The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc (Entire)

In which you can read without interruption ...

Feb 09, 2025

PART 5 IMBOLC

(i-MOLG) February 1; strengthening light, fertility and creativity. Awakening of youthful, chaotic energy. Midway between Yule and spring equinox.

The Card: The Star

Creative potential; renewal; new cycles.

CHAPTER 14

ASH

“Are you sure this a good idea?” Beatrice whispered a few minutes later.

“No,” Ash admitted. He wasn’t sure at all, but his curiosity was irresistible.

The dance, abruptly ended, already seemed like a dream. The dancers and the lynx had melted away into the forest. The candles were snuffed, the bonfire as cold as though it hadn’t burned in years. The ice-glazed forest stilled into a waning winter night.

Baba Yaga had sent everyone away, except Poseidon. He reclaimed his trident and threw a wolfskin cloak around his shoulders as the others left the clearing.

As the dance ended, Ash left his cozy vantage point in the scarf’s folds and flew into the shadow under the eaves overhanging the front of Baba Yaga’s hut. As he perched there, he heard a faint scraping sound, and the window nearest him opened a crack.

“Who’s opening it?” asked Beatrice fearfully.

“It’s the house,” said Ash. He edged down to the window gap and squeezed through.

“Phew!” Beatrice gasped.

They found themselves in Baba Yaga’s bedroom. It was a tiny room, containing nothing recognizable as furniture apart from the bed, which was a frame made from bones. A malevolent-looking skull of no identifiable species glared from the top center of the headboard. The bedding was a malodorous nest of stained and grimy sheets and blankets, the uncovered pillow a sodden, lumpy cushion the color of cold dishwater. The whole room smelled eye-wateringly of old fish, unwashed clothes and imperfectly tanned animal skins. The floor was heaped with tangled, soiled clothing, towels and bedding.

Hastily, Ash flitted through the gaping door. The bedroom consisted of a small square taken out of the larger square of the hut. Ash and Beatrice now found themselves in the single L comprising the rest of the floorplan. Here stood a rickety table with a splintered bench along one side and an old battered chair at the head. A small, obese iron stove squatted in a corner. A tiny galley kitchen contained a stained sink and a counter piled high with dirty dishes, pots and pans. An old-fashioned mangle sulked on the floor against the wall. Next to it leaned a broom with a long tassel of what looked horribly like human hair, clotted with filth

The hut tilted and began lowering.

“Quick! She’s coming!” shrilled Beatrice.

Ash darted among the rafters, which hung with cobwebs that clung greasily to his body. He wedged himself above the junction of three beams and peered down through a slot allowing him to see most of the room. Beatrice crawled out of the fur on his chest and settled herself on the beam over which Ash looked.

The wooden floor below them was littered with bones, dirty utensils, mouse tails, wood chips, cinders, lumps of rotting food, teeth, lurking clumps of grease-coated spiderweb, lint, dead skin, hair and dust balls looking as though they’d been spawned by the Black Rabbit of Inle rather than bunnies.

The front door opened smartly. Baba Yaga and Poseidon stepped in and it slammed behind them.

Ash watched Poseidon take in the room with one swift glance, Baba Yaga a step behind him. Poseidon rolled his eyes, cocked a sardonic eyebrow and turned to her with his crooked grin.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he inquired mockingly.

“My pleasure,” she sneered, “not yours. How about a game of Keepsies with old Baba? Show off your pretty balls, sonny! Give an old lady a thrill!”

Holding her gaze, the smile still in place, Poseidon placed his trident tines on the floor and unscrewed the end of the wooden staff. From the opening, he spilled a handful of marbles.

She smiled the most malevolent smile Ash had ever seen on a human visage, and he squirreled away the picture in hopes of imitating it for Mirmir.

“Clear yourself!” she demanded, looking down at the floor. Without waiting to see what would happen, she stumped into her bedroom, rudely slamming the door behind her. In a moment she returned, weighing a wrinkled, brownish skin bag adorned with sparse, curling black hairs in her hand.

“Is that bag made of what I think it is?” Beatrice murmured in Ash’s ear.

“Shhh!” He hissed back.

Obediently, a wide circle on the floor had cleared itself of debris. Baba Yaga and Poseidon stood eyeing each other across the circle, weighing their marbles in their hands.

“Keepsies it is -- if you’re sure,” Poseidon said slyly.

Baba Yaga snorted. A blob of mucous left her nose and, halfway to the cleared floor, made a 90-degree turn and hurtled into a corner piled with debris.

“Shall we honor the season and play Last Clams?” asked Poseidon.

“That’s played in the snow, Numbwits!”

“Too cold for you?” Poseidon needled.

Baba Yaga hissed, clapped sharply, stomped one bare foot, and screeched “Last Clams!” as the cleared circle filled with two inches of slush.

“Why did she say it aloud like that?” Ash whispered to Beatrice.

“Probably claiming some kind of advantage,” said Beatrice. “Everyone says she cheats. Hush!”

“I’ll do the honors, then,” said Poseidon, and he made a shallow hole in the slush with the heel of his supple boot. With his hands, he shaped the hole into a cup, smoothing the slushy edges. Meanwhile, Baba Yaga measured off twelve feet from the hole.

“Shall we say five for an ante?” Poseidon asked.

“Ten!” she fired back. “If you can bear to lose that many,” she added with a sneer.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I believe I can fit ten more into my trident handle.”

Poseidon knelt on the twelve-foot mark. He lay his trident staff in the slush, making a shallow groove to the slushy cup he’d formed. Laying the trident aside, he shot an opaque marble, ivory tinged slightly with pink, down the trench toward the cup with a powerful flick of his thumb. The marble rolled about three quarters of the way to the cup before bogging down in the slush.

Baba Yaga cackled triumphantly. She loosened the drawstring tie around her bag and peered into it, stirring with a finger, before choosing her marble. She withdrew a red one with a yellow eye and held it up between her thumb and forefinger. Ash smiled appreciatively at her sense of theater.

Poseidon moved aside and the Baba, in her turn, knelt. She leaned forward with her elbows on the floor, the posture revealing scrawny naked buttocks as the hem of her short tunic lifted. Squinting, she lined up her shot, waggling her rump like a cat getting ready to pounce. Ash, taking in every detail, gave his own bottom an experimental waggle.

She made the shot with a grunt. Her marble clicked against Poseidon’s, moving his forward. Evidently, the hit earned her another shot, for she again searched her bag and this time withdrew a white marble swirled with bloody color.

Ash and Beatrice watched, fascinated, as the hag and the sea king made trenches, selected shooters and gloated over each victory. Ash could see the slush made the game impossibly difficult. Snow would have been much easier to play in. As Baba Yaga’s first marble approached the slushy hole, she was unable to propel it up and over the shallow lip. She cursed, danced with rage and spat. She dug new trenches and advanced on the cup from other directions with other shooters, but still was unable to get her first marble into the hole.

Then, suddenly, she was successful. The marble slipped in smoothly as though rolling downhill, the first one in the cup.

Poseidon, who watched every movement his adversary made, cleared his throat meaningfully and glared at her while she crowed with satisfaction.

“Did you see it?” whispered Beatrice.

“No. What happened?”

“The floorboard raised up and tipped it in!”

Poseidon stalked around the circle, examining the several trenches and the marbles in play. Selecting a new shooter, this one black with a pattern of white stripes, he expertly hit one of the Baba’s pieces, earning a second shot. He then gave his attention to the marble closest to the cup. Kneeling, he took aim with one hand while giving two sharp raps on the floor with the knuckles of the other. As he made the shot, the whole hut tilted slightly and the marble rolled sweetly into the cup, just as Baba Yaga’s had done.

“Cheat!” shrieked the Baba.

“You started it,” replied Poseidon calmly.

Baba Yaga stomped to the door, flung it open and shrieked, “Don’t you dare help him! I’ll break your knees! I’ll beat you! I’ll take away your scarves and let you freeze! I’ll make you walk over hot coals!”

“Save your breath,” Poseidon advised. ‘We made an agreement. If needed, the legs would help me, in exchange for a gift.”

“Gift? What gift?” screeched Baba Yaga.

“Something they’ve always wanted. An ankle bracelet.”

“What?” Baba Yaga looked dumbfounded. Poseidon’s face was full of mischief as he grinned at her. Beatrice vibrated with silent laughter.

“An ankle bracelet,” Poseidon repeated clearly. “Honey invariably catches more flies than vinegar, my dear. Shall we continue?”

They played on, Baba Yaga taking every opportunity to cheat undetected with the help of the floor, but unable to evade Poseidon’s watchful eye. Every time she cheated, he rapped what could only be a previously-agreed upon code to the chicken legs, which obediently tilted to assist his shots. One by one, their marbles rolled into the cup.

Cheating aside, Ash thought they were evenly matched. Neither gained a permanent advantage over the other. At the end of the game Baba Yaga possessed two marbles left in play to Poseidon’s one. With an expert shot, he slammed his last one home and won the game.

While the Baba fumed, stamped her feet and muttered invective, Poseidon scooped the marbles from their slushy resting place and examined them on his broad palm.

“Very nice,” he said with approval. “An oxblood, a tiger and a lovely jasper. What’s this called?” he held up the first marble she had shot, red with a yellow eye.

“That’s my devil’s eye. It’s part of a set,” she whined. “One’s no good without the other. Poor old Baba, cheated out of her finest shooter! My prettiest! The joy of my old age! The heart and soul of my collection!”

Poseidon eyed her. “I suppose I could give it back to you,” he said.

“It’s only right! It’s only just! You cheated poor old Baba!”

Poseidon poured all the marbles but the devil’s eye into the hollow staff of his trident and screwed the end back on.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

“A deal? A deal? I don’t make deals with thieves and cheaters!”

“Well, in that case…” He began unscrewing the end of his staff again.

“What deal?” she asked resentfully.

“You know and I know if the Yrtym breaks down entirely Webbd is lost. We must do everything we can to support healthy cycles and seasons. The Rusalka will seek mates among the animals, and tonight Cerunmos was reborn. I propose I join the fertility ritual and add my energy to theirs, allowing the Rusalka to increase their contribution to the next cycle of growth. I’ve already spoken with them, and they consent to my presence, but they’re unwilling to add to the ritual without your agreement.”

“You expect me to sell my girls for a measly marble?” Baba Yaga pretended affront, but Ash saw a calculating gleam in her eye.

“Certainly not. I ask you to honor their consent and my intention in exchange for the prize of your collection. Of course, we could do nothing and let Webbd unravel as it will. I suppose in that case marbles will cease to matter.”

“Give it to me,” Baba Yaga demanded, holding out her hand.

“You agree to the deal?” Poseidon closed his fingers firmly over the devil’s eye.

“I agree!” she screeched. “Hand it over, you pilfering pirate, and get out!”

“Crawl back into my fur,” Ash whispered urgently to Beatrice. As she did so, Poseidon put the marble into Baba Yaga’s palm.

“Begone!” she shrieked, and in a swirl of air the lamps went out, the slush disappeared and the door crashed open. Poseidon, trident in hand, crossed the tilting, lowering floor to the gaping door in a few strides. Outside, the approaching dawn tinged the sky with pale light. Ash launched himself from his hiding place and followed Poseidon out the door, silent as a shadow. Poseidon’s form dropped away below and behind him as he sped away from the clearing and into the forest.

CLARISSA

Morfran, Marceau, Poseidon, Vasilisa and Clarissa gathered in the plunge pool. Many Rusalka were present as well; those whose mating season was not late winter. Sofiya, Morfran’s mate, an owl in her animal aspect, was not there, and neither were the Rusalka who took the aspect of fox and lynx.

Clarissa felt swamped with conflicting emotion. Irritation was uppermost, and she allowed her demeanor to express it, staying on the edge of the group with folded arms and an expressionless face. Nobody paid much attention to her bad mood, which increased her annoyance.

She felt uncomfortably aware, again, of her youth and inexperience. The birch wood positively hummed with sexual power. She felt it and responded to it, but was unable to participate or contribute, aside from the dance. The fact that Marceau and Vasilisa also stayed on the sidelines during the second part of the Imbolc ritual didn’t help the awkwardness of being caught between childhood and adulthood. She was curious, fascinated and a little afraid of the raw energy sizzling and sparking just out beyond sight and hearing. The huge footprint of the lynx in the snow, the feather dropped from an owl and the vixen’s midnight love song burned in her blood and body. Every interaction carried an erotic charge.

She wished passionately for Seren, but a small voice in her heart of hearts whispered the suspicion he would have hated such an elemental show of sexuality. Disloyal, she thought to herself. You don’t know that. He might have joined with the sacred consort and added his energy to the ritual. What’s more fertile than creativity?

She dared not disobey Baba Yaga’s command to accompany the others wherever they were going, in spite of her show of defiance, but she made her reluctance clear. She’d taken no part in the plan or discussion. She thought they were going to see Sedna, whom Marceau had spoken of before they came to the birch wood, but she wasn’t sure even of that.

She coldly ignored the stirring interest and excitement she felt about being in the sea with her own people, seeing new places, trying to discover more about the mysterious Yrtym and collecting stories. It felt gratifying to know when she met Seren again, she would have as much to tell him as he to tell her, but she knew she belonged with him and refused to take pleasure in any delay in rejoining him.

Still, the stories made up for a great deal. Morfran, Marceau, Poseidon and Vasilisa knew many tales, both familiar and new to Clarissa. The Rusalka proved a treasure trove, not only of animal stories but also secret traditions and stories of the rye and poppy fields and the endless birch woods. Clarissa listened, enthralled, to stories about Baba Yaga, sea creatures and people, and tales of the private lives of animals. In exchange, she repeated her father’s tales and poetry and stories she’d learned from Rapunzel and Persephone. She longed to share some of Seren’s tales, but loyally refrained, though she mentioned his enchanting performances whenever she had a chance.

Now, as they left the birch wood for the open sea, Clarissa swam beside Marceau. Morfran and Vasilisa made their farewells and slid into the plunge pool as well. She watched as Poseidon took each Rusalka in his strong arms, looking deeply into her eyes and kissing her warmly on the mouth. The Rusalka smiled at him and returned his caresses with a kind of grateful reverence. Evidently, his role in the fertility ritual had been successful.

She had seen nothing but tracks in the snow of the lynx, Cerunmos, since the dance.

The Rusalka slid into the water after Poseidon. They intended to escort the group to the portal and test its accessibility for themselves.

Clarissa arched forward in a dive, feeling her tail come briefly out of the water as it propelled her down after Marceau. She swam, the others about her, down and then sideways, rising at last toward sunlight filtered by clouds. Her head broke the surface and she found herself in the sea, the others around her. The Rusalka had stayed behind. The portal was open.

Poseidon took the lead. He set a swift pace, and they traveled for a day and a night and another day, the water growing steadily colder as they swam north. They began seeing huge, floating islands of ice, only a small portion of which showed above the surface. These were carved into fantastic ridges, arches, mountains and caves, like frozen clouds fallen into the sea.

Photo by Xavier Balderas Cejudo on Unsplash

Clarissa, gazing around her in wonder, gradually dropped behind the others and was startled to nearly swim into them. They had stopped, floating upright and looking ahead. As she made an abrupt adjustment to her own speed she saw, a yard beyond them, a vertical wall of water, exactly like the one outside the lighthouse. Here, too, the water had receded from the land, holding itself back as though invisibly dammed.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve seen this before. Just swim to the edge and slide down.”

“Wait,” Poseidon commanded.

Clarissa turned in time to see several seals emerge from the water’s gloom. The February sun sank.

The seals approached Poseidon, looking into his face with liquid dark eyes and frisking around him.

“King Poseidon?” said one. “We haven’t seen you in our waters before.”

“Greetings, Seal People,” said Poseidon. “We’ve come in search of Sedna, and to learn how it is with you here in the North’s cold water.”

“We are not Seal People, King,” said the seal. “We are Selchie. As you see, it is not well with us, or with Sedna. She is out there, huddled on the bare sea bed. She’s angry and none dare approach her. Sedna and her people are cut off from the land, and they from us. The land starves for the sea, and we starve for the land.”

“We’ve come to see if we can help,” said Marceau. “Disconnection and breakdown are everywhere. We’re trying to learn how to repair it.”

“Come back to our grotto tonight,” said the selchie. “Night is falling, and the nights here are cold. Sedna has no fire. You’ll freeze. We want to hear your news, and you can rest and eat. It’s better to approach Sedna in daylight.”

“Thank you,” said Poseidon. “We will come with you.”

Clarissa never forgot that night. She missed her father, Irvin, acutely. He would have gloried in the Selchies’ grotto, a cave half filled with water and illuminated by shallow half-moon bowls of burning blubber set in natural stone niches above the water line. Both Selchie and grotto smelled strongly of fish. Selchie and merfolk alike satisfied their hunger with raw fish as they swam to the grotto. Once there, after more complete introductions, the Selchie and half-humans found one another equally fascinating. Morfran, whose grandfather had been a selchie, appeared more animated and eager than Clarissa had ever seen him.

Having established mutually friendly relations, Poseidon and Marceau turned the talk toward Yrtym and the consequences of its breakdown. The selchie listened with interest as Poseidon outlined Yrtym’s ubiquitous role on Webbd.

“It is an invisible net, then, catching and holding all life? The sea as well as the land?”

“Even the stars,” said Marceau. “The constellations are changing. On land, life is dying. Gateways between peoples and places are breaking down. In the sea, volcanic activity heats the water, which disrupts the food web. Before long, people such as yourselves will be impacted.”

“We already are,” said one of the selchie. “Nurseries and breeding grounds disappear as the sea withdraws from the land. The threshold places are empty and barren. Sedna’s anger smolders, and no one knows how to comfort her. The land people cry out for food and the sea’s return so they can hunt on the ice again. Nothing is as it should be.”

Green fractal Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Clarissa, worn out after the long swim, found a place against the grotto’s wall to sleep, and drifted away to the selchie’s silvery-sounding voices and the deeper tones of Poseidon and Marceau, rocked in a watery cradle of stone.

The next morning the selchie accompanied them back to the sea’s edge. After a friendly parting, the company from the birch wood swam out of the wall of water and slid down to the bared sea floor, following Clarissa’s example and transitioning into human form as they did so. When Clarissa stood once again on two legs and looked around, she saw a stranger, a man approximately Morfran’s age with large dark eyes and silky black hair brushing his shoulders. A stylized black seal tattoo decorated his left upper arm.

He smiled apologetically at their surprise. “One of the selchie is my mother. I was visiting her when we found you, and I chose not to reveal myself while we talked. My father is human.” He pointed toward the distant land with his chin and gestured at the bare sea bed before them. “This is like a hole in my center.”

“What’s your name?” Vasilisa asked.

“Please call me Pim.” He turned to Poseidon. “Traditionally, the shaman visits Sedna to honor her and ensure good hunting, but when the sea left the land Sedna forsook her people. The shaman can no longer approach her. The places where we hunted seal and walrus are nothing but bitter stone and dried salt. The whales do not come to feed, and the polar bears are dying. Our fishermen must walk a long way, carrying their kayaks, to reach the water, and they cannot launch their boats onto the sea without climbing a rock or an ice slab.

“Then you arrived, talking about Yrtym and trouble elsewhere on Webbd, and I realize what is happening to me and my people is only a small part of a larger change. I am a man with two tribes and two families, belonging wholly to neither. I am not a shaman. I’m a drummer and a storyteller, a bridge between the selchie and the ice people. I want to help both my families. Sedna is our mother. We depend on her. I want to go with you to talk with her.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” said Poseidon. “We don’t know how to live here, or anything about Sedna. Perhaps we can help one another.”

They looked across the barren, rocky plain of salt-encrusted ice and sea debris at a world without color. The dark watery wall behind them emphasized a landscape of grey and white in which sky, the distant land and the bared seabed merged together. A dry wind knifed through Clarissa’s unprotected flesh, making her feel weak and vulnerable. Some way ahead she could see a structure. It reminded her of the shipwreck in which Marceau made his home, but this skeleton looked like bone. It leaned tipsily, like a bleached ship.

“Sedna is there,” said Pim. “Ever since the water receded, she has been there. We don’t know why she doesn’t return to the sea.”

They began walking, bare-footed, across the harsh sea floor. The cold pressed against them like an invisible barrier. The rocks hurt Clarissa’s feet. Morfran, with his twisted hip, struggled to keep his footing, and Marceau took his arm.

Pim fell into step beside Clarissa.

“I’m a storyteller too,” she said.

He glanced sideways at her and smiled. “Are you? Maybe we’ll have time to share some stories. I don’t have my drum with me, but I could show you some of our dances, too.”

“I’d like that,” said Clarissa.

The structure was the tilting skeleton of a whale. As they drew near, the wind brought a stench of rotting fish and flesh. Clarissa clapped a hand over her nose and mouth. “What is that?”

“I believe it’s the skins,” said Marceau, gesturing to several skins flung over the whale’s rib bones. The ivory bones were pitted, broken and cracked, the backbone tapering gradually to the tail. Lying on her side with her knees drawn up, her back against the ridges and knobs of the spine, lay a slight figure cloaked in snarled black hair.

Clarissa saw no evidence of fire. Gnawed bones were scattered around the whale skeleton, but none looked fresh. One of the skins was that of a polar bear, the fur yellowed and thin, and Clarissa could see strips of tattered flesh still adhered to it. There were also a couple of sealskins, the fur looking soft and thick but smelling powerful enough to make her eyes water. She wondered how Sedna, if this woebegone figure was Sedna, could stand it.

The curled-up figure remained motionless and Poseidon and Marceau stood looking down at it uncertainly. Surprisingly, Morfran awkwardly lowered himself onto one knee on the hard stones.

“Lady? Sedna? We’ve come to speak with you.”

Slowly, the child-like figure stirred, uncurling. The head turned and Clarissa saw a face decorated with tattoos, a graceful V from hairline to the bridge of her nose and vertical double lines running from lower lip to below her chin. Her dark eyes burned like embers. She tensed and hissed, baring her teeth like a cornered animal. In an explosive movement that made Clarissa take a hasty step back, the woman twisted into an upright position on her knees.

Clarissa gasped.

The woman was handless. Each arm ended at the wrist in a healed stump.

Sedna shot her a fiery look of pride and bitterness and Clarissa felt her cold cheeks color with shame.

Morfran, who remained on one knee, bringing him eye to eye with the starveling figure, said, “We mean no harm. We only came to talk with you.”

“I have nothing to give you,” Sedna snarled.

“We come to give, not to take,” said Morfran.

Eyes blazing, Sedna looked them over. A ridge of muscle stood out in her thin cheek.

“Lady,” Poseidon said when she caught his eye. He inclined his head respectfully.

“I am Marceau, a sea king,” Marceau introduced himself. “Vasilisa, my daughter, who is half human, and Morfran, my grandson, who is half selchie.”

“You are one of my people,” Sedna said to Pim in a harsh voice.

“Yes, Lady,” he replied. “I am called Pim. My mother is a selchie and my father a human. This is Clarissa.”

“You are not a shaman. Why have you come?”

Pim hesitated. Clarissa thought it the question was dangerous. Sedna radiated anger mixed with despair. Perhaps following Morfran’s lead, Pim said, “I’ve come to see if I may serve you.”

Sedna examined their faces in silence. Clarissa felt frozen, her skin plucked into gooseflesh.

“You have nothing I need,” Sedna said at last, and made as though to turn her back on them and lie down again. “Go away.”

“Are you hungry, Lady?” asked Morfran. “May we hunt for you?”

Sedna sat straight again. “You wish to feed me?”

“We would be honored,” said Marceau, with a glance at Pim, who nodded slightly.

“Very well,” said Sedna, and she sat where she was, her dark hair draping her shoulders, as they organized themselves.

After a muttered conference, they decided Pim would go back to his village for furs and clothing. Morfran, Marceau and Poseidon would seek out the selchie and attempt to find a walrus, which would be large enough to feed them all. Vasilisa and Clarissa, to Clarissa’s consternation, would stay with Sedna.

“Offer to comb her hair,” Pim said in a low voice.

“With what?” Vasilisa asked.

“She has a comb.”

Sea ice Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The hunters trudged away to the water, looking cold and puny against the back drop of low sun, the strangely arrested wall of water and the desolate sea floor. Pim walked in the other direction, toward land. Vasilisa and Clarissa looked at one another.

Vasilisa approached Sedna and sat, tucking her legs comfortably in imitation, and Clarissa dropped down next to her.

“Your hair is beautiful,” said Vasilisa. “It must be hard to take care of.”

Without hands, thought Clarissa, imagining trying live with such a pitiful loss.

“May I comb it for you?” Vasilisa asked.

Sedna regarded her.

“I have nothing to give you, so don’t waste your time.”

“I want nothing from you,” said Vasilisa, meeting Sedna’s smoldering gaze. “It would give me pleasure to comb your hair. I like cutting and combing hair.”

“There’s a comb somewhere,” said Sedna ungraciously.

Clarissa began searching the campsite and found the carved ivory comb lying within the whale’s ribcage. It was a beautiful object, and she handed it to Vasilisa, wondering who had made it and why it belonged to a woman with no hands.

Vasilisa moved closer to Sedna and asked her to sit sideways to the whale’s backbone so Vasilisa could work with her hair. As Sedna acquiesced, Clarissa felt emboldened to ask, “Are you cold?”

“I am not as cold as you are,” said Sedna, “but you may throw a sealskin around my shoulders.”

Trying not to gag at the idea of the putrid skin wrapped around her bare body, Clarissa draped a sealskin carefully around Sedna, stepping back hastily to distance herself from the smell.

Vasilisa, rather pinched about the nostrils, gathered Sedna’s hair in one hand at the nape of her neck and let it spill over the sealskin. Taking a firm handful of hair near the ends, she began combing through the tangled, salt-stiffened locks.

Clarissa watched the dark fire die out of Sedna’s eyes, leaving only dull apathy, as Vasilisa combed. She looked down at the stumps resting in her lap. The skin on her arms was dry and peeling. Sedna’s lips were cracked and her hair remained lifeless and dingy in spite of Vasilisa’s ministrations. The rancid fur hid her torso, but Clarissa had seen the washboard of her ribs and her shriveled breasts. She hoped the hunters returned soon with food.

The skins draped over the whale ribs shielded Sedna’s spot from the worst of the wind. Clarissa resigned herself to the stench and sat close beside Vasilisa and Sedna, wrapping her arms around her body for warmth.

“This reminds me of meeting another friend of mine,” said Vasilisa casually. “Her name is Rose Red. Her hair is black, too, but shorter and curly.”

Sedna, eyes closed, made no reply.

“Tell us the story,” said Clarissa, exchanging a glance with Vasilisa.

Vasilisa, in a low, soothing voice, told the story of Rose Red and her girlhood in her father’s castle with her mother, Queen Snow White. She described their first meeting in a forest clearing, where she’d found Rose Red sobbing. She remembered the Dwarves in their stone cottage, who befriended Rose Red, and Jenny, another friend. Section by section, she combed Sedna’s hair, smoothing it, running her fingers through it, and passing her palms over Sedna’s shoulders, head and back with firm strokes. Gradually, Sedna’s rigid pose melted. She collapsed inward, looking more childlike than ever, and Clarissa wondered how anyone could fear such a lonely, pitiful figure.

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

“I’d like to meet Rose Red,” Clarissa said as Vasilisa’s story ended.

“If you go to Rowan Tree, you will,” said Vasilisa.

Clarissa realized she’d forgotten about Rowan Tree and Seren for nearly a whole day. “Do you think she’d mind if I told her story?”

“I don’t think so,” said Vasilisa, “but you can ask her yourself. “Clarissa collects stories,” she said to Sedna.

“Do you know any stories, Sedna?” Clarissa asked.

Sedna shook her head and rubbed her right stump over her eyes.

“Pim said he knew some. Maybe he’ll tell them to us when he gets back. I’d like to know more about this place. I’ve never been anywhere like it.”

“In a land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color,” Sedna muttered.

Vasilisa and Clarissa exchanged looks.

“That’s beautiful,” said Clarissa. “Do you mean this land?”

“It’s how they used to begin stories,” said Sedna, “when I was a child.”

“Do you remember a children’s story, then?” Clarissa coaxed.

Vasilisa smoothed a section of hair from scalp to ends, and began combing it in long, slow, sensuous strokes.

Sedna did not reply. Clarissa opened her mouth to cajole further, but Vasilisa, catching her eye, shook her head.

They sat silently. Clarissa fidgeted on the hard stones, remembering again how cold and uncomfortable she felt and wishing the others would return.

Then Sedna began speaking, her voice harsh and cracked, as though she hadn’t used it in a long time. Her words were hesitant at first, as she groped for meaning and syntax.

“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. Her mother was dead, and her father a hunter and fisherman.

When it was time for her to marry, men came to court her, but she was proud and refused them all. She wanted…something else. Something more, though she knew no name for what she sought. Her father was angry with her. Her repeated rejections caused bad feeling in the village. It was her duty to marry and bear children, as a young, unattached, beautiful woman was bound to cause problems. People began saying she was proud and haughty and her father could not control her.

One day, walking alone on the ice, the girl found gigantic wolf tracks. She followed the tracks a long way, but never saw the creature who made them.

It was the season of Yr’s return, and the girl walked alone every day, enjoying his warmth and light. She often saw the wolf tracks going inland from open sea among the floating ice.

One clear day she came over a hill and saw movement ahead. A large white wolf trotted toward the horizon, the low sun making its long shadow run beside it. The girl understood then why it had taken her so long to find the wolf. Unless it moved, it remained invisible against the snow and ice and white sky.

Her tracks began mingling with the wolf’s tracks, until she realized even as she followed it, it followed her. She began looking over her shoulder as often as she scanned the horizon ahead, not afraid, but filled with excitement and anticipation. She wanted to see the wolf up close, perhaps even speak to it. Sometimes she dropped to her hands and knees and sniffed fresh footprints, trying to catch a trace of the wolf’s warm scent in the world of empty cold wind and ice.

Every day the villagers shunned her a little more. She didn’t care. Her father, too, suffered, and took out his humiliation on her, but she paid no attention. She refused to see suitors. She thought only about the elusive white wolf. She called him Akhlut.

One spring day she jumped off an ice shelf and found him standing on the other side, as though waiting for her. The girl stood still and they regarded each other across the ice and snow. She judged the wolf to be at least eight feet long and nearly twice her weight. Its white coat looked thick enough to swallow her hand up to the wrist. It watched her out of grey eyes, then turned and trotted away.

After that, she saw it every time she went out, but seeing it no longer satisfied her.

She wanted to touch it.”

Clarissa was so engrossed by the story of the beautiful girl and the wolf she didn’t hear Pim return. She jumped and gasped when he draped a skin around her naked shoulders, and Sedna fell silent at once, the spell broken.

Vasilisa shot Pim an annoyed look.

“I’m sorry,” he said, contrite. “I didn’t want to interrupt you, Lady, but these two are unused to our cold. Perhaps you’ll honor us later with the rest of your story?”

Sedna nodded her head slightly without looking up.

Gratefully, Clarissa clothed herself in tanned hides, skins and fur-lined boots. She took the comb and continued working on Sedna’s hair so Vasilisa could dress as well. After asking for and receiving permission, Pim took the stinking fur from Sedna and replaced it with another, well-tanned and sweet.

While Clarissa combed, Pim and Vasilisa took the malodorous skins away from camp and laid them on a convenient rock. They gathered up the half-gnawed bones and flung them as far away as they could for scavengers. Clarissa watched as Pim unpacked a bale of clothing and furs, a shallow half-moon bowl, two long, sharp knives in hide sheaths and a piece of hide stretched over a hoop about four feet in diameter, along with a thick wooden peg.

Clarissa heard a shout and saw Morfran, Poseidon and Marceau returning, heavily laden. Pim and Vasilisa helped them haul their burden closer to camp, where they laid it down and Pim began butchering, pointing and instructing as he worked. Marceau picked up the second knife and assisted.

By the time Clarissa had finished combing out Sedna’s hair, everyone was appropriately dressed and several pounds of walrus meat and blubber were cut into long strips, ready for eating.

Pim squatted on the ground near Clarissa and Sedna with the shallow bowl, which he filled with walrus blubber. He set three squares of ice around the bowl as a shield from the wind. He showed Vasilisa and Clarissa how to pound the blubber with an ivory tool, and then pulled pinches of what he called “arctic cotton” from a hide bag, soaking them in the fat and tucking them carefully along the dish’s rim. He lit the cotton with a spark from his flint, and fire outlined the bowl’s edge.

“This is a qulliq,” he said. “My people have used them for hundreds of years. With a snow house, called an igloo, and a qulliq, we can cook, drink, dry our clothes, warm ourselves and provide light.”

Clarissa watched, fascinated, as he made a tripod over the qulliq and hung a battered pot filled with chunks of snow over it.

Morfran approached Sedna, who sat watching the activity around her with more interest than she’d yet shown. Clarissa liked to watch him move, with his odd blend of grace and awkwardness. He sat down, positioning himself slightly to the side so he could speak to her face-to-face without blocking her view of the camp.

“Where I come from, we use wolf skins. I’ve learned a bit about tanning their skins. May I take your skins and finish cleaning them? Pim said he would teach me how your people do it.”

Clarissa felt pleased to see Sedna actually make eye contact with Morfran for a few seconds before looking away. She nodded.

“Thank you,” said Morfran.

Marceau and Poseidon draped raw strips of meat and blubber over the whale’s bleached bones near the qulliq. Vasilisa looked after the qulliq, learning the knack of maintaining a steady smokeless flame. When the snow in the pot had melted, she called Pim and Morfran, who were carefully scraping the putrid skins with Pim’s knives.

As they gathered to eat, the short day waned. They sat around the qulliq, even this flicker of fire in the immense cold wastes as attractive as one of Baba Yaga’s bonfires. Pim positioned the qulliq close to Sedna. She demonstrated no desire to move, so the others formed a loose circle, including her, with the qulliq in the center.

Well accustomed to eating raw fish and meat, they chewed lustily on the strips of walrus and even more welcome blubber. Clarissa knew eating the fat was as important as the protein in the meat, as it provided both energy and warmth.

She noticed neither Pim nor Morfran ate at once. Pim produced a carved bone cup, filled it with melted snow water from the kettle, and held it to Sedna’s lips so she could drink. She drank cup after cup. The others shared a wooden cup, but Clarissa took only a mouthful, as did the others, before passing it on. They would clearly need to melt more snow. Clarissa wondered how long it had been since Sedna had the simple luxury of a drink of water. No wonder her lips cracked and her skin peeled.

When the pot was empty, Marceau took it and walked away into the dimming afternoon in search of ice or snow to refill it.

Morfran chose a strip of blubber and offered it to Sedna. Clarissa watched her eyes go from the fat to Morfran’s face, as though gauging the risk of accepting it. He held it patiently, a friendly smile with no hint of pity on his face, and when Sedna leaned forward and took a bite Clarissa felt like cheering. She turned her eyes away, took a grateful bite of her own portion of meat and entered into the casual conversation of the others.

Marceau returned, rehung the kettle over the qulliq, which Vasilisa continued tending as she ate, and they applied themselves to filling their bellies while Morfran murmured to Sedna and fed her strip after strip of blubber and meat.

By the time the second pot of snow had melted, Clarissa and most of the others were replete. Pim, who had apparently eaten his fill, once again held the cup for Sedna, but this time she drained only four cups before turning away. She accepted another strip of meat from Morfran and then one last strip of blubber.

Clarissa and the others drank their fill, and Marceau once again took the pot to refill it. Morfran sat beside Vasilisa and applied himself to his own meal while Sedna sat against her bony support, wrapped in a thick fur that hid her mutilated arms, her black hair a neat curtain around her.

When Marceau had returned and the pot once again held melting snow, Clarissa said to Pim, “Will you tell us a story?”

Pim turned to Morfran. “You are a selchie?”

“Yes,” he replied. My grandfather -- my other grandfather -- ” with a smile at Marceau, “was a selchie.”

“Do you know any of our stories?”

“Only my grandfather’s story”

“I will tell you a selchie story, then.”

“In a land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color, there lived a young hunter called Tek. His skin boat was the lightest and strongest, his eye the keenest and his harpoon never missed. When his people needed food, Tek pulled his boat onto the sea ice with the other hunters, making camp where the dark water lapped against the ice, or where the seals made blow holes and came up to breathe.

Then he sat or knelt, motionless in his furs, for hours at a time. The people said he left his body, as the shamans did, and his spirit slid into the water, searching for an animal ready to give up its life. He swam among the whales in their season, among the seals and walrus, and darted among the silver fish, fat and heavy with rich flesh, until an animal offered itself freely and followed him back to where his body waited with the other hunters.

After a kill, Tek and his people lifted their faces to the sky, opened their arms and gave thanks to the animal for its life. Tek and his people honored every gift the animal gave: meat, fat, skin, blood and bones.

The young hunter was popular because of his skill, and many women wanted to share his igloo and qulliq, but he favored none of them.

The truth was he felt most comfortable in the world hidden beneath the sea ice, the cold, dim world of shining scale, sleek fur over a solid covering of fat, and the majestic blowing of the whales. The voices of the ice, groaning and creaking, followed him into his dreams. The sea beneath his skin boat held him and rocked him like a mother.

The animals came to recognize Tek’s spirit and welcomed the naked swimmer who visited them with his straight black hair and harpoon.

A group of selchie heard about Tek, and one day his spirit encountered this group. One among them, Selena, found Tek particularly fascinating. His skin was bare and smooth. Dark hair grew sparsely on his chin and upper lip and floated around his head as he swam. He had a layer of fat under his skin, as all healthy animals did.

Selena was young and vital, not yet ready to give up her life for the sake of others, but she noted Tek’s patience as he sought an animal who wanted to follow him into the world above, the world of humans and ice bears, birds and the life-giving air and sun.

He visited her people beneath. Why should she not visit his above?

The other selchie tried to dissuade her. They told her stories about humans who stole selchie skins, imprisoning them for years. They warned her of the anguish of leaving children in the world above to return home beneath, of being torn between one’s life and one’s loved ones.

‘Humans are not like us,’ they said. ‘Their love is selfish. What they call love is only possession.’

‘He is different,’ Selena protested. ‘I know he is different. He comes to our world beneath, and he is not selfish. He takes only those who offer themselves.’

‘If you follow him above as a seal, he and the other hunters will kill you for food.’

Selena began watching Tek and the other hunters from above the water. She avoided the blow holes the other seals used and concealed herself behind rocks or ridges and sea ice slabs. At night, the hunters disappeared into two round snow shelters, lit from within by a dim warm light. After a time, the light went out and remained so for several hours.

On a night of silver moon, Selena clambered out of the water onto the ice. Carefully, she anchored her skin with a stone so the wind could not steal it. She wriggled through an opening in one of the snow shelters on her hands and knees, crawling until the space opened. Three shapes lay under piled furs. The first man snored mightily, and he smelled of some kind of unfamiliar meat. The smell of it was strong in the shelter. The second man smelled of rancid fat and sweat. The third lay on his side, facing away from her. He smelled cleanly of the salt sea, and she knew this must be Tek.

Cautiously, she wormed her way under the furs, bending her knees and molding her body around his. The luscious fullness of her breasts and belly pressed against his hard back and she laid her round cheek against the blade of his shoulder, inhaling his body’s private scent. The mingling of warm breath in the frozen, dark shelter created an icy humidity that chilled every exposed inch of skin. She snuggled closely against the sleeping man, covering her face and ear with her black hair, tucking her shoulder down and pulling in her bottom.

Tek stirred and turned. Selena felt awareness wake in him. Warningly, she laid a finger on his lips, then replaced the finger with her mouth.

His breath, like hers, was scented with fish. His hand came up, rested briefly on her ribcage, and then moved in exploration over the landscape of her human form. It excited her and she stirred against him, torn between the necessity to stay under the furs and the desire to stretch and display herself for his touch.

As she returned his caresses, moving her hand over his muscled shoulders and chest, the slight indentation of his waist and the solid strength of his hip, his warm breath gusted against her cheek, her chin, and her lips, which he possessed again and again with gentle but increasing violence.

Her hand encountered soft, warm, rounded shapes with sparse hair at the core of him, and suddenly she found a hard rod, pulsing, velvet-sheathed, and he gasped when she wrapped her fingers around it.

Selena threw her right leg over him and knelt above him so they felt one another’s breath and her breasts made a cushion between them. She reached down and guided him into the wet divide between her legs, sinking slowly down until her full weight rested on him, though her elbows still supported her on either side of his shoulders.

He bucked under her, swelling and hardening, and she smiled against his lips, pushing into his mouth with her tongue. His hands came around her hips and he pulled her hard against him, thrusting deeply. She made a small sound of delight, and now felt his lips smile against hers. She lifted her hips slowly, feeling the delicious friction as he slid out of her, and then drove them down again with her soft weight.

Silently, they rocked together. Selena could see nothing but faint moonglow. Her senses were reduced entirely to her nipples, her mouth and face, and the place where their bodies joined.

His shuddering release fueled her own, and she writhed and jerked like a fish on a line while it swept through her. She slid off him in a rush of warm fluid and he put out his right arm and gathered her against him, stroking her hair, his breathing quieting. She laid her right hand on his chest and felt his heart’s strong beating.

She slept.

Hours later, when the short day dawned, Tek found one of his sleeping skins discarded near a large rock at the ice’s edge. He picked it up and the scent of their lovemaking came to his nostrils. He returned the skin to the igloo and spent the scant hours of daylight hunched over a blow hole in the ice, his body singing with remembered warmth and softness, his mouth tender with her scent and taste, his heart as loosened and melted as fat in a burning qulliq.

So the selchie Selena and the young hunter Tek became secret lovers. Above the ice, the long nights held them, wordless, naked and passionate. Beneath, Tek sought her out in spirit form, and they swam and played while the sea ice glowed and shimmered around them.

Selena was right. Tek never sought to steal her skin. She was free to come and go as she would. She, in her turn, did not compel him. When he and the hunters had food, they returned to their village; too far from the sea ice for her to visit at night. In this way, seasons passed during which they lived separate lives beneath and above for days or weeks at a time.

During a joyous reunion after some weeks apart, Selena told Tek she was pregnant with his child, and awe and joy filled him.

The other selchie watched Selena and her lover cautiously, accepting her right to do as she wished but fearing a painful and perhaps dangerous outcome.

Tek’s people had no inkling of his secret, but noted he was more remote than ever before, and less interested in the hopeful young women who tried to catch his attention. His prowess as a hunter increased with time; none other could compete with him. If Tek went to the sea ice, he always returned with food for the village.

Inevitably, the other hunters began to envy Tek’s success. That the young man should consistently bring home more meat than more experienced, older hunters and his own peers caused envy, and the other hunters muttered of uncanny powers assisting Tek. Their pride in his ability to send his spirit beneath the ice to hunt turned to distrust and fear. Perhaps he had struck a bargain with Sedna herself, they said, a bargain that might bring ruin and disaster to the people.

It's a strange thing, but people who need not work hard every day to survive soon fall into dissension and dissatisfaction. Tek’s village, with an abundant and ongoing supply of food, grew argumentative and restive. Fights and gossip escalated. Rumor spread. It was no longer necessary for the hunters to work together, and the pride of a shared kill diminished.

Camped on the edge of the sea ice, the other hunters began sabotaging Tek. They blunted his harpoon against a stone when he wasn’t looking. They interrupted his spirit trances by stumbling over him, bringing him back into his crouched body with an unpleasant jolt. They watched him jealously, their eyes unfriendly. Selena and Tek began to feel nervous and the tension in the rounded snow shelters disturbed their delight in their long nights together.

Selena’s time grew near. Seals must give birth on land, and Tek was determined to find a way to be with her and protect her and the child during the vulnerability of birth. As the birth approached, Tek took care to be less successful hunting; choosing smaller animals to assure he would need to return to the hunting grounds sooner. Once there, he would simply wait until the birth was safely over before accepting an animal that presented itself. The other hunters would follow his lead, he knew.

He did not know the hunters had seen him more than once with a certain seal, easily identifiable by a pattern of grey spots. Their vague suspicions and resentments flowered into certainty. The seal was a powerful spirit, perhaps an evil spirit giving Tek an unfair, uncanny advantage. Tek’s pride and arrogance must be smashed to teach him humility.

They decided to teach him a lesson.

The other hunters arranged among themselves that one of them always kept his eye on the young hunter. So it was, when he stole away from camp one day, saying he wished to crouch by a distant blowhole the seals used, they followed him, keeping well out of sight.

Tek helped Selena up through the blow hole and onto the ice. She lay, straining and heaving as she gave birth. The seal pup slid out in a gush of fluid tinged with blood. The little white creature flopped, bursting the amniotic sac, and as Selena turned awkwardly to sniff it, the thick ribbon-like cord attaching mother and child broke.

Tek, weeping and smiling, passed his hands over the pup while Selena nuzzled and spoke to it. Tek did not see the hunter with a raised club until the club crashed down onto Selena’s head.

Tek heard a sickening crunch, a sound that haunted him for the rest of his life. Two hunters restrained him while another took out his knife and skinned Selena deftly, removing the valuable blubber layer under the skin as well. The ice bloomed with Selena’s blood. The pup lay, defenseless and weak, as they butchered his mother, and Tek raged, beside himself with grief.

When it was over the hunters backed away with their bloody prizes. One held Tek’s harpoon and his knife. He fell on his knees beside Selena’s body, pouring out his grief. The hunters left him there, moving away with nervous looks over their shoulders in case the uncanny seal came suddenly back to life and pursued them.

As Tek wept, he heard an expelled breath and a seal poked its head up from a blow hole, nostrils closing and dilating. The seal gave a long, low cry and its lustrous dark eyes welled with tears. Tek rose like an old man and lifted the white pup in his arms. For a moment he held it closely while it squirmed and wiggled, and then he tipped it gently into the blow hole with the seal.

‘Take care of our son,’ he said, ‘please.’

Alone again with Selena’s body, he grieved for a long time. When the short arctic dusk fell, he wiped his face on his sleeve and made his way back to the igloos, leaving the pathetic skinned seal behind for whatever scavengers might come. It was the natural way of things, and Selena, he knew, wouldn’t mind.

The igloo he shared with two others remained empty, and he understood the other hunters meant to cast him out and had gathered together in the second igloo. He was glad. He neither ate nor lit his qulliq, but wrapped himself in his sleeping skins, wishing to never think, feel or remember again, and slept.”

Clarissa wept. In spite of the ending of the doomed love affair, something in her longed for the passion the lovers had shared. It was right, this power and delight in body and spirit. It was lovely, the selchie woman and the man in their snow shelter in the moon-washed arctic night.

“What happened to the child?” she asked Pim. “Did he become a selchie, too?”

“He did,” said Pim. The qulliq cast strange shadows on his face. Wind scoured the bare sea bed, and they hunched and huddled around the flickering light. “Another selchie with a new pup became his milk mother, and he grew up in the sea. When he became a young adult, the selchie told him about his origins, and he ventured onto the sea ice one day and discovered his human form.”

“It was you,” said Morfran. “It’s your story.”

Pim smiled. “Yes. Now I live mostly above, with my father’s people. I’ve told them I’m an orphan from another place. My father is dead now, but I’m a useful hunter and the village accepted me, though they sense I’m different.” He addressed Sedna’s slight, dark figure. “That’s why I’ve come to seek you, Ice Mother. We are your children, the creatures of above as well as the creatures below. Because of you, men possess food and light and life. Because of you, the sea is rich with salmon, seal, whale and walrus. Without you, we will die.”

Clarissa noticed Pim refrained from intimating Sedna needed help, as well. Perhaps she could survive on her own, even without hands, but she didn’t appear to be much interested in survival at this point.

Sedna neither stirred nor spoke in response. After Poseidon and Marceau lashed the skins they’d found in camp, still stinking, but considerably cleaner, to the whale bones to provide some shelter from the wind, they blew out the qulliq and lay down together to sleep in the empty place where land and water once mingled.

CHAPTER 15

The next morning, Pim once again set out for his village, promising to bring back a hide tent for better shelter. Marceau, Poseidon and Morfran returned to the sea, this time in search of salmon. Clarissa and Vasilisa stayed with Sedna, melting snow water and trying to discover some way to connect with the remote, angry, handless woman.

Pim addressed her as ‘Lady’ or ‘Ice Mother’, but Clarissa couldn’t view Sedna as a goddess. Aside from smoldering anger, she appeared powerless, as well as terribly alone. Her spirit seemed to mirror her mutilated body. Clarissa thought she would have been content to lie naked against the whale’s backbone and die rather than seek food, company and shelter, either on land or in the sea.

Yet she accepted both food and water, as well as Vasilisa’s attention to her hair. She ate like one who intended to live. She no longer asked them to leave, watched and listened to all that went on, though rarely contributed. If she possessed power, she didn’t use it to help herself or drive them away.

There was plenty of blubber, so they lit the qulliq and continued melting snow and ice for water. Vasilisa, pinching the arctic cotton carefully along the shallow bowl’s rim to encourage an even, smokeless flame, said to Sedna, “I think this fat would help your hair and skin. The cold and wind suck away our moisture. May I comb some through your hair?”

Sedna nodded without speaking. Vasilisa rubbed a blob of half-melted fat between her palms and rubbed her hands through Sedna’s hair from scalp to ends. She picked up the carved ivory comb and began using it. Clarissa copied her gesture of melting a pinch of fat between her warm palms and knelt before Sedna. She took one of her forearms gently in her hands and began rubbing the fat into her skin.

It was strange to see arms without hands. Her eyes couldn’t get used to the wrongness of it. The stumps had healed cleanly and looked pathetic rather than grotesque. Sedna’s skin was chapped, peeling and flaking, but her arm felt warm and living, reassuringly normal. Clarissa smoothed the fat into it, rubbing gently, and watched Sedna’s skin drink it in. Sedna kept her eyes lowered, looking down into her lap, but she let Clarissa handle her arms docilely. Her passive acquiescence emboldened Clarissa, and she lifted Sedna’s chin with one hand and applied a fingertip coated with fat to her lips with the other. Sedna’s eyes were the deep green of cold water and made Clarissa think of seals and selchie in the strangely-lit world beneath the ice.

“Will you tell us the rest of the story you began yesterday?” she asked.

She removed her hand from Sedna’s chin, and once again her gaze lowered and she hooded her eyes. Clarissa made sure Sedna’s arms were tucked into the shelter of the furs draped over her shoulders and moved back. Vasilisa’s ministrations were bringing Sedna’s dull hair into shining life.

“She wanted to touch it,” Sedna began, as though there had been no interruption in the story.

“The girl and the wolf circled each other as the sun rose higher in the sky and the land’s rocky bones bloomed with lichen. The ice and snow receded, revealing cushions of moss and mats of grasses and wildflowers. By the time the sun’s spiral had nearly reached its highest apex, never falling below the horizon, the girl and wolf rolled and played together in the sedge and cotton grass, tasting one another’s scent and breath, and she knew his coat’s depth and warmth, which he shed in heavy white tufts.

One day he led her out to the edge of the summer ice and sprang into the water, disappearing in the green depths. For a moment, her heart faltered and withered. Then, a blunt black head with a white throat and eye patch emerged from the water and an orca rested its chin on the ice beside her. It looked sideways at her out of a small black eye and opened its mouth as though smiling, revealing an efficient row of sharp, peg-like teeth and a thick tongue.

‘Akhlut?’ she said, in wonder.

The creature nodded its head, slid off the ice and gamboled, leaping, rolling and slapping its tail in a spray of water that caught the sunlight like diamonds and streaked the blue green sea with foam.

Thus, the girl understood the mystery of the giant wolf tracks disappearing and reappearing at the ice’s edge.

When Akhlut clambered out of the sea, he shook himself vigorously, teeth bared in a grin much like that of the orca, and she knelt beside him and combed her fingers through his coat, pulling loose his winter hair and leaving behind a shorter, darker pelt. He luxuriated under her touch, panting.

Leaving behind clumps of discarded wet hair, they left the sea ice behind, and Akhlut led the girl to a place of springy turf protected by a stone the size of a snow shelter, and there he revealed his third and last form, that of a man.

And so the girl became a woman under the wakeful sun, and for a few short weeks she lived in joy with her mate in all his aspects, putting aside thoughts of the future and the expectations of her people along with her heavy winter clothing. She lay, unashamed and bare, under the sun in the stone’s kind shelter. and Akhlut wove saxifrage stems through her hair.

The season of midnight sun burned in everyone’s loins, and she knew the village would hardly sleep during the light days and nights. There would be singing and dancing, drumming, visiting, repair work and the fashioning of new tools, clothing and other materials. As snow shelters sank and melted, watering the earth, her people moved into hide tents, lashed against the unceasing wind.

Summer’s bounty does not last, and the people scattered across the tundra to collect cotton grass for the qulliq, willow wood and berries. A whisper of the girl playing with a large white wolf grew to a murmur of someone hearing lovers’ laughter from behind a rock, and someone else swore they saw a woman fondling the head of an orca near the sea ice. The village seethed and muttered. Life depended on knowing one’s place in the world of ice, snow, land and sea. Magic was a fearsome force, and might bring who knew what ruin to the people. The girl and her uncanny lover must be stopped.

The sun’s spiral sank and night’s cold shadow spread like a wing across the land. The hide tents flapped in the wind and the land’s fugitive green faded to dun and brown, russet and grey.

One day, the girl’s father begged her to accompany him in his sea kayak to fish. Once, they had been happy companions on the sea, fishing, laughing and telling stories. She had not fished with her father since childhood, but he insisted, saying he missed her, he hardly saw her these days, and she agreed.

They set out early one grey morning when the clouds were heavy and low and the wind quiet. For a time, all went well, and they harvested several pounds of salmon, a good start to their fall supply.

When they had been out for many hours, the wind increased and the sea grew choppy. The skin boat floated low in the water, heavy with fish, and the girl wanted to go home. All day she had thought of Akhlut, and she longed to be with him again. He would be waiting for her.

Her father lingered, checking one good fishing spot, and then another, talking about everything and nothing, yet casting frequent looks at the sea and sky, as though worried about the changing weather.

‘What are you waiting for?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. It’s a shame to go back before we carry a full load, is all.’

‘Father, we have a full load already!’

He didn’t meet her eyes, but looked back toward land, as though waiting for a signal.

Fear seized her, though she didn’t know what she feared. Something was wrong.

‘Father!’

He didn’t turn toward her but continued surveying the low hump of land and iron sky.

‘The hunters went in search of meat today,’ he said distantly. ‘Let us hope they find caribou…or skins for the winter.’

‘I did not know there was to be a hunt. Why didn’t you accompany the others?’

He turned to look at her then, and she knew. His task was to keep her out of the way while they hunted Akhlut. They had been seen.

In a haze of fear and rage, she struck out at him. Glowering, he shoved her with his paddle, and she toppled out of the boat.

The cold water stole her breath, and her heavy hides and furs weighed her down so she could hardly kick hard enough to keep her head out of the water. Gasping and choking, she grasped the side of the skin boat so he could heave her back in.

He struck her clinging hands with the paddle.

‘Father!’ she cried.

‘You shame me!’ he roared. ‘You, with your uncanny lover! You bring ruin upon us! You’re bad!’

‘Father, please!’

When the paddle smashed down on her fingers again, she let go, floundering in the water.

‘Unnatural woman! You forget your place and your people!’

She grasped the boat again, her legs heavy as lead.

‘I love him!’

He dropped the paddle and lunged for her with his knife in his hand, bringing the blade down in a chopping motion. She watched in bewilderment as her severed hand with its white fingers fell into the water in a spray of blood. She reached for them with her bleeding stump as they sank into the green water. They were her fingers. They mustn’t be lost in the sea. As though in a dream, she watched them sink, watched her raw stump reach for them. She could feel her cupped hand grasping, the skin of her fingers alert for the feel of what they sought, though they were no longer there.

With an angry roar, her father brought the knife down on her other hand, and then she thrashed low in the water, cold salt in her mouth, her ears singing. Her father’s face looked as hard as stone. The sea covered her eyes as she sank, too cold to struggle any longer, but still she gazed up, unblinking, until too much water flowed between them to make out his features any longer.

Her hands, white and graceful, sank slowly with her. Blood swirled and congealed in fantastic shapes, rolling and turning, forming into spirals around her as she sank. She saw a large dark eye, curious and gentle. She saw a sharp, curving tusk beside stiff whiskers. She saw an endless hairless body, thick and massive, with a huge tail. She saw a twisting spike in a smooth, blunt head, and shades of white, grey, black and brown skin and fur.

Down and down she sank, escorted by the whirling creatures around her, and she realized suddenly she was not drowning, but breathed as easily beneath as she did above. Her hands were gone. Her father and the skin boat were gone. Akhlut was surely gone. Her old life was gone. Once again, she was born in a cloud of blood, but this time she was not alone. This time, her bone and blood and flesh peopled the sea with walrus, seal and whale.

So Sedna, who never bore a child and knew a lover only for a few short weeks, became the Ice Mother, the one who feeds the animals above and below. She feeds the humans, too, but grudgingly, for they murdered her lover and cast her out, and she demands gifts and attention before she releases an animal to feed them. The shamans must undertake the long and dangerous spirit journey beneath to propitiate her, and she insists they comb her hair and perform other services in exchange for food.”

Clarissa, absorbed by the horror of the story, realized Sedna wept. Her tears did not distort her voice, but the fur around her was spotted with moisture. During the story, Vasilisa finished braiding Sedna’s hair and wrapped it carefully around her small head, leaving her slender neck and the finely modeled cheeks exposed, though her head remained bent and her eyes lowered, as usual. The tattooed lines on her chin gave her an exotic look.

“Do your hands pain you?” Vasilisa asked, and Clarissa felt shocked. The question seemed an inadequate and inappropriate response to the terrible story. What did one say to someone who had endured such anguish? How did one acknowledge such pain and begin soothing it?

Sedna appeared surprised, too. She raised her head and looked at Vasilisa over her shoulder. Her dark eyes still smoldered with pride and rage, but Clarissa saw respect there, as well. She remembered suddenly that Vasilisa had been maimed once and had a malformed foot as a result. Her question was genuine. Clarissa wondered for the first time if Vasilisa’s foot pained her, and that was why the question occurred to her.

“Sometimes,” said Sedna. “Sometimes I dream of Akhlut. He comes to me as a wolf, and I reach out for him, expecting to feel the softness and depth of his winter coat, but my hands are not there and my stumps are bleeding so his white fur is stained with blood. When I wake, my hands itch and tingle and throb as though warming after frostbite.”

“Are you certain he’s dead?” asked Clarissa.

“He would have come to find me if he could have,” said Sedna.

Clarissa nodded.

“So, you are Ice Mother, but no one cares for you. Your children inhabit the sea. Your people exiled you and fear you, though they depend upon you,” said Vasilisa.

“The shamans visit me only when the people need of food,” said Sedna.

“No one loves you for yourself. You must feed all, but no one feeds you. You are alone.”

Vasilisa’s voice remained steady. Clarissa felt surprised at her cruelty. Surely comfort would be kinder, some kind of reassurance, some hope Sedna was loved apart from her ability to provide food, even if it was false hope.

Sedna sprang violently and unexpectedly to her feet, making Clarissa flinch and gasp. It was the first time she’d seen her stand up. The skins around her shoulders slid off, leaving her pitifully thin and naked, but her twisted crown of hair gave her a regal look. She ran lightly away from the camp, bounding as though weightless, making a keening sound of rage and grief. After a moment she stopped and bent, bracing her mutilated forearms against her thighs, sobbing and retching as though she would tear herself apart. Clarissa made as though to follow her, but Vasilisa laid a hand on her arm and shook her head. “Let her be,” she commanded.

Beyond Sedna, the heavily-laden figure of Pim appeared, emerging out of the white and grey landscape.

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.

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.

Pim, without waiting for permission or direction, picked up his drum by a short, protruding handle. He struck not the hide, but the edges of the instrument with a stout piece of wood like a mallet. As he struck it, he swayed on his feet, his body moving with his beat, and the big drum tilted with each blow. Morfran thought the effect was of not merely drumming but dancing as well, a one-person expression of instrument and body. Pim raised and lowered his arms, hitting the drum in a steady beat, crouching and then rising to his full height. Bundled in his heavy layered furs and moving with his clumsy boots, he made an ponderous yet oddly beautiful figure in the qulliq’s light with the cold starry sky arching above him, a male figure of strength and skill rather than grace.

Nephthys picked up the bones, one at a time. She held one out so they could see it, a carved polar bear. Pim, still drumming, spoke the native word for it, and bent at the waist, holding the drum low and lumbering in imitation of a bear’s movements. Nephthys repeated the strange word, and suddenly flung the bone out of the circle into the night. Morfran couldn’t hear the sound of it falling on the stony sea bed over the wind and Pim’s drum.

Nephthys searched through the pile and repeated the same ritual for a carved arctic fox, a hare, and, lastly, an arctic wolf made from walrus ivory. Pim supplied the native word for each creature, as well as a mime or dance of its movement, and each was cast outside the circle. Lastly, Nephthys held up an owl. Pim gave her the native word, she repeated it, and flung it straight up into the night sky. The object unfolded into an owl, silent as snow, white as ice, and took wing, flying inland.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom,” went the drum.

Now, Nephthys began laying out the shape of human hands, as though working a puzzle she’d completed many times before. Morfran leaned forward, fascinated by the way she pieced together the bones, some carved, and all from animals except the one knucklebone, which she carefully laid in place for the left hand’s middle finger.

While she worked in the qulliq’s light, Pim moved around the circle of watchers, never varying his drumbeat and playing with his whole body, as though he played the wind, each stone, each piece of bone, every star and creature of the night. Morfran felt mesmerized, hypnotized by the flickering light and the drum. The wind sighed in his ears, colder than death.

As Nephthys finished the second hand, Morfran heard a disturbance in the night. A snowy owl floated out of the darkness and perched on a whale rib, pale as a ghost, its eyes glinting in the qulliq light. Morfran turned his head and saw bobbing lights in the distance, and heard the sound of voices. An arctic fox, white as new snow, trotted toward them and sat like a dog, its tail wrapped around its feet. A polar bear moved out of the shadows with a powerful, rocking gait, sitting on its haunches and watching them out of small black eyes.

Morfran heard Clarissa gasp as a large white wolf moved opposite the bear, ears pricked, long tongue lolling. An arctic hare followed the wolf, appearing unconcerned by the presence of the predators, though keeping a prudent distance between itself and the fox and wolf.

The watching group stayed seated, craning their heads to see the approaching people and animals. Pim stopped drumming and stood motionless, his face amazed.

Nephthys alone appeared unsurprised. Two skeletal hands laid on a hide before her now, fingertips pointing toward her. She watched the approaching people, a group of perhaps forty women and men, smiling but aloof, as though watching expected but slightly late guests to the party. The people gathered around the seated circle. Some carried qulliqs. Nephthys gestured, and they came forward and set their lamps in the circle’s center with the camp’s qulliq before stepping back to rejoin their fellows.

Nephthys nodded to Pim, and he resumed beating the drum and his swaying, crouching dance. The newcomers allowed him space to move. Morfran supposed the animals had summoned the shaman in some magical way, and he in turn summoned Pim’s people, who followed their guides onto the dry sea bed.

Nephthys stood up and extended a hand to Sedna, who also stood. Sedna studied the faces around her, a thin smile on her lips. She made no effort to hide her stumps. Indeed, she shook them free of the skins fastened around her shoulders as though displaying them. The people murmured, and Morfran heard someone say “Sedna!” in a hushed tone of fearful reverence.

Sedna’s gaze traveled around the circle, her bearing proud and dignified. She stepped forward into the circle’s center. Hastily, Morfran folded a skin and laid it on the stones near the skeletal hands. Sedna, at Nephthys’s gesture, knelt and laid her stumps next to the neat rows of bones that lie at the dividing point between long arm bones and the intricate sculpture of hands.

Someone began chanting. It seemed to Morfran the qulliq flames rose higher in answer, and Pim at once beat a new rhythm, bending, swaying, crouching. Other voices joined the chanting, unintelligible words chopping the air with guttural sounds. The crowd swayed, feet moving up and down together, as the chant swelled.

Morfran thought it the strangest scene he’d ever witnessed: the ancient desert child and the lovely Ice Mother, kneeling next to a cluster of lamps rimmed with fire, surrounded by a handful of strangers from far seas and lands, who were in turn surrounded by the native people of this wind, this sky, this land of ice and snow and sea, who were in turn surrounded by the creatures they depended upon for life.

Sedna knelt, motionless, hunched over the framework of hands Nephthys had pieced together, and Nephthys crouched across from her, still and silent, watching intently. In the uncertain, wavering qulliq light, all was shadow and flicker, bone and stone and starlight, and the compelling chant, shuffling feet, and Pim’s drumming made a background as eternal and elemental as the night sky.

After what might have been minutes or hours, Morfran was never sure, Sedna sprang to her feet with a triumphant cry and held up her … hands.

“Oohhh!” said the watching crowd.

The night filled with a roaring, rushing sound Morfran couldn’t identify. The snowy owl took off from its perch. Pim stopped drumming.

“It’s the sea!” shouted Poseidon thunderously. “It returns to the land! Change!”

Morfran felt the sea bed tremble as he shifted into his seal shape and a wave of water swept across the sea bed, taking everything and everyone with it. A foaming whirlpool of water filled with struggling people. He felt no fear for Sedna or his other companions, but the people would drown without help, and he knew they could ill afford to lose so many skins and qulliqs. He looked around and made for the nearest struggling human shape. Many seals were in the water, far more than his companions, and he realized the selchie had come with the sea and they, too, did their utmost to rescue the humans. He fastened his teeth on a parka’s fur collar and swam with all his strength toward the shore.

One by one, everyone was pushed, pulled and carried to safety. No one had seen or rescued Nephthys, and Morfran felt cold at the thought of her death. Surely she, in her power, had not been swept away by the icy black sea! Then he heard Poseidon’s joyous roar and saw Sedna, riding on the back of an Orca and looking entirely at home. A falcon perched on her dark braided crown, dry and serene.

Most of Pim’s village, waterlogged and cold but awed and touched with wonder, trailed away into the night. Pim himself and a few others stayed, collecting soaked skins, qulliq bowls, the hide tent and even the pot in which they had melted snow and ice for drinking water, as the seals and other sea creatures retrieved them. Sedna herself found Pim’s drum floating on the agitated waves and brought it to Pim, though his mallet was gone.

“When daylight comes, we’ll get the rest,” she assured him. “Nothing will be lost. Go get dry and warm. “

“Ice Mother,” Pim said, kneeling before her and kissing her new hands. “Forgive us. Forgive me. I did not understand.”

“Now we begin again,” she said. “Carry my story and tell it so it is not forgotten. Let your drum speak it, dance with it and share it with your people and strangers, both. Remember me, and I will remember you.” She looked around at the others, standing naked and shivering in their human forms to say goodbye. “I will tell of the selchie, the birch wood, the Rusalka, and the sea kings. I will tell of the ancient child Nephthys, in her desert between the worlds, where everything lost is found again.”

She kissed Clarissa and Vasilisa and held Morfran’s face between her hands. “Thank you,” she said. He embraced her, as did Marceau and Poseidon.

“Go now,” commanded Sedna, “before you freeze. Pim, will you take care of Nephthys until the sun rises and she can find her way home?” He nodded and held out an arm. Nephthys flew to him and alighted.

The sea people slid into the waves, once again lapping against the land, and the water felt warm as a bath to Morfran after standing in his thin human skin in the icy wind. Sedna swam with them, supple and lithe and strong, her hands graceful and pale in the dark water. A huge black and white face rose from the depths to greet her and the merfolk moved past her, swimming out to sea, heading toward the portal to the birch wood and home.

CHAPTER 16

RAPUNZEL

When at last Rapunzel found herself alone in the lighthouse, her desire for absolute solitude had long abated. She missed Persephone, Ginger, Heks and Clarissa. She even missed Cerus.

It was a bleak time on the cliffs above the sea. The stone, bereft of the sea’s passionate caress, grew starker and colder by the day. Bitter frost hardened the dry sea bed and pewter sky watched dully over a scouring wind.

Rapunzel frequently observed the violet light which had first appeared the night she danced with Ginger, Persephone and Clarissa. She associated it with storms, but also days of frozen stillness, when all of Webbd seemed to be sleeping stone and cold silence. On such days she frequently stood at the top of the lighthouse, exulting in the wild, stern beauty of sky, stone and sea, and the eerie violet light settled in her cloak’s folds and outlined her swathed figure. Sometimes she thought she caught a plaintive, far-distant phrase of music, as though Dar’s ghost roamed the winter landscape with his pipe.

On still days her only companions were clouds of seabirds, white and grey, wheeling in raucous, rowdy groups above the stony landscape. One of them brought her a letter from Radulf.

Dear Rapunzel:

Morfran and Delphinus showed up a few days ago at dawn. Chris woke me. We were on our way back to Griffin Town after a discouraging series of stops at our usual ports of call. Trade becomes increasingly disrupted, especially building, smithing, and luxury trade, like gems. Usually ports are my favorite places, with the intermingling of people from all over Webbd, come together to buy, sell and trade, but now the happy camaraderie has turned to sullen mistrust. Fights break out frequently and dishonesty and thievery are rife. I was glad to get back home to the wide-open sea.

Even the sea, though, is not entirely peaceful. During my childhood I remember talk of corsairs boarding ships to steal goods and occasionally ransacking a port, but their numbers were small and their activities largely kept in check. Everyone knows about the magical specialty black market. Now we hear ugly rumors of increased demand for animal parts, and even enslavement of tree nymphs and merfolk. It’s getting hard to find anyone to barter with. Everyone wants gold, not to pass on in further trade or barter, but to hoard and keep.

Morfran has been far north with Poseidon, Vasilisa, Marceau and Clarissa. They traveled there to see Sedna and her people, who have also been affected by the division between land and sea. Sedna is a powerful guardian, but she became estranged from her people and they lost faith in her and, by extension, their natural world of ice, snow and sea. The story is too long to repeat here; either Marceau or Clarissa will bring it to you in person. They healed the disconnection and the water returned to the land, with the help of Nephthys, of all people!

Morfran also brought me news of recent events in the birch wood, including an Imbolc ritual in which Clarissa participated. I think you know the White Stag sacrificed himself during Samhain, and since then the Rusalka have been quite concerned about the loss of Cerunmos and a sacred consort for Artemis. Cerunmos was at the heart of the Imbolc ritual as a symbol of male fertility. However, during the ritual the new Sacred Consort revealed himself in the shape of a lynx. His presence, along with the bathhouse portal’s repair, gives the Rusalka and Morfran hope we might yet find a way to heal the damaged Yrtym and return to happier, more peaceful times.

During that Samhain ritual, Morfran and Rumpelstiltskin were initiated into malehood by Odin, and we talked a long time about what he learned and how he applied it to the situation with Sedna. I vividly remember the Ostara initiation we did with Baba Yaga before you and I met and before Rowan Tree. These initiations are both powerful and enigmatic; they leave one with more questions than answers about how to proceed, but they do provide a fixed point of reference, rather like Vasilisa’s fiery skull, to steer by.

If my role as a male is to provide, protect and procreate, how do I perform those tasks in a way that best supports the Yrtym, those around me, and myself?

I’m wondering about the Yrtym in the sea. If I understand correctly, Yrtym forms a kind of invisible scaffold or matrix weaving land, sea, and sky together. Marceau, Chris, Poseidon and I speculate endlessly about this. Is it possible to see it? Is there a center point of origin somewhere in the sea? Even Posey has no idea. The only one who might know is Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, but Proteus is elusive and will answer no questions unless someone can catch him. As far as we know, nobody ever has, so that may only be an old story, like the Firebird leading one to treasure if captured. The only contact Poseidon has with Proteus has to do with his horses and sea wolves, for Proteus breeds both, along with herding seals and other creatures. Proteus does not buy or sell his animals; his price is always a marble game. Poseidon says he rarely speaks. He’s evidently quite a good marble player, though!

I find myself thinking often of Dar, the White Stag, and the Firebird. They were guides, and friends. Both Dar and the White Stag are gone now, but are they? I used to rarely see spirit candles; that queer blue light only appeared during a violent lightning storm at sea. Now I often see them, outlining the Marella’s sails at night or flickering and rippling in the swells. My figurehead is a snarling wolf, and the light plays about that, too. Does the light come from Castor, or from Dar? Or are they the same? If only Dar could appear, tell me a story, play his bone pipe, and lead me to where I need to be!

As for the White Stag, I can’t speak of my feelings about his death, and I can’t imagine either the grief or strength of Artemis. Perhaps one day I’ll see the lynx Morfran described and find out for myself if there’s any echo of the magnificent creature I knew and loved as Cerunmos.

None of my news seems useful. I wish I could do more, make some kind of a real difference, provide some essential clue or missing link to all this. It seems Webbd is unraveling faster than we can mend it, and I wonder what the future holds. There isn’t much point in my heading to sea again as a merchant until something changes. It's not worth the cost or effort right now. When I get back to Griffin Town, I’ll have a long talk with Minerva and figure out my next step. I’ll be in touch.

In the meantime, take care of yourself. I hope you’re gathering more helpful news from other places and informants. Thank you for being so kind to Chris. You’ll see him again. The fire salamanders fascinated him. Interesting, that you turn out to have direct access to Dvorgdom through the tower.

Affectionately,

Radulf

One day a mighty storm blew in from the sea. The wind hurled itself around the lighthouse. Rapunzel wrapped her cloak around herself and stood on the narrow platform atop the tower, exulting in the storm. The purple and grey sky filled with noisy tumult. It snatched her breath and her cloak and the stone tower felt suddenly frail and vulnerable.

A sprawling black form, flung by the wind, fell awkwardly against her and slid down her body to the platform. Another fell against her arm. She swept it under the shelter of her cloak and snatched a third attempting to alight on the narrow rail surrounding the tiny platform.

Hastily, she bundled the three birds into the door at the tower’s top. Snow whirled in the air like white sand, making her eyes water and her cheeks sting. She shut the door behind her with a hard kick. The silence and stillness in the small circular room was shocking after the chaos outside. Rapunzel and the crows looked at one another, dazed and wind-blown.

Something thumped against the door. Rapunzel, expecting another crow, opened it and found a huddled form on the threshold. She made out a red beak and black feathers, but it was far too large to be a crow. She bent, bundled it unceremoniously in her arms and brought it into the shelter of the lighthouse.

The bird she held remained motionless. “Come along,” Rapunzel said to the crows, and quickly descended the stone steps winding along the tower’s curving walls. The ground floor room was warm and cozy, the stove radiating heat. Rapunzel knelt and carefully laid the bird on a sheepskin near the fire. She stretched out the large wings, feeling the bones for a fracture. The bird’s feathers were broken and crumpled, but she found no serious injury. It possessed the long graceful neck and regal look of a swan, but Rapunzel hadn’t seen or heard of a black swan with a red beak.

Image by Christine Sponchia from Pixabay

The crows found perches and busily preened their disordered feathers, exchanging an occasional hoarse comment. They appeared perfectly at home and unharmed. Rapunzel filled a flat dish with water so they could drink and set it on the kitchen table. Immediately, the nearest crow hopped off the back of a chair, landed in the dish and began taking a vigorous and enthusiastic bath.

“Hold on!” Rapunzel snatched up the dish, laughing, plugged the sink and filled it with a couple of inches of water. “If you must bathe, do it here.”

The crow perched on the sink’s edge, gave Rapunzel a roguish look out of shining dark eyes, hopped down into the sink and commenced splashing.

Rapunzel checked on the swan. In its place she found a young man, fair-skinned and handsome, with one large black wing in place of his arm. He was conscious, but confused.

“What happened?”

“You were caught in a storm.”

“The crows tried to lead me to safety, but I lost track of them.”

“They’re here, too.”

All three crows, hearing the stranger’s voice, walked about the place where he lay, jostling one another rudely, mincing gleefully and hopping, making chuckling sounds and giving vent to soft yaps like a nest of puppies.

“Thank you, my friends,” said the swan man.

“I’m Rapunzel and you’re in a lighthouse.”

“My name is Johan. I’m a traveler, and the wind blew so fiercely I couldn’t keep my bearings.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” He moved his arm, legs and wing gingerly, stretching and flexing.

“Rest. I made fish chowder. Will you eat some?”

“Yes, please!”

Rapunzel left him and warmed the soup. She sliced bread and set the table. After a few minutes Johan rose and went to the lighthouse door, accompanied by the crows. He slid the bolt back and looked out into the gale. The wind groaned and a snow swirled across the threshold. Johan shut the door hastily.

The storm raged about the lighthouse for two days, creating a strange intimacy inside the curving stone walls. Johan, fed and rested, declared himself perfectly well and healthy and took over the care of the wood stove, even braving the weather to split kindling and carry wood in from a shed outside the tower.

The loss of an arm didn’t appear to trouble him. He was deft and able in everything he did, using his wing as a modified arm.

The crows appeared quite at home, curious, mischievous and sarcastic. They demonstrated no desire to leave the shelter of the lighthouse, though both Rapunzel and Johan opened the door for them at intervals, offering freedom.

Rapunzel, by nature reticent, was happy to listen as Johan told her about his brothers and sister, Elsa, and their stepmother’s machinations, resulting in him becoming one-armed and being able to take a black swan’s shape. He had traveled widely, often accompanied and guided by his friends the crows. He’d found the sea withdrawn from the land in many places, and from the air he’d observed whole sections of dead or dying forests.

He hadn’t heard of Yrtym and listened attentively while Rapunzel told him of the breakdown of connection everywhere, including portals and within formerly peaceful communities.

“We fear for Yggdrasil’s health, the Tree of Life. Even the stars in the night sky are affected. Certain constellations have disappeared altogether.”

“And all this is because of the Yrtym?” Johan asked in wonder.

“We think so.”

“It’s hard to imagine something big enough to connect the stars, the sea, the trees and the underground, yet invisible.”

“Yes. As though Life’s architect is nameless and faceless.”

“And you think actively and intentionally repairing connection is the answer?”

“We hope so. It appears to me those who live between or on the thresholds between one world and another are our best hope. Rather like yourself, in fact.”

“You mean between a swan and a man?”

“Yes, but more than that. You’re a creature of the water, the air and the land. You represent a three-way elemental connection, as well as a bridge between swans and humans. Your viewpoint and understanding about different ways of living are necessarily broad.”

“What about you?”

“I came to this place to gather information about what’s happening. I possess certain powers, and from here I can watch and listen to the night sky, the sea and the land. News comes to me from far-away places, and I pass it on.”

“Like a spider in a web,” said Johan, grinning.

“Just like that,” agreed Rapunzel, and changed into her ugly woman face.

Johan gasped and flinched back. “Gods!”

Rapunzel giggled. A crow alighted on her knee, looking intently into her face with first one eye and then the other.

Johan laughed and Rapunzel joined in.

“Caw!” croaked the crow. “Caw! Caw!”

The other crows took up the call, and for a moment all was bedlam.

Johan, laughing helplessly, covered his ears. ‘Shut up!” he bellowed to the crows.

Rapunzel changed back into her own face, which each crow examined suspiciously in turn while she and Johan laughed until they ached.

“It’s your turn to talk,” said Johan, his face flushed with mirth. “I’m not saying another word until you tell me how you do that.”

They sat up late by the fire, Rapunzel telling the story of her encounter with Baba Yaga and her subsequent brief marriage. When Rapunzel climbed to the top of the lighthouse to check on the light, she found the wind dropping and the storm dying.

The next morning dawned clear, still and cold. A thin, hard crust of snow coated the seaward side of the lighthouse, outbuildings, and cliffs. When Rapunzel climbed the tower to put the light out for the first time in two days and three nights, Johan and the crows accompanied her. The crows hopped onto the platform’s narrow railing, stretched their wings, cawed hoarsely and launched themselves into the pale, storm-scoured sky.

“Thank you,” said Johan, taking her hand. “I believe you saved my life.”

“I’m glad I was here,” said Rapunzel. “Where will you go now?”

“Inland. You’ve made me curious about Yggdrasil. I think I’d like to see it for myself.”

“Safe travels,” said Rapunzel. She stepped back and watched as Johan’s form dwindled and became covered with black feathers. The swan stretched out its neck proudly, spread its wings and, somewhat clumsily, flew up and joined the circling crows. Rapunzel waved and watched them out of sight.

A series of long grey days followed. Rapunzel faithfully lit the lighthouse when the sun set and extinguished it when dim morning crept toward the tower from the sea. One night she awoke to tapping on her window, barely audible over the wind’s moan. It was Ash and Beatrice, shivering with cold and fatigue. They roosted thankfully in a quiet corner and slept without moving for the rest of that night and the following day, while Rapunzel fretted with impatience. When at last they had wakened, eaten and drunk, they told Rapunzel about the Imbolc dance and fertility ritual, the new Sacred Consort’s appearance, and the marble game between Poseidon and Baba Yaga.

Rapunzel wiped tears of laughter from her cheeks. Ash’s mimicry of Baba Yaga and Poseidon had been devastating.

“…and then Poseidon, Marceau, Morfran and Clarissa went through the bathhouse portal to see Sedna,” Ash wound up, “and we came here.”

“You forgot to tell her about your part in the fertility ritual,” said Beatrice slyly.

Ash became very busy grooming his flanks. “Nothing to tell,” he mumbled.

“One of the Rusalka takes the form of a bat,” Beatrice said to Rapunzel. “Her name is Izolda. She propositioned Ash.”

“I see,” said Rapunzel, amused.

“If you’re quite finished,” said Ash crossly. Deftly, he combed Beatrice out of his chest fur and onto the floor beneath the handy stone ledge he’d been hanging from and flitted up the curving stairs and out of sight.

Beatrice squeaked with laughter.

“I didn’t know he was so sensitive,” Rapunzel said, chuckling.

“I can’t wait to tell Mirmir,” said Beatrice.

When Ash and Beatrice were well-fed and rested, they departed for Yggdrasil, promising to watch for Johan along the way. After some discussion, they decided flying overland was safer than going through the lighthouse cellar into Dvorgdom. If the portal under Yggdrasil was shut, they would be unable to reach the Norns easily.

They left from the top of the lighthouse and Rapunzel stood a long time in the cold night. The Phoenix constellation glowed and pulsed, orange and red stars outlining wings and a long trailing tail. It made Rapunzel think of the Firebird, and the Firebird led to thoughts of Dar and Radulf’s letter. Was the Firebird abroad this night on Webbd, or did it rest in its place in the night sky, waiting for the right time to lead someone to their treasure?

As she gazed, the familiar violet blue light moved among the stars outlining Phoenix. Rapunzel stretched out an arm and spread her fingers, and the light caressed her fingertips and outlined her hand, her wrist and her arm. Rapunzel clenched her fist around the light and brought it to her breast. The violet light lingered among Phoenix’s orange and red stars, but when she opened her hand, it was gone, leaving only the pale skin of her hand and arm.

It was late and cold. Rapunzel went in.

SLATE

Slate paused at the entrance to Offrir Cave. It was filled with Dvorgs. Determined to find out for himself the truth about the rumored mining accident, he’d traveled farther through Dvorgdom than ever before. The straydle names were queer and unfamiliar: Papaya, Coconut and Breadfruit. Still, the Dvorgs went about their familiar work with tools in hand, dour and, for the most part, unfriendly. These were proper Dvorgs, not freaks. He’d heard a whisper, however, of a gathering, an unusual event for Dvorgs. At once, he suspected some ridiculous superstitious ritual involving Pele, and he resolved to disrupt it if he could. Doggedly, leaving small blobs of chewed and splintered sunflower shells behind him as he plodded through the tunnels, he followed a gruff word or two from those willing to give direction.

He heard voices ahead and sensed an open space. Stepping through a stone archway, he found himself looking down on a hollow cavern filled with people. A strange smell hung in the air, a tang of something familiar he couldn’t quite name. The atmosphere was thick and warm, hard to breathe. A fire burned on the cavern’s floor, a healthy fire, full of leaping flames, yet the cavern was not filled with smoke. He looked up and saw a terrible, gaping hole in the stone above it, realizing at the same time the tang in the heavy air was like salt. Above the murmur of voices, a huge, soft booming vibrated in the rock.

Rage choked him. Whose twisted work was this? Dvorgs gathering together around a fire, close enough to the aboveground world to actually see it and breathe its vile stench! He felt polluted, defiled. Never before had he been so close to the treacherous aboveground. He longed to turn and reenter the tunnel, walk swiftly away and down into the good, clean rock where he belonged, but he knew he must face and defeat any threat to his people.

Resolute, he stepped down into the cavern and began making his way through the throng to the center and the fire. He stamped on toes, jostling and shoving, forcing his way through the dense crowd. Curses and blows followed him, but he paid no attention. With a last jab of his elbow into someone’s ribs, he reached the center and stood in the ring closest the fire.

Among the flames and burning wood, another sign they were far too close to the aboveground world, black fire salamanders crawled, blotched with yellow and orange, their black eyes shining. A stranger stood atop a boulder near the fire.

He was not a Dvorg. No Dvorg would dress in such outlandish clothing of leather and woven cloth dyed horrible colors of green with touches of orange. His ugly face was brown and weathered, and he wore at his side a hatchet instead of a proper hammer and chisel. This was a Dwarve, a freak, one of those betrayers of race, and he spoke to the Dvorgs with force and authority, as though he belonged there, as though he was somebody!

With all the contempt he could muster, Slate spat a mouthful of sharp splintered sunflower shells into the fire. The stranger paused and looked into his eyes before continuing.

“The trouble is not here alone. Above, life sickens, unravels, and connections are broken. I’ve heard the straydles are producing fewer young, and you know of the recent catastrophic cave-in. Dozens of Dvorgs were killed. So it is above in the seas, on the land and even in the sky. Food is harder to grow, and more expensive, and you’ve noticed supplies are becoming difficult to obtain. The Tree of Life itself, whose roots hold our world together and whose branches hold up the cosmos, weakens.”

“That’s a lie!” Slate burst out. “By Pele, that’s a lie!” Rage boiled through him. He waved his hammer, making those around him back away. He faced the intruder over the ghastly fire. “We be stone and rock! We have nothin’ to do with sea, land, or sky! We have no need of ‘em! Trees! Pah!” He spat again, making the fire sizzle. “Only the stone! Stone above all!”

A couple of voices took up the familiar words, which Slate had been spreading far and wide for years. “Only the stone. Stone above all.” Gratified, Slate began shouting the chant to encourage others to join in, stamping his feet in rhythm.

“Without the trees, the Dvorgs will die,” said the stranger. He did not shout, or even raise his voice, but his words cut through the rumble of the crowd. His lined face looked serious, even sad, and Slate felt pleased. “Each straydle forms in tree roots. If the trees die, so will the roots. The trees are dying in great numbers, and the largest, which the abovegrounders call Mother Trees—”

“No mothers here!” roared Slate. “No tuls! Lies! Lies and heresy! Don’t listen to him! We be the foundation of life, powerful as rock, endurin’ as stone! We be strong because we be male, all male, with no tuls! We be pure! We be righteous! We shall inherit all! Go back, liar. Yuh dunna belong here. Yur not one of us. Go back to your tulish trees, and yur sky and yur land and die with ‘em!”

As he spoke, Slate exulted. If what the stranger (whom he realized must surely be the Dwarve Rumpelstiltskin) said was true, perhaps the aboveground world would die, was even now dying, and the Dvorgs would become Webbd’s masters, undisputed and uncontaminated. He had long toyed with the idea of regaining the riches and power of Hades, which was surely stolen from the Dvorgs long ago. Perhaps now was the time!

His words met with some response, but not as much as he’d hoped for. The crowd showed no inclination to become a mob and either kill or drive the outsider away. His heart swelled to see raised fists and hear cheers, but others in the crowd hushed their neighbors, their expressions glum and worried.

“If you won’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “Time will tell. Whatever you think of me, I was born in a straydle, just like you. I was raised among you. I was apprenticed and made my own tools. I chose to go aboveground and work there, but I am a Dvorg, and I do not want to see my people end. Think about this: if the aboveground dies, what will you eat and drink? How will you get supplies? If the trees die and the straydles with them, how will new generations be born? If the abovegrounders die, you will have no more work to do and none who value your skill and craft. All your gems won’t buy rubble.”

Slate grudgingly admitted his tone and demeanor were convincing. He sensed doubt in the crowd around him.

“No more!” he cried. “No more lies! We have work to do. This sickly air is confusin yuh, poisonin yur wits! Return to our tunnels and mines, caves and caverns, where yuh belong. Let Gobs take care of themselves. They have nothin we need.” His voice rose as he turned to make his way back through the crowd. “Only the stone! The stone above all!”

He felt relieved when others took up the chant, and a number of Dvorgs followed him, the tramp of their many feet emphasizing the words. “Only the stone! The stone above all!” He led them out of the cavern and steadily down until the tainted air was cleared from his nose and lungs and they were once again in the rock’s sterile embrace. Gradually, his followers turned down shafts and tunnels on either side until he walked alone again.

ASH

Ash and Beatrice watched from their hiding place on a shadowed rock shelf overlooking Offrir Cave as most of the Dvorgs exited. Some, perhaps half, departed with Slate, chanting and marching. Others slipped away singly or in small groups, and Ash suspected these were not entirely convinced by Slate’s rhetoric or Rumpelstiltskin’s eloquence. A group remained, less than a quarter, Ash estimated, of the original crowd.

“I intend to make an offering to Pele, Earth-Shaper,” said Rumpelstiltskin to the remaining Dvorgs. “It’s been a long time since I last honored her. Will you join me?”

“They say Pele is a lie,” said one of the Dvorgs gruffly. “They say sals invented her to steal our gems and gold.”

“Who says?” asked Rumpelstiltskin.

“Everyone. No one. The rocks whisper it.”

“What good are gems and gold to the salamanders? Why should they steal from the Dvorgs?” Rumpelstiltskin looked from one bearded face to another. “Have any of you seen the secret storehouse of the sals, stuffed with the offerings of thousands of generations of Dvorgs?”

“The bats say Pele is angry.” Another Dvorg spoke up. “They told someone she caused the cave-in.”

“How do we know Pele is real? I never seen her,” A Dvorg with a thick reddish beard demanded. “Slate is right, we want no tuls. Why give offerins and respect to a tul we’ve never seen?”

“Who made the rocks, then?” inquired Rumpelstiltskin. “Who made the mountains and shaped the land? From whence came the granite, the marble and the schist?”

The Dvorgs shuffled their feet uneasily, but none answered.

Rumpelstiltskin jumped from his perch on the boulder and opened his bundle. On a large, flat rock, he draped a piece of fine silk, gossamer light, in a shade of orange that outshone the fire’s flames. “Minerva wove this in her workshop. She’s the finest weaver on Webbd.”

On the scarf, Rumpelstiltskin placed a red brocade pouch tied with golden string, three gold coins, an engraved flask and two thick green stems, tied together. From behind a scatter of rocks against a wall, he produced a bouquet of flowers, white, orange, yellow and red. The stems dripped with water. These he laid carefully beside the flat rock so as not to wet the scarf.

“What’s in the flask?” Beatrice whispered to Ash.

“Brandy,” he replied. “It’s Pele’s favorite tipple. And tobacco in the red pouch.”

“And the green stems?”

“Sugarcane. Ssshhh!”

From some deep pocket, Rumpelstiltskin produced a stone the size of a large marble. He held it up in the firelight between his thumb and forefinger and it flashed with color, orange, red, blue and green. The watching Dvorgs murmured in appreciation.

“I never seen such a fine fire opal,” one said.

Rumpelstiltskin’s lips quirked in a wry smile. He knelt and displayed the gem to the nearest fire salamander. “Does this offering please you?”

The salamander looked up, nodding its head, wide mouth stretched in what looked like a smile.

One of the Dvorgs snorted in derision or amusement, Ash couldn’t tell which.

Beatrice giggled. “That little creature is no thief of treasure. These Dvorgs aren’t very bright, to believe such nonsense.”

Rumpelstiltskin set the fire opal on the scarf and stood with bowed head.

“Pele, Earth-Shaper, Mother of Rocks,” he said in a carrying voice. “I am your son, Rumpelstiltskin. I lay before you these humble offerings, that you may know your ancient power and wisdom are not forgotten. You shelter our lives, our bodies and our craft. Because of you, there is life, both under and above ground. Because of you, there is treasure.”

The Dvorgs glanced at one another uneasily as he spoke, but by the time he finished they, too, had bowed their heads.

“Honor and respect,” said Rumpelstiltskin.

“Honor and respect,” the Dvorgs mumbled in response.

“Honor and respect.”

The Dvorgs raised their heads, as though the simple ritual was ended, but Rumpelstiltskin continued with bowed head, “Pele, Great Mother, I come from Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and its guardians, the three Norns. I come from Odin, He of the Wind and the Wild Hunt. I come from Baba Yaga, Mother of Witches, to speak with you. Grant me the grace of your presence, for Webbd needs you.”

One of the watching Dvorgs shook his head. “Foolish. She willna come. Hope she doesna come.” He turned and walked away, the others following, though the last one looked back once, rather wistfully, Ash thought, at the fire and flat rock covered with offerings, before disappearing into the shadows guarding the cavern’s entrance.

“Hold on,” Ash muttered to Beatrice, and swooped down from their hiding place to Rumpelstiltskin’s beard.

“Hello, Ash,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “I wondered if you were around somewhere. Is Beatrice there, too?”

Beatrice emerged from the velvety brown fur on Ash’s chest and waved her antennae at him.

“Hello, Bea. What do you think of all this?”

“They’re not very quick, are they?” Beatrice asked cautiously.

Rumpelstiltskin chuckled like a bucket of gravel being emptied.

“No. For the most part, we’re as stubborn and slow as the rocks and stones we spend our lives with. Slate may have convinced some -- for now. It won’t be so easy, though, to dislodge our whole history and tradition. That’s the first time I’ve seen him, you know.”

Ash puckered up his mouth and produced a spitting sound in a remarkably fine imitation of Slate.

“Yes,” said Beatrice, “but he’s a dangerous adversary. We mustn’t underestimate him.”

“I agree,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “Still, he’s inconsistent, to have developed a habit involving a plant from aboveground.”

“Since when is villainy required to be consistent?” asked Ash.

“True.”

“Do you think Pele will respond?” Beatrice asked.

“I don’t know. I hope so. I think I’ll go aboveground tonight and sleep under the stars. Have you noticed the salamanders are gone?”

Ash looked down into the glowing coals. “I didn’t notice them leave.”

“They’re very quick. They’ve gone, no doubt, to tell Pele about my offering and my request. I think it’s best to clear out now for the rest of the night. I’m interested to see if my offerings are accepted and she leaves any sign in return. In the meantime, Pele loves meat, and I want to arrange a pig roast in her honor tomorrow. The abovegrounders here worship her too, you know. This island is formed from old volcanoes, and some are still awake. That mining accident we spoke of? It wasn’t a cave-in at all. Lava spewed up through a far-reaching area of Dvorgdom and filled caves and tunnels.”

“Was that Pele?” asked Beatrice.

“That was Pele in a rage,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “She embodies female primal energy and passion.”

“Tobacco, brandy and beautiful things,” said Beatrice.

“That’s right.”

“Does she have a consort?” asked Beatrice.

“I don’t know,” said Rumpelstiltskin, sounding surprised. “Some of the old stories say she and Ocean are lovers, but I haven’t thought much about it, to tell you the truth.”

“Such a female needs a consort,” said Beatrice. “No wonder she’s so angry.”

“Could Ocean be Poseidon?” asked Ash.

“I suppose,” said Rumpelstiltskin, “though I haven’t heard them specifically linked as lovers.”

Ash thought of the Imbolc fertility ritual he and Beatrice had witnessed in the bathhouse, during which Poseidon joined with every Rusalka in the plunge pool. It had been a night of water and foam, of gleaming scales and white skin, of rapture and sensuous play. Poseidon had indeed shown himself kingly, and Ash felt certain he was a worthy lover for Pele, if lovers they were. If so, however, why was he not here to soothe her temper?

Evidently, Beatrice was remembering, too. “Just like a man,” she said with a sniff. “Unavailable when he’s most needed, dallying with other women and playing marbles.”

“Marbles!” said Rumpelstiltskin, startled.

“Never mind,” Ash said hastily. “We’ll tell you later. We’ll go back to our hiding place and watch. You want to see Pele, don’t you, Beatrice?”

“You know I do.”

***

Beatrice had chewed bark all day while Ash slept in the cavern. Now, he left her on the high rock ledge where they’d watched Rumpelstiltskin speak to the Dvorgs and flew out to hunt. The humid air was intoxicating; the sea’s susurration sounded like the breathing of some sensual being lying in the shallows and dreaming passionflower dreams. The night air was alive with insects and Ash hunted to his heart’s content, eating the exotic food until he could hold no more. He would never admit it to Beatrice, but a steady diet of bark beetle did grow monotonous. He would be glad when spring came and he would no longer need to feed on his friend.

He flitted and danced silently above the place where Rumpelstiltskin lay sleeping, protected from rain by a projecting rock shelf.

Satiated, he flew back into the cavern.

“Anything happening?” he asked Beatrice.

“Nothing,” she said.

They settled down together to wait. In the night’s silence the cavern amplified the sound of the waves.

“Is it getting warmer in here?” Beatrice asked at length.

“Hush,” said Ash.

A fissure began opening in the cave floor with a grating sound. A dull glow issued from it. The crack widened, and several fire salamanders crawled out, glowing dimly. They nestled in the fire’s ashes, which Ash thought probably still retained some warmth. Their bodies flickered with low flame.

Two dusky flames appeared at the fissure’s edge, followed by a vaguely human shape pulsating with orange and red. Ash realized the flames were in fact arms and hands of tremendous strength that hoisted the being from the fissure’s depths into the cavern with one mighty heave. It knelt there on the brink of the crevasse, tendrils of thick black smoke like wild hair around the shape of a head and shoulders. Something moved apart from the roiling glow enveloping the figure, something sinuous and undulating, black and yellow and as thick as a strong man’s thigh.

“A snake!” whispered Beatrice.

She was right. Ash could see it clearly now, twining around the human shape.

A hot smell hung heavily in the cavern. It was nothing like the comforting scent of a burning fire, but an elemental, primal odor of unspeakable strength and merciless power that made Ash gasp and cower back.

The figure stood, becoming more clearly defined, the bubbling glow cooling and fading. Ash saw large bare breasts, proud and heavy, with jeweled nipples. Her thick hair writhed like sooty snakes around her head, the hair at her groin also thick and black but threaded through with delicate flowers, yellow and white petals like open wings. Ash wondered how such fragile-looking blooms endured the heat, but they looked as fresh as though growing on a rain-drenched hillside.

Her skin was coal black and smooth over voluptuous flesh, her arms curving with muscles, her generous thighs, buttocks and hips a passionate landscape around which the snake twined. An orange jewel shone from her navel. She stood proudly, as though the snake weighed no more than tendrils of smoke, looking about the cavern. Her eyes burned, a startling blue in her dark face, and a red gem glowed in the side of her nose.

Pele, for it could be no other, approached the stone on which Rumpelstiltskin’s offerings lay. She stood looking down at the colorful arrangement, her hair around her face, motionless as a stone. Ash wondered what was in her mind.

Pele crossed her arms over her chest, worming her hands underneath the snake’s coils and clasped her shoulders in an oddly childlike gesture of self-comfort. The snake, as though responding to the gesture, twined lovingly, caressing her with its body. Ash saw wet streaks on Pele’s cheeks and realized she wept. Beatrice stirred beside him, and he knew she had seen it, too.

After a moment or two, Pele wiped her eyes angrily with a forearm and picked up a gold coin, examining it closely, before she gave it to a salamander, which darted across the cavern floor and disappeared into the fissure from which Pele had emerged. The other two coins and the fire opal likewise appeared to find favor, and Pele handed each to a salamander. She sipped brandy from the engraved flask, rolling it on her tongue, and then took a healthy swig, smacking her lips. She put a pinch of tobacco into her mouth, making a sound of pleasure, before opening her lips and exhaling a fragrant cloud of smoke.

Next, she fingered the silk scarf. Her hands were broad and strong, her nails surprisingly well kept. She swirled the scarf through the air and it floated like a rippling flame. She took a few steps across the cavern, light on her feet in spite of her bulk. Ash noticed her delicate ankles and finely boned feet. She wore a gold toe ring. She moved like a dancer, the scarf a sensuous gossamer flame against her rich, dark skin with its jeweled adornments. She began chanting in a low, sibilant hiss, rather like a burbling tea kettle, and Ash watched a thin jet of steam issue from between her lips. She rolled her hips smoothly, the muscles in her abdomen strong and flowing.

Abandoning chant and dance, Pele tenderly bound the scarf around the flower stems, the sugarcane, the red brocade pouch and the flask. She plucked a single bloom from the hair at her groin and laid it on the flat rock, crossed the cavern floor and slid back into the fissure, holding the silk-swathed bundle carefully, the remaining salamanders following. She moved with remarkable grace and silence, given her strong body.

The fissure lips tightened behind her but remained slightly agape.

“My goodness,” said Beatrice inadequately when they were alone again.

“Indeed,” said Ash.

“She’s a dancer.”

“I saw. We must speak with Rumpelstiltskin.”

***

“Do you think they’ll come?” Rumpelstiltskin asked. He sat cross-legged on a stone in the cavern, twirling the blossom between his fingers.

“Yes,” said Ash.

“They’ll come,” said Beatrice. “In some strange way, Pele reminds me of Heks. They’re alike, somehow, even though they seem so different. Oh, I can’t explain it.”

“I saw it, too,”” said Ash. “Heks has a kind of wisdom, a kind of ancient … well, not beauty, exactly, but …”

“Toughness?” asked Rumpelstiltskin.

“Something like that. It’s hard to explain. And Ginger is a dancer.”

“When Pele moved, all I could think about was Ginger,” said Beatrice.

“Can you find your way back to the portal at Yggdrasil?” Rumpelstiltskin asked. “If it’s still working, you can try Rowan Gate from there.”

“I don’t know if it’s open,” said Ash doubtfully. The last time we were there, Kunik and Eurydice were trying to fix it.”

“We can only try,” said Beatrice. “If we can’t go that way, maybe the Norns will have an idea.”

“Go, then,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “Rest today while the sun is up and go tonight. In the meantime, I’m hopeful Pele will meet with me.” He held up the flower. “This isn’t a promise, exactly, but it seems a good sign. I’ll see about arranging a pig roast.”

“Do you think you can find a drum?” asked Beatrice, “And someone to play it?”

“I’m not sure,” said Rumpelstiltskin, frowning. “I’ll try.”

“Maybe Heks or Ginger will have an idea about that, too,” said Ash.

***

“You took your time,” Mirmir complained bitterly. “Here am I, with no newss, nobody comess to tell me what’ss happening, nobody keepss me in the loop.”

Ash, from his upside-down hanging position on a branch near the snake’s head, let his eyes travel obviously along the visible length of Mirmir’s body as it looped among Yggdrasil’s branches and grinned sardonically.

“Here you are,” he agreed, “with daily updates on Current Events from Verdani, not to mention visits from ravens and crows who fly between you and Odin, you and Hecate and who knows who else. Not to mention owls from Minerva and that fey creature Bloduewedd! As for loops …”

“Oh, shut up,” said Mirmir. “Sstop teassing me. What’ss the latesst?”

In spite of Mirmir’s nagging, Ash had refused to pass on any news until he’d eaten. He and Beatrice retired to his usual sleeping hole in Yggdrasil’s body, where he consumed her, over and over, until his hunger was satisfied. It didn’t seem quite nice to make such an unusual ritual public.

Once he had fed, Beatrice snuggled back into his chest fur and he flitted through Yggdrasil’s canopy in search of his friend’s head and a roosting place. With Beatrice’s help, Ash told Mirmir about Rapunzel, Seren and Clarissa, the happenings in the birch wood (Mirmir was particularly amused by the marble game between Poseidon and Baba Yaga), and the events taking place at the edge of Dvorgdom.

“So, we hope Heks will come and help Rumpelstiltskin talk to Pele. He stayed to make more offerings. We came to see if we could get through Rowan Gate and talk to Heks.”

“And you need a drummer,” mused Mirmir.

“Rumpelstiltskin said he would try to find someone. The abovegrounders there recognize Pele’s power and probably have ritual music and dance. But yes, a drummer would help.”

“Do you know what’s happening at Rowan Tree?” asked Beatrice. “Seren must have arrived by now, and as soon as Clarissa and the others return to the bathhouse portal, she’ll try to use Rowan Gate.”

“We haven’t heard anything. Weaving beginnings and endings from the Yrtym helped repair our portal and the Norns are able to work again, after a fashion, but the news is still spotty, as is Verdani’s thread. We do know Clarissa’s group is with Sedna, the Ice Mother, but we’ve heard no details.”

“The last time we were at Rowan Tree, Heks and some of the others were trying to get Gwelda settled for the rest of the winter. Artemis and one of the new people, I forget his name, left to see if they could find out who killed Jan, Gwelda’s husband. There was a lot of tension. Maria, in particular, was worried. Rose Red and Artemis took the White Stag’s sacrifice hard,” said Ash.

“It’s nearly morning,” said Beatrice. “Do you want to eat again before you sleep, Ash?”

“I do. Let me stretch my wings a bit. I’ll meet you back here. We’ll try the portal at dusk tonight.”

EURYDICE

As Eurydice helped the others build Gwelda’s shelter, she thought constantly about how she might repair Rowan Portal. Her mind returned again and again to the Samhain ritual and Hecate’s words: “Understand in Motherhood you must come to terms with death, with change, with time and with hunger, for as Mother you feed rather than being fed. You must come to terms with the limits of your power. Motherhood is life. Motherhood is death.”

She felt certain she had a role to play in both repairing the portal and the community, but she couldn’t grasp it. She was the gatekeeper. She was Mother. How did the two go together? How could she combine both responsibilities?

In these days, Kunik was like a rock at her back, the only strength she could find. Rose Red supported Gwelda staunchly, but Eurydice knew her anguish over the White Stag’s sacrifice, the loss of Rowan and the health of her oak tree. She grew paler every day. Her friends rallied around her, kind, supportive and respecting her sensitivity. They were joined, oddly, by Mingan, who often accompanied Gabriel and helped build Gwelda’s shelter in the birch wood.

Eurydice was of two minds about Mingan. He appeared helpful and generous with his strength and skill, but Eurydice noticed he rarely spoke to Gwelda or even looked at her. As Gwelda naturally caught the eye due to her size, fondness for bright colors and outgoing personality, Eurydice wondered why he took such trouble to ignore her. The contradiction in his behavior worried her.

His attitude toward Rose Red also made her uneasy. To her, he paid too much attention. There was something predatory in the way he stayed close to her, sometimes forcing his way between her and the others physically. He was one of those men who moves an inch too close and appears to loom, even when standing perfectly upright.

Rose Red was suffering, but Eurydice knew her too well to mistake her courage or strength. Her air of shy fragility fooled some into thinking she needed protection, but she was far stronger and more determined than she appeared. Eurydice had seen her step away from Mingan on several occasions, or draw away from his casual heavy hand on her shoulder or her arm with a warning flicker in her eyes he didn’t appear to notice.

Gabriel did notice, and he developed a habit of popping up suddenly whenever Rose Red and Mingan moved apart from the others, garrulous and annoying, inserting himself neatly into the subtle tension between them. Artemis, too, kept a close eye on Rose Red. With the loss of her consort, Artemis appeared to have aged overnight, though she, too, maintained a calm and capable demeanor. Maria appeared tight-lipped and tense, working tirelessly to help Gwelda get settled. Though pleasant, capable and calm, her eyes smoldered with unspoken anger.

Even among this group of Gwelda’s friends and supporters Eurydice sensed dangerous half-hidden currents and subtle strain. A kind of watchful wariness replaced the easy affection they’d once shared. Eurydice felt glad, at the end of the day, to be alone or relax with Kunik, with whom she felt completely at ease.

“How has it all changed so much?” Eurydice asked Kunik one evening. “We don’t seem like the same people at all. Is the Yrtym’s breakdown so destructive that all relationships are disintegrating?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “I feel the same way about you – closer, if anything. I love Gwelda, and Rose Red, and Artemis. I respect Gabriel more every day. I think the disharmony may be among us, here at Rowan Tree.”

“But we’re mostly the same people. Chattan’s not even here right now, and Seren just arrived.”

“I miss Chattan. I also trust him. I don’t believe he’s the source of any problem.”

“The only other newcomer is Mingan, and he’s been so helpful.”

“He has. I wonder why? He doesn’t seem particularly fond of Gwelda.”

“I noticed that, too. And he seems a bit too fond of Rose Red.”

“Yes. She doesn’t like it, either. He’s a fool if he underestimates Rosie, not to mention Artemis.”

Eurydice sighed. “Maybe the tension will ease once Gwelda has a roof over her head. Heks says her hand is healing.”

“We should finish with another day of hard work,” Kunik assured her. “Gwelda finished the chimney and stone fireplace herself today while we worked on the roof. Gabriel thinks there’s a storm on the way. We’re starting early tomorrow and hope to make the place snug and water-tight before another round of bad weather.”

“That’s good,” said Eurydice, stretching. “I’m worn out. Kunik, I’ve thought and I’ve thought, but I still don’t know what to do about Rowan Gate. After Yggdrasil, I know the key is working together, but with Rowan Tree so fractured I can’t see how to accomplish that. I’m groping for some connection between my initiation into Motherhood and my role as gatekeeper, but it eludes me. All I can think about is Rose Red’s pale face and Artemis’s grief and poor Jan. So much sadness and loss. I wind up thinking about how I can help them, and then I realize what I’m doing and try to refocus on the portal and embodying the Mother. I go around and around and get nowhere.” She twisted her hands together in her lap.

Kunik reached out and took her hands in his. “Slow down,” he said. “Relax and breathe.”

Eurydice sat back in her chair and looked into the fire, letting her hands relax in his. The tears welling in her chest and throat ebbed away.

“You are not alone,” said Kunik. “None of us are alone. We can find a way through this, and we can trust one another, for the most part. Perhaps the answer you’re seeking is already present and you’re too distressed to recognize it. You said you think about Rosie, Artemis and Jan. What do they possess in common?”

“Grief. Loss. Well, not Jan, I suppose, but Gwelda. Rosie’s desperately worried about her oak, and Rowan is gone. She doesn’t talk about him much, but they were lovers, and now she blames herself for grieving his absence. She says she should have known it would end this way – she did know, really. As though that means she wouldn’t feel anything! And then Artemis reappeared with the news of the White Stag’s sacrifice, another terrible blow, but Rosie’s concern is all for Artemis. She doesn’t count her own loss. Yet I can see her suffering, and I know what it is to lose a lover …”

“Yes,” said Kunik. “You do. You know what she’s going through because you, too, have felt that loss.”

“It was so long ago,” said Eurydice quickly. “I don’t think of it now.”

“But you remember the pain of it.”

“Yes. Then there’s Artemis. I know the White Stag’s sacrifice was right, and necessary, but to see him killed right in front of her, and to be prepared to do it herself – how do women have such courage? And then we ate him. That was right, too, but still … Looking back, I wonder how we could have done it. It feels like a strange and rather horrible dream, but when I look at Artemis, I know it was real. How can she ever recover? And it’s unthinkable she should not recover. “

“Yet the White Stag is gone,” Kunik mused. “I wonder who could replace him?”

Eurydice shook her head. “And now here’s Gwelda, a widow, and she and Jan were so happy, so in love …” Eurydice’s voice faltered and she began weeping.

Kunik sat quietly, letting her cry. His calm acceptance of her grief comforted her, and the storm of tears soon passed.

As she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, Kunik said, “At Samhain, Baba Yaga and Hecate initiated some of you into motherhood and some of you into cronehood.”

“Right.”

“The first stage is maidenhood?”

“Yes. I suppose the initiation into that is birth, but the time a woman begins to bleed is important, too.”

“Is every stage mutually exclusive, or does one build on another?”

“I haven’t thought about it,” said Eurydice. She considered, frowning. “I think one must build on another.”

“So, when you were initiated into Motherhood you became Mother as well as Maiden? They can overlap? Or is maidenhood over for you now?”

“No, that doesn’t sound right, that’s it’s over now. The Norns frequently behaved as maidens and mothers too, but they’re definitely crones. We welcome wild maiden energy back right now, in Imbolc.”

“Tell me about wild maiden energy.”

Eurydice felt a stirring of understanding. Kunik knew the cycle well; he didn’t need her to tell him Imbolc’s meaning. He was leading her somewhere, and she began to glimpse what he wanted her to see.

“The Maiden is youthful, passionate energy, disorganized and chaotic. She mirrors the weather this time of year. Capricious, changeable, even dangerous.”

“Is she whole?”

“Yes! Oh, Kunik, I see! She is whole. She’s on the path to creating life with others, but during this phase she’s whole and free to be wild and unthinking. She’s young and selfish and pleases only herself. She’s gathering strength and wisdom for the next part of her journey. The Maiden is what they need to reclaim to heal from their loss and move forward again! That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Not just them, Eurydice. You, too, and don’t forget Maria. Or Heks.”

“Maria … Oh, of course! I’d forgotten she lost her lover, too, and Heks’s husband died, didn’t he? And me, I suppose, but I honestly don’t grieve for Orpheus anymore.”

“Perhaps not, but you know the path from this kind of loss back to finding wholeness with yourself, like the Maiden, before moving on again. Maybe you and Maria can come up with a ritual or ceremony to help these other women express their grief and think about reclaiming their lives as whole women again, even though they’re alone now. You don’t need the whole community. In fact, I think it should just be women who’ve suffered the loss of their mate. Do it at Gwelda’s new place as a housewarming. Involve Rowan Portal somehow. Use what’s happening as a means of repair for each of you individually, the community, the portal and the Yrtym.”

CHAPTER 17

Yet another complication had arrived one cold day in the person of Seren. Eurydice didn’t know about it until Heks mentioned in passing a new guest had arrived. Eurydice would have been hard put to welcome any outsider during such a difficult time, let alone the young poet and musician, whom she remembered from Yggdrasil as petulant and rather vain.

“Why’s he here?” she asked Heks crossly.

“He says he’s heard Rowan Gate is broken, and he’s come to fix it,” said Heks expressionlessly.

“What?” Eurydice set down the bread pan she was buttering with unnecessary force. She and Heks were working in the community kitchen.

Heks repeated herself, smiling.

“What are you up to?” Eurydice asked her. “I see that smile. What’s going on?”

“Pass me the dough, will you? I’ll knead while I tell you. Keep your voice down, though.”

Side by side, kneading the yeasty dough, Heks told Eurydice about Ash and Beatrice and the news they brought from Rapunzel’s lighthouse.

“Gods, Heks, don’t we have enough problems?” Eurydice asked.

“We do. But what if our problems are connected to Seren and Clarissa? He was at Yggdrasil, remember, and Odin brought him. There must have been a reason.”

“I wish I could forget he was there,” said Eurydice, turning the dough with a thump.

“Ash and Beatrice said he told Clarissa and Seren he was the one who repaired the portal at Yggdrasil and helped the Norns. He made quite a story of it,” Heks said.

“Insolent puppy!” said Eurydice. “But he knows you and I know that’s a lie.”

“He doesn’t know we’re here.”

“You’re kidding me!”

Heks grinned.

“You’re positively gleeful!” Eurydice accused.

“I like Clarissa. You will, too. She’s something special. She loves stories and she’s a far more compelling teller than Seren. He does everything he can to keep her quiet, and she lets him. I think Ash and Beatrice are quite right. She’ll find a way to follow him here. Won’t that be interesting?”

“Well, I can’t see how she’ll get here if we can’t repair Rowan Gate. Let’s hope Seren keeps out of the way until after our gathering.”

“Don’t worry about that. He’s quite famous, and several in the community have taken him to their hearts. Including David.”

“He would,” muttered Eurydice. “Good. Maybe he’ll get off Maria’s back if he has a distraction. Has Seren seen you?”

“Nobody sees an old woman,” said Heks serenely.

***

Once Eurydice understood what she wanted to do, she wasted no time. She talked with Maria and Heks, giving them a brief outline of her intentions and asking for ideas. Heks agreed at once with Kunik’s suggestion that the ceremony be limited to a few participants, but Maria, somewhat to Eurydice’s surprise, voiced reluctance.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be so exclusive,” she said. She looked desperately weary and Eurydice noticed lines in her forehead she hadn’t seen before. “Won’t people say we’re being unfair? I don’t want to cause any more problems.”

“You mean David won’t like it,” said Heks flatly.

Maria looked defeated. “If we’re trying to repair community ties, and Rowan Gate, and the Yrtym, shouldn’t we be including everyone in our efforts? Isn’t that the right way to do things?”

“Maria, we tried to do that with Gwelda,” Eurydice reminded her. “You tried. The fact that Rowan Tree is splintering isn’t your fault. Other forces are at work in this. If we invite everyone and David comes, along with other men and women who know nothing of loss, do you imagine we’ll be free to create the kind of ritual and healing I’m talking about? Will you feel safe enough to express your emotions? I won’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with exclusivity,” said Heks. “This is a particular kind of gathering dealing with particular kinds of loss. We don’t say others can’t gather in groups to give one another spiritual and emotional support. We’re not obliged to invite everyone to every circle we form. Communities are healthier if everyone is not the same and acknowledges it. Many of our activities do involve everyone, storytelling, for example, and growing food.”

“I suddenly feel like I’m failing,” said Maria. “We were so happy here at Rowan Tree in the first couple of years, and I thought we were doing good work together, building something meaningful and sustainable. Now I wonder if I’ve done anything right from the beginning.”

“David would be pleased to hear it,” said Heks. “That’s just what he’s trying to do, demoralize you and break down your power.”

Maria straightened her slumped shoulders and a dark flame of anger flared in her eyes.

“What can I do to help, then?” she asked Eurydice. Heks smiled.

***

Gwelda’s house was finished. It was a simple structure, a long rectangle of birch logs with a high roof to accommodate Gwelda’s size. One end consisted of a stone wall on the outside and a fireplace on the inside with a chimney thrusting up inside the gable end and through the roof. They built the roof of birch logs and laid birch bark slabs over moss and mud chinking.

Although hastily built, it kept out the weather. They’d felled no trees, as downed trees from the autumn gale littered the forest. As Gwelda’s burn healed and her friends’ support eased her grief, she roamed far afield, searching for logs and stones and bringing them back to the work site, where Kunik, Gabriel and the others labored, with Mingan’s frequent assistance. The walls went up quickly, as Gwelda lifted roofing materials up to the builders, saving hours of back-breaking and dangerous work.

The weather held, day after day of cold nights and cloud-frosted winter days with gleams of sun promising Spring’s eventual return. Three weeks after Gwelda’s appearance, her house was ready. She agreed immediately when Eurydice asked if she would hostess a gathering of women to celebrate new beginnings.

Meanwhile, Rowan Tree’s sheep and goats were giving birth, augmenting the community’s winter supplies with an abundance of milk, cheese and butter. Maria, Eurydice, Rose Red and Heks volunteered to assist with baking bread and making cheese and butter during the week before the ritual and set aside generous portions for the gathering. The previous autumn had brought a bumper crop of apples, which they pressed and combined with honey to make hard cider. Kunik and Gabriel delivered a wooden barrel of this to Gwelda, who stood it in a corner of her new home.

Given the community’s attitude toward Gwelda, especially the question of feeding her, none of them felt comfortable sharing Rowan Tree’s meat. Artemis, however, had taken it upon herself to keep Gwelda well fed, and as soon as the building was done Rose Red joined her in spending long days hunting. It was the wrong time of year for hunting, being the season of mating and birth, but they were careful to take older male animals, reasoning that Gwelda could dry and store enough meat to get her through spring and into summer, when food would be more plentiful and her future clearer.

Eurydice felt glad of their companionship. Both Rose Red and Artemis had a worrisome tendency to withdraw into solitude when their experience was difficult, and Eurydice was relieved they turned to each other as they grieved for the White Stag. Grief, Eurydice thought, was best managed with friends.

On the evening of the gathering, Eurydice asked everyone to meet at Gwelda’s new home. The days lengthened as the light returned, so Maria and Heks left Rowan Tree unobtrusively, bundled in their cloaks, as though setting out for a late walk. They attracted no comment. Eurydice and Rose Red lived above Rowan Tree, in the forest’s fringe, their comings and goings unobserved. Artemis had stayed with Rose Red since she arrived.

As the day waned, but well before dark, Eurydice tucked a shallow wooden bowl under her arm and made her way to Gwelda’s house, which looked like something out of a fairytale, a house built from forest bones by elves or dryads. Warm light shone from the windows and she smelled wood smoke from the chimney.

In response to her knock, the door was flung open and she found herself face to face with Baubo, who stepped forward and took Eurydice in her arms, stifling her startled exclamation.

“Lovely girl! So good to see you!”

Eurydice returned her embrace enthusiastically. One needn’t hold back with Baubo. For a moment she put aside her role as Mother and relaxed into the embrace of a far older, wiser and more loving mother than she could ever hope to be. When she stepped away, she felt renewed and refreshed. She was not alone.

Gwelda, Maria, Heks and, unexpectedly, Persephone were gathered around the mammoth fireplace. Eurydice was glad to see Persephone’s improved looks. At the Samhain ritual she had appeared almost haggard, but now she glowed with health, her corn-colored hair thick and rich and her eyes shining.

They hadn’t met since being initiated into Motherhood together and greeted one another like old friends.

Gwelda looked better, too. She was clean and combed. Her burned hand no longer required bandaging and shiny pink skin covered what had been a blistered, weeping wound. Kunik had made her knitting needles and she’d knitted herself a long wooly sweater in glaring shades of orange, red and pink. Her round freckled face wore a wide smile and Eurydice could see she felt pleased and proud to be able to give back to those who had recently done so much for her.

Another knock on the door indicated the arrival of Rose Red and Artemis, both with bundles. Baubo swept them inside, embracing each in turn. She locked and barred the door, greetings were exchanged, and they sat in a circle on a rug Maria had woven in front of the fire.

Eurydice felt nervous. She hadn’t led a ceremony before. Surely Baubo, Artemis or even Persephone were better suited? Maria was their leader – wasn’t it her place to take charge? Expectantly, they watched and waited for her to say something. She took a deep breath.

“I want to …” she began. “I thought …” Rose Red smiled at her with trust and affection. Her trust wasn’t easily earned; Eurydice knew how often she felt outcast and isolated and how overwhelmed she felt by her sensitivity and passion. She wanted to help Rose Red; that had been one of her motivations as she planned this night.

She straightened her shoulders and back and began again. “I’ve called this circle to help one another with personal loss and grief. This is Imbolc, the season of purification and return to the belly, the womb and the earth. It’s the season of the wild Maiden and new beginnings. We also face the fraying of the Yrtym, and we’re learning healing and repairing that injury occurs when people come together in unity and connection. It’s my hope we can support one another in our grief and find a way through it into new beginnings with the wild Maiden, whole and complete in herself, and also repair Rowan Portal so it can once again connect us with others on Webbd. “

Eurydice paused, half expecting some kind of protest or words of doubt or resistance, but Maria nodded approvingly, Baubo smiled, and Gwelda’s pine green eyes fixed on her like those of an adoring dog. She felt both humbled and elated. It was going to be all right.

“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.

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.

“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.

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The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc (Entire)

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