The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #50: In which women and their lovers ...
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It was cool and quiet inside the three stone walls. She set the candle down and knelt by the spring, cupping water and splashing her tear-stained face. She unbound her hair, tucking it behind her ears, and kept still, letting the water’s murmur fill her with peace.
She took a copper fish from the basket and lowered it into the water. It swelled and came alive between her fingers, and she released it. With a flick and a tiny splash, it dove with the spring back underground and disappeared.
One by one, she released the metal fish, feeling each transform from metal to supple, wriggling life. Her hands were wet to the wrists and her clothing splashed from the diving fish. She imagined them moving through the picture she’d seen in the scrying bowl, swimming in invisible underground currents among the drinking roots, gleaming and flickering gold, silver, copper and brass, making their way, in time, down to larger and larger water, and then the sea. Life invisible, unremarked, but vital and lovely.
When the basket was empty, she took it and her candle back to the place where Brigid’s forge glowed in the forest.
Later, after every woman took her turn with Brigid and the scrying bowl, they returned to Gwelda’s house, which welcomed them with warmly-lit windows. They felt weary and hungry, each preoccupied with the night’s experience.
Baubo welcomed them without fuss and they found food set out on a long bench, as the table itself stood too high for them to easily reach. There were loaves of bread, dishes of fresh butter and soft cream cheese, rounds of hard cheese and platters of meat. Baubo passed cups of cider.
Eurydice and the others fell on the food and drink, and it was some time before anything was said beyond requests to pass the cheese and inquiries about cutting another loaf of bread.
Hunger sated, they gradually gathered in a loose circle in front of the massive hearth among scattered pillows. Eurydice nursed her third cup of cider, feeling comfortably full of food and mildly rowdy.
“Does anyone have anything they want to share?” she asked, looking around.
“What did you make?” Rose Red demanded.
Eurydice reached into the neck of her tunic and pulled out the key. As it dangled from the chain, it caught the firelight.
“’Cause you’re the Gatekeeper,” said Rose Red. “Here’s what I made.” She released a handful of metal acorns, gold, brass and copper. “So I can plant more oak trees, ‘cause mine is … mine is …”
“Sick,” supplied Heks.
“You’re drunk, Rosie,” said Eurydice, and giggled.
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not. Look what else she made me.” Rose Red held out a knife with a copper blade.
Eurydice sobered. “What is that?”
“A knife, shilly.”
“I can see that. But why is the blade copper? I haven’t seen a knife like that before.”
“I dunno. She only said I’d need it one day and to keep it safe. The handle is made from my tree.”
“I made seeds, too,” said Gwelda eagerly. She set a large golden pinecone reverently on the floor. “Under each scale is a different seed or nut, see? Here’s a beechnut, and those little whirly maple seeds, and a hazel nut. I don’t have any acorns, though.”
“We’ll share,” said Rose Red. “We’ll go out and plant them together, my acorns and your … nuts. And things.”
“Girls don’t have nuts,” said Maria reprovingly.
The circle snorted with laughter.
“Then why are my balls always bigger than everyone else’s?” asked Artemis in a loud voice.
“Amen!” chimed in Heks.
Rose Red demanded of Heks, “What do you have?”
“I made marbles,” said Heks, and she flung a handful of polished metal marbles onto the rug. They rolled in all directions, gleaming, reminding Eurydice of the fish. Once again, they were gold, silver, copper, brass and pewter as well as three heavy, dull iron orbs. “She gave me a basket of stars,” said Heks. Her childlike glee made them laugh again. Heks turned to Maria. “What did she make you, you sex-obsessed old woman?”
“I’m not sex-obsessed. And I’m not old,” said Maria with great dignity. She reached into the neck of her tunic and pulled out a pendant on a silver chain. The stone was about the size of a spoon, shaped into a wide teardrop with a hole for the chain at the narrowest end. It was cradled along one side by a silver crescent. Eurydice couldn’t make out the stone’s color in the firelight. “I made this. It’s a turquoise. Where I come from, they call it the sky stone, or the water stone. They say it’s formed by the grateful tears of the people when the rains come to water the earth and crops and animals. It’s a stone of power.”
She fixed Heks with a minatory eye. “The crescent moon is for female power.”
Heks grinned unrepentantly. “Did she give you a gift?”
“She said my future is where the threads cross.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have no idea.” Maria drained her cup deliberately. “I want more cider.”
Baubo, perched on the bench with her legs dangling, refilled the cup and handed it back to her.
“How ‘bout you, Artmis?” said Rose Red, slurring a little.
Artemis reached behind her and pulled a handful of arrows from her quiver. She laid them before her in the circle. “These are what I made. I wanted some new arrows.” She laid a thumb-sized gold object in Rose Red’s hand. This is what she gave me.”
Rose Red examined it owlishly. “It’s a bee!”
“Yes, but I don’t know what it means. Except I’ve always liked bees. In fact, I’d like to keep bees if I ever settle down long enough anywhere.”
Rose Red passed the golden bee to Maria, who sat next to her.
“That’s everyone except you, Persephone,” said Eurydice.
Persephone set two chalices on the floor. Identically shaped with elegant stems and bowls, one was dull silver and the other shining bronze. “I made this for Hades out of iron.” She turned the chalice to show the wolf engraved on the cup’s side. Its eyes were inset yellow topaz. A pattern of leaves twined around the goblet’s rim. “Brigid made this one for me as a gift.” She picked up the second goblet and turned it to show the same leaf pattern around the rim and a graceful spray of flowers decorating the bowl. They were clearly a set, but each individual and lovely.
The circle of women fell silent, all eyes fixed on the two chalices, sitting before them like the answer to an unasked question. Eurydice’s brain felt fuzzy. She groped for words, for meaning she couldn’t quite pin down. She sipped the fiery cider.
“An empty cup longs to be filled,” said Baubo unexpectedly into the silence. Eurydice, looking at her in surprise, saw a wide, knowing smile on her face. Persephone blushed in a deep wave of color that moved up her throat and into her face.
Maria pealed with laughter. “Look at her blush! They say Hades is well able to fill even a cup as large as that.” She gestured toward the iron chalice. “Is that true?” she asked, sounding both curious and wistful.
They all giggled now, except Baubo, who guffawed.
Persephone, her cheeks a rich crimson, replied with some defiance, “Yes, as a matter of fact. It is true. Hades is … he’s …”
“Masterful?” said Eurydice, remembering Orpheus, confident, youthful, eager and self-absorbed.
“Does he make you laugh?” Gwelda asked with curiosity.
“Hung like a horse?” asked Maria coarsely.
“Wild?” Artemis and Rose Red asked together.
“Tender?” inquired Heks, a half a beat behind the others, so her voice was distinct from the babble.
Tender, thought Eurydice. A queer word to use.
“Tender,” repeated Persephone, looking at Heks. “Yes, tender, but masterful, too,” this to Eurydice. “He’s … insistent. Confident. He takes his time.”
“It’s a rare man who takes his time,” said Baubo. “Most of them want it fast and without fuss, like a sneeze.”
“That was Juan,” said Maria. “He was handsome, rich, confident and powerful. Every woman imagined being his lover.”
“I bet he was terrible,” said Baubo. “Men who think they’re great lovers are usually deluded.”
“He was great at the seduction part,” said Maria. “Flowery words, lingering touches, smoldering looks, things like that. He was a wonderful kisser, but that didn’t last. The first time I lay with him was the last time he kissed me with anything but a peck on the lips.”
“Orpheus, too!” exclaimed Eurydice in surprise. “I loved kissing him, but after we married, he wasn’t interested anymore.”
“Was the sex as good as the seduction?” Baubo asked Maria.
“No. He was surprisingly – you know – small. He said I was too big, especially after Juan was born. I used to spend hours squeezing and releasing my muscles down there so I could tighten around him. I knew what he liked, and I could always give him pleasure, but I usually didn’t feel full enough to climax, if you know what I mean.”
“He didn’t touch you where you wanted to be touched, while he was inside you or with his hands,” said Baubo matter-of-factly.
“Or with his mouth,” blurted Rose Red, and immediately her face turned the color Persephone’s had been. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Lucky girl!” said Baubo. “Rowan, of course?”
“Yes. He’s the only one. He … we went slowly, especially at first. The first time, he only smelled me. He didn’t touch. I was scared, but when he did that – when he held back like that – it was so exciting I could hardly bear it. I wasn’t scared anymore, I just wanted him. He used to tease me, changing into his fox shape and brushing me with his tail and his fur, sniffing, even nipping, very gently, and the feel of his whiskers …”
“Oh, my,” breathed Eurydice. “That sounds wonderful!”
“It was,” said Rose Red. “That part was, but he’s a fox, Rowan. When it came to planning Rowan Tree, and building things, and planting gardens, he wasn’t really with me. He couldn’t be. It wasn’t fair to expect him to be, but I felt lonely.”
“Must we choose between a great lover and a great companion?” Maria wondered. “Can any man be both? Of course, Juan was neither, not really.”
“Jan was both,” said Gwelda. “He was everything.” Tears slid down her face. She set her cup down. “He was my best friend. We worked together, laughed together and played together. We wanted the same kind of life.”
“I’ve always been curious,” said Heks. “You’re so big and he was only man sized. How did you …?”
Eurydice had always wondered, too, but felt it rude to ask. Somehow, this night, after the intimacy of ritual and under the cider’s influence, rudeness no longer entered into it. Dimly, she realized Baubo deliberately provoked this frank conversation.
“I’ve always been ashamed of my size,” said Gwelda. “I spent my childhood trying to make myself small. But then I made a friend …”
“Borobrum,” supplied Rose Red. They knew Gwelda’s story.
“Yes. And he told me being big was important, and beautiful, and Webbd needed me to be big. Jan loved my size. He never made me feel ashamed, only gorgeous and lush and generous. We were too mismatched in size to make love the regular way, but we found so many ways to touch and give one another pleasure. He taught me what he liked, and I taught him what I liked, and we laughed and laughed all night sometimes.”
“I’m jealous,” said Heks. “Joe didn’t touch me unless he was hurting me.”
Heks rarely mentioned her dead husband, Joe, and at the sound of his name everyone turned to her. “He didn’t like sex, Joe,” Heks continued in a hard voice. “He said I was cold and ugly and my body was mean and too thin. He was thin too, all string and gristle. No fat on him. I picked him out of my teeth for a long time.”
Eurydice thought, wait, what?, and saw the same question on everyone else’s face, except Baubo, who looked gleeful.
Heks looked from face to face and then down at her hands. “I killed Joe with an axe and then Baba Yaga came and we cooked him and ate him.”
Eurydice felt distanced from the conversation, the circle and her own body. She felt untethered, as though she floated high up among the rafters. Heks had spoken perfectly clearly and Eurydice had no doubt she told the exact truth. In a single dry sentence Heks had filled in the missing information she’d held back until now. And no wonder!
“How did he taste?” Baubo asked with interest.
“I don’t know,” said Heks. “Baba Yaga made a barbecue sauce. He was a charcoal burner, Joe, and the Baba said he wouldn’t taste good, so we’d liven him up with barbecue sauce. I butchered Joe. She made the sauce. I didn’t ask what she put in it.”
“Much better not to know,” said Maria, and shuddered. Eurydice noted she looked interested rather than repelled, however.
Heks loosened the thong around the top of a leather bag in which she kept her marbles. She peered into the bag and selected two large black marbles shining with pinpricks of light. She rolled them into the circle’s center.
“Those were his eyes. Baba Yaga made me take them out with a thing like a spoon with teeth. I didn’t think I could bear to do it, but I did, and then the eyes turned into those. They’re called galaxies.”
“Oh!” said Maria. Eurydice knew Maria had given Heks her children’s eyes, four brown eyes, marbles now, but still looking like eyes.
For a moment or two, they sat contemplating the galaxies in silence.
Rose Red asked Maria, “If you could find a great lover or a great companion, but not both, what would you choose?”
Maria considered, then grinned.
“One of each.”
The circle rocked with laughter. Rose Red smiled, rather reluctantly.
“If only,” remarked Eurydice.
Maria sobered. “It’s a good question,” she said. “Here at Rowan Tree, I’m not lonely. I love having Ginger as a roommate and dear friends are around me. Sometimes my body aches for a lover, though. There’s been no one since Juan, but that ended so catastrophically I’m not sure I can ever try again. I have my weaving, my herbs, Rowan Tree, dance, stories – everything I want and need. How would I fit a man into all that? I don’t want just any lover, either. My body is changing as I get older. If I lie with a man again, he has to be generous, skilled, patient …”
“Big enough,” supplied Baubo.
“Tender,” said Heks.
“Do you mean able to be tender or tender between the teeth?” inquired Baubo slyly.
“Both,” Heks said firmly.
More laughter.
Maria wiped her eyes and took another drink. “Juan took a lot of energy and time. He wanted all the power. Now I’ve finally learned how to stand in my own power, I don’t want to waste it propping up a man.”
“Propping up?” said Baubo. “What, with sticks?”
“No, toothpicks,” Maria said.
In the ensuing hilarity, Persephone’s cider was knocked over.
When they had pulled themselves back together, Artemis said, “I’m with you, Maria. Cerunmos was a wild lover. He came and went …”
“I hope there was a little time between the two,” said Baubo. “I hate a man who comes and goes in the same five minutes. The best part of loving is the long hours of aftermath, sticky, richly-scented, relaxed and sleepy. Those are the hours that make a woman truly beautiful. They feed her soul, burnish her skin and make her eyes shine. Those entwined hours are where intimacy lives.”
Artemis gave her a look, half hilarious and half tearful. “We had that,” she said simply. “But he lived his life and I lived mine. We fed one another’s power rather than draining it. We were free to be together or be apart. We traveled our separate paths and gloried in the intersections.”
“That’s what I want, too,” said Rose Red. “I need my time alone, and I love my own little house. I want a lover, but I don’t want him on top of me all the time.”
“No, no,” said Baubo. “That’s very boring.”
“You know what I mean,” said Rose Red, and threw a pillow at her.
Eurydice, feeling bold, said, “I like the idea of living with a man – the right man.”
“An important distinction,” Maria said to Heks.
“Sex with Orpheus was all right,” said Eurydice. “It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. Maybe he was best at seduction, too.” She nodded at Maria. “We didn’t spend a lot of time having sex. He was quick. What he liked best was to practice music or make a new song. He liked me to sit with him and listen. Sometimes we did that all night.”
“He wanted you to worship him,” said Baubo.
“Everyone worshiped him, just naturally,” said Eurydice.
“Selfish, arrogant puppy,” Baubo pronounced.
“But he was the greatest –”
“Oh, spare me,” said Baubo crossly. “He sounds completely self-involved. Here he was with a gorgeous, lush young hussy like you, a tree nymph deeply connected to sensuality and the earth, and he can’t be bothered to take the time to appreciate you or awaken your passion. Sex was all right, indeed!”
“Maybe I’m not very good,” said Eurydice weakly, voicing a private fear she’d long harbored.
The entire circle shouted her down. Eurydice’s eyes filled with tears.
“Tcha!” said Baubo. “I don’t suppose you have any particular person in mind for the ‘right man’?”
Eurydice looked into her cup, feeling their eyes on her.
“Kunik, of course,” said Maria. “You’ve loved one another for years, ever since you met at Hel’s boarding house. I’ll never forget you arriving in Nephthys’ desert in the rain, and the look on Kunik’s face when he saw you.”
“What are you waiting for?” demanded Heks.
“Do you love him?” Gwelda asked.
Gwelda’s open innocence demanded the truth. Eurydice looked into her round, freckled, tear-stained face. “I think so,” she said.