The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #49: In which a forge in the forest ...
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“Will you come with me to Rowan Gate?” she asked. “I’d like to do a ceremony there. First, though, I want to show you something Kunik made for us.” She passed the wide bowl to Persephone on her left and addressed Rose Red. “Remember when your tree dropped that big branch a few weeks ago? Kunik used some of the wood to carve this. I thought it would make a good scrying bowl. I collected some water from the river and I thought we might take some spring water from Rowan Gate and … well, make an offering of our tears as well. Three kinds of water. Perhaps if we ask for insight or guidance the bowl and water will show us what we need to know. Do you mind, Rosie? Can we use the oak bowl?”
Gwelda passed the bowl to Rose Red, who ran her fingers along the finely-carved rim and rippled grain. “He didn’t tell me. I haven’t seen this before. Isn’t it beautiful!” She looked up at Eurydice, her eyes shining with tears. “It’s a wonderful idea. Let’s do it. I’m so glad you thought of it!”
Artemis spoke up. “Before we go, I brought a gift for everyone that will be useful tonight. Kunik helped me, too.” She leaned back and pulled the bundle she arrived with into her lap, moving aside the cloth to reveal a nest of curving ivory. She picked a piece out of the tangle and set it on the floor. It twisted and writhed upward for a few inches, dividing. At the division was a hollowed-out level platforms an inch or two across; another was at the top of the dividing branch. It took Eurydice a moment to understand what she saw. There was something familiar about the object. Artemis took from another bundle two white candles and set each one in a hollow.
“It’s the White Stag’s antlers,” said Rose Red, her voice shaking and tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Yes. I wanted to make something out of them, but I didn’t know what,” said Artemis. “I talked to Kunik and he did that thing he does –” They nodded. Everyone had seen Kunik’s unique exploration of shapes within shapes. “He said the antlers wanted to continue to hold light.” Her voice faltered. “I thought he – Cerunmos – would be pleased. A few days ago, Kunik brought these to me, and when Eurydice talked to me about her idea for a ceremony, I decided I wanted to give you each a gift from me, and him, that holds the light. I asked Sonia for some white candles and brought them, too. It’s dark out now. Will you each choose one to light our way to Rowan Gate? It would be like he was here, with us …” She could not go on. Wordlessly, she passed the bundles to Rose Red, who sat beside her.
One by one, they each chose a candlestick and candles and passed them on. Like everything Kunik crafted, the candlesticks were exquisitely made. He had not embellished the antlers, aside from polishing, only carving the sockets for the candles and sturdy, level bases. Each piece was unique. Some held a single candle, and some two.
They donned their cloaks and lit their candles, each woman giving Artemis a hug, a kiss or a murmured word of appreciation. Baubo stayed behind to look after the fire and ready food and drink for their return.
The early evening was soft and still. The stars were blotted out and the air smelled heavy and wet. The candles flared, allowing them to avoid melting snow and soggy ground. Eurydice led them through the protective ring of rowan trees around Rowan Gate. The community had been named after these trees, bare and only just awakening from their winter sleep in this season.
Rowan Gate itself was surrounded on three sides by rock walls Rose Red and Rowan had repaired when they first arrived. For shelter, they laid saplings across the top of the small space, leaves and all. Last year’s saplings were winter worn now, providing nothing but a lattice of twigs and branches.
“Gwelda, would you take off the saplings?” asked Eurydice. “I want you to be part of this, but you won’t fit inside the walls. You can stand outside and look down at us, though.”
Obligingly, Gwelda removed the thin roof and helped them find level places for their candles on the top of the walls, illuminating the scene. The spring gurgled to itself as it flowed out of the ground and into a wide stone basin before diving down out of sight again.
The women grouped around the spring in the flickering candlelight. Eurydice said, “I’ve heard of an old goddess called Brigid who is often honored during Imbolc. She’s a spirit of fertility and healing, and she’s a smith. She’s associated with holy wells. I know this isn’t exactly a well, but it’s Brigid’s time, and we need healing now. Grief and loss are hard, but they water life too, just as this water brings life to the land and the trees. I want healing for the Yrtym and for those grieving right now, but I want to make an offering as well, and my offering is my grief, the ebb and flow of it, my memories and regrets and the scars loss leaves.” She knelt and tipped the oak bowl into the spring, allowing more water to join what it already held.
Holding the bowl, she said, “I had a husband, whose name was Orpheus …” and told the story of her short marriage, descent into Hades and Orpheus’s last effort to bring her back to his side. It was a story they knew well, but it remained a poignant tale of loss and love and they wept with Eurydice as she told it, though it had taken place a long time before, in another lifetime. She allowed her first tears to fall into the bowl and then passed it to Maria on her left and leaned over the spring, the rest of her tears falling into Rowan Gate.
Maria retold the story of her lover, Juan, and her children, whom she drowned in a river before throwing herself in. Maria and Eurydice had been in Hades together, and Eurydice well remembered the first time Maria had told her the story. Now she, too, had found another life, but her tears for what was cast away and lost fell into the bowl and then the spring. She spoke of making a descanso, a resting place to mark and honor loss and death in all its forms, and reminded them of her treasured loom, made by Kunik out of her children’s bones. When she passed the bowl on, she took Eurydice’s hand.
Heks spoke then, briefly and dryly, of her husband Joe and her son, Bruno, who had murdered two women. Both Joe and Bruno were dead. Heks had never given a full account of her life and relationship with either husband or son, and she did not now, but she wept into the bowl and the spring in her turn, bitter, silent tears that gave away no secrets.
Eurydice had been aware of Gwelda’s tears ever since she began the ceremony and now her voice came from above them. “May I take a turn now?”
Heks handed up the bowl, and Gwelda spoke about her father, the loss of her beloved tree, Borobrum, and meeting and falling in love with Jan. Her story, too, was familiar, but they grieved with her as she choked and sniffed, the latest loss temporarily sharpening the earlier ones. Her tears sounded like pattering rain when she leaned over the spring.
One after another, Persephone, Rose Red and Artemis held the bowl, spoke and released their grief. As each woman passed the bowl on, she took the hand of the one beside her. When Artemis finished, she set the bowl down near the spring and completed the circle of joined hands as Gwelda knelt and gave Artemis and Eurydice each a finger to grip.
Eurydice’s face was wet and her nose running, but she felt lighter. She thought less and less about Orpheus as time passed; it surprised her to realize her grief had not dried up. Perhaps it never would. She felt surprised, too, at the relief of sharing, the rightness of being witness and allowing others to witness her sorrow.
“Brigid, Bright One,” she said. “We come before you, your daughters, and ask for healing for ourselves, for the Yrtym, and for the portals connecting us to others. We offer you our unity and strength, our grief and our loss. Please bless our holy spring here at Rowan Tree and help guide us back to wild Maidenhood, complete and whole, before we were joined in love with others. Show us how we may serve.”
They stood with bowed heads and clasped hands, each woman alone and silent with her thoughts and emotions, yet joined. Eurydice felt peaceful, in no hurry to break the silence or leave the stone walls’ sheltering embrace. Then, into the silence came a sharp clang, as though of metal on metal. Eurydice raised her head. Above her, Gwelda whispered, “Oh, my.”
“What is it?” someone asked.
“Did you hear that?”
The circle broke. Artemis picked up the wooden bowl, careful not to spill the contents, and they stepped out of Rowan Gate into the dark, damp night. Light glowed through the forest’s bare lacework. A rough shed stood where no shed had been before, and from it issued the regular Clang! Clang! Clang! of metal on metal.
Artemis took the lead, cradling the bowl. Eurydice and the others followed, amazed. They approached from behind the shed and found the front wide open to the forest night. A forge glowed red hot and a woman, a raw-boned, tall woman with strong arms bared by a sleeveless green tunic and red hair pulled carelessly back in thick disarray, shaped something silver on an anvil with a hammer.
The woman looked up, smiled a brief welcome, and continued working the silver with deft hammer blows. Sparks flew like glittering flowers. The furnace roared with heat and sweat beaded on the woman’s face. Over her tunic she wore a heavy leather apron covered with soot and scorch marks. She set the hammer aside and held up the bit of metal to examine it. Eurydice saw a tarnished, grey-looking star. The woman gave a satisfied nod and dropped it in a basket at her feet. She stepped away from the anvil and moved out of the shed, where the women stood watching. Strands of hair curled wetly around her flushed face.
“Brigid,” said Artemis, bowing her head. “You are welcome.”
“You called me,” said Brigid matter-of-factly. “Healing, is it? And repair? New beginnings?”
Eurydice pulled herself together. She had not expected such immediate and clear results from her words and intentions. She stepped forward, feeling shy but resolute. “I’m Eurydice. Thank you for coming to us.”
“I accept your offering of grief,” Brigid said. “Many ask, but few make an offering. New beginnings, transformation and reclamation are hard work. The furnace is hot. The hammer is heavy. Here is a forge in the forest. What will you make? What will you allow yourselves to be shaped into?” She looked from face to face. Her eye traveled up Gwelda’s stocky form to her round face and her own smile widened as she met the giantesses’ endearing grin.
Eurydice, glancing up, saw Gwelda looking as delighted as a child, grief temporarily forgotten. Gwelda reverenced characters out of myth and legend, the more colorful the better. Brigid’s appearance, with her red hair and green tunic; the roaring furnace, hammer and anvil and gleaming sparks, were magical. Gwelda held an armful of ivory shapes; Eurydice realized she had taken the time to snuff the candles and gather the candlesticks when the circle broke. Eurydice herself had forgotten about them in her curiosity.
“Set those down, my dear,” Brigid said to Gwelda. “Well away from the furnace’s heat, if you want to preserve the candles!” She turned to Artemis. “I’ve prepared a place for scrying there.” She pointed to a tall tree stump, smoothed and flattened on top, with a glowing lantern hanging from a neighboring tree’s branch. Artemis set down the bowl with care, and Gwelda laid the candlesticks nearby.
“Who is ready to shape a future? Who seeks guidance?”
Gwelda said, “I will come into the forge with you.”
“And I will look into the scrying bowl,” said Rose Red.
“The rest of you consider your intentions, questions, hopes and fears. Both forging and scrying are solitary undertakings, best shared after the work is done. Come, Daughter.” She beckoned to Gwelda, who followed her back into the roofless forge.
Eurydice pulled her hood over her head and found a friendly tree, an Ash, to stand against. From her vantage point in the shadows, she could see both the scrying bowl, before which Rose Red stood, the lantern light on her curly black head, and the forge, where Gwelda sat cross-legged on the ground, listening intently as Brigid spoke and handed her tools and pieces of metal. The other women moved apart, standing like quiet sentinels nearby. She wondered what was in their minds.
She felt glad of a respite from leading. The ritual at Rowan Gate had been beautiful and moving but also difficult. She wondered why allowing oneself to be deeply seen left one feeling so exhausted. On the face of it, concealment seemed as though it should be more tiring than authenticity, but for her this wasn’t so. Concealment, however burdensome, felt safe. Vulnerability did not.
What kind of a future did she want to forge? She hadn’t thought about intentionally shaping her life. Mostly, she’d been swept along by events. It had been a long and strange journey from her girlhood among her people, olive tree nymphs, and Rowan Tree. Along the way, she had married, died and found a new life, become a gatekeeper, been initiated into Motherhood and made extraordinary friends.
Now what did she want? Did she want children?
Perhaps. One day. First, she wanted to explore other aspects of being a Mother, as she did this night.
That’s not the whole truth, though is it? She asked herself. Isn’t the whole truth that you don’t know if a half man, half ice bear and a tree nymph can have children? And if they can’t, it’s safer to remain ambivalent about children than wanting it and finding it’s not possible?
Because she did want Kunik. In him, she’d found a friend, a companion unlike any other. Since they’d met at that strange threshold place between life and death, Janus House, he’d mingled with her roots. She’d taken the thought and memory of him with her when she left Janus House and went to the Norns and Yggdrasil in search of herself, and after the portal under Yggdrasil opened and let her through into a rain-swept desert and she’d found him there waiting for her, her feeling of joy and coming home told her how deeply she cared.
Since then, they’d lived together at Rowan Tree, for the most part seeing one another and talking every day.
Whatever the future held, she wanted him in it.
She remembered her time with the Norns, not when she worked with others to create new beginnings a few weeks ago, but the first time, when she’d reclaimed her identity as a tree nymph and discovered her role as Gatekeeper. These two aspects, she was also sure of.
Tree nymph, Gatekeeper, and Kunik. Whatever shape she chose, these would remain with her.
What about the scrying bowl? What would she ask it?
That one was easy. The question in her heart was how best to serve, how best to serve not only her community but the trees, the Yrtym, Webbd.
Perhaps that was enough for the forge, too. Caring for the trees, opening gates and thresholds, loving Kunik and serving the Yrtym was enough to be going on with for now.
Peaceful, her mind quiet, she closed her eyes and relaxed her awareness into the slow spring awakening of the tree behind her.
When Gwelda left the shed, cradling something bright in her arms, Eurydice took a deep breath and went to speak to Brigid.
***
It seemed to her, when she emerged, hours had passed. This night felt endless, or else a whole day had come and gone while she worked in the forge with Brigid and this was another night altogether. Around her neck, on a thin chain, hung a gold key. She remembered the gem-encrusted key she had carried from Janus House to Yggdrasil. That key had opened the portal beneath the Tree of Life and allowed her to enter Nephthys’ desert. She’d left the key in the door guarding the portal and not seen it again, understanding she had no further need of it. She was the Gatekeeper, and she herself the key. This key she made with Brigid was a reminder and a reassurance of her rightful place in the world. In addition, she held a basket of gleaming fish, copper, gold, silver, pewter and brass that Brigid thrust into her hand as she left the forge.
“What am I to do with these?” Eurydice asked, astounded.
“Whatever you think best,” Brigid replied, smiling.
Eurydice looked down at the graceful shapes lying in the basket, utterly nonplussed. Fish? What did fish have to do with being a Gatekeeper, a tree nymph, or Kunik?
“Thank you,” she said uncertainly.
Brigid laughed and took Maria’s hand as she stepped into the forge.
The outside air felt cool and refreshing after the forge’s heat, and Eurydice breathed it in deeply. The scrying bowl waited on its stumpy pedestal. Eurydice stood before it, carefully setting the basket of fish down near the stump, feeling the key’s unfamiliar delicate weight nestled between her breasts.
She had tied her thick dark hair back with a thong while working in the forge, so bowed her head and look into the scrying bowl without obstruction.
“How may I serve?” she whispered. “Show me the way.”
She leaned over the shallow bowl and thought how amazing it was that it now held so many memories. Orpheus was here, and Maria’s husband and children. Persephone’s lost child mingled with Jan, Heks’s husband and son, and Rosie’s Rowan and beloved oak tree. The spring’s water, the river; how far had they traveled? What sights had it seen? All this swirled together in an inch of shallow water cupped by the body of a dying tree.
She softened her gaze and opened herself. She pushed her energy and awareness into her hands, laid on either side of the bowl, just as she had when comforting the mother trees on the way to Yggdrasil after the Samhain ritual. She had always talked to the trees best with her touch.
Light glimmered and shone on the water and her eye followed shapes and patterns as it spiraled and wound. Then she realized she did not see random flickering light but glowing roots twining around one another, reaching sideways and down, joining with other roots. They were thick and golden, reminding her of the impossibly intricate knotwork of the White Stag’s antlers. Above them, thin silver lines drew upward, blossoming, winding and twisting, meeting with other silver lines born from other trunks, for she looked at trees, of course, an endless panorama of trees and smaller plants, golden roots below ground, silver stems, trunks and branches aboveground. Amidst the silver latticework of the tree canopies, points of bright white light appeared. Stars wove among the treetops. Among the golden roots, a silver river unfolded like a ribbon, forming wells and pools and, yes, springs bubbling between the tree trunks above ground before diving down again. Gold roots reached longingly for the silver river, and it twined among the roots in loving response. Underground and aboveground, water and roots and branches and sky, all connected, each glowing and vital, each a part of the others. The trees stood between everything else, the loom on which it was woven. She was a tree nymph, an opener of the way between. She was part of this beautiful, complex tapestry.
Her tears fell again into the bowl, breaking and scattering the gold and silver lines. Hastily, she wiped her cheeks, but the picture was gone. She saw nothing but the play of warm light from the overhead lantern on the water’s surface.
Eurydice left the scrying bowl and bent over the jumbled candlesticks. She found hers; a single socket above a gracefully twisting segment of antler. She lit the candle from the lantern, picked up the basket of fish and returned to Rowan Gate.
Beautiful imagery!
Thank you!