The Tower: Part 6: Ostara
Post #61: In which heard and believed ...
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CHAPTER 21
Cassandra made her way down the stairs, one hand on the curving stone wall as though afraid to lose her balance. Hair disheveled, she still wore her nightdress. A thick, fleecy shawl hung from her bony shoulders.
Enzu gave her his arm. Rapunzel produced a plate of food and a clean cup.
“I slept,” Cassandra said, child-like, to Minerva.
“That’s good. You’ll feel better if you can sleep.”
“The tower sang to me.”
“Sometimes the sea sounds like singing or sighing,” said Rapunzel.
“The stone breathes and whispers and sings,” said Cassandra, her eyes unfocused.
“The stone?” asked Minerva gently.
“The stone lives. The hidden people made it so with their love, but now time trembles and the stones lament coming ruin. Creators and destroyers. Life and death.” Cassandra’s hand trembled, hot tea splashing out of her cup. Enzu, sitting beside her, took it from her and set it carefully on the table.
“Believe me,” she appealed, looking into his face.
“I do believe you,” he assured her. “Can we help the stones?”
“The stones weep!”
“Cassandra, can we help the stones?” Minerva asked.
“No. The tower will fall. The tree will fall. The hidden ones sunder and splinter and shatter. The Blue Witch’s web floats in the withered wind.”
Rapunzel reached across the table and took Cassandra’s cold, quivering hands in her warm ones. “I understand. The tower and trees will fall. I believe you. Will the tower fall today?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you eat something, and finish your tea? We can talk again after you’ve eaten. Will you do that?”
“Yes. I drew a picture.”
Cassandra released her hands and picked up a fork.
“I brought your drawings in case you wanted to show them to Rapunzel,” Enzu said. “When you’re finished we can sit here together and look at them.”
Cassandra, her mouth full of eggs and bacon, appeared not to hear him.
Rapunzel, deliberately casual, began washing dishes. Minerva joined her, wiping the counter and drying and stacking plates, while Enzu, whistling, went in and out the open door, replenishing the firewood.
“That’s the most sleep she’s taken since we left,” said Minerva in an undertone under cover of the splashing water and chink of dishes. “It’s the most she’s eaten at one time, too.”
“Good,” murmured Rapunzel. “Now if we can understand what she’s trying to say or do here.” She raised her voice to a normal level. “How are things in your workshop?”
An hour later, fed, washed and dressed, Cassandra showed Rapunzel her drawings. They sat together at the table. Enzu was outside and Minerva upstairs, making the bed and tidying the room she and Cassandra shared.
In the center of the first drawing stood a lighthouse, recognizably the stone tower they sat in. It rose on cliffs above the sea. The sky above the tower held both clouds and stars, as well as flying birds and the outline of a bat.
Below child-like wavy lines on the sea’s surface, Cassandra had drawn sea creatures and merfolk, including an arched dolphin.
On the other side of the lighthouse, Cassandra had drawn a barren landscape of stony ground and scrubby growth. A slightly lopsided square cart drawn by a clumsy horse approached the tower. Underneath the land’s surface were two large ovals, side by side, reaching the page’s bottom. One said ‘Hades’ and the other ‘Dvorgdom.’
Over the whole picture a faint web of interconnecting lines was traced. Rapunzel thought she understood what Cassandra had said about a spider’s web.
“It’s the lighthouse?” asked Rapunzel. Cassandra nodded.
“Have you been here before?”
“No. But I saw it.”
“You saw true. It’s amazing.”
Cassandra put her finger on the lighthouse in the picture. “Blue Witch.”
“Me?”
Cassandra nodded. “Sea. Sky. Land.” She indicated each area as she named it.
“And they’re all connected?” Rapunzel asked.
“They want to be.” Cassandra’s voice sounded sad but she remained calm.
“I’m like a spider in the center of a web?” hazarded Rapunzel.
Cassandra nodded again.
“I see. What else do you want to show me?”
The second drawing showed a sphere touching the paper’s sides and bottom edge. Inside the sphere stood a tree with three trunks. A tangle of countless roots beneath the tree filled the sphere’s lower third. The trunks rose up through the circle’s middle and branches reached in every direction, filling the top of the circle, extending beyond it to the paper’s limits. Stars interlaced with leaves and branches above the sphere. An enormous serpent coiled around the tree, and among the roots were what looked like underground streams and rivulets of water.
This picture, too, was covered with a web of fine, thin lines.
“This is surely Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life?” asked Rapunzel.
Cassandra nodded. “The pattern is whole,” she said, indicating the stars and clouds among the branches, and then the roots, water and earth in the picture’s lower half. She pointed at an oval in the tree’s roots, like the mouth of a tunnel. “The gate is open.”
“Is the gate like a portal?”
Cassandra nodded again. She trembled. Fumbling, she folded down the top third of the picture, ran her fingernail along the fold, and tore it away. Tears fell down her face. She tore the roots away from the bottom of the picture, then folded across the portal and tore it in two. She folded and tore, folded and tore, until the picture was in fragments.
“Cassandra,” Rapunzel said, keeping her voice low and steady, “help me understand.”
“It unravels! It unravels. The hidden ones began it, but now it all unravels!”
“Disconnection,” said Rapunzel. “I understand. I believe you. How do we stop it?”
“Warp and weft.”
“Weaving? Like Minerva does, you mean?”
“The warp is sundered from the weft. The web is torn! The loom creaks and groans, rattling in the sterile wind! It calls for the weavers! The weavers must work! The One Who Weeps, Dragon Rider, Bone Weaver, Blind One, the mothers with deep roots, the three old ones at the foot of the tree! The Red Dancer, the storyteller from the sea, the Blue Witch and The Devil! You must dance! You must tell! You must create! You must make yourselves BIG! YOU MUST KEEP THE GATE OPEN!”
Minerva came swiftly down the stairs, her face filled with concern. Cassandra dropped her face into her hands and wept. Torn bits of paper littered the table. Rapunzel, filled with pity for Cassandra’s distress as well as apprehension, met Minerva’s eyes.
“Believe me!” said Cassandra, her voice muffled by her hands. “Please believe me! Tell the weavers!”
“I believe you,” said Rapunzel. “I’ll tell the weavers, and they’ll believe you, too. Minerva and I believe you, and Enzu, too. We’ll keep the gate open.”
Enzu appeared in the open doorway and paused, taking in the scene. He approached Cassandra and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Galahad has eaten his breakfast and wants his grooming. You know he steps on my feet when I comb his mane. He thinks you’re the only one who can do it properly. Will you come and help?”
Clarissa’s sobs slackened. Minerva wet a piece of linen in cold water at the sink. Rapunzel swept the torn paper into a pile and put it out of sight. Enzu sat beside Cassandra, talking calmly of Galahad, the cart and their journey, taking no notice of her distress and giving her time to pull herself together.
When Cassandra had wiped her face, blown her nose and stopped trembling, she accompanied Enzu outside, moving like an old woman but calm again.
“What did she say?” Minerva asked Rapunzel.
“Oh, Minerva, I’ve never understood half of what she says!”
“I know. Let’s write down everything you can remember, and then maybe we can puzzle some of it out together.”
Rapunzel repeated Cassandra’s words as best she could while Minerva took notes.
“Who are the hidden ones?” Minerva asked. “And the Dragon Rider?”
“I don’t know. The Blue Witch is me. The Red Dancer is Ginger, from Rowan Tree. The One Who Weeps might be Maria, from Rowan Tree.”
“Yes. She’s a weaver.”
“Bone Weaver could be Nephthys,” said Rapunzel.
“And the three old ones at the foot of the tree must be the Norns,” said Minerva.
“I wonder if the storyteller from the sea could be Clarissa,” said Rapunzel. “Or I suppose it might be Seren.”
For some time they sat together, reading and rereading Cassandra’s words and searching for meaning. At last Minerva took off her glasses, polished them, and ran a hand through her short silver hair. “I’ll put this away for now. Enzu might have ideas, too. I think I’ll go check on them. They might have groomed ten horses by now!”
They found Cassandra, Enzu and Galahad in a companionable group against the tower’s east wall. Enzu had heaped armfuls of hay on the ground at the base of the lighthouse and Cassandra sat with her back against the stone and her ravaged face in the sun on a cushion of hay. Galahad munched beside her. Enzu sang in a low voice. Rapunzel didn’t recognize the song or the melody.
“This is nice,” said Minerva. “It’s a shame to be inside on a morning like this. Are you comfortable, Cassandra?”
The seer looked up at them, smiling, her face calm. She toyed with Galahad’s forelock.
“He’s singing to me,” she said, glancing at Enzu.
“If nobody wants anything,” said Rapunzel, “I’ll make a list of supplies we need.”
She had not yet read Radulf’s letter. She sat at the kitchen table and unfolded it.
Dear Rapunzel:
As I wrote you before, I’ve returned to Griffin Town. I don’t know when I’ll go to sea again. The harbor is empty because the water has receded from the land, and I had to leave Marella anchored beyond the strange, invisible barrier keeping the water back. I hope she’ll be all right. I’m uneasy when I can’t walk down to the harbor and check on her.
I’ve talked with Minerva and Cassandra, at least as much as anyone can talk with Cassandra. She’s not doing well and I think Minerva is worried about her. She’s aged terribly and she makes even less sense than usual. Minerva is unfailingly patient and kind with her. I don’t know how she does it.
Minerva and I agree business must halt for the time being while we focus on repairing whatever is going wrong on Webbd. We’ve pooled our information, which is much the same. Cassandra speaks of weavers and keeping gates open, but we can’t make much sense of it.
I keep thinking about what Morfran said about the ritual he did with Odin and Rumpelstiltskin: protect, provide, procreate. Of these three, protect seems to me the most important. I feel restless and itchy, on land for who knows how long; I need to find a way to make a contribution where I am and stop longing for where I want to be. To that end, I’ve spent time in the shadowed, ugly places in Griffin Town, where men gather to drink rubble, fight with knives and fists, and conduct black market business. There’s a thriving trade right now in good luck charms and totems, especially among merchants and sailors. With the sea behaving so unpredictably, everyone is nervous. Hunters and fishermen notice a troubling drop in populations of fish and other sea animals. No one knows if this is tied to the withdrawal of the sea from the land or something else.
It seems to me it must all be connected in some way, and as I walk the harbor during restless nights, looking out at the distant wall of water where Marella is anchored, I grope for a way to protect the sea I love and all its creatures.
I’m particularly angered by the despicable trade in sea wolf paws. I saw a man last week with twenty of them concealed inside his cloak, each in its own separate pocket. Credulous sailors believe carrying one will prevent drowning, and the paws are always in demand, which means sea wolves are either slaughtered for the sake of their paws alone, or deliberately maimed. It’s an appalling business, and I’m more and more determined to find the sources and stop it. As you know, I feel an affinity with wolves.
Later:
Rapunzel, a strange thing -- a peddler by the name of Enzu has arrived in Griffin Town, guided here by the Firebird! Cassandra has been importuning Minerva to come and see you, and Minerva’s felt at her wit’s end, trying to figure out how to travel with her -- she’s so fragile now. Enzu turned up with a horse and cart, just like Dar’s, yet he’s not Dar -- not exactly. Oh, I can’t explain it. You’ll see what I mean.
Anyway, they’re leaving today. The Firebird is still here, so Minerva counts on him to guide them to your lighthouse. If he doesn’t, she can leave Cassandra with Enzu and find you on her own. I’m sending this letter along with them. I wish I could spend more time with Enzu, but Cassandra and Minerva both feel some urgency about seeing you as soon as possible. I considered coming with them, but my heart tells me it’s more important to continue with my information gathering here.
I hope they arrive safely and find you well, my dear. In haste and affection,
Radulf
Two hours later she took a cup of tea to Cassandra and found her curled up in a sunny hollow in the hay, Galahad nosing around her as he ate. Minerva and Enzu were not there, and Cassandra was dead.