The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #44: In which gather your bones ...
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Behind a screen of rocks, Morfran stretched and stood gazing at the sky, a look of concentration on his face, the wind blowing his dark, straight hair into his eyes. With the idea of raven firmly in his mind, he shifted into its form, hearing Pim gasp. For a moment, he stood on the rocky sea bed. He stretched out his wings once, twice, and then, with a croak, took off and climbed into the sky, the wind ruffling his black feathers.
It was exhilarating to fly again. He circled above Pim, who watched him, shielding his eyes from the rising sun. Below he could see the camp, the hide tent looking ridiculously tiny on the stony sea bed’s expanse. He searched the sky for other ravens, come to check for tidbits to scavenge.
Two flying black shapes came toward him from inland, and then a third. Morfran’s hope rose. The first two birds began circling above the camp, but the third broke away and approached him, the low, glaring sun directly behind it. Morfran flew to meet it, dazzled, and it wheeled in the cold sun-flood, glittering and shimmering, rising up until Morfran could look directly at its long, graceful tail and tapered, jewel-colored wings.
It was the Firebird.
Joy and wonder surged in Morfran. The Firebird turned and flew south with easy, strong wings, setting a comfortable pace. Morfran followed.
They flew all day, first over ice, then sea, then land. They stopped twice to drink and rest. The Firebird didn’t speak, and Morfran felt content to trust his guidance. During the second stop, Morfran found a deer carcass near a narrow river and ate greedily, tearing away chunks of rotting tissue with his strong beak.
As they traveled, the sun grew hotter and higher and the daylight seemed endless. Morfran had grown accustomed to the long darkness of the northern sea, and he rejoiced in the green veil of early spring draping the trees and hills below.
As the sun finally sank, the Firebird wheeled above rocky cliffs that had once overlooked the ocean, though here, too, the sea had withdrawn at least a mile from the land. He descended rapidly and Morfran prepared to land, but the Firebird made for a dark opening low in the cliff. Without pause or check, he flew into it and disappeared. Morfran followed. They flashed through a large cavern, floored with sand, and entered a tunnel.
The Firebird’s glowing feathers provided light. There was ample room for a man to walk upright. Morfran judged the tunnel roof to be about ten feet high. The tunnel was narrow, however, and he could feel his wing tips brushing against both sides as he flew.
The Firebird shot ahead and out of sight. Morfran was plunged into stygian darkness. As a raven, he was unequipped to see in the dark, or grope his way forward, so he alighted on the sand and took his human shape again.
Feeling worn out, his hip aching, he reached out with one hand for the tunnel’s side and began feeling his way forward. Morfran felt confident the Firebird led him where he needed to go. Eyes straining for a hint of light ahead, he walked.
In the complete darkness, he lost a sense of time or direction. His first intimation the tunnel was ending was not light, but the smell of smoke. Wood, not blubber, burned somewhere ahead. Evidently the tunnel curved, for a few more steps brought him around a bulge of rock into the dim play of firelight, bright as sunlight to his dark-adapted eyes. He approached more confidently, able to see now if an abyss opened unexpectedly at his feet, and stepped out into a larger space, a cave with a sandy floor. A lusty fire burned under a hole in the roof, and a mouthwatering smell came from a blackened pot hanging over it. A child sat cross-legged near a pile of bones, laying them out as though doing a puzzle.
The Firebird was gone.
As he stepped into the cave, she looked up, the firelight catching a glint of gold dangling from her ears. Her eyes were dark and her hair a mass of tight curls that looked as though they’d never been combed. A tattoo snaked up one bare arm. She was nearly naked. She smiled at him.
“Nephthys?” he asked.
“You’re Morfran,” she said with friendly delight. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
An adult would have risen, shown him around the cave, as though he was unable to see the small space for himself, and offered refreshment. Nephthys pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped one arm around them, and once again became absorbed in fitting the bones together. The skeleton before her looked small and fragile. Morfran stepped forward to look.
“It’s a jerboa,” said Nephthys, “a little hopping desert animal. See the long back legs?” She pointed to two long slender bones, like giant toothpicks. “The front legs are short, and those bones are much harder to find, but I will. Sometimes I find the smaller bones in owl pellets.”
Morfran nodded, rose and stood in the cave entrance. He looked out from a high place in a cliff overlooking a narrow winding arroyo. Across from this aerie rose another cliff. Night had fallen. Stars pricked the sky and moonlight cast stark shadows. The night was still, a relief after the endless frigid northern winds. The air felt cool against his face, but heat radiated from the cliffs. At his feet lay a threshold of broad rock. Stones made several irregular steps below the threshold before ending in a steep path winding down the cliff.
He stood for some time, resting and absorbing the peaceful desert night, before turning back to Nephthys. “Is there water?” he asked.
Without speaking or looking up from the delicate scaffold she pieced together, she pointed. Morfran found a spring trickling out of the rock. A hollow stone basin caught the water and he washed and drank his fill, taking his time and feeling as unselfconscious as though he was alone.
Refreshed, he sat by the fire with Nephthys.
“I’m hungry,” she said, and ladled a thick stew from the squat black pot into wooden bowls. She handed him a bowl and began picking up chunks of meat and vegetables with her fingers, blowing on each bite to cool it.
Morfran followed suit. The meat tasted mild, but the stew hot and spicy, overwhelming him with the taste of chilis and other fiery flavors.
“It’s rattlesnake,” Nephthys said.
“Is it?” he asked, amazed.
She giggled at his astonishment.
By the end of his third bowl, the cold land Morfran had left that morning seemed like nothing but a dream. He burped unashamedly, set his bowl down and leaned back on his elbows to give his stomach room to work.
Nephthys, satisfied after her first bowl of stew, had resumed piecing together the jerboa’s skeleton. When at last Morfran set his bowl down, she turned her attention back to him, folded her hands in her lap like a good child, and demanded, “Tell me a story now.”
“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,” he began, and told her Sedna’s story.
As Morfran spoke, Nephthys alternated between watching his face and gazing into the fire. He could read nothing in her expression. She looked like a child hearing a familiar and comforting bedtime story. Her dark eyes were expressionless in the firelight. Yet, as he reached the scene between Sedna and her father in the kayak, her face altered subtly, and he glimpsed an ancient face, ancient beyond words, beyond telling, ancient beyond sorrow, grief or pain. Then she looked a young girl again, her cheeks still plump and smooth, her mouth tender, her face unlined.
When he’d finished the story, Morfran said simply, “I’ve come to see if you can give her new hands from the bones of her children.”
“Oh, yes,” Nephthys said carelessly.
Morfran felt nonplussed. “You’ll come back with me?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I can take the shape of a desert falcon. We’ll fly back together.”
“I don’t know the way back.”
“I do,” she said. “This is the desert between the worlds, you know. All worlds border this place. I like traveling.”
She set the stew aside and covered the pot, threw wood on the fire and folded herself into a blanket.
“I’m tired now.”
Morfran, feeling both bemused and elated, chose a thick sheepskin as a sleeping pad and a blanket as a cover and lay down close to the fire. It would be as well to absorb as much heat as he could before returning to Sedna and his friends.
He slept.
The next morning, after finishing the stew for breakfast, Morfran followed Nephthys down the path and along the twisting canyon floor. They ascended until low hills and desert dunes stretched before them in every direction. He saw no path and few landmarks, only an endless expanse of cactus and other tough, shrubby plants. The low sun already radiated formidable heat. Nephthys tilted her smiling face up to the sun as though she loved it, held out her arms and gave a fierce, unchildlike cry. Pointed wings stretched and flapped. Her throat became the color of bone, the underside of her wings and her chest barred with black. She looked at him from a fierce black eye, ringed in the same startling yellow as her feet and beak, and launched herself into the sky.
Morfran shifted into his raven shape and followed.
From the air, the desert looked endless, the same in every direction. Nephthys, however, flew with swift confidence and Morfran trusted her guidance and luxuriated in the sunshine and warm air currents. As the sun rose high, the landscape changed. Green crept over bare rock, earth and sand, and they flew above a few scattered trees, taller than anything he’d seen in the desert. The air grew heavy with moisture. Ahead, he saw a bank of low clouds, like fog. Without hesitation, Nephthys plunged into it.
For a few minutes, Morfran could see nothing but the dark shape of Nephthys, just ahead. He flew close behind her, fearing he’d never find her again if he lost her in the cloud. His feathers beaded with cool moisture and the air grew abruptly colder.
When they flew out of the fog, they found themselves above tundra dotted with rocks, and a familiar cold wind whipped around him. Morfran moved up so they flew side by side, peregrine and raven, and he scanned the horizon, watching for snow and ice.
As the short northern day ended, they spied the hide tent and whale skeleton lying on the desolate sea bed and wheeled above them before descending onto the stones, Pim and Clarissa running to meet them.
Having regained their human forms, Morfran took Nephthys to Sedna. They ducked inside the hide tent, where the familiar smell of the burning qulliq greeted him. Vasilisa snatched up a skin and draped it over Nephthys’s naked shoulders, for she wore nothing but a ragged, sandy loincloth against the cold.
Sedna sat in her usual place, but Morfran noted her gleaming dark hair, wound again into elaborate braids like a crown.
Nephthys dropped to the ground next to her.
“Oohh!” she said, and reached out a finger to trace the tattooed V on Sedna’s forehead and the lines from mouth to chin. “Look!” She bared her upper arm and showed Sedna her own tattoo, lozenges, dots and dashes winding around her childish arm.
“This is Nephthys, Sedna,” said Morfran. “She is the Lady of Bones. She’s heard your story and wanted to meet you.”
Eyes wide, Sedna studied Nephthys’s face. For a moment, their dark eyes met, and again Morfran glimpsed the ancient being that was Nephthys blot out her childish aspect. Nephthys held out her hands and Sedna placed her stumps into them without hesitation.
“Everything lost is found again, in the end,” said Nephthys.
Hope flared in Sedna’s eyes.
“Can you give me hands again?” she asked.
“We can,” said Nephthys.
Pim unrolled a soft, white arctic hare skin, revealing a pile of bones. “We’ve collected these from Sedna’s children,” he said to Nephthys. “We’ve collected bones of seal, whales and walrus here, and walrus ivory as well. Some are carved into animals by my people.”
Nephthys stirred the pile. “What’s this?” She held up a rounded, vaguely tooth-shaped bone about the size of Pim’s thumbnail.
“We’re not sure. Marceau and Poseidon found it in a big salmon they caught. I thought it might be a human knucklebone …”
“It’s not,” said Nephthys, holding the bone in her palm.
“No? Well, we don’t have to use it …”
“It’s not a human knucklebone,” said Nephthys. “It’s hers.”
“Mine?” said Sedna.
They looked at the little bone with wonder as it lay on Nephthys’s palm. It seemed unbelievable, but Morfran didn’t doubt her certainty.
Nephthys tilted her hand and let the bone fall back into the pile. She jumped to her feet. “Show me everything!” she said, looking eagerly from face to face. “We’ll need a fire outside we can gather around.”
“We have no wood to burn here,” said Pim, “but we can burn the qulliq if we shield it from the wind.” He pointed to a large flat round shape leaning against the tent wall. “I brought my drum.”
“Perfect!” said Nephthys.
In a graceful movement, Sedna rose. Vasilisa straightened the furs around her shoulders. “Come,” Sedna said to Nephthys. “I’ll show you my place.” She ducked out of the tent, Nephthys following.
Morfran exchanged amused looks with the others.
“Well done, grandson,” said Marceau with pride.
“It hasn’t been just me,” said Morfran. “We’ve done it together. She looks so much better!”
“She is,” said Pim. “She eats more than the rest of us put together. Vasilisa and Clarissa healed her skin and hair, and we’ve fed her with stories. We tell her one, and then she repeats hers. She must have told it six times by now.”
“You were right,” Clarissa said to Morfran. “Hearing it, receiving it, is as important as giving her food and water. She doesn’t even cry now when she tells it.”
“Perhaps we should set up for tonight,” suggested Poseidon.
“I’ll cut some ice blocks to shelter the qulliq,” said Pim.
As Sedna and Nephthys meandered through camp, Sedna explaining and Nephthys asking questions and chattering like a child, the others built a shield for the qulliq. They laid hides onto the sea bed to help protect them from the cold and piled the rest to use over their shoulders, heads and laps. Pim sliced several large, frozen salmon ready for eating, and they set the tripod and pot over the qulliq for drinking water.
Nephthys wanted to walk to the sea’s edge and, in the other direction, the land. They hadn’t seen Sedna walk so far, but she made no demur, and Morfran rejoiced in her strength and Nephthys’s presence. They were not invited to accompany the two, and none offered.
The camp readied for whatever ritual Nephthys intended, the group retreated to the tent’s shelter and the qulliq’s relative warmth.
“Is our task done if Nephthys can give Sedna hands?” Marceau asked Poseidon.
“I’m not sure. If healing her helps heal the spirit of this place and its people, we will accomplish much. I don’t know how to bring the sea and land together again, though, and we’re no closer to knowing how to repair the Yrtym.”
“I’m selfish,” said Pim. “I’m more concerned with my own place and people than those far away. I can’t help them. It’s only here I possess any power.”
“That’s not selfishness, but wisdom,” said Vasilisa. “It’s all any of us can do.”
“Will it be enough, though, if a few people here and there repair and build connection and understanding?” asked Clarissa. “Won’t it take everyone everywhere for the Yrtym to recover?”
Nobody knew.
“Surely not,” said Morfran at length. “After all, there are always those who act against others. Maybe there’s a tipping point, and for some reason now there’s more damage than usual to the fabric of connection. Maybe we don’t need everyone to regain the balance, just enough people.”
“All we can do is the best we can do,” said Marceau. “Sometimes it’s enough, and sometimes it’s not. I’m certain we can do more together, though.”
“We’ve helped Sedna,” Morfran said to Pim. “What do your people need to repair their relationship with her? How can we help them honor and respect her, instead of acknowledging her only in time of need?”
“I wish they could be part of Nephthys’s ritual,” said Pim. “If they could see the whole pattern of land and sea and its animals without fear and understand their place within it, they might heal.”
“Would they come out here with you?”
“No. I am suspect because I’m different. They don’t trust me. They would follow the shaman, though.”
“They need a new story,” said Clarissa. “We need to give them a new story.”
“But how?” asked Pim.
They looked at one another glumly.
Outside, they heard Sedna and Nephthys returning, still talking, above the whining wind.
Pim had built the qulliq shield with blocks of snow and ice stacked man high, providing good shelter from the wind. After they ate, he lifted the soapstone qulliq and carried it out of the tent, setting it on a flat stone inside the windbreak. Pim picked up his drum, a large, flat skin circle fastened to a round frame of precious willow wood. Vasilisa added tufts of arctic cotton and chopped blubber to the lamp so it burned hot and high. Nephthys sat in the circle’s center beside the qulliq and spread out the bones in its flickering light.
Morfran did not know what to expect. He’d heard stories about Nephthys reanimating bones with chant, dance and song, but he couldn’t imagine how she would create hands and reattach them to Sedna’s stumps.