The Tower: Part 1: The Tower: Part 2: Mabon (Entire)

In which you can read without interruption ...

Apr 07, 2024

PART I THE TOWER

The Card: The Tower

Balance of creation and destruction; communication

The lighthouse stands on cliffs above the sea. The hidden ones built it, those among their people who shunned the world aboveground weaving the tower’s roots from stone, and those who had made friends with the Green World raising the round walls around steps spiraling into the sky.

The sea and stony cliffs were ancient lovers, and the builders found seams like mineral lightning, fissures frosted with dendrites, small crystal vugs and fossils locked within the stone. They flaked, split, chiseled and carved, adorning the tower inside and out.

As the hidden ones removed stone from the cliffs, the sea crept into new places, stroking and fingering. The rock gave way, shuddering, accepting the invasion, consenting to the shaping, and the sea hollowed out a round gate of passage linking the tower to other places.

They built the lighthouse in the center of a web of sky, sea and stone; at the top a platform embraced the warning light guiding sailors and other wanderers in the darkness. The sea’s voice vibrated eternally in the stone. Webbd’s stars and moons crept across the night sky above the tower. Seabirds like a handful of flung salt wheeled in the constant wind breathing around it in the milk and honey light of Yr, the life-giving sun.

A keeper came to the tower from the sea, a collector of dreams and fancies with a heart full of singing words. He was a sea creature who loved the land and its people; he wove stories and tales and faithfully kept the light showing others the way.

For a time, he lived in the tower, suspended between the elements, and visitors came from the sea and land to speak and to listen. The tower and its keeper provided balance and harmony and clarity. Water, stone, air and fire wove together into Webbd’s fabric by the tower’s light. Stars and quarried stones murmured to one another during long nights sonorous with sea and wind.

Then the keeper was gone.

Empty, the tower waited.

PART 2 MABON

(MAY-bone or MAH-bawn) Autumn equinox, the balance point between summer solstice and winter solstice. The second of three harvest points in the cycle, a time to complete tasks, measure success, give thanks and prepare for winter.

The Card: The Hermit

Inner truth and wisdom; stillness; withdrawal and rest.

CHAPTER 1

PERSEPHONE

In the end, Persephone took nothing but a few clothes and her dumbek.

She’d planned to pack more. After all, she’d have lots of time, time to herself to do whatever she wanted. She could read, or learn something new like…like…oh, anything! Tie knots, for example. She could learn to tie every knot there was, become an expert tier of knots, famous, rich, independent, respected! She could make a whole new life, create a new Persephone no one had ever met.

She liked the idea of Hades discovering gaps in their living space where she’d removed a picture, an ornament, a rug or a favorite piece of pottery. She relished the hurt each discovery would give him, the wince, the way the lines in his face would deepen as he felt the pain of her loss again.

But he’d never suffer as she’d suffered. He’d never feel what loss really was. What did loss of life mean to him? He existed because of death. He was death. He was steeped in it, made of it, and she’d been a fool to think life could come from death. Life was life and death was death and one canceled out the other. In the end, death was stronger. What Hades was mastered and controlled everything she was. His presence made the Green World’s light and life cold and dead. If she’d stayed with her mother, stayed to dance the joyous dance of harvest, wrapped herself in a blanket of abundant grain and fruit, stayed under the life-giving sun, her womb wouldn’t now be a shriveled wasteland.

But she’d made her choice. She’d given up the Green World for love, for some naive idealism that found the Underworld a necessary and lovely part of a whole. Now her harvest from that idealism was death. Hope, joy, laughter, physical rapture, new life, all came to death.

So, she decided to leave before death took the last thing she possessed -- her own life. She would flee, go back to the Green World where she belonged, but not home to Demeter. She didn’t want her mother. She wanted no words, no comfort, no helpful concern or concerned help. She wanted to be alone, where no one could find her. She felt sick to her bones of stories and passion, hope and fear and the false promises of love and family. She wanted nothing from anyone, only to be left alone.

Part of her still lay on her bed, the bloody sheet beneath her and thighs sticky and stinking as the child slipped out of life and into the Underworld. Part of her still lay seized by the cramping pain, the numb despair, the powerlessness of loss. Yet she’d risen, washed, eaten, drunk, and gone about her work, refusing to look at the memory of Baubo carefully wrapping the stained sheet around a lump of bloody tissue.

One of the first stories she’d heard after getting back on her feet came from a soul who’d been a lighthouse keeper. He’d been swept off his lonely rock by a storm-driven wave, smashed his head against an unyielding stone cliff and left the lighthouse fire to burn out and the mirror untended. He’d cared about his work, taking quiet satisfaction in guiding mariners and saving lives.

Before he finished his story and she’d asked, “What would you like to do now?” she’d known she would go to that remote lighthouse in a high rocky place where the sea pounded and the weather struck. It was the refuge she wanted. There she’d be safe. There no one would find her.

She didn’t want the dumbek, couldn’t imagine a use for it and resented the effort of taking it, but somehow it was impossible to leave it behind. Suddenly overcome by apathy, she turned her back on the fine, fierce imaginings of Hades’ suffering and left everything in place. Unless he opened her wardrobe, he’d never notice she’d left. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She took one last look around her at the place where she’d known such hope and happiness, and fled.

RAPUNZEL

Harvest ebbed into winter while Rapunzel learned to speak with the drums. Winter in the birch forest with the Rusalka was timeless. It might have been one winter in what she thought of as the real world, or it might have been a winter encompassing a year or more. The forest was sentient, a huge being made of uncounted trees and the life among them. A bathhouse plunge pool acted as a portal between the birch forest and other places, including Rowan Tree, the small community which had taken Rapunzel into its arms. Rapunzel had gone through the bathhouse portal several times with the Rusalka, forming the impression of layers of birch forests, each exactly the same (or was it the same forest?), the portal like a staircase between them. The same bathhouse, or did each layer have its own? She didn’t know. She accepted magic’s inscrutable nature. Sometimes Baba Yaga was present with her chicken-legged house, but she too might be in one layer or each of them.

When winter numbed the forest the Rusalka left the tree canopy and returned to the water as merwomen. Rapunzel couldn’t shapeshift the way the Rusalka did. Her friend, Morfran, was a shapeshifter and half merfolk, as well as mate to Sofiya, one of the Rusalka. Vasilisa, another friend, was also part merfolk, though the only shapes she could take were human and merwoman.

Rapunzel could wear the aspect of ugliness at will, thanks to Baba Yaga, but she remained in a woman’s shape. When the Rusalka were elsewhere Rapunzel stayed in the little log cabin in the woods where Morfran had taken her the first night she’d arrived.

The cabin suited her. It was rough but solidly built. Rapunzel quickly mastered splitting wood and Morfran supplied her with firewood and taught her to manage the stove. He and the Rusalka hunted and Rapunzel had learned something about finding her own food from Lugh back at Rowan Tree before she left. It seemed a long time ago now, another lifetime in a faraway place.

The cabin was equipped with a rough mattress of bracken and leaves and a pile of strong-smelling skins, primarily wolf. She ate at a wooden table, with a couple of stools, a plate, a bowl, a spoon, a cup. In spite of the rude surroundings, the place reminded her of the stone tower of her adolescence. Here she was free and there she’d been a prisoner, but the solitude of the place echoed that of the tower.

She was not displeased by this. She liked her own company. She was fascinated by the Rusalka, respected them, learned what she could from them and gladly joined her power with theirs in dance and music, but she luxuriated in her time alone as well. Morfran felt like a kind brother, friendly, helpful, vaguely protective, but emotionally remote.

In the tower of her maidenhood, Rapunzel had been surrounded with diversions and activities. Here in the winter birch forest, she need do nothing except keep the fire going and stay warm, or visit the bathhouse for a steam and a soak. Rapunzel practiced her drumming every day, losing herself in contemplative rhythm, her thoughts wandering freely. Many hours a day were empty of doing.

In the winter birch wood Rapunzel came fully into being. This process was aided by the forest itself. In the purity of solitude and nothing in particular to do, Rapunzel found her intuition sharpened to an almost painful degree. She became aware that every step she took was absorbed and recorded by the forest. She could feel its intelligence, its interest, its purposeful life. A tree, a winter rabbit, a bird, a skunk -- each formed part of an enormous complex system, a live being.

It was odd, she thought, this shifting perception of boundaries. She’d learned from her mother Elizabeth the interconnectedness of all things, but it was a rote kind of learning. She could express interconnection in language and intellectually knew it to be true, but the complex experience of it hadn’t become palpable until now. Elizabeth herself had lost sight of interconnectedness when she separated Rapunzel from the world. If Elizabeth hadn’t been so afraid of loneliness would she have seen the ultimate futility of locking Rapunzel away?

Here in the woods a skunk was clearly not a tree. A chickadee was not a bare tangle of bramble. Yet Rapunzel could feel some deeper level and layer of connection, a more complete understanding than the visual discernment between one being and another. The forest was made of hundreds of different forms of life, but at the same time it was one being. She felt sure of it, though she couldn’t explain it. Were boundaries real, then? They must be, on some level, mustn’t they?

She thought often about Dar. She felt glad no one could ever know how often he came into her thoughts, especially Dar himself.

Rapunzel had left Rowan Tree with Morfran, the Rusalka and the old woman, Heks, on an early fall day. Heks had come through the Rowan Tree portal after her, but Rapunzel hadn’t seen her again. The portal must have taken her somewhere else. At that time, Lugh; his twin brother Dar; and Mary, Lugh’s very pregnant mate, had been making ready to leave Rowan Tree in Dar’s wagon. Dar had been vague about their destination, telling Rapunzel he took Lugh to a meeting and Mary to a safe place to give birth. Then he’d return to Rowan Tree and help the little community through their first winter. “And wait for you,” had not been said aloud, but she’d heard it nonetheless.

She’d left Rowan Tree to learn how to drum from the Rusalka, having developed a fierce desire for the skill during an evening of women’s dance led by the Rusalka themselves, old Baubo, and Ginger, a newcomer to Rowan Tree.

Her desire for the drums had been real. The act of drumming revealed parts of herself she’d never known and enhanced her power and energy in extraordinary ways. However, it was also true she’d felt relieved to have an excuse to leave Dar.

He disturbed her. He saw too much and he made her feel what she didn’t want to feel. The more she enjoyed his pointed wit, his sly but accurate observations, his outrageous teasing and his nimble brain, the more she resented him. He fascinated her. He infuriated her. She disliked him more than she’d ever disliked anyone and his kiss had the power to disturb her peace for days. Yet something about him compelled her. Reluctantly, resenting her own reluctance (why did she care enough to be reluctant in the first place?) she’d suggested they leave Rowan Tree together, take the road wherever it led through the harvest landscape, free and unfettered. Let people think she was his woman. Why did she care?

Curtly, he’d refused, informing her coolly they would both stay at Rowan Tree for the winter and leave together in the spring. Irritated, resentful, rebellious and flattered in swift succession, Rapunzel ended the conversation without committing to this plan, but she privately looked forward to it, not without trepidation.

She told herself and him the invitation was careless, a lark, an uncomplicated week or two as easy companions. Nothing more. But she knew what would happen if they left together. She denied it, even to herself, but she knew. She didn’t want that to happen. Not really. But what would it be like if it did happen?

In the midst of this indecision and confusion the dance had occurred and Rapunzel gladly allowed herself to be seduced by the drums and dancing. On the point of staying at Rowan Tree, waiting for Dar’s return after dropping off Lugh and Mary and exploring what might come after, she drew back, asked the Rusalka to teach her and decided to leave Rowan Tree for a time.

Dar had shrugged carelessly, wished her well and said casually he still planned to return and spend the winter, then set out in spring with anything the community had produced to sell or trade and a list of necessities to buy.

She knew he waited for her.

What did he want from her?

What did she want?

She wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t about fear, but about boundaries. She didn’t want entanglement, at least not in a way she couldn’t control. She knew without doubt she couldn’t control Dar. Another man, perhaps, but not him. Boundaries again. Boundaries weren’t about fear, but about…independence. Healthy independence, nothing to do with fear. She wasn’t afraid to go back to Rowan Tree and see Dar. She simply wasn’t ready yet. She needed to learn about her own power, her own life.

One night Rapunzel rose up through the plunge pool from the winter birch forest where she and the Rusalka danced on a floor of silver ice and frost. The Rusalka rose with her, tail, fin, bare breast, flowing hair like leafy branches. Suddenly the dim water filled with starry points of light, as though the swimmers were suspended in a cloud of cold fireflies. The lights flickered and wavered, some shining bright and others dim. Rapunzel looked around her in wonder, as she rose to the surface of another pool in another place, or maybe not. Maybe, after all, they sank into the same plunge pool and rose again, over and over, into the same winter wood.

When Rapunzel had pulled herself out of the pool with the others, she saw someone had joined them, an old woman, lean, spare, completely unremarkable. She looked like every old woman, yet Rapunzel recognized her thin hair, her lined face. The old woman’s eyes gleamed, as though capturing the reflected starry light from the water. As Rapunzel watched, the lights dimmed and faded and the plunge pool looked depthless and dark again. The old woman opened her hand and cold light glowed from a handful of round gems or stones she held. The light struck the old woman’s face from below, casting strange shadows that reminded Rapunzel of firelight or torchlight.

“Heks?”

“Yes. It’s me. I want to talk to you.”

“Me?” Rapunzel felt surprised. She’d hardly spoken with Heks, though they’d traveled together with the others to Rowan Tree, led by Dar. Heks, being a midwife, had cared for Mary on that journey. Rapunzel and Cassandra, the half-mad seer she’d rescued from a mob, had met Dar, Lugh and Mary in a village and joined the group.

Heks said little to anyone. She was pleasant, matter of fact, and had a trick of rarely being noticed. Rapunzel remembered Heks had implied some prior relationship with Baba Yaga. Rapunzel had entrusted her ex-lover Alexander’s blue-eyed marble to Heks before leaving Rowan Tree, not out of friendship but out of a feeling that Heks was the rightful keeper.

Now, the Rusalka took no notice of Heks or Rapunzel. Some stayed to relax in the plunge pool and others lay in the sauna. Rapunzel knew they’d spend the rest of the night there.

“I’ll take you to my place,” she said to Heks, and led the old woman through the sauna and anteroom, out the door and along the path through the trees to the log hut.

Inside, Rapunzel gestured wordlessly to a wooden stool and put the battered teakettle on the stove. She pinched up some precious tea leaves and let them steep in her single cup, setting it before Heks and sitting on the other stool.

Heks poked at the floating leaves with a finger, watching them soften and uncurl in the hot water. She pursed her lips slightly and lines sprang out around her mouth.

“Where did you go?” asked Rapunzel, irresistibly curious.

Heks looked up, her mouth relaxing into a smile. “No idea. I was alone. I climbed a mountain and played marbles with a great bear with a sickle moon on his chest.”

Rapunzel’s jaw dropped.

Heks actually laughed. Rapunzel realized she’d never heard her laugh before. The lines produced by her laughter made her look like a different woman.

“Baba Yaga was there for a time, too.” Heks reached into a pocket and spilled a handful of marbles onto the scarred table top. They rolled, finding cracks and gouges, clinking together. They glittered and shimmered, red as the blood of strawberries and grapes, white and silver like polished ice crystals, black with tiny pinpricks of light, like a night sky. Among them Rapunzel saw four brown eyes, an amber wolf’s eye and Alexander’s blue eye, all open and gazing serenely at whatever appeared in their view when they came to rest on the table. Alexander’s eye, pointed just above Rapunzel’s head, winked at her.

Rapunzel made a strangled sound of surprise and snorted with laughter at the same time. In all the time she’d carried Alexander’s eye it had never once winked at her.

“I had news,” said Heks, paying no attention to the marbles or Rapunzel’s reaction, “and it was time to leave the Sickle Bear and come and find you.”

“But why?” asked Rapunzel, bewildered.

“Dar is dead.”

“He is not!” said Rapunzel at once. “He’s back at Rowan Tree by now, waiting for me.”

Heks’ eyes glimmered strangely in the marbles’ dim, like silver glass.

“You must mean Lugh is dead,” said Rapunzel, more calmly. “He wasn’t looking well when I left. He looked used up, somehow. He put too much of himself into harvest. Poor Mary. Is she all right? Have the babies been born?”

“The Dar you knew is dead, and Lugh as well. Mary’s twins are born and the new cycle begun.”

“No.” Rapunzel fixed her gaze on Alexander’s eye, which looked unblinkingly over her head. Heks’ steady regard felt unnerving. Feeling defensive, Rapunzel put on her ugly woman face, which usually distracted those around her. Heks didn’t react at all.

“Who told you this?” Rapunzel demanded.

“The stars,” said Heks, stirring the marbles with her old woman’s finger. “The cosmos is a web of matterenergytime and galaxies without end are strung on its threads. It’s sentient. It knows itself.”

“It can’t be true,” muttered Rapunzel, but with less certainty. “There must be a mistake.”

“The new cycle has begun,” Heks repeated, “but there’s a disturbance in the Yrtym threads and the sky is uneasy.”

“Urtim?”

“Yrtym,” repeated Heks. “Threads of matterenergytime.”

Rapunzel felt dazed. Could it be true that Dar was dead? And Lugh? And she’d been idling, taking her time, playing with the idea of facing Dar one day, when she felt ready, and all the time he was dead. Dead. She’d never see him again. She’d never find out what might have been possible. She’d missed her chance. And Heks sat regarding her out of those chilling eyes. Why didn’t she remember how unsettling Heks could be? Rapunzel remembered her as a rather uninteresting old woman. But that wasn’t quite right, was it? Hadn’t she told Maria, Rowan Tree’s leader, with perfect truth, that she sensed deep places in Heks? And she’d given Heks Alexander’s eye, a precious, personal, magical object. An unusual gift to give an ordinary old woman. Yet she’d known it was the right thing to do.

It's time to go back, Rapunzel thought to herself suddenly. I’m finished here. But now where to go? Dar was gone. She didn’t want to go back to Rowan Tree without him. Her mother, Elizabeth? Live with her in a little house in the town by the lake? No, not there.

“What should I do now?” she asked, her usual confidence and independence shattered.

“You’re needed. There’s an empty stone tower on the sea, a lighthouse. Its keeper has recently died and a ship has already foundered in a storm because the fire wasn’t lit and the mirror untended. The waters off that coast are dangerous. Someone with power must go care for the lighthouse and gather information, watch and listen for what stone, sky, wind and sea can tell. Threads of Yrtym connect life, from a single cell to the cosmos. Any disturbance will be felt throughout all levels.”

“You’re kidding,” said Rapunzel blankly. “You want me to go to a stone tower?”

“That’s right,” said Heks imperturbably. “Who’s better suited? But this one has a door, and a key.” She laid a small golden key on the table. Its shoulders were encrusted with red gems.

In fact, the idea of an isolated stone tower, and Rapunzel assumed it was isolated, standing on an unfriendly coastline, attracted her. It was something useful to do while coming to terms with Dar’s…

You bastard, she though furiously at him, you made me care and then you left! You might have told me! Had he known he’d never see her again? Had he known it was good-bye --forever? Surely not!

“All right,” Rapunzel said abruptly. “I’ll do it.” She took the key and stood up. “When can we leave?”

SLATE

Slate cut granite into huge foundation blocks, wider and taller than he was himself. He worked alone, which he preferred, and as he worked, he chewed sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out with the deadly accuracy and sound of an angry snake.

Hades grew the best sunflower seeds in his (necessarily) green world garden. They were expensive, because the Underworld’s king and queen grew many other products as well and the supply was limited. Slate could obtain sunflower seeds at much less inconvenience and cost, but it satisfied him to prefer these. It pleased him to sneer at anything that came from aboveground. Refusing any seeds but those grown by Hades of the Underworld allowed him to indulge his habit without compromising his hatred of Gobs, all those who lived aboveground.

Of the Gobs, he reserved his fiercest hatred for his own people -- well, no, not his own people. His own people eschewed the gaudy, dangerous sun and stayed where they belonged, bending their backs in good, honest labor, rejecting the seductive, treacherous, female Green World.

Yet even the strongest people occasionally breed dangerous weaklings, and so the ancient race of proud and independent Dvorgs had unaccountably produced an aberration, a young Dvorg who deliberately went up into the Green World, adapted to the sun and, worst of all, became ensnared by the first woman, by name Pandora. Jasper had been that Dvorg’s name, and thus Jasper split the Dvorgs in two, just as Slate now cleaved the granite. The Dwarves were born, master stonemasons, smiths and gem cutters like the Dvorgs, but with deformed sensibilities and loyalty and distorted by curiosity. They moved up out of the mountain roots and ancient chambers below the straydles, the Dvorg nurseries, and occasionally mentored young women.

Women! Women were tuls, worthless debris.

“Pagh!” Slate spit a small dark clot of splintered sunflower seed shell viciously and accurately at a dark vein running through the granite’s face like a petrified cobweb.

The worst of it was that in the time since Pandora not one Dvorg possessed the flint, the grit, the backbone to do anything about this intolerable deviance, although Slate knew many conservative Dvorgs understood the dangerous aberration for what it was.

Now that had changed. Slate, from the years of his youthful apprenticeship, had known he had a destiny, a destiny perfectly suited to a true Dvorg, a creature as elemental, reliable and unchanging as stone itself. Stone, after all, was the master, the king, the godhead. Stone endured beyond anything else, and Dvorgs were the stone. A Dvorg with tools in his hand and stone and minerals to work was the most powerful being alive. Stone needed nothing, but Webbd’s foundations needed stone, and those who mastered the stone were Webbd’s rightful masters.

As masters, the Dvorgs had a right to maintain control over all the stone, minerals, gems and building material alike.

The ancient race of Dvorgs, in addition to their mastery over stone, metal and gem, had created the kingly game of marbles. Slate had learned to play as an adolescent in his straydle, and before he left the nursery to go into apprenticeship, he’d won every marble he coveted from his peers and caregivers. Many Dvorgs enjoyed a skillful and relaxing marble game, but for Slate the game represented a means to satisfy his lust and pride in collecting the marbles themselves. Shaped and polished from mineral, stone and crystal, he chose only the best, the most highly polished, the rarest and most valuable.

He guarded his collection jealously and kept a separate stash of inferior marbles for playing, though he rarely lost. During the years he had developed a reputation of being one of the most ruthless players in Dvorgdom. Occasionally a bold Dvorg challenged him to a game and insisted he play with one of his treasures rather than a common marble. Slate accepted such challenges with scornful contempt, secure in his skill and his right to guard and preserve the most beautiful and valuable marbles on Webbd. He was the chosen leader of his people, and the burden of protecting Dvorgdom from outside pollution and interference included maintaining control of the rich cultural history and artifacts of the Dvorgs. His collection was legendary, and Dvorgs played with him just for a chance to glimpse and possibly handle his famous and fabulous acquisitions.

As far as Slate was concerned, one of the greatest evils perpetrated by the Dwarves was their willingness to shape and create jewelry, metal and marbles and sell or trade such objects to and with Gobs, thus undermining and depriving the Dvorgs of their rightful wealth and power. No amount of money adequately recompensed Dvorg craftsmanship and skill, and Slate looked upon the Dwarves as little better than thieves who stole from their own people.

Slate felt no confusion about his role or where he belonged, and because of this he saw more than his brethren. Only he could understand the full betrayal of the traitor Dwarves.

His had been a dual apprenticeship. He had been a diligent student, working with not one but two of the greatest Dvorg stonemasons in his youth, fashioning his own tools, in keeping with the tradition, and spending years learning the structure, strength and capabilities of stone and mineral. In common with many Dvorgs, he categorically refused to travel aboveground, but he quarried, cut and dressed stone and built foundations for towers, castles, walls, wells, bridges, and cities.

At the same time, he made himself a tool in service to the stone. In every team at every building site, he learned to recognize the Dvorg most susceptible to fear. Some Dvorgs were gneiss and others were limestone, and limestone and shale required only the lightest tap in just the right place to yield to shaping. Working side by side with a Dvorg suited to his purpose, it took only a murmured, “At the last site they said Dwarves are taking away our tools,” to begin rumor and sometimes even fighting, if the site proved particularly receptive. Slate kept his head down and slipped away so quickly often the Dvorg he’d murmured to never even saw his face.

Another favorite tactic at mixed sites where Dwarves worked aboveground and Dvorgs below involved misplacing tools. A true Dvorg carried his own tools, made during apprenticeship and never shared or used by another. Dwarves crafted with wood as well as stone, however, and wood, weak-fibred and in every way inferior to good honest stone and metal, required special tools, soft things even a Dvorg child would scorn. Exchanging a Dvorg’s chisel for a Dwarve’s lighter wood chisel had the potential to lead to outright violence, especially when fueled by a rumor that the Dwarve involved believed wood and stone superior to plain stone.

In addition to fracturing Dwarve from Dvorg, Slate chipped away at the ridiculous old spiritual traditions of his people. The Dvorgs, for the most part, put their faith and trust in nothing but themselves and the stone, and Slate strengthened this inclination with his two rallying cries: “Only the stone!” and “Stone above all!”

Unfortunately, sometime in the distant past, superstition infected the Dvorgs with belief in a divine creator, a keeper and shaper of stone. Her name was Pele, and she was a tul.

Slate didn’t understand how Dvorgs could be so gullible. Everyone knew the mighty race of Dvorgs had no need of tuls. This fact made them superior in power to any other people. Their strength must remain undiluted by the dangerous softness and seduction of tuls. It followed, therefore, that Pele was nothing but a ridiculous story, and honoring her a waste of time and effort. Worse, tradition dictated the finest crystals and gems were offered to her, offerings invariably carried away by fire salamanders, or sals, Pele’s familiars.

No tul could possibly be stone’s creator; clearly the true keepers and shapers were the Dvorgs themselves. Slate felt certain the sals maintained a secret cavern filled with treasure, the result of generations of foolish Dvorgs making offerings to an imaginary tul.

With a raised eyebrow, a shrug, a refusal to participate in the simple fire ritual of making offerings, Slate undermined false belief in Pele. He encouraged younger Dvorgs in rebellion, slyly mocking elder Dvorgs for wasting their time and most valuable treasure. He threw pebbles and chips at sals, with whom the Dvorgs had always lived peaceably. He emphasized the uselessness and weakness of tuls, shaking his head sorrowfully over the delusion that any tul deserved respect, honor or offerings.

In this way, as Slate moved from site to quarry and back again and the decades passed, he patiently shaped his people with a tap here, a word there, a mocking expression, readying them for a final revolution in which they would cleanse themselves of the deviant Dwarves and weak superstition and rise again into strength and legend, grow rich and fat by their skill, wield the power they deserved. Stone would endure and once again take its rightful place as king. Stone above all! Only the stone!

He placed his chisel and gave it an almighty blow with his mallet. The granite split along a rough plane and Slate grunted with satisfaction. That was the way to proceed! Find the plane, insert a wedge and apply force. Working the rock took time and experience, but stone was patient beyond all else.

Slate wasn’t a scholar, but the Dvorgs, like other races, preserved their legend, lore and skill in language. The name and location of Jasper’s birth, the one who began the poisoning of the master race, was well known. It was called Alder Straydle.

The Dvorgs reproduced without tuls. Dvorg babies were born in stone and earth nurseries. The nurseries, called straydles, formed under certain trees with huge root systems. Slate had been told the trees above the straydles were tall -- taller than the highest cavern underground -- and old. He’d never been aboveground and had only the haziest idea of what a tree looked like.

Every straydle grew between six and eight new Dvorgs each year. Slate didn’t know how many straydles existed. Many, he supposed. He’d only ever seen the one in which he himself had been born. Babies began as nodes. If all went well, the node slowly enlarged and matured over eleven months, finally bursting and releasing a Dvorg infant, which was cared for by adolescent Dvorgs in a dormitory-like nursery until old enough to become an apprentice and learn his craft. Each generation cared for the next, as the tree roots bore only every three years and Dvorgs became adolescent by age three.

Slate had an idea something was wrong in Jasper’s birth straydle; some subtle weakness or fatal taint began producing the unnatural Dwarves.

Thus far, Slate had taken no Dvorg into his confidence. He was a slow, heavy thinker, accustomed to rely on no one but himself and with little interest in anyone else. It was the rock he loved, the dim tunnels, the weighty reality of stone and tool, the demanding skill of building. Soon he would need to come out of the shadows and take advantage of the unrest he’d nurtured for so long. It would be necessary to rally and organize. To do so he needed a focal point, something bigger than a personal dispute or rumor, some tangible threat affecting every Dvorg. He’d counted on Alder Straydle to provide that unifying motivation, and it had.

Alder Straydle lay two days’ walk away from his home caverns, mines and quarries. He had stumped through miles of underground tunnels, carefully extracting handfuls of sunflower seeds from their shells with his tongue and spitting out the resultant splinters, raking through his slow, stubborn thoughts as though stirring sullen coals. He would examine Alder Straydle’s matrix until it gave up its secrets and pointed him in some direction.

Legend said Alder Straydle was one of the oldest straydles in the Dvorg kingdom. It was also one of the most famous, not only because of its ancient status but as Jasper’s birthplace. Consequently, the generation of caregivers currently in charge of the straydle was well used to visitors and not particularly interested in Slate. They gave him a bed apart from the children and their youthful guardians (thankfully) and left him to his own devices.

After a hearty meal and a good night’s sleep, Slate began his inspection.

He had only vague memories of his own birthplace, Ironwood Straydle. He loathed children and had found the whole responsibility of caring for young Dvorgs repulsive. After his release from Ironwood Straydle, he went into apprenticeship with a stone master and never ventured near a straydle again -- until now.

Alder Straydle looked much as he remembered his own. A round entrance, Dvorg sized, admitted him to an enclosed cup of interlacing bare tree roots. Above and below the cup earth encased the roots. The roots gnarled and knitted together, some as thick as his leg and others the diameter of his strong, broad fingers. It reminded him vaguely of mineral veins running through granite or marble.

Alder Straydle had been nourishing six young Dvorgs, just past node stage. Slate judged they were perhaps two months along, which accounted for the caregivers’ youth. By the time these nodes burst, the children would be adolescent and prepared for the responsibility of caring for the next generation.

The first day Slate had examined the straydle minutely, staying away from the swelling nodes where the baby Dvorgs gestated. They made him uncomfortable.

As far as he could see, there was nothing unusual about the straydle. It felt cool and dim, a sheltered earthen womb nourished by interlacing roots.

Dvorg eyes were well-adapted to the dark, but on the second day Slate took a small miner’s lantern into the straydle. By its light, he noticed for the first time a fine whitish filament of hair-like threads forming the same intricate pattern as the roots, but on a much smaller scale. The closer he moved to the nodes, the thicker the mat of threads became. Holding the lantern in one hand and examining these white threads minutely, he saw each brown node was supported from underneath the root bearing it with a dense thatch of hairs like a thin hammock. As he moved away from the nodes the mat thinned, becoming a loose network of fragile hairs he could easily break with a fingertip.

Slate backed out of the straydle, lantern in hand. He sat down against a rock wall and chewed thoughtfully on a handful of sunflower seeds.

He couldn’t remember ever hearing anyone talk about fine white fibers in the straydles. Were they in every straydle, or unique to Alder Straydle? Of course, Dvorgs who became Dwarves were not only from Alder Straydle. The contagion, whatever it was, had spread. But was this the original source? He must find out.

From then on, every time he came in contact with a Dwarve (which was sadly often) he questioned him casually about his birth straydle. Laboriously, he compiled a grubby, creased list, and as chance took him here and there on his increasingly skilled work, he visited every straydle on the list.

In every straydle he found the tell-tale polluting white threads.

It was the evidence he’d waited for, the spark he’d needed. Here was proof positive that the dreadful deformity of the Dwarves threatened the mighty race of Dvorgs. Unless he, Slate, took decisive action, the Dvorgs faced eventual extinction.

The Dvorgs had only the loosest government. An elder Dvorg took responsibility for each straydle, and these elders informally met and exchanged information. Slate didn’t know how big the group of elders was, how often or where they met, or the purpose of their meetings. He’d heard rumors they collaborated with Dwarves and occasionally Gobs. For the most part, the master craftsdvorgs governed themselves and their students. Dvorgs did not naturally cooperate, being fiercely independent. They could and would form working teams, but each Dvorg remained his own master and few cared to negotiate, cooperate or communicate outside the necessity of work.

Therefore, Slate saw no reason to change his methods, and determined he’d recruit supporters of the cause one Dvorg at a time as he went about his business. Everywhere he went, he whispered of the discovery of sinister white threads in the straydles where Dwarves had been born. Thanks largely to his years of effort, the Dvorgs’ natural suspicion and conservatism had gradually become paranoia and a growing sense of fanatical allegiance to their race and the stone. It was not hard to convince them of their duty to destroy the white threads wherever they found them and thus cleanse and purify their race.

As months and then years passed, Slate had listened and watched, hoping for a sign that Dwarves were gradually disappearing. He was disappointed. If anything, the talk indicated straydles lost productivity, affecting the population of true Dvorgs. In spite of this, Slate observed with satisfaction the Dwarves, unnaturally social and cooperative, often conversed with each other about serious or troubling matters. Obnoxious fellowship and joviality diminished, and sometimes Dwarves on work sites appeared nearly as dour as the Dvorgs.

All in all, Slate felt he had reason to hope the Dwarves’ pernicious influence waned. Perhaps they began to see the error of their ways and understand the depth of their betrayal of their race. He felt certain disrupting the white threads had something to do with the Dwarves’ changed demeanor, and so redoubled his efforts to spread the word, traveling as widely as possible himself, standing in every straydle he passed and running his clawed fingers through the fine web of pale threads wherever he found it. He soon discovered the sly threads returned after a time, and gradually the pleasure of raking his hard, callused fingers through the fragile but persistent web of threads became nearly as satisfying as chewing sunflower seeds, winning a marble game or hoarding treasure. He never tired of it.

All we need is time, he thought as he worked. All we need is the stone’s patience. Slowly, an army will grow, like an avalanche, every soldier recruiting two more, until the white threads are killed. Then the Dvorgs will be free and proud and mighty once again, and we shall be here long after the weak Green World and Gobs wither and die.

He set aside his tools and ran his hands lovingly over the square-shaped foundation stone he’d released from the quarry’s granite embrace. It looked perfect, every side level and smooth, with a lovely web of dark lacy mineral decorating the stone. He brushed away the small clot of sharp-edged sunflower seeds he’d spit out at the thought of the unnatural Dwarves and their tuls, gave the stone a final caress and turned his attention to the quarry wall in search of the next one.

PERSEPHONE

The autumn sky held enough light for Persephone to see the tower thrusting up from the cliff like a dark finger.

She felt haggard and old. She’d bundled her thick hair untidily into her hood and she ached with weariness. The effort of arriving, making a light, getting warm and finding a bed seemed impossible, let alone figuring out how to light a fire at the top of the tower and use the mirror. The night was windy, but clear. Perhaps she need not worry about signaling ships tonight. What did another dark night matter?

What did anything matter?

You’re tired, she told herself firmly. You’ve been ill. Tomorrow will be better. Right now, concentrate on getting there.

She trudged on, not looking ahead but at her next step. Gradually soil gave way to slanting slabs of bare rock, ridged and weathered. It looked as though it would be slippery footing in the rain. She moved steadily upward. She could both hear and feel the vibration of the sea as it pounded the rock.

The tower loomed above her. The heavy door was of thick wood. Persephone slid back a weighty bolt and pulled.

She first noticed the quiet. It reminded her of the Underworld, which was comforting and painful at the same time. A step took her from the wind and sea’s tumult into the relief of shelter. She set down her bundles, threw back her hood and looked around.

She found herself in a circular stone-walled room, about twenty-five feet in diameter. A large black stove squatted against the curving wall before her, the chimney pipe going up through the ceiling. Steps hugged the wall to her left, climbing and curving out of sight. To her right she saw a kitchen with a sink, work surface and cupboards and a scrubbed table with four chairs around it. A lantern sat on the table. Persephone lit the lantern and then, as the room revealed itself to be both tidy and friendly, she shut and barred the door, leaving the mutable night outside.

She stood at the kitchen sink, having coaxed the pump to produce water to fill a kettle, when the darkness outside suddenly became illuminated. She dropped the kettle with a clang that disturbed the peaceful stone silence of the lighthouse and her feeling of safety fled. The light shone warm and steady, not flickering as a candle flame or fire might, but shining bravely like a good lamp. It illuminated a few yards of bare rock that fell abruptly away into the dark, restless sea. The lighthouse tower was lit, but how?

She heard a fumbling and then a sharp, annoyed-sounding knock at the door. Persephone felt ashamed to find her hands trembling and her heart hammering. What was she afraid of? It wasn’t like her to fear anything. But before you didn’t know how cruel the world could be, she told herself. Now you know terrible things can happen, suddenly, like a snake striking from a bed of flowers, and nothing is ever the same. Still, the knock made her feel better, roused her own annoyance. Hades wouldn’t knock like that. He would pound and shout and kick. Not that she thought he knew where she was or would come after her. Persephone grimaced, wiped her hands on a rough towel hanging over the sink’s edge, and approached the door.

“Who is it?” she asked cautiously and -- she hoped -- assertively.

“Who’re you?” a woman’s voice snapped, sounding thoroughly put out. “This place is supposed to be empty! Unbar the door!”

Persephone opened the door, both amused and nettled.

The ugliest woman Persephone had ever seen stood on the threshold, scowling blackly. Persephone looked at her blankly. Was she the ugliest woman she’d ever seen? Surely she’d seen another like this, with puckered flabby skin, mismatched eyes, a gargoyle nose…

“It’s not…Rapunzel?” she asked tentatively.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Rapunzel, and pushed by her.

Persephone, annoyed, banged the door shut again, bolting it. When she turned back to Rapunzel, she was taking in the tower as she herself had done a few minutes before.

“Take off that hideous face at once!” Persephone said. “I can’t talk to you like that! Did you make the light?”

Rapunzel looked her in the eye, her short cap of blond hair disheveled and windswept. “Yes. I couldn’t see where I was going on the damned rock. Anyway, a lighthouse should be lit, no?”

“Yes,” said Persephone briefly, and turned away. “You can stay for the night, but I’m taking over the lighthouse for a time, and I don’t want company.” She picked up the kettle, refilled it and clapped on the lid.

“Oh, no,” said Rapunzel calmly. “Actually, I’ve been sent to take over this lighthouse. I’m not leaving. I’m supposed to be here, and here I’ll stay. How are you going to heat that?”

Persephone turned to face her.

“I want to be alone!”

“So do I!”

They glared at each other. Persephone felt unwelcome tears thicken her throat and looked away hastily.

Rapunzel’s face softened. She gestured at the stove with a word of command and it glowed as though it had burned for hours. Rapunzel took the kettle from Persephone’s hands and put it on the stove. She took off a heavy garment made of some kind of grey skin, ran her hands through her short hair in a familiar gesture making it stand up rather than smooth down, and dropped the coat onto bundles she’d set on the floor by the door.

Ignoring Persephone, Rapunzel opened kitchen cupboards and rummaged on shelves, exploring. She found mismatched pottery and chose two mugs. Utensils jumbled together in a pewter snarl in a basket. She found a tin of tea and a jar of coffee, which she sniffed, considered, and then replaced decisively, shaking her head. “Too late for coffee,” she said to herself. “I want tea.”

“Hah! What’s this?” From a cupboard, she pulled out a bottle, removed the cork and sniffed. “Mead! Yum! Just what we want.”

Persephone’s tears had receded. The kettle bubbled fiercely. She wrapped a towel around her hand, picked up the kettle and brought it to the table. The clean surface was so heavily scarred she wasn’t much worried about damaging it, so she set the kettle down, hooked a chair leg with her foot to pull it out and sat. Rapunzel joined her, setting the bottle down firmly between them, mugs hanging from two curled fingers.

Rapunzel was liberal with both tea and mead and Persephone relaxed slightly as she waited for the tea to steep, though she dreaded being questioned.

“How did you leave them at Rowan Tree?” asked Rapunzel conversationally, her eyes on the surface of her tea.

Persephone relaxed a little more.

“Mother and I left only a few days after you,” she said. “I haven’t …seen any of them since then.”

Rapunzel fixed her with a bright eye. “You haven’t seen any of them,” she repeated. “What have you heard?”

“I heard Mary had twin boys. She named them Dar and Lugh.”

“And?” said Rapunzel.

“And,” said Persephone, feeling too tired to fence, “I heard the Dar and Lugh we knew are gone.”

“They didn’t come through the Underworld?” inquired Rapunzel. “I thought everyone did.”

“No. Many thresholds lie between one thing and another. There’s a boardinghouse on the Northern sea called Janus House. There’s Odin’s Valhalla. Many come through the Underworld, but not all. Some are bound to a cycle that turns like a giant wheel. Lugh and Dar were -- are like that. One cycle ends and another begins. Mary is one of those, too.”

“I see.” Rapunzel took a cautious sip from her steaming cup. “Do the same people turn the wheel forever, or do different people enter the cycle and release others?”

“I’m not sure,” said Persephone. “It’s mysterious and -- so big, you know? I only know a small part of the pattern, and the Underworld plays a small role. I’m not sure anyone, even Hecate or Odin or Baba Yaga, for that matter, know everything. I think Dar has come through the Underworld before. He was someone else, once, not the peddler with his pipe. He asked to become part of something larger than himself, and entered the cycle as Dar, the silver twin.”

“And the baby Dar?” asked Rapunzel.

“Another cycle begins with the twins’ birth,” said Persephone. “Hecate acted as midwife.”

“Wow.”

“Yes.”

The stove pinged comfortably to itself, accommodating its own heat. The mead tasted heavy and smooth in Persephone’s mouth, the tea comforting.

“Rapunzel, why are you here?”

“Ah,” said Rapunzel, distracted from her thoughts. “Well. You remember I went through the portal with the Rusalka and Morfran and Heks?”

“Yes. You wanted to learn how to drum.”

“I did learn. I’ve been there all this time. How long have I been there, by the way? There’s no time in that place.”

“Three years,” said Persephone.

“Goodness. I didn’t think it’d been so long! Anyway, one day Heks turned up. She went somewhere else when she entered the portal, and I hadn’t seen her since we left Rowan Tree. She came to tell me about Dar.”

Rapunzel veiled her eyes and took another sip of tea, face carefully expressionless.

“I’m sorry,” Persephone offered.

“Yes. Thanks.”

Another sip. Rapunzel put the cup down carefully

“Heks talked about something called Yrtym.”

“What?”

“Yrtym. She said it’s threads of matterenergytime connecting all life. You’ve never heard of it?”

“No.”

“Me, neither. She says something’s wrong somewhere in the Yrtym. It’s subtle now, but it will slowly affect everything, since everything is ultimately connected. She told me about this lighthouse. She said the keeper had died and sent me here to take his place, but also to listen and watch the winds, the sea, the weather and the sky and see if I could find out anything. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I agreed.” Rapunzel met her eye directly, finishing with careless bravado, but Persephone recognized her desolation.

“I see,” she said carefully. She drained her cup, stood and took both mugs to the sink. Sitting down again, she said, “The lighthouse keeper came through Hades. His name was Irvin. He was interesting. He was born a merman and, believe it or not, he was a great friend of Radulf’s.”

“No!”

“Yes. He also knew Odin somehow, and Odin granted him the ability to be on land as a human. Irvin had married a human woman and had two children with her, but his wife left him when the children were still young. They’re adolescents now. Anyway, after Odin made it possible for him to live on land, he came here to keep the lighthouse. He was a gentle, creative person. Everything he said sounded like poetry. He liked humans and loved his own people, but he enjoyed his solitude and lived happily here. He called it “the tower.” He felt bad about leaving it without a keeper. Radulf owns a fleet of merchant ships now—“

“Does he?”

“He went into business with Minerva in Griffin Town, and he’s successful. He visited Irvin here, along with Clarissa and Chris, Irvin’s children. He has fond memories of this place.”

Persephone paused. “I needed to get away for a time, and when the soul who was Irvin told me about this place it seemed ideal – exactly what I wanted. I made up my mind to come and mind the light and…take a break.”

“Have you gone upstairs?” asked Rapunzel abruptly.

“No, not yet.”

“Let’s go see!” She picked up the lamp.

The stone steps were irregular but smooth and easy to climb. They spiraled up the curved wall. The floor above was a bedroom, smaller than the living area on the first floor because of the lighthouse’s tapering shape. There were windows on three sides, one looking across the water, one looking inland and one looking along the cliffs and overlooking the front door. “Morning sun, evening sun and southern exposure,” said Rapunzel. “Very nice. This is yours.” Another lamp stood on a bedside table. Persephone lit it carefully while Rapunzel ascended the steps to the next level.

Persephone looked out a window at the restless night sea. A desk sat under the window looking along the cliffs, stacked with books and papers. She set the lamp on the desk and sat down, curious.

A few minutes later she heard Rapunzel coming back down the stairs. “Irvin must have slept here,” she said without looking up. “He read. Look at these books! And he wrote, too. I wonder if anyone wants these things. Maybe we should get in touch with Radulf? Would he know how to find Irvin’s children?”

“Tomorrow,” said Rapunzel. “We’ll need to figure out how to tend the light and mirrors, too. Do you know how?”

“No idea,” said Persephone.

“Well, how hard can it be? We’ll learn. It’s late now, though, and I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You should, too. Get some sleep. You look as though you need it.”

It wasn’t until Persephone had pulled thick curtains across the windows to block the lighthouse light and blown out the lamp that it occurred to her Rapunzel was staying, and she didn’t mind, after all.

CHAPTER 2

MIRMIR

“Flittermousse. Wake up, ssleepyhead!”

Ash, deep in a dream of a dark tide of light-drugged insects swirling around the top of a tall tower at the sea’s edge, opened his eyes. He smelled wood, not stone and saltwater. He nestled, upside down, within Yggdrasil’s body. Mirmir, the Tree of Life’s guardian, was waking him.

He yawned, showing sharp teeth. He’d flown through the previous night to reach Yggdrasil’s shelter before dawn.

He knew Mirmir anxiously awaited the latest news.

“’Flittermouse’ makes me feel like a character in an old fairytale,” he grumbled in his high-pitched voice. “Why can’t you call me Ash, like everyone else?” He made his way to the entrance to his small bedchamber and squeezed out past Mirmir’s large flat head.

“I like the way flittermousse rollss on my tongue,” said Mirmir with a sardonic smile. “What news?”

“I’m not going to talk to you until I’ve eaten my breakfast,” said Ash. He stretched his wings, one at a time and then together, and groomed himself with a few quick licks.

“Verdani hass lit the lampss,” said Mirmir in his sibilant voice. “Be quick! I want to talk.”

Ash, thoroughly awake, flew soundlessly into the night. This late in the year insects were not so plentiful as during the summer, but enough moths, spiders and mosquitoes still congregated around light sources and over water to satisfy his hunger. He made several circles above the Well of Urd, where passing swans occasionally paused to rest and drink, and returned to Mirmir.

“What do you want to hear first?” he asked when he’d arranged himself comfortably, upside down under a limb. Mirmir stretched out along the top of the branch, his head close to the small brown bat. “I’ve visited the lighthouse, Hades, and the underground colonies among the Dvorgs.”

“Sstart after we lasst talked,” said Mirmir. “Where did you go when you left here?”

“I went home to the underground colonies. I can’t live in a heap all the time, but I don’t like to be alone too long, either. There’s nothing like hunting on a long summer’s night with hundreds of your kin around you!”

“Yess, yess,” said Mirmir impatiently, “but what newss?”

“No real news,” said Ash. “There’s just a strange sort of feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Yes. A kind of tension. The Dvorgs aren’t exactly ebullient, as you know, but they seem more dour than usual lately. Also, we notice increasing conflict between the Dvorgs and Dwarves. The colony described loud arguments and shouting matches, even fights. The Dvorgs say the Dwarves are weak and poison the Dvorg’s purity. Dwarves have lost their way and defile the Dvorg’s traditions and pride. The Dwarves say the Dvorgs are rigid and limited; they’ll destroy both races because of their intolerance, arrogance and ignorance of Webbd and its people.”

“The Dvorgss have long ressented the Dwarvess,” said Mirmir.

“Yes, but they’ve tolerated one another and managed to work together,” said Ash. “Now their work is suffering. If they refuse to work together, they can’t build for humans, because the Dvorgs won’t go aboveground, and if they don’t sell or trade their skills, they can’t get food. Or sunflower seeds.”

“Ssunflower sseedss?”

Ash grinned and inflated his furry brown chest. “There’s a Dvorg called Slate, one of the worst hardliners about race purity and all that. He’s addicted to sunflower seeds, but he hates everyone and everything having to do with above ground, so he’ll only buy them from Hades’ and Persephone’s garden. Somehow, he’s convinced himself he isn’t really having anything to do with above ground if he buys from them. He tromps through the tunnels and caverns like this—” Ash fixed his hairy face in a glare and stalked along the branch, swinging his body aggressively. He turned his head to one side, puckered his mouth into an ‘O’, stuck out his pink tongue and made a shrill explosive spitting sound, “Ptoo!”

Mirmir writhed with laughter. “Sss! Sss! Sss!”

“He spits out sunflower seeds wherever he goes, so we know where he’s been by the smell,” said Ash, pleased with Mirmir’s appreciation of his mimicry.

“Slate’s creating bigger problems than friction between the Dwarves and Dvorgs,” Ash continued. “He’s also challenging the Dvorgs’ oldest spiritual practice. He says Pele, Lady of Flames, is nothing but a superstitious lie, and honoring a female (he calls females tuls) is beneath the race of Dvorgs. He insists belief in Pele weakens rather than strengthens them.”

“How have they traditionally honored Pele?” asked Mirmir with interest.

“For time out of mind they’ve offered her their finest gems and crystals, always with a fire ritual, of course. Pele’s fire salamanders appear, take the offerings into the fire’s heart, and disappear. The Dvorgs call them ‘sals’. Slate says it’s nothing but an ancient deceit on the part of the fire salamanders, who collect treasure for their own purposes and without paying for it. Slate’s a great one for extracting payment for everything. He doesn’t believe in giving anything away. He loves to play marbles, but he only plays with the most precious gems and minerals, and he plays to win. In his view, anything made of material from underground belongs, by right, to the Dvorgs.”

“Iss Pele real?” asked Mirmir.

“What’s real?” Ash asked. “The fire salamanders are real. Rock and mines are real. Mineral, stone, gem and fire are real. The Dvorgs call Pele Stone Shaper and some believe the rock they spend their lives working with came from her. I’ve never seen her, but the fire salamanders have, and they say she has great power, power enough to melt rock, build islands and destroy mountains. They say Pele exists without the Dvorgs, but the Dvorgs can’t exist without her. I can’t see the harm in offering such power a few crystals and gems for gratitude’s sake, if nothing else. The Dvorgs possess a never-ending supply, and they’re not poor.”

“Thiss Sslate ssoundss like the tight-fissted ssort,” said Mirmir.

“He is. He stumps around saying ‘Only the stone! The stone above all!’ All in all, he’s causing quite a bit of tension. Dvorgs don’t like change. Most of them aren’t nimble thinkers and they hold fast to resentments and grudges. Slate’s talk enlarges their native distrust of anything outside their mines and caverns and their dislike of anything female.”

“They think they can ssurvive without a balance of male and female?” asked Mirmir, shaking his head back and forth. “They eat, don’t they?”

“That’s exactly what they think,” Ash assured him. “Slate hasn’t a thought for where food comes from, as long as it arrives, and plenty of it, as cheap as possible! He’s never gone aboveground at all. Hasn’t got a clue.”

“Anyway, after I left my colony I visited Hades. The queen, Persephone, expects a child. Lord Hades is all smiles and can hardly wait for her return. She’s spending the summer with Demeter, of course.”

“I knew that already,” said Mirmir, disdainful. “Verdani told me during her sspring sspinning. So far, you’ve said nothing very interesting.”

“Next time let me sleep in, then,” snapped Ash, “and I’ll take my time over breakfast!”

“What about the tower?” inquired Mirmir with pronounced politeness.

“The lightkeeper is dead. You remember his name was Irvin and he was a merman?”

“The poet. I remember.”

“Yes. I like the tower, as you know. The light attracts insects from miles around. Irvin was a good sort, quiet and dreamy. He never missed a night with the light and he had interesting visitors. His daughter visited often him and many of the passing ships knew him. I was fond of him.”

“What happened?”

“He was out on the cliffs one day. I don’t know what he was doing, but he liked to wander up and down the rock ledges and the shore, looking at nothing in particular and scribbling notes or simply sitting, watching the sea and the birds. A freak wave washed ashore and swept him into the water. For some reason, he didn’t change into his merman shape. Maybe he was injured before he had a chance to. Anyway, he drowned.”

“I wonder who will tend the lighthousse now?”

“I don’t know,” said Ash, “but I’ll miss Irvin, and until a new keeper comes that will be a dangerous channel again.”

“Huh,” said Mirmir. “Nothing of much interesst this time.”

“Now it’s your turn. Enchant me with your news, oh Sheherazade!”

Mirmir grimaced. “My newss is worrissome. I hoped you’d distract me from it. Skuld is ill.”

“Ill?” said Ash blankly.

“Ill. As in, she isn’t working. She says she’s too tired. She refuses to cut the thread. She says we’re running out of beginnings and if she continues to cut the thread to make endings one day soon everything will stop. In between saying things like that she moans and groans and sighs about how old she is, how her bones ache and how fearsome it is to be a used-up old woman.”

“How old is she?” asked Ash.

“Old enough to know better!” hissed Mirmir. “The Norns are eternal, ageless, immortal. Like me!” He drew himself up proudly.

“I get them confused,” said Ash. “Skuld is the one who manages what shall happen and cuts the thread, right?”

“Right,” said Mirmir. “And Urd oversseess what hass happened and windss the disstaff, which is Yggdrasil. And Verdani spins what is happening. I’m worried about her, too. She and Urd are doing the best they can to cover all the work, but they can’t do what Skuld does. All three of them are needed.”

“What will happen if Skuld … doesn’t get better?” asked Ash.

“I don’t know,” said Mirmir, sounding wretched. “How can the wheel turn without her? Can she ever be replaced? If this can happen to her, might it happen to Verdani, or Urd?”

Or you? Ash thought to himself, feeling sad for his friend.

“That’ss not the only worry,” said Mirmir. “Something is wrong with Yggdrasil. It’s …shedding.”

Ash looked around. “It looks fine to me.”

“It lookss fine here, but you know thisss tree supports the cossmoss and its rootss go down to the world’ss ccenter?”

“Yes,” Ash nodded.

“Well, I’ve sseen the top, where branches intertwine with the ssky. Small twigs and branches are breaking from there and falling. I can tell where they came from because they’re frosted with star dust.”

“What do the Norns say?”

“I haven’t told them. They’ve enough to worry about with Skuld’s illness.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know,” said Mirmir, “but I’m worried.”

Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay

HADES

Hades rode through the night to Valhalla on his black stallion, his wolf Hope like a gray ghost at his stirrup.

Odin had given him the wolf pup around the same time Persephone had come to him, and he well knew in naming the animal Hope he placed himself at a disadvantage in the eyes of many. Not unlike Odin himself, who had an unfortunate (in the opinion of some) and puerile weakness for marbles, Hades knew himself to be the subject of secret amusement and mockery.

He didn’t care. The green-eyed wolf bitch was Hope from the beginning, and now, in her fierce graceful prime, he couldn’t have renamed her if he’d wanted to -- and he didn’t want to.

The horse under him and the wolf beside him were the only warmth in his life, the only light, the only companionship since Persephone had left.

He felt maimed without her, but he understood why she’d needed to leave. His own grief felt unendurable. Hers added to his became impossible to bear.

Thus, in this harvest season, normally a joyous time of reunion with his queen, he rode alone to take counsel from Odin, one of the few whom Hades truly respected. In the bewilderment and exhaustion of grief he felt unable to come to any decision about what to do. Search for Persephone? Beg her to come home? Wait and hope for her return? Send someone to help her? How could he face his life and work in the Underworld without her? What did a woman need and want after losing a child? Must he set her free now -- forever? She blamed him, he knew, for the child’s death. Was he unable to father a child? Was death his only offspring? Yet children were lost, sometimes. Might they yet have a child -- many children?

Would she ever lie with him again?

Did she still love him?

Dawn found him at Odin’s hall. Hades refused a stable boy’s help, leading the stallion to a stall and seeing to his needs himself. The boy brought a bloody chunk of raw meat from Odin’s slaughterhouse for Hope, which she disposed of outside somewhere before finding Hades in the stall. He gave her water and she drank and settled down in a corner to sleep.

Odin breakfasted at his enormous table in the hall. The sun shone through high windows, making a brassy glare of the golden weapons from which the rafters were made. The one-eyed old man greeted Hades silently with a nod at a place laid ready next to his own carved seat. Valkyries brought smoking meat, fresh bread, honey, cream and mead.

He could eat at this table, where there were no memories of Persephone, and Hades felt grateful for the steadying ballast of food in his belly.

When they had finished, Odin rose, said, “Come,” and left the hall.

They entered a walled garden behind the hall through an iron gate, which Odin closed behind them with a satisfying clang. Hades saw grapes clustered like dark jewels and neat gardens with a final flush of chrysanthemums, sunflowers and daisies. Against one wall stood two comfortable deep-cushioned chairs with a table between them. The wall cupped and reflected the autumn morning sun. Creamy-pink mushrooms clustered at the base of a wooden post. Odin settled himself in one of the chairs with a sigh of pleasure, and for a moment became an aging scarred old man, weary with years and glad to take his ease.

“Death has come into your house,” said Odin when they were settled.

Hades laughed mirthlessly. “My house has long been filled with death.”

“No,” replied Odin. “Yours is the kingdom of death, but for others, not for you. Until now. Now you know the scent of Death’s breath. It’s not something only for others.”

Hades couldn’t speak.

“Your grief is important and true,” said Odin. “It belongs to you and there’s no shame in it. I’ll do what I can to assist you to bear it. But, Lord Hades, there is a whisper, a thread, a growing filament of grief in the cosmos. Something is wrong at Webbd’s core. Some tiny part of life’s scaffold weakens. Do you know Yrtym?”

“Yurtem?”

“Yrtym. It means threads of matterenergytime. It’s the net holding all life. The wind whispers to the stars, and the stars to the sea, and the sea to the stone, of a disturbance in the Yrtym. None can say what’s wrong, but it appears something is wrong, and the wind trembles.”

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Hades. He felt desolate. Not only this sudden rift in his happiness and dreams with Persephone, but some much bigger threat to contend with?

“There’s nothing and everything we can do,” replied Odin. “We must go forward. It’s as simple and difficult as that.”

“What can I do for Persephone?” asked Hades. “How does a woman heal after such a loss? Should I try to find her?”

“I think you must honor her choice to be away from you just now,” said Odin. “If it comforts you, she is not alone and friendless. She doesn’t know it yet, but she, along with the rest of us, has become part of the quest for understanding about what’s gone wrong at the root of things.”

“It does comfort me,” said Hades. “Thank you.”

“Lord Hades, put your faith in your work now. Trust your feelings. Be clear about your power. No one but you can oversee the Underworld. Now, without your queen, you’re doubly burdened, but perhaps not forever. Make a place for your grief at your table, and beside you when you sleep. Don’t try to escape it or deny it. Let it have its way with you. You can’t heal Persephone’s grief, and she can’t heal yours. Allow her to find her own healing while you seek yours. Have patience. Be my ears and eyes in the Underworld and send me word of whispers and rumors. Keep Persephone’s place in your heart and life alive and shining. This is hard counsel, I know, but it’s true counsel.”

“What you say makes sense to my heart,” said Hades. “I want to do what’s best for her.”

Odin raised an eyebrow at him. “What happened to the young arrogant hothead who took whatever he wanted and be damned?”

Hades smiled in spite of himself. “I fell in love and became a man.”

“You’re welcome,” said Odin dryly.

“If only—“

“No one can see the future,” interrupted Odin. “Be still and allow it to unfold.”

Hades fell silent and Odin spoke of the grapes, the harvest, the next Wild Hunt and three topaz marbles he’d recently commissioned from the Dvorgs.

CERUS

Cerus was born in a starry meadow of ebony. It was a slow, agonizing birth and he never knew the faces of his many mothers. They lived far away from the star fields, but they looked, and dreamed, and slowly Cerus emerged, rearing up from nothingness. His ruby eyes gleamed and glowed with bewildered anger. Marble horns sought something eternally out of reach. He strove with adamantine obsidian hooves to pull himself up and out, to stand, perhaps to move, but he could not.

He was not alone. One like those who birthed him stood before him. He had a flat dish of a face and stood on two legs. He held a round shining disc and menaced Cerus with a raised arm.

Behind this figure cringed another, a small creature on four legs, not daring to come too close but yapping hysterically, endlessly, until Cerus thought he would go mad. He longed to crush it beneath his feet, to toss it on his curved horns, to trample it and break it, quieting it forever.

But even as Cerus was trapped, so evidently were these others. Cerus glared. Two-leg threatened and the small one yapped, but none of them could move.

This was his life. Eternal silver light, a bloody haze of rage in his eyes, impotent strength in neck, chest, and hooves. Unseen, somewhere beneath his upper half, were powerful flanks and another pair of legs, and between those legs a center of power, a heavy, turgid, pulsing center he imagined blossomed with undulating color, like the luminescent clouds he could see in the endless darkness. It goaded him. It demanded…something. Yet he couldn’t move.

He could sense movement somewhere. Something moved. Was it he, after all? Or was it something around him?

He couldn’t tell. It further goaded him, not understanding, not seeing. But he thought he discerned movement, agonizingly slow and far away. Points of light and color moved in some kind of complex pattern — didn’t they? He saw another kind of movement, too, a sudden silver flash arcing across the blackness in cold white fire and then disappearing, swallowed up. His body was made of many such white points of light, but they didn’t move. How was it done? What was the secret?

Why must he bear such a life? What was he for?

Then, one day, something was different.

He couldn’t say what. There was no air, and no scent. The silent starry fields hadn’t changed. He could still feel his eyes glimmer and shine. Two-legs threatened, just as he always had done, and the small one yapped and yapped without ceasing.

Slowly, he realized it was his horn.

Something different about his horn.

But he couldn’t tell what.

Frustration boiled within him and he snorted, producing steamy wet vapor. He strained with all his might, as he had for eons, trying to pull himself out of the dark and onto the starry plain.

Suddenly he felt a hot slash of pain. It raked some unseen part of him hidden in darkness. It opened him. He felt agony. He roared in protest, tossed his horns and kicked, a scarlet net of rage running through his cool dark body with its silver outlines. Rage dripped down his flank, hot and corrosive. He bellowed again, kicked, the fabric of darkness tore, and he floated.

He moved away from two legs. Cerus imagined he’d seen an astonished look on his face as he floated away. The sound of the yapping creature disappeared, swallowed by the dark. Now Cerus could hear a slow rustling, infinite voices murmuring, but he only just heard it, like one hears one’s own heartbeat alone in the dark.

He was free. He moved. He bellowed again, this time in jubilation. Some part of his body burned with pain, but he didn’t care. Something was happening at last.

He saw the whole sky for the first time. The enormity of it! The endless depths of it! He moved through colored clouds of shining green, blue and red. He saw milky spirals and hazy silver clouds, stars like eyes so bright he couldn’t look at them. The sky was filled with jewels.

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Cerus began accelerating. Floating became falling. He looked down -- he could bend his neck and look down! -- and saw a perfect round blue and white sphere, growing larger by the minute. He fell into it. It filled his vision. His icy blood boiled. He shut his eyes against the sandpaper friction of the air. He bawled, protesting, thrashing his hooves. He fell through something wet and cold and opened his eyes in surprise. He could see nothing but grey around him. He fell through it helplessly. Then below, far, far below, he saw a moving mass of — something. It stretched on and on, a writhing blue grey carpet, and he fell toward it.

It felt cold, and it burned like fire on the place where he’d been hurt. He opened his mouth to bellow his outrage and choked on some unbreathable substance surrounding him, pushing and pulling, slapping at him. He found nothing beneath him, no fixed point anywhere, and he couldn’t breathe. He kicked, panicked, and thrashed awkwardly with his new-found back end.

Something nudged him. He turned his head and saw a smooth long nose, a friendly-looking dark eye and a smiling face. The creature’s long body had flaps of skin and a tail. It moved under him, supporting his body so his head stayed above the water. Cerus shook his head, coughing and choking, and took a breath. The creature rubbed against him, first one side and then the other, in a comforting sort of way. Cerus’ panic receded slightly. All about him was restless movement, and the wet stuff slapped him over and over again, filling his mouth and stopping his breath. Everything was dim and dark and confusing. He could see no stars, no colored clouds. His body felt heavy and cumbersome.

The strange creature stayed with him, making no noise but frisking alongside or underneath him, pushing and nudging with its long smooth nose. It smiled and smiled, its expression unchanging. Cerus felt colder and colder. The cold sapped his strength until he moved only feebly, twitching his legs and concentrating on keeping his head up so he could breathe.

Then, ahead, he saw something, a tall dark something. The sound changed. He heard a roar and hiss rather than the endless slap, slap he’d been hearing. He realized he could see more clearly. The sky no longer looked black, but grey and silver. The creature with him pushed him toward the roaring and the tall darkness.

Exhausted, numb with cold, bewildered, Cerus was nudged helplessly ahead, until suddenly his feet bumped against something and he realized he could stand, actually stand on all four legs! Still, the stuff around him pushed and pulled at him so he staggered, but in a few steps more of his body emerged from it. The creature skimmed once again along his flank and left him, saluting him with its tail as it dove into a moving wall of what he’d been in. Doggedly, Cerus pulled himself forward until he stood, shivering, on solid rocky ground.

PERSEPHONE

Rapunzel and Persephone fitted themselves into a shared life in the tower in a surprisingly short time. Persephone had promised herself when she reached the tower she would go to bed, pull the covers over her head and stay there for as long as she wanted in peace and privacy, but she forgot about this when Rapunzel came down the stairs the first morning with a cheerful “Good morning! Let’s see about the light, shall we?”

After breakfast, they climbed to the tower’s top and discovered the lightkeeper had used a coal fire and mirrors.

“Messy and complicated,” said Rapunzel. “We can do better than this.”

Witchfire was undoubtedly cleaner and easier, and both women worked with a will, polishing windows and mirrors and scrubbing greasy soot from the stones. Later, Persephone found instructions for manipulating the mirrors and keeping the fire burning on the lightkeeper’s desk, and marveled at the patience and determination such an isolated, lonely and physically taxing job required.

It was a desolate place, and Persephone admitted to herself she felt glad for a companion. She knew harvest was in full swing, but here Fall was harsh, stony and sullen. Fog often swathed the lighthouse, and even on sunny days the tower felt chilly and clammy. The sea beat ceaselessly against the stone cliffs, throwing up freezing spray in huge plumes during stormy weather.

On tranquil days, it was possible to make one’s way down to the sea, but the path became dangerous when the rocks were wet and the waves greedy.

Rapunzel was fearless and exulted fiercely in wild weather, undaunted by slashing rain and wind and the sea’s roaring. But Persephone was made for milder climes. She’d not seen a winter in the Green World since she became Hades’ queen, and this place lay far from the abundant fields and forests where she’d grown up.

She’d imagined relaxing into solitude and grief at the tower, but she found grief is not a soothing companion. When the sun shone, even fitfully, she wrapped herself warmly and went out, walking inland and exploring the harsh seacoast.

The place had an austere beauty. No trees grew here, only scrubby, tough plants where enough soil collected to support them. During the years, wind and weather had exposed and carved the rock, and she discovered a landscape of fissure and plane, layer and chip and crack, sand and stone and shell.

The honesty of stone comforted her. It could be shaped into walls, stairs and shingles. It could be worn away by water, wind and weather. But it didn’t pretend to be something else. If she moved carelessly and stubbed a toe, or bruised her flesh, or lost her footing and tore a nail against the unyielding stone, nothing softened the hurt. She meant nothing to the stone, as she meant nothing to the sea. They didn’t need her. She made no impression on them.

The tower’s stone, polished by the wind’s grey wings and the iron salt sea, had faces.

In her bedroom wall, a block of stone with a slightly protruding rounded side showed crystals the color of wine. The protrusion wasn’t polished, exactly, but it looked deliberately exposed, as though the stonemason subtly underlined it. It made Persephone think of the Underworld with unexpected painful longing, and she wondered for the first time who had built the stone tower.

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In other places the stone blocks making up the walls appeared to have been deliberately split in such a way that a lacy veining of white showed, or a fossil of some graceful water plant, or a cluster of spiral shells.

In the cliffs, too, she found plant, shell and even fish fossils. Metallic veins gleamed, even under grey skies, like frozen silver and gold lightning.

When she mentioned her growing fascination, Rapunzel showed her a stone in her own bedroom with a ghostly imprint of a bird’s wing, and another over the bed of a carved face. Persephone told Rapunzel what she knew about the Dvorgs and Dwarves. Rapunzel had known a Dwarve, Rumpelstiltskin by name, and one story led to another. The two women developed a habit of sitting before the stove after their evening meal telling stories, as they’d done at Rowan Tree.

As they shared memories of the Rowan Tree community and pieces of their lives with each other, Persephone dropped her guard slightly, but the loss of her child still stood between them like a cold wall. Persephone didn’t speak of Hades and her time as Queen of the Underworld, but of her childhood, the barn and horses, and the halcyon, innocent years with her mother, Demeter.

RAPUNZEL

Rapunzel filled her days with the weather, the sea, the wind and the light at the tower’s top. The light itself required little effort, except creating it at dusk or in case of poor visibility and extinguishing it at dawn. It burned clear and bright, once they scrubbed away grease and soot from burning coal. Adjusting the mirrors needed some skill, but she soon learned the hang of it, and the safe passage of occasional passing ships rewarded her.

Rapunzel felt at home in her tower and cherished her high room with its cushioned window seat, a perch from which to watch the ever-changing sky and sea. She often thought of Heks, Cassandra and the others she’d known at Rowan Tree. She wondered sometimes what would come next; where she would go and what she would do, but for now felt content to be still and keep the light burning. She’d been locked in a tower before, and found the key to freedom. Now she knew she couldn’t be trapped forever. She watched Persephone without appearing to, hoping with time Persephone would speak of whatever had hurt her and begin healing.

She turned away from thoughts of Dar. She’d been momentarily attracted, but chosen not to act on it. That was all. A good thing, too, as it turned out. No point in getting attached to a man who was about to die. Much better to remain free and independent. If Heks was right, and Dar, Lugh and Mary were tied to a greater cycle, their lives were bigger than any momentary attraction or passion. She felt impotent before that kind of power, and Rapunzel didn’t like to be impotent. She liked to be in control.

Though she held herself open, Rapunzel could find no whisper of anything wrong in the natural world. Heks’ talk of Yrtym made intuitive sense to her; naturally life would be connected by some kind of underlying pattern and intelligence. She wondered, though, why her mother had not shared knowledge of this hidden web and its name. Perhaps she’d not known.

In fact, the only voice Rapunzel really heard was the tower itself, or more specifically, the stone from which it was made. As Persephone told her about the Dvorgs and Dwarves, Rapunzel suspected they built the lighthouse. Only true masters and artists, deeply connected to stone, could create such natural beauty. Love and pride were evident in every block, and she and Persephone constantly discovered new wonder in the stone faces.

One misty day during which Rapunzel left the light burning to warn ships, she tackled the rough, wide-planked floor with a wet broom and discovered a trapdoor in the shadows under the stone steps winding up the tower. She set the broom aside and called Persephone.

A keyhole lay in the middle of an iron ring nestled flush with the floor’s surface. Rapunzel extracted the jeweled key Baba Yaga had given her from a tiny pocket she’d sewn inside her tunic. She had no doubt it would fit the keyhole, and it did. Persephone arrived as she pulled up the iron ring, and the heavy door rose soundlessly. Rapunzel noted a smooth, worn place on the stone wall where the heavy slab could be safely left propped open at a wide angle, to avoid it accidentally falling. Stone steps, like those in the rest of the tower, descended into darkness filled with the sea’s smell and sound.

Persephone took the lantern from its place on the kitchen table, lit it, and the two women descended cautiously into a stone cellar.

The builders had combined massive stones with the cliffs themselves to create a perfectly level and immensely strong foundation. In the floor they found a roughly round opening like the mouth of a well, about six feet across. Persephone held the lantern above the opening. They could see water, not still and stagnant, but living water moving and gleaming in the lantern light several feet below the lip.

“It’s the sea,” said Persephone. “There must be a passage through the cliff. Look, there are steps down there.”

There were. Steps exactly like those in the lighthouse curved up along the sides of the opening from below water level.

“Do you think it’s a portal?” Rapunzel asked.

“I don’t know. It looks as though it might be. I don’t much feel like testing it out.”

“No. Me, neither.”

Persephone raised the lantern and turned slowly, examining the rough walls. Down here, no effort had been made to build a smooth circular shape. The natural cliffs and quarried stones were expertly fitted, providing a level foundation of no particular shape. Niches and protrusions threw strange shadows. The sea roared and surged against the cliffs outside.

“What’s that?” The lantern light had picked out a silvery gleam on a wall. They walked toward it, giving the pool a wide and careful berth.

The end of a stone block, four feet high and wide, protruded from the cliff, making a ledge. On this lay large, bowl-like shells piled with pearls, coral, small stones and shells, and white fragments and pieces of material Rapunzel recognized as bones when she fingered them. A mortar and pestle lay near a pile of grit or sand, and a burned, blackened spot on the rock, as though someone had lit a small fire. Wood scraps and fabric lay about, along with a small knife.

On the nearby wall they found a mural. A boat with sails of coarse linen sailed on silvery waves, curved like the birds above. Under the boat and below the waves were the flowing, organic shapes of plants, pearl and silver dolphins with shining black eyes, merfolk with tails sparkling with jewels. A pack of what looked like dogs raced along the wave tops as though escorting the sailing ship.

“Who made this?” Rapunzel asked in wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Was Irvin an artist?”

“He loved stories and words, but he didn’t talk about anything like this,” said Persephone. “Look, it’s made with some kind of cement, like the Dvorgs use. It reminds me of their work, but I’ve never seen them use pearls and coral. They have no access to such material.”

“Maybe a Dwarve?”

Persephone shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Look.” Rapunzel picked up a bundle of neatly folded linen towels and robes from another ledge. “And here are lanterns and candles.”

“What does it mean?” Persephone asked.

“It means someone uses this place, probably someone from the sea. Maybe someone connected to Irvin.”

“Do you think whoever it is has come since we’ve been here?”

“Who knows? We haven’t been here long. I don’t much like the idea, but I can’t believe anyone evil did this kind of work. There’s no bolt or lock on the trapdoor, so Irvin obviously had no fear.”

“Maybe he didn’t know about this. It’s easy to miss the trapdoor.”

“Maybe he didn’t. But someone knows about it, obviously,” said Rapunzel. She wondered if Heks had known, if the well-like pool and whoever used it was part of why she’d been sent to the lighthouse.

“What should we do?” Persephone asked.

“Nothing. Wait and see.” She laid the bundle where she’d found it and they climbed the stairs. Rapunzel lowered the trapdoor and stood, looking thoughtfully down at it, while Persephone blew out the lantern and returned it to the table.

“Let’s put a stone on it for now,” she said. “At least that will make a noise and warn us if someone tries to lift the door. Brrr. It’s a raw day What would you say to a bowl of soup?”

Persephone felt too restless to sustain much attention, but Rapunzel was interested in the previous light keeper, and she sat at the desk in Persephone’s room sorting through Irvin’s papers and books while Persephone rambled up and down the coastline.

The man had indeed been a poet. She found several pieces of poetry, as well as bits of stories, myths and legends. Books stood in a row along the back of the desk. She paged through heavy volumes of poetry with dim, worn covers; old novels; slim, calf-bound plays; myths and legends and stories from cultures she’d never heard of. Someone had carefully lined up a row of shells, a dried starfish and a coral lump on one side of the surface.

It occurred to her, as she explored, it would be useful to take notes of her time in the lighthouse. Heks had clearly expected her to gather information, though she couldn’t imagine what useful information would reach her in such an isolated spot. So far, she’d done little but tend the light, housework, and interact with Persephone, who knew less than she did about the Yrtym. Still, a record might be useful.

Rapunzel gradually worked her way through Irvin’s papers, sometimes reading bits aloud to Persephone during their evening time in front of the stove, but carefully preserving everything in case someone came one day to claim it. She felt certain someone who’d loved the lighthouse keeper would want this eloquent evidence of what had occupied his attention and affection in his solitude.

The flat stone on the trapdoor remained undisturbed.

Persephone remembered Irvin talking about his children, but recalled no names, and knew of no way to reach them. Irvin had left a few well-worn clothes as well as his books and papers, but nothing else. Rapunzel suggested they contact Radulf, but Persephone had shaken her head and turned away, so clearly unwilling that Rapunzel didn’t suggest it again.

Rapunzel often lingered at the top of the lighthouse after lighting the signal and adjusting the mirrors, watching the day fade into darkness. The breeze frequently blew at the threshold of land and sea, occasionally still holding a fugitive warmth. On one such evening a small dark shadow darted among the swirling insects drawn by the lit tower.

She was familiar with bats, and had made a friend of one in the days during which she lived in the tower of her childhood. Rapunzel had freed herself from that tower, ending at the same time her first love affair.

A small colony of brown bats had taken up residence in the top of that other stone tower, and Rapunzel, bored, lonely, and resentful, had learned their ways and formed a friendship with one in particular named Ash. She hadn’t thought of him since she’d left the tower of her maidenhood, but now she exclaimed with delight as she watched this bat dart and swoop, impossibly swift and graceful and utterly silent. She groped in her memory for the right words and spoke to it.

“Welcome, Insect Eater.”

To her surprise, the creature darted toward her and came to rest against her cloak, clinging with its clawed feet. It peered up at her with its small wrinkled face.

“Rapunzel?”

“Ash?”

“What happened to your hair?”

“I cut it off. That’s how I escaped the tower. I had the key all along.”

“I woke one night and you were gone.”

“I know. It happened suddenly. What are you doing here?”

“I know this place. I liked the old light keeper. I’ve been waiting to see who would come and tend the lighthouse now. I never thought it would be you!”

“When you’re finished hunting, come talk with me. See that window?” Rapunzel pointed at a lighted window two levels below the platform. “That’s my room. I’ll leave it ajar.”

They talked all night, she and the little brown bat, filling in the years since she’d so abruptly fled her prison tower. An entertaining storyteller, Ash described the Norns, Mirmir and Yggdrasil in rich detail, as well as telling Rapunzel something about the history of the Dvorgs and Dwarves and Slate’s divisive behavior.

She, in her turn, described her reunion with her mother, the meeting with Baba Yaga resulting in her ugliest-woman-in-the-world aspect, which delighted Ash, and something about her travels and the friends she’d made, culminating in Rowan Tree’s founding. Ash was such a sympathetic and interested listener she even told him something about Dar, her choice to go to the Rusalka and learn to drum, Heks’s appearance and request that she come to the lighthouse, and Persephone’s unexpected presence.

“Has the child been born?” Ash asked.

“What child?”

“Persephone’s child, of course!”

Rapunzel looked at him, bewildered.

“There’s no child? She’s not pregnant?”

“No,” said Rapunzel. “So that’s the trouble! I knew something must be wrong, but I didn’t know what it was.”

“She hasn’t said anything?”

“No, not a word. And we mustn’t let on. When and if she’s ready to talk about it, she will.”

Ash slipped out at dawn while the lighthouse light still burned and hunted before roosting for the day.

The next evening, Rapunzel introduced Persephone and Ash. Persephone was familiar with bats, as they were naturally present in Hades. She was polite, but clearly not much interested in Rapunzel’s old friend. After a brief exchange, she left them.

“She’s usually friendlier,” Rapunzel said when she’d gone.

“I’ve seen her before,” said Ash, “but not to speak to. She’s changed, hasn’t she?”

“She has. I’m worried about her.”

“If she’s here with you, it must be where she needs to be.”

Rapunzel sighed. “I’m not sure if I’m any help at all, to be honest. Never mind. I want to show you something. Will you come inside with me?”

They left the top of the lighthouse, Ash clinging to Rapunzel’s tunic, and descended the winding stairs to the main level.

“I found this while I was cleaning the floor,” said Rapunzel, stooping to pull the iron ring attached to the trapdoor. She carefully propped the door against the wall and entered the cellar. While Ash flitted here and there, exploring, she lit the lanterns and candles, as well as sending balls of her own blue witchlight into corners and crevices.

Ash came to rest on the shelf of bowls and other material and they examined the artwork on the rock wall together.

“Who did this?” he asked.

“I have no idea. I hoped you could tell me,” she replied.

“It might have been Irvin,” he said, sounding doubtful.

“It might have been, but I think Irvin worked with words. This strikes me as someone else’s work.”

“Interesting,” said Ash. “You say what’s-er’-name -- Heks? -- asked you to come here and gather information?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure how. Persephone’s the only person I see or talk to. I watch the weather, the sea, and the night sky. I see a lot of birds, but none to talk to. This is an isolated spot.”

“This place reminds me a bit of Yggdrasil.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Yggdrasil is tall beyond telling. I’m not sure anyone but Mirmir has ever seen the top, but I’ve been way up in it with Mirry, so high the air is thin and cold. They say the top branches are interwoven with the stars. Then the roots go way, way down, to Webbd’s center, they say, and drink from the Well of Urd, which is bottomless. It connects everything. There’s even a portal in the tree roots.”

“Persephone and I wondered if the well, or pool, or whatever it is there in the floor is a portal, but we didn’t much want to try it.”

“Here you’ve a tall tower in a place where sea meets rock. The lighthouse is a kind of connector too, like Yggdrasil. Do you see the cleft up there, near the ceiling in the corner?” He pointed with a wing, and Rapunzel sent a witchlight to the place he indicated.

“Yes, right there. From here it looks like a shadow, but it’s actually a hole. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a passage into Dvorgdom. Shall I go exploring?”

“Do you think it’s safe?”

Ash chuckled. “I think a cleft in a rock wall underground is perfectly safe -- for a little brown bat! I’ll be back!”

He darted up to the place and disappeared.

CHAPTER 3

PERSEPHONE

Persephone went out one morning after a night of wind and rain. She’d laid awake, listening to the waves beat the rocks, watching the light through a crack in her curtains. For the first time, she wondered what Baubo had done with the child. Was there a grave somewhere? Did Hades know about it? Had he perhaps gone there to lay autumn flowers on the raw earth? It seemed terrible she hadn’t thought about this before. It was unnatural, wicked. What kind of a mother forgot to ask about her child’s grave? Did the rain beat on the little grave, turning earth to mud? Was the child alone in the dark, cold, cast adrift in some Land of the Dead, while she lay safe and warm, alive in her bed?

She rose and went out at dawn without bite or sup, leaving her hair in its disordered nighttime braid and throwing on whatever clothes came to hand. Her burning eyes felt gritty and her head throbbed dully.

The air off the sea felt like a cold slap in the face, but the wind was dropping. The rock underfoot was slippery and treacherous. Dim dawn light under an iron sky showed grey waves veined with dirty foam. Persephone walked along the cliff path, dropping down and away from the tower and then climbing slightly again. She heard a sudden clatter of rock and a loud snort from the cliff below. Cautiously, she stepped to the edge and looked down.

A large white animal labored up the rocks. Horns gleamed dully in the light, the color of cream. One was broken at the tip. The creature gasped and snorted, powerful flanks and chest heaving and straining, black hooves slipping and pawing. It was soaking wet and trembling, either from cold or exhaustion.

Persephone had grown up with horses and animals and she knew a cow when she saw one, but this was the biggest cow she’d ever seen. It looked as though it used its last reserves of strength to mount the cliff and she dared not frighten or distract it, in case it fell. She stood quite still, the wind blowing her cape and unraveling her hair.

At last it reached the top, scrabbling with huge black hooves at the rock and pushing with all the strength in its back legs. It stood panting, head hanging in exhaustion, chest heaving. There was froth around its muzzle. Its eyes were red, like jewels in the grey light. Along one flank three bloody furrows seeped blood. They were deep and fresh and Persephone winced, thinking of cold salt water in the open wounds. A feathery fan of blood formed beneath them and dripped down a trembling leg. In noticing this, she saw an impressive pair of testicles. This was a bull, then.

“Where did you come from?”

The animal threw its head up with a snort and she realized it hadn’t been aware of her presence in its struggle to escape the sea and the cliff. Persephone stood quite still.

“I won’t hurt you. Something has, though. That looks sore. You must be hungry, too.” She looked up and down the cliff. “There’s no hay or grass here, but I can give you water…and oats! We have oats!” She felt real pleasure at her ability to feed this exhausted refugee from sea and storm. But how could she persuade it to come with her? She had no rope, belt or anything to use as a lead.

It looked at her out of those marvelous gem-like eyes. It looked pale as a ghost, sticky and wet with seawater, little rivulets of blood and its eyes the only color.

As she watched, drops of red like blood fell from the eyes and she understood, with horrified pity, the creature wept.

Persephone had not wept since she’d left her bloody bed in Hades, but the silent grief of this magnificent creature struck her heart, and his garnet tears unlocked her own. They stood there, the disheveled young woman, gaunt and pale, and the huge white bull, and their tears mingled with salt spray and the last ragged raindrops. The tattered clouds split and dissolved, allowing a sunbeam to fall on the wet stone.

At last, the bull raised his head and heaved a sigh. His breathing had slowed and his trembling stilled. Persephone, feeling released, wiped her sleeve carelessly across her face, cleared her throat, sniffed, shuddered with a few last sobs and pulled herself together.

“If you come with me, I’ll help you,” she said simply, and turned away, back toward the lighthouse. She didn’t look back but she heard the bull’s hooves on the rock behind her.

***

Rapunzel, after a moment of jaw-dropped surprise, took it well. They possessed a good supply of oats, and they poured some into their largest bowl with a little hot water and salt. While this cooled, they carried the hip bath out and filled it with buckets of water from the cistern. The bull drank thirstily. Rapunzel recommended honey for the bull’s flank.

“Are you sure he’s safe?” Rapunzel asked nervously as she held the bowl of oats for the bull to eat from. “He’s so big!”

“I don’t think he’ll hurt us,” said Persephone. She dipped two fingers in the honey and smeared it gently over the bull’s flank. He snorted and his skin quivered, but he stood still, jaws grinding.

“He needs hay, or grass,” said Persephone. “Cows graze. I need to find pasture for him, or hay from some nearby farm.”

“Do you know a place?”

“No. I’ve mostly explored the shoreline. But I can walk inland today and find some pasture. There should still be plenty of grass.”

“How will you get him there? Do you think he’ll follow you?” Rapunzel looked doubtful.

“He followed me here,” said Persephone.

“Heks said someone would come with supplies and to check on us once a month. We’ve been here three weeks, so it should be soon.”

“We’ll ask about hay then, but he can’t wait. He’ll get sick if he can’t eat the right food.” Persephone finished anointing the slash marks and cleaned her fingers. “This has stopped bleeding, at any rate.”

The oats were gone. Rapunzel stepped away from the marble horns, still holding the bowl. The bull heaved a great sigh, took another draught of water, ambled to the curved tower wall and lay down in the thin sun.

The familiar sight of a cow at ease gave Persephone a deep feeling of security and comfort. She swayed on her feet, suddenly exhausted.

“You need your breakfast,” Rapunzel said firmly, and steered her inside.

ASH

Ash hunted in the clear skies above the tower while the eye at its apex looked up into the night sky’s depths. Golden eye and starry eyes regarded each other. The wind sang its endless song of stone and sea, and starsong spread its net across the cosmos, but something was different. Some small note was lost. Some red pinprick of light had gone out. The wind ruffled the waves, searching. The tower eye sought but could not find. Heaven’s vault turned. A milky bull with a broken horn stood on thin pasture near the rocky coast and grazed peacefully.

Inside the tower two women slept and outside, above the cliff’s edge, Ash watched an old man stand looking out to sea, his face hidden in shadows from his hood. One bright eye gazed across the starry waves and the ebbing, flowing sky. The man turned and walked along the cliff, head bent, studying the dark stone under his feet. He caught a gleam of light, took a swift step that defied his age, and knelt. The rock cupped a gleam and glitter, crystal and ruby. He picked up four objects, two clear and bright as diamonds, and two like drops of fresh blood. The four orbs rolled in his hand, clinking gently together.

The tears of a queen and a constellation. The blood of death and change. He closed the marbles in his hand and transferred them to a pouch within his cloak.

Far above, Ash danced on silent wings, waiting for dawn and Rapunzel’s waking.

***

The cleft in the lighthouse cellar had indeed led into a remote edge of Dvorgdom, a kind of underground cul-de-sac. Several miles inland Ash had found a few Dvorgs stumping through the tunnels, working in a small underground quarry. He suspected much of the stone for the lighthouse had come originally from the quarry. Perhaps at one time there had been activity here, but now it was quiet and felt rather abandoned. However, he found plenty of his kin, who liked the quiet, and there were fire salamanders.

He stopped to speak to a pair of them, addressing them politely.

“Greetings, Glowing Brothers.”

“Winged Brother,” they said.

“Do your people know the roots of the lighthouse? The place is connected to our kingdom.”

The salamanders looked at each other, their bodies shimmering with flames and heat, and shook their heads. “Will you show us?” asked one.

It had taken some time, as they traveled more slowly than he could, but on the way they became comfortable with one another and formality eased. The salamanders were named Ig and Mag, but Ash couldn’t tell them apart.

When at last he led them through the cleft into the lighthouse cellar, they explored every corner, insatiably curious, climbing up and down the walls, flowing into every nook, cranny and crevice, intently examining the mural and the shelf of material, and cautiously approaching the edge of the stone well in which the sea ebbed and flowed.

“We do not know this place,” they told Ash. “The Dvorgs built it, obviously, but we’ve never been here or heard of it. What is this thing you call a lighthouse?”

“It’s aboveground,” said Ash in warning. “I can show you, but there’s a lot of water. We’re on the sea’s edge here. Also, my friend lives here, a female human who is also a witch. She’s here to gather news of Webbd, all of Webbd, from Dvorgdom to the sea to the night sky.”

“We are not Dvorgs who fear females,” sniffed one of the lizards, burning yellow with blue and green flames. “Our Lady of Flames is a powerful female. She is unafraid of aboveground or even water. But why is a human female interested in news of Dvorgdom?”

“It’s a long story,” said Ash. “If you’re willing to meet her, you can ask her. I’m tired, my friends, and hungry. It’s time for me to sleep. Will you wait here, and I’ll return with her in a while? I must go out and hunt before roosting.”

He had left them then, curled together in a niche, well away from the water’s chill breath. The trapdoor was closed, but he reentered Dvorgdom and found an old mine entrance nearby. He darted up into the night sky, worn out but pleased with himself, and made his way back to the lighthouse to fill his belly and sleep until dawn.

RAPUNZEL

Ash, having introduced Ig and Mag to Rapunzel and thoroughly enjoyed himself watching them make friends and showing the little creatures the lighthouse, returned to Yggdrasil on a special errand, having agreed to a plan Rapunzel proposed.

She found the fire salamanders charming, and they agreed to bring her news from Dvorgdom. They were not the storytellers and raconteurs Ash was, being both distractible and unreflective, but they knew every single event that happened in Dvorgdom. Their people were ubiquitous and largely ignored by the Dvorgs.

Rapunzel’s pleasure and skill in manipulating fire and light made an instant connection with the little creatures, and she found herself both teaching and learning as the three of them played with her round blue witchlights and various other forms of fire and flame. Irresistible as puppies, they clambered, climbed, and explored the new world of the lighthouse.

Persephone was polite and comfortable with them, but clearly uninterested and incurious. She accepted the information that the salamanders would bring news of Dvorgdom to Rapunzel without further questions.

Rapunzel wondered if Heks had known of the lighthouse cellar and its access to both the sea and Dvorgdom. The tower was certainly not as isolated as it appeared. She had begun to make friends with the gulls, getting to know their habits and language and gleaning what information she could from them. They were raucous and greedy, but great travelers and gossips. She had seen both crows and ravens as well, though not to talk to, and wondered if they carried news of her presence and activities to Odin or Mirmir.

The longer she spent at the lighthouse, the more distinct the voices of the wind and stone became. Here, the wind blew nearly without ceasing, bringing news and sometimes scents of far places, murmuring ceaselessly of weather, stars and sea.

Rapunzel had never spent time near the sea. For her, a land dweller, water was something to swim in and enjoy, but amounted to only another supporting detail for the land, like a mountain, a valley or a forest. She didn’t think about trying to swim along this rocky coast. The salt water lived, its muscles green, blue and grey, veined with capillaries of foam. It battered the rocks, covered the cliffs and tower with its breath, hissed and roared, murmured and sighed.

It could also be a portal.

The portal at Rowan Gate was a threshold of mystery and power, and it had a keeper, Eurydice, one who opened the way. Rapunzel had gone through it to the Rusalka, where she learned to drum. The Rusalka used a portal too, the plunge pool in their bathhouse. Or perhaps there were many plunge pools in many bathhouses. Rapunzel had never been sure. She and Heks had come through that portal to the tower.

Now, two weeks ago, the great white bull had dragged himself out of the sea, clambered up the cliff, and he and Persephone had formed an improbable bond.

In the last few days someone else watched from the sea. Rapunzel couldn’t guess if the tower drew the watcher, herself, Persephone, or even the bull, but she knew someone watched — and waited.

She wasn’t afraid, exactly, but alert. When evening fell, she liked to climb up to the roof where the fire burned and the mirrors tilted, reflecting starlight, sunlight, moonlight, sealight, witchlight. During these hours in which she lit the light and watched night sweep across the stones and heaving sea, she could hear a swirl or the plop of a sudden dive, not of the sea, but in the sea.

She didn’t search the shore with her eyes, feeling an obscure desire to protect whoever took such pains to remain invisible and unnoticed, but she did stand in full view, letting the watcher get used to her and observe her movements and routines.

During her years in the tower, her foster mother Elizabeth, a powerful witch, had taught her about the night sky. Noola ebbed and flowed like the sea. Cion, larger and closer to Webbd than Noola, was never wholly visible. The sun cycled through the seasons. The stars arranged themselves in patterns and pictures. Rapunzel’s classroom in those days had been a luxurious room in an inaccessible tower in the forest, and she’d spent many hours at her window watching the dark heavens. Now those days and those teachings came back to her as she stood at the top of another tower and once again marveled at the firmament above.

Among Irvin’s books she found a collection of star and constellation stories, and these Rapunzel had read and repeated to Persephone with great enjoyment, refreshing her memory and affection for constellation and star lore.

Slowly, as she reacquainted herself with the night sky, she realized something had changed. It took her days to put her finger on it. At first, she only had an uneasy feeling of difference, perhaps a subtle shift in the pattern. Sharpening her focus, she found most of the patterns were familiar and expected, but something was missing. She gazed into the black depths of the night sky, examining the constellations and their relationships to each other, remembering their seasons, cycles and names. One by one, she rediscovered The Warrior, The Hound, Phoenix, Gemini, and Draco. The Warrior gave her the answer. He was sovereign in the night sky, menacing club upraised, shield before him. None threatened him but the constellation of Cerus the bull, which faced him. Cerus, with his starry red eye and sharp horns, was not in his place.

Rapunzel couldn’t guess why or how Cerus had fallen out of the heavens, or why a white bull with garnet eyes had emerged from the sea at this particular place, but she now understood Heks was right. Some kind of cosmic disturbance was taking place.

She suggested casually to Persephone the bull be called Cerus. The name obviously meant nothing to Persephone. After all, how could it? Rapunzel thought. Persephone had been raised to cherish the sunlit planet and now had become Queen of the Underworld. What did she know about the night sky, except it was there?

Rapunzel saw Cerus was accomplishing what she could not -- what perhaps no person could -- in assisting Persephone. The young woman and the bull recognized one another. Rapunzel didn’t trust the great white bull. She didn’t try to handle him and stayed away from him, but he followed Persephone like a large dog, clearly enjoying both her company and her touch. His flank had healed, he’d put on flesh and his hide shone white as milk. His only blemish was his broken marble horn.

Persephone had found thin fall pasture inland, but Cerus didn’t stay there without her. They’d obtained decent hay and he alternated between grazing and hay, depending on Persephone’s movements.

Rapunzel felt relieved to see her looking better. She put on weight and began taking care of her appearance again. She seemed less haunted and Rapunzel thought she slept better.

Rapunzel tended the light, kept her eyes, ears and awareness open, allowed the watcher to watch unhindered and unchallenged and gathered information for Heks, keeping her own council and letting the days unfold as they would. Every day she wrote in her journal, recording not only her thoughts and questions, but the weather and any visitors or news or rumors reaching her.

Dar was gone, swept away from her by inexorable cycles and tides of life and death. Heks had spoken as if he still roamed out there, somewhere, turning the wheel. Perhaps the same force had placed her here, and Persephone; cast Cerus ashore at the tower’s foot; sent Ash to renew their friendship and connect her to Dvorgdom.

She wondered what would happen next.

CLARISSA

Her father was gone. Clarissa could say the words aloud to herself, had heard the words from others, but she couldn’t make them real. They slid away like small silver fish. They lay like stones in her mouth, without meaning or flavor, things to spit out and walk away from. Sometimes she woke feeling panicked, fearing she’d lost her ability to create meaning from language. Her father had loved words, had sculpted with them, crafted with them. Losing her ability to use and understand words seemed an unforgiveable betrayal. She felt as though she spat and trampled upon his dead body.

She thought, with some guilt, she would have minded losing her mother less than her father. She’d been a child when her human mother left the sea to rejoin her people on land. Clarissa’s father had explained she missed her old home on land too much to be able to stay. Clarissa had seen how much he wanted them to accept her sudden absence without grief or resentment, and she’d tried.

She remembered a stormy day of wind and waves when her father had taken her and her brother Chris from the sea up a narrow stream that ran through a place called a cemetery, where the land people buried their dead. They’d hoisted themselves onto a slab of rock and looked through a window in a white building with a tall tower and a bell. Inside she’d seen a large room with people sitting on rows of wooden seats, shoulder to shoulder, listening to a man who stood in an elevated wooden box and spoke. Her mother had been there. Her hair, the same color as Clarissa’s but dry, wound smoothly on the back of her head. A piece of cloth covered her shoulders and a book was in her hand.

Chris, her brother, cried when he saw her and held out his hands. The wind was roaring by then, and the rain slashing down. The white building was thick-walled and no one heard the little boy’s beseeching voice or noticed as he reached out with pleading hands for his mother.

Irvin had taken them in his strong arms, slithered back into the stream and let it carry them down to the thrashing sea. Clarissa had not seen her mother again until she was seventeen.

For a time, they stayed in the bay near the little town where her mother lived. As far as Clarissa knew, her father made no additional attempts to see or speak to her mother, but she sensed he stayed in hopes she might one day return, or at least visit.

Then a stranger appeared on a horse and Radulf came into their lives. After that her father became less lonely and silent and she and Chris were distracted from their bewildered grief. Through Radulf they met Marceau, one of the sea kings, and eventually they left the bay near the little white town and moved into the deeper sea community of merfolk, where Clarissa and Chris grew up with friends and relatives and felt their mother’s loss less and less as time passed.

Clarissa didn’t forget her mother, though, and as she grew to womanhood among the merfolk, she longed to know her. She remembered her singing strange songs from the land people, sea songs, lullabies, and songs of faith and praise she called hymns. She remembered sitting on her mother’s lap and having her long hair combed, and the shimmer of sunlight falling into their grotto while Chris played with shells at her mother’s feet and their father looked on, smiling.

Why had her mother left? Her father spoke as though it was a hard choice, a choice that tore her mother in two. Was that so? Had she been unhappy with them, or had she wanted to stay and left against her will? What in that white building with the wooden rows of seats made her mother’s face so peaceful and shut away? Had she loved her father, and did she still? Did she think of her children and wonder about them?

One day Clarissa returned to the bay near the town. By then, she’d matured into her ability to take the shape of a human body when she wished. She had no firm plan about how to find her mother, if she was still there, but her curiosity and longing compelled her to try.

For two days she watched the place and observed people coming and going during the day. Several men went out in fishing boats early in the morning. As the day ended, lights shone from house windows. No one entered or left the white building with the tower and bell.

On the second evening, a dinghy left the shore and slowly moved into the bay. A lantern sat in the stern. As Clarissa watched, she heard an anchor splash and the boat stopped moving and bobbed gently on the waves. Then, she heard singing.

In an instant, she felt a young child again, sitting on her mother’s lap, the comb’s tines against her scalp, stroking slowly. She gasped. The singing stopped.

“Mother!”

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Clarissa.”

“Clarissa? Is it really you? Come closer, so I can see you!”

Clarissa swam into the lantern light.

Her mother’s face looked shocked and pale. She searched Clarissa’s face with wide eyes.

“You’ve grown up.”

“I’m seventeen.”

“I know, but somehow I’ve pictured you exactly the same as the last time I saw you.” She began to cry.

She was neatly dressed in a plain skirt and shirt, her hair coiled and pinned to the back of her head the way it had been when Clarissa last saw her. Clarissa had grabbed the dinghy’s side to come into the lantern light. Now she let go, moving her tail and arms to stay upright in the water.

“Don’t go!”

“I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to tip the boat.”

“Why did you come? Is something wrong? Is Chris all right? How is your father?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I only wanted to talk.”

“Let’s go among the rocks, then, where we can talk properly out of sight.”

Clarissa brought up the anchor and they steered the little craft among a group of large rocks on a headland some way from the town. Here, they could not be seen or heard by a chance late walker.

Her mother stayed in the boat, knees together, feet firmly planted and back straight. Clarissa pulled herself onto a flat rock.

“Here, drape this around your shoulders and cover yourself.” Her mother handed her the shawl that had draped her own shoulders.

“I’m not cold.”

“It’s not the cold, child. It’s not seemly to be bare-breasted, even in front of me.”

Clarissa felt astonished. The merfolk, naturally, were always naked. Her mother had not worn clothing in the sea.

“What do you mean?” she demanded. “You know we don’t wear clothes.”

“I know, and it always bothered me.”

On a spurt of anger, Clarissa said, “I came to find out why you left us. Was that part of the reason, because we didn’t wear clothes?”

Her mother sighed. “There were many reasons, but that was one, yes. Clarissa, my people are different from the merfolk. We’re more … civilized. God has rules, important rules, that we must follow because we’re not beasts. We’re better than beasts.”

“We’re not beasts!”

“Of course not. I didn’t mean that. But merfolk aren’t humans. They don’t acknowledge God and His laws. I missed the discipline and structure of my human life when I lived in the sea. I need it. It makes me feel safe and clear about who I am and how to behave.”

“Did you ever love Father?”

“I thought I did, but I was young and rather silly. I was rebellious. Leaving my world for the merfolk and the sea seemed romantic and exciting. Then you came along, and Chris, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to leave you, but I longed for my old life again, for church on Sunday morning and proper dry clothes and a house to live in. Your father encouraged me to visit my old home whenever I wanted, but I needed more than visits. After each visit I felt wretched. I couldn’t take you out of the sea, away from him. I made the only choice I could, in the end.”

“Father loved you. His love didn’t stop.”

“You’re too young to understand love, Clarissa.”

“I know it when I feel it, and when I see it. I remember when you left, how sad Father was, and Chris crying for you.”

“I’m sorry. I only did what I had to do.”

“Did you miss us?”

“Of course.”

“But you were happy, too?”

“I was glad to come back to a life I understood.”

I was glad to come back to a life I understood, Clarissa thought with grief, as she returned from her memories and found herself looking up at the lighthouse. Come back, Father. Come back to the life I understand and be with me again.

He couldn’t be gone. He must be there, at the tower. He must be. He had never allowed the light to go out and ships to lose their way. Inside those curved stone walls, he slept and woke, lit the stove, prepared food and ate it, carried coal up the stairs, patiently cleaned the glass and mirrors, knowing it would need to be done again the following day, and all the days after as well, because coal fire burned so dirty. He read, and sat at his desk writing and dreaming. He held the coral lump she’d given him in his hands, warming it, his eyes soft with images and words…

But she didn’t see him, only the two strange women who’d come to keep the light.

Both women were young. The one she saw the most had short, pale hair. She kept the light, but now the fire wasn’t lit with coal. She wondered what this new fire was made of, for it lit instantly and burned clean and clear and bright all night long. She couldn’t smell wood or coal. It didn’t smoke or smolder. It extinguished as quickly as it lit. The woman never carried any kind of fuel. But every night the young woman lit the fire and tilted the mirrors for the best visibility from the sea. She was as reliable as Clarissa’s father had been, as loyal to her responsibility, and Clarissa felt comforted. Some part of what had been important to her father continued, though he was gone.

The other woman was beautiful. Clarissa could tell this by the way she moved, by the rich wealth of corn-colored hair, by her body’s shape under her cloak when she stood or walked along the cliff tops. She seemed restless, walking away from the tower nearly every day, either exploring up and down the cliffs for several miles or, presumably, walking inland.

This woman was companioned by a large white animal.

It wasn’t a horse. Clarissa knew what a horse was — had even ridden one. Horses didn’t possess horns, and this did. Horns and a big, broad head and nose, powerful shoulders and flanks and a thin, small tail. It looked rather frightening to Clarissa, but it followed the woman like her brother Chris used to follow her when they were children, affectionate and trustful, wanting to be near.

Sooner or later, she would speak to the two strange women. Sooner or later, she would enter the stone tower again, but not yet. If her father wasn’t there, she wasn’t ready to know it. As long as she lingered on the shore, watching and hoping, she could still imagine it was all a mistake. He was there. He wasn’t gone. Everything was right. She needn’t take any responsibility for his papers, his books, his clothes and the sad remainders of his life. She needn’t ever think of them again, because her father would be somewhere, with his vague dreamy smile and his love for her, his hazel eyes, his stories and poetry and songs, his gentle curiosity and ability to see what others didn’t.

So she stayed, an uneasy wary presence, desolate, bobbing up and down in the surf, watching the cliffs and the tower, hoping, waiting.

GINGER

My Dear:

Thank you for writing during such a busy season. Living life on and near the sea, it’s easy to forget the land’s rhythms and cycles, but when I read about the work of harvest, I feel reconnected and reminded. Remember that first harvest season at Rowan Tree? Someone said -- maybe it was Dar?-- harvest that year was a harvest of people and their skills. How far you’ve come in only three years!

I often think about Dar. It grieves me to know he no longer travels the roads with Gideon and his little cart. What a special person he was.

Pausing for a moment of business, I’d be delighted to buy any of Rowan Tree’s weaving. I regularly buy from Minerva and her pupils, of course, but Maria’s work is unique. There’s something of the desert in it, something of bleached bones and burning sun. You needn’t worry about sending me an inventory. I’ll gladly take whatever you’ve got, be it rugs, shawls, capes or bedding. You didn’t say if Kunik expects to have excess pieces this year after the local harvest fairs, but I’ll take anything he might have, too. I know it’s a longer wait for the money when I sell for you, but I hope the higher prices I can command make up for it.

I’m disturbed to read about Rose Red’s oak tree falling ill, not only because it’s such a magnificent old tree and beloved by her, but also because it underlines my own private worries. The truth is, I have a feeling something is wrong in Webbd. I’ve felt this way on a ship -- an uncomfortable tense feeling in the pit of my stomach that something’s not right. The first time I felt it I told myself I was being silly, but several hours later we discovered a leak and the Marella had taken on quite a bit of water belowdecks before we managed to patch her up. After that, I don’t ignore a feeling like this.

Tonight I write from Griffin Town. I’m staying, as always, with Minerva’s friend, who also looks after Cassandra. It’s a pleasant fall evening. A window is open over the desk where I’m sitting and the town is peaceful. I can hear gulls down in the harbor, probably welcoming the fishing fleet back. Everything seems absolutely normal and unremarkable.

I’ve thought perhaps there was something amiss at Rowan Tree, where there are so many people I care about, but aside from the tree and Rose Red’s distress, your letter reassures me that, for the most part, all is well. I’ve lately heard from Vasilisa, too. She’s with the Rusalka and Morfran.

I did lose a friend recently. His name was Irvin, and he was a merman. I met him before I met you. He had two dear children, a boy and a girl. I’m not sure where Clarissa is, but Chris, her younger brother, has traveled with me ever since I built the Marella. He’s a bright boy, and quite artistic.

Irvin was working as a lighthouse keeper, of all things, when he died. There’s an isolated stone tower on a treacherous coast that needed a keeper and he agreed to go. He was fascinated with humans and the land. If you remember, his wife -- the children’s mother -- was a human. He was a dreamy fellow, always quoting bits of poetry and lore. He lived quite happily there, with his books and his writing. I visited him whenever I passed that way.

The loss of my friend is as nothing compared to Chris’s grief at losing his father. Under the lighthouse a cellar is built into the cliffs. A narrow passage through the rock leads to a well in the cellar. The sea people used this means to visit Irvin, and Chris used it as a kind of art studio.

The sea is filled with wonders, treasures and strange creatures and people. Irvin loved their stories, songs and poetry. I know now I did the right in deciding to spend the rest of my days traveling on the water. I wouldn’t have been happy in that nice little town your father wanted me to oversee, and I don’t think you would have been either.

There’s something else, too. I haven’t told anyone else because I feel like a fool -- I think I must be confused, or mistaken -- but something’s wrong in the night sky.

I know. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I haven’t been a sailing merchant long, but I did think I was familiar with many of the constellations long before now. After all, I sailed in my youth quite a bit. Just recently, in the northern sky, a constellation seems to be missing. The Warrior is there, and The Hound, but Cerus the Bull is gone.

But this can’t be, can it? A whole constellation can’t suddenly disappear!

Sailors are a superstitious lot. Perhaps it’s catching. Perhaps I’m merely overtired.

Anyway, my heart is lighter knowing you’re all well and happy, the animals thrive and the gardens bear well. Perhaps the old oak is merely in a natural part of its cycle and will soon regain its health. If the Red Dancer is dancing, everything must be all right!

I heard a strange rumor down at the wharf last evening in a bar. A sailor talked about a new lighthouse keeper in the stone tower where Irvin worked. He said it was a woman with short blond hair. It made me think of Rapunzel and her tower. Vasilisa said Rapunzel has left the birch forest. I wonder where she is now?

I’ll close now, and eat a meal. Don’t let my imaginings worry you, dear heart. Keep in touch. I’ll let you know when I next sail. Give everyone my love, most especially Rose Red.

Radulf

Image by Angela Yuriko Smith from Pixabay

Thoughtfully, Ginger folded Radulf’s letter and tucked it into a pocket. It wasn’t like him to be nervous, and it worried her. She frowned. If Radulf said stars were missing -- then they were missing. He knew the night sky intimately, in spite of his modesty.

But how could a whole constellation be missing?

It didn’t make sense.

“How is he?” Maria stood above her, balancing a basket of onions on her hip. Her skirt was bunched up and her hands smeared with dirt.

Ginger scrambled to her feet and took a basket handle, sharing the load. They carried it into the root cellar and Ginger knelt, sorting the onions into their winter storage.

“He’s good. He’s in Griffin Town. He says he wants whatever weaving you have, and whatever Kunik has, too.”

“Good. That means we’ll see the money next spring, when we most need it.”

They emerged from the root cellar and Maria glanced up at the sun.

“We’ve done enough for today. What do you say to a cool bath in the river before we dance tonight?”

“I say, lead me to it,” laughed Ginger.

***

The autumn Rowan Tree had been founded, Ginger and Maria had lived together in a rudimentary shelter with two closet-like sleeping rooms. During that first winter the two women grew close. Ginger had lived and slept with eleven younger sisters all her life, and couldn’t imagine living alone. Maria, isolated by choice for much of her life because of shame and self-loathing about murdering her young children and destroying herself, found the younger woman’s friendship and companionship enormously healing. During Rowan Tree’s first summer, Maria’s small dwelling was enlarged to accommodate them both, with room for Maria’s loom, and a balance of space for living together and individual privacy.

After the dance, Ginger moved like a red flame around the kitchen in her gauze dancing skirt as Baubo and Maria sat at the wooden table. The evening air struck chilly and a fire flickered on the hearth.

Baubo had joined them in dance, as she did from time to time. They didn’t expect her but were always glad to see her. The earthy old woman added an element of humor and play to the dance, shaking and jiggling, wide-hipped and grinning hilariously as she farted and belched. But here at the table she looked old and rather careworn in the fragile firelight as she told them about Persephone and her lost child.

“Oh, dear,” said Maria, her brown eyes filled with tears. “Where is the grave, Baubo? We must make a descanso.”

“We buried her next to Persephone’s garden,” said Baubo. “Demeter planted herbs over her. Hades was there, but Persephone had left.”

“Left! Where did she go? Is she with Demeter?” asked Maria.

“No. She left Hades…for a time.”

“She left Hades the place or Hades the man?” asked Ginger.

Baubo sighed. “Both. She went to an isolated stone tower on the coast to keep a—“

“Lighthouse,” finished Ginger flatly.

Baubo and Maria looked at her in surprise. Ginger groped for the letter in her pocket.

“Listen.”

When Ginger had finished reading the letter, Maria said, “But that doesn’t sound like Persephone the sailor talked about. It sounds like Rapunzel, as improbable as it seems.”

“Rapunzel’s there too,” said Baubo.

“But how — why?” asked Ginger. “It makes no sense.”

“I’m not sure,” said Baubo, “but here’s what I suspect. I think the lighthouse keeper died and went to Hades, where he talked with Persephone. She was grieving and maybe it seemed to her a place to get right away, a place to hide for a while and lick her wounds. I’m not sure how Rapunzel wound up there, but Radulf is right.” She tapped the letter where it lay on the table. “I’ve heard whispers, too, that something is wrong with Webbd. It’s nothing definite, but there’s unease in the wind. I think something’s coming, something destructive and evil. I suspect the presence of Rapunzel and Persephone together at the stone tower is no coincidence. Even so, I’m worried about Persephone. She wasn’t herself, and she slipped away before I felt satisfied of her recovery. If she is with Rapunzel I’m comforted, but I want to know she’s all right. Hades is like half a man without her, Demeter’s beside herself, and the Underworld needs its queen. Also, Persephone left before we’d made final arrangements for the child.”

“You mean she doesn’t know where her daughter’s buried?” asked Maria.

“No. There wasn’t time. She didn’t say goodbye or tell anyone what she planned to do.” Baubo looked from Ginger to Maria. “There’s a reason I’ve come tonight. You remember Rapunzel went to the Rusalka to learn drumming and sacred dance?”

“Of course,” said Maria.

“Well, she did learn. And Hades tells me practically all Persephone took with her was her dumbek.”

“And you think,” said Ginger slowly, “I…”

“I think you might be able to dance with them,” said Baubo bluntly. “I don’t know why Rapunzel has returned to an isolated tower, but I suspect she too is dealing with some kind of pain. I taught Persephone to dance myself, and I told her to return to it whenever she was in need, but it’s hard to dance in the apathy of despair. I think if you went, Ginger, and demanded Rapunzel drum and led them both to dance, they might express their feelings and begin to heal their troubles. Persephone’s no mean drummer herself, you know.”

“Well…I can try,” said Ginger doubtfully. “But I don’t know either of them well and I haven’t lost a child. Are you sure I’m the right person? Rapunzel’s a witch and Persephone’s a queen! I’m just…ordinary.”

“I’m sure you’re the right person,” said Baubo firmly.

Four days later Ginger left Rowan Tree, laden with messages and gifts. Persephone and Demeter had visited the community their first fall and proved invaluable in helping them prepare for winter. Persephone had brought rabbits, which she bred, the beginnings of a now thriving colony. Now the community sent their thoughts, prayers and sympathy to Persephone.

Rose Red took Ginger aside the day before she departed.

“Will you take a message for me?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Ginger. “What is it?”

“Remind her of an ancient piece of wisdom she taught me,” said Rose Red. “Remind her to let die what must, and give her this.” She stepped forward and put her arms around Ginger, kissing her on both cheeks and then the lips. A tear transferred itself from her cheek to Ginger’s.

“I’ll remind her,” promised Ginger, wiping the tear away.

***

Somewhat to Ginger’s surprise, Demeter traveled with her to the lighthouse. She arrived at Rowan Tree with a spare horse. Ginger and her sisters had learned to ride as children, and she felt like a child again as she swung her leg up and over the mare’s back and felt the familiar contours of the saddle beneath her. She was going on an adventure without her family, Radulf or Maria. She was going into a largely unknown world, traveling to a strange place in an effort to help two women she hardly knew because Baubo said she was needed.

The Corn Goddess was all warmth and nurture, just as Ginger remembered her from the first months at Rowan Tree. Ginger rested in her presence as any child might rest with its mother. Demeter seemed quiet and slightly careworn, but after all, the harvest season was her busiest time, and Persephone’s tragedy had surely taken its toll. Ginger supposed the lost child would have been Demeter’s first grandchild.

However, she talked of other subjects, telling Demeter stories about Rowan Tree and its people, the animals and the gardens. At night the two women lay in their sleeping rolls and looked up at the stars. Ginger couldn’t honestly say she noticed a difference, but she had not been educated in star lore. Demeter’s concern rested almost wholly with the land, and she knew less than Ginger of the constellations.

As they drew nearer to the tower, Demeter expressed her intention to part from Ginger, sending her on alone.

“Why aren’t you coming yourself?” Ginger asked. “Surely you’d help more than I can?”

“No,” said Demeter firmly. “I can’t help Persephone now. If I’d been what she needed she would have come to me. She knows my love and support are with her. Now I need to stand aside and let her find her own way through her life. She can, and she will, and others will be better able to help her than I am. You, for example, my dear. I’ll be there when she needs me, but my own life needs attention, as well my own work in the world. I lost sight of that for a time after she left, but I learned one of the greatest gifts to give one’s child is the knowledge that the parent is well, and happy, and going forward.”

Ginger accepted this, and wondered if her own mother had these feelings, and if she herself would feel them, if one day she had her own child.

They parted one October day, only half a day’s walk from the tower. Ginger gave the mare a kiss on her long nose and a final scratch in the roots of her mane. She and Demeter embraced and Ginger stood and watched the two horses and the Corn Goddess out of sight. It was midmorning, a crisp, clear fall day.

Ginger set out on the last couple miles of her journey, her face to the sea, and gradually the earth and scrubby grass under her feet gave way to rock. She saw the tower thrusting up toward the sky, smelled the wind off the sea and idly watched a large white shape at the tower’s base, wondering what it might be, until, as she drew close, she saw an enormous white cow.

It grazed peacefully in a pile of hay, but Ginger stopped abruptly when she recognized what it was. She had no experienced with cows, and unless she was much mistaken this was in fact a bull, with an impressive set of pendulous testicles. It wasn’t precisely between her and the tower door, but she suspected it could reach the door quicker than she could, and it had a daunting set of marble horns, though one looked broken near the tip and, incongruously, the horns were wreathed with plaited grass and a few late flowers. Its hide was milk white and looked as smooth as silk, its hooves polished obsidian.

While Ginger stood, hesitating, Persephone herself came out the door, which stood ajar, letting in the fresh air and sun. She in her turn stopped in surprise, seeing Ginger. The bull left its hay and approached Persephone her, licking her hand with a long, thick tongue. Absently, Persephone smoothed her hand along its neck.

“Ginger? Is it you?”

“Yes,” said Ginger, a little uncertainly.

Rapunzel appeared in the door. “Ginger!” She brushed by Persephone and the bull and Ginger, emboldened by the animal’s apparent docility, took a step forward.

“I’ve come,” she said inadequately and obviously. She felt herself blush. “I mean, I’ve come to see you…both. With some gifts.”

Rapunzel gave Ginger a quick, strong hug, wordlessly welcoming, and smiled.

“How did you know I — we — were here?” asked Persephone, standing still.

Ginger had no talent for artifice. “Baubo sent me,” she said baldly. “She thought I was the right person.”

For a moment Persephone’s carefully neutral face dissolved and Ginger saw desolation. Then the mask slid back. Persephone smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“Come in,” said Rapunzel briskly, taking charge. “Don’t worry about Cerus. He won’t hurt you.”

Ginger followed Rapunzel into the tower, thinking Cerus? Persephone stayed outside, murmuring inaudible endearments to Cerus.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Ginger muttered, feeling close to tears. “I told them I didn’t think I was the right person.”

“Who’s they?” asked Rapunzel ungrammatically. She helped Ginger set down her various bundles. “Oof! That’s quite a load!”

“I brought gifts from Rowan Tree, and I’ve only walked this last little bit. I’ve mostly traveled on horseback. They are Baubo, and Maria and Demeter, too.”

“Sounds like a conspiracy,” said Rapunzel.

Ginger flushed. “It’s only that everyone’s concerned for Persephone. They felt better, knowing you were here and she wasn’t alone, but they – we -- wanted to be sure she was all right after…after the baby.”

Rapunzel’s eyebrows shot up. She took Ginger by the wrist and pulled her up the winding stone steps. They emerged into the largest bedroom but Rapunzel kept climbing, spiraling up and up to a second, smaller bedroom, then through a third room, empty and clean, and then out onto the top of the tower with its empty fireplace and mirrors. Ginger caught her breath at the panorama of sky, sea and rock. Below them, Persephone and the white bull -- Cerus, Rapunzel had called him -- wandered along the cliff edge, side by side. Ginger noted the bull walked between Persephone and the steep drop-off to the foaming water. It looked oddly protective.

“The baby?” demanded Rapunzel, but quietly.

“She didn’t tell you?” asked Ginger, amazed.

“No. I heard a rumor about a child, but I didn’t ask and she hasn’t said.”

“She lost a child in September. It would have been born in January. It was a daughter.”

“I see.” Rapunzel looked stricken.

“I know,” said Ginger. “I mean, I don’t know. I can’t imagine.”

They looked glumly at one another.

“Baubo was with her,” said Ginger, “but Persephone left suddenly, and Baubo is worried about her. She left before they buried…the baby, so Persephone doesn’t know where the grave is. That’s what upsets Maria the most -- that Persephone doesn’t know where the child is buried. She said Persephone will be worrying.”

“And Hades?” asked Rapunzel.

“I don’t know. Baubo said Persephone left the Underworld and King Hades, and no one knew where she’d gone or what she planned to do. Hades and Demeter are both worried, but they want to give her the time and privacy she needs. Demeter came from Rowan Tree with me, but she turned back this morning with the horses. She said she can’t do anything for Persephone right now, except love her and let her be.”

“Baubo came to you at Rowan Tree?”

“Yes. She came to a dance and then she told Maria and me what had happened, and that you were here, too. She asked me to come—“

Ginger swallowed the rest of the sentence.

Rapunzel cocked an eyebrow at her. “Go on.”

“Well, Baubo said maybe it would help if we…danced.”

Rapunzel eyed Ginger so closely she blushed again, but she continued bravely. “And she said maybe we should…drum.”

“Ah ha!” said Rapunzel, but without much pleasure. She scowled, and without warning metamorphosed into the ugliest woman in the world.

Ginger burst into a sudden peal of laughter. She loved watching Rapunzel shift in and out of her two faces. Now it brought back the early days of Rowan Tree vividly, the excitement of building, the rush to get ready for the first winter, the stories around the fire, Cassandra and Lugh and Mary and Dar, Dar with his dark purple cloak like the night sky, and his bone flute and mobile features, telling stories, laughing, teasing Rapunzel…”

“Do you remember when Dar—“ Ginger began, but at the name Rapunzel’s ugly face closed upon itself like a fist and she turned away, looking out across the sea.

Ginger, seeing this, stopped speaking. Looking at Rapunzel’s determined and rigid back, she suddenly realized why Baubo had sent her, of all people, and her shyness and fear of being an intrusive nuisance drained away. These two women needed expression and healing, and she, Ginger, knew how to give them a place to do it.

“Rapunzel,” she said, and the new assertiveness in her tone made Rapunzel turn around, this time wearing her young, gamine face.

“What’s the third room for — the one just under us?”

“It used to be the storeroom. The old lighthouse keeper burned coal, and that’s where he stored it, along with some other odds and ends. But I use witchlight, so we cleaned out the room and left it empty.”

“That’s where we’ll dance. Are your drums here?”

“I don’t want to dance,” said Rapunzel quickly.

“Fine. Then you drum. I need to dance, and Persephone does, too. Where’s her drum?”

Rapunzel looked surprised. “I didn’t know she had one.”

“She does. Baubo said it’s practically all she brought with her. She says Persephone’s a good drummer, too.”

“Huh.”

It was Ginger’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

Rapunzel, somewhat grudgingly, broke into a smile. “You look like a strict governess when you do that.”

“Don’t forget I had charge of eleven younger sisters for most of my life.”

“Baubo’s an interfering old woman.”

“Well, she’s not as bad as Baba Yaga.”

Rapunzel laughed. “No. She’s not as bad as Baba Yaga. I suppose if we don’t do what Baubo and Demeter and Maria want, the Baba will show up on our doorstep next, on top of everything else.”

“What everything else?”

“I don’t suppose you noticed the sexy white bull guarding the door?” asked Rapunzel sarcastically.

“You called him Cerus.”

“He heaved himself out of the sea a couple of weeks ago. Climbed the cliffs. He had three claw marks on his flank. He and Persephone are inseparable. Before he came, she spent all her time alone, wandering on the cliffs day and night.”

“Where did he come from?”

“I’m not sure,” said Rapunzel.

“Isn’t Cerus a constellation?”

Rapunzel looked amazed.

“I had a letter from Radulf,” Ginger explained. “He mentioned the constellation of Cerus is missing.”

“Did he? I noticed that, too.“

“But that bull couldn’t be a constellation, could he?”

“I don’t know,” said Rapunzel, as though closing the subject. “There’s something else, too.”

“What?”

“Someone’s watching us from the sea.”

Ginger looked horrified.

“No, no, nothing to worry about,” said Rapunzel hastily. “It’s nothing like that. I have an idea about what -- or who -- it is, though. Maybe you being here will help coax them out into the open.” She scowled. “Heks made it sound like coming here would be a nice, quiet vacation. She’s another interfering old woman.”

“Heks!”

“Yes, Heks. She’s the reason I’m here. She said I was needed…to gather information.”

“What kind of information?”

Rapunzel shook her head in exasperation. “It’s not clear. Evidently there are rumors that something’s wrong with life’s fabric. Heks talked about something called Yrtym, a kind of web or threads of matterenergytime. She said the threads seem to be breaking, or unraveling, and she thought maybe I could hear or sense information from here; you know, listen to the wind and read the sky and sea and rock.”

“And are you getting information?”

“Not exactly. But I will admit things are strange. It’s not an accident Cerus is here, or you. Forces are at work.”

“Radulf is worried, too.”

Rapunzel looked on the verge of saying more, but Persephone and Cerus ambled back into view, heading to the lighthouse in what looked like perfect companionship and accord. “We’ll talk again later, but now we’d better go down and get a meal together. You’ve hardly seen the place yet.”

Ginger was relieved to find Persephone accepted her presence without evident resentment after returning from her walk with Cerus. She was neither warm nor curious, but Ginger could see her preoccupation with her own thoughts left little attention to spare for anyone else, and chose not to take her behavior personally. Her observation of both Rapunzel and Persephone made her forget her diffidence in her determination to lead a dance without delay.

At the end of a simple and mostly silent meal, Ginger pushed back her chair, carried her dishes to the sink, and surveyed Persephone and Rapunzel, still seated. Rapunzel, reading the writing on the wall, sighed, rose, and said briefly to Persephone, “We need you upstairs.”

Ginger picked up her pack and bundles and followed them up the winding stone steps.

“Get your dumbek,” Rapunzel said peremptorily when they were in Persephone’s bedroom. Persephone looked surprised, but obediently pulled a box out from under the bed, knelt to open it and rose to her feet with the dumbek. Without a word they ascended the steps into Rapunzel’s bedroom and then the storage room. Rapunzel’s drums already stood, waiting.

“What are we doing?” Persephone asked in a hard voice. She set the dumbek down and took a step back toward the stairs, as though to leave.

“I need to dance,” said Ginger firmly. “It’s important. I need drumming to dance to.”

Persephone’s face hardened, but Ginger turned away from her and said to Rapunzel, “Can you make a good light?”

Rapunzel held up her open palm, muttered a word and a clear white ball of light glowed in the cup of her hand. She blew gently on it and it sailed away like dandelion fluff, hovering up near the ceiling against the stone wall. She repeated this until five spheres of witchlight lit the room with a gentle glow, bright enough to dance safely by but dim enough for privacy.

Ginger opened her bundle and spread it carelessly on the floor against the wall. She’d brought belled bracelets, bangles, gauzy scarves and skirts and dangling earrings. Paying no attention to the other two women, she slid off her traveling clothes, selected an orange crinkled skirt embellished with gold thread and wrapped a cord of brass bells around one wrist. She loosened her knotted hair and let it flow over her shoulders and bare breasts. Barbaric brass earrings completed her preparation.

CHAPTER 4

CLARISSA

Another woman had come to the tower, a woman with hair the color of red seaweed. She and the short-haired lightkeeper had stood on the top of the tower talking for a time earlier in the day while the beautiful one and her white animal walked along the cliffs. Then they all disappeared in the tower, and Clarissa thought they must be having a meal together, as it was late afternoon and the sun was sliding down, staining the autumn sky with deep color.

She’d seen the lightkeeper at dusk, lighting the fire at the top of the tower, but she didn’t linger, as she often did, looking at the night sky and gazing across the water.

After she disappeared, a light shone from a window in the highest room, where her father had stored coal and other necessities. Like the two larger rooms below it, windows looked out in three directions, and Clarissa could clearly see one from her vantage point on a rock with skirts of foam around its roots. The light didn’t go out, and Clarissa wondered what they could be doing. She hadn’t seen a steady light from that window before.

Then she heard drumming. She knew what it was, because many of her people drummed, but she hadn’t heard anything quite like this. It compelled her with its power, yet she shied away from it, too. It made her body feel unfamiliar, at once too sensitive and too…hungry. After a few minutes she realized there were two drummers, but they didn’t seem to be playing together. One sounded barbaric, passionate and sensual. The other was hardly audible, rhythmic and comforting, like the sea’s throb.

Watching, listening, she saw the red-haired woman moving in front of the window, her hair flowing around her bare shoulders and neck, dancing? -- yes, dancing to the drumming. The other two must be the drummers, then.

Then the tower’s top began glowing with blue light.

Clarissa knew what it was, but she’d never seen it on a clear night, only in stormy weather. Sailors called it “spirit candles,” and believed it a good omen in stormy seas.

The red-haired dancer whirled into view again, her graceful arm sweeping in front of the window, trailing sparks of violet light. One of the drummers had stopped, but the other continued, an invisible heart beating in the night. Did it beat in fear? In hope? Or did it just beat with persistent life?

Without thinking about it, Clarissa found herself clambering among the rocks, her tail transformed into two legs. She climbed the cliff fearlessly, knowing if she fell, she’d take no more harm from the restless sea than a fish. It would be easier to take her usual route through the passage in the cliffs into the lighthouse cellar, but somehow she didn’t like to with strangers there.

The tower door wasn’t bolted. A looming white shape in the darkness gave a surprised snort, but she’d slid in the door before there was time for more.

It still looked the same. A fire crackled in the stove. The table, the chairs, a large twisted chunk of driftwood against the wall -- all were the same. The kitchen was tidy, just as her father had always left it.

Clarissa mounted the stairs, resolutely keeping her eyes down as she passed through the first room, where her father had slept. Then the second room appeared, obviously being used as a second bedroom.

The drumming had started again, defiant now, throbbing with emotion and life, but the second drummer was silent. The steady heartbeat had stilled. For some reason this made her feel panicked. She ran the last few steps and then crouched down, eyes wide, mouth agape.

The dancer wore an orange and gold skirt that swung and floated against her legs, but her breasts were bare. Clarissa’s mother would certainly disapprove. Earrings glinted in the low light of spheres hovering near the ceiling. A bracelet of bells wrapped her bare arm. Her face was like the face of her father when he was lost in dreams, and her dance expressed such vivid passion and joy that Clarissa felt breathless.

Nearest her was the beautiful woman with the corn-colored hair. She pressed right up against the wall, as though hoping to be overlooked, or needing shelter. She had a goblet-shaped drum under her left arm and stood, slightly slumped, in the same clothes she’d worn earlier while walking on the cliffs. Clarissa saw her hair screwed into a careless knot on the back of her head.

The short-haired woman was the dominant drummer. She stood before two drums of different diameter, and she too was bare breasted. Her hands moved in a mist of blue and violet sparks as she played. She swayed and stamped, playing with her whole body.

The drumbeat made Clarissa think of the sea. She thought of her father’s strong, scarred body, his skin wet and alive against hers. It was like the rhythmic movement on horseback. The comfort of it stung her nose and behind her eyes.

The only human women she’d ever known was her mother, and her mother’s neat, square house with its scrubbed kitchen, plain walls and floors was nothing like this tower room. Her mother wore plain colors and no jewelry. Her clothes were “decent,” with long sleeves, high collars and long skirts, and she asked Clarissa to cover herself every time she visited. She had rules for conversation; rules for sitting, standing and walking; and rules for appropriate ways to spend time. Clarissa, resentful and uninterested in what sounded to her nonsense, took no interest in either learning or adhering to such rules.

“Why must I follow your rules? They’re not mine.”

“Because there’s a right way to behave and a wrong way to behave. To stay safe, we must stay on an established path in life.

“Says who?”

“Says God, the father of us all.”

“He’s not my father. I have a father, and he doesn’t expect me to follow any rules.”

“Clarissa, your father is a gentle, unworldly man. He knows nothing about what a young lady needs to know, or how dangerous the world can be.”

“My father is wise and loving. I know how to behave. I have friends and family. I can take care of myself.”

“The world is full of wolves and shadows and ways to lose the path. Don’t you understand I want to protect you from making the same mistakes I did?”

Clarissa gave her mother a level look. “You forget I’m half merfolk. I don’t want to live among humans on land. I want to live in the sea with my own people, where we don’t follow meaningless rules or think about this God of yours, who takes the joy out of life!”

“Don’t say such things! I’m ashamed of you!”

“I know,” Clarissa had said, and left, making her way back to the sea with a heavy heart. Once out of sight of the town she shed her clothes and slid back into the sea’s glimmering wet arms.

More often than not, she left her mother feeling like a disappointment, yet she couldn’t stay long away from her. She longed for a woman to talk to, to share with, and to ask for advice. Surely if she spent enough time with her, her mother would realize Clarissa was fine as she was and stop trying to shape her into something she wasn’t.

She didn’t want to be changed or protected. She wanted to be loved the way she was.

Here, in this round tower room, with these human women, she felt warmth and beauty and passion. Here was music, color, grace and body. Next to these women, her mother seemed as cold and lifeless as a dry stick. Did these women follow God? Did they fear wolves and shadows? Would they turn her away, find her disappointing and inappropriate? Uneasily, she covered her bare breasts with one arm. Perhaps women like this had incomprehensible rules as well. Perhaps she should not have come.

PERSEPHONE

For Persephone, Rapunzel’s drumming forced another step into the life and feeling she was determined to avoid. To roam barefoot with Cerus, letting the sun and wind tangle her hair, to smooth his heavy milk-white flanks, trace the spiral of his marble horns, feel the strong thrust of his tongue and smell the half-chewed slime of grass he left on the skin of her arms after his caress was one thing. But to dance was to feel. To dance was to rediscover oneself, to let go of restraint and careful defenses. Panic made her palms greasy with sweat and her heart race painfully. She would not. She could not bear it.

She looked at Ginger’s smooth round breasts, her ribs curving above her firm belly, and thought of her own misshapen body with revulsion. Her belly felt loose and slack, her breasts hollow and flabby. She was vile. Hades had thrust into her womb with death, not life. She was stained; tainted beyond repair. She hated looking at herself. The drums mocked her with their sensual voices. She would never be beautiful and desirable again.

Tentatively, she struck the dumbek lightly with flat hands, settling without thinking into a simple one-two stroke like a heartbeat. She paid no attention to Rapunzel’s rhythm and made no effort to join it. She averted her eyes from Ginger’s flowing dance and waited, cringing, anticipating pain. Nothing happened. The witchlight left her in private shadow. The other two women paid her no attention. Her own drum sounded hardly audible, easily overcome by Rapunzel’s skilled, confident hands. No one watched. No one listened.

She relaxed fractionally. As long as she stayed with the simple one-two rhythm, she’d be all right. She remembered being on the floor before the fire in her mother’s home, her childish hands on the drum head, drawing out the instrument’s different voices. She remembered her mother, smiling, encouraging, laughing at her childish delight in this new toy.

She thought of the child she’d carried, and how the sound of her heartbeat must have defined that brief, precious existence. The child’s own heartbeat would have been quicker, lighter. Unconsciously, her hands took up a lighter, pit-pat rhythm, like small feet running or the first drops of rain.

Ginger let out a wordless cry and Persephone looked up, startled. Rapunzel danced in place as she played, feet and hands working together with the drums. She was bare breasted now, a hard grin of something like triumph on her face. As Persephone watched, Rapunzel changed into her ugly woman face. Her lumpy breasts bobbed unflatteringly, her matted hair flew in a lank clot and her misshapen hands beat out a rhythm of barbaric, savage sensuality. It was as though her ugliness fueled a passion for life. Persephone remembered Baubo dancing, wide hips jiggling, big round belly jutting, a thick dark forest of hair over the tops of her thighs and groin, mouth stretched in a hilarious grin. She thought with sudden clarity, dancing is not only for the beautiful.

For a moment this brought comfort, but only for a moment. Her momentary softening roused an even fiercer determination not to be seduced. But why? She thought to herself. If I’m not too ugly, then why can’t I dance?

Because if you do, you’ll feel, came the answer.

RAPUNZEL

Rapunzel beat gently on the two drums she’d brought to the tower. She wondered, vaguely, why she hadn’t touched them since arriving at the lighthouse. She’d practiced every day during her time with the Rusalka, finding rest, companionship, grounding and clarity. The feel of them under her hands, the sound of their voices, woke a deep desire in her for dance, in spite of what she’d said earlier to Ginger. She had a half-formed feeling dance would unleash something, uncover something best left undiscovered, but suddenly she felt impatient with being pent up, and a reckless desire for freedom swept over her, no matter the cost.

She could hear Persephone’s tentative, quiet beat, but it had nothing to do with her own rhythm. It made no effort to join with her hands, and she made no effort to join with it. As her own drumming swept her up, it faded into the background until she forgot about it. She was far more aware of the sound of Ginger’s bell bracelet. It pierced her like a silver knife. What did it remind her of? She remembered Dar, a silhouette on the hill at Rowan Tree against the darkening sky, playing his bone flute with a silvery sound, like the bells. Of course! The bells reminded her of Dar, the shape of his leg, the insouciant swirl of his cloak, his teasing smile. And he was gone. He was gone. She’d loved him and he was gone.

Suddenly she became aware of another sound, a low crackling buzz. The hair on her arms stood up. She looked down at her hands, shifting from the swollen-knuckled, scarred, nail-bitten appendages of the ugly woman to her own, strong neat-fingered hands, and saw they were outlined in blue fire. She lifted them from the drums and violet flames dripped from her fingertips. In the drums’ silence, she heard Persephone’s simple rhythm again, now a fast and fluttering heartbeat. It sounded like a frightened bird, or some small hurt creature, gone to ground, crouching and fearful.

GINGER

In the drum’s silence, Ginger’s whirling dance slowed but didn’t stop. The background fluttering beat from Persephone sounded frightened. In the room at the top of the stone tower the sound became magnified, inexorable, until Ginger felt they were joined by it in pulse, breath, the very tide of life. Her skin prickled with power, and she remembered walking through the avenue of trees with her mother and sisters in her old home. The trees, with their silver, gold and diamond leaves, had vibrated and hummed with this same sense of power. Blue fire outlined every hair on her body, along with the tips of her breasts. She spread her fingers and swept her arms through the air, violet light trailing in her fingertips’ wake. Power filled the room. It wrapped her, caressed her, joined with her. Sacred dance was a wordless practice, but not soundless. She threw back her head and cried out with wonder, like a woman in climax, and words rose in her, the right words, the only words.

“Let die what must!”

She heard Persephone gasp and cease drumming.

Rapunzel brought her hands down hard, her own fingers leaving a trail of blue light above the drum heads, and began playing again with a kind of desperate defiance. Ginger felt like an orange, red and blue flame, elemental as the wind, wild as a whirlpool.

Sensing movement from the corner of her eye, Persephone swung around to look at the shadows along the curving wall where the stairs wound.

White-faced, naked, a child crouched on a stone step, watching.

PERSEPHONE

Perhaps nothing could have distracted Persephone more quickly from her own pain than the sight of a child in distress. Without thought she set the dumbek down, took three steps and took the stranger in her arms.

Her first impression had been of a child, but she held a young woman dwelling in the gravid pause between childhood and womanhood. Her body was mature, but she put her arms around Persephone’s neck and clung, pressing her face into Persephone’s shoulder. Persephone held her firmly, rocking a little as she sat on the stone step. She could feel the girl’s heart thumping steadily, her excited but steady breathing. Her wet hair smelled of the sea.

Rapunzel had stopped drumming and the room was silent.

“I’m Persephone,” said Persephone, falling into the gentle, reassuring ritual of give and take she’d enacted so many times as Queen of the Underworld. “What’s your name?”

“Clarissa,” came the muffled reply, and then, “You’re so beautiful. Why don’t you dance? Why is your hair tied? I want to see it.”

“I…” Persephone, still rocking, had a sudden feeling of reversal, as though Clarissa comforted her. Tears spilled down her cheeks, unstoppable, silent and oddly releasing. Clarissa pulled away slightly, released Persephone’s neck and pulled the pins from her hair. It fell like a thick disheveled curtain down her back and Clarissa combed it with her fingers, draping it over them both, smiling with delight.

“Much better,” said Ginger approvingly. She stood near a window, watching, and spoke casually but warmly. Rapunzel, with a movement of her finger, directed a ball of witchlight so it shone on Ginger’s flushed face. “I was hoping as hard as I could for someone to dance with. I don’t suppose you would, would you? My name’s Ginger, by the way.”

“I don’t know how,” said Clarissa, eyes gleaming with interest.

“Have you ever tried?” asked Rapunzel.

“No,” said Clarissa.

“Everyone has a dance,” said Rapunzel. “You just haven’t made friends with yours yet.”

“You’re helping the lightkeeper,” said Clarissa.

“I’m Rapunzel. Yes, I help keep the light now.”

“I’ll try to dance, but I liked the drum like a heartbeat. It was you, wasn’t it?” she turned to speak to Persephone, who was recovering from her inaudible storm of tears. Will you dance, too? Will you show me what to do?”

“I’ll drum the heartbeat,” said Rapunzel quickly.

Persephone, fairly caught, looked from Clarissa’s imploring face to Ginger, who smiled at her with a kind of aloof warmth, allowing her to make her own decision; and Rapunzel, who caught her eye, turned into the scowling ugly woman and then turned back.

Clarissa gasped with surprise at the same time Persephone chuckled in spite of herself. She wiped her cheeks a final time, sighed, took Clarissa’s hand and stood up. “If I’m going to dance, I want to feel like…a girl,” she said. “Come see if there’s anything you like, Clarissa.”

“But she—“ Clarissa stared at Rapunzel.

“I know. Ignore her. She’s teasing. We’ll tell you about it later.”

Persephone found a crinkled skirt of violet blue, turned her back to the others, slid off her clothes and pulled it on, covering her breasts with an off-the-shoulder clinging top in a lighter shade matching the skirt.

“Now you’ll match the spirit candles,” said Clarissa approvingly. She’d chosen a long floating garment like a bathrobe in warm earth tones, light and sheer and open at the front.

“Is that what you call the blue light?” asked Rapunzel.

“It’s what sailors call it. They think it’s good luck. They say the twins send it as a sign. I’ve only ever seen it at sea during stormy weather. Sometimes it outlines whole ships. Is it gone?”

“Who--?” began Rapunzel, but Ginger silenced her with a look.

“I don’t know,” Ginger said to Clarissa. “Perhaps it’ll come back if we dance.”

Rapunzel, shrugging, laid her hands motionless on her drums for a moment and then took up a slow, regular rhythm.

“Stand still for a minute,” said Persephone, swaying to the drumbeat without moving her feet. “Give yourself to the music. Let everything go. Watch Ginger.”

Ginger began moving, her feet keeping the rhythm. Her face looked abstracted, distant. Arms, hips, skirt and hair flowed together in a quiet dance.

Clarissa, standing before Persephone, closed her eyes. Persephone watched the music take Clarissa into its embrace. Eyes closed, she gave herself to it willingly, no longer needing outside guidance. When she opened her eyes, Persephone gave her an encouraging nod and turned aside to search for her own place in the dance.

Persephone danced across the smooth floor, the wood supple beneath her bare feet, and looked out a window. Stars pierced the dark sky; the cliffs stood remote and solid against the restless sea. She thought of Cerus, his male strength and virility, his milky beauty, his hard horns and red eyes. The drumbeat quickened, deepened. Blue and violet light flickered like a swarm of fireflies.

Persephone danced.

***

“But who is she?” Ginger asked.

The three women ate breakfast the morning after the dance. Clarissa had refused either to stay or say where she was going, slipping out the door after their dance, as naked as she’d come.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. I promise!” was all she would say.

“I expect she’ll tell us when she’s ready,” said Rapunzel calmly.

Ginger surveyed her. “You already know, don’t you?” she said accusingly.

“No. I can guess, though. But I think we should let her tell us in her own time.”

“I agree,” said Persephone. “Some things take time.” She poured the last of the tea into Ginger’s cup, pushing it toward her.

“Thank you for the dance. I didn’t want to -- but it was good.”

“I thought it was dreadful,” said Rapunzel, putting on her ugly woman face. “A dreadful dance engineered by dreadful, interfering old women.”

Ginger touched Persephone’s hand with affection while laughing at Rapunzel.

“I liked it,” came a voice from the door. “Can we do it again?”

“I suppose we will,” Rapunzel sighed. Casually, she threw a shawl over Clarissa’s goose-pimpled shoulders and gave her a push in the direction of the empty chair. “Hungry?”

“No thank you,” said Clarissa like a good child. She ignored the proffered chair and went instead to the large chunk of driftwood against the wall. She ran her hands lovingly over it and heaved it into a different position. “It goes like this. See the shape of the goat with his curly fish’s tail? He’s called Pricus. Here’s one horn, but the other broke off.” She stayed crouched before the wood, the shawl’s fringe sweeping the floor, head bent and eyes veiled.

“A seagoat,” said Ginger. “I like that. Are they real?”

“The sea is full of wonders,” said Rapunzel absently, eyes on Clarissa. “’A ceiling of amber, a pavement of pearl.’”

Clarissa sprang to her feet, shocked, her face white.

“Where did you hear that?” she demanded fiercely.

“I read it,” said Rapunzel quietly. The lightkeeper who lived here before us left some papers when he—“

Clarissa put out a hand in wordless denial and Rapunzel stopped, her face softening.

“I met him,” said Persephone, “the lightkeeper.”

“You did?” asked Clarissa in amazement.

“Yes,” said Persephone. “We talked. His name was Irvin and he loved poetry and stories. This was his lighthouse. He was happy here. He was a merman but he had human friends and the land fascinated him. He’d married a human a long time ago and had two children with her…”

“Where is he? Where did you meet him? When is he coming back? I knew it wasn’t true!” Clarissa’s eyes shone with hope. They were strange eyes, like abalone shell, almost silvery in the morning light coming in the open door.

“Come here,” said Persephone, holding out her hands. She’d washed her hair before breakfast and left it lose to dry. She’d reacquired some of the serenity Rapunzel remembered in her from their first meeting at Rowan Tree. Her eyes were clear in her newly-lined face and she seemed more present than Rapunzel had seen her during their time in the tower.

Clarissa went to her eagerly, hands outstretched to meet Persephone’s. “Clarissa,” said Persephone, “I’m the Queen of the Underworld. I met your father in Hades.”

Clarissa stood quite still, looking at Persephone steadily out of her strange light eyes. Persephone saw courage and strength in the women she was becoming. She also realized Clarissa had known her father was gone. She hadn’t accepted, but she’d known. They were watching the final surrender.

“I’ve lost someone, too,” whispered Persephone, and tears fell down her cheeks. Her grip tightened on Clarissa’s hands, and Clarissa tightened her own grip in response. “I lost my baby.”

Clarissa cried, too, as silently as Persephone, but she smiled. She knelt before Persephone’s chair, freed one of her hands and laid it on Persephone’s empty belly.

“The next one won’t die,” she said.

Ginger, who was also crying, caught her breath.

Persephone, bewildered, looked from Clarissa’s upturned face to Rapunzel.

“She’s half merfolk,” explained Rapunzel. “They possess the gift of prophecy -- and fertility.”

Clarissa laid her head on Persephone’s thigh like a tired child and Persephone felt the cloth of her leggings grow wet as she cried. She rested her free hand on Clarissa’s damp head and they wept together.

While Ginger sat quietly and bore witness to Persephone’s and Clarissa’s grief, Rapunzel brewed tea and made toast out of oatmeal bread, setting a pot of jam on the table with it. In spite of their recent breakfast, she, Ginger and Persephone helped themselves, and Clarissa took two pieces and ate hungrily. Clarissa’s lashes still clumped together with her tears, but she’d blown her nose lustily and seemed, for the time being, to have shed some of her grief. A sticky smear of jam on one cheek made her look very young.

Rapunzel, who’d been holding back her questions since the night before, now gave way to her curiosity.

“Last night you said the twins send the spirit candles to the sailors. What twins?”

Clarissa chewed, swallowed, and said “Castor and Pollux.”

“Gemini,” said Rapunzel.

“Yes, but the constellation called Gemini is only a picture.”

“What do you mean, a picture?” asked Ginger.

Clarissa turned to her. “It’s like a placeholder for the twins. They can go into the night sky, among the stars, and be together, but they’re not always there. When they’re not there the constellation we call Gemini is an empty outline of stars, like an empty room. At least, that’s the way my father told the story.”

“Tell us,” said Rapunzel intently, almost urgently.

Clarissa looked at her in mild surprise. “I’ll try. I haven’t told one of his stories to someone else, though. I might get it wrong.”

“You won’t get it wrong,” said Persephone with confidence. “Retelling his stories and poetry will keep him alive and close. He’ll never be entirely gone while his words are remembered and passed on.”

Clarissa nodded, accepting this. She picked up a few last crumbs with a moistened fingertip, drained her cup, wiped her mouth and sat back.

“Well, first of all, we merfolk have always studied the night sky. We’re active during the night because it’s safer for us to stay hidden from humans. Most humans, anyway,” she said apologetically, looking around.

“For generations we’ve navigated by the stars, just as sailors do, and we’ve seen pictures and patterns among the stars and told stories about them. The sky speaks to us of cycles and seasons and a cosmos much larger than the world of the sea we know. Some of our elders say the night sky reveals an infinity of galaxies and nebulae, strung like jewels on threads of matterenergytime. The threads are called a funny name. I can’t remember it.”

“Yrtym,” said Rapunzel.

“That’s it!” said Clarissa, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Someone told me about it recently,” said Rapunzel. She nodded to Ginger and Persephone. “Heks.”

“Heks!” said Ginger, amazed. “But how--?”

“Later,” said Rapunzel. She turned to Clarissa. “Go on.”

“Well, I don’t quite understand, but Dad said our elders say Yrtym is everywhere, in the water, in the earth, everywhere, but its threads are so fine we can’t see it, even though all life is strung between it and supported by it. He said it connects everything and it’s alive and intelligent. It makes life possible. It’s like the mother of life.”

“I haven’t heard of this,” said Persephone, fascinated.

“It’s true,” said Clarissa, slightly defensive, “but I might not be quite right. I don’t understand it very well.”

“I don’t doubt you, sweetheart,” said Persephone, smiling at her. “I only meant I hadn’t heard about it, that’s all.”

“You were going to tell us about the twins,” prompted Rapunzel.

Clarissa’s slight frown cleared. “Yes, that’s right. I was telling about the stars, wasn’t I…”

“Once upon a time, before the moons and sea found one another and the silver tide ebbed and flowed with their passion, two boys were born from their mother’s dark, salty womb. This mother was called the Star-Bearer, for she collected planets and orbs and spheres, comets and cosmic dust, and sowed the night sky with stars. The Star-Bearer lay with the Sun, the Lightmaker, Yr, he of green and gold. He was a Seed-Bearer, and his seed entered the Star-Bearer and their sons swam in her belly like little glimmering fish, one silver and one gold, until they were too crowded to move, and then they fit themselves against each other and waited for the tide that would carry them into life.

The red birth tide came on the year’s longest night, when the snow and frost and stars lose themselves in one another, when the White Lady flies like ash on the wind and the black sky is deeper than the deepest sea. On this night the twins were born into the hands of the Queen of the Crossroads.”

“Hecate,” breathed Persephone in wonder.

“So they were born, and they had many mothers, their flesh and milk mother and foster mothers, among them the Wise Weaver, the Awakened One and the dancing trickster who sees through her nipples.

The twins are called by many names, but the merfolk and sailors call them Castor and Pollux. Castor was the silver twin and Pollux the golden one.

When their childhood was over, they parted, for each had important work to do and it was not the same work. Pollux went out into the world as a Seed-Bearer, like his father. He learned to wield tools and take life to provide life. In his youth he roamed the Green World, primordial and inescapable, calling winter into spring and searching for his mate.

Castor answered the road’s siren song and traveled uncounted miles with his cart and horse, through silver night and golden day. Story collector, peddler, piper, he wove in and out of the world’s threads like a comet trailing a jeweled tail. He had a special affection for travelers and became a friend to sailors, commanding the wind with his bone flute and sending spirit candles to light their way through storms.

Now and then the wheel of time reunited the twins, and they still fit together as they had in the dark night of their mother’s flesh-bound sea. But time is restless and must ebb and flow, and they reunited and parted, reunited and parted, until one day Pollux, exhausted and diminished with harvest, traveled in Castor’s jolting cart to rest in Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and the twins parted again.

Pollux, on the last night of his life, journeyed to a forest filled with trees like gnarled hands on the year’s longest night and was cast into the fire by a circle of power and reborn into the Firebird’s waiting talons, a jeweled creature of eternal renewal.

Castor, on the last night of his life, lay down by the side of his cart on a desert track on the year’s longest night and breathed his last breath under a falcon’s pointed wings and the ageless gaze of the child Nephthys, Lady of Bones, who surrendered him also to the Firebird’s care.

On the same night twins were born from their mother’s dark, salty womb into the hands of the Queen of the Crossroads, one silver and one gold, as the wheel continues to turn.”

Clarissa’s voice stilled, and for a moment they rested in the story’s spell.

“Beautiful,” said Persephone. She glanced from Ginger to Rapunzel. “Was that Lugh and Dar’s story?”

Ginger shook her head, lifting her shoulders in a small shrug.

“But there must be more,” said Rapunzel, frustrated. “The story doesn’t explain anything! Is each set of twins Castor and Pollux all over again with different names, or is each set of twins entirely different? Are Castor and Pollux the same as Dar and Lugh? And if Mary gives birth to the twins, is she always the same mother — or are there different mothers? Is she reborn, too? But if Lugh was the twins’ father, how could he also be Mary’s son?” Her voice rose and by the end of her questions she was striding back and forth in the stone-encircled room.

“Rapunzel,” said Persephone, effortlessly adopting the tone of a queen who expects to be heeded.

“What?” snapped Rapunzel, pausing.

“Life and death are a great mystery. You know that. We here can’t answer your questions, and it may be no one can.”

“Perhaps you’ll see him again,” said Ginger compassionately. “Perhaps some part of him is still turning with the wheel.”

Rapunzel glared at her. “I don’t want to see anyone again!” She turned on her heel and swept out the door like a gust of irritated wind.

Clarissa turned a troubled face to Persephone. “What’s wrong? Did I tell the story badly? I think I did it the way my father used to.”

Persephone laughed, finding it unaccustomed and strange.

“No, sweetheart, you told it beautifully. Were those your words or your father’s?”

“His words, as well as I could remember. He made everything sound so beautiful…” Her lip trembled.

“Rapunzel’s sad because she loved someone, someone she expected to see again, but he -- died,” said Ginger to Clarissa.

Persephone looked at her, surprised. “Do you mean Dar?”

“Yes,” said Ginger.

“Oh, my,” said Persephone, feeling ashamed. “I’ve been too caught up in my own feelings to even think about hers.”

“You might have noticed she doesn’t want to talk about it anyway,” said Ginger with a smile, “but she was part of the reason Baubo sent me. She thought perhaps you both needed to dance your feelings.”

“Dar’s a funny name,” said Clarissa. “Was he a twin?”

“He was,” answered Persephone, “just like Castor, and they were fond of one another, Dar and Rapunzel.”

“So we’ve each lost someone,” said Clarissa gravely.

“Yes, but you’ve each found someone, too,” said Ginger, “and that’s joyful.”

HADES

Without Persephone, Hades’ life in the Underworld lost its shape. Before her coming he’d taken little account of regular sleep and meals. All hours were the same in the Underworld. He couldn’t be bothered to create a routine, seeing no use in it. But she, so fresh from the Green World, naturally kept a rhythm of sleep and waking, work and play, bathing and meals. He discovered, somewhat to his surprise, how much better he felt and functioned in a predictable routine.

Now, in her absence, he slipped into apathy. He rarely felt hungry and avoided sleep. The rooms that had contained his life with Persephone became terrible to him. He couldn’t say whether hope or despair had sharper teeth, but they both gnawed unceasingly at his heart.

He’d taken Odin’s advice and continued his work as best he could. As he followed this course, he acknowledged Odin’s wisdom, for he found relief during his hours with the dead souls. If he could do nothing for Persephone, he could do much for others, and in the doing days passed in a confused haze of fatigue and grief. He discovered the loss of Persephone and his child’s death made him a better guide for the dead. His compassion and patience had enlarged, and listening to stories of other men and women, ordinary yet unique, provided him with perspective. Others had suffered loss. Children were lost every day. He was not alone in grief, at least.

Dogged and determined, he’d pulled himself through some weeks after visiting Odin when, after a brief period of sleep saturated with bad dreams, Kadmos, his manservant, roused him.

“Lord, someone comes from the river.” Kadmos’ voice was awed. No one in Hades’ memory had ever come out of the River Styx. The wizened aged boatman who ferried others across the black muscular water, cold as space, was the only creature, living or dead, who would have anything to do with it.

For a singing moment, Hades’ heart leapt. Could it be?

“Who? Who comes?” he asked eagerly.

“He — he says he’s your brother, Lord,” stammered Kadmos.

Hope was extinguished at once. “Oh…what? What did you say? My brother?”

Kadmos inclined his head.

Hades, dressed now, snapped his fingers at Hope, who slept by his pallet. She woke and came to his heel.

“Thank you, Kadmos,” he said. “I’ll see to it.”

His thoughts were an incoherent jumble as he strode through tunnels, making his way down to the River Styx. It couldn’t possibly be his brother Poseidon, could it? After all these years? But who else would dare the River Styx in search of him?

Poseidon was his younger brother by two years. They weren’t friends, but Hades tolerated Poseidon better than their youngest brother, Zeus. Poseidon had brains, and Hades admitted to himself he envied Poseidon’s nimble wit and learning. Zeus was proud, arrogant and entitled, and Hades saw the worst of himself reflected in the younger man.

As a young man, Poseidon sought and received an education. He was particularly interested in astronomy. He was interested in women, too, and they in him. In this the three brothers shared a competitive commonality. Poseidon ruled the oceans, at least in theory. In actuality, he traveled widely; bred, trained, and raced Fasari Barahi, green sea horses, bred sea wolves; and collected and played marbles with the likes of Odin and Baba Yaga. He delegated the onerous chore of overseeing the oceans to the able and competent sea kings who managed, for the most part, quite well without him.

This arrangement suited everyone. Poseidon was free to pursue women, play with his animals and indulge his other interests with little interference. In consequence he was charming, sophisticated, good humored and an unashamed sensualist.

Ever since the memorable day in which the three brothers drew lots for management of the seas, the Underworld and the sky, they had parted ways. Poseidon and Zeus were satisfied with their lots, but Hades had bitterly resented his fate until Persephone came into his life, and effectively isolated himself in his angry misery from all but Odin, for whom he’d had a grudging respect approaching liking.

Now, as Hades made his way down to the River Styx, he found himself looking forward to seeing his brother again. He was a different man than the surly, resentful one Poseidon had last seen. Had his brother changed, too? What had time and life made him? And what could he possibly want?

Styx was a silent river. It poured itself through the Underworld’s stony embrace, smelling of wet rock. As Hades approached, he heard two voices. The old boatman, who’d hardly spoken a word in Hades’ hearing, was actually conversing in a high sharp creaking voice. The other voice sounded amused, educated and exhortative.

“…Now I’m going to try to hit your glassie, or at least get close to it…there. I missed you, but if I can touch one marble with my thumb and the other with my middle finger…that’s called spanners . . . there. I can. So I keep your marble but my aggie stays there. Now use another marble to chase me…”

“I’ll chase you, sonny, right into Hell!” The boatman wheezed with laughter.

“Big talk, old man, big talk. That’s right. Hold it like this, see? Now shoot!”

Hades stood in the shadows beyond the feeble flickering lantern that usually sat in the boat. The boatman and his brother knelt on the stone, hunched over. Hades clearly heard the click of one marble hitting another.

“Ha! Got you. Hand it over, hand it over. I thought you were some kind of expert, but you’re no match for me! Age before beauty! Age before beauty! He, he, he, he, he…”

Hades cleared his throat meaningfully, and Poseidon, hand poised to shoot his next marble, relaxed and turned his face to his brother. He sprang youthfully to his feet.

“Hayseed!”

The old childish nickname made Hades grin.

“Posey. I thought the place smelled better than usual. Why are you distracting my boatman?”

“I’m not distracting him. I’m teaching him the sophisticated game of kings. I’m improving his reflexes. I’m providing him with a hobby.”

“You’ll ruin him for his job. I need his services.”

“Nonsense. The laborer is worthy of his hire, that’s all. You must increase his pay. Better yet, let the gem masters make him a marble now and then so he can start his own collection.”

Poseidon swept his hand over the stone, collecting the marbles, and poured them into the boatman’s hand. “Practice,” he advised briskly, “and look after my trident, would you?”

The brothers walked side by side through the tunnels. Hades felt hulking next to his brother’s shorter, less massive frame, though Poseidon’s shoulders were of impressive width. He was clean shaven, his dark curly hair clipped short. His interested gaze took in the tunnel walls and ceiling, the lights in brackets, side rooms and side passages. Hope had left her post at Hades’ left heel and sniffed suspiciously in Poseidon’s wake. He ignored her. “She smells the sea wolves and horses,” he said to Hades. “She’ll make friends when she’s ready. Beautiful bitch, by the way.”

“Odin gave her to me,” said Hades. “I call her Hope.”

Poseidon grunted with what might have been amusement but made no further comment.

Kadmos, anticipating the need, had set the table for two. When the two men appeared, he produced hot coffee, mead, a round of bread, meat, strong-smelling goat cheese, marinated olives, and a bowl of apples. He replenished the fire and exited, tray in hand, shutting the door behind him. Hope went to her place in near the hearth, turned in a circle once or twice and subsided with a sigh on her sheepskin bed.

The two men helped themselves and ate and drank, neither hurrying to break the silence. Poseidon sampled the mead and cocked an eyebrow at Hades.

“Odin’s?”

Hades nodded assent and Poseidon took another sip, closing his eyes and savoring the flavor.

When they had finished and pushed their plates away, they took their coffee and mead and seated themselves in two padded chairs before the fire.

“So,” said Hades encouragingly, as though his brother was a soul newly come to Hades and needed help beginning its story.

Poseidon shot him an amused look. “You’ve changed,” he remarked. “There was a time you’d have pounded it out of me.”

Hades felt nettled, but his brother’s gaze was friendly and affectionate. There were new lines in his face, but they were lines of good humor and a life lived under the sky and its weather. Hades shrugged. “My wife’s had a civilizing influence.”

Poseidon, his dark eyes compassionate, said, “I heard of your trouble. I’m sorry for it, Hayseed.”

Hades, without meeting his eyes, made a dismissive gesture and dropped his hand to Hope’s ruff, sinking his fingers into her dense coat.

“I’ve come both to ask and to tell,” said Poseidon, adopting a businesslike manner. “Events on Webbd concern us all and if we’re to avoid destruction we must work together.”

Hades remembered his conversation with Odin. “Odin spoke about some kind of cosmic web breaking down. It was a strange word -- yartam?”

“Yrtym,” said Poseidon. “Yes. The web of matterenergytime. It appears it’s unraveling, and without the scaffold it creates, earth, oceans and even stars will collapse. Yrtym is the very fabric of the cosmos, and for some reason it’s weakening.”

“You speak in riddles, like Odin,” said Hades impatiently. “I don’t understand you. What exactly is happening?”

Poseidon sighed, sounding exasperated, and Hades was flung back to his boyhood, watching his younger brother outstrip him intellectually, academically and socially.

“Spare me your condescension,” he snarled in sudden anger. “You came to speak to me, remember?” In his memory, he heard Persephone, coaxing a soul into telling its story. “Help me understand,” he said quietly.

Poseidon chuckled ruefully. “You’re right, brother. I apologize. I daresay by now you know many things I can’t understand, after all.”

“Only if I refuse to tell you about them,” said Hades pointedly.

“The truth is, I’m not sure how much to say. I don’t want to make anything harder for you.”

“By all the Gods, Posey, spit it out or I will pound it out of you! I don’t want your protection! Speak plainly and don’t leave anything out! What the hell is going on?”

“Listen, then,” said Poseidon, resigned. “I’ll tell you what I know…”

Hades sat back, his hand idly resting on Hope’s neck, and heard for the first time about the delicate, complex living system of the sea; the currents and tides, the effect of temperature, light and depth, the food web’s microscopic foundations, the complicated chemistry and all the interwoven life forms.

“And under that system is another system,” said Poseidon at length, “the system we call Yrtym, and it’s made up of matterenergytime. It’s largely invisible, but it’s there, like a huge, intelligent net, and it connects everything, not only in the sea but in the earth and the cosmos as well. It sends and gathers information and nutrients, it learns, it grows and it adapts.”

“And something’s wrong with it?” asked Hades, fascinated.

“Something’s wrong with it.”

“How do we know?”

Poseidon reached out and laid a hand on Hade’s arm.

“We know because healthy patterns and connections are breaking down. You know, because it’s happened to you.”

“Oh, come on, Posey!” Hades rose abruptly to his feet. “That’s just a private -- just a thing that’s happening all the time! Unions break up every day! Children die. People die -- and life changes. That’s always been the pattern!”

“Yes. But the King and Queen of the Underworld don’t divide. The Green World’s growing and resting cycles endure, driven by Demeter, the Corn Mother, and her daughter, Persephone. You’re no ordinary human couple. You’re part of the great wheel of life. You know Persephone can’t tear herself from the fabric of the Underworld. The Norns themselves ordained it when she ate from the pomegranate.”

Hades shook his head doubtfully, pacing before the fire with his hands clasped behind his back.

“That’s not the only sign,” Poseidon continued. “There’s a slow destruction at connecting points, at threshold places and portals. A lighthouse keeper on a desolate coast was killed by a storm, and he was part merman, mind you, one of my people. He was an empath, an intuitive, a storyteller, and he connected the land and the sea, both geographically and in his body, for he made his home in both worlds. He created a safe passage and when he died the passage closed and lives were lost. That’s partly why I’ve come -- to warn you. You too stand on a threshold, and you must be alert and mindful of any change in Webbd’s matrix. Hel, too, is at risk, and Odin.”

“The strangest event that’s happened here is your arrival and the road you chose to use,” said Hades, with a rueful smile.

“There’s more,” said Poseidon, returning the smile, but soberly. “The oldest trees on Webbd are dying. Many kinds are affected in many different places, but no one knows why. Also, and this disturbs me most of all, stars are disappearing.”

Hades gaped at him, surprised out of his restless pacing. “The stars are disappearing?”

“Yes. The Yrtym holding them together is weakening. In fact, I pulled down the constellation of Cerus not long ago with my trident. It took little effort to tear him away from the sky.”

“And what exactly were you doing near the constellation of Cerus?”

“Trying to seduce a luscious naiad in the Celestial River,” Poseidon replied casually. “The Celestial River, if you don’t know, is the constellation Eridanus, which is near Cerus.”

Hades sat in his chair and eyed his unabashed brother with disapproval. “Was the seduction a success?” he enquired dryly.

“No. She set a crocodile on me, the wench!”

“Serves you right. So what did you do with Cerus?”

“I sent him to Persephone.”

Hades hunched in his chair. “You sent Cerus the bull to Persephone?”

Poseidon chuckled and Hades flushed and closed his mouth abruptly.

“You look like a boy again, Hayseed, with your mouth fallen open.”

Hades glared at him and Poseidon raised a placating hand. “I’m not teasing you. Persephone is at the lighthouse that belonged to the keeper I spoke of who was killed. I suspect his soul passed through here and it seemed to her a good refuge. She’s not alone. There’s a young witch with her, an acquaintance of Persephone’s. The queen has taken a deep wound, brother, as have you.”

Hades shaded his eyes with his hand and looked down.

“It’s not your fault,” said Poseidon gently. “She knows it. But right now she needs the company of women and the wisdom of the Green World to heal and come back to herself so she can return to you. Cerus had a broken horn; perhaps it broke because of the Yrtym breaking down. I don’t know. But if so, he may have fallen eventually in any case. He must have been bewildered when I pulled him from the sky. I thought they might help one another, as indeed they have. Give her time, and I believe she’ll come home.”

For a moment, Hades couldn’t speak. Then he cleared his throat and said gruffly, “What do you want me to do about the Yrtym? What can anyone do?”

Poseidon smiled ruefully, and shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t think anyone knows what to do. Perhaps there’s nothing to be done. Nobody seems to understand why connections are breaking down, and if we can’t identify the cause we won’t find the cure. I have this idea…well, not an idea so much as a feeling…”

Hades, glancing up at his Poseidon’s face, saw a kind of embarrassed determination that made his brother seem young and unsure of himself. In an instant, Hades’ defensiveness was swept away by a wave of fraternal protectiveness.

“Tell me,” he encouraged.

“You’ll think I’m a fool,” said Poseidon, “and perhaps I am, but my sense is the best action we can take as things fall apart is to stay together.”

Hades raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“I mean, you and I have been out of touch for a long time. Watching things loosen and break away from each other -- dividing, if you will -- makes me want to do the opposite. You, know, create connection and maintain it, keep it whole.”

“But the sea and the Underworld have never been much connected,” said Hades.

“Maybe they should be,” said Poseidon stubbornly, not meeting Hades’ eyes. “That’s not what I mean, though, or at least not all. I miss you, Hayseed. I want to see you and talk to you and know you. I want to meet Persephone and know her. I want us to be friends. It probably won’t help the Yrtym at all. Yrtym is much bigger than we are, but it’s something we can do, a protest, a counteraction against division.”

“I see,” said Hades slowly. “Posey, are you frightened?”

“Yes. I’m a gregarious fellow. I love life, I love women, and I’m awed by the marvelous complex connection I sense everywhere. If we begin amputating one kind of life from another, every amputation point will become infected and diseased, and the disease will spread and overtake us all eventually. I refuse to be amputated. I hold out my hand to you. Will you take it, and hold on, whatever comes?”

For answer, Hades, standing with his back to the fire, extended his hand. Poseidon clasped it, smiling into his face, the firelight revealing a sheen of unshed tears his eyes.

HEKS

Heks made her way slowly toward the sea. After her hermitage on the snowy mountaintop with the Sickle Moon Bear, the scrubby land and late fall sun felt luxurious and welcoming. Now, in midafternoon, it was warm enough to unfasten the wool cloak Maria had made her, neither green nor grey, but some indeterminate color in between.

She’d traveled much longer than she’d expected to. The portal nearest the lighthouse was no longer open, necessitating using another, more distant one. She wondered if the portal at Rowan Tree still functioned.

However, now she neared her goal. The lighthouse could not be far ahead. The breeze brought the smell of the sea. There, she knew, she would find Ginger, Persephone and Rapunzel. Baba Yaga had hinted at someone else, muttering about a “useless piece of flotsam,” but refused to explain further. Neither would she explain the Queen of the Underworld’s presence at the tower, so far from Hades, where she should be joyously reuniting with King Hades in this season.

Heks didn’t know how long she’d been alone in the cold and snow, absorbing the gleaming company of the galaxies, but it felt like an age, at least as long as her life with the charcoal burner, now a pale memory. She looked forward to the company of women again.

All day she’d traveled through sweeping fields and sparse farmland. Gradually, as she neared the sea, the soil became thinner and thinner over Webbd’s bones. This land supported no trees. She followed no path, but walked according to the stars’ nightly guidance, straight as the crow flies over the gently undulating land.

Heks climbed the last steps to a low rocky ridge, a landmark she’d been moving toward for the last three or four miles. Below the rocky crest, the hill sloped down into a sheltered depression with a narrow stream wandering through it. It trapped the sun, and the grass growing along the trickling water grew thicker and showed a deeper green than that on the hills.

An enormous white bull lay at rest, jaws moving, in the thick grass, and a few feet away a naked woman stood ankle-deep in the stream. She bent over, scrabbling for wet rocks like a child. Her long hair, dropping like thick honey, trailed carelessly in the water.

Heks sank quietly down behind the concealing ridge, drawing her cloak around her again, for she crouched in cool shadow on the north side of the rock.

The woman straightened up, inspecting rocks in her dripping palm, and Heks recognized Persephone. For a moment, Persephone remained absorbed in what she held, her face abstracted, and then she tilted her hand and let the rocks fall back into the water with small splashes. She bent, rinsing her hands, and then stood again, rubbing her wet hands over her arms, and then her hips. Persephone waded along until she found a pool and crouched, splashing herself with the water and washing her body. She put her hand in the water, brought up a handful of coarse-looking sand, and rubbed it over her skin. Heks imagined it must feel like sandpaper and winced, but Persephone appeared careless of any discomfort.

Body washed, Persephone released the sand and rolled onto her back, letting the water splash over her body, hair feathering out like seaweed in the current. She couldn’t fully submerge in the shallow stream, and the twin hills of breasts and shallower rise of belly became islands, along with her face, knees and toes. She lay with her eyes closed, letting the water wash over her, legs spread and arms relaxed at her sides.

Heks, who had often bathed alone in the river in early mornings at Rowan Tree, remembered the current tugging against her body, and the living water’s busy murmur in her ears. She remembered her gratitude for the friendly river’s touch, the pull and push against her flesh and hair. She too had opened herself to the lively cool caress that took no notice of age, beauty or modesty.

In a youthful movement, Persephone rolled and stood, letting water run off her body. Barefoot in the grass, she left the stream and approached the bull.

The animal came out of his ruminative daze and nuzzled Persephone like a puppy. Heks noticed for the first time he had a broken horn, and the sight of it set off a dim bell in her memory. She watched the woman and the bull, groping for the elusive thought. Where had she seen or heard of a bull with a broken horn?

With a gasp, she clapped a hand over the hidden pocket of marbles. They were there, lumpy and hard beneath her palm. She narrowed her eyes and examined the bull carefully. He lay with his front legs folded under him, but she could see a thick back leg ending in a massive hoof, black as obsidian.

The horns curved graceful as a lyre and cream colored, the top third of the left one cleanly broken. The bull’s hide was palest cream and glowed like…like…starlight.

Heks remembered the night on the mountain when the Sickle Moon Bear had towered above her, roaring, so she looked up into its gaping red maw, as it reached a massive arm up, its paw fringed with hanging daggers, and raked treasure from the sky, glittering star marbles and red spheres like jewels, like embers, like drops of celestial…blood.

She remembered the constellation of Cerus, in which Cerus the bull endlessly struggled to pull himself out of the black depths of the night heavens into starlight and moonlight, forever arrested by The Warrior with his shield and club. During her apprenticeship with the Sickle Moon Bear and then, later, Baba Yaga, Cerus’s horn had been broken. Had it always been so?

If she could see the creature’s eyes, she’d know for sure, but he was too far away.

Persephone had been gathering late-blooming purple asters and now sat cross-legged by Cerus’ head, deftly weaving the flowers and their stems with long grass. She draped a garland over Cerus’ horns and made a crown for her own head. Her tumbled hair dried, curling and waving over her shoulders and breasts.

Standing up, Persephone threaded asters through the cloud of gold brown hair below her navel. The bull watched her hands for a moment, gave a sigh and surged to his feet with a grunt. Heks could clearly see the paired testicles dangling between his massive back legs.

Delicately, the bull lowered his broad muzzle to Persephone’s sex and sniffed. She raised her hands, wrapping them around each horn and swaying with the bull as he rubbed his nose against her belly and hips. She widened her stance and the bull put out his tongue and lipped up an entwined aster. He raised his head to look into her face and she released his horns. Heks could hear her murmur something as she stroked his cheeks and muzzle. She bent and rubbed his broad forehead with her cheek, and then her own forehead. He turned, nuzzling against the globe of her breast. She cupped her breasts and offered them to him, and he dipped his head, velvet lips moving over her body. Her body expressed tension as she stood, slightly hunched, the long curve of her back looking desolate rather than sensual.

Heks, watching, felt troubled. Why did Persephone offer her body to this unusually gentle and beautiful white bull, rather than to Hades?

The bull turned aside, dropped his head, and took a mouthful of grass. Persephone leaned against his broad shoulder, looking like a child next to his bulk. She passed her hands over his neck, rubbing, caressing, and speaking in a low voice. She pulled a handful of drying grass and twisted it into a rough curry comb, rubbing every inch of the bull from head to tail. He appeared to enjoy it, leaning against her heavily, groaning and heaving great sighs. At last, she threw away the twist of grass and, with a light movement, sprang onto the bull’s back. He took absolutely no notice, and Persephone draped herself along the length of his back, her face turned up to the sun, one knee bent and her head pillowed on his thick neck. Her hair hung over his shoulder like a scarf.

The bull cropped peacefully at the grass; the naked woman motionless on top of him. Heks did not think she slept. The lines of her body were not relaxed and dreaming but taut. After a few minutes, she turned and lay face down on the table of the white bull’s back, one arm and one leg hanging down on each side, cheek against the humped neck above the shoulder. Idly, she moved her hands over the bull’s hide, stroking, stroking.

Taking Heks by surprise, Persephone sat up abruptly with a lithe movement.

“Run with me!” Persephone said. “Run with me somewhere, anywhere far away, until we’re too tired to think or feel or remember!” Her bare feet kick against the white bull’s sides, but he took no notice and continued grazing.

Persephone wept. She leaned forward and clung to the bull’s neck, weeping into the lustrous hide. Her bare back shuddered with grief. The bull grazed and Heks bore silent but sympathetic witness. She could offer nothing greater than the comfort of the stolid bull, the gurgling water and sheltering grassy cup’s peaceful solitude.

Gradually, Persephone calmed and her body relaxed. She sat up, pushing her hair back and blotting her cheeks. Sliding off the bull’s back, she knelt again by the water, splashing her face repeatedly and blowing her nose. She cupped her hands and drank, went to a pile of clothes lying on the grass and dressed. Combing her hair with her fingers, she reached back and braided it swiftly. The aster crown lay discarded near the stream.

“I’m going back,” she said to the bull, laying an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Will you stay and graze, or do you want to come with me?”

The bull lifted his garlanded head and snorted. They moved up and out of the hollow together, away from Heks, easy companions walking side by side.

Heks stayed concealed for some minutes, thinking about what she’d seen. After a time, she moved down the ridge, away from the small grassy valley, before resuming her course toward the sea.

CLARISSA

“Do you have a story for us tonight, Clarissa?” asked Rapunzel.

They sat, as was their habit, around the stove. They’d eaten their evening meal; the lit lantern stood on the scrubbed table. Clarissa sat cross-legged on the braided rug before the stove in her accustomed place. Ginger sat in the rocking chair, Heks and Persephone in sagging but comfortable stuffed chairs, and Rapunzel stretched out on the rug with a pillow under her head.

“Yes, but we don’t have to tell stories…” Clarissa looked shyly at Heks.

She felt entirely comfortable with Ginger, Rapunzel and Persephone now, but the newcomer was different. For one thing, she was old — older than anyone Clarissa, who hadn’t known her grandparents, had ever talked to. Her father’s old friend Marceau, a sea king, was old, she supposed, but this old woman Heks had an air of remote age Clarissa hadn’t encountered before. Clarissa felt both awed and attracted.

All the others knew Heks, and after the first surprise of finding her at the door as they prepared the evening meal, accepted her presence, much as they had accepted Clarissa’s. No one, during dinner, had asked any of the questions thronging Clarissa’s mind. Why had Heks come here, to this remote tower? Would she stay? Did she dance? Would her presence change the friendship and acceptance Clarissa felt with Persephone, Ginger and Rapunzel?

The lighthouse had become a refuge for Clarissa. In this place her father had lived and been happy. In this place she’d found dance and the kind of understanding she’d tried and failed to find from her mother.

She’d intended to tell one of her father’s stories tonight, not a new story discovered in the notes he’d left upstairs in Persephone’s room, but a story he’d told her and her brother, Chris, for years. It was her favorite story, and she’d practiced it for days in anticipation of sharing it with the others.

Clarissa hadn’t told stories before, and she found the experience enchanting. To sit with friends around the stove’s warm glow in the evenings and weave words into tales that moved and delighted her listeners was the most fun she’d ever had. Well, perhaps not better than dance, another new discovery. It felt strange to discover new parts of herself and at the same time feel so diminished by the loss of her father.

Heks smiled at Clarissa. “I like stories.”

Persephone, who’d been out all day and returned looking both exhausted and as though she’d been crying, said abruptly, “Heks. Why are you here? Is something wrong?”

Clarissa felt a flash of gratitude for this plain speaking. Concentrating on even a favorite story while the air seemed thick with unspoken words was hard.

“No, my dear,” said Heks, surprisingly gentle. “Nothing’s wrong in the sense you mean. I’ve come for Ginger.”

“Me?” asked Ginger nervously.

“You. I need to go to Rowan Tree and I thought we might travel together, if you’re ready to go home.”

“Oh,” said Ginger blankly.

“I want to stay here,” said Persephone defiantly. Her vehemence surprised Clarissa.

“Of course,” said Heks. “As long as you like. It’s nothing to do with me.”

Rapunzel sat up and eyed Heks. “What about me?”

“Are you willing to stay?”

Rapunzel put on her ugly woman face, which made Clarissa giggle, said “Humph,” and laid back down, pushing the pillow under her head irritably. She closed her eyes as though shutting out the sight of them all, but her mouth quirked at the corner and Clarissa didn’t take her rudeness seriously. She felt relieved. She didn’t want Ginger to go, but if Persephone and Rapunzel stayed it would be all right.

In fact, a general feeling of relieved tension made Clarissa confident enough to speak up. Addressing Persephone, who seemed the most distressed, she asked, “Shall I tell the story, then?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Persephone, “but there’s just one more thing.”

“What?”

“Will you come and give me a hug first?”

Clarissa knelt next to Persephone’s chair and wrapped her thin young arms around Persephone’s neck and her heavy disheveled braid. She nuzzled against her neck. “You smell grassy and fresh and like Cerus,” she said.

Persephone pulled back. “Are you saying I smell like a cow?” she asked in mock outrage.

“No,” giggled Clarissa, and then, “Yes!”

“Well, you smell like a fish! So there! Now go tell your story, and do a good job, mind! We need a good story. Show Heks how it’s done. Give Ginger a story to take home.”

Clarissa settled back into her spot and began with the traditional words of the merfolk.

“Once upon a time, before the moons and sea found one another and the silver tide ebbed and flowed with their passion, a wise enchantress in a far northern place gave birth from the cauldron of her womb to a child who was a transformation of one being into another.

The enchantress was sacred vessel, but not mother, and after the child’s birth she gave it into the sea’s keeping in a coracle lined with rabbit skins and protected with spells until it was time for the child to be found.

Time twisted and turned and swallowed its tail like an eel, and one day, a long time ago and coming again soon, an old fisherman called Elffin drew in his nets and found, instead of the salmon he hoped for, a weathered coracle, lined with rabbit skins, and inside it a child with shining white light around its brow.

Reverently, Elffin took the child home to his wife. They unwrapped it and found a perfect little boy, but no clue to where he came from or where he belonged. They named him Seren, which means star, and let it be known they’d adopted him.

The babe happily took milk from their goat and throve, crawling in the dirt yard among the animals and chickens and playing contentedly in the fishing net folds as his foster mother repaired them.

From the beginning, he proved an easy child, observing everything with wide-eyed interest and accepting what life brought with little fuss. Thanks to his foster father’s skill with the nets, the family did not go hungry, and the humble old couple gave him all the love and affection they had, though they had little else to give.

Though ignorant and poor, Elffin and his wife suspected Seren’s crown of white light marked him as one touched by the faeries or otherwise blessed, and indeed, the child began speaking during his first year, and making songs and poems before his second. Word traveled of the precocious child, and teachers came. Seren learned so quickly it seemed he already knew everything they had to teach and more, only needing to be reminded.

Just twelve years after he’d been found, Seren could earn in an evening more than his father did in a month of fishing, making poems and songs and relating histories of families, kingdoms, battles and deeds. People said he might one day become a great bard. He was handsome and self-possessed, confident in his gifts. His fame spread and his presence was requested across the land, so he left his foster parents and went out into the world to begin a man’s life.”

Clarissa looked at each of them in turn, eyes shining.

“They say he’s out there, right now,” she indicated the door with a wave of her arm. “They say his words are starlight and sunlight, that the sea and trees whisper their stories to him, that the faeries have enchanted his tongue. They say he is no less than a star fallen to earth in beauty and wisdom and poetry.”

“Maybe one day I’ll meet him,” she said, low voiced. “He’s a bit like me, isn’t he? Born from the sea but partly of the land, too.”

“It reminds me of Orpheus,” said Persephone.

“There’s more than one smooth-talking man in the world,” said Rapunzel.

“Who’s Orpheus?” Clarissa asked.

“Orpheus was a magician of music,” said Heks. “You told a fine story, and now I’ll give one back to you. This is a story we know from Rowan Tree.”

Clarissa stretched out next to Rapunzel, sharing her pillow, and listened to Heks tell the tale of Eurydice and Orpheus, with occasional help from Persephone. Eyes closed, she built in her mind a shining picture of a young man, beautiful, gentle, sensitive and filled with longing.

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A Stone, a Web, a Story

The Tower: Part 1: The Tower: Part 2: Mabon (Entire)

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PART I THE TOWER

PART 2 MABON

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