Eve of the Serpent

by Jon Jacks

  At this point, Nechtan had made his apologies and left, saying he had some urgent work only he could attend to – while his apprentice Prytani was perfectly capable of taking his place at a dining table!

  Prytani felt uncomfortable amongst these boisterous, boastful people, despite the elegant dress Nechtan had forced her to wear once more. Worse still, she’d had to leave Tamesis behind in their little cell. Without the little vixen by her side, Prytani felt weirdly naked and vulnerable.

  She didn’t know anyone seated by her on the long table. She didn’t know anyone on any of the long tables that had been set out in the hall, laden with all manner of meats, vegetables, berries and fruits.

  It was only when one of the princess’s young attendants began to sing that she felt herself relaxing and enjoying the meal. The singing, the glorious, lilting melody: it was all every bit as beautiful and entrancing as the first time Prytani had heard the girl sing.

  One by one, the lords and ladies began to still their own singing and chatter. Soon the whole hall was silent but for the girl’s enchanting tune, flowing about its charmed listeners as comfortingly as cooling waters.

  The princess leant closer towards the king, whispering something to him that made him grin expectantly. She rose from her seat, elegantly ducked behind it, and quickly but lightly tripped towards the door leading out to their bedchamber.

  Not only Prytani had spotted this. A handful of lords, a few of their ladies, had witnessed it too. Like their king, they smiled knowingly, hiding their mischievous chuckles.

  As if already lamenting the loss of innocence of her lady, or perhaps celebrating the arrival of a knew, enlightening knowledge, the girl’s singing became evermore wonderful. Rising, falling, its calming waves washing across everyone, its drifting melodies were taking them elsewhere in their minds, transporting everyone there across foreign seas and great oceans to more exotically beautiful lands.

  Only the king seemed unaffected by the singing, his own mind obviously focused on other matters. He leapt up from his throne, reaching for the wolf pelt draped over its back. He held the pelt close, a wicked smile on his face, as he made for the door leading out of the hall.

  Even in their semi-dazed states, the lords who saw this lightly guffawed, while the ladies gasped in horror. In a moment, though, even these drifted back into a relaxed trance. The girl’s singing had been enhanced by equally wonderful voices as the rest of the princess’s attendants entered the hall.

  The harmonious voices intertwined, spreading out throughout the hall, bourgeoning now and again into crescendos that then faded away into soothing streams. Prytani sensed that she was becoming drowsy, causing her to briefly suspect that Nechtan might have slipped a dose of the serpent potion into the fruit and berry drinks she had limited herself to.

  She was only partially, even half-dreamily aware that the man seated next to her had dropped his drink, the wine oozing across the table top like spilled blood. It looked like it might run towards her, spill into her lap, yet she didn’t feel any need to leap out of its way.

  More drinking horns were dropped, more wine spilled. But no one cared. They listened, enraptured, to the glorious song weaving its way around the hall.

  And Prytani found herself woven into Tamesis, running up the tower’s stairs.

  *

  She didn’t go to the lady’s room.

  Rather, Tamesis found herself being drawn to a window overlooking the land stretching out beyond it. Sitting here, on the window’s broad sill, Tamesis seemed to be soaring across that land, as swift as a swallow.

  The swallow squirmed in through one of the many small holes many homes have between walls and roof. She became a mouse, scurrying along roughly hewn beams, silent and secretive. She found a comfortable perch, one looking down into the room below.

  She was in a bedchamber. Below her, in a large fur-covered bed, the princess waited.

  Prytani didn’t want to be here. She was embarrassed.

  She wanted to look away.

  She couldn’t.

  The princess smiled hungrily as the door to the bedchamber swung open. When the king stepped inside the room, his grin was every bit as hungry as the princess’s.

  With a malevolent chuckle, he slipped on the charmed wolf pelt.

  And, as he transformed before her, the princess’s eyes widened in awestruck terror.

  *

  Chapter 35

  Prytani wanted to tell Tamesis to leave the bedchamber.

  But she still couldn’t converse in any way with her. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t control her.

  She couldn’t control even herself.

  Because, yes, strangely, she was still herself.

  Still the Prytani who was seated, entranced, within the hall.

  The bewitching singing still held everyone in its wonderful spell. No one was moving, as if rooted to their seats. They could have been frozen, they were all so still.

  Only their eyes moved, allowed to witness and be aware of everything that was going on around them. Including the awareness that they had absolutely no influence on what was happening.

  Without even a change in the beat of their singing, the young girls stepped down from their position by the thrones. Separating, they moved languidly and silently towards the crowded tables.

  Each of the seven girls stood behind a seated lord. Reaching over a shoulder of each petrified lord, each girl picked up the dagger that lay alongside the dinner platter.

  The girls continued to sing, their voices full of innocence, grace, blissfulness, the song truly angelic in its unmatchable beauty.

  Then, expertly, with just one quick blur of a hand, each one slashed the throat of the lord seated before her.

  *

  Chapter 36

  Within the bedchamber, the princess’s expression turned from one of horror to one of amusement.

  ‘My lord,’ she said brightly, ‘if I’d known this had been your intention, I could have prepared myself better.’

  The eagerly advancing Wolf King stopped by the side of the bed, perplexed by the princess’s gaiety.

  ‘You appear surprised by my acceptance of your transformation, my lord,’ the princess calmly continued, having noted the king’s puzzlement. ‘Yet, it proves to me only that we are indeed ideally matched.’

  And with that, with a satisfied smile, she changed into an immense, ferocious wolf.

  *

  Chapter 37

  The blood that spurted from the slashed throats spilled across the table, swirling into and happily merging with the already spilled wine.

  The men gurgled as they slumped forward in their seats, their strained, surprised faces falling into their platters of juice-soaked meats.

  Alongside them, their women wept. Some even managed a muted moan, a pained wailing. Thankfully, it didn’t detract in anyway from the most wondrous song that the girls continued to exultantly sing as they moved on to the next seven lords.

  The knives slashed once more. The blood fountained, spilled, ran, like previously stilled waters disturbed by the casting of pebbles.

  Prytani wished she could be anywhere else but here.

  Anywhere else, that is, but in the king’s bedchamber.

  *

  Wolf and Wolf King were evenly matched.

  They chaotically tumbled about the room, fiercely clutching each other in an unforgiving embrace, each attempting to unbalance, or to even throw, the other. When they separated, they swung taloned hands that rived fur and flesh, that tore gashes spouting streams of blood.

  They leapt at each other, barged hard against chests, pinioned arms back until they were painfully wrenched free. Maws opened wide, snarled, bit.

  It could have been an endless battle.

  Desperate to break this impasse, the king briefly leapt clear of the fight.

  He spotted the sheathed Siren, laid across the bedchamber’s great chest. Yes, the sheath held it tightly: but surely, in his desperate need, with
all the power and strength he possessed as the Wolf King, he could finally pull the blade free?

  He reached for the sword, grabbed its handle, pulled – and Siren slipped free of its embracing sheath.

  He turned back to face the wolf, triumphantly holding Siren aloft, all ready to strike, to deal the death blow that no one, not even a werewolf, could resist.

  The wolf, the princess, stared at the bared blade in disbelief.

  She began to back away, frightened for the very first time in her life.

  With a cackling laugh, the Wolf King slowly advanced on her, backing her up closer and closer towards the wall.

  Then, abruptly, the wolf halted her retreat.

  ‘It’s not singing,’ she pointed out with a pleased, rasping laugh. ‘Siren: it’s not singing!’

  The king glanced at the sword in his hand with a puzzled, irate frown.

  It didn’t feel right in his hand. Didn’t feel as light as it should.

  ‘It’s not Siren!’ he growled, briefly tempted to contemptuously throw it aside.

  Then, thinking better of it, he lunged forward, bringing the blade down hard as he aimed for the wolf’s head.

  Caught off guard, the wolf tried to dance aside. She was just a little too late. The sharp blade caught her down the side of an arm, slicing off a large chunk of flesh.

  She howled in agony.

  ‘Hah! Who needs Siren?’ the king exclaimed gruffly, surging forwards once more, curving the blade before him.

  He had speed, grace, the power of a wolf. And now he had an extension of his reach, one as keenly edged as any talon.

  The wolf backed away once more, this time swiftly, lithely, bending as she moved her body out of the way of each swinging curve of the blade. Now, however, she’s the one who’s desperate, clambering over the chest, over the bed, over chairs she picks up and flings to no avail.

  The Wolf King unexpectedly dives forwards, coming in low, the sword protruding out before him like a tightly held lance.

  The wolf, slips to one side, avoiding the striking blade.

  But it was a feint. The king brings up a fisted hand, backed by the muscles of a bull. It smacks the wolf hard in her muzzle.

  She’s dazed, everything swimming about her. Her knees give, her legs crumpling.

  She drops heavily to the floor. Before she has a chance to recover, let alone rise, the king’s standing over her, raising the sword slightly before swiftly bringing it down towards her exposed chest.

  And there the blade stops, a mere finger’s width from slicing into her bosom.

  The wolf glances up into his face in surprise.

  Has he changed his mind about killing her after all?

  Yet his face is as surprised as hers.

  He can’t understand it! He wants to kill her!

  And yet, he can’t!

  Sweat forms on his brow, runs down his muzzled face. The blade quivers, like it’s being held there by some invisible force against his wishes.

  ‘Brother?’

  The Wolf King whispers this in disbelieving fear.

  ‘You’re exhausted, you’ve been severely weakened.’ The Wolf King whispers again, but it’s another, slightly different voice. ‘I’ve waited so long for this moment.’

  The shaking blade gradually swings back across the wolf’s heavily breathing chest. The Wolf King himself shudders, quakes, fighting against this turning of the sword.

  Despite this inner battle, the king is slowly turning his own sword against himself. His eyes bulge, as white as mistletoe berries in his terror.

  Watching in awe, the wolf wonders if he’ll really go ahead with it – kill himself with his own sword.

  But she hasn’t got time to watch this play out. Slipping out from beneath the hovering blade, she athletically rises to her feet.

  She swings out viciously, slashing his throat.

  As the Wolf King falls to the floor, he manages a grimacing smile.

  ‘Thank you, sweet princess,’ the king’s brother says gratefully.

  *

  Chapter 38

  ‘A bad day’s work.’

  Quietly approaching Tamesis from behind, the lady fondly stroked the warm fur of her head.

  ‘Or is it a good day’s work? Who’s to say? Not me, that’s for sure.’

  She stared through the window, out across the land, as if she too has witnessed everything taking place.

  Tamesis turned around on the window sill.

  ‘You’ve shown me far greater treachery,’ she said, Prytani at last regaining a better sense of connection between them, ‘many times throughout man’s history.’

  ‘The gods, too,’ the lady replied nonchalantly. ‘They have no right to take a morally superior positon over this. There’s an overlap between the two, of course: at man’s own creation. Only for tales to be used to veil the truth.’

  And so Tamesis listened very carefully to what the lady had to say.

  The great text brought by Joseph tells how god creates first man, then woman.

  Only this is a second account of the creation. For within the same text, there is an earlier, more veiled description.

  There Elohim’s creation is in ‘our’ image: which isn’t really so surprising, for Elohim means ‘gods’, not ‘god’.

  Like their new creation, made in ‘our image’, these gods are male and female.

  ‘Did I conceive all this people?’ Joseph’s text says elsewhere, even, ‘you forgot the God who had given you birth.’

  Indeed we have forgotten her (for, of course, only a woman truly gives birth).

  Beth-El, remember, is the house of god. And to the Canaanites, El was married to Asherah, Mother of All Living.

  Before El, it was Ea who was married to the Mother of All Living.

  And before Ea, there was Enki, married to Ninhursag – which means, again, Mother of All Living.

  Before all this, there was the sacred merging between Apsû and Tiamat, the primeval ocean and Life Mother (and who, as Thalattē, is also the Moon).

  And before Tiamat?

  Without a beginning in time, there was just the endless primeval sea in which the universe floated.

  This is Namma, Mother of Everything, who gave birth to heaven and earth from her own body.

  Now even Joseph’s god, we read in the opening words of the text, passes over ‘the deep’. Or, as it originally said, ‘tehom’, their word for Tiamat, for Namma.

  In the very oldest parts of this text, the oldest Psalms, their god is simply called Yh, written in Negev script as >—–O. A snake’s head with a striking, forked tongue. To arrive at ‘Yhwh’, we have to add ‘hwh’ – which means both Mother of All Living and snake

  Two serpents, male and female.

  But what happened to this ‘hwh’, this Mother of All Living, this serpent of wisdom, this Tree of Life?

  She was exiled, of course, along with man, Adam.

  Mother of All Living in Greek is Eve.

  *

  Chapter 39

  Within the hall, every man lies dead. His throat cut. His face ingloriously smothered in his last meal.

  His lady bends, weeping, over him. Their wailing isn’t anywhere near as beautiful as the girl’s singing, Prytani finds herself bizarrely thinking.

  The girls have gone. Just as she had seen the werewolf dive into the air as if into a pool and vanish, the girls had similarly leapt forwards and disappeared, like they were slipping into invisible waters.

  At last, the doors of the great hall are thrown open, the sons of the dead lords charging in, only just realising that a weirdly silent – or rather, accompanied to heavenly music – massacre has been taking place under their very noses. Nechtan follows straight after, but he ignores the mourning women, the bloodied men with torn throats, the sons swearing vengeance, yet secretly relishing the reins of power being thrust into their own hands

  Nechtan heads straight for the bedchamber.

  Of course, Prytani knows what he
will find there. But she’s not supposed to know, of course. So she follows him anyway when he asks a few of those in the hall to come with him.

  She knows, too, off course, that the princess won’t be there, won’t be captured. Like her attendants, like the werewolf she is, she’ll have dived and vanished into those mystical waters.

  The king, still in his transformation as a wolf, lies across the marriage bed. Like all his lords downstairs, his throat is slashed. The blood seeps off to either side, darkening the bed’s fur coverings.

  ‘Send men to our borders: make sure this princess can’t leave the kingdom.’ Nechtan sternly orders, turning to one of the newly appointed lords. ‘Take her alive.’

  ‘Why alive?’ one of the men asks.

  ‘Because your new king needs a wolf pelt, of course,’ Nechtan snaps, glancing down at the dead king with disgust. ‘And as this one’s dead, I can’t get it from him!’

  ‘But how will we know it’s her?’ another lord asks.

  Nechtan briefly looks around, reaches for a small fur slipper at the end of the bed, hands it to the man.

  ‘How many girls do you know with feet that small?’

  *

  Chapter 40

  The village yard is busy again, this time with men preparing their horses for a long trip. At their head, Nechtan is mounting his own horse, Siren strapped across his back in its sheath.

  Cructan has his own special perch, a padded wooden rod fixed on the horse’s flanks. He sits here proudly, his eyes round as dark berries, taking in everything, missing nothing.

  Unlike the other troops of men sent out the previous night, Nechtan and his men won’t be hunting for the girl. There are more than enough men set doing that now, Nechtan had declared, having made sure that each group carried with them one of the princess’s many shoes or slippers.

  ‘Bring them all to me!’ he’d said of the girls whose feet fitted the shoes. ‘I’ll roast every one, if I have to!’

  ‘Girl,’ he shouts out now, calling Prytani over to his mount’s side as the rest of his men finish sliding into their saddles. ‘I hope you were paying attention when I told you the tale of the Seven Star Powder.’