Introduction

 

 The White Carpathians 

 

In the winter of 2012 eight recordings were made over several weeks of conversations with Marus Pohansky. He was 68 years old and soon to die. Each recording was made at length, some recordings being more than six hours long, and were mainly records of his life as one of the last Carpathian Witches; a tradition that dates back in this region many hundreds of years.

 He was a direct descendant of Jakub and Anka Pohansky, the infamous Witches of Osikovce, whose story is told later in this book, and also descended from Alex Koza who witnessed the tragic killing of Dr. Ladislav Horvath, also retold below, a crime which still haunts the beautiful hills of this region today.  

I was fortunate enough to meet him, listen to his stories, get drunk with him and hear him sing his songs during that long winter, and it's a time I look back on often with fondness. As the Carpathian Mountains change forever under the cold rationale of progress, the likes of Old Marus and his tales will become more and more important if the traditions are not to be lost forever.

However, there is a new generation of Carpathian children, more enlightened than their parents perhaps, who do not see the glitter of gold or look with longing at the latest plastic gadget, and I met a number who had come to see Marus Pohansky the winter I was there. They were ardent, youthful and seeking, and came in search of things that science and the rational world told them no longer existed.

 In the evenings we talked of Myth and Magic, and recited legends that filled the room with a hundred generations of understanding. As the room grew hazy with the smoke of cigarettes and the sweet warmth of plum brandy, our host would speak of many things, and we, like children would hold our breath in wonder at a world so far removed.......yet just beyond the haze of reason. There are not many people you meet today who can hold an audience of adults spell-bound with a fairy-tale but that is exactly what we were: bound by the beauty of his words, and wrapped in the images he painted before us with such clarity and familiarity, that it seemed as if he himself had experienced these things.

He was a story-teller, mystic, witch, poet, and a man who believed that only by keeping the traditions of our ancestors did we have any chance of surviving past ‘the arrogance that science and technology has bred in us’ - and it was good to see his words struck a chord with some.

 In the few months that I was with him he was never short of visitors; a constant stream of people, mainly young, was coming and going having heard about him ‘from a friend of a friend’. They came from Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, Austria, Lithuania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Serbia and of course, myself from England. Some stayed only an hour and some months but I think the impact he made upon all of was the same. He left us feeling hopeful in a world (especially the West) where a belief in ‘something afar’ is seen as a foolish thing.

 

One such pilgrim who made a big impression both on myself and Marus, a woman named Bea, arrived just before the end of January and stayed with me in my house for several months. She very quickly formed a special bond with Marus, and it's my belief that she reminded him of his wife: Bea is her in spirit, he had said to me once, yet never said exactly whom he meant.

I always assumed he meant Aneta, his wife, who had died many years before. He told me when I first arrived that he had been married and that his wife had died within days of delivering their stillborn son, yet it was something he had not spoken of since, at least not to me.

However, when Bea arrived he became more reminiscent about the past, and I would sometimes see him watching her as she moved about the cramped kitchen or in the evenings when we sat by the fire. I don’t think she noticed it, herself, but I would sometimes see Marus lay down his book, or stop in mid-sentence and glance across the room towards Bea; never sad, I would say, but contented as if the final piece had just fell in to place.

Bea herself was a mystery and the only thing I learned about her was that she had been born in Nyirbator in the East of Hungary. She had studied literature at University, spent time in a commune in Scotland, and been married to a farmer in Moravia before turning to religion.

She believed herself to be a Wiccan by the books she read half-heartedly, but had failed to be satisfied with the make-believe silliness she had found there. And so, on her 26th Birthday, she had sold what little she had and headed for Osikovce to find true Paganism.

She had travelled up from Hungary, hitchhiking for three days in sandals and a thin sheep-skin jacket that barely kept her warm, to listen to a man who some believe to be the sole remaining Carpathian Pagan.

 She had not called ahead of her visit, yet Marus was not surprised when she arrived on his doorstep frozen to the bone with barely enough money in her pocket to pay her bus fare home. He didn't bother to ask her why she had come, or when she would be leaving; he sat her by the fire, gave her tea flavoured with rose hip and dried hyssop and asked her if she would mind cooking our dinner.

It turned out to be a homecoming of a sort.....but more of that another time.

The reason I mention Bea is her arrival in Osikovce seemed to stir in Marus a sentiment for the past, and it was during this time when the stories in this book were first told.

  Jakub and the Green man was the first tale I heard and, as was his way, Marus just launched into the story  without prelude or warning.

We, myself, Bea, and Marus, were standing in his barn: I was boiling water of over a metal stove, Bea was draining the blood from a chicken which was to be our dinner, and Marus gazed out in to the garden, smoking a cigarette with his usual contentment.

“She’s buried there you know”, he said pointing into the Orchard. Bea and I looked at each other and could tell by the tone of his voice that something was coming. I put the kettle down -we’d pluck the chicken later- and slipped my recorder from my pocket.

“Who?” asked Bea.

“Anka. Anka is buried just there beneath that old Walnut. Ah, but she was so beautiful to see, the most perfect creature…..too good for this sad world, she was.”

“Who is Anka? I don’t remember you telling us about her”, I said.

“Well, she died a while back now, 1560 or there abouts. I don’t quite remember now the time but I do remember her….” And so the story began.

 

Marus was not a natural teacher yet everything he did was worth studying. He seldom had us to a 'lesson', but more just went about his business and we, Bea and I, stumbled behind trying to learn from what he did. At the most bizarre moments he would come out with some instructions, or start to tell us a story that only later we realised had a profounder meaning.

I asked him once if he would 'show me' magic or allow me to witness some incantation or ritual (in fact I was looking for anything arcane or mystical to add to this book) but he just looked surprised and said that every action a person takes is an act of magic, a ritual. It just depends on the reverence with which we do it, and the meaning we choose to give it. For Marus Pohansky every action in life was a spiritual act and therefore infused with magic. 

Before we get in to the stories he told us, and of the many I have only written four for this book, it might be an idea for me to give you a sense of his beliefs.

In this day and age of labels and definitions it’s difficult to fit Marus into a category. I call him a Wiccan, but he had never heard of the term himself, and chuckled at being termed a witch. When I asked how I should describe his beliefs, he scratched his chin, blew a cloud of smoke into the air and replied: not learned.

  So, there we go – ‘Not learned’. It took me a while but I eventually realised, and Marus talks about this in Jakub and the Green man, that he believed all “real” knowledge and wisdom was not transmitted from one person to another, not learned; but was absorbed through meditation and an awareness of Nature….the way a sponge absorbs water, we drink in wisdom from the very earth Herself.        

  To give you a further idea of the man Marus was I have written out a transcript of three conversations he had with Bea when she first arrived. He was a great one for Socratic meanderings and he seemed to believe that a novice should find their own answers - he simply prodded us in the right direction. 

 

Conversation 1          

Bea: How do I become a Witch?

Marus Pohansky: You already are.

Bea: I've never been initiated or studied, I'm not even sure I know what a Witch is. How can I be a Witch already?

Marus Pohansky: You were born a Witch, as I was.

Bea: So I inherited it from my mother, or grandmother?

Marus Pohansky: Perhaps, that's one way of looking at it. But we are all born to Paganism. All of us. Paganism is the natural system of the world we live in; every person, every animal, and bird; every tree, plant, and all living things are born pagan. The very earth itself is pagan.

Bea: But still there needs to be some study involved, right?

Marus Pohansky: Perhaps. Some people like books, and are happy to read what others think or have to say. But our beliefs are written into us, into the land and into the world around us. I would rather listen to what the forest has to say, than read a book, myself. 

Bea: But every great religion has laws, creeds, rituals, and liturgies. Paganism can't be proper a religion if it doesn’t have a unified code, can it?

Marus Pohansky: I never thought we needed one. Christians need a Bible because Christianity is unnatural, that is, it doesn't come naturally; same with Jews and Buddhists. Being Christian is like riding a bicycle: it's something you have to learn to do; but being Pagan is as natural as breathing. No one needs to learn or be taught that.

Bea: So what do I need to do?

Marus Pohansky: Nothing, you are already doing it. Just be as you are. 

Bea: But there are so many organisations, orders, groups, covens. There are hundreds of books, blogs, online communities and 'experts'. When I’ve tried to research or find out what ‘being a Pagan’ means there are always a thousand different answers. It’s totally confusing.

Marus Pohansky: No it isn't. And most of what you read in books or on-line is just Hollywood nonsense anyway, nothing to do with neither true Paganism nor true Witchcraft. In truth, girl, there is only you and Nature. Nothing else, and no one else is important. Everyone calls their gods by different names, dress up their rituals in different ways; some join groups, some practice alone; some like to tell everyone what they think, some go all secretive. But there is only you, and your relationship with Earth that matters. Don't fret over it....relax, breath, and you will find yourself drifting towards your own way…in time. As I said, Paganism is a natural force, we are driven towards it despite ourselves. We don't need to go looking for 'it', paganism is not a quest or a journey: we are already found, we are where we are meant to be. If anything the hardest part of being a Pagan is understanding this. 

Bea: I don't get it.

Marus Pohansky: When Adam left the Garden of Eden, where do you think he went?

Bea: East, so they say, but who knows?

Marus Pohansky: Well, here is a Pagan secret. Adam never left Eden. His, and all of Mankind’s, punishment was to become blind to the Paradise he lived in. To search and yearn for what we already have. Paganism is knowing that nothing is lost and Heaven is right before us.

 

 

Conversation 2 

Marus Pohansky: You’ve come back then. I didn’t think you would. I imagined you to be half way back to Hungary by now.

Bea: And why’s that? I am serious in learning all there is too know.

Marus Pohansky: Aye, I can see that. And what things do you think you need to know?

Bea: Well you said I should not worry about rituals, that I should be myself and then it would come. So I have come to learn how to be myself.

Marus Pohansky: And that is the hardest thing to learn, true enough; but not something any one can teach you. 

Bea: Well I guessed that, so I decided to focus on myself more. I wrote a list of my good points and my bad points, another of my dreams and fears. I also made a few notes on things I don’t like and want to improve about myself….and, I’ve set myself some goals in my life. Do you want me to read them?

Marus Pohansky: No, I want you to burn them.

Bea: But why, this is how I will come to know myself, be myself, isn’t it?

Marus Pohansky: What, you think you will come to know yourself by naval-gazing and self-absorption? Oh, what a creature you are……did you get that idea from some self-help book? Well, you can burn that too. In fact go now back to you room, bring out every book on Paganism you have there and you can burn them here in the stove….at least they’ll serve the purpose of keeping my arse warm.

Bea: How can examining myself, trying to understand myself possibly be wrong; it’s what you told me to do?

Marus Pohansky: No it isn’t. I said you have to BE yourself……that means strip away all of your pretence and artifice, not spend your time up your own arse.

Bea: You’ve lost me again.

Marus Pohansky: In the old days Druids, Witches, and holy men of all faiths, would spend time in isolation. Here they’d choose an isolated islet, a woody grove, a hill top, anywhere away from people. Some would stay a short few weeks, others a lifetime. Even the Old Christians wandered the loneliest places to talk to their god. Why do you think they did that?

Bea: To talk to God, as you said?

Marus Pohansky: No…not really, but to talk to themselves; to be free of other eyes, to relax into themselves, to give voice to themselves in freedom. 

Bea: So, you think I should spend time in the wilderness like Jesus or Buddha.

Marus Pohansky: Or like Merlin who made the woodlands his home. Yes. Go to the wild, be free even if only for one hour. Be as a child unencumbered by others expectations and then you will begin to BE yourself, then you will begin to understand what it means to be a true Witch.

Bea: So I go to the woods and what?

Marus Pohansky: Sit, be still, breath. Stand if you want, or lie down. Listen to what your body tells you. Eat when you’re hungry, cry when your sad, laugh, be naked or sleep, or perhaps just enjoy the beauty of Nature……but do what you feel to do, not what you think you should do. Live on a whim, inspired by the moment. See where you take yourself: down valleys, up hills, to woodlands, or sea coves….don’t question your motives just BE/DO…and you will begin to know yourself, and be surprised.

Bea: Surprised how?

Marus Pohansky: Well I never cared much for mountains, but I loved the sea. However, my soul took me to the mountains constantly.

Bea: Why?

Marus Pohansky: Because it was the mountains that spoke loudest to me, and where the Awen flowed greatest in me. I would never have known that if I hadn’t allowed myself to be, hadn’t listened to myself. I’d be still sitting on a beach somewhere and probably quite lost.

 

 

Conversation 3 

Bea: I’ve been reading a book about Paganism……it was really very good. I think I learned something.

Marus Pohansky: Aye, and what have you learned?

Bea: I learned that modern Witchcraft has little or no connection to the past. That it’s all made up. I learned that modern Witchcraft in the West, Wicca, was invented in England a hundred years ago; that most, if not all, Pagan beliefs are just extensions of the whole fantasy ‘world’ created by the likes of Tolkien. Pretty similar really to the people you read about who think they’re Jedi’s or descended from Aliens. It’s all just made up.

Marus Pohansky: And I reckon by the tone of your voice this is a disappointment.  

Bea: Well of course it bloody is! I thought I was learning from the traditions that stemmed back to the ancients. I thought I was rediscovering my lost heritage, that I was following in the footsteps of Merlin not acting out the fantasies of some old hippie with a beard, bad breath and a how-to guide to making mint tea. If I wanted to ‘pretend’ at Spirituality I would have moved to California!

Marus Pohansky: And modern Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism is different how? The Buddhism of today is a far-cry from its original form 3000 years ago, Christianity would be unrecognisable to the Christ…they have all evolved and become modern, and most of the modernisers would have been beardy hippie types, that is the odd balls with bad breath and a vision.

Bea: But they have provenance. They have written records, archives, histories which connect the modern believer to the original source. Pagans have nothing: a bit of archaeology, one or two written and incoherent records and that’s it. 

Marus Pohansky: What does the word Pagan actually mean?

Bea: I’m not sure. I know it’s Latin.

Marus Pohansky: That’s right. It is Latin and has no religious or spiritual meaning in itself. Paganus is the adjective form of Pagus meaning a place outside of the city, a rural area, farm country: uncivilised, wild and untamed. Nothing to do with religion at all really, but it does tell us something important about modern Pagans and the provenance we’ve got.

Bea: And that is?

Marus Pohansky: It tells us that our beliefs stem from wild, that they are not the beliefs of city intellectuals with their big books and fancy words. Paganism was born out of the beliefs of the little man, the villager who, with no education, had no way of recording what he thought of life. The Greeks with all of their reason and logic were the first to remove themselves from the ‘superstitions’ of Pagan belief. Later thinkers, closed behind city walls, and wrapped in stone cocoons then began to invent new explanations for the things around them. The Christians in Europe sat in Rome making up fantastic tales that placed Mankind at the centre of the world and at the right hand of God…..a Pagan farmer on the fringe of the Carpathian Mountains would never have been able to come up with such a ridiculous theory. He knew, struggling as he did with the vagaries of the land, that Nature/God held Man in no such prominence, he knew that people were levelled alongside the rest of creation. Only a fool lost in a Labyrinth of brick and stone could ever believe that Nature cares more for him than She does for the next creature. 

Bea: Okay, but that doesn’t provide modern Pagans with any greater insight. Very few of us today live a Pastoral life, most of us live in cities, most Pagan writers too probably. And without a written connection to the ancients we are just as far from the essence of ‘real’ Paganism as before, right? Modern Paganism is being made up by the very city intellectuals who you claim deserted it in the first place.

Marus Pohansky: True.

Bea: And….????

Marus Pohansky: The ‘Real’ Paganism, the real Witchcraft you are talking about is not in books. If you remember I told you to burn the lot…you obviously didn’t and look at the result!

Bea: If not in books then where? You tell me nothing except don’t read books, so where should I find the Old Truths…where?

Marus Pohansky: Probably in the same place our ancestors looked 3000 years ago, probably by seeing the world as they saw it, hearing it as they heard it, breathing it as they breathed it, feeling it way they felt it. It’s there that I find the provenance of my Paganism.

Bea: But how can I do that? How can I  know what a Iron age farmer in the Carpathian Mountains saw, felt, smelt etc. if it’s not documented? How can I possibly experience what he experienced?

Marus Pohansky: Because the world he knew is still there, nothing has changed, Bea. Cities have changed but Nature, she has remained constant; and people think they have changed/developed but they haven’t, not really. In a forest the smell of the wet earth after rain is the same now as it was when our farmer trod the land; the wind sounds the same as it ever has, the beauty of daisies on a hill side has not changed, the feel of the rough skin of an oak is just as coarse. Our ancestors experience is not so different from ours as we like to believe. Our strongest senses/feelings of love, hate, fear are the same: a mothers love is just as fierce, a fathers fear is just as profound, a lovers sadness just as tragic, they have not changed. And it is here the Pagan Heritage that you lament is to be found….much stronger than any written book, much more tangible than a lengthy, dry history, much more real than the fantasy of recorded religion because Paganism is a living thing, it’s encoded into us and into the Human experience.

Bea: So you’re saying that modern Paganism’s connection to the ancients is constantly being replayed in us, in our own experience?

Marus Pohansky: It is, because a man today is no different than a man 3000 years ago, Nature today is no different to Nature 3000 years ago…in fact all things of importance have remained the same. Only things in towns and cities change, only temporary and therefore unimportant things change. If you want to know what Merlin knew, felt, thought, how he saw the world all you need to do is go to the Wild as he did, sit beside an oak as he did, close your eyes as he did, and absorb Nature as he did. That is paganism’s provenance. 

 

                                                                         recorded December - January 2012/13

 

This should give you an idea of his beliefs which were founded in the land that he had lived on all of his life. He was not a small minded man, nor a man of no Education as some might think due to his never having travelled much. He was well read (despite his ‘burn your books’ speech), and one of the few people I have ever met who actually listened to what was being said when spoken to. He could quote Shakespeare, loved Mozart and had much to say on the world as he saw it, though his views were not as politically correct as many ‘right on’ folk would have liked him to be. 

Yet despite his intellect he was far happier in the forests of Krajnanska Hora, his back garden as he termed it, than in the company of men. He was at home in the wild wood, much more relaxed with animals, and far more content in Nature than anyone I have ever known.

In this book are a collection of four short stories he told me. They tell the tale of the small hamlet of Osikovce over four hundred years and are, I believe, allegorical in that they hold a much deeper meaning, but then there seemed to be deeper meaning in everything Marus said and did. They are his and I have simply copied them down as they were told to me. They are true, according to Marus, and attest to the true Pagan heart of the west Carpathian Mountains.

                                                                                                         A. Hanson

 

                                                                                                       Osikovce, 2014 

 

The First Tale

  A Dream of Unknowing

 

                   "This is the cave where Witches were made" – M. Pohansky

 

 A deep forest, remote and isolated from the chaos of men. At the heart of this forest is a cave, known to few the cave delves deep beneath the earth’s fragile skin into the heart of the world. In this place, and since the beginnings of Humankind, a woman has been sent down in to the pit to discover herself by self-forgetting. Shedding herself, skin and bone, like a serpent she 'dies' a death that will free her and that links her soul to that of the Void, the Peace that was before all time and worlds were created; and is so doing Anka discovers creation, the false god who gave us life, and the sorrow that came thereafter.  Close beside her are those who keep the Wake, men sent to protect her and to await her return from the dead. But one man must go down into the pit to bring her back, to die himself, so that she can return. In this way Jakub Pohansky met his wife and, through her, learned to see the world for what it truly is. A deceit.

Introduction

 

 

 

Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,

It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,

It longs in thy cells to deposit its load,

Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,

Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away,

And Bigotry's bloodhounds lose scent of their prey.

Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o'er,

What awaits on Futurity's mist-covered shore? 

                                       

                                         (A Dialogue) P.B. Shelley

 

The First and Last Chapter – Osikovce 1558

             

The gum was thick and heavy on her fingers, and stuck with eager relish to her skin. She rolled the sap between finger and thumb shaping the mass into a milky ball before placing it carefully into a square of beech leaf. Quickly folding the small package she then tucked it into a pouch at her belt with a dozen others before her blackened fingers began their work again. She scanned up and along the knotted bark before her, and soon spotted another leak of resin oozing from the body of the tree. The liquid was almost golden in the quiet light and seemed to signal, in her imagination, of a greater wealth - an ancient wealth- that slumbered within the pines impassive trunk. She pressed her palms against the solid flanks of the old tree and felt the long weight of years lean back against her; it was imperceptible but there, an awakening.

The sun crisply gilt the edges of the woodland leaves as she moved between each pine and oak; her leather store of resin tapping against her hip as she wove in and out. The sounds of her feet were muted on layers of fallen needles; the swish of her gossamer-like skirts the only charge to inflect the soundless air. And from that air she felt the last tendrils of the night withdrawing from the mount of day, and flow before and away from the grasp of invasive light. It was a good time, a clear hour, before the raucous clack of the forest, raised from out a thousand desperate throats, cut the still and unspoiled peace. A peace found only in the hours between day and night.

A blackbird scrambled amongst the dead wood, scratching at the earth and mining out the soil; and as she knelt, the better for to see, the richness of that dark black earth enveloped her. It was not earth, not in the true sense, but a half digested maze of leaf and bark and root, close woven in a web of sweet decay. Its scent was heady and rich, filling her with a longing to rest her cheek against the cool mulch and be absorbed. She inhaled and tried to hold inside her the forests impress, to mark herself within. The blackbird leapt and was away, and she knew that were many things that she must do, and many miles to walk. She could not lose herself when so much was yet to be done.

Along the streamlets edge, and not too far from the source from it flowed, a grey fletch of light plumed and fringed the dark silhouettes that quietly moved in her wake. They would not see her for some time, nor did they expect to, for they knew that she was rare to be seen. Their leader trode with careless steps but even so was the quieter of the four; he, like her, needed no signs nor path to guide his way but allowed the waters course to direct him. The small river knew where she went, and he would not let Anka stray too far ahead, and knew he would not lose her in the labyrinth of trees. In his left hand he carried a sprig of meadowsweet, its splayed blossom luminous against the dark green of the flowers stem; in his right hand he had a tendril of ivy clutched and wrapped in spirals until the wrist; the flowers were still in bud and not yet come into the world.

In a small place, where the soft mosses grew, and the stream began to lull itself to sleep in shallow meanders, the forest formed a circle round a patch of standing grass, it swept against her knees and thighs, and curved before her as she moved, parting to reveal a well worn path. Wild strawberries crushed beneath her feet as she walked and filled the air. Comfrey bells clanged their silent chimes before shifting back to hide beneath the shade from leaves above. The glade was cool and fanned by the swish of grass. From her satchel Anka pulled a knife and, by the streams bank where the grasses were thick with green, she gathered moss and cut and bunched them there.

She did not need much, for there was only her, so took little, and then stripped the leaves from willow tails plaiting them into a rope to tie about the moss. Next, and where the forest over hung, she found the oak mushroom, dark and brown against the earth, and with scent so rich it flavoured the air on picking. Again she collected only a few and wrapped them in a cloth basket, careful not to abrade their soft skins. And last to the mild oaks where acorns strew the ground from yester year and here she cut the leafy wands, hung heavy with their unformed flowers, and threaded them through the leather strap of her bag.

And far back, the stream whispered of her doings and guided on the men who patiently stood and would not dare approach for fear of failure. Their leader looked up and saw the distant moon, now full and pale against the deep blue of the sky, and he knew the oak mushroom to be out from beneath the rich soil, and that she would be eager to search the glade before the boar and fallow deer could sneak away her prize. He signalled the other men to sit, and he himself hunched down and waited. It would not serve his cause to startle or rush her, he must be patient for what she would do could not be hastened; there was still one more night; one more night and three more days until her death, and his.

The verberation of a woodpecker echoed through the trees and emphasised the quiet as few other forest sounds could. It was a good sign and he scanned the tree tops for a sight of the bird. It sat high on a dead branch and seemed imperious, possessive of the woodlands in its care. Its scarlet crown bobbed a time and then it flew; a black and crimson flash against the canopy. It was good, he felt sure, to see such a bird at this time. A pecker bird, curer and maintainer, the forests own apothecary.

The forest grew thicker as she moved on, and the old elder trees, thick laden with their heavy white flowers, blocked her passage and forced a thousand detours. Sunlight slid obliquely through the higher trees slicing into the damp underworld of lichen, brush and stone. The floors uneven swell washed before her as she wove between green banks of moss covered stones, ducking to evade the elders that trailed about her. The entrance to the pit was not much further and it would be well before dark when she arrived.

As it always was with her, at this time and on the eve of their meeting, she began to feel a steady calm pervade her; she knew this detachment and welcomed its creeping arrival. It had been the same, she was sure, when they had brought her mother before her. The fear of the darkness, the pummelling drums and screeching whistles had all dissipated in the final hours, when her mother had made her way into the cool and reassuring precincts of the pit. Yet there was not the same clamour for her, she had chosen to travel to the Pit alone.

During the night, as she waited for the following dawn, that sense of well-being would no doubt continue culminating in euphoria when, at the first glimpse of light to the east, she would slip her bridal skirts and descend nude into the dark womb and, descending blind, encounter with herself and self-unknowing.

A mile from the pits entrance she settled for the night, pulling down the rich mosses and made a chair. She collected tinder and pine branches and heaped them in a small hollow before her seat; and took down the thick elder limbs and, separating the pith from the stem, struck the fire and funnelled air to raise the flames. A small pool of water enrapt in Roman stones and fed by a busy spring was sat nearby, and she kneeled to clean the fallen leaves and twigs. She would bathe once more before the dawn but not until the darkness came and she was safe from the eyes of those who followed close behind.

The men did not light fires, nor did they make seats or beds from flowers. They ate little and drank only water from the stream. When the light faded their leader signalled to each of them in turn who then quietly, and without words, moved off into the dark forest. Each man held an assigned place and knew without direction to where he must go. Whilst Anka slept they would watch and, in forming a protective circle around her, this wake ensured that no other could threaten or do her harm.

The leader knew her to be close and closed his eyes. In the dim quiet of the evening he sought to hear and by hearing perhaps to know of what she did. But she was silent; as were his men, and so the animals and birds too. Nothing moved, nor spoke; it was a vibrant stillness, so close to death yet quivering with life.

 Yet he knew she would be at her task, and moving to prepare. She must remove herself from flesh and bone, and having been loosed from the meagre senses, she would descend into the clay, into the confining earth.

As night fell Anka dipped herself into the cooling waters and felt its softness. The ancient pool was lined with silken stones worn smooth by time and motion, and rendered to such softness they felt no more solid than the water they contained.

The water smelled of soil and grass, and in its reflecting surface the trees shimmered and wavered in the dark light. She made a ball of the mosses she had cut before and scrubbed them against her skin, she then pulled the tangles and knots from her hair and wove a plait down her back. Then stepping out into the warm air she held her arms aloft and allowed the breeze to slowly dry the water from her skin. She would not dress now until her return so folded her clothes and lay them by her seat.

The flames of her fire plied her with warmth and she stood savouring its

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.09.2015
ISBN: 978-3-7396-1532-5

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