They set about constructing a rope ladder that could hang from the tree above the gorge. They roped up a basket that Lissom could lower from above, to haul up the gold objects. The next day their sheep stayed home, tended by the children, while the brother and sister carried out their plan.
Lissom’s eyes grew wider and wider as she saw the rich artifacts coming up out of Fairy Gorge. The old chest yielded a wheelbarrow load of shining objects, virtually priceless not only because of their precious metal but also because of the historical value of their rare, archaic design. Winsom and Lissom took them home and carefully stored them in a locked cupboard in their root cellar, to be taken to market over the course of future years, whenever a new infusion of money was needed.
They had their leaky roof repaired, extended their property lines, built a larger, improved sheepfold, bought a fine purebred ram for their herd, and sent Lissom’s children to a prestigious private school. They gave parties and invited neighbors to share their good fortune. They gave generously to local charities. Soon Lissom found herself courted by a handsome young squire, whose company she began to enjoy.
Lissom hired a maidservant, and Winsom hired two helpers to take the sheep to pasture every day, so they were relieved of much of their toil. Nevertheless, Lissom noticed that even though her brother didn’t need to attend the sheep, he often disappeared from home for many hours at a time. She asked him where he went.
“I visit the fairy queen in the grotto,” he admitted rather ruefully. “She looks so beautiful standing there in her nakedness. I feel extraordinarily comfortable just being in her presence. I’m sure she loves me, Lissom. She is cold when I’m not there, but she turns warm when I touch her. Sometimes I think she moves, or changes her position on the dais.”
Lissom felt a chill touch her spine. “Surely you’re mistaken, brother,” she said. “Your imagination works overtime. You are too much alone. You should go into town and meet a real woman, someone kind and cheerful who might love you and bear your children someday.”
“There’s no real woman as perfect as the fairy queen,” said Winsom. “I don’t want any lumpish peasant girl. The queen of my heart lives down there in Fairy Gorge.”
“Oh, Winsom!” his sister cried. “It has always been said that the one who finds fairy gold will go mad. Is this happening to you, that you think yourself beloved by a statue?”
“She is more than a statue,” Winsom answered solemnly. “You haven’t seen her and you don’t understand, Lissom dear, so please don’t tax me with it. It’s a harmless habit that gives me pleasure. Let it go at that.”
Lissom held her peace, but as the months went on she noticed that Winsom’s absences became longer and longer. Sometimes he stayed away from home all day, and then even overnight. He usually took along a basket of food, but Lissom thought he never ate anything. He seldom ate at home. He grew thinner and thinner. Strangely, though his fingers were thinned down to mere claws, his gold ring never became loose enough to slip off. His eyes took on a hectic brightness, like one who was looking into a glowing world beyond the sunset that no one else could see.
Then Winsom began staying out several days and nights in succession. Lissom became so worried about him that she went to Fairy Gorge and climbed halfway down the rope ladder, calling his name in the direction of the waterfall. Soon he came through the water curtain on the platform below, wildly waving his arms at her.
“Go back!” he cried. “Don’t come here, Lissom! Not even you may come here! This place is mine, and mine only! Please do as I say! I promise I’ll be home soon.”
Lissom hesitated, clinging to the ladder. Her heart sank at the sight of her brother’s wild, white face, so thin and bony, his hair plastered to his skull, his clothes sopping wet. He seemed so frantic, so out of control, that she gave in and climbed back up the ladder. She went home and waited.
When he finally returned, near dawn the next morning, he was staggering with weakness and obviously sick. Lissom put him to bed at once and brewed him some strengthening beef tea, but he couldn’t keep it down. Over the next few days she tried desperately to get some food into him, but he seemed unable to eat. He became delirious. He muttered love words into empty space, as if he saw a beloved mistress standing before him.
Then one cold, misty morning, Lissom came into her brother’s bedroom and found his bed empty. She searched the house, but he was nowhere to be found. She ran outside and searched the outbuildings. He was gone.
Choking down a surge of apprehension, she set out across the fells to Fairy Gorge. She climbed down the rope ladder and passed through the waterfall. As she stood in the cave, wet and shivering, she saw her brother’s body in circumstances that she would never forget.
He lay across the marble dais, obviously dead, his skin gray, his limbs stiff. But on his face was a smile of the most delicious happiness. He looked not only peaceful but ecstatic.
The most curious thing was that the tinted marble statue of the Goddess lay with him, her limbs intricately intertwined with his, her hands gripping him in a way that seemed impossible. Lissom felt sure that Winsom had described the Goddess standing on the dais. With the statue’s naturalistic color against his death gray, she seemed the more lively and human of the two. On one of her fingers was a gold wedding ring, matching the ring on Winsom’s dead hand. Dim light filtered down through the rocks and bathed both figures in a silvery twilight that seemed to cover them with a cloak of timelessness.
Lissom backed out of the chamber, which flickered before her sight as her eyes dimmed with tears. The waterfall washed her tears away as she slowly climbed out of the gorge. At the top, she unfastened the rope ladder and threw it down into the darkness, to be lost forever. She walked home slowly, making up her mind to leave Winsom undisturbed in his natural tomb, and to say he had been killed by a fall into Fairy Gorge. Her grief was soothed by the thought that in dying he must have been happier than most human beings ever expect to be.
She never returned to Fairy Gorge. She married the young squire and lived happily ever after, in considerable affluence on the proceeds of the fairy gold. Her children grew up literate, cultivated, and wise, and became the joy of their mother’s old age. They married well and brought her grandchildren to receive her blessing. In later years they told their own children stories about their mysterious Uncle Winsom, who had been taken in the bloom of his youth by the fairy queen, and who left a rich, benevolent legacy of fairy gold.
TWENTY-SEVEN
This story is a version of the Teutonic Götterdämmerung, featuring such deities as Odin or Woden (Wednesday’s god); Thor (Thursday’s god); Freya (Friday’s goddess); Loki with his miraculous offspring, the eight-legged horse Sleipnir; the primal mother goddess Idun with her life-giving apples; and Baldur, the young prince of the gods. Odin (Wednes) was the northern god-king who hung on the World Tree to win magic powers for the gods.
The serpent in the apple tree symbolized creation and ongoing life long before the book of Genesis was written. The Great Mother’s magic apples were so ubiquitous in religious traditions from China to Ireland that they were assimilated into the Bible story even though the word apple never appears there. We still don’t know what Eve’s forbidden fruit was supposed to be. But Hera’s land of magic apples lay in the west, as did the paradise of Celtic heroes, Avalon, which means “isle of apples.” Ancient middle-eastern cylinder seals show the Goddess handing out apples to men or gods while her sacred serpent looks down from the apple tree. From such a scene the Bible story could have been mistakenly deduced, thus saddling all of Western civilization with a fairy tale that everyone was commanded to take literally.
He slithered down from an apple tree…
Once upon a time, a minor god named Lowkey became unhappy because his godlike powers were incomplete, and he complained to the king of gods, Wednes (whose day is still celebrated every week). “Consider, Lord Wednes,” he said, “what is the most godlike power in the world? Why, the power to give life.
Goddesses can do it; mortal women can do it; even female animals can do it. But we, the gods, can’t do it. I demand that this situation be remedied.” “Ungrateful whelp that you are!” Wednes snapped. “Haven’t I done enough for you? Didn’t I give up the use of one eye, and go into the very womb of the earth to find her cauldrons of magic blood, and even hang myself on the Tree to win us the powers of the runes and of fatecasting? Can’t you be satisfied with these accomplishments?”
“I can’t feel really godlike unless I have the ultimate power to give life,” Lowkey insisted. “If you can’t help me, I’ll find a way to do it myself.”
“Good luck to you,” Wednes growled ironically. “You presume too much.”
“I think you’re satisfied with too little, sire,” Lowkey said. “Surely we gods should be able to do anything a mortal woman can do.”
Wednes said no more but dismissed Lowkey with a rude gesture. Lowkey smiled to himself, thinking that he recognized impotence behind his ruler’s anger. He devised a way to get what he wanted. He went to another god, the thrower of thunderbolts, Thurs (whose day is also celebrated every week). “Divine Thurs,” he said, “next time you send a thunderbolt to earth, kill me a woman.”
Thurs agreed to do so and soon delivered to Lowkey the fresh corpse of a young mother. Lowkey removed the woman’s heart and ate it. “Now,” he said, “I will have the power to give life and will be the most complete of all gods.”
In a short time Lowkey proudly announced to all the deities that he was expecting and soon would be able to produce a life. The goddesses laughed, but the gods believed him and were impressed.
When the time came for Lowkey to deliver his offspring, they all gathered around to witness the miracle. Lowkey put on a great show, groaning and straining, making his body ripple and dance, generally creating a huge fuss. After he had gained enough attention, he finally produced a living creature.
To his chagrin, all the deities began to laugh. Lowkey looked at the creature, and his balloon of pride abruptly burst. At first he thought it was a spider; then he saw that he had produced an eight-legged horse.
King Wednes felt sorry for Lowkey in his embarrassment, so he tried to be comforting. “Never mind, Lowkey,” he said. “I’ll take the creature and bring it up, and when it’s grown I’ll ride it. Even an eight-legged horse can be useful.”
The other deities followed Wednes’s example and tried to comfort Lowkey, but he never forgave their laughter. Unlike a real mother, he rejected his poor offspring, which was named Sleepnever because it seemed not to need rest. Eventually it grew into a strong if odd-shaped horse, and Wednes made it his favorite steed.
In later years Lowkey became increasingly reclusive, sullen, and obsessively concerned with matters of life and death. He took to playing unpleasant, ill-humored tricks on the other gods, who endured his mischief indulgently enough because they felt guilty for having mocked him.
One day Lowkey discovered that the deep secret of the gods’ ongoing life lay in the apples daily delivered to them from the garden of the Great Mother, Idone. The gods were fond of saying, “An apple a day keeps old age away.” For them it was literally true. The Great Mother’s red essence of life was inherent in her apple tree. The gods didn’t want it to be generally known that their immortality depended on something external to themselves. Lowkey had never been told because they didn’t trust him to keep the secret, but he discovered it anyway. A little bird, who nested in the sacred apple tree, told him.
Being an accomplished shape-shifter, Lowkey took the form of a serpent to wriggle into Idone’s garden and steal all the apples. Without their food of life, the gods began to age. Their hair was speckled with gray. Their skin showed wrinkles. Their limbs became weaker. Wednes’s favorite son lost all his hair and was known ever afterward as Baldy.
Lowkey compounded his offense by trying to give away the secret even to mortals, to whom most gods wished to remain forever mysterious. In his serpent form, Lowkey went to the land of mortals and offered the secret to a woman. He slithered down from an apple tree and told her, “The gods lied to you, saying that you would die if you ate apples. What they really fear is that you might become like gods, knowing the secret of life and death.”
The woman believed him and ate the forbidden apple, sharing it with her mate. But the magic didn’t work for them. It was only ordinary fruit from an earthly, mortal apple tree, unlike the fruit of the Great Mother’s magic garden, which held the essence of her life-giving blood. The woman had some of that herself, without apples.
The gods were angry. Lowkey’s attempt to betray them to their inferiors was the last straw. They were aging rapidly. Some had even become ill. They agreed that something would have to be done quickly if they were to preserve themselves from death. “If we can die,” said Wednes, “we will be no better than humans, and of course that is unthinkable.”
Thurs had tried to save them by engaging in a wrestling match with the spirit of old age, who took the form of a crone. He scoffed at her, saying that his great strength could certainly overcome an old woman. Nevertheless, she won the match. “Not even godlike strength can stand up against old age,” she said.
King Wednes told them, “There is one way for us to put off death as long as possible. We must teach the humans to revere us, feed us with sacrifices, and continually sing our glory and praise, for these things give spiritual life. When the humans no longer recognize our divinity, we are dead indeed.”
The serpent Lowkey sneered at this. “Don’t forget that they can recognize us as devils just as easily,” he remarked. “Humans are stupid, flighty creatures without much sense of continuity. Sooner or later they get all their stories tangled up and wrong. If the gods’ immortality depends on human opinion, then the gods are doomed. Face it. The period of ascendancy is over for all of you. You are approaching your twilight.”
Then up spoke the goddess Fria (whose day is also celebrated every week). She said, “We may be ascendant no longer, but we should remember—and Lowkey especially should remember—that even if the miracle of indefinite life extension has gone the way of fable, the miracle of giving life hasn’t ceased. Even the humans and the animals know it. Perhaps it would be best if humans forgot all about the gods and their wrangling, jealousy, and warfare. Let the humans be content with revering the female force that nurtures and protects the life it gives. And if we join them in experiencing old age and death, so be it. They don’t need us to keep up their race. They only need to develop their own intelligence and understand themselves. They’re wasting their time trying to understand gods, who don’t want to be understood. Someday, perhaps, there will be a new world with better principles out of which the humans can create better deities.”
Somewhat abashed, Lowkey slithered over to Fria and rubbed against her hand. “You are the wisest of us all,” he said. “Let the humans know that Lowkey the snake will be the Goddess’s humble friend forever.”
“They will know,” said Fria. “They will misunderstand, as they misunderstand nearly everything, but they will know.”
It is written that shortly after this, the gods voluntarily went into their twilight. The male deities engaged in a mighty battle and killed one another off, all except Lowkey, who remained a serpent and hid in the womb of earth. The goddesses also hid under other names in the psyches of humans, even when the humans didn’t know it. No one lived happily forever after, because that is not the nature of things. But some lived happily enough, for a while, in a world without gods.
Some say the apples of Idone will grow again one day, and the Great Mother’s gift of immortality will be bestowed on a new batch of deities. Others say this can never be. As in all questions concerning gods, it is strictly a matter of opinion.
TWENTY-EIGHT
This story could be entitled “How the Hyena Learned to Laugh,” or “The Holy War on Animals.” Africa has been one of the chief sufferers from the patriarchal god’s directive to humans to “subdue” and “hav
e dominion over…every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Therefore a trio of the African goddesses appears here to investigate and remedy the situation.
Something of this sort will have to take place if the unique heritage of African fauna is to be preserved into the next century.
“The white god is insane,” all the animals said.
Once upon a time the white god Yawalla came to the African land and began causing great trouble among the animals. He allowed his followers to kill them in such numbers that, for the first time in all the millennia, the animal nations grew smaller and smaller. The slaughter came to the attention of the three goddesses Oshun, Yemaya, and Mawu. They set out to investigate. They first questioned Elephant Mother, leader of the largest, oldest, and wisest nation among the warmbloods. She was in deep distress over the ongoing massacre of her people. “The white god’s men want only our big teeth,” she complained, “but they slay whole tribes to get them. They pile up mountains of my children’s teeth to be exchanged for money. They are insane creatures.”
Oshun said, “We’ve heard that Yawalla insists on the superiority of killer males to nurturant females. What say you, Elephant Mother?”
“Only another example of insanity,” said Elephant Mother, waving her long, muscular trunk in disgust. “Naturally, the life-giving sex is the only one important enough to need numerical upkeep. Most males are useless, except for breeding, and even then they are addlepated and foolishly destructive during musth. Our matrons are right to keep males out of the herds, where young calves are being protected. Our bulls know their place. They’re wise enough to remember their mothers’ teachings and to stay away from nursery herds.”
The goddesses went next to Lion Mother, leader of the cat nations. She was constantly angry and growling over the destruction of cat people in general. “They take our skins for no apparent reason, except to exchange them for money,” she snarled. “The mothers of leopard, cheetah, and ocelot tribes have almost no children left. These men are felicidal maniacs.”
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