Mother's Day: A Darker Tale

Once upon a time, in a place not far from here, in an age beyond memory, there lived a beautiful orphan named May.

May knew nothing of birth, or parents, or family, or sorrow. She lived in a convent atop a tall mountain with shrouded dark women who never spoke. Elusive and thin, they moved along interior walls like evening shadows; like nightwinds that rustle the tops of trees, or wings of birds made soft by moonlight.

Each morning, for all the days she could remember, May woke to find a clean cloak and a wooden bowl filled berries and milk beside her chamber door. Each evening, when she returned from wandering the fields and gardens outside the convent walls, she found a loaf of bread and a fresh white muslin gown folded neatly upon her simple cot.

She slept like a child and lived like a child, in peace and silence; without men, without words, without pain.

One day, while lying on her back and watching clouds drift through an egg-blue sky, May heard the far-off lilt of pipers. Sitting up quickly she looked around a meadow humming with bees and sweet clover to see a strange procession marching over the horizon towards the thick grass.

At the head of it were two young boys with flutes and flags who half-marched and half-danced in step to their own strange tune. Behind them followed two strong men on chestnut horses, with banners and armor and brilliant red capes and clanging swords. Behind them still, a single white mare pulled a marvelous silver chariot that carried a man all dressed in gold and diamonds, with hair like sunlight and a face as fierce as a winter wolf.

So astonished and alarmed was she by the appearance of these importaint men, that May soon found she could not catch her breath. When the procession came upon the place where she sat, the Charioteer dismounted, approached her confidently, and whacked her over the head with the hilt of his sword.

Then, all went black.

May woke atop a massive canopy bed surrounded by twelve young women with deep sad eyes and hair bound with ribbons. Inside her belly was a searing pain, and beside her head a book and a candle and a weak old man whose lips moved constantly to some rote prayer she could not understand.The sheets were soaked in blood and black thick bile.

"Where am I?" She said.

"Why, in the King's chamber My Lady. Your time is near."

The sad young woman who spoke shook her head, and all the others nodded, as if they were all connected by some invisible filament, one to the other, like marionettes.

"I want to go home!"

"But you are home Lady!"

The old man emerged from his whispering trance and spoke but once:

"They all say that when the child is coming."

A shriek, high and weird, like an owl piercing a rabbit through the heart, bounced through the room then echoed out some hidden door. The pain stopped. A sad eyed maiden at the end of the bed produced a swaddled bundle and shook her head.

"It's a girl. It's another girl."

The others shook their heads on cue and left the room in single file.

May looked at the bundle, now tucked into the crook of her arm and saw a bloodred moon swathed in a violent sky.

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May lay in the grand bed, and waited in the grand room, as seasons came and seasons went.

"You shame me," said the man with hair like sunlight and a face as fierce as a winter wolf.

He stood above her looking down.

"You give me daughter after daughter, and now you lock yourself in this chamber and grow thinner and more strange with every passing day. I think you are enchanted. Or a witch yourself. Or maybe you are simply mad."

May opened her mouth to speak but all that came out was the sound of nightwinds rustling the tops of trees, and wings of birds made soft by moonlight.

"I will not have my Kingdom know of this disgrace. From here onward, you shall have your own feast day, just one day each and every year. On that one day, all the people of this land will bow down to you and gather flowers for you and praise your warmth and kindness. You will dress yourself in white and smile and be a proper wife."

The man's face grew whiter, like a molten gold. Like the furnace at the center of the sun.

"But on all the other days of the year, on all the other long and cold days of year after year after year after year, you will stay in this stone room and wither, and you will grow thin and then thinner, and I will send you nothing but bitter mead and dry bread and cold dark silence. For you have disgraced and disappointed me, and I will not have it. I reject you and all your dark ways."

Even as he spoke, a brisk wind began to chill the shuttered halls and rattle the iron latches on all the grand chambers. Dark air swirled above the roof of the grand room and blotted out the sky. High above that world of blood and sorrow an army of wraiths swirled and met and clattered through the heavens like great trees snapping. The base of the world groaned and cried out, and the blackness grew so thick and so harsh that the man with hair like sunlight and a face like a winter wolf bounded from the room in terror.

The grand room shook violently, and the screams of the people of the land could be heard far away, like the ghostly cries of nightowls or the howling of wild dogs. May looked down at her hands and saw only evening shadows moving across the interior floor.

When it was finally over, a female child with blood red hair stood amidst the rubble and death and wailed.

"Ma!"

She smeared bright blood down her own young thighs and stamped the ground and cried out for mercy, but May and the man with hair like sunlight were no more.

Then the sun came out, the grass grew green and thick, and people gathered flowers and sang their praises to the May, to the warmth and kindness of the earth, to the Mother of us all, and to all our mothers. But always, as the people sang, they watched over their shoulders for the whirlwind, for the spring storm that brings destruction. For life is beautiful; and life is filled with sorrow and blood. And death awaits us all.

That is the story of how Time began, in a place not far from here, in an age beyond memory.

Happy Mother's Day.