The Tower: Part 3: Samhain
Post #25: In which collaboration and a homecoming ...
(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 next morning, after a lavish breakfast, Odin called the meeting to order with a brisk and businesslike air. Mirmir and Rumpelstiltskin had moved the tent-like walls hanging from Yggdrasil’s branches, enlarging the enclosed space, and encouraged everyone to dress warmly and take a chair outside. Morning dawned cold and grey, pale with frost, but a second brazier added its warmth to the first within the tent’s walls and there was ample room for everyone to make themselves comfortable. Verdani sat before her spinning wheel with her hands folded forlornly in her lap. Eurydice sat with her back against Yggdrasil, absorbing comfort from its massive body.
“You know what Yrtym is, and you’re aware of some of the effects of its breakdown. The Norns are finding themselves unable to continue their work, and Yggdrasil itself is threatened, as whatever is happening appears to be killing the trees. Without the Norns to turn the wheel and the Tree of Life, we don’t know if Webbd can continue. Yrtym is an essential ingredient in Verdani’s spinning. The Norns, Eurydice and Rumpelstiltskin have proposed we attempt to make Yrtym to assist the Norns in creating new beginnings, as Skuld fears there will soon be no more. Nobody knows exactly what Yrtym is made of, but we can say something about the constituents of beginnings. Thus, messages came to me, to Nephthys and to Shala, as Nephthys is the Lady of Bones, Shala the Seed-Bearer, and I am a harvester of lost souls, all of which seem essential to new beginnings. That is why we’re here. Rumpelstiltskin, will you continue?”
Odin sat and Rumpelstiltskin took his place. “The way I understand it, Verdani uses Yrtym to spin what is happening,” he began. He raised an eyebrow at Verdani, who nodded affirmatively. “She’s willing to try spinning Yrtym itself, but she doesn’t know how to go about it without a matrix in which to weave bones, seeds and souls. It so happens I know something about spinning gold from straw without any extra ingredient.”
“But how?” asked Shala. “Seeds need sun and water and soil, bones can’t reanimate by themselves, and souls can’t either, can they?”
“With song,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “With music’s creative power, and also with intention and presence.”
“With magic,” said Nephthys.
Odin moved his chair so he could sit facing them beside the Dwarve. “That’s why I brought Seren,” he said. “You may not know it, but he’s one of the greatest musicians Webbd has ever seen.”
Seren raised his chin and smiled, eyes shining.
“He is, if you like, to play Yrtym’s role, combining our songs.”
“Our songs?” said Eurydice, surprised. “I don’t have a song.”
“Think of song in a wide sense,” said Odin. “I’m no singer, but I brought the horn I wind during the Wild Hunt, and in that sound, I’ve embedded the lost souls I last gathered.
“I know a seed blessing and an autumn prayer,” said Shala. “They’re not really songs, though.”
“What’s your song?” Seren asked Rumpelstiltskin.
“It’s an old cradle song I learned long ago.” Rumpelstiltskin hummed a melody.
“I recognize that,” said Seren. He turned to Shala. “If you give me the words to your seed blessing and prayer, I can combine them with Rumpelstiltskin’s cradle song and Odin’s horn.” He looked at Odin. “I know a traditional lament, a song of loss and ending, I think might be useful to add.”
“I know that cradle song, too,” said Heks.
“Good,” said Odin. “Nephthys, you can drum and we need your reanimation chant.”
“I know a prayer to Nephthys,” said Urd. “I just remembered it. I never understood why I couldn’t sell it, it’s so powerful and beautiful, but I suppose most people no longer understand the life-death-life cycle. One woman did, though, and she wrote the prayer years ago. I’ve wondered what she was calling to life. I know exactly where it’s hanging, too, wait a minute …” Her voice trailed away as she began climbing the tree, moving upward to where Eurydice knew she stored skeins and hanks of thread and yarn, all containing what had happened.
“I can drum, too,” said Shala shyly. “Did anyone bring a drum?”
“I brought a drum,” said Nephthys gaily, though Eurydice hadn’t seen her with one.
“How do we begin?” asked Eurydice.
A skein of yarn the purple black color of a ripe plum fell out of the tree, narrowly missing the brazier. Hastily, Rumpelstiltskin pulled it out of harm’s way.
“I shall do it all,” Seren said grandly in reply to Eurydice’s question. “I’ll weave it together, if you’ll line up and give me your piece of the whole. Then I’ll need some time for inspiration to work, and time to compose, of course, and practice, and then--“
“No,” said Heks.
“Excuse me?” Seren raised a perfectly-shaped eyebrow.
“No,” Heks repeated. “This is not a performance. We don’t have time. We must act. Each of us are skilled specialists, in our way. We don’t need practice. We only need be what we are.” She looked at Rumpelstiltskin. “You used the cradle song to spin gold from straw?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“You, Seren and I know the cradle song. If you play it, Seren, on your lyre, we three can sing it. Meanwhile, Shala can sit and drum and say her Seed Blessing and Autumn Prayer. Nephthys can do her reanimation chant. Urd can add the prayer to Nephthys. Odin can play his horn, just as he does during the Wild Hunt. The sound of it is a haunting lament in itself.”
“What shall Skuld and I do? asked Eurydice.
“Your business is thresholds, endings and beginnings,” said Heks. You must join your power and hold space open for us to work together, and you must signal us when our work is finished.”
“I’ll try to spin,” said Verdani doubtfully.
“No, Verdani,” said Heks. “You will spin. We will each do our part.”
“It will be a cacophony!” Seren protested. “If you’d give me some time, I can make something beautiful, a perfect blend and weave--“
“We’re out of time,” Heks interrupted again. “This is not for entertainment or applause. This is about combining the deepest, most powerful soul work we can each do. There’s plenty of room for us to separate so we don’t drown one another out.”
“I’ll go around the trunk to the other side,” said Nephthys. “I need fire, though.”
“I’ll bring you a brazier,” said Rumpelstiltskin.
“I’ll work with Nephthys,” said Urd, the skein in her hand. “She can chant and I’ll say the prayer.”
“I’ll stay near the trunk, in the center,” said Shala. “Then everyone can hear the drum. “I’ll play a simple repeating rhythm, a heartbeat, that will support everything else.”
“My horn will probably be the loudest,” said Odin. “I’ll go outside and play, circling the tree. Then I won’t be distracted by you and I won’t drown out everyone else. I don’t mind the cold.”
“We singers will stay together,” said Heks. “Seren will guide us with his lyre.”
Eurydice sat by Skuld, taking her hand.
“We need the seeds and bones,” Heks reminded them.
Death, who until this point had stood quietly against a tent wall, strolled through the group to Yggdrasil’s trunk. He turned and faced them all, bowed, and with a sharp “crack” fell into a clattering heap of bones. His skull and two long bones rolled to Shala’s feet.
“Not there!” said Nephthys, giggling. “The other side!”
With another sharp “crack,” Death reassembled himself, save for his skull and a bone from each forearm, which remained near Shala’s feet. The headless skeleton waved a hand at the group and disappeared around the tree’s trunk, Nephthys following.
Shala lumbered to her feet. She groped inside her sheepskin tunic and produced a weighty leather bag.
“Are there enough seeds to circle the trunk?” asked Verdani. “I don’t think there are enough bones to go all the way around.”
“Certainly,” said Shala, and she tipped out a palm full of seeds and breathed over them before letting them fall gently from her hand to the base of Yggdrasil. She moved slowly out of view, releasing seeds as she went.
Rumpelstiltskin followed her with a brazier.
Shala reappeared, the leather bag looking significantly deflated. Behind her, Rumpelstiltskin came around the trunk, arms full of ivory bones, which he scattered among the seeds around the base of Yggdrasil. “There are hundreds of bones,” he said briefly, “plenty for circling the trunk.”
While Shala made herself comfortable and tentatively picked up the skull and bones, obviously her drum, Rumpelstiltskin circled the trunks, ringing Yggdrasil with bones and seeds.
Shala tapped on the skull with the bones, together and then one at a time. Seren tuned his lyre. Odin produced a bronze horn, gracefully curved, and polished it with a scrap of cloth.
“Is everyone ready?” Heks asked, looking around.
Everyone nodded. Heks moved briskly around the trunk, out of sight.
When she returned, she stood near Seren. Odin slipped out of the tent. Shala, having decided her hand produced the sound she wanted, tucked the skull under one arm and began a slow two-stroke beat. Eurydice was amazed by how resonant it sounded.
It was also soothing. Eurydice relaxed, recognizing tension in her shoulders and neck and her tight grip on Skuld’s hand. She relaxed her jaw muscles and rolled her neck, looking up into the branches overhead. Mirmir lay immediately above her, chin resting on a thick branch, all but a few inches of neck invisible. His golden eye smiled down at her.
From outside the tent walls came the sound of Odin’s horn, a prolonged, desolate note of copper, brass and bronze, of geese on the wing, invisible in the pewter sky. Again and again, he blew the horn, calling, searching, seeking and grieving.
Seren strummed the lyre and began singing in a rich tenor, Rumpelstiltskin joining with his gravelly deep voice and Heks with a surprisingly strong and clear alto.
Shala spoke underneath the singing. Eurydice caught disconnected phrases weaving through the drumbeat, the horn’s lament, and the song.
“One for a home … One for each dream … One for the passing sorrow. One for the death that life is …”
From the other side of Yggdrasil’s trunk came a steady, low chant in a deep, unchildish voice that could only belong to Nephthys, and Urd, sounding strong and confident.
“Bone woman … Mother … Crone I will be …
Skuld’s hand tightened on Eurydice’s, and Eurydice followed her gaze. The bones and seeds circling Yggdrasil shifted and rustled, as though stirred by an invisible wind.
It was working.
The horn’s sound wound through Yggdrasil’s branches, through Eurydice’s roots and memories, drawing tears from her eyes. Death. Loss. Implacable change. The eternally turning wheel. She imagined the lost souls of the dead, released on Odin’s breath, weaving themselves among the bones and seeds around Yggdrasil’s body. She wondered if souls of dead trees were among them.
“Gather my bones … Let time wheel away …” Urd said into Webbd’s heartbeat, the hearts beating in Shala’s belly, and the heartbeat of her hands on Death’s skull.
The cradle song flowed on the lyre’s notes, lapping the tent walls, drifting into Yggdrasil’s canopy, telling of love, unending, unconditional, primal, between mother and child, between Webbd and its creatures. Eurydice had never heard such exquisite music, even from Orpheus.
“One for the maiden’s wild winds. One for the mother’s ripe womb,” said Shala.
A pale swatch of material wound around Yggdrasil’s trunk, an end lying loose on the ground. Verdani stooped and picked it up. Tentatively, she tugged, and it lengthened, unwinding from Yggdrasil’s trunk, though Eurydice could not see the trunk spinning, as a distaff must. She had never seen it spin, but many times she’d watched material unwind and flow through Verdani’s hands as she spun.
Now, Verdani, faltering at first and then gaining confidence, began spinning, and the material ran smoothly through her hands, no breaking, fraying, knotting or snarling. The spinning wheel turned as the cradle song rose and fell, enduring, binding.
“Cover my jeweled bones. Let the wind bring my breath,” recited Urd.
“A glowing handful for the night, white and scented,” said Shala.
Skuld pulled her hand from Eurydice’s grasp and reached up to her left ear in a gesture Eurydice recognized and rejoiced in. Eurydice passed Skuld the scissors she’d reluctantly borrowed and carried in her own pocket.
Skuld knelt next to Verdani’s chair, eyeing the thread intently. She reached for it, marked a place with her thumb and forefinger, and cut the thread with confidence, returning her scissors to their accustomed place behind her left ear. The wheel spun between Verdani’s hands without pause as she began a new length. An ivory swatch of bones, seeds, and souls, woven together with voice, passion, presence, and intention, thickly wrapped Yggdrasil’s trunk.
Eurydice sat, letting words and music wash through her, holding her awareness open, imagining the tent, Yggdrasil and Webbd nestling in her arms, safe and content. She didn’t think about time passing or fatigue or hunger. She merely was, breath, heartbeat, soul, body.
“One for what was. One for what is. One for what will be,” murmured Shala, and Eurydice didn’t marvel at how perfectly the words of a Seed Blessing fit the Norns, but thought, of course.
“Bone Woman … Moisten me from between your legs … Let life return!” Urd said.
Verdani’s wheel spun, as did the distaff of Yggdrasil’s trunk, as did the great wheeled cycles and seasons, as did Webbd, Noola, Cion, Yr, and the stars, and Eurydice felt herself and the others as the axle around which they spun.
“Bless our seeds. Bless our seeds. Bless our seeds,” Shala chanted.
The sound of Odin’s horn seemed distant, as though many hills and valleys away, or high up in the sky. It searched and called without rest, remembering all that had ever been lost. It mingled with Nephthys’ chant, which rose and fell, anchoring the horn, rooting its sorrow, warming it with fire and rock.
“… Plant me where I am needed,” said Shala, and Eurydice thought now she recited her harvest prayer.
Skuld cut Verdani’s thread, and length after length lay on the ground near the spinning wheel, all a neutral ivory color. Some looked thick and fuzzy, like yarn, others fine and smooth, like thin thread. Some were hanks of rope or cord. All appeared unflawed.
“Let deer browse beneath me. Let me be filled with wings,” said Shala, and Eurydice’s eyes again filled with tears, for Shala spoke for the trees now, the desire to be seen and loved, the desire to nourish and shelter.
The end drew near. Eurydice felt it approaching, a feeling of completion, of absolute rightness, satisfying and unmistakable. Nephthys’ chant deepened powerfully. Odin’s horn became less plangent, softer, still grieving but now with a note of surrender and resignation. Now with a note of letting go. Seren’s lyre drifted from the full-breasted passion of mother for child to a lullaby, soothing, comforting and finite.
“Let life return!” said Urd triumphantly, and Nephthys’ chant broke into giggles like a spray of shining water breaking over a backbone of rock.
“Hold me in the palm of your hand,” finished Shala, and the supporting heartbeat she’d drummed so steadily slowed, growing less resonant, its job nearly finished.
Outside the tent walls, Odin blew one last long note, and Eurydice heard gentle triumph in it, satisfaction in the long road, the deep night and the cold journey, ending with a beckoning light in a distant window. Lost and found, the horn said. Lost and found.
The cradle song ebbed into a hum supported on the delicate lyre strings, like a child’s birchbark boat on a stream. The little boat sailed on, but the stream grew narrower and shallower while the boat faltered, hit bottom and came to a gentle, resigned stop, resting on the boggy ground.
There! Thought Eurydice, and felt the circle she’d held in her mind, in her body and in her arms close with gentle finality.
Her eyes were closed, and she kept them closed as she relaxed against the back of her chair. She felt worn out, as though she’d walked all day, though she thought it was probably still morning. She felt suspended in silence, warmth and a web of connected energy. She could hear Verdani’s spinning wheel and knew Verdani and Skuld still worked together, but everyone else quieted and stilled.
Approaching movement made Eurydice open her eyes. Urd came around Yggdrasil’s trunk, looking both anxious and expectant. When she saw Verdani at the spinning wheel and Skuld kneeling beside her amidst careless coils of thread and yarn, her face relaxed and tears stole down her cheeks. She met Eurydice’s eyes and smiled tremulously. She went to the spinning wheel and began gathering the lengths of material, inspecting them for flaws and winding and looping them deftly into skeins and hanks. Her hands trembled.
Nephthys and Death appeared, hand in hand, Death reassembled into his familiar skeleton shape, complete with skull and all his arm bones. Odin quietly reentered the tent, his long, gracefully curved horn between his hands.
Gravely, silently, they watched the three Norns as they worked seamlessly together, each at her accustomed task once more.
PERSEPHONE
Persephone felt as though she’d clambered through the stricken forest for weeks rather than days, but at last she emerged from the trees and the road stretched before her. It was her journey’s last leg. The Gates of the Underworld lay only a mile ahead.
When she’d left Hades, the trees still wore autumn colors, though she’d hardly noticed them in her grief. Now, weeks later, the landscape was a study grey and brown, the true shape and texture of rock, tree and land revealed, the leaves’ glory faded and changed into a damp, richly-scented, russet and brown carpet beneath her feet.
She traveled alone and was thankful for it. She’d set out from Hades alone as well, but that isolation had been a wild, instinctive response to grief and rage too great to bear in company. Now her solitude felt peaceful and she drew close to herself during the long hours and miles.
Two days ago, a storm of wind and rain had forced her to shelter in an inn. She’d laid in a narrow feather bed under the roof, listening to the wind’s roar and pounding rain, relishing the storm’s power, the exhilarating air, and even the steady drip as rainwater penetrated a weak spot in the roof and began leaking onto the floor.
She wished, urgently, for Hades. They had never lain together in a stormy night. Their bed in Hades lay far below ground and the Green World’s weather was a distant story. This was a night for love, as the house creaked around her and the trees popped and swayed outside. It was a night of power, untamed and fierce, a night to shriek and groan without reservation, a night to enter into tumult and passion, to allow the wind to sweep where it would and rain to dash against heated bare skin and trailing bed linens.
She lay still, listening, eyes open in the dark, body humming with desire and vivid with life, and slept only when the storm had passed, sometime before dawn, waking to find a spreading puddle on the floor.
When she went out, the world had changed.
She knew the country well, for she traveled near the place where she’d grown up and her mother, Demeter, the Corn Goddess, still lived. If she left the road and cut through the forest, in two days she’d meet a road that would take her to the Underworld’s gates.
The wind and rain had wrought havoc with the forest, and making her way through it took a day longer than she’d expected. She’d seen old trees come down before, giants that died slowly, branch by branch, whose trunks grew riddled with holes until a heavy snow or wind pushed them gently to the ground, where they gradually subsided into nourishment for their sons, daughters, and brethren with the help of moss and fungi.
But many of the downed trees were not old and ailing. They were strong and vital with thick, intact trunks and huge canopies. They had snapped and shattered, leaving raw, jagged stubs, shockingly pale and visible among the weathered forest colors. As they fell, these giants knocked down other young and healthy trees and left them leaning drunkenly or pinned beneath their heavy bodies.
Persephone stooped and clambered, slipping on the wet, matted leaves, climbing over the fallen bodies, scraping her hands. Twigs snagged her hair and winter bare thorns scratched her face as she forced her way through thickets. Debris obscured the path, and she navigated by instinct and memory.
After the storm the temperature dropped sharply and her progress became noisy. Puddles and rivulets left by the storm froze and crunched underfoot.
She’d never seen such destruction, and wondered if it had to do with Yrtym. Eurydice had said Rose Red’s oak at Rowan Tree ailed. Had the storm been extraordinarily strong? But surely the largest of the fallen trees had weathered many decades of storms.
Uneasy, longing now for Hades and home, she walked doggedly on, her legs aching and her cloak dirtier with every step. The sky looked like iron, and when the sun returned, she wondered how many previously shaded saplings would now bathe in its light and accelerate their growth. The forest would never be the same, but she knew it would renew …maybe. If the Yrtym could be repaired. If trees indeed depended on such a thing.
She spent two nights in the forest, wrapped in her cloak and sheltering against fallen trees, and on the third afternoon she struck the road and wearily trod the last mile. A feathery snow filled the air, not falling so much as floating. The gates of Hades came into view, and beyond them the familiar barns and outbuildings, the garden and the greenhouse. Hades’s black stallion stood inside the fence, ears pricked, the breeze stirring his mane, watching her approach, and near his shoulder stood a tall, brawny figure with a thick black beard.