Liv Unravelled

by Donna Bishop

  The lazy wisps of fragrant steam mingle and dance with the brilliant blue thread and pull my spirit, fully and willingly, into that of an enchanting auburn-haired woman who is tending a blackened cast iron pot over an open flame.

  She raises her head and glances around the room expectantly, as if she can feel the stirring of my presence.

  “Failty dhachaidh! Mo cridhe…Welcome home. How are you, my friend, my spirit from afar.”

  “She’s speaking to me. She knows I’m here!”

  “Ciamar a ta Moragh…My name is Moragh. Whaur ar ya frae? Methinks the future me? We are in for a wee bit of a journey together, are we?”

  “Hello Moragh. I am indeed your soul from the future and have come to explore this earlier life.”

  “Tis a fine treat for such a day. It so happens at this minute that my spirit is low and I am feeling both defeated and angry but getting stronger as I inhale this dreamy steam and meet the likes of you. Show yourself that I may know ye.”

  Just as it was with Hannah, I understand Moragh’s lovely lilting Gaelic speech, although I have to pay close attention so I can translate as I speak.

  By envisioning my own life and what’s in my heart, I project images to Moragh so she can see who I am, who I love, and how our spirits have been tied all these years. She sees my past connection from my Norwegian ancestors and how the line runs all the way to my present life in Little Mountain. She sees into my heart. She nods and smiles with recognition. I conjure images of my three children and she gasps.

  “The wee one is the perfect likeness of my Nic! It’s as if he sprung from me. I love that he lives on, as do I through you.”

  She resumes stirring the concoction in her kettle. I’m loving being joined with this vibrant young woman. I can tell she’s very strong and not afraid of anything. I wonder what could have happened to upset her.

  “Treachery, my spirit friend. Eucalyptus, cinnamon and turmeric from Spain — it was not worth it, Mo Cridhe, not at all. That cursed snaggle-toothed thief, Christo Mirabella. I shouldn’t ever have trusted that he wanted to do a straight trade of coin for goods.”

  Moragh shows me the events of the day as if she’s playing a film for me: I see her holding out her hand in this very kitchen to pay a nasty looking man in a fancy black cloak for a small sack of herbs and spices. He snatches the coins and puts them in his pocket, then suddenly grabs Moragh, causing her to drop the sack. The herbs and spices scatter, green and red powders spread across the stone floor. He roughly pulls her toward him as if to kiss her. His breath is rotten and foul. Moragh slaps his pocky face and turns to run, but he lunges and clutches her, tearing the bodice of her dress nearly in half, exposing her breasts. Moragh’s fierce green eyes flash, not with fear but strength as she fights him, pounding furiously on his back and thick head. In spite of her strength, he throws her on the ground and my spirit rages in commiseration with her.

  As they grapple on the floor, he drops one hand down to open his trousers. She’s able to jerk her knee up and land one well-placed blow to his groin. That sets him back. His face a mask of red-pained fury, he throws his substantial weight against her again. Reaching into her apron pocket, she retrieves her small knife, the one she uses for snipping plants. She jabs the blade deep into his thigh.

  He withdraws with a scream. “You witching whore, you’ll pay for this,” and he jumps up, sweeping through her cottage, smashing things to the floor, searching for her stash of coins. His attention diverted, Moragh takes the opportunity to grab a small, cloth-wrapped sachet from the top shelf of her cupboard and sneak it into the pocket of his heavy black cloak.

  “A keepsake, so to speak,” Moragh explains to me, with a wry smile. “I merely wounded him, so sadly he will live to spread his deceitful tales and his wicked deeds, but I did feel the need for some retribution. The potion within will cause Mirabella some anguish, which he richly deserves.”

  As we’ve been talking, she’s been tending the pot, adding fuel to the fire and stirring it occasionally. Now she selects three jars from a set of shelves in the corner and adds a pinch each of penny royal and black cohosh and a healthy dollop of pine oil into the brew. Then she pulls out a vial and drizzles a thin stream of thick amber substance across the bubbling surface. A stringent, fresh fragrance immediately lifts into the air, somehow so familiar!

  “It’s Balm of Gilead,” she says. “A very precious resin that speeds emotional and physical healing.” A little more than necessary, she judges, but she feels the need to cleanse not only her battered, bruised body but also her tiny home of the evil that beastly man brought in.

  “It bothers me sorely that I am a target simply because of my sex and my standing in life,” she tells me. “But at least I can feel fortunate because, unlike most women of my time, I know independence and I know love. Most women are chattel, rape is all too common.”

  “Still to this day, Moragh,” I say out loud, and she raises her brows in surprise.

  Moragh vows to herself that she will never lift her guard with a man she doesn’t know and trust ever again and she will always have her knife on hand! “And so should you, Liv from the future! With my man gone to Norway, I am vulnerable. I must be my own protector.”

  Now Moragh reaches up to pull a necklace over her head. She holds it out so I can see the black, crescent moon-shaped pendant on the chain and takes a deep and mournful breath.

  “This pendant was my grandmother’s, and before that, her great grandmother’s. It’s made of obsidian. It carries the strength of the hardest stone into loving human hearts — not to harden the person, but to make their hearts stronger than flesh and blood. It’s said to ward off darkness by taking it in and transforming it into light.”

  I’m entranced as Moragh continues, her voice deep with emotion. “My Grandmother Fee and her beloved Gwynneth burned to death while sleeping in the small wooden cottage they shared over the hill from this one of mine.”

  My sadness combined with Moragh's is overwhelming. I must take a moment to collect myself.

  “It was rumoured the fire was set on purpose in retribution — the two women had long been suspected of not only practicing witchcraft, but of sharing a love considered unnatural.

  “They judge it a crime for two women to live together and never take husbands, but my dear grandmother and her friend loved each other perfectly and if that is wrong, so be it,” she declares. I can feel her probing me for a reaction.

  “Yes, so be it,” I emphatically respond.

  Moragh smiles slightly as she takes the pot off the flame and sets it on the stone floor to cool. Aromatic steam rises and she breathes it in — there is a sensation of clearing, as if my senses have become sharper.

  She takes off her torn dress and stands in her cotton shift. She’s tall and slender, yet her limbs and back are muscular. Her lively eyes are sea green and she has light freckles on her nose. She gathers her wild-looking thatch of auburn hair and twists it into a knot at the nape of her neck, then collects a small basket and takes a seat on the hearth. She inspects the tear, then pulls out a needle and thread to mend it.

  “Grandmother Fee made this for me. She spun the wool herself and dyed it this mossy green with sorrel root. It’s my only frock. My dear bairn will soon be home an’ it’s best he not see the damage to the dress — or to his mother.”

  At twenty-four years of age, her hands are reddened from hard work and weather, but she sews nimbly.

  “My parents died of influenza when I was six, so it was Grandmother Fee and Gwynneth who raised me. They taught me all they knew of herbs, potions and magic, life and love. Together, we gathered botanicals for their healing qualities, while they patiently instructed me on their names, the particulars of collection and their uses. Every leaf, root and berry, it seems, has some dedicated power, even the lichen that clings to the stones.”

  Moragh pictures the land for my benefit — rolling green hills strewn with boulders, pastoral and lovely, yet stark and forlorn at the same
time. They had to wander far and wide across the highlands to gather enough good for their healing arts. At sixteen, the women felt Moragh was ready to move into her own place and begin her own life as a woman. The property with the two wee huts had passed down to Grandmother Fee from her great grandfather Fergus, although many locals felt it was wrong to have passed property to a female.

  “Had I not moved into my own cottage at 16, I would have burned to death with my Grandmother and Gwynneth,” Moragh exclaims.

  She finishes her sewing, breaks the thread with her teeth and then holds the garment up — the mended tear is visible, but at least her skin won’t be. She rises, takes a cloth and begins to wash herself with the warm, fragrant water from the pot.

  “It was I who discovered their bodies together in the dying grime of the fire, although I could scarcely believe it until I found my grandmother’s obsidian necklace on her poor burned body.”

  ~ ~ ~

  I feel a lightness, as if I’m being lifted by an invisible force. Moragh says she’s taking me along on a memory to show me how she became the person she is.

  I see her forlorn figure kneeling, hunched over, in the midst of the charred ruins of the cottage. She’s exhausted from hours of crying — for her loss, but also out of despair. She knows her beloved guardians have been murdered and there’s no point in trying to prove it.

  When she finally rises, she’s determined. She will honour the two women by living true to herself, to the land and the sea. She will continue their healing work and perpetuate the knowledge of the mystical powers of plants for future generations.

  But first she needs to say farewell to her grandmother and Gwynneth in the old way, as she has been taught. She gathers armfuls of tall, dry, fragrant grass, twisted branches of juniper and whatever wildflowers she can forage from the surrounding fields to build a pyre on the bodies of the women.

  Although she hasn’t spoken to anyone of the tragedy, a handful of people appear, walking silently through the dusk. They gather around her to help usher the two beautiful, wise souls on their journey back to the earth. As the moon rises, a man comes forth and hands Moragh a torch, which she uses to light the pyre.

  Standing at the centre of the circle and lit by the bright flames, Moragh places the obsidian moon around her neck, as her Grandmother had instructed her to do in the event of her passing. As the chain settles around her throat, Moragh feels her heart throb and expand; her mind suddenly tingles with neural connections. She feels her spirit brighten like an ember fanned by the wind. She is energized by a surge of love, an awakening of wisdom — all of it bequeathed to her by her beloved grandmother.

  One by one, the people come forward to pay their respects to Moragh, then move off toward their own homes, until she is alone.

  She stays by the fire all through the night, and in the morning, she gathers handfuls of ash and scatters them in each of the four directions. They fall from her outstretched hand and are taken by the wind. She imagines each particle touching down on the earth like droplets of pure, healing love.

  ~ ~ ~

  We’re back in Moragh’s present again. She puts her dress on and finds that the bodice fits her more tightly because of the mending. Her full breasts bulge out of the neckline in a more pronounced way.

  “Through the ceremony, it was as if I was imbued with all their healing knowledge an’ it was made stronger through magic. It is a daunting responsibility. To be a healer is a blessing and a curse. It’s a useful skill that I trade to make my living — along with raising a few chickens and sheep and what food I can grow. But ‘tis also a dangerous legacy, for some consider it a dark art.”

  She wished she had been forewarned that one day she would carry this burden alone — perhaps then she would have been more attentive to their teachings. But now she would need to learn how to harness this power and use it with wisdom to heal and do good for the earth. Fearful she would forget, she began to make a record of all the plants and their uses, laboriously sketching every detail of her specimens with charcoal on parchment.

  “I don’t know everything, but I must! Our ways cannot die,” Moragh tells me. “What is remembered lives! You remember, Liv from the future, you remember these things if I’m to die.”

  In the lonely days of mourning, Moragh took stock of the herbs and remedies, experimented and helped many of her country men and women with their ailments. One day, a hopeless young widow came to Moragh and begged for a cure for her loneliness. Her Grandmother’s teasing words sprang to mind, “Moragh you are sixteen now, we’ve a good mind to make you a little love potion … rose petals, spearmint, cardamom, cinnamon, basil and a strong wish for love ought to do the trick.” Moragh had retorted, “Ewwwh, I do not need any such potion Grandmother!” But as she brewed and blessed these ingredients for the widow, she couldn’t help but think of her own loneliness and desire for a good man, being eighteen years of age now. Tasting a fair bit of the tincture herself, she wished hard and had a sudden urge. “I must go to the sea!” It was like a powerful itch deep within her. Giving the widow instructions and bidding her goodbye and good luck, Moragh quickly gathered her cloak around her shoulders and clambered down the rocky path to the sea.

  An enormous grey whale appeared in the shallows, closer to shore than she had ever seen. Moragh stared with fascination as the great grey creature ponderously manoeuvred its body around and plunged back into the deep. Then she noticed a dark, heavy bulk being jostled in the surf on the wave-tossed beach. She ran to investigate and found the half-drowned body of a man.

  Even under hypnosis, Liv can’t contain her excitement and blurts out “This must be Nicolai, from the tale that Uncle Olav told Hannah and Ingaborg!” She laughs at her own outburst and then urges Moragh to continue sharing this memory.

  “Aye, his name was Nicolai. He was cold as the dead. I had never seen such a man — unnaturally tall, lean and muscular, his hair near white-blond, with the chiselled face of a God. I fashioned a litter of driftwood and sea kelp and rolled his poor broken body on it and with every bit of might and maybe a little help from my Grandmother on the other side, I was able to haul my unconscious patient up the trail to my cottage.”

  From his sodden clothing, she deduced that he was a seaman, probably a whaler. “The style was unfamiliar, being made of leather with unusual fastenings. He was from across the sea, a foreigner. Maybe Norse.”

  She was attracted to him at once, even before it became clear that he would live.

  “I watched him through the first night and in the morning he began to rouse. I fed him broth.” As he regained his strength, they awkwardly began to learn to communicate.

  “Before we knew one another’s minds, we discovered the joy of our bodies,” she says with a chuckle. Whoa! Moragh is sharing some pretty steamy images!

  Now she goes to the cupboard and pulls out a batch of dough wrapped in damp fabric. She shapes it into four small round loaves and places them on the embers in the hearth.

  “Me bairn, little Nic, will soon be home for his sup.”

  She reflects on the trauma of her day, then surprises me with an ironic smile.

  “I must tell you, my spirit friend. That nasty Mirabella will suffer with that little bit of a curse I slipped in his pocket. The day will dawn that his despicable penis will be rendered limp for at least a fortnight!”

  Her concoction, she tells me, contained the red berries of the chaste tree — an ingredient long known to discourage the male libido. Ironically, the same substance is used with good success to enhance fertility in women. She makes a mental note to replenish her supply of the berries, just in case she should need them for more positive potions in the future.

  A raven caws outside and Moragh shudders with a premonition.

  “Faith protect me — I shouldn’t have plied my magic for revenge. This was one of Grandmother Fee’s most fervent instructions — that magic should only be used for good, not for ill.”

  Images of Mirabella’s grimacing face
and putrid teeth flash through her mind again, but she willfully banishes his vile spirit from her thoughts, seizes her cloak and goes outside into the dusky red autumn afternoon. She ambles through the mossy meadow to a stand of brilliantly coloured oak trees and looks to the south across the moor, watching for her son. She begins to softly sing a Celtic song her grandmother taught her.

  Cauldron of changes

  Feather on the bone

  Arch of eternity

  Ring around the stone

  Moragh breathes in deeply, replenishing her heart with the wonder of nature, and gazes out toward the horizon again. She spies a small figure running toward her. His face is beaming as he nears and he leaps into her arms for a hug. Her heart melts at the sight of her boisterous, bright-eyed five-year-old Nicolai.

  My heart and spirit soar with recognition — this towheaded boy could be Micah’s twin! He smells like the earth after a rain and his blue-green eyes twinkle with mischief.

  Back at the cottage, Moragh passes her son a piece of potato cake warm from the fire, and he launches into a lively description of the day’s escapades with his friend Fiona. They found magic stones, climbed trees and helped Fiona’s grandfather gather the sheep to be sheared. This sturdy lad with his flowing Gaelic chatter is bewitching. Clearly, he effects his mother the same way — she drapes herself over him and kisses his cheek.

  He leans into her and enjoys her warmth, then looks up into her eyes, “I gave Fiona the holy stones I found by the sea,” he went on with a faraway look in his eyes, “So she can look through and see the fae folks when I’m no longer…” Moragh takes his small face tenderly in her hands, her face pale, but says nothing.

  Sensing her fear, he adds, “Tha mi ag iondrainn papa — I miss Papa.’

  “Soon we will be together again, my bonnie bairn. Soon, I promise.”

  Spurred by her son’s request, Moragh indulges in thoughts of her beloved Nicolai. Who would have dreamed that she would fall in love with a man who made his living slaughtering whales — creatures she had revered since childhood? The mere sighting of a whale was a supernatural experience for her. Mind you, when she told him she believed the very whale he and his crew had been hunting had safely brought his wrecked body to shore to be rescued, he made a promise to himself, to her, and to the sea, that he would never harm another whale.