The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #51: In which meetings and reunions ...
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“I’m like you,” Gwelda told her. “If, one day, I could find another like Jan, I’d like to live with a man again. We had such fun. I loved everything about it.”
Eurydice nodded at her, feeling tears on her cheeks.
“What about you?” Baubo asked Heks.
“What about me?” Heks shot back.
“Lover or companion – or both?”
“Neither. Too old for the first and not interested in the second. I like being independent.”
“You’re not too old,” said Baubo. “Look at me. Look at Baba Yaga.”
“I’d much rather not look at Baba Yaga,” snapped Heks.
“Do you have a lover?” Eurydice blurted.
“Certainly,” said Baubo. “Several.”
They gaped at her.
Baubo, amusement all over her face, fixed Heks with her gaze. Heks squirmed, clearly unwilling to discuss the matter further.
“A lover, then,” she muttered. “As though anyone could possibly be interested in a dried-up old stick like me.”
“Gabriel would take you in a second,” said Maria. “He’s been hanging around you since you arrived together.”
“I don’t want Gabriel,” snarled Heks. “I don’t want any nice, normal man. I want … I want …something different. Something powerful.”
“You need someone with power equal to your own, like Artemis,” said Baubo.
“Someone who won’t mind she ate her first one,” said Maria to Rose Red in an audible aside.
Rose Red giggled.
“I want to hear,” said Eurydice loudly to Baubo, “about your lovers.”
Baubo rocked with mirth, her stout body rolling and jiggling, her eyes alight with mischief.
“Very well …” she began.
CLARISSA
Clarissa came through the Rowan Gate portal at dawn. It was still, the trees wrapped in silver and pale green sleep. An early-rising robin announced the new day. The spring burbled happily to itself in its stone-walled enclosure. Clarissa looked out at a small grouping of rowan trees, surrounded by much taller hardwoods, which were beginning to leaf out. She walked toward a clearing ahead. She found an area of flattened growth shaped like a large square, as though a tiny house had come to rest briefly and then moved on. A shallow, wide wooden bowl holding an inch of water stood on a stump under a lantern hanging from a branch. She caught a faint smell of burning.
Somewhere in the forest, a wood thrush sang. Clarissa walked around the clearing, looking in every direction. People had clearly been here recently. She came upon a well-used path leading through the trees and followed it.
The hardwood gave way to birch trees and a house came into view, a long, high rectangle. It was made of birch logs and looked like something made by forest creatures rather than men. A stone chimney rose from the layered birch bark roof. There was no sign of life. Clarissa approached the door, strangely tall, and reached up to lift the latch.
The door swung open, revealing a large room with birch logs on three sides and stone on the fourth, with a cavernous fireplace. She saw a tall wooden table with a long, high bench to one side. Oddly, the remains of what looked like a party were set out on the bench. She saw bread, cheese and a platter of meat, along with several wooden cups. She picked one up and sniffed the contents, wrinkling her nose at the heady scent of apples, slightly rotten.
Between the bench and the fireplace, on a grey rug gayly striped with pink, orange, green and turquoise, several women slept amidst strewn pillows. Clarissa grinned as she took in their abandoned attitudes and tangled hair. They were fully clothed. One of them was huge, the biggest woman Clarissa had ever seen, with a round moon face. She lay on her back, snoring comfortably.
Persephone lay on her side with her long, disheveled braid snaking across the pillow under her head. Heks was there, too, curled as neatly as a cat, her iron-grey hair sticking out in every direction. She clutched a skin bag with a drawstring top in her hand.
Clarissa knelt beside Persephone and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Persephone? Persephone, wake up!”
Persephone stirred, groaned, and put a hand to her head. “What?”
“It’s me, Clarissa.”
Persephone ran a tongue around her lips without opening her eyes.
“Clarissa?”
“Yes. I’ve come through the portal.”
“The portal? Did you say you’ve come through the portal?” A strongly-built woman with thick, dark hair tangled around her shoulders peered at Clarissa through slitted eyes. She, too, put a hand to her head and groaned. “My head!”
“Is there any water?” Persephone asked pitifully.
Clarissa rinsed out two cups and filled them with cold water. The dark-haired woman and Persephone sat up, bleary-eyed, and drank tentatively.
“Best take it slow,” Persephone cautioned.
Clarissa sat patiently, watching them gingerly sip the water.
When the dark-haired woman set the empty cup down, she raked her fingers through her tangled hair, wincing.
“I’m Clarissa,” Clarissa introduced herself politely.
“I’m Eurydice. Did you say you’d come through Rowan Gate?”
“Is that what you call the portal? Yes, I came through a few minutes ago.”
“We did it!” Eurydice said to Persephone, who smiled at her.
Clarissa couldn’t wait a second longer. “Is Seren here?” she demanded.
“He’s here,” said Eurydice neutrally.
“Will you take me to him, or tell me where I can find him?” Clarissa could have danced for joy.
“Not so loud!” said Persephone, wincing away from the sound of her happy voice.
The other women began stirring, roused by the sound of voices. None of them appeared in better shape than Eurydice and Persephone. Resigned, controlling her impatience, Clarissa rinsed cups and provided cold water. After a few minutes Heks tore the remaining bread into chunks and passed them around. Nobody touched the cheese or the meat, but the giantess, whose name was Gwelda, invited Clarissa to help herself, which she did.
Gwelda was the first to venture to her feet, recovering more quickly than the others. The house obviously belonged to her. She seemed as tall as a young tree to Clarissa. She filled the sink with water and plunged her whole head in it, snorting and slopping water onto the plank floor. She filled a giant-sized bucket with water and took it outside the door, leaving the door open when she reentered so the chilly morning air came in, along with birdsong and the smell of the trees.
One by one, the others staggered to their feet and washed in cold water. Introductions were exchanged. The absence of someone called Baubo was remarked upon. Clarissa gathered there had been some kind of a ritual the night before, and the women had stayed up half the night drinking hard cider.
Gwelda was as friendly as a child, and Clarissa nearly forgot her impatience to see Seren as they talked together. Gwelda knew Rapunzel and Vasilisa and wanted to hear about the lighthouse and birch wood. To Clarissa’s disappointment, she had not yet met Seren.
“I don’t exactly live at Rowan Tree,” she explained to Clarissa. “I just live near it.”
“But you must come and hear him! He’s the greatest musician, poet and storyteller in the whole world! He came to fix the portal, and the portal’s fixed! It’s the second one he’s repaired. She must come and hear him, mustn’t she?” she appealed to Heks.
“We’ll see what can be managed,” said Heks noncommittally. “Perhaps he could perform here, at Gwelda’s house.”
“Oh, I’d like that!” said Gwelda. “What a good idea! But he wasn’t with us, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t with us when we repaired the portal.” Gwelda gestured around to the other women.
“Oh.” Clarissa felt rather flat. She’d been so certain Seren’s power was necessary. Rapunzel had made it sound as though nobody here knew what to do. She wondered if Seren felt annoyed that he’d not been needed after all.
“Gwelda, we’re ready to go now.” The woman called Maria stood before them, her dark, silver-threaded hair twisted up in a knot on the back of her head. Her face was lined and tired, but her eyes sparkled. She wore a beautiful blue-green stone bracketed by a silver crescent moon around her neck on a silver chain.
“We’ve put away what’s left of the food and tidied the house, what we could reach, anyway!” Gwelda leaned down and Maria kissed her cheek warmly. “Thank you, my dear. We could not have done this without you. Someone will visit later.”
They set out along the path, Artemis with her silvery bow and a quiver of arrows; a shy, slight woman with curly black hair called Rose Red, Eurydice, Heks, Maria and Persephone, who walked beside Clarissa.
“Where are you staying?” Clarissa asked Persephone.
“With Heks in Rowan Tree,” she replied. “Eurydice and Rosie live in the forest, and Artemis is staying with Rosie for now. We’ll drop them off on our way.”
Eurydice lived in a small house built against a tree near the portal, which they referred to as Rowan Gate. Next, they came to Rose Red’s house, also built against a tree, and left Rose Red and Artemis to recover from the long night.
From here Clarissa looked across a wide, gentle slope. A river ran along the valley’s bottom. The slope was terraced into gardens and fields, neatly divided by young hedges and fences. She saw what looked like a springhouse and animal sheds built right into the earth. The whole slope looked south, and the sun shone warm on the new grass, dotted with early coltsfoot, cheerful and sunny yellow. Along the sloping edges and the river she could see dwellings and buildings.
“It’s lovely,” she said to Persephone.
“Isn’t it? They’ve done a wonderful job, and an amazing amount of work in only a few years.”
“I didn’t expect anything like this.”
“What did you expect?”
What Clarissa had expected was a shabby, struggling community, impoverished and backward, but she didn’t like to say so. “I’m not sure,” she said instead.
As they walked down the slope, Clarissa fastened a look of polite interest on her face as she was shown the animals, their sheds, the root cellar, the dairy and other points of interest. Her heart beat so heavily she felt slightly sick. In minutes, she would see Seren again!
Maria pointed out her house and left them as they neared the slope’s bottom. Heks led them to one of the more formal houses. This one did not incorporate rocks, trees or the sheltering slope, as many others did. It was built of wooden planks, not logs, and made no effort to blend in with the landscape. Heks knocked assertively on the door.
A man with thick grey hair, a carefully shaved face, and neat clothes opened it. He was rather attractive, but Clarissa thought his mouth was mean. For a moment, she saw Poseidon’s sensual, wide mouth in memory. This man had a pleasant expression, but there was something forbidding about him, too.
“Is Seren here?” Heks asked without preamble.
“Yes?” Clarissa heard Seren say somewhere behind the figure in the doorway.
She flung herself through the door, brushing by the man, and into Seren’s arms with a triumphant shout.
She had imagined this reunion in every detail over and over again since he’d left the lighthouse; his strong arms around her, his joy leaping to meet hers at being together again, his kiss on her mouth, his hands in her hair or holding her face, and the onlookers smiling in sympathy to see the two lovers reunited.
For an ecstatic second or two, it was even better than she’d imagined, but then she realized his arms were loose around her, his body tense, and he’d turned his head at the last moment so her lips only brushed his cheek before he drew back and stepped away.
Her passion and joy evaporated and a hot tide of shame rose into her cheeks. She wouldn’t have felt more rejected if he had slapped her or spat on her.
“Clarissa,” he said stiffly, avoiding her eyes. “It’s good to see you again.”
She realized with a rush of relief that he was embarrassed. Once again, she’d trampled on his sensitivity. What they had, what they felt for one another was too private to demonstrate publicly. He was a man of reputation, an artist, and his dignity must be maintained at all costs. She must behave like a woman, not a child.
She stepped back. “It’s good to see you, too.” Turning to the man who had opened the door, she held out her hand. “I’m Clarissa, a … friend of Seren’s. Pleased to meet you.”
Briefly, the grey-haired man took her hand and released it. “My name is David.”
“Clarissa will be staying with me,” Heks said to no one in particular. “Come along, Clarissa.”
Clarissa found herself outside again. The door shut behind them. She trembled with emotion and told herself furiously not to be such a fool.
Heks made no comment and appeared to take no notice of Clarissa’s emotional state as they walked along a path running beside the river. Heks’s house was dug into the hill’s slope not too far from Maria’s place. The roof was tufted with grass and wildflowers growing around a stone chimney. Inside, the house felt cozy and cave like, with a fireplace along the back wall. Sun poured through the two windows and open door along the front of the house. To one side was an alcove where Heks slept with a high round window looking east.
“You can sleep there, near the fireplace,” said Heks, gesturing to a spot along the pounded earthen wall. “Maria made the rug on the floor. We’ll find you some cushions and blankets.”
“Thank you,” said Clarissa. “I thought I’d be staying with Seren …”
“Naturally,” Heks was brisk. “But David is a stranger to you, and I’d like the company. Persephone is meant to be staying here, too, but she loves to wander at night and has an unqueenly habit of sleeping in the hay shed. She relishes her time in the Green World. Perhaps David will invite you to stay with him later.”
Clarissa brightened. After all, neither David nor Seren had expected her. She’d taken them completely by surprise. No doubt Heks was right, and Seren would make arrangements for her to be with him now he knew she was here.
“I don’t like to be away from the water too long,” she said to Heks. “I’ll probably spend some nights in the sea, now the portal is open again.”
“Whatever you need,” said Heks. “I’m going to lie down and sleep. It was a long night. I’ll see you later this afternoon.”
Clarissa went out, closing the door carefully behind her. The river made a glad sound and looked full, probably due to snow melt. A pair of water birds floated in a quiet eddy. She made her way up the slope, seeking a sunny spot from which she could see David’s house and watch for Seren.
“Clarissa!”
She turned. A woman with long red hair strode to catch up.
“Ginger!”
She ran into the woman’s loving embrace and found herself in tears. Since she’d come through the portal, nothing at Rowan Tree had been as she’d thought it would. She felt very, very far from home.
“Oh, now, it’s all right,” Ginger soothed, rocking her and stroking her hair. “Cry it out and then you can tell me about it.”
She was as comforting as the mother Clarissa longed for, and she made no effort to stem her tears. When at last she calmed into sniffles and gulps, Ginger took her by the hand and they walked up the slope together. A boulder jutted out of the earth at the slope’s edge, and they settled in a sheltered grassy cup with their backs against the warm stone. It made a good vantage point. From there Clarissa could see Rowan Tree spread out below and across the slope. Only the top of the slope was out of view.
“Tell me, now,” said Ginger, encouraging. “Tell me everything.”
Clarissa knew Ginger possessed eleven younger sisters and she need not hide her thoughts and feelings. Ginger would not be shocked or hear anything she hadn’t heard before. Clarissa took a deep breath and began talking, starting with the appearance of Delphinus and Seren at the lighthouse.