The Tower: Part 3: Samhain
Post #22: In which motherhood ...
(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.)
CHAPTER 8
EURYDICE
It was over. Eurydice felt life’s last wavering flicker leave the maple, whose trunk she embraced. Too weary to move, she rested there, with her forehead against the dead tree, her arms still around the trunk.
It looked an old tree, and very large. It would have taken at least three of her to reach entirely around the tree’s girth. It had been a Mother tree, 150 feet tall and hundreds of years old. She wondered how many winged seeds it had entrusted to the wind during that time, and of those how many had taken root and grown. The thought gave her comfort.
Comfort was scarce during these dark November weeks. The Samhain ritual seemed to have taken place in another lifetime, in another world. When she’d accepted the path of Motherhood, she’d not known how much death lay ahead.
Eurydice, Heks and Rumpelstiltskin set out together from the Rusalka’s birch wood to travel to Yggdrasil after Samhain. The ritual had been but a detour for Eurydice and Heks, who left Rowan Tree intending to seek out the Norns and consult with them about the Yrtym. Rumpelstiltskin accompanied them.
Eurydice was glad of his company. Heks, indefatigable, reliable and self-contained, wasn’t warm, and Eurydice missed Kunik’s companionship almost unbearably. His acceptance, support and steady affection had become more important to her than she realized. In Kunik’s absence, Rumpelstiltskin filled some of the void.
Like Heks, the Dwarve was utterly dependable and possessed rock-like endurance. He never complained and appeared to be able to do any task: hunting, cooking over a fire, building a rough shelter, navigating (he possessed an unfailing sense of direction) and even storytelling. She discovered he was also a wise and compassionate listener.
In fact, she felt quite certain she couldn’t have faced the journey to Yggdrasil without him, as ever since they left the birch wood tree after tree had died in her arms.
It began with an enormous old beech tree, rustling with its golden-brown leaves. Beeches often held onto their leaves well into early spring, she knew. As a matter of course, she greeted it when they stopped to camp beneath its boughs. As soon as she touched it, she realized it was dying, though she saw no sign of disease. It appeared to have been suddenly stricken as it prepared for its winter sleep; it lacked the patient acceptance she associated with old dying trees at the end of their natural lifespan.
It was a Mother tree, dying before its time, cutting short generations of future children, and its anguished protest tore at Eurydice. She opened her arms and embraced the trunk, pressing herself against it, feeling the bark against her forehead, her cheek, her lips. Silently, she comforted it, as a mother to a child.
Shhh. I’m here. All will be well. I’m Eurydice, an olive tree. I’ll stay with you. Rest in my arms, now.
Not rest, the tree murmured in her mind, death.
Why?
I don’t know. I’m divided … divided… The tree groaned, leaves agitated.
What can I do?
Stay with me. Let me die in your arms.
So, Eurydice stayed, her arms about the trunk, a helpless witness to the tree’s death, while Rumpelstiltskin and Heks set up camp. As evening fell, Heks threw her cloak and then a blanket over Eurydice’s shoulders, and when Eurydice came to the campfire, arms sore and shaking and tearful with exhaustion and grief, the Dwarve had a hot drink and roasted meat ready for her.
Since then, tree after tree had died in her arms, always the largest Mother trees. Mighty oaks, birch, cedar, beech, pine, spruce, hemlock, chestnut, hornbeam and elm.
Thus, the journey to Yggdrasil became much slower than they had anticipated, as they agreed there was no question of leaving a dying tree, although they felt increasingly uneasy about what they would find when they reached the Norns and the Tree of Life.
At first, Eurydice grieved deeply for every lost life, but she gradually learned to take the deaths less hard. As they traveled and talked together, they realized the trees, including Rose Red’s beloved oak at Rowan Tree, were affected by the same illness, and they agreed that illness must be connected to the disruption of Yrtym, but none of them could guess how.
“They all talk about being divided, or cut off,” said Eurydice, “but their bodies show no mark of ax or cut.”
“Yrtym is a web or matrix,” Rumpelstiltskin mused. “Perhaps somehow the trees’ place in that web has been disrupted.”
“Then why is it only the Mother trees are affected?”
“Maybe they’re just the first to show signs,” said Heks. “If all the Mother trees die, can the younger ones survive?”
It was a grim question.
***
As they neared Yggdrasil, Eurydice said to Rumpelstiltskin, “Have you noticed I accepted Motherhood’s life-death balance and you chose the path of malehood, to feed the Mother, and that’s all we’ve done ever since?”
“I noticed. I confess I’ve not thought much about what it means to be male. I know a lot about guiding young women into femalehood, but we Dwarves don’t possess fathers and mothers, only male caretakers when we’re very young, and then peers. There are no women Dwarves, you know.”
“I didn’t know. How are young Dwarves born, then?”
“We’re born in underground caverns called straydles, always within tree roots.”
Eurydice stopped walking and turned to face him.
“Really?”
“Really. Baby Dwarves grow as nodes on the tree roots in the straydle until they’re fully formed and ready to be born. Then the node detaches from the root, the membrane around the baby opens and the young Dwarve is cared for in a nursery next to the straydle by adolescent Dwarves until he’s three years old, by which time he’s an adolescent himself. At that point he takes charge of the next generation of newly-born Dwarves for the next three years, and then he leaves the nursery and his birth straydle and goes into apprenticeship.”
“What happens if the tree above the straydle dies?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking myself the same question.”
“It can’t be a coincidence,” said Eurydice, walking again.
Rumpelstiltskin fell into step beside her. “I think it must be all connected, like the Yrtym itself,” he said. “I’m wondering if ‘feeding the Mother’ means more than feeding you and Heks. I’d not heard about Mother trees until you told me about them.”
“In the world of trees, Mothers are the largest, oldest and healthiest of their species, and during their lifetime they produce hundreds of thousands of seeds. Of course, only a small percentage sprout, become saplings, and live to adulthood, but Mother trees are essential to any healthy forest, and their death costs a great deal more than the death of an immature or sickly tree.”
“I’m wondering if there are any changes underground, in the tree roots,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “Once I see you safely to Yggdrasil, I think I’ll spend some time with my people.”
“’Descend in the dark and face your shadows,’” quoted Eurydice. “That’s what Odin said.”
“Exactly,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “Where’s Heks?”
“She went on ahead. We’re nearly there.”
They walked through leafless trees, their progress marked by a layer of rustling fallen leaves. The weather was dry. A weak afternoon autumn sun shone, painting the landscape with shades of old gold and brown.
Rumpelstiltskin held up a hand. “Stop.”
Eurydice paused, but the rustling continued, as though several people moved through the woods towards them, though she could see no one in any direction.
“My Gods,” whispered Rumpelstiltskin, pointing, and Eurydice, adjusting her gaze downward, saw a giant snake’s large flat head and thick body.
“Mirmir! I’m so glad to see you!”
The snake sped toward them, gliding effortlessly through the leaves, his golden eyes fixed on Eurydice, his endless sinuous body stretched out behind him. He reminded Eurydice of an enthusiastic and rather frightening dog greeting a visitor.
“It’s all right,” she said to Rumpelstiltskin. “It’s Mirmir, the Well of Urd’s guardian. He won’t hurt us.”
She’d nearly forgotten Mirmir in her anxiety to speak with the Norns. She remembered now he’d been the first to greet her the first time she visited Yggdrasil, and Verdani had appeared and scolded him for frightening her.
In fact, Mirmir, though something of a shock, hadn’t terrified her. She’d been killed by a snake once, before Hades and Maria and Persephone, before Janus House and Kunik and so many other friends and events, but she’d never feared snakes and held no resentment against them because of her death.
Apparently, Mirmir talked to the Norns, but he’d never spoken to Eurydice or even in her presence. Still, she’d grown fond of him during her time with the Norns and seeing him now felt like seeing an old friend. She reached out a cautious hand and stroked his smooth, dry neck, twice the girth of her leg. She’d forgotten how beautiful his golden eyes were, with their vertical pupils and green and orange flecks.
“This is my friend, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said to Mirmir, and the snake swung his head around to look at the Dwarve.
“How do you do?” he said, looking amazed.
“We’ve come to talk with the Norns about …things,” said Eurydice. Then, remembering, “Oh, of course, you probably already know that, don’t you?”
She remembered Verdani sitting at her spinning wheel, the thread flowing between her fingers as she recited Webbd’s news. She and the others had called this “Current Events,” and Urd and Skuld avoided the recitation as much as possible, Urd being more interested in the past and Skuld in the future. By default, Mirmir was frequently Verdani’s only audience, but he loved “Current Events,” as it fueled his fondness for gossip with various cronies and friends, including crows, ravens and who knew what else.
Mirmir, of course, made no answer. He turned and led the way, his thick body between them as they advanced.
Eurydice had first visited the Norns during early summer, and then Verdani had sat at her wheel in Yggdrasil’s shade. One of its three trunks acted as a spindle for whatever material she currently spun into thread. Nearby boughs supported hanks of every kind of thread and yarn, organized and stored by Urd, who also wound the spindle. Skuld cut the thread, signaling endings and beginnings, and was instrumental in choosing the material for the next skein.
In this season, Yggdrasil was leafless, though it was still impossible to see its top or entirety from any vantage point. Eurydice remembered it had taken Urd several steps and nearly a minute to wrap its trunk once with material for spinning.
As they approached the trunk and walked around it, they found lengths of thick cloth hanging from boughs, forming a tent against Yggdrasil’s trunk. Pushing aside the cloth, Eurydice discovered Verdani, sitting at her wheel just as she remembered, cozily enclosed with a small brazier for warmth. Heks sat near the radiating heat of the coals.
“Oh, my dear, I’m so glad to see you! Come here quick, and give me a hug!” Verdani bounced to her feet, her gaze warm over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. “What a long time you’ve been! We thought you’d never get here! Mirmir’s gone out every day looking for you.”
“But don’t you know what’s happening?” Eurydice asked, surprised.
Verdani opened her arms and Eurydice leaned gratefully into her feather-pillow embrace, feeling unutterably weary and as though she needed a good private cry.
Verdani held Eurydice off and studied her face. “You’re exhausted, of course. Small wonder.”
Privately, Eurydice thought Verdani looked rather exhausted herself. Her face was more lined than she remembered, her eyes shadowed.
“Why didn’t you know what delayed us?” she asked again.
Verdani turned to the Dwarve. “You’re Rumpelstiltskin, I know.” She gave him her hand. “You’re welcome here. Essential, in fact. And you’ve had your own troubles. Tch! Tch! What are we coming to? I just don’t know.”
“And Heks! So glad to meet you at last! I’ve seen you in my spinning, of course.” She raised her voice, looked up and said, “Thank you, Mirmir!”
The snake slithered up the tree, coil after coil disappearing among the branches above.
“Verdani,” said Eurydice peremptorily, “what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Rumpelstiltskin, having unshouldered his pack and bundles and set them outside the cloth wall with Heks’s and Eurydice’s possessions, replenished the brazier from a pile of firewood. Verdani resumed her seat. Eurydice dropped to the ground next to Heks’s chair and Rumpelstiltskin settled down cross-legged beside her.
Verdani patted her puff of white hair distractedly. “That’s just it,” she said, her voice sad. “I don’t know what’s going on, at least not all of it. I can’t see and hear it all anymore. The thread knots and breaks because the Yrtym—” she paused and glanced from face to face. “You know this word? Yrtym? Matterenergytime?”
They nodded and she resumed. “Yrtym is the essential component in all my spinning. Look.” She gestured toward Yggdrasil’s trunk, wrapped with a rough swathe of brown and grey, faded orange and gold, straw-colored stems, the white fluff of milkweed pods and cattails, and a shimmer of game bird feathers. It smelled like overripe fruit and wet leaves and mushrooms.
“All of that, in a matrix of Yrtym, is the yarn for thick blankets to hold Spring’s seeds and down for Hel’s feather beds. It’s thick pelts for the animals and winter plumage for the birds. It’s crystals of frost and snow and ice. Within each element is past, present and future, endings and beginnings, all smoothly spun together for the next cycle of weaving and making and breaking down.”
“But something is wrong with the Yrtym,” said Rumpelstiltskin.
“Yes,” said Verdani. “It frays. It unravels and breaks. It’s like an old cobweb in the wind. It doesn’t hold together anymore, so my spinning can’t hold together, either. We don’t know why, and we don’t know exactly when it started. Urd can still see the past, but there’s so much of it! So many events happening, every second, everywhere! She’s searching for some event, a moment, a thought, a choice that began the trouble, but she has yet to find it, and she hasn’t much time to look because …” Verdani faltered, removed her glasses and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve.
“Because Skuld is ill,” she finished resolutely, replacing the glasses on her nose.
“Skuld is ill?” repeated Eurydice in disbelief. She loved all the Norns, but Skuld had been the hardest to part from. They shared a special connection, a bond because they both worked with thresholds, Eurydice as a gatekeeper and Skuld as a figure of fate and destiny.
“Yes,” said Verdani. “She can’t work. So Urd and I are doing our best to take care of her and fill in for her, but it’s not going well. We each possess our separate tasks, you see. We’re not interchangeable. All three of us are needed. Whatever is happening to the Yrtym affects our jobs, too, so everything takes twice the effort and time it should, on top of the extra tasks right now. I can still spin, but the quality of my work is lower and lower, and without me -- without all of us -- how will the wheel turn? How will the cycles continue?” Her voice broke and she lowered her eyes to her hands, idle in her lap. Eurydice realized with a jolt she had never seen Verdani sit idle before, especially not before the wheel.
Eurydice felt an uncomfortable mix of anger and compassion. She realized she’d counted on the Norns for answers, for reassurance and for strength. They would know about the Yrtym and what afflicted it. They would know what to do and how to set things right again. They would be able to restore the Mother trees.
She chided herself for being childish, and then, hearing the word ‘childish,’ paused. She had committed to Motherhood, and here was a further test of her commitment. To whom did mothers turn when feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and uncertain? Their children trusted them to keep the world safe, comfortable and secure. It was not Verdani’s responsibility to be wisdom and comfort without end so Eurydice could avoid feeling uncertain and afraid.
“Perhaps,” said Heks unexpectedly from her chair, “this is simply the breakdown of one larger cycle before something new. It might be there’s nothing we can fix and the best course is to wait and see what happens next.”
“Skuld, Urd and I have talked about that,” said Verdani. “We’ve wondered if what’s needed is merely surrender. But Skuld never cut a thread ending our current reality, and she never foresaw such a cataclysmic change. Before she fell ill, everything seemed as usual.”
“Did she fall suddenly ill, or did it happen slowly?” asked Eurydice, thinking of the Mother trees.
“It happened gradually. She grew more and more tired and grouchy, but we didn’t much notice because she’s always a bit like that.” Verdani gave Eurydice a wry smile, shaking her head. “Then she began to talk about ‘running out of beginnings,’ not endings but beginnings, and she was afraid to keep cutting the thread and making endings.”
“But endings are beginnings, aren’t they?” asked Eurydice.
“Oh, my dear, of course they are. You yourself opened Skuld’s eyes to that when you visited the first time, remember? But Skuld thinks endings are dividing from beginnings. I can’t understand it, and I don’t think she does, either, but she refuses to cut the thread and her terror is real that if she does cut, one day everything will …stop.”
Verdani turned to Heks. “Over the ages, we’ve seen many endings, big and small. Skuld has seen it, I’ve spun it and Urd has stored it. We’re accustomed to the natural balance of ebb and flow, but this is too sudden. It doesn’t feel natural, it feels like a dysfunction somewhere can be fixed and must be fixed if we are to save Webbd. We just don’t know where to start.”
“It appears we must pool our information,” said Heks.
“I agree. I think we should go inside. Urd and Skuld need to be part of this as well, and Skuld’s longing to see you, my dear,” Verdani said to Eurydice.
They stood, Eurydice and Rumpelstiltskin stretching and easing their legs, gathered up the travelers’ bundles and entered the Norns’ little house.
This was a comfortably-sized structure with a kitchen, where Urd was working, three bedrooms and a living room dominated by a rock fireplace. Above was a slope-roofed attic, where Eurydice had slept during her first visit. Verdani took them up. Two beds had been added to the one she’d used previously.
“We knew you were coming from Rowan Tree,” Verdani said to Heks and Eurydice. “Then I lost track of you, but Urd found the Samhain ritual as she wound and stored skeins, though I missed it as I spun. The thread was particularly weak and broke several times. She learned Rumpelstiltskin had joined you and you intended to come here. After that, we’ve seen no news, but we prepared for your arrival.”
She gestured toward a window in the gable end, partially lowered. “It can be stuffy up here and overly warm if the fire burns for several days.” The stone chimney rose up from the fireplace below and exited the low roof. “We usually leave the window slightly ajar. One of Mirmir’s friends occasionally spends the night.” She gestured to a flat rectangular box attached to the wall in the darkest corner near the window.
“What is that?” asked Heks.
“A bat house,” said Eurydice and Rumpelstiltskin together.
“Of course, you’d know about bats,” said Verdani to Rumpelstiltskin, “being born and working underground.”
“Useful, intelligent and fascinating creatures,” said Rumpelstiltskin.
“I’m so pleased you think so. We’re rather fond of them as well. This one comes and goes and makes little mess. Their pellets are easily swept up. Also, he’ll keep the attic quite mosquito free for you, although the cold weather has taken care of most of them already.”