The Hanged Man: Parts 9 & 10: Lughnasadh & The Hanged Man
Post #98: In which an ending before the next beginning ...
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MARIA
“Somebody tell a story,” said Liza. She sat close to Brian, a blanket thrown around their shoulders for warmth. It was the coldest night of the season so far. The fire’s heat and light comforted Maria’s face, but her back felt the bony breath of winter.
Jan and Gwelda, with promises to visit often and soon, had returned to their own hearth and giant downy bed. Ginger had moved into Maria’s house and her own hastily erected bedroom.
Dar, Lugh and Mary were also gone, to general sorrow. Dar and Lugh had been so involved in creating Rowan Tree that Maria felt bereft and uncertain without them. Their natural leadership and presence lingered everywhere, but nowhere more than at the fireside.
With their departure, Rowan Tree began to settle down for their first winter together.
“Yes, someone do,” agreed Gabriel, hunching his shoulders against the cold night.
Unexpectedly, Cassandra responded. She stood, as Dar had so often done, close to the fire. Maria caught glimpses of her face, lined and haunted, in the dancing light. She wore a new cloak, a thick charcoal grey wool with a thin crimson stripe Maria had woven for her. It fell away from her arms as she gestured.
“Now comes the Harvest Hag with her stone moon blade, sharpened with deathly charms. She dances through husk and chaff and over stubbled fields on her iron-tipped bare feet, sticky blood between her toes. She’s searching for a consort, a partner for Harvest’s death dance.
But he must be worthy, yes, worthy, with broad bones and sandpaper cheek. His hair must taste like salt and sun. He must hang low between his legs like a ripe cluster of grapes, bursting red and purple. Most of all, he must swing the sharp sickle, swing it with arrogance and skill.
They come to each other in rolling fields of oats and barley, wheat and rye. His pride and strength are ebbing, but he’s longing for her, too. They face one another, the Harvest Hag and the green and gold man, and autumn wind ripples the grain like fur.
She sneers a challenge, twirling her blade. He bows courteously, and grins like a boy.
They bend their backs under the tired sun, swinging their arms, creeping row by row through the fields, leaving heaps of fallen grain behind them. Now the man, sun-dusted, gold earring glinting, leads, and now the Harvest Hag, dusty and spiky as a grasshopper, tireless, inexorable, crawls ahead. As the sun slides down, they’re coated with sweat and dust and flies.
They reap what has been sown, bend and swing, bend and swing, beating harvest heartbeat, and the stars look down with cool eyes. Noola rises, waxing gibbous.
On they go, timeless, inevitable, waltzing over shorn fields, swaying, revolving, each determined to beat the other, flinging themselves headlong toward the last severing.
Triumphant, he crows as his swift blade parts the last sheaf from the earth. He stands in moonlight, laughing, arms full of a bouquet of death. She comes to him on her clawed feet, cackling, thighs wet, the taste of him already in her mouth, and the sickle moon thrusts into her, enters her, fills her, rips the rotten fabric of her body.
She falls into the night’s cauldron, stone, bone, earth, and a splash of scarlet poppies at the corner of the last barley field, taking with her the last of his strength, for death must come before renewal.”
MIRMIR
“The firelight fingered the ssircle of lisstening fasses, finding jawline, cheekbone and eye ssocket. In its uncertain light memories moved through eyes, across lips. Hands clasped around knees, in laps or in the hands of a lover remembered work’s texture and tattoo. A hard grin of triumph flashed across the men’s faces as he, the green and gold one, cut the last sheaf for them all. The women stirred, subtly widening their legs, breasts awakening, roused to lust by the presence of death.”
“In cold darkness beyond the reach of light and heat stood another circle of pearl antler, half-moon bow, jeweled wings trailing sparks, the White Lady’s flower face, an old one-eyed man, wolves with eyes of amber and jade, seeing nipples and hairy lips, torchbearer, and a child creased with sand holding an armful of bones like ivory flowers.”
“And beyond that circle an old hag peered from the shadows, whiskers and nose hairs tied in a knot, caressing marbles with her tongue and scratching her ass with a bloody blade.”
“Circles within circles, each turning in their own dance, and held within the circle of Webbd, held within the circle of the sky, held within a circle of stars…”
PART 10
The Hanged Man
Life in suspension
MIRMIR
“Across ssleeping hillss and fieldss the lasst dolly hass been plaited and cut, the lasst sheaf carried to the barn. Mice and rats nibble at grain on the threshing floor. Corn is gathered in heaps. There will be enough food for the winter — or there won’t be. Herds are culled, trees relieved of their burdens. The land lies, exhausted and spent, under winter’s iron blanket.
He, man of light, sun man of green and gold in his crimson cloak, makes his way across the earth into which he spilled his seed. He’s called the land into life, fed it with his vitality. He’s danced upon it and rutted upon it, whispered to it and commanded it. He’s called ripening fruit and grain, each by its secret name, and felt himself diminish, bit by bit, as each seed swelled into maturity. His reflection is in the dying animal’s eye, his hand released its blood and severed its bone. He’s fed the cycle and now he’s tired husk and dry chaff, empty of seed, empty of beauty, empty of sustenance. His own blood is let, his bones soft. Now he’s weary.
He makes his way to rest, to a place of being and not doing. He makes his way to a suspended interval during which nothing is needed from him — not mastery, not virility, not seed. He no longer holds the shield of himself between his loved ones and the world.
He goes to hear stories of what might be and what might not be, what has been and has not been, time past and coming again soon. He goes to be cradled in the ancient arms of Yggdrasil and hear his own story, his mate’s, his brother’s and sons’ stories. He goes to rest before his final journey, which ends in the beginning.”
Mirmir’s words trailed off, his golden eyes softening with tenderness as he watched the Hanged Man sleep. An autumn breeze blew through the network of branches, rocking him gently, and he smiled in his sleep as he hung, anchored to the Tree of Life, the pivot around which the wheel spins, his dry bones whispering of change and renewal in the desiccating rind of his flesh.
“It endss with the Hanged Man,” whispered Mirmir.
THE END (AND THE BEGINNING)
Thank you for reading the first book in my Webbd Wheel series, The Hanged Man! The second book is titled The Tower, and you’ll find it in the top navigation bar as a section in my newsletter. I’ll publish a Directory for The Tower by the end of 2023 and begin serial posts of The Tower in January 2024.