Excerpt from Persephone's Children
She found that she did not mind waiting and surrendered without question to the sense of peace which rose if like an invisible cloud from the warmth of the soft, moist earth, and sought to wrap itself around her. Like a heartbeat the shape of the man in the distance could be seen, rising and falling amongst the shadowed green of the grass; the wind teased in a soft stirring through the full-skirted drape of the willows; the fast-flowing stream, danced and sang in a liquid, crystal gurgling of delight and all around rose fat, full-breasted clumps of daffodil and jonquil in vivid bursts of yellow and white.
Jennifer sat, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees. This was a sacred place. For once she agreed with Collen, although he believed that all of Somerset was sacred. It was strange really, how all three of them, John, Collen, herself, so very different in the way they lived life and yet in this place they felt exactly the same thing. They had nothing else in common and yet they could share this feeling; this sense of specialness, in the earth, in the trees, in everything that made up this land. Everything else was different but in this one thing they felt the same.
Not that they were the only ones. There were many who believed that the whole of Somerset was a special place; this land of deep underground caverns and heathered uplands. Its serpentine hills had long been known to have a power of their own, a force felt although unseen, which rose from the deep mysteries of the earth. It was within this rough and rolling land that Camelot was said to have been, that Christianity was cradled and that long before either, and perhaps even still, the Gods of the Otherworld held sway.
It was a place which the fairies called their own, where the past walked in dreams and visions, where what was seen was not necessarily what was known and what was known was often not seen; where serpents dug deep beneath the surface of the earth, through soil and ancient limetone, carving their nests between valley and tor, sliding silently from one world to the next.
These were the fields of Avalon, of the glass castle and the blue-circled island of death, of King Arthur, Merlin and the shadowy Guinevere; of Uther Pendragon... and of others, from even more ancient times of Noden, the hunter god, woodland guardian and guide of souls, and of Gwyn, the King under the Hill, whose palace lay beneath Glastonbury Tor and where pilgrims might come to sleep so the god could give them messages through dreams. Gwyn, Lord of the Underworld who takes the soul through the most harrowing depths of the psyche, down deep into the inner realms, through desolate tracts and blighted fields, to the land of the living dead where the hag Ceridwen stirs the cauldron of rebirth, preparing the bitter-black drops which bring the only hope of life in death.
But for Jennifer, cradled as she was, on this clear bright day, nestled in a circle of the soil's warm breath, it became a place of sleep. As the grass had fallen still in the emptiness of late afternoon, she dropped, unknowingly, into its embrace, floating on small, gentle snores in a stream which fed far-distant springs. Small faces watched her as she slept; small faces, curious and bright, disappearing back into the crush and crumple of flower and leaf, leaving no more than a shivering tinkle of laughter as they went. She could hear the laughter, but wrapped as she was within the folds of sleep and surrounded by a warm, heavy mantle of droning bees, it sounded more like the quick, clear rustle of dragon flies.
It was the sound of the raven which woke her; the coarse, raw cry of a fat, sleek bird which sat, watching her with glass-bright eyes, from the top of a hawthorn bush further up the hill. When she sat up it was to find herself alone. There was no sign of Collen. She had fallen asleep, had slept in fact for hours. It was a silly thing to do, she told herself, getting to her feet and straightening her clothes. The day was nearly over and she had wasted it.
“So, you're awake then?" She turned to see John making his way down the hill. "Collen said you were up here. Thought the day was getting on though. Couldn't leave you here all night."
“I'm quite capable of finding my way," returned Jennifer, trying to pull her hair into some sort of order, brushing at the pieces of grass which seemed determined to make a permanent home in her clothes.
"You look okay," said John as he reached her. "Had a good sleep then? Lucky Collen didn't mistake you for one of his strange herbs." It was a feeble joke, delivered in his gruff, half-hearted way, and they both knew it and so both ignored it.
Jennifer was less than happy that Collen had seen her, sleeping like some field-worker in the grass but even more aggravated by the fact that she had missed a good chance to talk with him in private. She would be leaving in the morning and it would be difficult now to make an excuse to John as to why she wanted to go down to the cottage. It would have to be done after dinner. John would probably drink himself into a stupor again and would have no thought and even less care as to what she was doing. He didn't look too bad really, considering the events of the night before... a bit bloodshot around the eyes, that was all.
He seemed so normal at times. It would be easier if he were simply mad all the time. This changing, one minute one thing and the next another, was exhausting. Last night he looked as if he were lost forever, and now, now he seemed no more than a middle-aged man who has not slept well but was otherwise perfectly ordinary and in command of his faculties. But that too could be a sign of insanity. She had read somewhere once that the insane were very clever about acting normal when they needed too. The madder they were the more cunning they became. It was part of the disease. On that basis John's mother must have been very mad indeed and his father not much better. It was not surprising that he was as he was and she could almost feel sorry for him. It wasn't really his fault for he was doomed by his birth.
It was the cry which tore her away from her thoughts and a determined brushing of the last few pieces of grass on her blouse ... the throat-choked gasp of anguish which burst from the stilled and stricken man. The body lay face up, rocking gently with each reverent stroke and wash of the running stream. His long black hair floated out behind him, rag-like; creeping and snaking beneath the ancient roots of the willow which had taken hold of this intruder and claimed him as her own.
The sun danced prettily on the shiny silver belt buckle, which held his small cream shorts neatly in place, a glistening talisman beneath the protuberant rise of milk-white belly. He looked for all the world like some plump, plastic doll, cast into the water by a cruel and angry child and like the doll he would bear no grudge and waited only for someone to draw him forth. The expression upon the broad, square face was peaceful enough, with the curl of ebony lashes in a final rest upon his cheeks and only the eyebrows, thick and black, joined ever more forcefully at the bridge of his nose by the gathered wrinkling of a sudden frown. The arms floated wide on either side of the goblin body, fingers drifting listlessly on one side, and on the other, grasping tight, a handful of daffodils with crushed stems and torn blossoms.
"Ellis, oh my God Ellis." The words came in a broken whisper as John knelt by the side of the stream, rocking, unknowingly, back and forth, reaching out with his hand, every now and again, as if by some miracle he would find the power to draw the child back from his watery grave.
But it was not so much the stream which had claimed Ellis, as they would discover later, but that bright-faced herald of Spring, the daffodil, Demeter's sacred flower, known also as chaplet of the infernal gods, guardian at the graves of the dead ... the flower which heals but which can also kill. The small, fey boy had trodden silently in the footsteps of his father, seeking the treasures of the field, gathering and tasting that which could be used to heal, not knowing that death most often also resides in the strongest source of life. He had eaten of the daffodil, drunk deep the poison from its pure golden chalice and, beckoned by the fingers of death had fallen into the water, clutching still the broken stems with the bruised and bitten head of the blossom.
It seemed an eternity to Jennifer, that John knelt by the side of the stream, the muddy water seeping through his trousers. She did not know what to say. She did not know what she felt. She could only look at John looking at the body, wanting him desperately to do something and yet not wanting him to move, not wanting anything to move because that would then make it all undeniably, irrevocably real.
After a time he stopped rocking and she moved down and knelt beside him. When she looked into his face it was to see the shadow of rage, brought to birth in his eyes, dropping down through every line and contour. He turned toward her, not really seeing her but knowing she was there. The hollow grief which ate hungrily into his soul could be clearly seen on his face. She shivered. This was a John that she did know and one she feared. It was not the same man that Ellis had known. She doubted that anyone would see that John again, the one whom Ellis so miraculously brought to life, for with the death of this small, strange boy he too had been extinguished.
When John stood up and stepped into the stream it came as a shock, shattering as it did, the ephemeral, dreamlike quality of the moment. In an instant, or so it seemed, the day stood lit, harsh and clear, the sun biting and nipping at the slosh and whirl of water as John walked across to where the body lay. Everything seemed somehow sharper, clearer, brighter, louder and far, far more cruel. Jennifer watched as John bent over to gently untangle the strands of hair from the greedy roots of the willow, and when he scooped up the sad little body and turned toward her she could see the tears running down his cheeks, but the words when they came were firm and clear:"I'll take him to the house. Go and tell his parents."
Jennifer nodded and began to walk away. Something made her turn back as she reached the middle of the path which would take her through the apple orchard and down to the cottage. She watched as John carried the dwarf-small body, one arm flung out, still clutching the bedraggled yellow blossoms, watched as he carried the dead child on up into the house, not wanting to hurry on her terrible mission and wishing too, for some strange reason which she did not understand and which therefore bothered her slightly, to give John some time alone with the boy.
He had loved the child, of that there was no doubt. In fact, Ellis was probably the only person John had ever been able to love; Ellis who loved because it was in his nature to do so, without doubt, without question and without conditions. It was a given thing, this kind of love, of that she was sure. It was not something which ordinary people could do; it was not a normal kind of love. But then he had not been a normal kind of boy. Perhaps that was what John had liked about him so much; he was imperfect and he did not demand that others be what he was not. He made it seem somehow normal, being different, being unlike everyone else, as if it were the most natural of things to be a small, unfinished boy who was in the world and yet not quite of it.
Whatever Ellis had meant to John, his death could only make him worse. If he had found a sense of sanity in the company of the boy then he would now have to find a way to live without it and that meant he would be left to his madness and his rage. Jennifer did not quite know what his madness meant to him but she did know that for John, rage was a holy thing, a sacred weapon to be wielded against all that he called enemy. He would raise it high again, perhaps ultimately against himself, this holy rage, against the taking of the child, and it would be a dark and fearsome thing. She did not want to be around to see it. She would speak to the boy's parents and then pack her things and take the evening train. It was no business of hers. It was all over, done with, both John and the house.
It had been a terrible day and yet somehow she felt at peace. She knew now that she was a stranger in this place, perhaps always had been. Home beckoned; that place which was truly her own. There was no part for her to play in John's life and even if there had been, she would not want it for she knew with even greater certainty that she had no place for him in her life. Whoever she had been when they shared a life together was as limp and dead as the strange, dark-eyed boy and now, the last sods could be thrown on her grave. She would leave him with his fury and insanity, leave him with his demon's and the ghost of the goblin child, leave him in the hell which was of his own making.
Labels: Somerset; Camelot; Daffodils
posted by Roslyn Ross at 1:33 AM
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