Witches
The winds blow hard here. So hard that if you forget your
hat your ears will hurt.
She once had a dream about that, saw herself as both older and younger in clothes she’s never worn. Walking across the bare-bone back of the open moor to the burial mound in the distance. She'd seen feathers in her hair, matted and wild, and heard the rattle of bones at her belt. Both younger and older versions were each the mirror of the other - only the younger carried the gear (as all good apprentices should). They’d sat on the mound and used the white noise of wind to enter trance. But that only ever hurt the sensitive skin of her ears when she tried it awake.
She once had a dream about that, saw herself as both older and younger in clothes she’s never worn. Walking across the bare-bone back of the open moor to the burial mound in the distance. She'd seen feathers in her hair, matted and wild, and heard the rattle of bones at her belt. Both younger and older versions were each the mirror of the other - only the younger carried the gear (as all good apprentices should). They’d sat on the mound and used the white noise of wind to enter trance. But that only ever hurt the sensitive skin of her ears when she tried it awake.
In a pinch there are those little cottony whips of white
that grow in the moorland grass. You can stuff in your ears and they can help
with the soreness.
But they do nothing for the whipping of hair and loss of
warmth from the head.
This isn’t Ilkley Moor, but you could certainly catch your
death of cold up here, and the worms would just as surely eat you up.
The moor is both barren and unforgiving, yet healing and
home. With its wild winds and tussocks, wildfires and bogs, mounds and ghosts,
and of course, her.
“Owd” Rachel.
The boogeywoman, the witch.
(Stand there at Devil’s ditch and you’ll hear the shrieking
from her ruined pile if you go there in dream upon a night.)
A mist falls, a featherlight curtain draping over a sleeping
giant’s back. It’s damp and cloying, suffocating, and she imagines a thousand invisible fingers
tracing along her skin. She resists the urge to pull her coat tighter around
her (as though that would ever keep them out).
No, that’s best left for the knitted cables on her coat that
wind like snakes and entangle each other in a game of dropped pennies left for
a baneful wight to count.
She follows the screams through the steely grey, watching
her footing as she goes.
It may be the mist but the sun looks weak now, a dusk come
early in the day.
It reminds her of another time, and a mountain a thousand
miles away. Of how the mist had fallen and dragon had eaten the sun. The
closing of flowers. The wind that was strangely thin. And the sound of bells in
the distance from the wild ponies that roamed.
She’d found it eerie, and then as now, an atavistic fear had
clawed to get out.
The mist begins to thin as she comes to the ruin, and all is
clear as she reaches the wall. The screams are no more, and a brightness shines
down from a sun no dragon or wolf has ever seen (let alone tried to devour).
She runs her fingers along the stone - pulling them through
cushions of moss, as she makes her way to what was once the door.
And that’s when she hears it - a reedy voice calling out -
bidding her to stay and fear no more.
She comes to the threshold and stands in that space. Just as
she was taught to do before.
Touching palms to cool stone, she drops to the
floor with a moan.
Owd Rachel may have lived there, but it was another she'd seen - a bundle of black lying prone on the floor. The world shifts, and she's no longer stood on the threshold of a ruin on the moor.
Her palms hit the cool of a dirt floor, and the cold, midday sun disappears from sight. She is somewhere different now, somewhere other and dark, and with barely a flame to cast a light.
Stepping forward she makes her way cautiously to the bundle of black, and realizes that whoever it is still breathes. Crouching down, the hiker reaches back to the bottle in her pack, shuffles carefully across the dirt floor.
"Y'orrite love?" she asks, her accent thick with the speech of her ancestors, and the figure begins to stir from its repose.
She offers the bottle, cursing the lack of light as she unscrews the cap.
"Av sum wather here if tha con manage it."
The figure - an old woman - pulls herself to sitting, and her dark shawl falls to obscure her face as though pulled into place by some unseen force. When she speaks, her voice sounds like gargled rocks. Almost as though she'd never spoken before.
"Aye...bless you love." she croaks, then drinks deeply.
As the old woman drinks, she seems to fill out, the ash-grey of her fingers enlivening once more. The hiker watches, fascinated by the change, and wonders what she has stumbled into this time.
She's no longer on the moor, but now sits in a cave. The candle sends flickers of light around the subterranean gloom. She looks around, takes as much in as she can, follows the lines of figures moving like water across the walls. Herds of animals run, stars dance, man becomes beast, and figures hunt with spears. Bulls charge, stags fight, bird-people preside over ritual, and lionesses stalk them all. The hiker finds herself entranced, moves without thought to stand closer to the walls, to trace the figures with delicate finger tips.
The old woman chuckles throatily behind her. Her voice restored, and accent foreign to the hiker's ears.
"Ah so it's the old drawings you're drawn to...of course you are..."
The hiker turns to look, sees an eye glinting from out of the darkness of the shawl-shrouded face. Senses rather than sees the smile. There's something about this woman that's familiar, something she just can't put her finger on.
Longingly, she puts her fingers once more to the images on the wall, feeling a sense of nostalgia for something she never could have known, then turns to the woman once more.
"We shud prolly get y'owt o'ere, love." she suggests, though she knows deep down this is no ordinary old mother found out on the moor.
The older woman laughs - raucously now.
"Get out of here? Where would I go but here?"
The words aren't born of desperation but of simple fact. The hiker looks at her bottle in the older woman's hands - soft now with life and warm with blood. She could have sworn it was a corpse she was dealing with before. But yet here this woman is, more alive by the second, her ragged form filling out into something approaching health.
The laughter falls suddenly silent, and when she next speaks, the old woman's voice is serious and low.
"You know why you are here, girl."
The hiker begins to shake her head. How could she know the why if she didn't even know what she would encounter in the first place?
"Stop fooling yourself!" snaps the old woman, her words suddenly sharp like broken glass.
The hiker takes in a deep breath, prepares herself to speak, to mollify this angered form. But before she can marshal the words from heart to lips, the old woman speaks once more.
"Dear gods, you don't know, do you?" Her voice this time is hesitant and pity singes the edges of her speech, eating at the hardness and making them soft.
The hiker simply shakes her head. It would be all to easy to write this old woman off as being crazed - the product of being isolated in a cave for goodness knows how long. But from the way her soul sings and the otherness of the place, she knows that 'crazy old woman' is the least likely option here.
Pulling at her shawl, the old woman pulls the ragged cloth back to reveal her face, and a big, tearful eye meets her own. The hiker gasps, for it's her own self she sees, the one that she saw in dream so long ago. This woman is different from the one she saw before, her wrinkles were born of more pain than joy, and black has replaced the rich reds of her clothes. No bones or feathers now, just the mourning weeds of a crow.
"Yer diffrunt..." she whispers, and the old woman nods.
"We were not meant to be this." The elder replies. "We were meant to be priestesses not just witches with half-forgotten lore."
There's a truth here, the hiker can feel it poking at her heart and soul but still yet out of reach. She leans in in silent encouragement of the elder.
"I remember the time you saw in your dream. Truth be told, I was there too. Time is a circle you see, not a line like his lot would say. I remember how we looked and the work we did then. I remember the singing of the winds back then on these moors."
The old woman pauses for a moment and her eyes mist over.
"The winds don't sing like that anymore."
The younger nods, this she knows. The winds bring only pain to the ears now.
"I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I know it happened when they killed her. She was the last of her line, you know?"
"Ah dunno who yer on about." replies the younger.
For a moment, Older looks impossibly sad, but shrugs it off like a cloak and carries on.
"They used to call her the Very Black Witch - Orddu. She had a place not so far from here...well, in a manner of speaking. She was a mother of sorts - our mother."
Suddenly, the old woman stops and closes her eyes, inhales like a deer scenting the air. When she opens her eyes now, she does so with a smile.
"Is" she amends. "I should say that she is a mother of sorts. She's back!"
This time when the old woman laughs, it's warm and full of joy.
Younger looks at her confused. "Wha's tha' mean though?"
"Everything, girl. Everything."
Owd Rachel may have lived there, but it was another she'd seen - a bundle of black lying prone on the floor. The world shifts, and she's no longer stood on the threshold of a ruin on the moor.
Her palms hit the cool of a dirt floor, and the cold, midday sun disappears from sight. She is somewhere different now, somewhere other and dark, and with barely a flame to cast a light.
Stepping forward she makes her way cautiously to the bundle of black, and realizes that whoever it is still breathes. Crouching down, the hiker reaches back to the bottle in her pack, shuffles carefully across the dirt floor.
"Y'orrite love?" she asks, her accent thick with the speech of her ancestors, and the figure begins to stir from its repose.
She offers the bottle, cursing the lack of light as she unscrews the cap.
"Av sum wather here if tha con manage it."
The figure - an old woman - pulls herself to sitting, and her dark shawl falls to obscure her face as though pulled into place by some unseen force. When she speaks, her voice sounds like gargled rocks. Almost as though she'd never spoken before.
"Aye...bless you love." she croaks, then drinks deeply.
As the old woman drinks, she seems to fill out, the ash-grey of her fingers enlivening once more. The hiker watches, fascinated by the change, and wonders what she has stumbled into this time.
She's no longer on the moor, but now sits in a cave. The candle sends flickers of light around the subterranean gloom. She looks around, takes as much in as she can, follows the lines of figures moving like water across the walls. Herds of animals run, stars dance, man becomes beast, and figures hunt with spears. Bulls charge, stags fight, bird-people preside over ritual, and lionesses stalk them all. The hiker finds herself entranced, moves without thought to stand closer to the walls, to trace the figures with delicate finger tips.
The old woman chuckles throatily behind her. Her voice restored, and accent foreign to the hiker's ears.
"Ah so it's the old drawings you're drawn to...of course you are..."
The hiker turns to look, sees an eye glinting from out of the darkness of the shawl-shrouded face. Senses rather than sees the smile. There's something about this woman that's familiar, something she just can't put her finger on.
Longingly, she puts her fingers once more to the images on the wall, feeling a sense of nostalgia for something she never could have known, then turns to the woman once more.
"We shud prolly get y'owt o'ere, love." she suggests, though she knows deep down this is no ordinary old mother found out on the moor.
The older woman laughs - raucously now.
"Get out of here? Where would I go but here?"
The words aren't born of desperation but of simple fact. The hiker looks at her bottle in the older woman's hands - soft now with life and warm with blood. She could have sworn it was a corpse she was dealing with before. But yet here this woman is, more alive by the second, her ragged form filling out into something approaching health.
The laughter falls suddenly silent, and when she next speaks, the old woman's voice is serious and low.
"You know why you are here, girl."
The hiker begins to shake her head. How could she know the why if she didn't even know what she would encounter in the first place?
"Stop fooling yourself!" snaps the old woman, her words suddenly sharp like broken glass.
The hiker takes in a deep breath, prepares herself to speak, to mollify this angered form. But before she can marshal the words from heart to lips, the old woman speaks once more.
"Dear gods, you don't know, do you?" Her voice this time is hesitant and pity singes the edges of her speech, eating at the hardness and making them soft.
The hiker simply shakes her head. It would be all to easy to write this old woman off as being crazed - the product of being isolated in a cave for goodness knows how long. But from the way her soul sings and the otherness of the place, she knows that 'crazy old woman' is the least likely option here.
Pulling at her shawl, the old woman pulls the ragged cloth back to reveal her face, and a big, tearful eye meets her own. The hiker gasps, for it's her own self she sees, the one that she saw in dream so long ago. This woman is different from the one she saw before, her wrinkles were born of more pain than joy, and black has replaced the rich reds of her clothes. No bones or feathers now, just the mourning weeds of a crow.
"Yer diffrunt..." she whispers, and the old woman nods.
"We were not meant to be this." The elder replies. "We were meant to be priestesses not just witches with half-forgotten lore."
There's a truth here, the hiker can feel it poking at her heart and soul but still yet out of reach. She leans in in silent encouragement of the elder.
"I remember the time you saw in your dream. Truth be told, I was there too. Time is a circle you see, not a line like his lot would say. I remember how we looked and the work we did then. I remember the singing of the winds back then on these moors."
The old woman pauses for a moment and her eyes mist over.
"The winds don't sing like that anymore."
The younger nods, this she knows. The winds bring only pain to the ears now.
"I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I know it happened when they killed her. She was the last of her line, you know?"
"Ah dunno who yer on about." replies the younger.
For a moment, Older looks impossibly sad, but shrugs it off like a cloak and carries on.
"They used to call her the Very Black Witch - Orddu. She had a place not so far from here...well, in a manner of speaking. She was a mother of sorts - our mother."
Suddenly, the old woman stops and closes her eyes, inhales like a deer scenting the air. When she opens her eyes now, she does so with a smile.
"Is" she amends. "I should say that she is a mother of sorts. She's back!"
This time when the old woman laughs, it's warm and full of joy.
Younger looks at her confused. "Wha's tha' mean though?"
"Everything, girl. Everything."
LOVE. THIS!!!
ReplyDelete