by Jon Jacks
And her sacrifice, naturally, would be the spiritual foundation for a tower he would dedicate to the Great Goddess herself.
Her spirit, the life that had been hers, would suffuse the whole construction, adding to its strength, its own, new life.
Once again, Lothan went into the local forests.
By the light of a waxing moon, he asked the Maiden for permission to cut down her willow.
By the light of a full moon, he asked the Mother for permission to down her hawthorn.
By the light of a waning moon, he asked the Crone for permission to down her elder.
To these great timbers, he added carefully chosen woods such as birch, elm, rowan, hazel, apple, alder, ash, yew, cedar and oak.
He had in mind a great tower, one that stood like a great tree in its own right.
The stairways (for there would be two, should they ever need to flee anyone coming up the other staircase) would twist like two great serpents around the tower’s great trunk. They would also curl first in then out, allowing either him or Ebur to see whoever was making their way up towards them.
Of course, he couldn’t hope to construct such a great tower purely by his own devices.
He reminded the Great Goddess that this beautiful daughter was as much a creation of theirs as of his and Ebur’s.
The Great Goddess must have agreed: for the tower rose as if growing from the very land itself, drawing as much power from the spirits of the hill and the surrounding lake as it did from Lothan’s spirited labour, rising in ways that he would have previously found impossible to imagine.
*
Lothan and Ebur’s daughter grew as if she, too, were drawing her beauty and grace from the spirits of the hill and the surrounding lake, rather than purely from her parents.
Strangely, too, she didn’t require the binding of her extra arms beneath a veiling, voluminous dress. Just as no one can see all three aspects of the Great Goddess all at once, no one could see all Olwen’s arms at once either.
Stranger still, yet more worryingly, some people would see the actions of one pair of arms that was hidden to others, while these other people would see the arms hidden to everyone else.
And, of course, there was always that fear of Lothan and Ebur’s that someone would see all three pairs at once, cry out in horror, and bring them to the immediate attention of everyone else.
So, as a precaution, Olwen’s visits to the nearby village had to be restricted after all.
Fortunately, Olwen was happy enough staying at home, where she would work diligently on creating the most gorgeous tapestries. These tapestries became famed for their expertly detailed work, their life-like portrayals of scenes and objects, their use of weft and warp that finely mingled as if embracing each other like long lost lovers.
Of course, it might seem entirely obvious that a girl born with so many extra hands would be so adept at weaving. But there was an extra advantage Olwen possessed, one that astounded even her parents.
If they brought any flower, any bowl, any implement, up into the room, then with a touch Olwen would sense its vibrations, its flux, its connections with all life around it: and, as in a swirling of stars, like hawthorn blossom stripped and raised higher and higher in a whirling wind, its very threads of being would leap into her hands. One pair would draw out this flax-like presence, the other would spin, the third would cast it as weft and warp, threading it into her latest creation.
She had never dared try it, of course, on any animal, still less a person.
These, however, she could conjure up surprisingly realistically in her mind and, with a caressing of palms, a twirl of fingers, similarly transpose the flux of thought into her portrayals of life.
And, once entwined in such a scene, it appeared for all the world like that person was meant to be there, had always been there, the landscape around them utterly dependant on their presence: a tweak of a thread here, a pull of one there, influencing and changing all intertwined, connecting threads.
And did those threads really end at the edges of her tapestries?
They hadn’t started there, after all.
*
There was a piercing shriek, the sharp clump of something heavy being dropped on the floor.
Olwen partially spun around on her seat, her hands never breaking off from her work.
Her mother, Ebur, was looking down in dismay at the large book she had dropped.
‘It was an accident!’ She looked, sounded, weirdly horrified. ‘I didn’t mean to do it! I was just scared, that’s all!’
Leaving off at last from her tapestries, Olwen strode over towards the dropped book.
‘Poor little thing,’ her mother said sorrowfully. ‘How silly of me to be sacred of it.’
Kneeling down by the book, Olwen lifted it up by an edge, cautiously peered beneath it. Another pair of hands tenderly retrieved the poor, dead shrew she saw there.
It was so incredibly tiny.
So amazingly beautiful, in its own, odd way.
It was still warm. But there was no throbbing heartbeat. No pulsating of blood. No rise and fall of its little chest. No breathing.
And yet…and yet…
In Olwen’s highly sensitive hands, there was another kind of responsiveness, another form of life.
The throbbing, the pulsating, of the breath of the universe.
She felt the little shrew’s eagerness to live again.
It should, perhaps, have been a terrible sight. The way the shrew, curled up in the warm, caressing cocoon of Olwen’s many hands, quivered, rippled, spiralled; but you must imagine it as it really was, as it really happened – like an abrupt shedding of that which was no longer necessary, a revealing of the brightly burning flame within, a spreading out and strengthening of that glow until the flame itself was also no longer required.
These ripples of illumination, these threads of spirit, of life, eased their way under Olwen’s deft handling and direction into her latest scenes.
And here, threaded into a new life, a new being, the shrew lived once more.
*
The presence of the shrew in Olwen’s tapestries only added to her fame.
Not because, of course, anyone was aware of how the little shrew had come into being.
No: if they had known that, they would no doubt have been horrified.
They wouldn’t realise, of course, that the shrew was alive once more. For it was a life ultimately lying beyond even these tapestries.
A life yet to be lived.
Instead, those viewing the tapestries marvelled at Olwen’s dexterity, her skill, at portraying life in such a difficult medium to master.
Finding the shrew, wherever it was hidden amongst her landscapes and scenes, all became part of the joy of seeing or owning such a tapestry. It ran, it ducked, it scampered through many of the tales she portrayed, now living a life far more amazing than the one it had left behind, each thread linked to and therefore in some way also an indelible part of another tale.
Alas, such wondrous works of art should never be created by a creator who wishes to hide away. No matter how secretive you wish to be, someone with the will and means will find you.
And so, one day, there was a heavy, demanding knock on the door to the tower.
A knocking that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much Lothan and Ebur tried to ignore it.
With a warning to Olwen to stay where she was, to stay away from the tower’s high balcony, Lothan miserably clumped down the many steps leading to the door.
For Olwen, however, this call was far from unexpected.
Naturally, her tapestries had already informed her that a prince would come seeking her out.
A prince she would fall in love with.
And he with her.
And so, despite her father’s warning, she went out onto the tower’s balcony.
And she curiously peered over the edge of the rail.
At this very same instance, as if sensing her presenc
e (her vibrations of being, the expanding ripples of her interest), the handsome boy below looked up.
Olwen immediately ducked back in surprise, her heart beating furiously, hoping that he hadn’t seen her.
But she knew that he had.
That it was too late
That they were both in love.
*
‘You can’t just fall in love like that!’
‘Love doesn’t happen that way!’
‘You need to really know someone!’
‘Otherwise, how can you know they’ll be right for you?’
Olwen didn’t contradict her parents.
She knew all this was true.
‘I know, I know!’ she said. Yet, thinking of her tapestries, added truthfully, ‘But it really is as if I’ve known him for so much of my life!’
Then again, what other woman can honestly say they’ve felt the tremors of their intended’s love threading through their palms, their fingers? Utilising these emotional threads, caressing them and thrilling at every aspect of their existence, she had created her most heartfelt tapestries. And he too, in his way, had sensed that constant caressing of his very being, his soul.
And so he, too, felt that he had known her for far longer than their brief encounter would suggest.
Lothan had only managed to persuade the prince to leave after the most forceful protestations that he would have to call at a much later date, that his daughter wasn’t seeing anyone, no, not even a prince.
‘It cannot be: even if you are in love!’ Ebur insisted.
‘You’ll be discovered!’ Lothan said, more directly.
‘He loves me! He won’t mind!’
‘You can’t expect love!’
‘He…he would be horrified!’
There; they had spoken the truth.
No matter how hurtful it was.
Because to marry someone, someone who would eventually see you for who you really are, would be far more hurtful still.
They all, all three, felt wretched.
They all loved each other. Yet they had said the most hateful things. Because they all loved each other.
Olwen realised her parents only meant the best for her. Forlornly, she also realised she couldn’t disobey them, not over this.
Besides, weren’t they only spelling out the truth? Hadn’t even a tapestry, the one showing her and her prince embracing, caressing, lying naked together, troubled her for some undefinable reason?
No matter how hard she’d tried, she hadn’t ever been able to make whatever it was she feared completely clear.
It remained a sense that something wasn’t quite right, nothing more.
Seeing your own future, that was always the hardest thing: so many of your own, meandering thoughts getting in the way, your own hardening beliefs of what you hope really lies ahead for you. It was so hard to just relax, let the truth flood through you – particularly when you wanted to deny that truth.
Had her tapestries ever been wrong, ever lied to her?
No.
But here she just couldn’t be sure that they were telling her everything.
And so it might have been that, for once, her tapestries had presented a false future to her. A future in which there would be no lovers, at least in her life.
However, not long after her argument with her parents, Lothan died. Only a few days later – as so often happens with long-married couples, their lives having become so indelibly intertwined, one life overlapping and supporting another – poor Ebur followed after him.
Olwen wasn’t surprised: they had both been incredibly old when they had finally managed to achieve their deepest wish and have a child. She was, of course, deeply saddened, her life now completely devoid of the presence of love.
She had them buried next to each other. As they deserved, as they would have wished. They wouldn’t want to be parted, even in death. He was the warp, she the weft.
As Olwen walked away from the funeral, back towards her now lonely tower, she spotted someone waiting by the door.
It was the boy. Her prince.
*
Like any girl, she believed that the love between them was like no other love.
Even her tapestries, of course, only showed her what she wanted to see.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the boy. Far from it. He was wonderful in so many ways that she would have previously found impossible to imagine.
She couldn’t let go, however, of the forebodings her parents – with the best of intentions, her own wellbeing being their main consideration – had so forcibly instilled within her. Before their forthcoming wedding took place, she decided, she would have to reveal her secret to him.
Otherwise, once they were married, he would feel unfairly trapped. He would say that he had been fooled. That she had bewitched him.
And he would hate her for it.
Better, then, to tell the truth. And accept the consequences.
Like any man, of course, he wilfully misinterpreted her desire to reveal her innermost secrets to him before their wedding night. He climbed the many stairs with growing anticipation, increasing eagerness.
She, equally eagerly, was waiting for him. Behind her, brightly shining through the windows, were the glittering horns of an earthshine crescent moon.
She was dressed in a series of diaphanous veils, each of which she intended to take off one by one, revealing herself only slowly.
The boy breathed heavily. He had never seen a more beautiful sight. A sight more wondrous than he had ever believed possible.
He frowned a little in puzzlement, a little in amusement.
It was strange, the way the light shone through the multiple veils. It gave her the appearance of, well…
He laughed.
That, of course, was impossible.
He rushed towards her. Threw his arms around her.
Her arms wrapped around him.
Caressing. Stroking.
Tickling. Teasing.
Holding tightly. Holding tenderly.
He sighed with pleasure. With gratitude.
She was his lover.
The girl who would be mother to his children,
The woman he would gratefully grow old with.
And then, of course, he saw her for what she was.
*
‘Monster! You’re a monster!’
The boy wrenched himself backwards. Out of her arms.
He looked at those arms, the many hands, with revulsion, horror.
He felt sick. Sick that those hands had been caressing him
Sick that he’d been fooled into thinking he loved…this!
As he pulled farther and farther back, Olwen half danced towards him, reaching out to hold his hands again.
Realising this only made him back away all the more, she stood resolutely still, opening up her arms imploringly, begging him to return.
But he ignored her. He didn’t even want to see her.
He turned, ran for the door.
Ran down the many, uncountable steps.
Eventually, Olwen heard the door crash shut behind him.
As her legs gave way beneath her, she fell to her knees, wringing her hands in her lap.
‘Olwen!’
It was a cry coming from far below her. She raised her head, trying to make sure that she had heard correctly.
That it wasn’t just her imagination, a product of nothing but wishful thinking.
There was a knocking on the door. Another cry she couldn’t clearly make out.
Full of hope, she ran towards the edge of the balcony.
She peered over the rail.
At this very same time, he looked up at her.
‘Olwen! Open the door!’
She elatedly tripped lightly down the many steps. They seemed endless, she was so eager to embrace him once more.
She threw open the door, threw open her many arms in welcome.
He came at her with his knife drawn.
<
br /> ‘Monster!’ he shrieked, all reason having left him, now replaced by madness.
If she had raised her many arms to protect herself, she might have been able to fight him off for a while, at least deflect the blow aimed at her heart.
But a part of her wanted this, wanted to die.
They fell apart from this deathly embrace, these onetime lovers. One who was now full of hate. One who was still flooded with love for the one who would kill her.
He frowned, half in bewilderment, half in confused amusement.
There was no dagger in her heart.
She was reaching out to him once more, her horror-struck eyes wide and pleading.
The dagger, strangely, was protruding from his own heart.
‘No, no!’ she whispered as she steadily approached him. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how…’
She caught him as his body crumpled, easing him gently to the floor.
Her arms embraced him tenderly, lovingly. Her hands caressed him, both sensing and also somehow fearing the final tremors of his rapidly passing life.
‘You shall live!’ she breathed excitedly, knowing what she should do, must do. ‘You can live in ways previously thought unimaginable!’
The pulse of life was leaving him.
Olwen took it, spun it in her many hands. Threw it upwards, upwards, drawing on more and more of it. Cast it higher and higher, watching gleefully as it continued its ascension, rising like glistening, angelic strands through the tower’s very centre, stretching and reaching out towards the light of the moon shining through the windows.
Like a heavenly harp, the threads of life quivered, sang their own, particular song. A song of lost connections, of new ones being forged.
The tower itself rose and grew along with this new sense of life. It sprouted many new ways, it burgeoned with new, spiritual fruit.
The hill it stood on became as glass, as transparent as any soul.
Around its base, however, like a sheen of covering flesh, a milky band of hovering hawthorn blossom threw out branches that spread, intertwined, weaving into an almost impassable barrier.
Olwen sadly ascended the many, uncountable steps.
Her tapestries were calling for her.
*
Chapter 21