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At the reddening of dawn, a vast forested dream seduces me. I snap a forked branch from a witch hazel, holding a tine
in each hand, and let the rod pull me into the deep woods, towards sparkling Rohr Baugh as it flows from under the Devil's
Saddle, where darkling elves, dark and lean with flashing eyes, emerge from the hollow mountain to dip animal hides in the
creek.
I tap the ground three times with my stick and ask, "Is the water in this stream good to drink?"
"Indeed," says their leader... a bowlegged matron, wrinkled and stooped with age, wearing a cobbler's apron,
with a green blanket around her shoulders. She blinks with both eyes, points a crooked finger back to the woods, and moves
towards the water. The other sidhe take her blanket and apron, her blouse and bloomers, hanging them in the branches of a
knotty elm, and as she wades silently into the stream, I notice that though her skin is loose and wrinkled, she is without
a single hair on her body... not even an eyelash.
They wait until she emerges, then speak gibberish among themselves, ignoring me, until I dip my double wand into their
watery reflections and wave them away... but it is I that leave, elwetritsch,[1]easing along the carved sandstone banks of
the creek, until I come to where the fameflower blooms and the water slows in a clear deep pool.
There, on the banks of Rohr Baugh, sits my true love, feeding boiled eggs to the enormous black eel whose head is in her
lap, whose eyes are not those of a dumb beast, but have cast her into trembling fascination.
He will not let her eat... hissing when she lifts bread to her own lips, and she wastes away with oppnehme,[2] so I split
my divining rod like a wishbone and plunge the sharp end into the eel's spine, bringing oily blood... and my lady's eyes shine,
searching mine, to say, "Everything led to this moment."
As I cast the broken branch into Rohr Baugh, watching it slither through shallow rapids like a ribbon in a sudden gust,
Brigit bows to the creek. She dips her hands and takes a long draught, and as I kneel to join her, I find that the water smells
like her open thighs, and looking across the stream, to the opposite bank, I see our child's skeleton, the rotting fetus,
tangled in the exposed roots of a red maple, and I can suddenly decipher the unfolding sidhe-song as it sails the breeze...
Das wasweib schaut nach vorne
Das hexe in den Wind
Das Weibsbild an dem Borne
Hat viele, veile Kind
Hier ich bring euch etwas zu spinnen,
und was zu essen;
ihr solt spinnen und essen...
Und meines Kindes vergessen. [3]
I leave her, to find the sidhe again, and see them lifting a white stone to disappear again into the mountain and mingle
with Allegewei.[4] But, when I follow and lift the stone, the entrance is so small that by the time I squeeze through, they
are beyond the ken of ambient light, and I venture deeper, alone, until I reach a large circular chamber lit by a single candle.
Here twelve of them lay, each upon a pallet. The beds form spokes for the round room, only I notice that one is empty. The
leader, the bowlegged woman wrapped in a green blanket, again crooks her finger and directs me to lie upon the empty pallet,
which I do.
At this, the stone closes, and I am trapped. They bind my arms and legs, though others lie unchained, and inject me with
some elvish tincture using the sharpened leg bone of a wren. My veins burn and my eyes feel as if they will collapse, and
then I am given a second grain, which raises my temperature, and causes me to shed my skin, hair and teeth. My fingernails
are swept away by dark attendants. They blow out the candle and leave, and I hear the breathing of those around me on the
cots, and have no idea whether four or forty nights pass, before the bowlegged leader returns and injects me with a third
grain of their elixer, which restores my body.
"And now" she says, "ten more, by Crispin, to rejuvinate your spirit and send you back where you belong,
out of this womb, and to the waking world."
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[1] elfstruck
[2] apnehme… falling off, or severe malnourishment
[3] The woodswoman (midwife) looks ahead, the witch into the wind, the woman at the well has many many children. Here
I bring you something to spin, and something to eat; go on, spin and eat and forget my child.
[4] Native American tribe supplanted in the Alleghenies by the Lenni Lenape and Iroquois.
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