Three white sheep, three snowy-complected boys, and three white dogs lay in the snow, white soaked crimson with their out-flown life’s blood, still and not yet stiff in departure. The visitor was sick in his soul over this sacral sorrow, wished in his bones that he might have stayed home. Then, smitten soundly with the reminder that he had no home, that Manhattan, his domicile of record, was never and could never be his home when emerald pastures of green undulated in his blood within the misty eye of Time, he set aside his sorrow for the scene, recalled that he had returned here after being softened by wistful ages, now a soul unweened; a soft babe confronted with his hard ancestors.
O’Connell looked up from the sad scene what had brought him. He stood alone, living within the crimson circle, the innocent and meek felled about his feet, even the priests who had summoned him standing beyond the circle of reeds picked from some distant fen and soaked in a woman’s moon blood, the off flow of nine virgins, he knew, placed there by the squatting witch in her white hair rabbit skins, to effect his return up the crimson cataract of ages.
He was naked and did not begrudge the cold north wind that whipped him, for the winter sun, so low in the sky at noon, warmed him from the same quarter. Once again he stood among his most ancient kin, the most ancient of those who possessed the means of summoning him. He looked down at the scars on his forearms from that terrible fall when drunk those many years ago. It had been a way of looking away from the tomb that Good Earth’s womb had become.
He inhaled the age, filled his lungs with the nectar of recollection, drove despair from his jaundiced mind’s eye, nodded to the elder priest, showed the open left hand to the witch, and turned slowly, making eye contact with all of the nine under-priests who had sacrificed. He saw there with a start that the blood had already congealed coldly upon their pure ivory knives, ground to precise keen. The hair of them all, as was the hair on the heads of the poor boys, did sheen yellow in the sunlight.
Behind the squatting witch, two matrons, full-figured beauties in linen shifts, with great swells of yellow hair, stood to either side of the line of nine linen-clad, yet barefoot, virgins. The nine fresh women of the Hyperboreans regarded him with a variety of emotions: elation, stark terror, dread, hope, resignation, ecstasy, flat-pan fear, happiness—and, to his mazement, curiosity. So he named them in his mind, opened his arms, and nodded to the matron on the left, beckoning with his open left hand.
The procession of brides began as he looked out over the solemn throng of Hyperboreans and Cimmerians, towards the near yet all-far City of the Midnight Sun with the longing of a widower for his childbirth lost wife; a man who clings to life only because his wife’s death brought about his daughter’s birth. Such would be cowardly beyond ages of judgment to abandon the child to a fallen world’s dearth. The houses there were of timber and sod, smoke rising from the great hall—a town really, home to these perhaps 2,000 souls what seemed such a throng so near the shimmering pole. Perhaps 200 Cimmerians—his folk the most—visited, dignitaries, chiefs, matrons, shaman—for they had no priests, attended with respectful anticipation. To these men he raised his fist in the air, then brought it to his heart. They did the same, as, among them, a harper began softly picking.
Among the shield men of the Hyperboreans, in the outer ring, a low chant arose. A youth of some other race, related by half blood to those who lay dead at his feet, folk who seemed to be of the fens, perhaps Grendelkin, took up a reed flute and pranced the circuit of moon-blood reeds, plying his instrument.
The first girl approached.
This pretty sprite had elation painted brightly upon her eager face. He greeted her with words aided in their meaning by harp and flute, for the mechanics of language become baffled by Time’s harrowing hags, “Elation, to wed a chief—no prince, but a battle captain.”
She danced a small gig of joy, cupped her round face in her long hands and skipped off to the line of virgins.
A girl whose dove-like face etched with terror was brought forth, her eyes glassy green like the pastures in his haunting dreams, “Child, you are right in your fears—wed the stars and sail the Sea of Dreams, be a seeress.”
Her eyes opened wide, narrowed, and she bowed, retiring to the line.
The beauty of curly yellow hair and buxom form stepped gingerly forward, her oval face suffused in dread, contacting his eyes with her hers. He looked to her lovingly, wishing they could touch to comfort her, and advised, “Marry a shrewd man and bring but three children into the sun, raised up with love and caution.”
The witch seemed to shiver at the poise of this naked young woman, who bowed and walked purposefully back to her place.
A full-breasted and big cheeked beauty with a mop of unruly blond curls walked forward, hope beaming from her cheerful eyes. Oh how he wanted to take her—crime though it would be. But he had assured his supplicants that he would not behave selfishly. “Marry the man most eager for you from among those in their prime. Have many children. When you bury him, marry a prince and bring more men into the sun.”
She bowed with a bitter smile, her hopes having been to be taken by him, and returned dutifully to the joy of some horn-dog chief in the first row, he was certain.
A dutiful girl wearing the invisible veil of resignation, walked stridently forward, the witch and the matrons, showing no liking for this one. She looked at him squarely, though he knew that his form flickered like flame.
“You are already a woman in mind. Marry a strong man without brains to math his brawn and guide him with love, bringing as many children as you might properly guide.”
This one had already expected this by her knowing bow. So he added, “A witch you shall be, a witch with many flowers in her hair.”
The old witch shuddered audibly. The new witch smiled narrowly.
The girl of ecstatic temper was married then and their to a grunt warrior, the fearful lass assigned a nursing creed of service, and she of shameless happiness, confident in her mind and body, was assigned to marry out to an enemy king for alliance and concord.
Came curiosity, the least pretty of the nine beauties to be sure, almost plain in face, slight yet curved of figure, and with hair a bit too thin for his taste—gossamer locks easily blown in the soft wind.
He looked into her huge blue eyes, so large that she loomed hauntingly beyond the barrier of beauty, and commanded, “Come with me, Child, come to the Lake and the Urn.”
He extended his hand and she stepped over the reeds and into the crimson welter of slush, her soft linen shift falling away in a dancing of daylight stars. They clasped hands and embraced, a kiss on her forehead assuring her that wonders danced in her path.
His last vision was of a dark-haired fen girl slouching in disappointment that she could not be chosen, kneeling sullenly at the feet of her red-headed Cimmerian master.
To lose sight of home again, after so dread long, made him whimper ever so lightly. To this, she comforted him with a whisper that turned to rushing water and carried him back down the plunging stair up which he had been called.
[From a dream had after listening to Odysseus Journeys to the Land of the Dead, while drinking three pints of terrible beer.]
