“I warn you again; I am not what I seem.” Her voice was low, and if he had been listening, he would have sensed the impatience. He looked into her eyes and saw the skin around them pulled tight by her trapped hair. Her expression was still unreadable, but she remained limp. Somewhere, a less primal part of his mind was disturbed by her lack of fear, but he could not focus beyond her soft flesh. She drew in a breath as he forced his way into her body, and remained motionless while he sought his moment of ecstasy within her. Her flesh was very sweet.
Once spent, he collapsed on top of her, crushing her. He tugged his hand from her hair, not caring that strands of it came away with his fingers, not caring that he had hurt her.
His ear was next to her lips. “Doom and triple doom, upon you and your clan,” she whispered.
She vanished from beneath him.
****
Mother
Pwyll clambered to his feet, suddenly afraid. He had ignored her warnings, and now he knew it was no mortal he had taken. He scrambled to where he had first seen the washerwoman, hoping to see her back at her task. He knew there was little chance of asking for forgiveness, but maybe he could offer restitution, for he had inherited a wealth of weapons and jewels. The clothes were still beside the stream and seeping water; a pink-tinged trickle that dripped steadily.
He picked up one of the items and stared at it. It was a cape, twin to the one around his own shoulders. It even had the same brooch; a gift from his father, except the stone was black instead of blue. With growing horror, he held the other clothing up and saw his shirt, his tunic, his trews, all sodden and stained.
The girl had been the Bean-nighe, the little washerwoman who would foretell your death. Sometimes, you could escape your fate and it was even possible to ask the washerwoman for a blessing. Pwyll had ruined any hope of a reprieve from his death. However, there was still a chance he could avert the doom he had placed on his clan and retain his honor. He fell to his knees. He called up to the sky, “Oh great Morrigan, I beseech thee. I will make restitution.”
Three crows started to circle overhead, a wreath of dark feathers, their harsh cries a litany of accusation. One flew down to land at his feet. The bird seemed to shimmer for a moment, before it formed into a naked woman with hair as black as a crow’s feathers, her belly swollen with a ten month child. Tattoos covered every square of her skin in a complex pattern of dark blue plaits, triquetra, knots, spirals, triskeles and wyrms; most of her skin was a puzzle beyond the knowing of any man. However, Pwyll did recognize the pattern on her stomach, a highly detailed tree of life, its fruit and leaves twisting into runes. The tattoos made it hard to read her expression, but her voice was hard and cold. “There is no way you can avoid your doom, lad.”
“I know that. I accept my fate. But please, my Queen, I would beg that you set no doom upon my kin.”
“It’s a little too late to be asking any favors from me, isn’t it?” For one instant, she was again the little Bean-nighe, and her hands gestured to the bite marks on her neck, and the bruises on her breasts and thighs. There was a trickle of dark blood on the inside of her legs, snaking its slow way to the ground. Then, the goddess was back.
Pwyll groveled, holding his hands palm up towards the goddess. “It was only I who committed the crime.”
“Your clan raised you. They taught you the manners of a man. They taught you poorly, and deserve part of the punishment.” The woman was grim. “They must share your fate.”
Pwyll pulled out his knife. “I’ll kill myself right now, if you will forgive them. Will you accept a blood price as payment for my great wrong against you?”
The goddess’ severe expression softened a little. “You are prepared to make that sacrifice, and restore my honor with your life?”
Pwyll shuddered, but he whispered, “Yes. If I must.”
“So be it. I will accept your sacrifice, and if you die like a warrior, I will bring no doom down upon your clan or kin.”
****
Crone
Giving himself no time to dwell and despair, he drove the knife deep into his chest. A gout of blood spurted forth, painting a red crescent across the throat of the pregnant woman. As though the blood were magic, she changed form.
The woman became a gray-haired crone, with a battered green shawl enveloping her bony chest and shoulders. Rusty blood dripped from the hem of her black dress, and the bright crimson stain around her thin throat was now a copper torc. Her face was both savage and sad as she watched the man bleed away his life.
Pwyll’s vision grew dark and then his body weakened and he fell to his knees. He refused to make a sound, and he valiantly tried to remain upright.
The ground about the woman’s feet was a tapestry of the rich red of his sacrifice.
Pwyll swayed, and the goddess caught him before his head hit the ground. She held him to her chest, and muttered, “You poor boy. You poor, stupid boy. I guard your death.” He died in her embrace, his last breath rattling against her neck.
The twin crows that had remained overhead swooped down to land on her shoulders, their wings setting her wispy hair fluttering like a battle flag. The crows pecked at his eyes as Pwyll gazed blindly into the clear sky.
“What a waste,” said the Morrigan. She abandoned the body and rose to her full height, the crows flapping to keep their balance. For a moment, three women stood by the stream, before three crows rose into the air, flapping determinedly away.
****
Afterword
I am drawn to the knotted darkness of the Celtic Twilight. Fairy tales were never meant to be politically correct; they were originally about the dangers leering in the shadows beyond the glow of the hearth, at the bottom of a loch, behind that smile with the too-sharp, too-white teeth. I like to walk into those mossy shadows and bring back the stories lurking there, armed with my word processor and a pure heart. As a mythogynoclast, it is my destiny to bring back the histories of all the old goddesses, including the Morrigan. You asked to see the Phantom Queen awake after all. I didn’t promise you that she would be a tame goddess.
****
Biography
Lynne Lumsden Green is just about to finish her second degree and embark on a further academic adventure: Honors. Her topic will be firmly based in the genre of the Fairy Tale, but not the sweet and twee sort; she prefers the older stories still rife with sex and blood. (And if you want to know what a mythogynoclast is, go look it up.) This year saw her helping judge the Aurealis Awards for the third time, and working as a volunteer for the Reality Bites Literary Festival and Voices on the Coast Festival. If you run into her, give her a big hug...she needs all the support she can muster.
****
Mari Ness
Ravens
She crawled along the roofs, harvesting black feathers.
The first raven had fallen from the sky at dawn, crashing upon a rock in front of the tanner’s cottage. The fall had cracked its skull, and it bled while the villagers stepped around it. The second had fallen but an hour later, landing outside of the small chapel, hand built by one of the monks, a chapel many of the villagers still avoided. The third fell as the sun reached its peak, landing on the crossroads at the village center. By late afternoon, clouds of ravens fell from the sky, their feathers and blood blanketing the three small streets. By midnight, each straw roofed house was littered with ravens.
The villagers shook their heads, and pretended they did not know what this meant.
Maire knew. But still, she gathered the feathers, soaking her hands in blood. The others stayed beneath the roofs with their children, their mouths forming prayers in a mingle of languages.
****
The first to die was a child, also at dawn. Maire gathered feathers as she heard the cries of the mother; tried to shut her ears against the father’s sobs. The monk emerged to comfort them. They wrapped the child in rowan and rue, and sang the old prayers over her.
The second to die was an ancient man, in the evening, clut
ching at his heart and then falling to the floor. Fewer wails this time, and stronger songs. He was buried under the light of stars, over the protests of the monk, who wanted to say more prayers.
The third was a young woman, just married, who had never learned to bake decent bread.
Three days passed.
And then another raven fell.
****
“I’m going to the mound,” Maire said to the villagers who had gathered around to look at the fallen raven.
“That will do us no good,” said the miller.
“We have only the songs,” said Una, whom Maire did not like.
“They will do no good either,” muttered Sorcha, whom Maire did like. “The Raven Queen weakens.”
Maire listened for the hiss that should have followed those words, but heard nothing.
“You might try praying there,” Maire said, waving towards the chapel. “If the Raven Queen―” she said the name coolly, but no one stopped her “―has lost all power, there’s a magic there that might protect you.”
“Or it might be she needs their blood.”
“Blood to restore the ravens.”
“Blood to restore her sight.”
“Blood to restore her flight.”
“Three deaths she’s had, three and three more she needs,” crooned another.
Maire’s hands whitened around her walking stick.
“Might be,” she said. “Might be. And I’ll be going to find out.”
“And how will you see?”
Maire smiled. “I won’t need to. I’ll feel.”
“And how do we know you will have the strength?”
Maire held up her bag. “I have her wings,” she said.
****
She ignored the hisses of the village women as she left, along with the well meant prayers of the monk who called out to her as she left; bag over one shoulder, a stout staff in her left hand, tracing out the old road from the village that passed by the mound.
In truth, it could hardly be called a road, that path, though it led to other places; other villages, even fabled cities and towns that Maire had never visited, but had heard of from the few travelers and monks that entered their village in search of bread or other goods. She did not think of those cities now as she used her staff to push her way along the path.
It had been a true road once, she’d heard, and then the ravens had come, not dying. Her hands whitened again, and she thought of the two babies still in the village, the other small children playing in the fields.
She felt the first drops of rain touch her face; felt an odd tug to her left, then her right, then her left again.
She took three deep breaths, turned about three times and followed the pull, feeling her feet walk up a mound―
―and then felt the earth slide away beneath her, felt herself falling, falling, wrapped in sudden chill, almost thinking that she heard the feathers screaming...
****
She awoke in the cold and the utter stillness.
She did not move for a long moment. This was wrong, she thought; the underworld was supposed to be filled with whispers, with music. She remembered the tales of the shadows that pulled men into the mounds for dancing, of the little red capped creatures that promised wealth and beauty to women.
No tale had mentioned silence. Or the cold. For a moment, she heard the voices of the village woman ― the ravens are dead. She shook herself, and reached behind her for the sack of feathers. She pulled one out and stroked it.
She thought she felt a faint touch of cold wind.
Sitting here would do no good. She raised herself up, adjusted the bag around her shoulders, and stepped out into the darkness, clutching the feather.
****
As she walked, she sometimes thought she heard half whispers, or half snatches of songs, hushed before she could catch a word. She was certain, however, that the cold kept deepening. She had brought with her a cloak of double woven wool, but it did little against the chill.
The path ― and it was a path, marked with rough walls on each side, which to her fingers sometimes felt like stone, and sometimes had the slippery feel of what might have been bone ― followed, she could feel, a slow downward spiral. After what seemed hours of walking, she wondered if she was heading in the right direction, if perhaps she should head towards the top of the mound. She paused, turned around on the path, and stepped forward―
―only to feel herself heading down again.
She reversed herself, hardly knowing why, and continued in her original direction.
She lost track of time, of her steps, of the depth, but felt she had travelled the lengths of many raven wings when she heard the distinctive sound of raspy breathing.
Her footsteps froze.
“Who comes?” asked a voice.
Maire thought her hands had changed to solid ice. Her throat hurt. “One who has summoned the raven.”
The cold, if possible, deepened. She reached behind her, to the bag she carried, trying to draw out a second feather, but her hands were too cold to move.
“Who comes?”
“One who has used the raven’s feather.”
“Who comes?”
“One who would speak with the Raven Queen.”
Something dry and cold brushed her cheek. She held herself still. The cold dryness reached up to cup her face in ten narrow, rough points. She suddenly knew what her cheeks felt: fingers of dry bone. She swallowed to keep from screaming.
“And what would this one speak of to the Raven Queen?”
“Ravens fall into our village.”
“Lives for a life,” said the Raven Queen.
“You have had four,” said Maire. “Four for the death I asked. The death I asked and three.”
“And still I am unpaid. Three and three and three again: that is and was and will be the price.”
Maire remembered the fists slamming into her back, the shouts, the nights she spent huddled in the ashes, wondering if she dared kick a coal into the wall. She remembered the woman, now dead, who had never learned how to bake.
“Do you touch them, and I shall take your wings.”
“Do you take my wings,” the Queen hissed, “and I shall take your eyes.”
“You cannot,” said Maire. “For I am already blind.”
Silence. Then the Raven Queen laughed.
“Yes, I remember you,” she said, her voice seemed filled with a thousand screams, the cries of songbirds and the shrieks of ravens. “The blind one, crying in the night, weeping over her tender and torn skin ― without the courage to bend her fingers around his neck.”
But she had dreamed it, dreamed of choking him, of beating him, of wrapping her fingers around his neck and hearing his breathing cease and―
“I had the courage to call your name, and call upon the raven song.”
“To have another kill him. For cruelty.”
She remembered the blows striking her cheek, remembered the―
“No. Because I could not see.”
“And now refuse to pay my price.”
“I did not know your price.”
“You did not see.”
“Three and three and three again? For but one death?”
“A price of kindness, not of cruelty.”
Maire thought of the child who had died. “You name that kind?”
Another whisper of frozen touch across her cheek. “The child plays beneath my mounds. And her brothers may waver now before they call my name. And think upon it. What would it mean, if any could call upon my name, and have no cost to pay?”
“And why should they be the ones to pay my price?”
“A point. A point.”
Finger bones caressed her cheeks again; this time Maire did not suppress a faint moan. “Indeed, a most fair point. And I could, I think, spare your village, yes. Spend my nights in the shadowed hills, and think no more of ravens, and let its children grow in peace.”
Maire found herself b
reathing again.
“But then no other could call out my name, for aid at home and war.”
Maire thought of her own dark nights in the straw bed; thought of the women with arms bruised from their husband’s love, thought of the men who sobbed at the deaths of brothers and friends. She thought of the tales she so often heard, of ravens shrieking during war.
“You lie,” she said.
“Without the blood, I cannot answer another call. And I am too weak to journey far.” And now the voice was a rich caress, “Your words brought me to this hill. If not your village, where else can I sip my blood?”
“Our cows―”
“Do not pulse with a human soul.”
“Your wings―”
“Beat only when filled with human blood.”
She remembered her mother, weeping over her when she was a child.
“Your choice,” the voice said, and it was filled with gold; “Deny me your promised price, and deny all others the power to call upon my name, or give to me my feathered wings and step aside, and know the helpless have a shield.”
“Too heavy is your price.”
“Three and three and three again,” the voice said, now filled with the calls of ravens. “That is the price. But perhaps we can bargain; you and I.”
Do not bargain with those under the hills, for they are full of treachery and deceit. The song said nothing of nine deaths.
“I make no bargains,” Maire said. “Not with tricksters.”
She knelt, and pulled a flint and stone from beneath her robes, and set the feathers alight.
The Phantom Queen Awakes Page 3
