The Tower: Part 3: Samhain (Entire)

In which you can read without interruption ...

Jul 07, 2024

PART 3 SAMHAIN

(SAH-win or SOW-in) Halloween; begins the dark half of the year and is the midpoint between autumn equinox and winter solstice. Fire festival; third of three harvest points in the cycle. Self-assessment and reflection, a time to let go of that which no longer serves. Ushers in a period of peace and rest.

The Card: The Heirophant

Faith; allegiance; trust.

CHAPTER 5

ROSE RED

Rose Red dreamt of Death snapping his fingers with bony clicks in a macabre dance, just as he had during the Ostara initiation with Baba Yaga. In the dream, the snap, snap became louder and more insistent, until it was the sound of bones breaking, dozens of bones, hundreds of them, breaking into jagged-edged pieces and falling onto the ground on a carpet of dead leaves, perfumed with death. She woke with a sound of distress, loud in her dream but low and quiet in the dim confines of her little house.

She turned on her back, warm tears sliding from the corners of her eyes into the curly hair at her temples. A bad dream, and yet not a dream. She found no relief in waking; her waking life was as shadowed and stained with dread as her dream. The oak tree forming part of her house was dying and her lover, Rowan, was slipping away.

It felt like very early morning. Desperately, she craved sleep’s forgetfulness, but she was wide awake. Experience had taught her not to lie in bed thinking. Better to begin the day with dragging fatigue than give way to panic and despair and sobbing herself into a headache and inability to eat breakfast.

She sat up and put her feet on the chilly floor. Tentatively, she reached out her hand and laid it against the trunk of the oak tree against which she slept.

It felt the same. Empty and cold, its vitality dammed and broken into nothing but a seep.

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

Later, Rose Red sat with her back against the oak tree and looked down the slope at Rowan Tree. Maria was on her hands and knees in the garden, digging carrots and potatoes. Gabriel leaned on a shovel nearby, talking. Rose Red could hear the sound of his voice, though not his words.

Smoke rose from the slaughterhouse shed Lugh had helped build the first year, and several people worked, butchering, smoking and preserving meat for the winter.

Heks and Ginger, lately returned from visiting Persephone and Rapunzel, trundled back and forth with loads of animal bedding and manure between the animal pens and sheds and the garden, spreading compost.

Leaves fell as she watched, oak leaves like little brown hands, rustling and curled as though in appeal, an appeal she could not answer. Gradually, the trees on the hill’s crown above Rowan Tree were baring themselves to purple and grey autumn skies.

It had not been a colorful fall. Whatever passion made the leaves flame and rejoice as the trees released them had not ignited, and orange muted to golden brown, scarlet to faded red. Even the sulpher shelf mushrooms growing on rotting stumps and logs did not display their usual vibrant golden orange. Another leaf floated into her lap, and she looked down at it and thought, What do you need? What can I do?

She hadn’t seen Rowan for weeks.

In the long cold deeps of a February night, a vixen had called for a mate, an entirely wild sound, neither yap, bark or howl. For several nights she called steadily, moving in the forest around Rowan Tree, and Rose Red lay alone in her bed and listened to the savage demand for a mate and for motherhood.

She didn’t blame Rowan. He must live true to his nature, as the rest of the forest did. She herself felt the compelling demand of the vixen’s call, the erotic thrill of the long cold night, the lust of fur and teeth and musk. Had she been a dog fox she would have gone without hesitation to bite and snap and snarl, to dominate and cover and thrust. It was right for Rowan to seek a mate among his own kind and father offspring.

Since the beginning of their union, they had shared each other with their respective tribes, though he could enter farther into her world with his ability to shape shift than she could into his. Her human form was all she had, and she often felt frustrated with her limitations. Rowan could experience two physical realities, but she was chained to one.

She’d understood for some time their relationship could not endure their differences, but understanding did not prepare her for the desolation she felt as he slipped away from her. She felt ashamed of herself, and withdrew from the others. What had she expected, when she took a fox man as a lover? They would think her naïve and weak, making drama out of an inevitable ending. Why could she not learn to take life casually, not make such a big deal out of everything? Maria, who had experienced real tragedy, would despise her, and she’d deserve it.

The gradual decline of the forest, though, was something different. That she should tell them about, and soon. Somehow, Rowan’s departure and the forest’s diminishment seemed inextricably tangled together, and she feared speaking about one would reveal her pain and grief about the other.

She had a frantic feeling if she began crying she wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Rosie?”

Rose Red started. She’d been so deep in her own misery she hadn’t heard Eurydice approach.

“Sorry,” said Eurydice. She sat down next to Rose Red.

“Are you all right? You look upset.”

“I’m fine,” said Rose Red. She moved so Eurydice could share the tree trunk as a back rest and turned toward her, manufacturing an air of serene inquiry.

“I’m not,” said Eurydice with enviable frankness. “I’m scared. I feel like a bit of a fool, but something’s wrong. At first, I thought I imagined things, but the feeling of wrongness is getting … bigger.”

Rose Red took a deep breath, feeling relieved. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

“Tell me.”

“I’m not sure I can. That’s why I haven’t said anything. In the beginning, it was a feeling more than anything else. Just a feeling that something about Rowan Gate was different. When I tried to pin it down, I couldn’t. Something seemed … off. Then, as the season turns, I’ve noticed the trees are different. The last couple of years the leaves have been a riot of color, almost a shout, you know? This fall they’re dull. Kunik and I have both noticed it.”

“Me, too,” said Rose Red.

“The latest news is the portal is not working properly,” said Eurydice. She picked up oak leaves, one by one, and fanned them out, holding the brittle stems between her fingers. Her thick dark hair swung forward, hiding her face. An errant shaft of sunlight gave her head a momentary purple sheen.

“Rosie, I’m afraid it’s my fault. I don’t mean the forest — I’m not that important! But the gate. Maybe I’m not a good gatekeeper after all. Maybe it was a mistake for me to try to look after Rowan Gate?”

Rose Red reached for Eurydice’s hand, and Eurydice dropped the fan of withered leaves and gave it to her. Rose Red pressed her palm against the tree trunk behind them.

“It’s not you. My tree … this tree is dying.”

Tears rose in her throat, and Eurydice’s appalled look made her feel she needn’t hide them. She let them fall.

Eurydice put her own palm against the tree’s body and closed her eyes, as though listening. After a moment she dropped her hand without speaking, and intertwined her fingers with Rose Red’s. Their hands rested on the rustling carpet of leaves.

“What do you think is wrong?”

Rose Red wiped her cheeks. “I don’t know. I’ve wondered if it’s my fault. Maybe I’m not a proper guardian of the forest and Artemis made a mistake. But when you say that’s how you feel, I know it can’t be right, so maybe it’s not me, either. Maybe it’s something bigger than us.”

“It must be, if it affects the whole forest.”

“I don’t know how much of the forest is affected,” said Rose Red. “I suppose we’d better find out.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“I think we should visit the birch wood and talk with the Rusalka, to start with,” said Rose Red. “If something’s wrong in their wood, they’ll know it. They have more power and wisdom than I do, and perhaps they can advise us. I’ll talk with Artemis, too, and Gwelda and Jan. If something’s amiss with the trees, they’ll have noticed it.”

“And the gate?”

“What do you mean when you say it’s not working properly?”

Eurydice frowned, thinking. “You know when a gate is rusted or a door warps or swells, and it gets hard to open?”

Rose Red nodded.

“It’s like that. I feel resistance when I open the portal, like I have to push much harder and it drags or is blocked somehow. I first noticed it when one of the Rusalka traveled back and forth between here and Morfran’s forest.”

Rose Red stood and brushed leaves off her leggings. “I think we’d better talk with the others before we do anything else.”

“I feel better,” said Eurydice, and opened her arms for a hug.

“Me, too,” Rose Red whispered into her shoulder, sinking into Eurydice’s generous embrace and feeling comforted. “Me, too.”

***

The leader of the group of Rusalka near Rowan Tree was Valeria. The Rusalka, though they danced with the women of Rowan Tree, did not mingle freely with the human community. They had the most contact with Eurydice, as they made occasional use of Rowan Gate to travel between their home forest and Rowan Tree. Rose Red wanted to know them better and knew they could teach her a great deal, but their aloof self-sufficiency and power intimidated her.

However, her uneasiness about the forest’s well-being made her forget her own sense of inadequacy, and she and Eurydice set out on an October afternoon for the Rusalka’s birch forest. Breakfast in the community’s all-purpose gathering space had become a protracted affair as Eurydice and Rose Red shared with the others their concerns and observations. Rose Red was surprised to find Ginger and Heks both possessed information to contribute. Ginger shared a letter she’d received from Radulf and Heks introduced them to the concept of Yrtym.

Rose Red, sitting with the others and listening in wonder to Heks, realized how isolated she’d become. Preoccupied with her private misery since early spring, she’d not paid attention to the changing seasons. Naturally shy and quiet, Rowan had provided her with most of the companionship she wanted as Rowan Tree was built and settled. As he slipped out of her life, she’d made no effort to reach out to others, and her friends, used to her solitary presence on the community’s edge and ignorant of Rowan’s absence, hadn’t known of her trouble.

Now, seeing concerned and puzzled faces around her as Heks talked of matterenergytime, Rose Red realized her withdrawal was self-destructive and useless, her sense of shame a familiar prison she need not inhabit. Kunik, as the child of an ice bear and a human, would certainly understand the complexities of her relationship with Rowan. Eurydice would not condemn her, or Maria, or any of the people she worked, danced and lived with.

While she’d been emotionally absent, Rowan Tree harvested and prepared for winter, Ginger had visited Persephone and Rapunzel and returned. (What happened during that visit and how were Persephone and Rapunzel? She’d never asked.) Heks had reappeared, returned from her journey through the portal, (where had she been and what had she done?) a more assertive, more confident Heks, who spoke knowledgably of things Rose Red had never heard of before. If the strangely-named Yrtym underlay life everywhere in the cosmos, it was part of the forest, and protecting the forest was her business.

It was as though she’d looked through a pinhole for months, and the pinhole suddenly widened into an infinite view. In this new view she realized how insignificant any single person was, and the abrupt shift in perspective brought her a sense of relief and expansion, as though an unutterable burden lifted from her shoulders. If what Heks said was true, not only Rose Red’s beloved oak, but Rowan and the entirety of the forest, including the Rowan Tree community, were at risk. It appeared the very stars were somehow loosening from the sky, and life everywhere was threatened.

As they walked through the crisp October forest after breakfast, Rose Red reached for Eurydice’s hand, seeking to both give and receive comfort. Eurydice was a tree nymph, and if trees sickened everywhere, could her people survive? Could Eurydice herself survive?

The thought brought an icy rush of fear.

Eurydice’s strong, broad hand clasped her own gratefully.

“It’s so big,” said Eurydice. “How do we fix something as vast as this … Yrtym when we can’t see it? I don’t really understand what it is.”

“I’m not sure anyone does,” replied Rose Red.

“I suppose this is what’s wrong with Rowan Gate as well.”

They reached the edge of the birch forest. Slim black and white trunks stretched before them. Bark peeled away in delicate, feathery strips. Yellow and red mushrooms grew amongst the thick trees.

A crow took flight from nearby, rattling the naked branches with its harsh caw.

“The sentry,” said Rose Red.

They waited, still with clasped hands, and Rose Red thought they must look like a picture in a fairytale, two young female travelers or waifs, dwarfed by the duns, greys and shadows of an autumn birch wood.

She glimpsed movement between the trees and a large boar came into sight, its heavy head with curved tusks below broad humped shoulders, knotty with muscle. It was far larger than the native wild pigs that roamed in small sounders and were occasionally hunted by the people of Rowan Tree. This boar was alone.

It grunted, and Eurydice said, “Valeria, we’ve come to take counsel with you, Rose Red and I.”

The boar grunted again and turned away, leading them farther into the forest.

The Rusalka lived among the birch trees during spring, summer and fall, weaving garments from their hair and feathers. Rose Red never found herself among them without remembering with grief her old friend Jenny, who had spun gold out of straw and been murdered.

The Rusalka were shape shifters, each female in human form, but also able to wear the aspect of other creatures, and most of them had a favorite. Valeria, for example, often took a wild boar’s form, and to dance with her was to dance with glittering savage small eye, slashing curved tusk, bristly hair, and the grunts, squeals, screams and even purrs of a boar. In her human form she looked, like all the Rusalka, a beautiful woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed and pale-skinned as milk, with an occasional swathe of bristles visible between her powerful shoulder blades.

Valeria wove linen from both bristles and the heavy fall of hair she wore in human form, and the other Rusalka wove also from hair gathered from at least one of their shapes. In some cases, they used feathers and even scales, as more than one of them frequently took a snake’s shape.

The Rusalka had joined Rowan Tree when it was founded, staying in the birch wood until winter and then returning through the portal called Rowan Gate to their first home, Baba Yaga’s birch wood, where their sisters, Vasilisa, Morfran and his mate Sofia, also a Rusalka, lived. In the winter, they inhabited the waters of the portal on their side, the icy plunge pool beneath a bathhouse, resuming their mermaid shapes. In the spring they returned to the birch wood outside Rowan Tree and lived among the trees, weaving and watching over the wood and Rowan Gate, along with Eurydice, gatekeeper, and Rose Red, handmaiden to Artemis.

They would leave with the first snow, but today, as Valeria led Rose Red and Eurydice into the forest’s heart on her strangely delicate hooves, they found the Rusalka perched high among the naked branches, chattering together, combing out long skeins of hair as women or grooming, plucking, and preening as animals, and weaving on looms of living birch branches.

Rose Red greeted them formally and respectfully, as one guardian to another, and the Rusalka and two humans gathered to talk.

Eurydice, clearly and deliberately, shared her own concerns and observations, her talk with Rose Red early that morning, and the subsequent information they’d obtained.

As she spoke, Rose Red looked around the circle, fascinated, as always, by the shifting kaleidoscope of aspects that was the constant state of every Rusalka. They preferred to be naked, no matter what the weather, and to sit among them was to be in a dream of boundary ecstasy in which breast, hand, hip, buttock, tusk, fang, wing, talon, claw, ear and paw mingled, as though their being was too powerful to be contained in only one aspect.

To dance with them was to dance with infinite expression from savage and primordial to fathomless physical beauty and sensuality. They reminded her of Rowan, though he was limited to two shapes.

It was as unthinkable they should be captured as it was that Rowan should be. Such wild power lay beyond civilization, beyond taming. To be graced with its presence, even fleetingly, felt like a gift, and a feeling of resignation that might one day mellow into gratitude eased her heartache.

Eurydice ceased speaking.

“We have not heard of this Yrtym,” said Valeria, glancing at the perplexed faces around her. “However, we too have noticed the season’s dullness, and it appears the birches no longer provide us looms with such joy. If the portal is affected, as you say, I’m greatly concerned. I think perhaps we should depart early this season and talk with our sisters and the Mother of Witches. Maybe they know more than we do. In any case, we do not want to be trapped here on your side if the portal breaks down.”

Eurydice bowed her head.

“From what you’ve said, if the portal closes, it’s not your fault,” said Valeria.

“I don’t want to lose you,” said Eurydice, looking around the circle, “any of you.”

Neither did Rose Red. Having the Rusalka nearby gave her a feeling of magic and power, and also of safety. She wished she had not been so tentative in approaching them. Would they ever return if the gate broke down during the winter? What had she missed learning from them?

Unexpectedly, another Rusalka spoke up, one who often appeared as a lynx. “We don’t want to lose you, either. We’ve enjoyed our second home, and you and your human community have taught us a great deal. Also, you share dance with us, a powerful bond. Still, we cannot be permanently divided from our sisters or the Hag. If we can return safely, we will.”

Murmurs of assent came from others around the circle.

“We can give one another more,” agreed Valeria, looking at Rose Red. “For now, though, I think we must counsel with our sisters at home and seek more information.”

She turned to Eurydice. “Do you know of the Mother trees, nymph?”

“The mother trees are the largest, and the first,” said Eurydice. “They birth, nurture and shelter their daughters and sons.”

“Yes,” said Valeria, “but there is more.”

She stood and laid her hand on a massive tree trunk. It took three Rusalka in human form with outstretched arms to girdle it. It rose a hundred feet above the canopy and other trunks split off the main. The greyish trunk was deeply fissured and scored with black. Thick roots snaked across the ground around its base, partially covered by the forest floor.

“This is a mother birch,” said Valeria. “She’s connected to the entire birch forest, as well as many other trees in this region, through a network of roots and fungi. We recognize a birch forest as one tree, and Mother trees are the heart of any forest. They possess the ability to send food, water and messages to other trees and plants. They favor their own species, although they will share with other species as well. They are the nexus of power, the fixed point around which everything in the forest revolves. If they die, the forest dies.”

She turned to Rose Red. “I suspect your oak is a mother tree as well.”

“It’s certainly the biggest oak in the area,” said Rose Red.

“Your grief is well founded,” said Valeria. “If the oak is lost, many other trees depending upon it will die.”

“The greatest mother tree of all,” said Eurydice, looking appalled, “is …”

“Yggdrasil,” said Valeria. “Yes. This is why we must take your news to our home place and seek counsel. If the threat to the thing you call Yrtym can kill the mother trees, the Rusalka’s world will die.”

Eurydice met Rose Red’s gaze. She looked pale. Rose Red felt as if she’d taken a blow to the belly. She hadn’t grasped the enormity of the threat before Valeria’s words. Perhaps I still haven’t grasped it, she thought fearfully.

“We will leave tonight through the portal,” said Valeria. The Rusalka stood, shifting from four legs to two. To Rose Red’s surprise, Valeria stepped forward and embraced her. The Rusalka rarely initiated physical contact, though Rose Red often longed to stroke their varied textures. One by one, each Rusalka embraced both Rose Red and Eurydice, and by the time the last one released Rose Red, she was weeping.

Together, she and Eurydice turned and made their way back to Rowan Tree.

Rowan Gate was a humble spring bubbling up out of the ground, enclosed on three sides by old stone walls Rose Red and Rowan had rebuilt and repaired when they arrived at Rowan Tree. As dusk fell, Sonia, the community’s candlemaker, passed out candles to everyone, and Rowan Tree gathered to say goodbye to the Rusalka, lit candles in hand.

Eurydice and Rose Red had once again addressed them in the dining hall, explaining about Mother trees and the Rusalka’s intention to leave early, in case the portal should break down entirely.

Eurydice privately confessed to Rose Red her fear that she would not be able to open Rowan Gate far enough for the Rusalka to pass through, and Rose Red, resolving to take her own advice, said, “Tell them. Maybe together we can open it if you have trouble.”

Rose Red listened to Eurydice with admiration as she confessed her fears to the people of Rowan Tree and noted their willingness to help any way they could. Sonia volunteered candles and everyone volunteered their presence, not only to bid the Rusalka farewell, perhaps permanently, but also to support Eurydice, who tried to convey the feeling of pushing the gate open with her mind and heart rather than her body.

They formed a candle-lit aisle in the autumn gloaming, men, women and two solemn children, and the Rusalka walked between them, pausing to touch, exchange a word or two, and even embrace. The Rusalka crowded into the shelter of the spring’s three stone walls with Eurydice, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Rose Red on one side and Kunik on the other.

Eurydice drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, and her tension and effort flowed into Rose Red.

“Together now,” said Rose Red, low-voiced. “One … two … three.”

Rowan Gate filled with the tension of pushing, and Rose Red remembered the oak leaves like supplicating brown hands. The Rusalka, one by one, stepped into the spring and disappeared. The feeling of effort dissipated. Eurydice opened her eyes and relaxed, and the little group of people exhaled.

“It was so hard,” said Eurydice. “I don’t know if I can open it again, even with everyone’s help.” Tears fell down her face and Kunik put an arm around her.

“What will happen now?” one of the women asked. Darkness had fallen, and Rose Red couldn’t see faces as the candles flickered.

“I don’t know,” said Rose Red.

Maria, the community’s leader by unspoken agreement, said, “Now we will continue to harvest and prepare for winter. We’ll care for our animals and each other and wait for more information. We’re sure to hear from someone. In the meantime, we must look to our own needs as well as we can.”

The group murmured agreement and loosened as people turned toward their homes. Rose Red heard candles being blown out and the smell of burning wicks hung in the air momentarily before being dissipated by a night breeze.

“Thank you,” called Eurydice. “I needed you.”

Several people raised their hands in acknowledgement as they moved through the Rowan trees guarding Rowan Gate.

SEREN

The shock of slamming into the cold water nearly stunned him into unconsciousness. He’d been laughing, bantering with the captain of the ship, when one of the crewmen tipped him over the rail as neatly and effortlessly as though disposing of a bucket of slops. He’d noticed before the strength of sailors, though naturally none could match his wit or his tongue. Muscles they had, but in sensibility they were as rough and stupid as cows.

The laughter hadn’t quite left his lips, and a mouth and nose full of icy stinging seawater brought full consciousness roaring back, along with a wave of fear, and then fury. Surely this was a dangerous sort of practical joke!

Gasping, he searched the heaving waves around him for the ship, expecting to see a row of jeering, laughing faces above the rail and a boat being lowered for his rescue, or at least a rope coiled and ready to throw.

But the ship moved away from him, not toward him.

They were leaving.

“Hey!” he shouted after the ship. “Hey!”

His outrage and injured pride earned him a slap in the face by a wave and another mouthful of water. He realized he was quite likely to die, and the ignominiousness of the situation made him clench his teeth in fury.

The greatest poet who had ever lived could not die, alone, uncomforted and unsung, in the middle of the ocean. The Gods would not allow it.

On this thought, he felt something stir beneath him, and jerked and shouted in surprised fear, kicking out.

Something moved against his thigh and then his side, and a smooth grey shape surfaced beside him, a blunt head with a neat blowhole on top, a wide fixed smile and a friendly and rather intelligent dark eye.

It was a dolphin.

Thus began a lengthy ordeal. Seren was not clear exactly how long the dolphin steered and supported him. It felt like days and days. The water was freezing cold, and he felt proud of his ability to withstand hypothermia. Perhaps his superior creativity came with subtly superior physical skills. Sailors possessed brute strength, but his abilities were more refined and sophisticated.

For a long time, he saw nothing but waves in every direction, and the dolphin’s sleek, wet curves, but then he noticed a faint smudge of dark land. Days later (it seemed like days, though he hadn’t noticed intervening nights. Perhaps he’d blacked out periodically?) he could see a rocky shore under a slanting cliff on which a lighthouse perched.

Heartened, he forced his cold-numbed and (surely by now) emaciated body into weak paddling and kicking to help his rescuer, who pushed him determinedly toward land.

What a poem he would make of this! What a story! An epic struggle! A night adventure (night was always more dramatic than day), full of stars and foam, salt waves and a dolphin of silver and pearl! He became so engrossed in describing the exhausted hero, pale and half drowned after being callously cast overboard by pirates, crawling on all fours onto rocks that bruised and cut his beautiful, long-fingered hands, that he didn’t immediately grasp the feel of solid land beneath his feet.

Truthfully, his numb legs would hardly hold him and he felt as weak as a newly-hatched chick. He clutched the dolphin for support, though clearly the creature could take him no further without risking its life in the shallow water. Seren, however, eyed the sharp-edged rocks and pounding surf with chagrin. He had no wish to actually be seen crawling out of the surf like an exhausted wet animal.

As he stood, trembling and panting, he heard a shout and someone hurried down a narrow path on the cliff face. A girl with long hair, streaked gold and brown, tumbling down her back. It looked as though it needed a good combing.

She trod the path nimbly and left its gradual zig-zag descent to jump straight down the steep rocks. Seren noticed her bare feet.

“Are you all right?” she called. She stepped right into the surf, walking among the sharp wet rocks as though on soft, grassy ground. “Shall I come help you?”

“Certainly not!” he called back, wincing as he heard his voice, raw with salt and thirst. Steadying himself, he squared his shoulders, left the dolphin’s support and took a few steps forward. The sea ebbed, clutching him, trying to draw him back into its bosom, and he heard a loud splash behind him.

“Delphinus!” the girl cried, evidently delighted.

As the next wave pushed him from behind, Seren took advantage of it and moved forward. Pausing during the water’s ebb, moving with its flow, he gradually made his way to where the girl stood, knee deep.

She was strong. She linked her arm with his and guided him out of the surf. He staggered, suddenly feeling deathly tired, and his stomach rolled uneasily. She lowered him onto a handy slab of rock.

She turned, looking out to sea, and the dolphin arched out of the waves in a graceful silver blue arc. She waved. “Thank you, Delphinus!” she called. “I’ve got him now!” The dolphin leaped again, as though in answer, and swam toward the horizon.

The girl turned back. “We must get you up to the lighthouse. You’re white as foam and cold as sea ice. What’s your name?”

“Seren,” he said.

She paused as though struck, looking intently into his face. She appeared only slightly younger than he, and her eyes looked strange, light-colored like abalone shell. He coughed and winced. His chest felt waterlogged.

At once, her speculative look became concerned. “I’m Clarissa,” she said briefly, and put a strong hand under his elbow, raising him to his feet.

Laboriously, they clambered up the cliff path, Seren staying on his feet by an act of willful pride. By the time they reached the lighthouse, he was gasping and would have fallen without Clarissa’s support.

He had a confused impression of female voices as they lowered him into a chair. Clarissa disappeared. A woman filled a bathtub and he noticed her thick braid of honey-colored hair, swaying against her back as she worked the pump handle next to the sink. Another woman with the shortest hair he’d ever seen on a female knelt before him and deftly began removing what clothes he still wore. She stripped the stockings off his white, dead looking feet. He felt humiliated by the discovery he couldn’t even find the strength to lift his hands and unbutton his jacket.

The short-haired woman lowered him into a steaming tub of water standing in the kitchen. The warm water felt unexpectedly painful and he cried out before he could stop himself, and then felt ashamed by his weakness.

“It will get better,” she assured him. “Be still and relax.”

Bundled herbs floated in the water, their scent soothing the inside of his raw nose.

“I’m thirsty,” he said, and the woman with the braid handed him a glass of water.

“Sip it slowly if you want to keep it down,” she advised.

He sipped, and as the sweet water cooled and eased his salt-puckered mouth and throat, he struggled against tears of relief.

The sharp pains in his arms and legs gradually eased into tingling as he began thawing. He submerged his head, rinsing saltwater from his hair and face. His eyes stung and burned, watering.

Seren leaned his head back and relaxed. Every now and then the woman with the braid tipped more hot water into the tub. She boiled a kettle and made tea for him, adding a slug of something from a bottle. When he tasted it, he recognized mead, sweet and thick with honey and ginger.

At last, drugged with warmth, several cups of mead-laced tea and exhaustion, he allowed the short-haired woman to steer him onto a stone staircase winding up the lighthouse wall, through a large bedroom and into a smaller one above it. He fell onto a bed and slept.

***

“You called the dolphin who helped me by name.”

Clarissa looked up into Seren’s face from where she sat on the floor near his feet. He was ensconced in a chair before the stove. Persephone sat in her favorite armchair, but Rapunzel stretched out on the floor on her back in her accustomed place, a pillow beneath her head.

Seren had slept straight through the rest of the day he washed ashore and the following night. He woke feeling warm, rested, famished, and ready to create a story of his adventure that would be told and retold for all time. His lyre, along with his other possessions, remained on board the ship, but he consoled himself with beginning to craft words. He could add music later.

After eating a prodigious breakfast, cooked by Persephone and served by Clarissa, they settled before the stove to talk.

“Delphinus,” she said, smiling up at him, her eyes warming to blue, green and a hint of violet. “He’s a special friend of Poseidon’s.”

Seren raised an eyebrow, amused by the girl’s presumption to speak about King Poseidon as though he was a family member.

“Where did you hear that?” he asked.

She pulled her knees up and clasped them, her eyes on his face. “It’s well known,” she said, “among my people. I’m a—”

“Delphinus is a constellation,” interrupted Rapunzel, without opening her eyes.

“Yes,” said Clarissa, looking at her in surprise.

“Is there a story about him?”

“Many stories. Shall I tell one?” She looked shyly back at Seren. “You’re the storyteller. Some say you’re the greatest storyteller who ever lived. I couldn’t tell it like you could.”

Seren felt gratified by her praise. It pleased him that they knew who he was, although it was hardly surprising. Everyone had heard of him.

“I’d be pleased to hear it,” he said graciously. If they were to exchange stories, it was kinder to allow her to go first, before she heard his skill and became too discouraged to try.

“All right,” said Clarissa. She left her place at Seren’s feet, picked up a fat pillow and sat against a wall, the pillow behind her, from which vantage point she could see everyone’s faces. For some reason she found she told better when she could see her audience’s reactions.

“Once upon a time, before the moons and sea found one another and the silver tide ebbed and flowed with their passion, Delphinus arced through a foam of stars in an endless black sea, lit only by nebulae and starglitter.

His body curved, a bowstring of joyful potential, but he remained fixed, arrested, forever still, only his coruscating eyes moving here and there as he watched the cosmos.

For unmeasurable eons Delphinus hung, suspended in the cold, lonely black sea of space, abiding, his thoughts and hopes focused on Her.

She was not fixed. She was not black and diamond glitter, but vibrant green, shades of grey and brown that rested his eye, and most of all blue, a blue shimmering from indigo to amethyst, and from turquoise to jade as she revolved before his gaze. At times she concealed herself with gauzy grey, at other times flirtatiously swirling streaks of milky white over her body.

She enchanted him. He was captivated as she rolled voluptuously before him, always subtly changing but always there, enduring, suspended, like him, within the web of space.

He called her Hyash, and he longed for her as the sea longs for the land, as the tide longs for the moons.

As Delphinus gazed, captivated, at Hyash, a large rock hurtled past his long nose, not quite touching him, and he moved! His head moved and he thrashed, ungainly, heart pounding with excitement, uttering high-pitched sounds of effort. He rolled, flexed his powerful tail, at last realized the promise of the arc he’d held so long and plunged straight toward Hyash. The rock that had severed him from his place in the black sky sped ahead like a beacon, and as Hyash filled Delphinus’s vision the rock glowed and then burned with a lambent light too brilliant to look at. As he shifted his gaze, Delphinus realized he fell amidst a shower of stars, and they too burned more and more brilliantly as they dove together in a rapturous swarm.

A strange perfume filled his nose, fecund, salty, moist and filled with life. Delphinus swelled and blazed with passion, moving his powerful tail in an effort to dive faster, to enter Hyash’s beckoning blue-streaked being, to disappear into the waters of her body and never leave them again, to taste, to feel, to fill his senses with her.

Blinded by light, he felt intoxicated with sound and movement, scent and color. Still he dove, silvery grey and gleaming, eyes ablaze with determination, and Hyash parted her watery thighs and welcomed him, warm and liquid, as he penetrated and then rose to the surface to leap and dive again and again, mad with ecstasy.”

Seren felt stunned, not only by the story’s rhythm and poetry, but also its sensuality. It was unexpected from this strange girl with her disordered streaked hair of blonde and brown and silvery eyes. How had this tale, clearly a creation story, escaped his notice?

“My people say Delphinus and Hyash between them made all the sea’s life,” said Clarissa. “The stars that fell with him turned into starfish.”

“And stars still mark his place in the night sky?” asked Rapunzel. “A sort of placeholder, like Castor and Pollux?”

“Yes,” said Clarissa.

“And is it the same creature, the Delphinus in the story and the one you know?” asked Rapunzel. “If so, he must be old beyond telling.”

“I think so,” said Clarissa. “Many thousands of dolphins swim the sea, all kinds, even pink dolphins in some places who shapeshift into men who come on land and seduce women, but this one dolphin is the one we call Delphinus.”

Seren, bewildered, annoyed by references to people and creatures he knew nothing about, cut in.

“Who are your people?” he demanded of Clarissa.

“The merfolk,” she said simply, looking surprised by his vehemence.

“The merfolk!” he exclaimed.

“Lucky for you Delphinus was there,” Rapunzel said to him, sitting up and crossing her legs comfortably. “How did you happen to fall in the water, anyway?”

“Oh, yes! Now you tell!” said Clarissa.

Generally speaking, Seren preferred standing before an audience when performing to facilitate playing his lyre and please his listeners with the cut of his clothes and the flirt of his cloak, but his legs still felt unreliable, so he stayed seated, though he straightened his shoulders and imagined, as was his habit, the shining white light he was born with still blossoming about his head like a crown, symbolizing his unparalleled skill and voice.

“Once upon a time,” he began, “before the shining stars learned to sing enchantments,” (this was his own personal private conceit, a subtle reference to his natal white light), “a great poet and musician boarded a ship to return home after entertaining kings in a far-away exotic place.

Naturally, the captain and his crew had heard of this artist, and they begged him for a story or song. Although he felt worn out with his recent exertions in the foreign land, he humbly complied with their importuning.

The entire crew gathered on the deck, and the poet, with his lyre on his arm, enchanted them with music and words, freely giving his best, though the audience was rough and ill-equipped to appreciate it.

As the poet sang, the sails became white wings, and the ship skimmed the waves in the ecstasy of music and lyrics. As he spoke poetry describing the lineage and accomplishments of kings and queens, the masts remembered their roots and budded and sprouted with branches and leaves, becoming starred with sweet blossoms. The figurehead ceased its watch over the waters ahead and listened, her chin propped on her hand.

Night crept across the sky while the poet held the crew rapt in the net of his words. The stars hung low, listening, and crescent Noola tilted to hear. On and on the poet spoke, without food, water or rest, and his audience alternately laughed, groaned and wept as he recited romance and adventure and sang of victory and defeat.

When he finished, the ship had traveled far on the wings of his words, and nearly a day and a night had passed. As they applauded, the poet took a modest bow, and exhausted, staggered to support himself with the rail as the crew went about their duties. The blossoms adorning mast and spar shriveled, the leaves disappeared and the white wings resumed the shapes of sails, rather patched and dirty. As he rested, trying to regain enough strength to go and seek refreshment in the galley, the poet fell into conversation with the captain. The poet suggested pleasantly that his fare, due upon safe arrival at his journey’s end, would reflect a modest debit in remuneration for taxing his strength to hold an unscheduled, though heartfelt and ungrudging, performance.

The captain, apparently unable to grasp the value of the poet’s condescension and the quality of his entertainment, flew into a rage and berated the poet so loudly that some nearby members of the crew drew near to see what caused the disturbance.

Before the poet could defend himself or calm the situation, the brutish captain shouted to the others he refused to pay, and they grasped him roughly by the legs and tipped him over the rail into the sea. As he begged and pleaded for his life, the ship sailed away. With great courage, the poet struggled against his fear and the approach of a watery death, alone and uncomforted, and raised his voice in supplication to the Gods to spare his life and his talent. The Gods answered. In the poet’s last extremity, he felt something underneath him in the water, supporting his fainting, exhausted form.

The poet soon understood the Gods had sent him a sea creature of silver and pearl, with a friendly, intelligent eye. It gamboled about the drowning man like a puppy, nudging and supporting and ultimately steering him toward a tall tower on a rocky cliff where three beautiful ladies watched the sea with anxious eyes and willed him to land safely.”

“How marvelous!” breathed Clarissa, looking up at him with shining eyes. “I could see the sails becoming wings and the masts blooming like trees in the spring! I wish I could have seen it!”

Seren tried to look modest.

“It was quite a sight,” he said.

“Dolphins love music and poetry,” said Clarissa. “I bet that’s why the Gods sent one in answer to your prayer. Perhaps Delphinus was already there, listening to you perform before the crew!” She turned to Rapunzel. “Wasn’t that a wonderful story?”

“Wonderful,” agreed Rapunzel, with a smile for Clarissa and a speculative look at Seren, which he met with his most charming smile.

“Thank you,” he said graciously.

“Is fishing you out of the sea and saving your life payment enough?” asked Rapunzel sweetly.

Persephone, who had not said a word, snorted with amusement.

Clarissa turned red. “Of course he deserves to get paid, Rapunzel,” she said. “His skill is beyond price! He honors us with this story as a gift because we helped him, don’t you?” She looked from Rapunzel to Seren.

“Naturally,” said Rapunzel calmly, standing up. “As recipients of such a kingly gift, we can only say -- ‘thank you’!”

PERSEPHONE

“I don’t believe a word he says.” Rapunzel washed the dishes with much vigor and clatter. “Not one word!”

“Clarissa believed every single word he said.” Persephone dried a cup and put it on a nearby shelf.

“Of course she did! Clarissa and every other silly girl he comes across!”

“Probably plenty of silly women, too,” Persephone pointed out.

“I’m glad he’s gone. I thought he’d never leave.”

Seren had left that morning, determined to return to Griffin Town, where he rented a room. He thought from there he could trace the ship he’d been on and demand the return of his possessions.

“He should pay double the passage for being an arrogant brat,” Rapunzel remarked privately to Persephone as Clarissa and Seren made protracted farewells.

Clarissa had watched Seren walk away from the top of the lighthouse, the breeze lifting her hair. Persephone and Rapunzel, having wished him well, came in to deal with the breakfast dishes, and Persephone had looked up and seen Clarissa there, a lonely, romantic figure watching her true love walk away, and smiled to herself.

Happily, the young people were unlikely to meet again. Clarissa appeared far too susceptible to Seren’s silver tongue.

The youth had irritated her less than he had Rapunzel, but she hadn’t warmed to him. He was too pleased with himself and too young for the worldly pose he assumed. He might be a grown man, but he acted like a spoiled child. Too much talent too fast, she thought.

In fact, Seren’s story of his mishap had been entertaining, if suspect, but Clarissa’s tale of Delphinus and Hyash stayed with her, the inescapable attraction of the light and the dark, the shadow and the flame.

It reminded her poignantly of herself and Hades.

In spite of everything, she missed him. Her body, now completely healed, felt desolate for touch, for caress, for skin and breath and heartbeat. As the year died along the bleak cliffs and scrubby fields around the tower, she felt dislocated and alien. Weeks ago, she should have returned to the Underworld gates to spend the winter with her husband and carry on her work while the Green World slept and her mother rested before the fire, her amethyst shawl around her shoulders.

Now she must consider Cerus, too. Somehow, in companionship with the bewildered, injured bull, she had found healing. His primitive male presence spoke to her injured sexuality and fertility. His massive body, his smooth white coat, the spirals of his alabaster horns and his garnet eyes reawakened her sensuality, and his strength sustained her restless pain and grief.

She couldn’t leave him at the lighthouse. At home, he could share a warm barn with other animals, including Hades’s black stallion, and be well looked after. She could visit him often.

Rapunzel handed her the last plate and wiped down the table with a wet cloth. “That’s done,” she said with satisfaction. “Now I’m off to open my windows and free my room of his lordship’s presence!” She had slept before the stove to accommodate their guest.

“Persephone!”

Rapunzel and Persephone looked at one another in some dismay. Clarissa sounded distraught, her voice high and frightened. She invariably sought Persephone in times of distress, and she’d been cool with Rapunzel ever since Seren’s story about being thrown off the ship.

The two women met Clarissa at the foot of the stairs that wound up the curving wall of the lighthouse. She looked pale and Persephone noted traces of tears on her cheeks.

“Something’s wrong with the sea!”

Persephone opened her arms and Clarissa wrapped her arms about her waist and buried her face in Persephone’s shoulder, trembling.

“Hush, now. Everything’s all right. Perhaps you’ll see him again one day.”

“No!” Clarissa looked up at Persephone, angry. “It’s not that! Something’s wrong with the sea!”

Rapunzel took charge. “Show us,” she commanded.

Clarissa gulped, released Persephone and began climbing the stairs.

“Up here.”

They ascended up through Persephone’s room, then through Rapunzel’s room, the bed disordered from Seren’s occupancy, then through the storeroom above, once the repository for fuel and fixtures for the light at the top of the tower. Each room was a smaller diameter than the one below it as the tower tapered to its apex. Above the storeroom, they stepped out onto a small balcony which held the light and mirrors.

From here, Persephone could see a great sweep of stark cliffs and the rocky shore below them, where the surf pounded among sharp-edged pieces of granite as big as small houses, except now the shore was empty of water. Enormous boulders scattered across the steeply shelving seabed, completely exposed to view. She could see shells and gravel, what looked like rotting timbers and ribbons of seaweed. Further out, the familiar watery horizon was present, but she couldn’t see exactly where the water started. The stillness felt eerie. It made the hairs prickle on her arms. In place of the normal surge and suck of the tide and the crash of the waves against the cliffs were only small sounds of dripping water and the sudden cry of a gull, so loud they jumped.

“What is it?” Persephone asked Rapunzel. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Rapunzel. “Did you see it happen?” she asked Clarissa.

“No. I watched Seren walking away, and he didn’t turn back so I could wave, and then he disappeared, and I cried, and then I realized something was wrong, something more than Seren leaving, and I … I… saw!” She collapsed against Persephone, weeping.

“I’m going to walk out and look,” said Rapunzel.

“No!” Clarissa followed her back down the steps, eyes and nose streaming. “You mustn’t do that! Sometimes when the water recedes it means something terrible, a great wave that comes back and drowns the land. It’s not safe. You’ll be drowned!”

At the bottom of the stairs, Rapunzel turned and took Clarissa firmly by her upper arms.

“Calm down. Catch your breath, and listen to me.”

Persephone handed the girl a handkerchief, and Clarissa made a visible effort to stop crying. She wiped her cheeks and blew her nose.

“Take a deep breath,” Persephone encouraged.

Clarissa did so, and Rapunzel said, “Now, I promise you I will not drown. I promise, do you understand? No matter what happens, I won’t drown. There isn’t any kind of a storm, not here, not as far as we can see from the tower. I will be safe. You can come with me, because you won’t drown either, will you? If the water comes back, you’ll change into your merfolk shape and swim, and if I couldn’t save myself you could save me, but it won’t come to that, because I can take care of myself. I possess power, too. I need to see what’s happening where the water and the land meet. Let’s go find out what’s wrong together, all right?”

“All right,” said Clarissa.

Rapunzel took her hand and approached the path climbing down the cliffs.

“I’ll stay here,” Persephone called after them. “Be careful!”

Cerus rose from where he’d been lying in the sun against the curved lighthouse wall, chewing his cud. He stood beside her, his massive creamy shoulder warm and solid against her upper arm, and the two of them watched Rapunzel and Clarissa clamber down the cliff and out of sight.

After giving the white bull a brief caress, Persephone ascended the lighthouse steps again. From the tower, she watched the two figures move slowly down the steep cliff path and then set out, hand in hand, across the exposed sea bed. They looked tiny among the jagged rocks. The sight of the naked sea bed both frightened and fascinated. It was like seeing an alien planet, something not meant for human eyes. Starfish and other slow-moving sea creatures lay naked under the sky.

The two linked figures of Rapunzel and Clarissa gradually moved out of clear sight into a hazy distance where Persephone presumed the water was. She waited, anxiously scanning up and down the cliffs. Scavenging sea birds congregated, not only around the lighthouse but as far as she could see in both directions along the cliffs. As she watched, they swooped and dove above the sea bed, picking up shellfish and offal. The air filled with their harsh cries.

For once on this windy coast, no breeze blew. The sky showed clear and milky. It was a beautiful autumn day, though slightly sticky, as it frequently was so near the sea.

She strained her eyes to catch any hint of a towering wave approaching the cliffs, but the horizon remained still. Only the birds moved.

It seemed to her she stood there waiting and watching for hours before she made out the hazy dark movement of two figures emerging from the horizon on their way back to the lighthouse.

CHAPTER 6

“It’s as though the sea is withholding itself from the land,” said Rapunzel in a low voice, though she and Persephone were alone, Clarissa having left to talk to Marceau, one of the sea kings, about what was happening at the lighthouse.

“It made me feel a bit sick. And walking back, seeing what should be hidden from human eyes, felt like a violation.”

“I know,” said Persephone. “I felt that way, too, when I watched from the top of the tower.”

“Do you think this has something to do with what Heks talked about? Yrtym?”

“She called it a web,” said Persephone. “A web of matterenergytime connecting everything. I thought of connections between people, though. Beings. What could disrupt the connection between the land and the sea? It seems impossible!”

“I wonder if there’s trouble at other thresholds,” said Rapunzel. “What about Rowan Gate and other portals?”

What about Hades? Persephone thought. But she didn’t say it aloud.

MIRMIR

Mirmir dreamed of a swarm of words, each one glittering like a white star. The swarm was airborne, but it wriggled like a skull full of white maggots. It was night, and he was in Yggdrasil, but the Norn’s cottage windows showed warm light, and he knew the company inside played marbles. He could hear their laughter and banter. He wanted to leave the tree and join them. His place among them was empty and cried out to him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the approaching swarm. It was beautiful, but it made him shudder. His tongue flickered, tasting the air. The swarm came upon him, and as though shattering against some invisible barrier, it broke into fragments, each fragment a still-wriggling word, and showered his body. The glowing words writhed with sharp little edges and sticky claws, moving slyly against the long length of his body, tickling unmercifully. He wanted to thrash and twist, tie himself in a knot and then release it, rub himself against Yggdrasil and rid his body of the maddening sensation, but he couldn’t move a muscle. He strained with all his might, emitted a soft grunt, an agonized giggle, and woke.

“Wake up, Mirmir! Wake up!”

The voice, high and piercing, came closer. He could feel Ash’s little claws as the bat hiked along the length of his body toward his head. He sounded thoroughly put out.

Mirmir, released from his dream paralysis, rippled his body in protest against Ash’s tickling claws, and the bat, caught unawares, exclaimed shrilly as he slid off and took wing.

Mirmir snickered.

“I heard that!” said Ash, alighting on the branch on which Mirmir’s head had been pillowed. “I’ve been trying to wake you for an age, you lazy reptile!”

“It’ss the middle of the night,” said Mirmir, reproachfully. “I’m supposed to be asleep.”

“It’s the middle of my day,” said Ash, “and I want your help.”

“Now? Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No, you laggard! It’s important!”

Mirmir yawned hugely, stretching the skin and muscles of his jaw and throat. He rubbed his body against Yggdrasil, ridding himself of the last of the tickling sensation from Ash’s efforts to wake him.

Ash yawned until his eyes watered in helpless contagion. He fluttered his wings peevishly and consoled his irritation with a few quick licks.

“Very well,” said Mirmir, wide awake. “What’s the panic?”

“I am not panicked,” said Ash with dignity. “I bring news. You do still want to hear the news, even if it’s not served up with your morning coffee and Verdani’s Current Events, don’t you?”

“Don’t be so huffy, flittermousse,” said Mirmir. “What’s up?”

“I’ve come from the lighthouse,” said Ash, “and there’s a new lightkeeper. You won’t believe it, but she’s an old friend of mine. Do you remember Rapunzel, the lovely girl whose foster mother kept her in a stone tower?”

“’Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair,’” said Mirmir.

“That’s right. She and I became friends. A few of us roosted in the tower. She and her foster mother were witches and knew something of our kind. She was lonely and bored and she often sat up on summer nights, watching us hunt and talking with us. Then one day she left, and I never knew what happened to her.

“And now she’ss the new lighthousse keeper?” asked Mirmir.

“She is. She’s cut her hair off, but when she spoke to me, I recognized her. We talked for hours. I told her about Verdani being ill, and you, and the Dvorgs. Mirmir, Queen Persephone is there, at the tower. She lost the baby and left Hades.”

“She left Hadess?”

“That’s right. And Rapunzel says the night sky is changing. She thinks Cerus the bull somehow fell and wound up at the lighthouse. She says Persephone found him and they spend all their time together.”

“Very funny,” said Mirmir coldly. “Pull the other one, and then let me go back to ssleep.”

“I mean it,” said Ash. “You needn’t take my word for it. Look for yourself.”

Without another word, Mirmir slithered up Yggdrasil. Ash took wing and darted out of the canopy, circling the great tree and listening to Mirmir ascending. Together, they spiraled upward, Mirmir embracing the trunk and Ash a dark and silent shadow orbiting the tree’s bare crown. It grew steadily colder and the stars blazed. When Mirmir stopped, Ash pressed himself against his thick body. Both were unsuited to cold weather.

“Look,” said Ash. “See The Hunter? And there’s The Hound. And Cerus should be right there … You said the top of Yggdrasil was shedding, remember?”

“I remember. Cerus had a red eye,” said Mirmir.

“He still does. Rapunzel says the white bull at the lighthouse has red eyes. One of his horns is broken and he was injured, but he’s healed now.”

“All right. I’m freezing. Let’s go back down.”

After descending into warmer air, Mirmir draped part of his body over a thick, low branch, and Ash hung upside down within the loop.

“Go on, then,” encouraged Mirmir.

“Right. Well, this will sound crazy too, but at the lighthouse the sea has withdrawn from the shore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the water has pulled back, as though it doesn’t want to touch the land anymore. There’s nearly a mile of bare sea floor exposed and then a sudden wall of water. I flew out and looked. It’s the strangest sight I’ve ever seen, so unnatural it’s frightening. Rapunzel felt more disturbed by that than by anything else.”

“It ssounds bizarre,” said Mirmir.

“It is. Rapunzel has friends at a place called Rowan Tree, and she says a tree there is dying. There’s a portal there, too, and it’s breaking down somehow, so it no longer stays open. Nobody knows what’s happening or what to do. Isn’t there a portal at the base of Yggdrasil?”

“Yess,” said Mirmir. “It’s not always in evidence, but sometimes it opens up.”

“Has it opened lately?” asked Ash.

“No,” said Mirmir. “So, to summarize. One of the three Norns is ill and their ability to perform their roles diminished. Trees are distressed. The night sky is changing. The sea withholds itself from the land. Relationships are breaking down, as are portals.”

“It’s all division and disconnection,” said Ash. “Rapunzel talked about a thing called Yrtym. Have you ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“She described it as matterenergytime, a kind of web in which everything is suspended, sky, earth, water. She said something’s wrong with it and that’s what’s causing the trouble. That’s why the woman called Heks sent her to the tower. She’s trying to gather information. That’s where I come in, if you’ll help me.”

A chill breeze eddied around the tree’s bare arms. The sky paled into dawn. Ash yawned again and shivered.

“Shouldn’t you be hibernating ssoon?” asked Mirmir. “It’s getting too cold for insects. Urd probably still has mealworms, though.” Urd, aware of Ash’s frequent visits, had installed a bat house in the attic, left a window permanently ajar and began raising mealworms in case the little bat needed food. Periodically she gave Mirmir a handful as a treat.

“Yes,” said Ash, “but I’m thinking about staying awake this winter. Rapunzel has asked me if I’ll gather news for her. If I can find an insect volunteer to help resolve whatever is going wrong with Yrtym, Rapunzel will provide food for me all winter. As long as I stay warm, I can travel from place to place and collect information.”

“You want help recruiting an inssect to volunteer to feed you?” asked Mirmir in disbelief.

“Yes. Rapunzel can charm it so no matter how many times I eat it, it never dies. It would travel with me and help collect news.”

“What did you have in mind? The mosquitoes are gone, and so are most of the butterflies and moths.”

“A beetle,” said Ash, wearing a smug expression.

“A beetle?”

“A bark beetle. From Yggdrasil.”

“Hmmm.”

“I know they’re here. I’ve heard them before when I’ve spent the night. They’re protected from the cold because they live under the bark, and they depend on the trees. I thought maybe we could find an adventurous one.”

Mirmir sniggered. “An adventurouss bark beetle,” he murmured, as though to himself. “What next?”

“What makes you think a beetle will actually talk with us?” he asked Ash. “We eat beetles!”

“Don’t help, then,” Ash grumped. “I’ll do it myself. Webbd is unraveling and I want to do something about it. You stay here and coddle your sarcastic attitude while Yggdrasil falls around you!”

Mirmir gave an exaggerated sigh. Ash glared at him ferociously out of his small black eyes.

Mirmir had in fact noticed bark beetles in Yggdrasil. He made it his business to know every creature living on the body of the tree, no matter how small, and he regularly checked the lower branches for soundness, as Urd spent a great deal of time climbing among them and storing the results of Verdani’s spinning. The beetles were not numerous and apparently created no serious damage. Yggdrasil, until recently, had seemed impregnable in its size and health. However, Mirmir knew the beetles could invade and decimate whole stands of trees, so he kept a minatory eye on their numbers.

Mirmir led Ash to a slab of bark under which bark beetles, among other insects, occasionally sheltered. Woodpeckers worked in this area, and the bark had loosened slightly from the tree’s body. The two friends listened intently, and Mirmir could hear the tiny scritch, scritch of insect feet and jaws, along with assorted clicks.

“Excuse me,” piped Ash. “Excuse me, I’d like to speak to a beetle, please.”

Immediately, all movement stopped. Dawn approached and Mirmir heard a single chickadee call from somewhere nearby. Another eater of beetles.

“Who is that?” came a tiny female voice.

“My name is Ash,” said Ash. “I’ve come because I need help.”

“Help from us? What kind of help? Who are you?”

“I’m … Well, don’t be afraid, but I’m a little brown bat, and I’m here with my friend Mirmir, the tree’s guardian.”

Mirmir heard the scratch of several tiny feet on the run. He pictured insects under the bark fleeing in every direction. It sounded like stampeding fairies.

“Please,” Ash cried desperately, “I didn’t come to hurt you. If I was hunting, I wouldn’t try to talk with you.”

“What do you want, then?” asked the female voice with a definite snap. Mirmir wondered if she possessed jaws.

“I want to offer an adventure,” began Ash, who clearly hadn’t thought out exactly how to persuade a beetle to partner with a bat.

Mirmir rolled his eyes, but kept silent.

“You may not know, but there’s something going wrong with the trees,” said Ash.

“We know. The Yrtym is disrupted and trees are dying.”

“You know!” Ash exclaimed. He and Mirmir looked at one another in astonishment.

“Certainly. We insects and Tym are architects of the Green World.”

“Well,” said Ash weakly, floundering, “we want to find out more about Yrtym and what’s going wrong with it, and a friend of mine is a witch, and she said if I could find a volunteer insect to keep me fed during the winter, then I could gather news and bring it to her instead of hibernating, so I’m trying to find someone to do that. Feed me, I mean. Except you wouldn’t die! I could eat you as many times as I need to, but you’d always come back …” he trailed away, looking miserable.

Silence from under the bark. Mirmir wrinkled the skin over one eye and shook his head at Ash.

“This is all wrong,” Ash muttered. “It’s against nature. I thought I could help, but I’m not powerful. Most people never even see me. I should hibernate and leave the doing of deeds to people bigger and more important.”

He turned away, looking disconsolate.

Mirmir nudged Ash from behind. Ash glanced at him and then followed the direction of his gaze. A shiny black beetle peered out from under an edge of loosened bark. Its antennae waved.

“How would you carry me?” the female voice demanded.

“In my fur,” he said at once. “You can hold on with your feet. You’ll be warm against my body and my fur will cover and hide you. I’ll take you to Rapunzel, my witch friend, and she’ll perform a charm so I can eat you without taking your life, and then we’ll travel together.”

“How do I know you’re not just trying to get an easy meal?”

“Not an eassy meal,” Mirmir pointed out. “Easier for him to hunt in the usual way. His belly would be full by now.

“Hmmph. Say I agree to this plan. Will you bring me back here if we survive this adventure of yours?”

“Yes,” said Ash, “I promise. What’s your name?”

“Beatrice,” she replied primly.

Mirmir quivered with suppressed laughter. Beatrice the beetle.

“If Tym dies, we’ll die too,” said Beatrice. Mirmir couldn’t tell if she meant Yrtym or spoke of a different thing, but it wasn’t the time to clarify terminology.

“If you die, it will hurt my people,” Ash said delicately.

She sounded matter-of-fact. “Yes. It will also limit rodents and birds. We are essential in the web of life and the food chain.”

She crawled out from under the bark and surveyed Ash with a critical air. He smiled shyly, his ugly little face wrinkling. Mirmir grinned as he watched them size up one another.

“I’ll need to eat too, you know,” she said.

“Of course,” said Ash. “Trees grow everywhere.”

“When do we leave?”

“Tonight. I must eat and sleep today. Tonight we’ll go back to Rapunzel.”

“Come back here and call me,” said Beatrice. “I’ll be ready.” She crawled back under the loosened bark and disappeared.

Ash yawned again, slumping with relief.

“Bed for you, flittermousse,” said Mirmir. “Off with you. I’m going back to bed as well. I’ll see you tonight.”

Lazily, he began to coil his body. Ash flew to the kitchen window and showed himself to Urd, who was washing dishes, before darting through the attic window and seeking a roost in the bat house. He heard Urd come up, and the clink of a bowl as she set it on the floor. After stuffing himself with mealworms, he clambered back into the bat house and slept.

EURYDICE

“I’ll go with you,” said Kunik.

They sat together on a bench under the rowan trees outside Rowan Gate. It was a raw, grey day and Eurydice huddled in her green wool cloak. She took Kunik’s broad hand and shook her head.

“No. You must stay here and help Maria look after everyone. You’re needed. I am the gatekeeper, and now the gate no longer opens …” She swallowed. “I must go and talk with the Norns. If anyone knows what’s happening, they will. The gate is my business. Please understand, Kunik!”

“I understand, but I don’t like you setting out alone with winter coming on. There must be someone we can send with you.”

Maria is needed here, as you are. Persephone is at the lighthouse with Rapunzel. Radulf is at sea or in Griffin Town. Ginger has hardly arrived back from the lighthouse. Rose Red can’t shirk her responsibility for Rowan Tree. Who else can we ask to undertake a long, uncertain journey this time of the year, especially with so much fear and confusion about what’s happening?”

“I’m going with you,” said a dry voice from behind them.

They both jumped. Eurydice dropped Kunik’s hand.

Heks regarded them calmly from inside her hood.

Eurydice had hardly spoken to Heks, hardly noticed her, if truth be told. She was the last person Eurydice would choose as a companion.

“Thank you,” she said warmly to Heks, “but I don’t need … Kunik covered her hand with his own and squeezed. He studied Heks’s face intently. Eurydice had seen him examine a chunk of wood or bone the same way as he searched for the shape within shape.

“You carry the eyes, don’t you? Maria’s sons’ and Radulf’s wolf and Rapunzel’s Alexander’s eyes? Do they guide you?” he asked.

Heks reached inside her cloak and extended her dry palm toward them, displaying a heap of marbles. “Yes,” she said, “and yes. They will take us to Yggdrasil, The Tree of Life. Eurydice is wise. We’ll consult with the Norns.” She returned Kunik’s searching look. “I’ll take care of her.”

Eurydice was amazed and irritated to see his face relax. He gave Heks his cheerful, bunch-cheeked grin. “Good. You’ve eased my mind considerably.” He turned to Eurydice. “How soon do you want to leave?”

“As soon as possible,” said Heks before Eurydice could reply. “Tomorrow.”

Eurydice, feeling put out and stubborn, opened her mouth to object, then shut it. What was the point, after all, of putting it off? They desperately needed information.

“I’ll be ready,” she said, resigned.

VASILISA

“I’ve been worried about you,” said Vasilisa. “When the Rusalka realized the portal wasn’t working, I didn’t know what to think. Sofiya was calm; she said you’d find your way back in time, but I was surprised she didn’t go meet you.”

Morfran stretched his twisted leg out in front of the stove, which simmered with warmth in the cold autumn evening. Vasilisa thought he looked worn, with new lines of pain in his face. She wondered why he’d stopped to see her before reuniting with Sofiya.

Morfran looked around the hut that had once belonged to the woodcutter, Timor. Now Vasilisa’s cloak hung from a peg on the wall and she slept in the corner on a bed of boughs and skins. His hand curved around a wooden cup filled with hot broth, the same cup he’d used when Timor had pulled him from a snowbank and saved his life.

“This place feels like home, no matter who’s living here.”

She noticed his avoidance of the subject of Sofiya. The doll in her pocket stirred, and she sat back in her chair, deliberately relaxing her curiosity and concern, allowing peaceful acceptance to fill her mind and flow into the room. Her nephew would speak in his own time.

She felt glad she’d let him be as she watched him sip the broth and relax. When he spoke again his color looked better and his face less strained.

“Strange news from Marceau and the other sea kings. The water withdraws from the land, leaving bays and shorelines uncovered, and the tidal zones are dying. The merfolk don’t know what to think. Marceau reports fear and doubt on every side and the talk is that the land people seek to destroy or diminish the sea and its people.”

“But why? How?”

Morfran shook his head. “No one knows. Marceau doesn’t believe it. He suspects the land is also affected, and I think he’s right, as we know both Rowan Gate and the bathhouse portal have broken down. He thinks the problem is much bigger, in fact, than the land and the sea put together.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard of a thing called Yrtym?”

“Yurtam?”

“Yrtym. Yrtym is matterenergytime. Marceau described it as a web, a kind of matrix in which life is embedded everywhere, even the stars. It’s largely invisible to us, but holds everything together, connects everything.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Poseidon met with the sea kings and queens, a thing he’s never done before, and told them about it. He’s usually content to let each ruler do as they will with their area and people. He prefers spending his time racing Fasari and breeding sea wolves. Marceau had hardly ever spoken to him before.”

“I’ve heard he’s not much of a manager and the sea kings and queens do all the work.”

“Yes. He cares more about pleasure than power. Anyway, he told the merfolk something has gone wrong with the Yrtym. As it weakens, strange things are happening. Connections are breaking.”

He looked at the gently popping stove, his face bleak.

“Sofiya and I are taking some time apart. The Rusalka feel associating with humans might be part of what’s causing the disturbance to the portal. Some say it’s punishment for allowing a human male to watch them dance and enter the bathhouse, and for their friendship with Rowan Tree. Sofiya feels torn between her people and me. I thought it might ease the tension if I spent some time with Marceau.”

“I’m sorry,” said Vasilisa simply. He nodded without speaking.

“Do you think your trouble with the Rusalka is part of the problem with the Yrtym?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’re too different. Maybe I made a mistake in mating with a being different than myself. Such relationships are often ill-fated. Look at my parents. Look at yours.”

“Yes.” Vasilisa’s mother had been human, her father, Marceau, of the merfolk. Morfran’s mother had been Marceau’s daughter, also of the merfolk, and his father half selchie, half human. His father had nearly destroyed his mother and Morfran before his death, and Vasilisa hadn’t known her true parentage until recently.

Vasilisa’s fiery skull, mounted on a stout stick jammed between floorboards, well away from the hut’s wooden walls, suddenly flared into brightness from its usual low light at night. At the same time a fist pounded on the door.

Morfran started to rise stiffly to his feet, but Vasilisa motioned him to remain seated, took the fiery skull’s pole in her left hand and picked up a sharp knife from the table standing near the corner of the hut used as a kitchen. She slipped the knife into her apron pocket and opened the door.

She could see no one. She extended the arm holding the stick under the skull to illuminate the front of the cabin.

“Be careful! I’m down here. It’s Rumpelstiltskin.”

She looked down with a gasp of surprise at the bundled figure. The top of his hooded head came to the level of her waist.

“Rumpelstiltskin!”

“It’s me. Can I come in?”

Vasilisa, amazed, stepped aside.

After fastening the door, Vasilisa jammed the fiery skull back into its place, noting it once again burned low, and turned to find Rumpelstiltskin still standing, making no effort to take off his cloak and hood. He made a somber figure, his face invisible behind a thick reddish-brown beard. He appeared uncertain, almost fearful, he who had always appeared so confident and strong, and it shook her.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she heard the sharpness of fear in her voice and felt for her doll. It nestled into her palm and Vasilisa took a deep breath. Tonight everything seemed ominous.

“Perhaps you would rather not speak to me,” said Rumpelstiltskin gruffly.

Vasilisa knelt before the Dwarve. “What do you mean? Show me your face, old friend, and let me greet you from my heart.”

He reached up and twitched the hood off, revealing a jagged cut above his right eye and a plum-colored swollen cheek. Vasilisa leaned forward and pulled him into her arms, tears filling her eyes.

The Dwarve returned her embrace with his strong arms, making her ribs creak. She kissed him on his uninjured cheek and stood.

Morfran rinsed the wooden cup and ladled broth into it. As Vasilisa hung up Rumpelstiltskin’s bundle and cloak, he introduced himself to the Dwarve, whom he had seen in passing before at the Ostara ritual, handed him the cup and urged him to sit. Rumpelstiltskin declined the chair but made himself comfortable on a wolf skin on the floor and sipped the broth gratefully.

“Thank you. I’ve come a long way, and I’m tired and cold. I didn’t know where else to go, but I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“How could you cause trouble? I’m glad to see you, and you can stay as long as you want to.”

The Dwarve shook his head but didn’t speak again until he’d emptied the cup. Vasilisa, once again, sat back and consciously relaxed, wondering why she felt so tense this evening.

To give Rumpelstiltskin time and distract herself, Vasilisa told Morfran how she’d met him and some of his Dwarve brethren, giving a brief history of the Dwarves and the Dvorgs, as well as the friendship they’d shared with Rose Red, whom Morfran knew from Rowan Tree, and Jenny, whom Rumpelstiltskin had loved and who’d been murdered.

As she finished, Rumpelstiltskin picked up the narrative.

“After I left Jenny with Minerva in Griffin Town, I traveled to Woodale, where another young woman without family or guide needed me. She was living in an orphanage, and I befriended her. Medicines and herbs interested her, and I did everything I could to foster her love and understanding of natural plants and remedies. After a time, though, I realized the knowledge she most wanted was dark herbal magic; how to prepare poisons and control others, how to harm rather than help. I tried to turn her towards other paths, but she was determined.”

“She’d felt so powerless during her short life, she never again wanted to lose the upper hand with anyone. I didn’t want to see her throw away a peaceful, happy, useful life, so I persisted, but she in her turn was stubborn and gradually we became adversaries and she viewed me as another person who wanted to disempower her.”

The Dwarve looked down at his clasped hands, sorrow in his face.

“I failed,” he admitted. “I did more harm than good by staying, but during my time there word came to me of Jenny’s … of Jenny, and for a time I couldn’t think clearly about anything. Somehow, I thought I owed it to Jenny to go on trying to save Sarah from herself.”

“Anyway, I failed to see the people at the orphanage and in Woodale had begun to view me with suspicion. Sarah was indiscreet, and rumors that she was learning the black arts spread. Naturally, everyone assumed I was her teacher. I was a stranger there, and no one defended me. Sarah boasted of how much she was learning and encouraged people to think I was a powerful magician. It’s flat country there, and the local people knew little about Dwarves. I was different, not human, and therefore feared.”

“A rival of Sarah’s for a young man’s affection sickened and then died, and Sarah gloated openly, saying none should cross her if they knew what was good for them. She whispered in the ears of the town fathers that I had administered poison to the dead child, and they came for me with stones and torches.”

“My Gods,” muttered Vasilisa, appalled by the story. Unable to quietly contain her feelings, she strode to the door, wrenched it open and stepped outside, furious tears hot on her cheeks.

Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaidaa from Pixabay

The birch wood smelled of wet rotting leaves and wood. Intermittent stars shone between clouds. The forest’s naked branches looked like lace against the dark sky. Vasilisa wiped her cheeks, feeling calmer under the trees. Behind her, the door gaped, showing the warm light of lantern and fiery skull. The stove burned so warm she knew the cool air would feel good in the little hut.

She found it hard to believe anything could go wrong with the inviolability of the night sky, the trees, the forest, the cycle of autumn. The possibility these could break down or disappear frightened her more than she wanted to admit. Seeing Rumpelstiltskin hurt, defensive, unsure of himself, was like seeing a boulder tremble, or a forest sink to its knees. How to go on living if such foundations could be shaken?

When she returned, she found Morfran bathing Rumpelstiltskin’s face with warm water and a cloth and telling him about Yrtym and what he’d learned from his grandfather, Marceau.

Vasilisa bandaged the cut above the Dwarve’s eye with a linen square, woven by the Rusalka, without interrupting their conversation.

When Morfran had finished and Vasilisa had thrown the bowl of blood-tinged water out the door, Rumpelstiltskin thanked them and said, “I must confess I feel better knowing what happened in Woodale might not be entirely due to my mishandling. Such a thing has not happened to me before, nor have I ever heard of a relationship between a young woman and a Dwarve breaking so violently. But if this Yrtym is what allows and nourishes connection and it’s breaking down, that explains much.”

“I feel the same,” said Morfran soberly. “In fact,” he said to Vasilisa, “I’m going home to talk with Sofiya. She and the Rusalka should hear this news, both from the sea and Woodale.”

“You’re welcome to return if you need to,” said Vasilisa, embracing and kissing him. “In any case, let’s talk again tomorrow. Rumpelstiltskin will stay here with me.”

Morfran bade the Dwarve good night and slipped out the door.

“Sofiya?” Rumpelstiltskin inquired as she turned back from barring the door.

“His mate,” she explained. “She’s a Rusalka, one of Baba Yaga’s handmaidens. He’s my nephew.”

“You have much to tell me,” said the Dwarve.

“Yes, but not tonight. It’s late, and I’ve heard enough revelations. You look worn out. Let’s get some food into you and then sleep. Tomorrow we’ll talk.”

***

Vasilisa and Rumpelstiltskin slept well into the following bitter grey day, she in her bed of boughs and he wrapped in wolf skins by the stove. They assembled a simple breakfast and as they finished Morfran appeared, looking rested and more like himself. He joined them in drinking a pot of tea, having brought with him a couple of cups, as he knew the hut was equipped with only one.

As the level in the teapot lowered and Vasilisa tidied away breakfast, they talked, Vasilisa and Rumpelstiltskin getting caught up with events since the Ostara ritual where they last had been together, and Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin getting to know one another. Each was fascinated by the other. Rumpelstiltskin knew almost nothing about the sea and Morfran knew nothing of the complicated history of the Dvorgs and Dwarves.

The morning wore away in talk, first at the table and then before the stove. As midday approached, Morfran said, “We’ve been summoned by Baba Yaga to appear two days from now for a Samhain ritual.”

“You and the Rusalka?” asked Vasilisa.

“Yes, and you and Rumpelstiltskin.”

Rumpelstiltskin grimaced.

“It’s not an invitation,” cautioned Morfran.

“The lady is not in the habit of issuing invitations,” said Rumpelstiltskin with some irritation.

Morfran snorted. “No. Also, we are to fast until then and use the bathhouse and plunge pool before we go. The ritual begins at dark in the birch circle. Vasilisa knows where it is. We are not to share the bathhouse with the Rusalka, but Sofiya said they’d be finished with it the morning of the ritual and we could use it in the afternoon.”

“Does the plunge pool still work? I mean … is it there?” asked Vasilisa.

“It’s there, it just doesn’t function as a portal at present.”

“I’ve never been in a bathhouse or a plunge pool,” said the Dwarve. “Sitting in hot water sounds wonderful, though.”

“It’s not hot water, my friend,” said Vasilisa, smiling at him. “It’s icy cold water. But the bathhouse is as hot as anyone could wish, don’t worry.”

“What kind of a ritual?” Rumpelstiltskin asked Morfran warily.

“She told the Rusalka it would be a Samhain ritual. That’s all I know.”

“Death? Endings? Bidding the light farewell? Letting die what must? Bringing in the Crone?” suggested Vasilisa. “Does she know about Yrtym and how connections are breaking down?”

Morfran shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Interesting that a representative of the sacred wild demands the presence of a Dwarve, a creature of rock, earth and underground; a member of the merfolk, a creature of the sea; and a half-human to the ritual,” Rumpelstiltskin pointed out.

“I wonder who else is coming,” said Vasilisa.

“Nothing and no one would surprise me,” said Morfran dryly.

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.

Persephone felt as though the story had been deliberately aimed at her. She resolved to ask no question and participate in no discussion about it and wished fervently to quickly move on to another part of the ritual. She lowered her eyes and looked at her clasped hands.

The circle fell silent. After a minute or two, the silence became unnatural. Persephone glanced up through lowered lashes at Heks, sitting beside her. She appeared to study the fire, her face expressionless. Eurydice, across from her, looked faintly bewildered, glancing openly from face to face. Morfran looked intently at one of his knees. Vasilisa sat with one hand in her apron pocket, her gaze fixed on Baba Yaga. Hecate’s face remained hidden in her hood’s shadow and Artemis leaned her forehead on her hand, shielding her eyes. Rumpelstiltskin sat with bowed head, his features indistinguishable behind his beard.

The fire popped loudly, and Persephone flinched, feeling as though she broke free of some kind of paralysis. Everyone in the circle moved, sighed, shifted position. The silence became expectant.

Hecate rose. She disappeared under Baba Yaga’s hut and returned to the circle with the bone basket Death had brought. The wolf walked at her heels. Artemis withdrew a knife from a sheath at her waist and handed it to Hecate, who murmured in thanks. Hecate lifted one of the round objects from the basket and it glowed warmly in the fire and skull light. Persephone recognized a pomegranate and once again felt singled out. Was she to be publicly punished now for turning her back on her promise to protect the Underworld, a promise made by ritually eating pomegranate seeds?

She watched as Hecate expertly sliced the fruit. It opened like a blossom and she turned it over and gave it a sharp tap on the rim of a bowl. The seeds filled the bowl with a pattering sound. Hecate flicked a few tenacious seeds from the rind with the knife’s point, threw the rind in the fire and picked up another fruit.

When the basket was empty, she set it aside and held the bowl in both hands. The seeds glistened in the dancing light. “Persephone, Eurydice and Vasilisa,” said Hecate, “approach, my daughters.”

Persephone rose and the circle reformed into a loose audience as the three women approached Hecate. Baba Yaga stayed seated on her stump. Death, still wearing his foolish beard and carrying the scythe, joined Hecate, standing behind her shoulder like a guard. The wolf sat on her other side, amber eyes alert.

“Tonight, we perform the Ceremony of the Mother and Crone. Understand in Motherhood you must come to terms with death, with change, with time and with hunger, for as mother you feed rather than being fed. You must come to terms with the limits of your power. Childbearing and rearing can be the smiling face of Motherhood, but also bring great pain, the desolation of loss and starvation and the understanding of aging and mortality. Motherhood is life. Motherhood is death.”

Hecate’s words slashed open Persephone’s loss and she wept. She felt Eurydice take her hand in a firm clasp. Persephone felt ashamed to stand before them all, the Queen of the Underworld, and reveal such grief over a death, but she couldn’t prevent the upswelling emotion.

“You have already experienced something of which I speak,” Hecate said, addressing her directly. “Persephone, here is yet another crossroad. You once pledged yourself to love and to responsibility for a sacred threshold. Now will you renew that pledge, with a deeper understanding of the inexorable balance of life and death? Will you risk it? Will you dare it? Or do you wish to turn away and take another road?”

Persephone, shaking with sobs, reached for the bowl and felt the seeds, smooth and wet, against her fingers. She scooped some up and put them in her mouth. The tart, cool flavor refreshed her. She wiped her face with her sleeve and returned the pressure of Eurydice’s hand, feeling both comforted and suddenly exhausted.

She would go home.

“Eurydice, Gatekeeper, Opener of Ways, you too are ready to transform Maidenhood into Motherhood. Understand Motherhood takes many forms and caring for children wears many aspects. I do not say your path is to conceive and bear a child, though it may be so. I do say your ability to nurture and care for others is now needed, though it may end in death more often than life. At Janus House, Yggdrasil, and Rowan Gate, you pledged yourself to opening the way for others. Now, at this crossroad, will you renew that pledge, understanding death and loss may be on the other side of thresholds as well as life and joy? You yourself came from life to death and back again. Are you strong enough to support others on such a sacred path? Or do you wish to turn away and take another road?”

Persephone gave Eurydice’s hand a final squeeze and released it, not wanting to influence her choice. Eurydice, after a short pause, reached for the bowl of pomegranate seeds. “I will enter Motherhood,” she said in a steady voice, and ate the seeds.

“Vasilisa the Wise,” said Hecate, and Persephone thought she heard respect and affection in her tone. “You, too, stand on a crossroad. Your Maidenhood has ripened into something greater. As I said, I do not know in what form Motherhood may come to you, but do you choose now to embrace it, come what may? Do you understand Motherhood involves the duality of life and death in all its aspects?”

Vasilisa rested one hand in her apron pocket, but with the other she reached for the bowl of seeds without hesitation. “I consent to Motherhood,” she said clearly, and ate the seeds.

Hecate stepped aside, and Death stood before Persephone. His empty eye sockets appeared bottomless as she looked into them. Gently, he laid his hands on her belly. Tears ran down her face at the intimate tenderness of his touch. Leaving his left hand where it lay, Death touched her breasts in turn, first left, then right, almost with reverence. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against her wet cheeks, first left, then right, and she felt the ridge of his maxilla above his teeth.

Death stepped sideways and faced Eurydice, who stood as though rooted to the ground and met his gaze. With one hand he touched her belly, her left breast and her right breast, and then he took both her hands, turning them palms up, and stroking them with his bony fingers. He dropped his head and kissed each palm, closing her fingers over the place he had kissed and returning her hands, which she held clenched to her breast as he turned away.

Standing before Vasilisa, Death pointed at her apron and held out a hand. She reached in her pocket and gave him a small doll. It was dressed like Vasilisa herself in a black skirt, white apron and vest embroidered with colored thread. Death raised the doll, cradling it against his shoulder as though it was an infant, patting its back gently, and then returned it. Vasilisa slipped it back into her pocket. Again, Death performed the ritual of acknowledgement and touch: Belly, left breast, right breast. For a moment he stood looking into Vasilisa’s face, she returning his gaze steadily. She smiled a small smile.

“So be it,” said Hecate. “Sit now.”

Persephone and the other two women joined the audience. Baba Yaga, from her stump, pointed a long, iron-tipped finger at Heks and then Artemis. “You and you. Let’s see what you’re made of! No soft, round, moist motherhood for you! No milky seed and milky mouths for you! Iron and brimstone! Blood and bone! Fear and despair! If you can face them, which I doubt!” She cackled as she rose, adjusted her scarves and moved to stand next to Hecate and Death.

“The Ceremony of the Crone is an invitation to darkness,” began Hecate. “To be Crone is to consort with Death, with endings and with loss. To be Crone is to wield power and insight, to enter into the heart of sensuality and feeling, to exercise curiosity, nonattachment and persistence. To be Crone is to become a drinker of one’s own blood and to nourish oneself after Motherhood’s long starvation.”

Baba Yaga smacked her lips. “The taste of blood, eh Heksie? Red iron on the tongue! Gristle between your teeth! Sucking the rich dark marrow out of bone! A feast of death! An orgy of stench and taste and a gravy of blood!” She glared into Heks’s eyes, the tangled hairs marking the meeting of nose and chin nearly touching the smaller woman’s forehead. Heks stood steadily, not moving a muscle, and Persephone admired her fortitude. She suppressed her own impulse to hide her face in her hands and shut out the firelit scene.

Artemis stood like a statue, her silver bow resting beside her.

“To be Crone is a pledge to be real, to see and be seen, to recognize the shadow as well as the light and honor both,” continued Hecate as though Baba Yaga hadn’t spoken. “To be Crone is to encompass Maidenhood and Motherhood, guiding those who walk behind. As Crone you feel what is too much to feel, do what you cannot bear to do, speak truth no one else dares to speak, lose what you cannot live without, and flourish and thrive in defiance of your loss.”

“Now you stand at a crossroad, my daughters. Do you choose to enter Cronehood? Do you choose to be fed from Death’s lips? Do you choose the path of power? Or do you wish to take another road? Think carefully before you answer, for this threshold is a bloody one.”

Persephone fought back the desire to cry out a warning to Heks and Artemis. The awfulness of her own loss once again brought tears to her eyes and choked her. How could anyone choose such certain agony? It wasn’t fair! It was a cruel choice, too high a price for wisdom and power.

Image by Enlightening Images from Pixabay

“I will cross the threshold,” Heks said in a ringing voice. At once, Death handed his scythe to Hecate, who stood next to him, stepped forward and took Heks in his arms, Persephone gasped with surprise. For a moment she felt she watched lovers. There was something erotic about the way they pressed themselves together, their hands moving frankly over one another’s hips, backs, buttocks and shoulders. Persephone felt a shocking stab of lust and desire for Hades as she watched, actual envy of Heks, with her scanty grey hair, lined face and nearly sexless body. Her own body cried out for such an embrace, for exploring touch, rough and insistent, for male scent, pressure and texture.

Then they broke apart, Heks and Death, and the scene froze. Persephone suddenly became aware of the sound and smell of the fire, gnawing hunger in her belly, and discomfort in her legs and hips from sitting on the hard, cold ground. No one moved. She clearly heard Eurydice’s stomach growl.

Artemis stood like a statue. She appeared to be studying the ground. As Persephone watched, Artemis glanced at the White Stag. He raised his head, with its hawthorn crown, and met her glance steadily with his big, dark eyes. For a moment his bearing was kingly and proud again, and then he dropped his head wearily, the “whuff” of his sigh sounding loud in the silence.

Artemis choked, and Persephone realized she wept. “We will cross the threshold,” she said, her voice thickened but resolute. She dropped her right hand to the sheath holding the knife Hecate had used to cut up the pomegranates. Death stepped before her and laid his mouth on hers. This time there was no embrace, only the meeting of Artemis’s lips and Death’s bared teeth and bony maxilla and mandible. It seemed more a pact than a passionate exchange, Persephone thought. A promise, given and received.

Death took his lips from Artemis’s, whirled on his heel, plucked the scythe from Hecate’s hand, took four bounding steps to where the White Stag stood by the fire, raised the scythe and brought it down in a glittering arc on the White Stag’s neck.

The stag collapsed in a bloody fountain, his thick neck nearly severed.

Persephone cried out in horror, her voice lost in the others’ cries. She heard Artemis call, “Cerunmos!” and recognized the name of the Horned God, Lord of Wild Creatures, the Hunter, the sacred consort. Of course! She thought in a flash of understanding, Samhain is the ritual of the Horned God and the Crone.

Baba Yaga’s howl of rage rose above the confusion, silencing everyone. “Impuissant slackwit! Marrowless milktoast! Chicken-livered, lily-hearted yellow belly!” She danced with rage before Death, scarves and beads flying. “Gutless pantywaist!” she spat.

Death stood calmly, the stag’s blood dripping from his white bones, the scythe’s blade resting on the ground at his side.

“Enough!” said Artemis sharply, surprising Persephone. “It was our choice and intention, his and mine, that surrendered to his death. We chose and I was prepared to see our choice through. Death merely acted in my behalf. The threshold is crossed. It’s time now for the men.”

“Men,” sneered the Baba. “Men! An undersized weakling, fit only for nanny duty, who got himself run out of town with stones and rotten eggs, and a crippled half-breed! They’re not men, they’re boys!” She straightened her scarves and yanked her belled fringe back across her forehead, still glaring at Death.

“The boys can’t take their turn, because yon cockeyed marriddle is late. And I’m hungry! I’ve a fancy for bone soup, if there’s no meat to be had.” She looked Death over meaningfully.

Persephone didn’t know what the Baba was talking about. She exchanged puzzled looks with the others. Hecate and the wolf had moved around the fire, away from the stag’s body and the blood-soaked ground near it. Artemis joined her, seating herself again on the ground, her silvery bow beside her. Persephone stood up, pulling Eurydice with her and retaining her grasp on her shaking hand. Vasilisa, white-faced in the firelight, followed them. Heks laid a comforting hand on Persephone’s shoulder and sat beside her. Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin stayed on their feet, coming to stand near Hecate. Baba Yaga, with an audible grunt and an explosive fart, lifted the stump she’d been sitting on and carried it to the new location, squatting on it like a brooding malevolent toad wrapped in a gauzy tutu.

Persephone heard a sound, as though mighty gates closed, and then, far away, the desolate calling of wild geese, invisible in the night sky. At the same time, a rough breeze agitated the birch trees around them, though, oddly, the air remained still near the ground. The fire burned cleanly, the flames reaching up into the night. Vasilisa’s fiery skull blazed into even brighter light with a sound like a soft explosion.

Persephone had heard that sound before. She’d stood on a windy hillside in another life, alone, seeking … something, listening to Odin and his Wild Hunt approach on the wind’s wings.

Artemis raised her head, listening.

“Odin,” breathed Vasilisa.

“What is it?” whispered Eurydice to Persephone.

“Odin and the Wild Hunt. Baba Yaga must be waiting for him.”

A large black winged shape flew into the clearing and a raven perched on Baba Yaga’s roof, croaking and cawing in a voice of cinders. The breeze above became a gale, and the tree tops thrashed. Now Persephone could hear hoofbeats and harsh metal-throated horns. Hounds bayed dismally and a rising clamor of male voices approached, cursing and shouting.

Persephone could see the Hunt’s forerunners, a tattered black ribbon sweeping across the sky, blotting out the stars. A single speck detached itself and circled away, descending, and as it drew nearer, she saw two shapes loping behind it and recognized Odin’s wolves. The Hunt spread out behind the leaders like a narrow wing, staying high above the trees and passing over, its noise slowly fading, along with the wind, though it still stirred Odin’s horse’s mane and tail into a wild tangle.

The horse landed neatly on the ground with a thump. He had a white blaze on his face and three white socks, and Persephone guessed he was roan, though she couldn’t distinguish his color in the firelight. The two wolves landed lightly and Hecate’s wolf trotted to meet them. They touched noses briefly, tails erect. Each passed a little urine, which the others thoroughly sniffed, and then Hecate’s wolf returned to her side, Odin’s animals taking up positions on either side of him as he dismounted.

“You’re late,” remarked Baba Yaga disagreeably from her stump.

Odin took no notice. His glance took in the little group seated on the ground and the White Stag’s body. He exchanged a casual nod with Death, who stood as though guarding the dead stag, still holding the bloodstained scythe.

Hecate, more formal, inclined her head in greeting as Odin approached her before seating herself near Artemis. Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin remained standing. Persephone couldn’t see the Dwarve’s features through his beard, but Morfran looked uncertain.

Cloaked, with a broad-brimmed hat and a long grey beard that put Death’s facsimile to shame, Odin approached Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin.

“We have met before, Morfran, foster son of Bald Tegid and Ceridwen, grandson of Marceau, Sea King,” said Odin, and swept off his hat. His back was to Persephone, but she well remembered Odin’s empty eye socket.

Morfran looked astonished. “Timor!”

“Yes. And you, Rumpelstiltskin, I know of, though we have not met.” Odin knelt, looking natural and youthful, so as not to tower over the Dwarve.

“And I have heard of you, also,” said the Dwarve.

“Will you allow me to guide you through this ceremony?” Odin’s keen one-eyed gaze moved from the Dwarve’s face to Morfran’s.

Receiving consent from both, Odin regained his feet.

“Female energy and male energy balance one another. The act of procreation and the continuation of life depend on that balance. To be male, to implant a woman with seed through penetration, is sacred. To be female, to receive penetration and nurture new life in the womb, is likewise sacred. Each distinct participant is required for the covenant of life.”

“Procreation is but one of three male tasks. The others are protection and provision. On this night Cerunmos, the Horned King, protector of the wild, has willingly sacrificed himself to feed others.”

“Our world sickens. Yrtym’s scaffold wavers. Connection breaks. It’s a time of crisis, and if we are to survive it, we must look to balance. We must look to connection. We must discover the disease crippling the natural cycles and the turning wheel.”

“I invite you now to step onto the path of mature manhood. Our task is to feed the Mother, creator of life. She has conceived, birthed, fed and sustained you, and now you will complete the circle and nourish Her. We begin by accepting the Horned King’s sacrifice. We continue by walking the path of male power, acting, building, repairing, forsaking the comfort of the light and the known, and accepting endings, loss and fear. Will you descend in the dark and face your shadows? Will you take your place in the sacred balance between male and female power?”

“I will,” said Morfran.

“I will,” said Rumpelstiltskin.

“Then let us prepare and cook the meat,” said Odin.

As they turned away, Baba Yaga grumbled, “They’ll take all night and mangle the meat in the bargain. I’m a better butcher than you’ll ever be!” she shrieked after the three figures. Turning back to the group seated on the ground, she tapped thoughtfully her tusk with a dirty fingernail. “How shall we entertain ourselves while we wait, girls?” she purred. “Let me see.” She gave an exaggerated start, closed her eyes and began swaying, her hands clasped against her bosom. “Yesss! Sspeak to me, spirits! Oohhh, the message comes! It comes! We shall… we shall dandle … no, no, that’s not quite right! We shall dandify … no, speak, spirits! We await your wisdom! … Dance! That’s it! We shall skip, shuffle, samba and shimmy! We shall jig and jive, prance and polka!”

Persephone felt cold and stiff. The smell of freshly-killed meat and blood mingled with the fire, making her empty stomach twist ferociously. Her grief, shock and sympathy for Artemis weighed her down. She, Eurydice and Heks had traveled for days and fasted since they arrived. She wanted a hot meal, a hot drink and a warm, comfortable bed. The idea of dancing with this oddly-assorted group while the White Stag’s body was butchered an arms-length away seemed horrible. She sat stubbornly, her eyes fixed on the ground. She would not dance because this hideous hag ordered her to, no matter her power.

“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.

Image by Anja #pray for ukraine# #helping hands# stop the war from Pixabay

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

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.

Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay

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.”

Skuld greeted Eurydice with tearful gratitude. She lay on her bed, thin white braids over each shoulder, looking frail and wretched, but she gave Eurydice a smile, returned her kiss and kept a firm grasp on her hand. Her scissors, with which she cut the thread, lay on a table next to the bed, and it gave Eurydice a pang to see them there rather than in their accustomed place behind Skuld’s ear.

The first night they sat in Skuld’s room on a variety of chairs and stools, eating Urd’s rich meat stew. In unspoken agreement they didn’t speak of Yrtym or troubling subjects, but instead reminisced about Eurydice’s previous visit, talked about Rowan Tree and Rumpelstiltskin’s work (leaving out mention of his last student), and exchanged stories about Baba Yaga and Odin, which grew wilder and more fantastic as the evening lengthened, until they laughed together like old friends.

The next morning, however, Eurydice sobered. She realized the Norns needed at least temporary assistance. Skuld was an integral part of the household. In addition to her work as a Norn she tended the garden, although, thankfully, that work was finished for the winter. She was also the chief cook, which task fell to Urd now, a good, plain cook in her own right but without Skuld’s finesse or pleasure in producing meals.

Food was also becoming a problem. The Norns traded Verdani’s spinning for most of their needs, and as the quality and quantity of her yarn and thread decreased, so did its value. Fortunately, Skuld had harvested and stored vegetables and fruit before she took to her bed, but fresh food like eggs, butter and meat were in short supply, and the addition of three mouths to feed overwhelmed the Norns’ larder.

As a matter of course, Rumpelstiltskin quietly took upon himself hunting and foraging, just as he had during the journey to Yggdrasil. He also undertook to supply firewood for both the fireplace and the brazier. When Urd thanked him, he made little of these contributions. “It’s what I’m skilled at, enjoy and want to do,” he said. “With so much uncertainty, it’s as good a place to start as any. Besides, I made a commitment to follow a path into malehood. You need the help, and I need to provide and protect. I can also keep an eye on the natural cycles and progress of the season as I’m out among the trees and wild animals.”

In these activities, to Eurydice’s surprise, Mirmir frequently assisted and accompanied Rumpelstiltskin. They looked a strange pair, the giant snake and the Dwarve’s short, stout figure with his hammer and chisel, hunting gear and knives.

“He’s a good hunter,” Rumpelstiltskin said when she questioned him.

“Does he talk to you?”

“In his own way,” the Dwarve replied, but refused to elaborate.

Heks, Eurydice observed, appeared to grow ten years younger in the Norns’ company. She was willing to do any task, from laundry to kitchen work to nursing Skuld. She proved a match for Urd’s stringy strength, and because of her presence Urd was able to return to her work as a Norn, considerably reduced though it was due to the disruption in the Yrtym and Verdani’s spinning. Heks also traveled with what yarn and thread they did produce to exchange or sell it for household necessities. In nearby villages, markets and shops she heard the latest local gossip and news, which was increasingly grim. Everyone seemed to be experiencing some kind of breakdown, in relationships, in business or in the land and animals they lived with and depended on. The harvest had been adequate, but feelings of scarcity and fear grew everywhere.

Heks spent a great deal of time with Skuld, and Eurydice often heard them cackling and snorting with laughter behind Skuld’s closed door. She couldn’t imagine what they found so funny. They were the two least likely women on Webbd to exchange amusing stories. There was no denying, though, under Heks’s care Skuld looked better. She wept and sighed less and took an intelligent part in the evening conversations as they each shared their histories and stories, including what they’d heard and experienced since the trouble started. She also ate better, and began leaving her bed and sitting by the fire during their evening talks.

Eurydice, much to her discomfort, found herself filling in for Skuld as the cutter of the thread. First Verdani and then Urd begged her to do so.

“But I’m not a Norn,” Eurydice protested. “How can I fill such a responsible position? I’m not powerful or wise enough! Who knows what mistakes I might make?”

“Nonsense,” said Verdani stoutly. “You’re far better qualified than either Urd or I, and far less likely to make a mistake. Your work is thresholds -- stepping from one thing to another. So is this!”

“But what if Skuld’s right, and we’re running out of beginnings? What if I cut the thread and everything ends -- because of me?”

“Poppycock!” said Urd. “I don’t believe that could ever happen. Everything must end, and at the same time nothing really ever ends. It’s an immutable enigma, a law of life. Something is always present, even when nothing is! Think about your time in Hades.”

“Nowhere to go and nothing to do,” said Eurydice.

“You were there,” said Verdani.

“And Maria, and Persephone, and so many others,” said Eurydice.

“That’s just what I’m saying,” said Urd, triumphant. “Something is always present!”

“I can’t cut the thread,” said Eurydice. “I daren’t.”

“We need you,” Verdani said. “Eurydice, we need all of you -- Heks and Rumpelstiltskin and you. It’s not an accident you’re here, and no one else. We need you, specifically you, with your power and skills and abilities. We need you the way the mother trees needed to die in your arms. The Yrtym is breaking down, coming apart. The remedy might lie in possessing the courage to hold on to connection, and I trust your connection to Skuld.”

Without another word, Eurydice had gone into Skuld’s room and asked if she could use her scissors. Skuld, in the midst of gossiping with Heks, paused, gave her a long look and nodded, taking up her conversation again before Eurydice left the room.

As she cut the swathe of autumn Verdani spun into hanks for animal pelt, winter plumage, frozen water crystals and a rather moth-eaten heavy yarn for clothing and blankets, she prayed with each cut a new section would begin.

As she passed section after section to Urd for winding and storage, she gained confidence, feeling where the cut should be made to separate one thing from another.

Verdani reached the end of the swathe. They deliberated a long time about what she should spin next. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to spin anymore,” Verdani said.

They discussed it together for several evenings by the fire.

“If you fear running out of beginnings,” said Heks, “what can you weave that makes the stuff of beginnings? What begins?”

“Seeds,” said Eurydice, “and sometimes roots.”

“Bones,” said Heks. “Maria has a loom made from her sons’ bones.

“Nephthys has bones,” Urd remarked.

“Procreation involves male and female energy,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “One of the tasks of malehood is procreation.”

Skuld shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense, since there are no female Dwarves. You’re born solely from male energy. I’ve seen it happen millions of times.”

“I have an idea about that,” said Rumpelstiltskin, “but can we agree creating something -- a new beginning -- takes more than one…ingredient?”

“I agree,” said Eurydice. “Also, what about souls? I know that sounds silly,” she looked around at the others, “but I know from my time in Hades souls are like bones and seeds. They’re what’s left when everything else is stripped away, the basic building block of something new.”

“It’s not silly,” said Urd. “Makes perfect sense.”

“Death, in fact, begins life,” said Heks. “And life begins death.”

“Verdani,” said Eurydice, “what makes Yrtym?”

Verdani looked blank. “I’ve no idea. I haven’t thought about it before.”

“If we can find out, maybe we can make more.”

“Maybe. What an amazing idea!”

After a few silent minutes while they thought about making Yrtym, Skuld said, “So, how do we gather seeds, bones, souls and death to weave with?”

“The male and female Seed Bearers, obviously,” said Urd. “We can send for them, and Nephthys can provide bones.”

“What about souls?” asked Rumpelstiltskin. “Should we send to Hades for them?”

“No,” said Eurydice. “Remember the Wild Hunt? Why not ask Odin for whatever the Hunt gleans?”

“But how can I spin new beginnings from these elements without Yrtym?” Verdani asked hopelessly. “I can’t turn death into life on a spinning wheel without some kind of alchemy!”

“We can,” said the Dwarve. He left his stool and stood before the fire, facing them all. “We can. I can teach you to spin straw into gold and endings into beginnings. Listen.”

He told them Jenny’s story, his most beloved student, the miller’s daughter who learned to spin straw into gold and saved her own life. He told them about her brief marriage to Hans, the baker who judged a woman’s worth by a pea, and about her time with Minerva, maturing her skill and learning how to manage her power. Then, he told them of Jenny’s murder at the hands of Heks’s only son, Bruno, who was himself killed in the act of another murder by a soldier who happened to be near. As he ended his story, tears dripped down his face into his beard, and he made no effort to hide them.

“She sounds so special,” said Verdani. “I’ve never heard of a talent like that.”

“You are a talent like that,” said the Dwarve. “You’re a Norn, one of the Three Norns, and between your hands the Wheel turns. I think if we work together, we can help you spin beginnings out of endings and perhaps even find a way to make Yrtym. I think we must try. I know if Jenny was here, she would try.”

“After all,” said Heks. “We have nothing to lose. And if I can be part of carrying on Jenny’s legacy it will help me atone for my son.”

“You are not responsible,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “We’ve talked about this before.”

“I am responsible in that I gave him life,” said Heks. “After that, his choices became his own. Still, I brought Jenny’s death into the world, and that’s a heavy burden.”

“Must we travel to Odin, Nephthys and the Seed Bearers and ask for help?” Eurydice asked, changing the subject tactfully.

“No,” said Skuld. “There’s no need. Mirmir will do it all.”

The next morning Verdani, Urd and Rumpelstiltskin conferred at length with Mirmir under Yggdrasil. Eurydice watched from the kitchen window as she did the breakfast dishes. Heks and Skuld had a cup of tea together in Skuld’s bedroom.

When the conference ended, Mirmir, Verdani and Urd examined Yggdrasil’s base together, moving around the trunks and out of sight and then appearing again from the other side. Eurydice, watching, remembered the portal under Yggdrasil had opened on her first visit to the Norns; she’d traveled through it to Nephthys’s desert and found the Well of Bones, where she’d met Kunik, Maria and Nephthys. She wondered if the portal showed itself again, and if Nephthys would be able to travel through it.

The two Norns and Mirmir spoke together for a minute, and then the Norns returned to the house and Mirmir began slithering up the massive tree and out of sight, yards of his coiled body at the base of the tree slowly straightening and disappearing.

As Verdani entered the kitchen, Eurydice looked at her expectantly.

Verdani smiled. “Yes, that portal does look as though it’s beginning to open. We don’t know if it will work, but with Nephthys opening the other side it might be possible. Mirmir will send word to the desert vultures, and they will tell Nephthys we need her. He’ll also speak to Odin’s raven, who’s a great friend of his and often stops by for a gossip. He’ll find a way to contact Shala, the Seed-Bearer, as well. She should be on her way to Yule House, but there’s still plenty of time for her to stop here.”

“Does the portal go only to Nephthys’s desert?” asked Rumpelstiltskin.

“We have no idea,” said Urd. “Not our business. I’m not sure it goes anywhere now.”

“I think we’d better prepare for more guests,” said Verdani.

***

Eurydice expected to wait several days, but two days later a heavily pregnant woman with a long mane of curling black hair and several gold bangle bracelets on each wrist appeared and introduced herself as Shala, the Seed-Bearer. She wore a simple sheepskin skirt and tunic, tufted and fringed, and was escorted by, of all people, Death.

Eurydice again marveled at the expressiveness of what was only an animated skeleton. Solicitously, he put Shala in a chair, offered her a footstool and a cushion for her back, hovered like an overanxious father and would have held the cup of water Verdani brought her while she sipped if she hadn’t taken it decisively from his hand.

Heks shouldered him rudely aside. “That’s quite enough, you clown. She’s pregnant, not incapable. Go away. Skuld’s wanting to see you. In there.” She gestured at Skuld’s closed bedroom door.

To the young woman, she said, “Shala, I’m Heks. I’m a midwife. Thank you for coming. Are you comfortable? What can we do for you?”

“I’m quite well,” said Shala. She smiled. “I’m glad to get off my feet, though. She laid her hands on her bulging belly, her bracelets jingling musically. “I’ll be relieved when someone else can carry these two.”

“Twins, then?” asked Heks.

“Yes, in three or four weeks. I’m on my way to Yule House, where I’ll give birth. Hecate will be with me.”

“You’ll be in excellent hands,” said Heks. “Let me know if I can do anything for you while you’re here.”

“Why am I here? I received the message you wanted me, but that’s all I know.” Her dark eyes moved from Heks to Eurydice to the two Norns and Rumpelstiltskin. “I don’t know any of you, do I?”

“You don’t know us, my dear, and the reason you’re here is a complicated story,” Verdani answered. “We’ll talk about this evening. For now, will you eat something and rest?”

Shala agreed to this plan. Verdani performed introductions and Urd brought Shala a bowl of soup made from rabbit, grouse and turkey meat with vegetables and barley. After she’d eaten, Eurydice took her up to the attic and showed her where she would sleep. Shala toed off supple short leather boots and lay down with a relieved sigh, curling on her side around her protruding belly. Eurydice made sure the window was ajar, covered her lightly and left her resting.

As the afternoon waned, Nephthys skipped out from under the shadows beneath Yggdrasil. She looked like a child on the brink of puberty, wearing nothing but a ragged, sandy cloth around her middle. Earrings swayed from her lobes, the fire and lamplight turning them into golden spangles, and a tattooed dots and dashes wound their way up one childish bare arm. Her hair was a thick, kinky tangle, her eyes dark and her skin the same olive color as Shala’s.

She walked into the Norn’s cottage without knocking, gave Verdani and Urd an affectionate hug, wrapping her thin arms around their waists, greeted Eurydice familiarly, who she’d met once before, nodded to Rumpelstiltskin, whom she had encountered at an Ostara initiation, and made a beeline for Skuld’s closed door, from behind which sounds of muffled hilarity issued as Heks, Skuld and Death were, presumably, talking. As she opened the door and entered, Eurydice watched her pull a grubby bag out from inside her loincloth. She shut the door firmly behind her.

“Did she bring bones?” Eurydice asked.

“Who knows?” answered Urd, rolling her eyes but smiling.

“Maybe she left them out by Yggdrasil,” said Verdani.

That evening, a raven brought word that Odin would arrive the following day.

***

The party-like atmosphere in the Norns’ house surprised Eurydice. When she, Heks and Rumpelstiltskin had arrived, the Norns seemed worn out and old, frighteningly unsure about what was happening or what to do about it. The last thing she’d expected was this gradually increasing playful mood and even hilarity. Even stranger, Heks appeared to be largely responsible for it, and the arrival of Death and Nephthys escalated the lighthearted mood considerably.

Now, as they finished breakfast and began clearing the table, Heks said, “I feel like a swim.” She looked from one Norn to another, and then at Shala. “So do you. It will do you good.”

“I’m too ill,” said Skuld dolefully. “I can’t.” Eurydice thought of the frequent cackling she’d heard going on behind Skuld’s bedroom door and eyed her dubiously.

“You’re not ill and you will,” Heks said to her.

Skuld looked mutinous.

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Rumpelstiltskin put in unexpectedly. “It’s been a long time since I sat in a spring. Is it warm?”

“Yes,” said Urd. “It’s lovely. We haven’t bathed in it in a long time. I’m surprised at you, Skuld. You used to love swimming in the well.”

“Only privately,” muttered Skuld.

“Nonsense,” said Heks. “We need hide nothing from one another. No one will faint when you turn into a mermaid.”

“A mermaid?” said Shala, astonished. “But how wonderful! My mate, Dago, can take a fish’s shape! Our people are fisherman and we love the water.”

“All three of us Norns can become mermaids,” said Urd matter-of-factly. “It embarrasses Skuld.”

“Mirmir will join us,” said Heks firmly.

“Not if the swans are here,” said Verdani. “They terrify him.”

“The swans,” said Heks severely, “are not here.”

“Goody,” said Nephthys. “When can we go?”

“The well is behind the house,” Verdani replied.

“We can go when the morning tasks are finished,” said Urd, sounding like a schoolmistress. “Skuld, go in there and make your bed. Better yet, strip it and Heks can help you put fresh sheets on it. You’ve lain there too long. Open the window and let out the fug. Nephthys, will you please go upstairs and make the beds? Check the floor under the bat house and give it a sweep if Mirmir’s friend has visited. Make sure the window is ajar. Eurydice, will you do the dishes?”

“I’ll bring a load of wood and lay the next fire,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “Are you planning a venison stew?”

“Yes,” said Urd.

“Then I’ll cut vegetables and help Eurydice in the kitchen, while you cook,” said Verdani.

“Let me do the vegetables,” said Shala. “I can sit at the table and stay off my feet.”

Later in the morning, when the pale autumn sun was at its warmest, they gathered together by the Well of Urd.

Eurydice had heard it called both a well and a fountain. In fact, it looked like a pool, about 35 feet in diameter, rimmed by a low stone wall. A stone collar lined the well’s throat a couple of feet below the water’s surface, providing a bench. The water looked slightly agitated, bubbling up from some unseen source.

“How deep is it?” Shala asked.

“As far as we know, it’s bottomless,” said Verdani.

Nephthys dropped her scrap of loincloth on the ground, leaned over the wall and tested the water’s temperature.

“It’s warm!” She stepped onto the wall and jumped with a whoop.

Death accompanied them to the well and stood watching with his hands on the bony wings of his hips. He minced forward and barely touched the water’s surface with a finger, as though afraid of disturbing it. Apparently satisfied, he straightened up, turned his back to everyone else and mimed disrobing, casting what could only be described as looks of maidenly modesty over his shoulder.

Rumpelstiltskin chortled.

Death turned around, one hand shielding his pubic bone and the other across his chest, ran to the well’s stone edge, and leapt into the middle, bones clattering. His rounded skull broke the surface and he trod water, grinning his empty grin at them.

Eurydice took off her clothes, folded them into a neat pile and eased herself into the water, trying not to feel self-conscious about her thick, strong body.

It felt blissful. The water was slightly above body temperature, pleasant but not uncomfortable.

Skuld had given up resisting Heks’s determination, and she, Urd and Verdani undressed without a trace of discomfiture and nimbly entered the pool. Heks assisted Shala, steadying her while she took off her sheepskin and boots. She laid her bracelets on top of her clothes and, moving awkwardly, swung her legs over the stone wall. She looked enormous without her clothes, her belly taut as a drumhead, her breasts hard and round. Even her belly button looked hard as a marble. While Heks supported her with a strong arm, she let herself down onto the underwater bench and groaned with voluptuous relief.

“Oh, this is wonderful! Thank you so much. I’ll just sit here and luxuriate.”

“Huz-zah!” shouted Rumpelstiltskin, and shot like a furry cannonball into the well’s center, sending up a fountain of spray. The hair on his body matched his beard, a rich brown tinged with red.

“There’s Mirmir!” called Nephthys. “Come play with us, Mirmir!”

Once again, Eurydice was reminded of a large, clumsy, exuberant dog as the snake surged forward, eyes gleaming with what looked like excited glee. Without pause, he flowed up and over the stone rim and dove headfirst into the water. They watched as his body followed his head and Eurydice, not for the first time, wondered exactly how long he was. Several minutes passed before his entire body disappeared into the depths.

Eurydice, treading water in the well’s center with Death, Rumpelstiltskin, the Norns and Heks, felt a qualm at the idea of bottomless fathoms of water beneath her and the giant serpent somewhere in them. She wondered how long Mirmir could hold his breath.

She needn’t have worried. The snake shot up the side of the well across from Shala, his head reaching high into the air before he fell down again with a tremendous splash. Nephthys shrieked with laughter.

Mirmir then proceeded to coil himself into intricate loops and hoops, a kind of watery obstacle course, and the Norns, now sporting tails rather than legs, began a fierce competition to see who could leap highest and swim fastest. Skuld, Eurydice noticed, acted as though she’d never been sick a day in her life.

Rumpelstiltskin repeatedly left the pool to make a running start and shoot himself through a loop of Mirmir like a hard brown ball. Mirmir, smiling his reptilian smile, managed to move so as to spoil Rumpelstiltskin’s aim as well as throw off the Norns, and much shouting, splashing and laughter ensued.

Death trod water with great dignity in the midst of the fray, and Heks removed herself from the center turbulence, lay on her back and floated serenely without moving a muscle, alternately looking as though she slept and gazing at the sky. Eurydice couldn’t imagine how such a dried-up old stick of a woman could float so buoyantly. Shala looked on, laughing, from her seat, her black hair a wet cloak around her.

Eurydice felt like a sponge. She soaked gratefully, drinking as much as she could hold and enjoying the feel of suspension in warm wetness. It felt good to be naked. It felt good to hear laughter and play. It felt good to be with friends. She wished painfully for Kunik and wondered what was happening at Rowan Tree. When they reunited, she and Kunik would have much to share.

The sun slid down the sky. Heks swam to Shala and Eurydice watched them exchange a few words. Shala nodded and Heks climbed out and returned with a towel from a pile Verdani brought from the house. She gave Shala a hand and helped her out, wrapping her in the towel. They retrieved their clothes and returned to the cottage together.

A few minutes later, Eurydice began feeling cold, and she too returned to the house. By the time she had dressed and combed her tangled hair, the Norns had come in. Eurydice gathered up discarded towels and pegged them onto the line. She could hear Rumpelstiltskin and Nephthys, still splashing and playing with Mirmir and Death.

Heks settled Shala and Skuld before a newly-lit fire. Verdani and Urd worked in the kitchen, where the simmering stew scented the air with onions and garlic. Eurydice fetched her comb and stood behind Shala, combing her wet hair.

By the time darkness fell, the whole group had gathered together by the fire or in the kitchen, feeling clean, relaxed and entirely comfortable with one another. Verdani, Urd and Eurydice set the table, and two apple pies added their fragrance to the meaty stew and burning applewood.

In the middle of the meal someone knocked on the door.

Rumpelstiltskin opened the door and stood aside in invitation, letting in a chilly gust of autumn-smelling wind. Odin entered, followed by a slim youth with pale blond hair and grey eyes.

Odin and his companion set down their bundles, took off their cloaks, and acknowledged introductions while Eurydice hurriedly set another place for the unexpected stranger, whom Odin introduced as Seren.

The name gave her a shock. She’d heard it before, though a swift glance around the table revealed nothing but polite interest from anyone else. With some amusement, she noted how the young man’s face fell when nobody reacted visibly to his name. Evidently, he expected to be recognized. She dropped her gaze and schooled her expression into pleasant neutrality.

Seren was rumored to be the greatest bard who had ever lived, renowned for his verse, singing, composing and performance. Gossip declared he’d been born with a shining white light about his brow, and his name meant “star”. His instrument was a lyre. Seren’s gift was no less, it was said, than Orpheus’s had been, and Orpheus, for a few fleeting days long ago, had been Eurydice’s husband.

In her maidenhood she’d been enchanted by Orpheus’s skill, along with everyone who heard him. Handsome, passionate and irresistible, she’d gladly given herself to him entirely. A few days after their whirlwind courtship and marriage, Eurydice had been bitten by a snake and died suddenly, and Orpheus, inconsolable, did something no man had ever done before and sought out the throne of Hades in the Underworld to beg for Eurydice’s return.

His grief and powerful music compelled Hades to summon Eurydice and order she follow Orpheus back to the Green World with the caution that he must not look back until they moved out from her tomb’s shadow. Eurydice did not want to return to the life she’d lost, but she’d not been allowed the choice.

Obedient, she’d followed Orpheus as he strode up out of the Underworld in his blue velvet cloak with his golden lyre on his arm. Impulsive and triumphant, he controlled himself with difficulty from looking back to be sure she followed until they reached Eurydice’s tomb. When he stood in the sun, he turned, exultant, but she had remained within the tomb’s shadow and thankfully turned away. The sound of his anguish followed her all the way back to Hades.

Orpheus never accepted what he could not change and withheld his musical gifts from the world and from himself, expressing only unending grief for the rest of his short life.

Now people said this young man Seren blessed the world with music again, and this time talent would not end in tragedy, but in many long years of service and acclaim.

He was young, though Eurydice realized, with a shock, he was no younger than Orpheus had been when she’d first laid eyes on him, and she’d been even younger. She wondered why Odin had brought him.

The conversation remained general during the meal. Seren demonstrated the healthy appetite of any young man who’d traveled all day and was pleasant and agreeable, taking part in the conversation with self-confidence and extraordinary poise for one so young. Eurydice wondered if her initial impression of his disappointment at not being recognized was accurate.

When the pies were reduced to crumbs, Urd, Verdani and Eurydice washed the dishes while Heks and Shala cleared the table and wiped down the counters and stove, after which they gathered together before the fire.

She’d noticed Seren carefully unwrapping his lyre and setting it ready to take up at a moment’s notice, as though he expected to perform. He sat upright in a chair, alert and vibrating with enthusiastic energy. He smoothed his pale hair once or twice, tucking it carefully behind his ears.

Odin produced a pipe and performed the ritual of packing it with tobacco and lighting it. Rumpelstiltskin followed suit, though he didn’t normally smoke in the evenings. Eurydice wondered if he’d missed male companionship. Somehow, Death and Mirmir hardly counted.

Death, as usual, stood casually in a corner observing and listening.

Once his pipe was going to his satisfaction, Odin removed it from his mouth and rumbled, “Now we’re together, we have business to see to.”

Seren sat up, his expression expectant.

“But not tonight,” Odin continued. “Tonight, we relax after that excellent meal, and tomorrow we go to work. Tonight, we need entertainment.”

Odin had removed his hat and his one eye searched the faces around him with a sardonic gleam.

Seren began to rise.

“We’ll play a game of marbles,” said Odin.

Eurydice nearly laughed. Seren dropped back into his chair, looking thoroughly put out. Was Odin teasing him deliberately? Surely Odin knew who Seren was, even if none of the others appeared to. What more obvious choice of entertainment could there be? As for playing marbles, she didn’t take that seriously for a minute.

“Where’s Mirmir?” asked Odin. “We need him.”

Urd opened the door and called out into the windy darkness, “Mirmir! We want you!”

A moment later Mirmir poked an inquiring head into the cottage.

“We need a ring, my dear fellow,” said Odin. He put his pipe on the stone mantel. “Get up, everyone. A rearrangement of furniture is necessary.”

Eurydice was open-mouthed with astonishment, as were Shala, Verdani and Urd. Nephthys and Rumpelstiltskin grinned. Heks wore her driest, most inscrutable expression and Skuld, to Eurydice’s astonishment, looked positively gleeful. Seren simply looked pole-axed.

They arranged chairs, stools and cushions around the room’s perimeter. Mirmir, coiling and uncoiling in convoluted patterns, positioned the tail end of his body in a large loop on the floor in room’s center. He coiled the rest of himself out of the way and rested his head on the back of Seren’s chair, where he obtained a good view of the circle he’d made. Seren, visibly uncomfortable, leaned away from the snake’s flat head propped just above his right shoulder.

Eurydice took pity on him. “He won’t hurt you,” she murmured. “He’s gentle. You can relax.”

Seren gave her a stony look, tension in every line of his body. She gave up and sat back comfortably in her own chair. For some reason, both Mirmir and Odin appeared intent on teasing the young man, but she could do nothing about it.

As Eurydice watched in disbelief, Heks and Skuld organized themselves side by side on cushions outside the circle’s perimeter. Nephthys crouched on the floor, holding a small, frayed-looking bag. Odin stood smoking with his back to the fire, looking benignly on as everyone arranged themselves.

Death sauntered forward and knelt on a bony white knee, spilling a handful of fire and ice onto the wood floor just outside Mirmir’s loop. Eurydice leaned forward to examine the rolling marbles. Some were as red as fresh blood and others exactly the same ivory as Death himself.

Nephthys emptied her bag with a rattle. “Mine are real knucklebones,” she said to Death. “Yours are just glass pretending to be bone.” Hers did not roll heavily, as Death’s weightier collection, and varied in sizes and shades from cream to light brown.

“Show them yours, Heks,” said Skuld. Heks reached into the neck of her tunic and withdrew a plain linen bag, slightly grubby. She unknotted the top and emptied the bag within the circle.

Eurydice gasped. She remembered hearing some vague talk about Maria and Rapunzel giving Heks marbles that had once been eyes. In Rapunzel’s case, the eye had come from her first lover, Alexander, whom her foster mother nearly killed in her rage and grief after Rapunzel freed herself from her tower. Maria’s eyes had been those of her two sons, whom she murdered before killing herself. She and Eurydice had in fact met in Hades. All five eyes had inexplicably become marbles, and all functioned as guides. Now, she saw them again, the four brown eyes of Maria’s children and the blue one from Alexander. In addition, there was a fierce amber eye she hadn’t seen before, obviously not human.

Several marbles were the same deep red as Death’s, the color of rubies and garnets. They reminded Eurydice of a gem-encrusted key she’d once held for a time that had unlocked the portal underneath Yggdrasil so she could travel to Nephthys’s desert. They glowed in the fire and lamplight. Other marbles burned with diamond-like brilliance, reflecting beautifully in the warm light, making Eurydice think of starry crystals of ice and snow. Other spheres made from gems and glass in every color and various sizes were mixed in with them, along with a few humbler, roughly made marbles that appeared to be clay or stone.

“Oh, my,” said Verdani inadequately.

“I have some too,” said Skuld. “See? This big one is a taw. You shoot with it. This is a clambroth, and this a bird’s egg. It’s made of clay. Heks gave me the taw, but I won the other two!” She looked enormously proud of herself.

Eurydice now understood the hours of laughter and giggling behind Skuld’s closed bedroom door.

With the air of making a grand entrance, Odin squatted and tipped a large leather bag into the circle of Mirmir’s body. A double handful of marbles rolled gently onto the floor in a bewildering array of sizes and materials. Eurydice couldn’t imagine finer or more fascinating treasure.

For the next two hours, the audience was instructed in the ancient art of marbles, including the proud history of cheating, though Odin generously named Baba Yaga the queen of cheaters; none could challenge her skill. General hilarity spiced with the rich and unique language of marbles ruled as Odin directed and participated in games such as Troll-My-Dame, King of the Mountain, Handy Candy, Dicies, and, in honor of Mirmir, Black Snakes.

Skuld, being the most inexperienced player, was allowed to play “for fair,” which meant the other players would return her marbles at play’s end. Death, Heks and Odin, however, played for keeps, knuckling down and circling the ring with determination and skill, and employing various cheats when they thought they could get away with it. Nephthys shot with skill and daring, but appeared indifferent to winning or losing, and Eurydice noticed when the evening ended the others gave her back her knucklebones, in addition to what she’d won.

Rumpelstiltskin moderated, eyes gleaming with interest. He quickly spotted cheating and evaluated the marbles with a professional eye, as the Dvorgs and Dwarves had made many of them.

It was the perfect end to a relaxing day, and when the marbles were put away, the furniture put back where it belonged, and everyone had trooped off to their beds or, in the case of Odin and Seren, their bedrolls, Eurydice fell peacefully asleep without a thought for any coming difficulties.

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?”

Image by Gabriele M. Reinhardt from Pixabay

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.

Image by Julia Christine Schütze from Pixabay

“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.

Share A Stone, a Web, a Story

A Stone, a Web, a Story

The Tower: Part 3: Samhain (Entire)

In which you can read without interruption ...

Discussion about this post