The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #43: In which searching for what has been lost ...
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MORFRAN
By the time Marceau, Poseidon and Morfran returned with as much fish as they could carry, Pim, Vasilisa and Clarissa had erected the tent, using the whale’s skeleton as support, and lashed it firmly against the wind. The qulliq burned within it, protected from drafts. Tonight, they would sleep warmer. Morfran’s hip ached in the cold, and he was relieved to see better shelter. He had limbered up in the water, which was warmer than the air, but he knew he’d be stiff and sore after another night on the stony sea floor.
He’d been surprised to find Sedna on her feet, staring toward the strangely suspended sea, when they returned to camp with the fish. Wrapped in a beautifully tanned polar bear skin that dwarfed her slight figure, he thought she looked like an ice queen with her shining black hair bound around her head.
She ignored everyone around her, as aloof and withdrawn as if she were alone, and they didn’t disturb her as they entered the camp, but he knew she must have seen the fish.
He wondered if she would allow him to feed her again this night.
He wondered what they were doing here, and how long they would stay.
He thought of Sofiya with longing, and the winter birch wood. He thought of the smell of birch oil and the sauna’s heat. He hadn’t imagined a landscape so bleak or a place of such delicate beauty. The poverty of color, mountains and trees emphasized the textures and shades of ivory and grey. The cold, empty wind intensified the smell of the melting blubber in the qulliq and the ever-present smell of fish, skins and meat.
Marceau and Poseidon appeared content, unbothered by the cold and equally at home in the water and out of it. They spent hours talking to the selchie, learning everything they could about this northern sea.
Morfran, quiet and self-sufficient by nature, kept his questions and uncertainties to himself and focused on the one thing he felt sure of.
It was his task to feed the Mother.
The Samhain ritual he’d undergone with Rumpelstiltskin under Odin played over and over again in his mind. For weeks he’d fretted, not knowing how to express positive male energy in the world. He knew Vasilisa felt the same frustration and asked the same questions. How could she express the energy of Mother? Everyone around them appeared to have a role and a contribution.
Here, in this place that felt like the end of the world, lived the Ice Mother, wary and bitter as a starving wolf. Here was the division he’d seen and heard of elsewhere: the sea withdrawn from the land, the people rejecting the spirit of their faith, and the connection between animals, humans, ice, stone, and water collapsing.
He could not begin to fix it all. He didn’t even fully understand what needed fixing. But Sedna, handless, smoldering with rage, alone, was hungry, and he could feed her. She allowed him to feed her.
So, feed her he would until he knew it was time to do something else.
That night, they ate in the tent’s shelter, and the qulliq seemed as warm as a campfire when they were shielded from the persistent wind. Sedna did allow Morfran to feed her, and she ate as much if not more than she had the day before. It amazed him, how much food she could take in one sitting. He alternated offering strips of walrus meat and blubber with salmon, and she ate with avid concentration. Pim brought her cup after cup of water.
Two days of food, water and attention had helped her regain some humanity. Thin and fierce, she nonetheless possessed a new dignity and Vasilisa’s work on her hair revealed a prideful beauty. She no longer looked like a feral starveling. Her cracked lips healed. She even met his eyes directly once or twice as he fed her, and he smiled at her, hoping to convey friendship rather than pity, which he knew she would resent.
He took care to eat nothing until she was satisfied, as a gesture of respect and willingness to serve. Pim snatched a mouthful here and there in between bringing her water, and the others ate freely, chatting comfortably.
Morfran liked Pim. He was direct and thoughtful, two qualities Morfran appreciated. His instincts were good, too. Morfran admired the way he’d picked up on his lead when they first spoke with Sedna. Another man might have talked over a stranger, displaying condescension, pity or impatience with Sedna, but he had watched and listened and joined Morfran in approaching her with an offer of service, asking nothing in return.
The night before, they had talked as they worked on cutting up the walrus meat and scraping the skins. Briefly, Morfran described the Samhain ritual and explained his recognition of the need to feed Sedna, a starving mother if ever there was one. Pim listened carefully and asked good questions. Morfran looked forward to a lengthier talk. He missed the companionship of men his own age.
Dealing with the cold demanded calories, and they ate heartily. Sedna was still at it when Vasilisa declared herself replete and offered a story while the others finished. The company applauded the offer, and Vasilisa told a story about Nephthys, Lady of Bones, who lived in the desert between the worlds.
Morfran had heard a great deal about Nephthys when he visited Rowan Tree from his friends, Eurydice, Kunik and Maria, each of whom had visited the desert between the worlds. He himself had met Nephthys briefly, at an Ostara ritual in a circle of story with Baba Yaga.
Although ancient and powerful, Nephthys appeared in the form of a child. It was said she was so old she had passed through old age and begun life’s circle again. It felt strange to sit in a skin tent in the northern wastes, the cold wind scouring the dry sea bed and trying to tear the hides from the whale’s skeleton, hearing about an ancient woman-child of the desert. Strange, but somehow fitting, too, because Nephthys, like Sedna, contained a kind of elemental female power. Her skin was tattooed, as Sedna’s was, though her tattoo circled around an arm like a snake. The desert, in its way, was as harsh, unforgiving and mysterious as this land.
Marceau, Poseidon, Clarissa and Pim sat spellbound as Vasilisa described a woman lost in the desert, Nephthys finding her and teaching her to gather bones, lay them out and pour spirit over them to reanimate herself.
“No bone is ever so lost, or broken, or hidden that Nephthys cannot find it,” Vasilisa finished. “Everything lost is found again in the desert between the worlds.”
Sedna, finished, wiped her mouth with her forearms, the rich fat from the blubber glistening on her skin in the qulliq’s light. Morfran, watching her and imagining drifting above Nephthys’s desert with the vultures, had a sudden idea. He shot a glance at Vasilisa, who watched him with a small smile, and their eyes communicated question and answer.
His heart leapt with the rightness of the next thing, clearly laid out before him. Pim took his place with water for Sedna to rinse her mouth, and Morfran, smiling to himself, began his own meal.
“I suppose every place has its stories, then?” Pim asked. “The seas, the desert, the ice, the forests and the mountains?”
“The stories of place and people mingle until their voices become the same,” said Poseidon. “If you would truly love and understand a place and its people, you must learn its stories and, over time, add your own.”
“Do all people have a Mother, as we have the Ice Mother?” Pim asked.
“Many do, in some form,” Vasilisa replied. “The Kingdom of Hades has a king and queen, Hades and Persephone. Hades is Poseidon’s brother. Nephthys lives in the desert, but she is also a life-death-life figure, like Baba Yaga, Mother of Witches, guardian of the birch wood where I’ve been living, though she can go anywhere she wishes, even into the sea as the Sea Witch.”
“Odin flies on the North wind,” said Morfran, “and collects dead souls lost in storms.”
“I had no idea Webbd was so rich and varied,” said Pim. “All these people tell their own stories, then?”
“They do,” said Vasilisa, “but none more astonishing than Sedna’s story.” She turned toward Sedna and smiled. “She told her story to Clarissa and me today, and it’s powerful and beautiful. Will you share it with everyone?” She fixed Sedna’s gaze firmly with her own, and the Ice Mother didn’t drop her eyes, but steadily returned the look.
“Please tell it again,” said Clarissa. “I’d like so much to hear it.”
“Will you honor us, Lady?” Pim asked quietly.
Sedna transferred her gaze to Morfran, and as she began speaking her eyes looked into his, unwavering.
“In a land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color, there lived a girl, the most beautiful girl in the village,” she began.
As the story unfolded, Morfran guarded his face, lest he break the fragile trust they were trying to create with the Ice Mother. He couldn’t guess why she chose him to receive both her fixed attention and her words, but it felt like a test of his intention and strength.
He saw in the circle of listeners around him expressions mirroring his own feelings: wistful indulgence of the girl and her white wolf lover, wonder at the transformation into an Orca, and relief at the apparent reconciliation between the lovely young woman and her father. If Sedna resented the range of expressions, she didn’t show it.
As she described the scene in the sea kayak, Morfran, listening in growing horror, thought he glimpsed a desperate plea in Sedna’s dark eyes, as though she begged for …what? Reassurance? Rage on her behalf? Surely not pity. Her face aged as she spoke, her skin stretching over bones that seemed to grow more prominent. Muscles bunched in her jaw as though she clenched her teeth. Marceau and Poseidon looked grave; their eyes filled with sorrow as they listened. Pim looked agonized, as though the tale was new to him, though Sedna was the guardian of his people. What stories, then, did his people tell about Sedna’s birth? Vasilisa and Clarissa, both familiar with the story, cried in silent sympathy, the qulliq’s light picking out the shine of their tears.
Feeding the Mother, Morfran thought. Feeding, not only food for physical sustenance, but feeding emotional food. Feeding the Mother with the understanding of the woman, the living creature and soul beyond the Mother. Perhaps Sedna asked now for a witness, a listener, someone to share her story’s burden.
He dropped his wavering guard at once, feeling his face screw up painfully, childishly, with distress. He remembered his beloved sister, Creirwy, who had been murdered for her innocent light. He allowed his tears to swell and fall, making no effort to hide his grief from Sedna. She didn’t falter in her telling. It seemed to him her voice grew clearer, stronger, as she told of sinking into the sea, held within the whirling circle of children newly-made from the bone, blood and flesh of her fingers and hands.
Morfran and the others heard the story to its end, and he pictured the tale as a sharp knife dividing a chunk of meat too big to carry, too big to chew and swallow alone. They were hunters of story huddled around the qulliq’s tiny flame in the vast, cold northern night, and now it lay before them and they must butcher and share the load to carry it on.
For the first time, he glimpsed an untold story’s crushing weight, unwitnessed and unreceived.
Morfran wiped his face with his sleeve. The circle around the lamp shifted, coughed and sniffled, coming back to the hide tent, the relentless wind and the presence of one another. Sedna wept too, but silently. Tension left her face and the tears falling down her cheeks and onto the skin draped around her shoulders made her look very young, in spite of her regal crown of braids. Morfran leaned forward and carefully blotted her tears away. For the first time, he gave her an unguarded smile, allowing both his compassion and admiration to show. She smiled back trustfully, and his heart leapt as he realized his willingness to connect with her story was at least as important as providing her with food.
He wanted to tell her then, what he had in mind, but he refrained. It would be terrible to raise her hopes for nothing.
Pim knelt with water for Sedna at Morfran’s elbow, and he moved aside and sat near Vasilisa. Pim, Marceau and Poseidon quietly made plans for the following day, allowing the story’s emotions to ebb gently, without question or comment, and enabling Sedna to relax and reclaim her privacy.
“Bones?” he murmured in Vasilisa’s ear.
“Yes,” she said. “But how will you find your way?”
“Have you noticed the ravens?”
“Of course,” she said.
Ravens had come both days, circling watchfully in the white sky above the camp, and eventually settling warily on the stones to scavenge the offal inevitable in any camp. Vasilisa and Clarissa had flung the scant unwanted flesh from walrus, hides and fish away from the whale’s skeleton and carefully cached the rest against the predations of arctic foxes, wolves and flying scavengers.
Morfran had traveled widely, and knew ravens lived everywhere. Wise and wary, they watched the land and the creatures upon it, following hunters and prey, migration routes and death’s irresistible attraction. He knew their endless curiosity, their love of gossip and sarcasm, and their connection to power. Odin, among others, used them frequently to carry news and messages.
“Odin?” said Vasilisa, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He raised his voice and interrupted the other hunters’ conversation. “Pim? Will you come talk with us for a minute?”
Pim left his place and Clarissa moved to make space for him. He looked somber.
“I didn’t know it was like that,” he said wretchedly. “I didn’t know.”
Morfran, realizing Pim thought they blamed him for Sedna’s story, said, “It’s not your fault. Let that go for now. We’ve had an idea. Listen.”
Tersely, he outlined his plan. Pim’s expression changed to interest and then excitement.
“Is it possible?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try,” said Morfran.
“But how will you find her? It must be worlds away from here.”
“A merman is not the only shape I can take,” said Morfran simply. “I’m a shapeshifter. I can fly.”
Pim looked at him, speechless.
“Will you gather bones?” Morfran asked. “Not her bones, obviously. Those must be long lost. But her children’s bones. Small bones, you know, like the bones in human hands. Can you collect bones from walrus, seal and whale? If I can find her, if she’ll come back with me, perhaps she can use the bones of Sedna’s children to …”
“Give her hands again,” said Pim. “I understand. Yes, I’ll collect bones. Does it matter if they’re carved?”
“I don’t know,” said Morfran, arrested by the idea.
“My people use them for many things. Tools, combs, ornaments and jewelry are but a few. Artists carve bones into animals and birds, among other things.”
“Use your own judgement,” said Morfran. “Think about Sedna, and her story, and gather the bones that speak to you. Better to have too many than not enough. If Nephthys will come, she’ll know what to use.”
“I’ll help however I can,” offered Vasilisa.
“You are helping. Both you and Clarissa. Care for her. Talk to her. Tell her stories, and ask her for her own.”
“She was much calmer after telling the story the second time than she was the first time,” said Vasilisa. “She cried so hard she threw up the first time.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Pim. “It’s a dreadful tale. No wonder she’s so angry.”
“It’s hard to hear it,” said Clarissa, who had been listening. “I want to forget, not hear it again.”
“She hasn’t that luxury,” said Morfran. “She can’t get away from being handless. I think part of what we need to do is feed her with our presence and listening as she comes to terms with what happened. If she’s strong enough to endure it, we must be strong enough to witness.”
“I never thought about story like that before,” said Clarissa. “I thought storytelling was about pleasure and entertainment.”
“Perhaps it’s about both,” said Vasilisa.
“If it will help her, I’ll listen to it again,” said Clarissa.
“I’ll feed her while you’re gone,” said Pim.
“We’ll take care of her,” Vasilisa assured Morfran. “You go. We’ll have the bones when you return.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” said Morfran. “I’ll leave as soon as it’s light.”
With only six hours of daylight, the late dawn arrived well after the camp had wakened, breakfasted and begun the day’s work. Morfran had told his grandfather, Marceau, what he intended. He’d said nothing to Sedna and left it to the others to answer any questions as best they might. When the sky paled with dawn, he nodded to Vasilisa and walked away from the tent and whale skeleton with Pim.