The time of snow and shadow was upon us, and the jubilant hag who sits atop my ribs and skips stones in my blood made new demands. Leave nothing undone, she said. Harvest what’s hearty now. Gather your people. Stack the wood high. Take your lessons from the mountain-dwellers. Stock salt. Build a better fire.
I raised my hood and did all she asked of me, her aging house of flesh and bone. I walked against the wind and collected the fallen apples, shriveled rosehips, and dried twigs. I readied the well. I sharpened the axe. These were the days of the pitiful sun, and that old crone sung a weaver’s work song while my skin went dry, while a pale sun rose behind the gold and garnet trees.
The land was still and ready under a sky swollen with storm. My mind was softening into a dreamscape full of ghosts, graves, bog bodies, and galloping corpses. I peeled the apples slow like Grandma Grace, and I prayed to Brighid like Grandma Mary. While my sweet brew bubbled, I heard a blessing from both dead-and-gone grannies, and the winter-rich hag who tugs on my tongue joined them in their pagan prophecy:
May you meet these dire times well, dear daughter. May the remedy for your apathy be awe. May you stand on the northern hill, ring a bell, look west, and hum while the sun sets on your tamer ways, while the crumbling binaries burn and the new innocents quiver and hatch, while the impossible becomes possible and the clocks fall from the walls. Stay tender through it all. Stay wise. Walk with one foot in the world of the wailing women and the rebel chieftains who dreamt you alive.
Take the low roads to higher ground. Forget fate. Remember emergence. Teach your babes to be wonder-rich and fear-poor. Hone your night vision and look for the lessons in the old stories of devils, shadows, sunsets, and blackthorn trees. You know more than you think you know.
Keep watch over the stores. Line the sills with ash and salt. Lick the bottom of the jar. Waste nothing, not one drop of syrup or one daylit hour. Beware those who would sell you solutions, simplicity, or secrets. Bemoan those who draw hard lines between sovereignty and empathy. Befriend everyone else. The lone wolf dies on the longest nights no matter the length of its fangs or the thick of its fur.
Stay warm. Bring the old ones in the woods soup and vinegar. Keep drumming.
You are the knowing crow and the clueless fawn. You are the angry kings you hate and the careless princesses you envy. You are hope and despair wrapped in skin and boiling apples as the veil grows thinner between light and shadow, right and wrong, living and dead, ancient and future. Stock your accounts with the new-old currencies of joy and jam, gratitude and grain, humor and honey, song and seed.
Name neighbors family. Name truth treasure. Stitch the holes, drop the hems, mend the coats. Keep laughing. Protect the spring. Compost the dusty dreams, bloody eggshells, and flaking skins; dance while you do it. Don’t let the fire go out. Keep the air out of the jars. Grow mushrooms. Let the birds nest in the barn. Let the beasts roam the borderlands. Leave milk for the fair folk and wine for the warrior-queens. A long winter never meant an absent spring. Don’t be the false prophet’s fool. Practice awe.
Can the apples while they’re hot.
Pour your blood in the garden. Let the land go wild. Pray over the roots. Rest. Weep and laugh from low in your body. Scry in the well. Bury the dead. Keep going. Eat so slowly every meal is a memory. Sing. Tend the altar. Wrap the pipes. Put the leaf in the table and keep it there. Knit. Pickle the eggs. Hang the mugwort. Hold hands. Bless the winter wheat. Taste the snow. Leave butter for the Cailleach. Wash the rags. Ration the tea. Wait. You were made for these times. Watch. We’ve seen this before. Go slow. Stir the apples. Become weather. Add more sugar. Have patience. Lower the heat. Breathe. Pour with care. Come home. Become home. We are with you.
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The time of snow and shadow was upon us, and the jubilant hag who sits atop my ribs and skips stones in my blood made new demands. Leave nothing undone, she said. Harvest what’s hearty now. Gather your people. Stack the wood high. Take your lessons from the mountain-dwellers. Stock salt. Build a better fire. […] -
The time of snow and shadow was upon us, and the jubilant hag who sits atop my ribs and skips stones in my blood made new demands. Leave nothing undone, she said. Harvest what’s hearty now. Gather your people. Stack the wood high. Take your lessons from the mountain-dwellers. Stock salt. Build a better fire. […] -
The time of snow and shadow was upon us, and the jubilant hag who sits atop my ribs and skips stones in my blood made new demands. Leave nothing undone, she said. Harvest what’s hearty now. Gather your people. Stack the wood high. Take your lessons from the mountain-dwellers. Stock salt. Build a better fire. […]
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The time of snow and shadow was upon us, and the jubilant hag who sits atop my ribs and skips stones in my blood made new demands. Leave nothing undone, she said. Harvest what’s hearty now. Gather your people. Stack the wood high. Take your lessons from the mountain-dwellers. Stock salt. Build a better fire. […] -
The time of snow and shadow was upon us, and the jubilant hag who sits atop my ribs and skips stones in my blood made new demands. Leave nothing undone, she said. Harvest what’s hearty now. Gather your people. Stack the wood high. Take your lessons from the mountain-dwellers. Stock salt. Build a better fire. […]
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