The Tower: Part 2: Mabon
Post #3: In which unexpected company ...
(If you are a new subscriber, you might want to start at the beginning of the Webbd Wheel Series with The Hanged Man. If you would like to start at the beginning of The Tower, go here. If you prefer to read Parts 1 and 2 in their entirety, go here. For the next serial post, go here.)
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.