The Tower: Part 3: Samhain
Post #19: In which blue light and a story of parenthood ...
(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 part 3 in its entirety, go here. For the next serial post, go here.)
The three of them spent the afternoon before the ritual alternating between dozing and relaxing in the steamy bathhouse and briefly immersing themselves in the icy saltwater plunge pool, Rumpelstiltskin swearing volubly as he jumped in and clambered out again.
When they were free of both dirt and tension, Morfran left them to go home and Vasilisa and Rumpelstiltskin returned to the hut to build up the fire and wait for dusk.
When it was time, they made their way through the birch wood, wrapped well against the steely cold, Vasilisa’s fiery skull held like a torch on the top of its pole in her hand. She led Morfran to a large clearing. Baba Yaga’s hut stood near the tree line on a towering pair of chicken legs, adorned with long woolly purple and orange striped socks against the cold. A bonfire burned, slightly off-center, in the circle, well away from the trees.
Baba Yaga’s squat, sooty black cauldron stood near the fire and Vasilisa, drawing close, smelled hot cider, well spiced, intoxicating and delicious. The scent of it made her mouth water unwillingly; she remembered other things she’d seen go into and come out of that cauldron: a rabbit’s dead body and the Firebird, old gristly bones, Baba’s marble bag, made from a human scrotum with the hairs still attached, a broken mirror, dirty laundry and other malodorous litter. She suspected the cauldron had also held many a human dead body, both child and adult.
Vasilisa drove the pole supporting the skull deep into the earth near the forest’s edge, away from the trees, and as she did so the skull flowered into a much brighter glow than it usually produced at night. By its light, she saw figures coming out from between the trees, eerie figures by firelight, and she returned to stand with Rumpelstiltskin.
She had warned him about the Rusalka’s shape-shifting nature, but no warning properly conveyed the sight of beautiful women seamlessly flowing into forms bearing tusks, fangs, tails, wings and claws and then back again.
Rumpelstiltskin grunted with wonder as the light picked out a gleaming eye, a furred flank, a sinuous neck, a snarl, a leathery wing.
Morfran approached them, leaving the side of a woman with the glaring amber eyes of an owl. She turned her head, watching him walk away, her lifted arm becoming a wing.
“Look,” said Rumpelstiltskin in a low voice, pointing. “Artemis and the White Stag.”
They emerged from among the pale birch trunks, the White Stag cloudy in the near darkness and Artemis’s bow glowing with starry silver light. Vasilisa well remembered the White Stag with his kingly antlers and regal bearing, but tonight he seemed diminished. He walked wearily, head drooping, and as he and Artemis approached, she could see a hawthorn wreath twined around his antlers, the leaves withered among the sharp thorns and the hard berries like blood drops.
Artemis smiled a greeting, but she too looked worn. Vasilisa did not remember her face being so lined. Artemis had always been youthful in her athleticism and grace. Vasilisa laid a hand on the White Stag’s side and felt the ridged ribs under his skin. She watched Artemis look around the clearing. The Rusalka stayed grouped together near the forest fringes, leaving Morfran, Rumpelstiltskin, the stag and herself near the fire. Baba Yaga’s hut sat, shuttered and silent, above the chicken legs.
“We’re not all here yet, then,” said Artemis.
“Who—” began Vasilisa
“There,” interrupted Morfran.
Torchlight showed in the forest, approaching the clearing. A cloaked and hooded figure, torch in hand and a dog-like shape at its heels, led three others. As they stepped into stronger light, Vasilisa exclaimed in surprise, and she, Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin approached the newcomers.
“Mother Hecate,” Vasilisa said respectfully as the leader threw back her hood. Hecate gave her a brief smile and thrust the torch’s handle into the ground near the fiery skull. The wolf by her side panted briefly, showing gleaming teeth, and then sat by the torch, ears pricked, taking in the scene.
The other figures were revealed to be Heks, Eurydice and, astonishingly, Persephone.
After a flurry of hurried introductions and greetings, they rejoined Artemis and the White Stag.
“Now what?” Vasilisa whispered to Artemis.
“One other is yet to come,” said Artemis.
Vasilisa, remembering the Ostara initiation she’d participated in, thought she knew who they expected. Surely no Samhain ritual would be complete without …
Death came strolling into the clearing, nonchalant and somehow debonair, though how he managed to express such a quality as a skeleton, Vasilisa was at a loss to understand. He walked by them, a spring in his step making him look as though he was about to skip or dance. He raised his fingers to his forehead in an ironic salute, glancing their way with empty eyes, and Vasilisa could practically see a hat on his bare skull. In one hand he carried a basket, apparently woven of bones, heaped high with round shapes. This he set down in the shadows under Baba Yaga’s hut. He moved to the fire, folded his arms and fixed his gaze on the hut on chicken legs. He shifted his weight to one leg and idly tapped the toe of the other.
No one spoke in the hushed clearing. Even the Rusalka became still, ceasing to shift from shape to shape.
With a snap, the shutters over the window to the right of the door were thrust open. In a moment, another snap opened the shutters on the left side. Lamplight glowed from inside the hut. The door opened and slammed shut, and Baba Yaga stood before it, surveying the clearing and those gathered within it.
She appeared to wear nothing but scarves and several bead ropes. Some scarves were fringed, some spangled with sequins, some gauzy and transparent and others finely embroidered. Another scarf covered her grizzled head, this one sewn with tiny brass bells along the hem dangling across the Yaga’s forehead. A pendant around her neck caught the light and threw it into their eyes. Vasilisa could hear the bangles sliding together as Baba Yaga made a dramatic gesture, throwing her arms wide in welcome.
“Bless you, children,” she screeched in falsetto. “Bless you for attending my little party! Let us begin with a cleansing breath, shall we? In through the nose, out through the mouth. Ready? One, two, three, breathe!”
Vasilisa, feeling ridiculous, found herself obediently taking a deep breath, and she heard Morfran, standing by her side, doing the same.
“Wonderful! Now we share the sacred blue energy of consciousness! Now we are one! Now we are tuned into universal harmony!”
She stepped forward, spat out the word “Down!” in her usual harsh tones, and the chicken legs obediently knelt, bringing the threshold close to the ground. Baba Yaga jumped, looking like a spiky old grasshopper pretending to be a butterfly.
Baba Yaga always cut a macabre figure, but Vasilisa hadn’t expected anything like this. She glanced swiftly at the faces around her and found both Hecate and Artemis unsmiling and inscrutable. Persephone, Eurydice, Rumpelstiltskin and Morfran’s faces reflected her own amazement, tinged with hilarious disbelief. She could read no expression on Heks’s face whatsoever.
“Friends,” said Baba Yaga throatily, “dear ones, we are gathered this Samhain night to perform the Ceremony of the Crone and other rituals. Our Master of Ceremonies is none other than Death himself, unspeakable Death, He whom we must despise, He whom we must reject and deny, He whom we must revile and fear, for he is NOT PEACE! He is NOT LOVE! He is NOT FORGIVENESS AND COMPASSION! He does not shine with gentle blue light! He is violence, patriarchy, murder, penetration and hate! He is sin! He is to blame! He is unclean! Oooh friends!” She put her face in her hands and swayed as though in anguish, “Oooh my dears, he is EVIL!”
Dropping her hands, Baba Yaga strutted toward Death, who stood as though taking a bow, arms outspread, facing the Rusalka and then Vasilisa’s group, grinning his empty grin.
“Worst of all,” purred Baba Yaga. “Worst of all, he is male!” She sidled up to Death, lifted a scarf to reveal a bony bare hip covered with skin like a fish’s dead belly, which she ground against Death’s pelvis.
Death, thrusting lewdly to meet Baba Yaga’s nudging hip, coyly pulled the edge of the scarf covering her scrawny neck and upper chest away from her skin and peered down the front of it. With the other hand, he reached delicately into the gap between filmy fabric and flesh and withdrew a long tattered grey object like a dead squirrel with a flourish. Baba Yaga shrieked and slapped his hand, simpering, but Death ignored her, passed a strap over his skull and donned a long grey beard.
He stepped away from Baba Yaga, wagging his skull ludicrously, the beard swaying, and suddenly he held a long-handled scythe, the end on the ground and the slender curved blade waving in the region of his ear, if he’d possessed an ear, as he gyrated.
Vasilisa realized her mouth hung open and shut it. The scene was ludicrous, but with a mad undercurrent, more terrifying than any solemn ritual could have been.
Baba Yaga suddenly lost patience with Death’s antics. She folded her arms, making her scarves flutter, and said in her usual tone, “Yes, all right! You always need to be the center of attention, don’t you? Not a minute to spare for poor old Baba Yaga! Don’t share the spotlight! After all, no one’s as important as you, you bag of bones! Typical man!”
She turned away from Death and shrieked, “Sit yourselves down in a circle, pathetic poppets! Mother Baba has a story to put you in the proper mood.”
Vasilisa, remembering the last time she’d sat in a circle listening to Baba Yaga tell stories, shuddered. She half expected protests from the others. Surely Hecate wouldn’t sit on the cold ground while the Baba told a story? And Heks?
To her surprise, they obediently settled themselves near the fire, folding their cloaks under them. Artemis joined the circle as well, and the White Stag took up a place where the fire’s heat radiated against his thin side. Hecate’s wolf lay with its head resting on its paws, ears pricked, its long nose near Hecate’s elbow. Vasilisa, Persephone, Rumpelstiltskin, Morfran and Eurydice joined them, Morfran and Vasilisa exchanging a resigned look. He, too, had attended the initiation in which Baba Yaga acted as storyteller.
The Rusalka, Vasilisa noticed, did not approach, but watched from their place near the forest’s edge, and Death remained on his feet, his grey beard dangling from his chin, scythe in hand. Baba Yaga settled herself fussily on a stump, her beads and scarves disheveled. The firelight cast grotesque shadows over her tusk-like teeth, upcurving chin and down-curving nose.
“A dark story, goslings. A dark story for the dark threshold into the dark of the year. Prepare to wander, lost! Prepare to cringe in fear! Prepare to face evil demons. Prepare for Death. He is upon you!”
CHAPTER 7
PERSEPHONE
Persephone had not met Baba Yaga. She’d heard stories and thought them exaggerated, but now she realized they failed utterly to convey the presence of the hag her mother referred to as “Primal Mother.”
When Heks had returned to the tower, this time with Eurydice, and told her to get ready to travel, she’d been nonplussed. She had, in fact, secretly begun to think about returning to Hades. She slept poorly, her mind turning ceaselessly from the sea withholding itself from the land to Clarissa’s story of Hyash and Delphinus and back again. The words ‘connection’ and ‘disconnection’ whispered in the back of her mind, night and day. She stretched between them as though on the rack, not sure what to do, not sure what she wanted, and afraid to do anything but stay safely in the tower.
Heks’s message specifically summoning her to Baba Yaga’s Samhain ritual put an end to her dithering, at least for the time being. Unthinkable to disobey the summons and there was no time to prevaricate. Heks couldn’t or wouldn’t provide any further information about the ritual or the reason Persephone’s presence was demanded, and Eurydice appeared equally bewildered. Heks refused to speculate during Persephone’s hurried preparations and parting from Rapunzel, who she embraced with real affection.
“I don’t know what I’d have done without you,” she murmured in Rapunzel’s ear. “Explain to Clarissa and give her my love. Feed Cerus for me. I’ll send for him when I can if I don’t come back. Take care of yourself, Rapunzel.”
“You, too,” said Rapunzel.
There had been no time for more.
The journey from the lighthouse to the birch wood for the ritual was lengthy and cold. The trees faded and the nights lengthened. Persephone, however, was accustomed to walking every day with Cerus, no matter the weather, and had quite regained her strength and vitality.
Persephone knew Eurydice found the long miles exhausting. She, too, had slept restlessly before leaving Rowan Tree, worrying about the breakdown of Rowan Portal and the loss of the Rusalka, as well as Rose Red’s withdrawal and grief for her ailing oak tree. Persephone knew she missed Kunik
Heks proved an easy companion, tireless and uncomplaining. She wasn’t talkative, but Persephone soon realized she missed little in either the landscape or the people they encountered.
One night they sat by the fire at an inn with a local woman, a round, comfortably middle-aged person with red cheeks and incongruously delicate hands below thick wrists. Persephone, always interested in others, fell into easy casual conversation with the woman, who introduced herself as Mabel, the local midwife.
The reminder of her private pain subdued Persephone, but Heks joined the conversation and Persephone remembered, with a queer jolt, Heks’s care of Mary, who’d been pregnant with twins during the early months at Rowan Tree. It was before Persephone’s own pregnancy, and the role of a midwife had not seemed especially important then. She’d forgotten about it.
She listened as Heks and Mabel discussed herbs, morning sickness, conception, techniques for labor and delivery and, inevitably, stories of cuckolded husbands, barren wives, bastard children, miscarriage and tragedy during difficult births. To her surprise, Heks mentioned having spent time with Baubo and what she’d learned from her. Baubo had been Persephone’s midwife, but even she couldn’t keep the child safely in the womb until strong enough to be born.
Later, as they prepared for bed, Persephone had said, “I’d forgotten you were a midwife, and I didn’t know you trained with Baubo.”
“Baubo taught me to see, speak and laugh as a woman,” said Heks, “as well as how to be a better midwife.”
Persephone looked at Heks’s expressionless face, trying to imagine her producing the belly laughs Baubo reveled in. She couldn’t. “You mean, ‘see through your nipples and speak through your—‘”
“Hairy lips,” said Heks composedly. “Yes. No one ever taught me such things before. I didn’t know my grandmothers and my mother was … absent. I’m only now learning what it is to be a woman, from Baba Yaga and Baubo, mostly.”
“You know Baba Yaga?” Persephone felt astonished.
“Yes,” said Heks. Unexpectedly, she smiled. “Have you met her?”
“No,” said Persephone. “But I’ve heard about her.”
“Hmmm,” said Heks.
***
Now, sitting like a child in a circle of other children at Baba Yaga’s feet, Persephone felt glad of Heks’s presence, and glad, too, of Eurydice, Artemis and the White Stag, although shocked by the stag’s condition. She thought Artemis looked ill, too, and wondered what was wrong. She’d not met Rumpelstiltskin and knew Morfran and Vasilisa only slightly from Rowan Tree. Hecate’s appearance made her uneasy. After her miscarriage she’d run away from Hades and the Underworld, in spite of her original commitment, made in Hecate’s presence. For many weeks she’d been hiding in a lonely lighthouse, not knowing if she could ever return to the Underworld or King Hades.
Hecate, however, made no reference to either Persephone’s loss or her absence from the Underworld. As usual, she appeared calm, imperturbable and dignified.
Baba Yaga herself was a surprise, hideously macabre in her scarves, beads, crystals and bells. No one had ever said anything about her garb to Persephone, but surely this was not her usual attire. The antics of the skeleton called Death made her wonder if the whole situation was some kind of bizarre theater, but it struck her as ominous rather than amusing, though, naturally, neither the presence nor theme of Death upset her. That’s not true, though, said a voice in her head. It upset you so much you ran away and hid from it when it came too close.
Baba Yaga spoke. Persephone folded her cold fingers together and listened.
“The merfolk tell a tale of Pricus, a sea-goat. He was an aberration born of Delphinus and Hyash, who, according to the sea folk, created all sea life. Pricus was neither goat nor fish but a misshapen combination of both. As though one such wasn’t bad enough, from his seed sprung many children and grandchildren until their race plagued the sea and crowded the shores, for the sea-goats loved the land as well as the water and often used their front legs to clamber out of the waves and lie under Yr.
Pricus was proud of his race, for they were intelligent and could speak. He cherished pretensions, Pricus. He wanted to create a culture and be powerful, perhaps even be represented among the sea kings. He cultivated ambitions for his family.
He nursed these fine plans as the first generations of sea-goats grew up, and rather than sensibly kicking his children and grandchildren into the world as soon as possible to fend for themselves and make their own way, he bleated about love and connection and family. He ranted about ‘making the sea a better place’ and ‘contributing for the good of all.’ Sickening stuff, it was, the sort of twaddle too-sweet maidens mouth.”
Here she paused and grinned maliciously at Vasilisa, who held her gaze expressionlessly.
“For generations Pricus played the proud, fond patriarch, but he gradually realized some of the younger sea-goats took an unnatural interest in remaining on land for longer and longer periods. To his horror, those who spent more than a couple of days away from the water began losing their tails and developing rear legs. As their rear legs grew, they lost the ability to speak as Pricus did.
He made a great fuss, weeping and wailing, commanding and demanding, begging and pleading, and of course the rebellious brats paid no attention. Why should they listen to an old greybeard who’d hardly ever left the water, even for an hour? What did he know about it? What could he understand? They wanted to see new places, do things no sea-goat had ever done before! They wanted to scale cliffs and mountains, climb to the top of the world and touch the stars! As their speech disappeared, they stamped their feet, shook their horns and snorted at him.
Pricus watched helplessly, his heart breaking, as groups of sea-goats left the sea for a life on land. He begged them to return and visit, let him know they were well and happy, and they carelessly agreed, eager to be off and away.
Pricus waited and waited, his fine dreams in tatters, but no sea-goat ever returned, and a few more departed each day.
He pined. He moaned and sniveled. He went off his food. He spent his time lingering near the shore, straining his eyes, looking inland, watching and waiting for a glimpse of his lost ones.
At last, desperate, he called on Chronos for help, known to the ignorant as Father Time.”
Here, Death, who had been standing quietly outside the circle, as though listening, extended a foot, planted his heel on the ground and bowed low over his leg.
“Death?” asked Vasilisa, confused.
“Yes, frogling,” snapped Baba Yaga. “What is Time, but Death? Time is second after second of Death, of change, of Now, each Now different than the last. He wears that silly grey beard in imitation of his father, Time, or Chronos, as some call him. But I daresay Time’s fatter than yon bony fellow! Don’t interrupt me again!”
Persephone, familiar with the concept of death as change and the Underworld as a threshold between one thing and another, wondered for the first time why her understanding provided no comfort for the loss of her child.
“Where was I?” said Baba Yaga irritably. “Oh, yes, namby-pamby Pricus.”
“Pricus laid his woes before Chronos and begged him to turn back time, to take away the dreadful pain of being a parent and allow Pricus a do-over. The stupid creature felt certain he could refrain from making the ‘same mistakes’ and thus control his brats better the second time around.”
“Chronos, though he says he felt dubious now,” she glared at Death, who spread out his hands and shrugged, “agreed.”
“Pricus found himself back at the beginning, carelessly spreading his seed, children and grandchildren springing up everywhere, all the time trying desperately hard to be a good little patriarch whose family would never wish to leave him, never think an original thought, never grow the balls to defy him and never become independent and self-sufficient.
Pricus shunned the shore and taught the young sea-goats to fear it. He underlined the superiority of the sea-goats to those creatures who could not reason or speak, explaining their responsibility to protect and care for those less intelligent and enlightened. He harped on the horror of exile from one’s place and becoming outcast from one’s tribe.
Predictably, as the decades and generations passed, exactly the same thing happened in spite of all this. A certain number of young sea-goats inevitably discovered the land’s attractions, left the sea, grew legs and headed off to climb mountains and touch stars. Meanwhile, Pricus became more and more obsessed with his failure to control his family and wallowed pleasurably in grief about his “lost ones.” He blamed himself, embraced martyrdom and became more revolting by the day, in spite of the fact that the majority of his family was quite content to stay in the sea and build his stupid culture.
Eventually, Pricus returned to Chronos and begged for Death to come for him. Life was too disappointing, too painful and hard. His grief had broken him down. He couldn’t bear his loss. He feared eventually the sea-goats would die out altogether. His life possessed no meaning. Blah, blah, blah.
Chronos refused to send Death to Pricus. However, he did offer to send him away, to a place where he could rest and think about things. Pricus agreed, and Chronos swept a patch of night sky clean and placed Pricus there, where he could look down and see his family in the sea, as well as his family on the land.”
Death turned and pointed at the starry sky, tracing with his bony index finger the shape of a horned goat with two front legs and a curled tail.