I.Tales of Wood and Iron
ii. Rapunzel
The
house was built of whole trees
notched into a daub and
wattle frame,
eaves thatched, a hearth of
creek stone
dressed to keep a fire.
Latin
the old tribe left
remained long after their
departure
south across the mountains,
settled now
to place names and the
skills of making walls
and a straight road deep
into the forest.
A
thousand years passing − herbs
once cultivated for a cure
grew wild beyond the old
enclosures.
Near
a tumbled brick course he gathered
chervil, rocket, the
clove-scented pinks
craved by his wife these
many months,
heavy and heavier still and
soon the child.
Beyond
the rubble boundary
thick with tansy and
succulent rapunzel,
he sensed the old woman
suddenly beside him,
knew her names, Artificer, Blood-Bake,
Time Wheel,
no warning but her smell
and he felt his choices
fade.
She wore a beaded cap stuck
with feathers,
a cloak the colour of
shadows.
She said that place was hers
forever,
from the world’s dark heart
to the blind blink of
heaven.
For
his trespass, one life was forfeit.
She
fixed him with a sign.
He
told her all.
When he returned home he
kept quiet,
but his wife saw through
him, was afraid,
and wished he had not come
back, there
to the house where fear was
the first-born.
In
the upstairs room a window
framed with coppice hazel, a
film
of pig’s bladder stretched
over – no other light
but candles by the
rope-slung bed
and his wife exhausted with
the birth.
Still
blood-soak on the straw
when a filthy wind roared
through the cracks,
blew the window from its
leather hinges.
The man leaned out into the
night,
shouldered back the gale
but could not stop the gaps
nor the wind’s hands,
shouting to his wife the child the child.
When
she looked where the babe had been
she saw a dead cat tucked
stiff as toenails.
The
wind dropped
and the man heard the sound
that rose in his wife’s
throat, and the room
was filled with the sound,
and his mind,
and his heart was filled.
*
Time
passed without destination
and the child grew, secret
in the stone surroundings
far from festivals or trade.
The old woman called her
Herb Child, Tender Leaf,
a hundred pet names of taste
and scent.
Days
were whispers, and the girl’s hips
widened womanly, between her
legs
a neat tuck of silky muff.
The
old woman felt the blood banging
and the weather turn − dragged
the girl
naked, deeper still into the
forest
to a great oak, old before
the old tribe left,
now a hollow rising high as
a cock’s crow.
Up,
up they climbed, to a high room
through a hole of rotted branch,
a chamber
the old woman had prepared
as a hatred
and a jealousy are prepared.
In
the room was a seat of bound bark
and a wheel to sit at
spinning.
Her
hair was long and grew
like a new sun, and she spun
slippers
and a gown from her own
hair, head to toe.
*
Days
are paltry things
where divine light blanks
the human scale.
Day
after day, down the deer path
the old woman came steady as
bread,
remorseless as salt, with no
word
but of climbing and hauling.
One day, looking up to the
heavy height,
she called, Iron-Hair, Sable-Soft, oblige:
from the treetop, a ladder
of bright ropes tumbled
to the ground.
The
old woman
stepped into the mane of
braids, uplifted…
Beyond
a twist of briars, a young lord
rested in a clearing’s
shade, the crake voice
drifting through to find him
−
Iron-Hair
Sable-Soft oblige
Watching
the old woman
raised high through
branches,
watched her leave −
he calls the name of mink
and metal,
rises into the leafy
canopy,
eyes meeting eyes soft as a
dressed pelt,
a figure cat-slinky, languid
as the moon.
*
If
there was time it passed, root-gnarl time.
The old woman came, stood
calling,
Flame-Heart, oblige, then caught the man-scent,
buckskin sweat and the
spilled seed,
drew the knife ready.
She
entered like a shadow, wild look
this way and that way… where where…
The girl touched her belly’s
own sweet swell,
heard the whispered, One life is forfeit,
and with one quick cut
the world fell free.
Even then his voice below,
the old woman turning to it,
winding the hacked hair
on a snag, let it tumble,
felt the weight of it,
felt the man’s weight
heaved.
She
lunged as the face appeared, the blade
slicing as she fell, his
eyes in blood,
still sight enough to see
the hagheap
crumple past.
On
the ladder of her own hair
the girl climbed down into
the light,
gathered comfrey and witch
hazel
and with the loosed braids
bound them in a poultice to
the prince’s wounds.
The
old woman’s corpse lay where it fell.
With
a yank on the chin hair
the girl stuffed an acorn
down its throat.
South
beyond the mountains
she gave birth in the
prince’s lands,
and there were many years
and many children
and in time the prince
became king.
Across
his eyes the knife cut scarred
crooked as a deer path.
Each night she walked it in
her dreams,
to the wood’s great sink of
rotted stump
where she stood, anchored in
oak shade
deeper than the world’s dark
heart, older
than the cold, blind blink
of heaven.
