The Tower: Part 3: Samhain
Post #21: In which a dance, a visitor, and a letter from the sea ...
(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.)
“First, we drink,” said Hecate unexpectedly. “The men, too. They’ve fasted for two days.”
“Oh, very well,” snapped Baba Yaga. “What a passel of insipid wimplings! What a set of spineless wussies! Give them a drink, then. Give them all a drink, and then—” she catapulted herself off the stump and knelt before Artemis, “then, my newly-hatched little Crone, you will dance in his blood! Because that’s what a Crone does! Get on your feet. All of you!” She bounced to her own feet, eyes gleaming with malice, and watched them haul themselves up, stretching and rubbing their arms against the chill.
Hecate, without fuss, went under Baba Yaga’s hut and retrieved another basket filled with rough wooden receptacles that might be used as bowls or cups. She walked around the fire to where the Baba’s cauldron lay steaming gently. As Persephone followed her, she caught the scent of hot cider and other fruit and spices, too. Cinnamon, and a hint of orange and cloves. Saliva rushed into her mouth and for a moment she felt faint with hunger.
Hecate began ladling out the rich liquid. An orange studded with cloves bobbed into sight and then vanished back into the cauldron’s depths. Persephone, controlling her own appetite, took the bowls, one at a time, to the men. The three wolves formed an interested audience to the butchering. After serving Odin, Rumpelstiltskin and Morfran, she returned for her own bowl, already feeling warmer from movement and the heat of the bowls between her hands.
She tasted grape, pear, orange and apple, along with a hint of honey, ginger and other spices. The cider warmed her empty, cold belly, burning as though she’d swallowed an ember from the fire. She wanted to gulp it down without pause, but she felt wary of anything coming out of Baba Yaga’s cauldron, no matter how inviting, and she suspected such ambrosia possessed quite a kick, especially on an empty stomach. Still, she sipped eagerly and it wasn’t long before she held her second bowl.
Odin had built up the fire to provide good light for the butchering, and Persephone reached up and unfastened her cloak, feeling warmed and comforted. Artemis and Hecate threw back their hoods and Eurydice gave Persephone a smile, tucking a strand of her dark hair behind an ear. Heks unfastened her cloak as well. Persephone could hear the men murmur on the other side of the fire, Odin instructing and the others responding or making an occasional query. She wondered remotely how long the butchering would take, and if she could bear to eat the White Stag’s flesh.
From the forest came the sound of a drum. It began softly, like a gently throbbing heart, seductive and comforting. Persephone closed her eyes to absorb it completely. As she listened, piping joined the drumbeat, and then, moments later, a stringed instrument. She realized the musicians must be the Rusalka, who had not left the tree shadows.
“I thought they danced with us,” she said to Vasilisa, who stood near. “Don’t you dance and play music together? Rapunzel did, and they did at Rowan Tree.”
“We did,” said Vasilisa with regret. “It seems they no longer wish to join us in dance, but only play for us.”
The tempo and volume increased, strings and pipe combining passionately. Persephone drained her bowl and set it down on the ground near the cauldron. In spite of cold, hunger, worry and grief, she would dance. She must dance. She would dance with the knowledge she was going home to Hades, home to the Underworld, where she belonged. She would dance, and in dance make it real, make it true.
The music swept her up, and she allowed it, made room for it, gave herself to it. Her body warmed, vibrated with life. Sparks rose and it seemed to her she, too, could rise, fiery and burning, if she surrendered wholly enough to the music.
Persephone danced, flinging aside her cloak. Eurydice, Heks, Artemis and Vasilisa danced with her. She loosened her hair and it swept around her, half blinding, heavy and sensual, brushing against her face and throat. She was going home. She would see Hades again, go with him to the underground spring where they bathed, sit beside him as souls related their stories, lie down with him at night, and together they would visit his stallion and Cerus to be sure all went well with their outposts in the Green World.
She danced, imagining, remembering, flowing with the beat, feeling beautiful and strong in her body … And then the music changed. It seduced them and when they were firmly ensnared played spitefully with them. The drumbeat became arrhythmic and jarring. The melody broke into jagged pieces. Their steps faltered and Persephone could no longer predict the next beat, the next movement. What had been sensuous and filled with pleasure and thoughtless movement became staccato, jagged and irritating.
Persephone faltered, feeling annoyed. Vasilisa uttered an angry exclamation. Heks stopped, head cocked, listening to the ugly sounds the Rusalka made. Baba Yaga, observing the whole scene from her stump, screeched with laughter.
Artemis, whom Persephone had never seen discomposed or emotional, threw back her head and let out a ferocious cry, causing the dancers to step back from her. She stood, straight as a birch in her tunic, hide leggings and soft boots, her knife sheathed at her side, her hair tangled, and to Persephone her strength appeared ageless and half-wild.
“You think I cannot dance to this?” Artemis shrieked, both to Baba Yaga and the invisible musicians. “You think you can stop me dancing with this, or force me from my own dance? You seek to sabotage my power? You cannot! I will not be less than I am! I can dance to whatever music life brings me!”
She raised her outspread arms and glowed with a soft white light, radiant as the White Stag had been, radiant as her bow, propped against a tree a few yards away. The music twanged and jerked and Artemis, graceful, athletic Artemis, threw herself into movement, dancing with elbows, knees, fists and kicks, as though surrounded by a whirlwind of attackers. Watching her, Persephone thought of caged animals, cruel-toothed traps, trees smothered by ivy and stone prisons. She thought of implacable rock and shadows, long illness and sudden injury, murder, war, suicide and despair.
She thought of all the faces of Death.
She found herself dancing, a small, tight dance, a violent dance of protest, of defense, of refusal to be stilled and silenced by despair. She danced edges, restrictions and limitations. She danced the bitter ebb and flow of pain, the smell of blood and the taste of her own helplessness. She peeled away the last of her grief and underneath it discovered rage, not rage at Hades, her mate, her lover, but rage at life and death’s inevitability, rage at the true and terrible shape of the cycle.
The others danced around her. Vasilisa had bared her feet, and Persephone had the impression in the firelight of a misshapen foot. A cold snarl on her face, Vasilisa danced heavily, as though trampling enemies.
Heks’ fingers crooked into claws and she whirled in a tight circle and struck out. As she danced, she let out an occasional cry of defiance and anger.
Eurydice’s hair flew in a black storm around her head and shoulders and she, too, bared her teeth in something like a snarl, moving with sharp, jerky steps and thrusting out her hands and arms in every direction, as though pushing something away.
Persephone realized she could smell cooking meat. Gradually, the dancers moved around the fire. The men moved too, away from the spot where they’d butchered the White Stag. The wolves, snarling and snapping, tugged at a pile of entrails, bones and hide near the forest’s edge.
Someone had raked a bed of coals to the side of the fire, and over this, slabs of meat cooked, while a haunch turned on a spit closer to the flames. Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin drank deeply from bowls.
The music changed, the rhythm tightening, quickening and becoming regular, the strings passionate and resonant and the pipe wild and insistent. Artemis cried out in what sounded like triumph and danced to the blood-soaked ground where the stag had lain. Persephone remembered Baba Yaga telling Artemis she would dance in the White Stag’s blood, and understood she meant to do exactly that.
As she approached the bloody ground, Artemis kicked off her boots and bared her feet. Eurydice and Persephone did the same, Persephone realizing she wanted to dance in the stag’s blood. It seemed a suitable offering for his sacrifice, and for Artemis’s part in it. Heks, like Vasilisa, was already barefoot.
The music became a force of nature, too powerful for anything but surrender, like orgasm, like childbirth, like the changing seasons and cycles.
Like death.
Persephone danced, the ground damp and slightly sticky beneath her feet. She danced in the blood of Artemis’s beloved consort, in the blood issuing from the rupture between herself and Hades, in the blood of her menses, in the blood of her own birth and the premature birth of her lost child. She danced in the blood of the rabbits she raised and slaughtered for meat as Queen of the Underworld. She danced in the blood of every piece of flesh she had ever eaten.
Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin danced now, too, the Dwarve’s beard flying and his pants rolled up, revealing thick, broad bare feet and ankles. Morfran, whose leg was twisted, nevertheless looked oddly and uniquely graceful, but it was a strong, sinewy male grace. The music pushed them faster and yet faster. They whirled and shouted, sweating and breathless. Persephone felt like a drunken, wild, half-mad creature and relished it. Lust filled her, ferocious hunger for the cooking meat (who cared what it had once been?) and desire for union, for penetration, for thoughtless passion. Desire for Hades.
Again, the music changed, now into something lighter, more melodic, something prettier. Persephone stretched out, taking longer steps, covering more ground, moving away from the White Stag’s falling place and circling the fire. Her passion cooled slightly, but her sensuality burned bright. She looked up and saw stars and Cion’s dim half-circle in the night sky. Noola was dark. It was a fitting night to celebrate Samhain. She raised her hands and arms, letting them sway gracefully to the music. She ran her hands over her breasts and hips.
They circled the fire. The Rusalka’s playing became childlike now, innocent and playful. It teased and beckoned. The faces around her relaxed, and Persephone felt herself smiling. She thought suddenly of Baubo, her wisdom, her clowning and her belly laugh. Vasilisa began clapping her hands to the rhythm, and then they all clapped, circling, whirling, circling, clapping, laughing together, playing like children.
Odin cooked, appearing to pay no attention to the dancers. Hecate was with him. Baba Yaga still squatted on her stump. Death stood with his scythe near the pile of offal that had been the White Stag. Each of the three wolves had dragged part of the body away and crouched over it jealously, gnawing their prize.
Now the music transitioned into something quieter, the strings swelling into slow, deep passion as though autumn itself sang in a reverberant, nostalgic voice of loss, endings and lament for the light.
Persephone lost awareness of the other dancers. She wrapped her arms around her body, slowing her steps, swaying, feeling comforted by her own touch and embrace. She became aware again of the sound of the burning fire, the smell of meat and hot cider. She felt hungry, but not famished. She felt weary, but not exhausted. She felt like a calm morning after a fearsome storm, disheveled but swept clean, with hope and interest in what lay ahead. The music spoke of grief and change, but neither felt unfriendly.
She stilled her feet and let the music wash through her quieting body, felt her pulse slacken, caught her breath and gradually realized it was a chilly autumn night, and she without food for two days. She found her cloak where she’d flung it during the early part of the dance, intensely grateful for its weight and warmth. The others picked up discarded shoes and cloaks as well, and as the music died away the dancers came together, men and women, fully clothed and smiling wordlessly at one another, still caught in the strange intimacy of the ritual.
“Come now and break your fast,” said Hecate, and they did, sitting on the ground with their bowls, sharing knives and feasting on the meat, which was lean and slightly tough, but seasoned with salt and dripping with lard, with which Odin had basted it.
Persephone felt no qualm about eating the White Stag after all, and she noted they all ate heartily, Artemis included.
Baba Yaga demanded the haunch from Odin, half-cooked as it was. She took it straight off the fire with her bare hand, stalked to the chicken legs and dealt one of them a blow with the sizzling meat. “Down!”
The chicken legs jumped reflexively away and then knelt hastily. Baba Yaga jumped nimbly up to her threshold as though her feet were springs and disappeared inside the hut, slamming the door behind her. They could hear the sharp “snick” of the lock’s toothy long snout as the door locked.
Odin clicked his tongue at his horse, who raised his head from cropping the grass and approached the fire. He was heavily laden, presumably with the White Stag’s meat. Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin put their bowls aside and rose respectfully.
“Farewell, sons and daughters,” said Odin. “You’ve done well this night. We shall meet again.”
He swung himself up on his horse, circled the clearing, breaking into a canter, and then chirruped and horse and rider sprang into the air, moving above the treetops at a gallop and disappearing against the black sky.
RAPUNZEL
Much to her annoyance, Rapunzel missed both Persephone and Clarissa. She tried to recapture her state of mind when first approaching the lighthouse; looking forward to a haven of solitude, a place to come to terms with Dar’s death, and a desire to challenge her memories of being imprisoned and powerless in another stone tower, but that state of mind had quite gone.
Now, the first sharp-edged grief about Dar had dulled. Persephone and Clarissa had distracted her from her own troubles, along with Ash, Ig and Mag, and Ginger had compelled her to express her tangled emotions through dance.
It was a cold, raw, day, and the top of the tower didn’t tempt her. She built a fire and made a simple breakfast, irritated with herself for feeling lonely. As she finished her meal, a fire salamander appeared from under the trapdoor, which Rapunzel left ajar now.
Clarissa had told her that her brother, Chris, was the artist who had created the mural in the lighthouse cellar, but he worked with Radulf most of the time and visited inconsistently.
“I don’t know if he’ll come back here at all, now Father is gone. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Knowing this, Rapunzel no longer felt uneasy, and she liked having Ig and Mag come and go. They were company.
Now one of the little creatures flowed up the cellar steps, glowing brightly, his shiny eyes fixed on Rapunzel.
“Good morning,” she said. “Where’s your friend?”
The salamander, his mouth stretched in a perpetual smile, looked at her, pulsing excitedly. Rapunzel set down her cup and approached the trapdoor.
“Show me,” she said, and followed it down the steps.
The cellar was lit, not only by Ig and Mag, but with candles and lanterns as well, which clustered around the mural wall. As she descended, a youth wearing a linen robe turned to meet her.
Rapunzel’s first impression was of Clarissa in male form. He possessed the same changeable silvery eyes and the same tangled dark blond hair, though shorter than Clarissa’s. He was tall and slim and his bones looked too heavy and long for his body, his joints too big. A slim gold ring pierced his left eyebrow. He did not answer her smile, but searched her face intently.
“Are you Clarissa’s brother Chris?”
He shifted his feet.
“I’m Christopher. Are you Rapunzel? I brought you a letter from Radulf.” He handed her a strange envelope made from supple skin, carefully sealed.
“I’ve wanted to meet you. What you’ve made here is remarkable.” She indicated the wall behind him.
He smiled then, showing large, square teeth. Clarissa, though young, was a woman. This boy still stood on manhood’s threshold.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Rapunzel said. “Was it hard to come back here?”
The smile left his lips and he looked away.
“You must have walked a long way, now the sea has receded so far. Do you normally come up through there?” she indicated the well.
The change of subject appeared to relieve him. He turned his face toward her again, nodding and frowning.
“Why does the land withdraw from the sea? Do you know?”
“No,” said Rapunzel, noting from his perspective as a sea creature, the land disconnected from the sea rather than the other way around. “Your sister left to speak to Marceau and your people about it. She said you work with Radulf. He doesn’t know why it’s happening either?”
He shook his head.
Rapunzel wanted to read Radulf’s letter, and she wanted to get to know the boy and put him at ease. Abandoning delicacy, she said directly, “I’d like to be your friend. I’m fond of Clarissa, and I feel as though I’ve gotten to know your father through her and the papers he left behind. I hope you’ll feel welcome here and visit often and go on working on your mural. Just now, what I most want to do is read this letter, but I’m afraid if I go and do that you’ll disappear.”
This time the smile was a grin, making him look like a small boy. “I won’t disappear.”
She grinned back. “Good. Will it bother you if I sit here on the steps and read this letter? Then we can talk more. Maybe you’ll come upstairs and see the lighthouse again. Are you hungry?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Read it. I don’t mind.” Ig and Mag chased one another, looking like fiery streaks. Chris stooped and caught one as they sped by his feet, quick as thought. He approached her and set it on her shoulder. “I’ve not seen these before, but they’re friendly. It will give you light to read by.”
“They’re fire salamanders from Dvorgdom.” At his uncomprehending look, she said, “I’ll tell you about Dvorgdom. These are named Ig and Mag, but I don’t know which is which. I can’t tell them apart.”
The salamander radiating warmth against her jaw and neck, Rapunzel sat on a step and opened the letter.
Dear Rapunzel:
Ginger wrote and told me you’ve taken my friend Irvin’s place as lighthouse keeper, and been kind to his daughter, Clarissa. I’m sending this with Chris, Irvin’s son, who works with me and is a wonderful and unusual artist, which I understand you’ve already discovered. I know he’s nervous about going back to the lighthouse after Irvin’s death, but I think he needs to face it and I know your presence will help. I will miss him while he’s gone. Look after him for me.
So much has happened since we were last together at Rowan Tree! Perhaps soon we can see one another and catch up. In the meantime, though, current events seem more important.
You know I’m in business with Minerva as a merchant. After I left Rowan Tree, I spent some time with Odin before returning home to the sea. Shortly after Minerva and I bought our first ship I asked Chris to come work with me and he’s stayed with me ever since.
Ginger has written me about the Yrtym and present troubles all over Webbd. I myself have seen the land and sea separate in various places, including the harbor at Griffin Town. It’s an eerie and disturbing phenomenon, as disturbing as changes I’ve noted in the constellations. It seems impossible that the very stars could be affected by anything here on Webbd, but obviously we have much to learn and understand.
It appears Heks has sent you to the lighthouse to gather information. A remote lighthouse on cliffs above the sea is an odd place to gather news, but Heks is an enigmatic person, and I suspect Baba Yaga had a hand in your recruitment. Certainly, you are ideally placed to gather news from the sea, as the cellar pool provides direct access for any sea creature. I’ve used it, in company with Chris, in calm weather when I felt adventurous.
Odin has asked me to collect news as well. I pass whatever I learn onto him through his ravens, which can find me wherever I am with the gulls’ help. From now on, I will do the same for you, either via seabirds or other means.
For a long time, I wasn’t sure where I belonged; I never felt completely at home. Now, I have at last found my place, my people, and my purpose. During my years of exile and wandering, I didn’t form any real attachments to anyone or anything, and so remained rootless and uncommitted; free, but alone. Now I have finally come home to the sea, I’m profoundly concerned about a natural disturbance capable of breaking the union between land and sea. This world of water and wind, of people and creatures, is so rich and textured, so full of magic and mystery and complexity, it must be saved at all costs. We must find a way to understand what’s happening and heal the hurt.
It comforts me to know you, too, are seeking to learn and understand. Ginger told me about the spirit candles that accompanied your dance together. The candles have often lit my way, as well. I know the story Clarissa told you about Castor and Pollux. When I first heard it, all I could think about were Dar and Lugh. It almost seems a story about them, doesn’t it? Whenever I see the blue spirit candles, I remember Dar and his wagon, patient Gideon, Dar’s pipe and marvelous cloak and the good times we had.
It's as though he’s with us still.
Chris is ready. I close with affection and the promise to do whatever I can for you, for the sea, and for Webbd. Keep an eye on the cellar for visitors.
Radulf