“I’ve brought in the story I started that day in the library,” Laura said. “I thought maybe you’d like to read it. ‘In context’, I suppose you could say.”
“Yes, I’m appreciating these stories,” James replied. “They add an extra dimension to what you’ve been telling me.”
“This was a turning point, starting to write,” Laura said. “Not just in regards to what was to become my future career but … the whole experience went to another level in a way that I didn’t appreciate at the time. I’m not sure I still quite understand it, but that was the point at which things started to change.”
As Torgon approached the hut, she saw the Seer standing in the doorway. He wore his long, formal gown, so she knew he’d come to perform the usual rites for a newborn child. The father, Donar, too, was there. It would have been his first glimpse of his newborn daughter after his wife Anil’s three-day lying in. When Torgon reached him, Donar went fully down to prostrate himself in the dust at Torgon’s feet, as a worker should.
There were tears in his eyes as he came to his knees. “Forgive Anil,” he pleaded. “She has wanted a child for so long.”
They went into the hut, dark already with afternoon shadows. There was no lamp burning, only the fusty gloom of unaired rooms. Torgon could scent blood from the birthing.
The baby clutched to her, Anil sat huddled amid the birthing straw. The baby was alive. That’d been Torgon’s initial fear, that Anil was keeping a stillborn infant to her breast.
Tears ran over Anil’s cheeks. From her position she could not prostrate herself in obeisance, but she bent her head.
Torgon knelt beside her. “Here, let me see,” she said gently and held out her hands for the child.
Slowly, sadly, Anil unwound the garments binding the child to her and put it into Torgon’s waiting hands.
The baby’s lip was cleaved right up to the nose, leaving a spreading gap. “Ah,” Torgon said, rising with the child in her arms. “It has had a moon kiss.” Gently inserting her finger into the infant’s mouth, Torgon examined it. The parting went back into the soft palate of the mouth.
“Please do not take her,” Anil whimpered. “She has survived to her three-day feeding. She is strong.”
“No,” Torgon said gently. “It cannot be.”
“Please? I will feed her myself. With a small spoon and the milk from my breast,” Anil pleaded, the tears rolling down over her cheeks. “I will care for her. She will be no burden.”
“No,” Torgon said. “A moon-kissed baby never thrives.” And with that, she took the infant and left.
Gently binding it close to her body, Torgon began the climb up the steep path to the high holy place. The path broke through the trees and Torgon could see the summit of the cliff, dazzlingly white in the setting sun. Steadying the baby against her, Torgon went down on one knee to show deference to Dwr and The One in this holy place. Then rising, she continued on up onto the precipice.
When she reached the top, Torgon sat down cross-legged in the grass. The baby cried from hunger, a weak, ribbony sound. It made water as she undressed it, the urine hot across Torgon’s thigh. She smiled at it, feeling the softness of its skin with her fingertips. Then she unstrapped the small ceremonial dagger at her wrist.
Lifting the child over her head, holding it face upward to the sky, she spoke the holy words before lowering it again into her lap. Bending forward, Torgon kissed the child on its mouth to acknowledge that she knew only its body was defective, and so, in honouring the soul with a holy kiss, its soul would be allowed to return freely to The One. Finally unsheathing the ornate dagger, she slit its throat and let the blood flow out over her hands and onto the soft white fabric of her clothes.
The lake shimmered darkly in the starlight. Standing at the water’s edge, the Seer in his long white robes looked almost incandescent. Beyond him the shadowy water lapped restlessly at the shore. He knelt before Torgon, going down in full obeisance, his withered old body prostrate on the ground. Then soundlessly he rose and began to unfasten the front of her bloodied clothing. He undressed her entirely, laying each piece on a small wooden raft that rested on the shoreline, until at last she stood naked in the autumn darkness. Without hesitation, Torgon then walked into the icy water until she was neck-deep and remained there. The Seer set light to the small raft containing the blood-stained clothing and pushed it out into the lake. Then he poured sacred oils into the water and they spread out under the flames in iridescent ripples. Like a fallen star, the raft burned brilliantly in the forest darkness.
Torgon emerged wet and shivering to stand on the shoreline while the Seer clothed her in new vestments. These weren’t the benna’s clothes but the long, loose, coarsely-woven garments of the dead. He pulled them on roughly, as if he were dressing an inanimate object.
Then he turned and began to walk through the forest. Torgon followed. No shoes were allowed her until she was reborn, nor any light, even in this darkest hour. She couldn’t re-enter the compound while she was still unclean, so he took her to the isolation hut. Once she was inside, he barred the small door, anointed the handle with holy oils and strewed the doorstep with the scented herbs used in preparation of the dead body. Then he began a high keening to mourn her death. Then silence. With inaudible footsteps, the Seer had slipped away into the forest.
As Torgon’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she was able to pick out the small rectangular window on the eastern wall that would provide the only light in the small hut during daylight hours. It was too high to see out of, but while in isolation, one was not meant to be seeing out; and this late at night, so deep in the forest, that made little difference anyway. The window was only a small patch of lesser darkness.
Miserably cold, Torgon clutched the robe tightly around her in a desperate effort to get warm again. Why was this the way things are? That thought came to her with unexpected brightness, like sunlight through the golden autumn leaves. She’d wondered this on other occasions, of course, but then only for herself. So many of the rites and rituals meant suffering that it was hard not to question them, especially in the beginning when she was first learning to discipline her mind and body in the way of a benna.
Now, however, it was the moon-kissed child’s face she saw and when this question came to her, it was with the flickering brilliance of insight.
The Power?
Why should she feel the Power now? It was Dwr’s will that malformed babies should die. Why would Dwr’s holy Power make her question it?
It was the Power, bright and shining in the infrangible darkness of the hut. Resplendent luminosity suffused her mind. Why are things as they are? the Power whispered. Why did she accept them?
Torgon sat back. Why should the Power ask this of her?
When Torgon awoke, it was Mogri’s face bent close. Taking a soft cloth, Mogri wiped away the perspiration from Torgon’s temples.
Torgon turned her head to see the familiar white walls of her cell in the compound. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Shhh,” Mogri said. Leaning down, she dipped the cloth in warm water and brought it up again. With it came the green, piquant smell of water herbs.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Torgon said.
“I’m here because the acolytes won’t wash you like I will, and you need washing. You’ve gone very sweaty. Now, shhh. You needn’t talk.”
It felt good, the confidence of Mogri’s hands, the familiar smell of water herbs. The Seer never used water herbs, but then he wouldn’t have taken the liberty of washing her either. Her head was still heavy with the aftereffects of the death oils the Seer had given in order that she might escort the child’s soul to safety. Torgon allowed herself to drowse.
“It was so strange this time, Mogri,” she murmured.
“What are you talking of?”
“In isolation. The Power came over me.”
“It was probably less the Power, Torgon, and more the death oils. You did not have your soul when they brought you down from the isolation hut and I feared greatly that you would not get it back this time. You must have walked great distances among the dead to find this child’s spirit – too far, we feared – and there were many who thought the dead had barred your way and wouldn’t let you back again.”
Mogri paused. “It is perhaps not fitting that I should say this but I feared less the dead were to blame than that the old man had poisoned you with the death oils. He is very old, Torgon. I do not believe he always thinks straight.”
“It wasn’t the death oils that caused the visions. It was the Power. They came before I was given the death oils.”
Mogri’s expression grew serious. She quickly made the gesture of deference with her fingers. “This is for you to talk with the Seer about, Torgon, not me. I have no holy calling. You know that.”
“I cannot talk with him. He will say they were unholy things which came to me. He will say I lost my way among the dead and was seduced into darkness, but this is not so. It … the Power … shone with great light. And in the light I saw other ways of doing things. Ways that seemed not like Dwr’s at all … At one point, I saw Anil’s baby, but she was well grown. She was five or six summers maybe, with fair hair like her brother’s, but curly, like her father’s, and the moon kiss was gone … No, not gone exactly, but where it had been there was naught but a scar line. A crooked line, as is with Bertil’s mouth, you know? Where he caught it on the spear and it has healed.”
Mogri shook her head. “Except a moon kiss never heals, Torgon. The child would just waste and die.”
“I know that. But in the visions the Power brought me, it was different. The child thrived. Her soul was happy to be in such a body and would have found no blessing in her death.”
Torgon sighed. “Why would Dwr send such visions to me, when they question holy laws? What am I supposed to make of them? They came so strongly and took me from the darkness into another place.”
“Here, give me your hand,” Mogri said gently and reached over. Taking Torgon’s hand between both of hers, she pressed it to her breast. “What you need is the feel of living flesh. You’ve been too long among the spirit kind. Hold on to me a good moment. This is what you need most.”
“Perhaps she was right, because the quicksilver brilliance of the Power faded from Torgon’s mind with the warmth of Mogri’s hand. Weary and wordless, Torgon let go of the feeling and lay back in her bed.”