork. It rocked me on my feet and I tightened my arms around it in an awkward catch that made everyone laugh.
The slaughtering shed at Valhalla is a busy place. Men work bare-chested in the chilly air, warmed by wielding shears, blade and mallet. The shed smells of stiff flesh, greasy offal and congealed blood.
I’d been excited to leave Yule House and my foster mothers. I longed for the company of men. When Baubo told me I was to live at Valhalla as an apprentice to Odin, I imagined myself on a splendid horse, crimson cloak swirling as I joined the Wild Hunt. Or exploring wild places, tracking boar or bear, chasing hounds, taking my place among the men as a hunter with blood on my hands from a fresh kill, providing meat for the table.
Fresh blood seemed the height of romance, but all I had at Valhalla was greasy old blood that left its stink on my skin and caked stubbornly under my fingernails.
Odin barely looked at me. When we arrived, he indicated the slaughtering shed with a jerk of his chin and walked away without a word. Baubo gave me a last hug and I was on my own, feeling mightily left down. I went to the shed and opened the door, trying to look confident.
That was the last time I wore my cloak or my gold earring anywhere at Valhalla. I folded the cloak and hid it away, wearing it only when I was alone, waking cold earth under fields and forests with my flute. I hid my earring in the flute, plugging the end with a bit of cloth.
At Valhalla, I was never alone. I had what I’d wanted, the company of men, but rough, coarse company, unkind and brutish. They took one look at my split hooves and brown flanks and nicknamed me ‘Billy.’”
“I remember,” said Mary, her belly blooming with warmth. “I remember you the night we met …”
“That was before you came along and tamed and civilized me,” said Lugh. “Before Valhalla and you I was wild. I spoke only with my flute, and with that I roused winter into spring and spring into consummation. As the wheel turned, I regained my human shape and lost my adolescent goat-foot aspect.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes. I miss the power and lust of it. I miss being a creature apart, with no responsibilities.”
“But you did have responsibilities. You had to call me out of maidenhood, as well as the earth out of winter.”
“Yes, but I wanted to do that. I couldn’t help myself. You seduced me.”
She laughed and slapped his arm playfully.
“I suppose you liked me better in those goat-footed days, you wench!” His tone was light, but she sensed a tinge of insecurity.
“You’re my mate,” she said. “I loved you then and I love you now. Together, we turn the wheel.”
He took her hand and squeezed it.
“Tell more,” she said. “More about Valhalla.”
“Where was I?”
“They called you ‘Billy.’”
“I was never allowed to forget my cloak and gold hoop, though I only wore them once,” resumed Lugh. “They made fun of my body when I appeared without the cloak and adopted my flanks as the most convenient place to wipe their knives, administering sly cuts and digs as they did so. Every evening I had to clean matted gore off myself.
I was the butt, the drudge, the scapegoat. I was the youngest and most unskilled, so I did the heaviest, dirtiest work. I was everybody’s whipping boy. I was in three fights the first week, all of which I lost ignominiously.
By the second week, I’d become more stoic. I wrapped a heavy sacking apron around myself, ignored (or at least didn’t react to) every jibe, and learned. I started asking questions. Sometimes my only answer was a kick or a blow, but occasionally I got a gruff reply. As I sharpened and cleaned tools at the end of the day, I remembered how they’d been used, sculpting dead flesh, cleaning bone, severing tough cartilage. I scoured pots and blackened kettles; poured off rendered fat; hoisted carcasses to hang;, skinned, cleaved, salted and ferried fresh meat to Valhalla’s kitchens. My hands cracked from mixing salt and water for slurry.
I ate. Everyone ate well at Valhalla. I ate all the meat I could hold, glistening with fat, fueling long cold hours in the slaughtering shed and my changing body.
I began to appreciate the thoroughly male dance of heavy boots, soiled sawdust, carrion odors, tools and skilled hands. There was beauty in uncovered bone, beauty in the shine of greasy sweat on heavy belly and muscled arms. I enjoyed slipping skin and pelt off flesh. There was something sensual in the naked structure of the meat. The splattering hot fat was like pale honey and left burns on my arms. I learned the skill and mastery of working with dead flesh, reading the grain, anticipating hidden ribbons of cartilage and membrane, seeing how best to shape death into sustaining life.
Sometimes I slipped away with my cloak and flute. Outside the slaughtering shed spring approached. During those times I wandered, my cock heavy and my body humming with vitality. The flute spoke as I caressed it with my tongue, fingers and mouth. Winter came to me, seduced, and I pressed myself against its snowy lips until they melted into cold drops pooling on my tongue.”
Mary stopped in midstride, turned and pulled him to her, giving him a hot open-mouthed kiss. They stood together, their hands greedy on one another’s body, the kiss deepening, and Mary remembered the Day of Seeds with every cell and nerve in her body.
“I called you, my Seed Bearer,” he said, freeing his lips but not drawing away. “I knew you were in the world, my cup, my mate, my female half. I wanted you. My seed cried out for you.”