The Tower: Part 2: Mabon
Post #13: In which a visit, a story, and a musician ...
(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.)
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.