Marei - book one. Part two: Initiation. Chapter 11

When I woke, I was so sore that when I tried to stretch my arms above my head as I usually do in the morning, my muscles creaked and groaned like an old chair and tears came to my eyes. I rolled painfully to one side and struggled to sit up. I almost cried out for help from Grandmother but just as my mouth opened to speak I remembered that I was not to utter a voluntary sound for the next year and a day. Too exhausted to drag my body out of bed, I fell back to my pillow and passed again into a fitful sleep.

I woke from time to time, hungry and thirsty, but my muscles were still so tender that I decided repeatedly that missing a meal would be worth the chance to just not move. I knew that sooner or later I would have to leave the room, but I was going to put it off until moving didn’t make me want to cry.

I have no idea how many days I spent lying as still as possible while I dreamt of darkness and black water rising, waiting for my muscles to stop seizing and clenching and regain the ability to stretch and bend as I needed. But the healing process was long and arduous those first few days back at the House on the Hill.

I could occasionally hear Grandmother moving about quietly in the common room or through the thin walls between her bedroom and mine. Several times when I woke I found food and water on a chair next to my bed and I was able to eat and drink without moving too much from my soft warm bed.

When finally I was able to stretch, and then sit up, five different meals had been left on the chair beside the bed. This time as I ate the bread and oatmeal that Grandmother had brought in for me, I stretched my legs and thought about standing. After chewing and swallowing the piece of bread that was in my mouth I placed one hand against the wall as a brace and pushed myself into an upright position, standing for the first time since I had returned home.

I looked down at my feet, noticing for the first time that they were covered with bruises and scrapes. Inspecting myself more fully, I could see scraped knees, a large cut on my right leg, scrapes on my palms and bruises almost everywhere I could see. I used the bucket in the corner rather than trying to trust my still weak muscles to go out to the out hose and when finished, rolled back into the bed and slept again.

The next time I awoke, Grandmother was sitting in the chair beside me. I smiled up at her in lieu of a verbal greeting. She smoothed my hair away from my face with a gentle hand. “You survived! Later, after your year, I want to hear all about it. But for now, as you were birthed from the bowels of the Earth as a new human, so too must you keep quiet about all that you saw as a babe is forced to do nothing by cry to communicate. Hopefully you won’t need to cry at all.”

“Come, I have heated you a bath. Come and soak your sore body in the heat until your muscles loosen up and start to feel more normal.” She stood and, reaching down, slid her arm under my shoulders and helped me to stand. With her patient assistance I was finally able to leave my room and walk over to the bath tub. Lifting my leg enough to get into the tub was a trick, but with Grandmother’s help, I was finally able to sink gratefully into the warm wet heat.

After my recent experience with full immersion in water, I was surprised that I wanted to put myself into water again, but the liquid heat felt so good on my still sore muscles. And though the abrasions all over my body stung at the first touch of the fresh water, they had soon softened and the crust from the salt sloughed off me like a film. I sank lower in the tub until I was completely covered by the steaming water, except for my face. I soaked my hair and as I had when I first arrived at the House on the Hill, I lathered it several times until I had washed all the salt and sand from my scalp. Then with a slightly scratchy cloth, I scrubbed my sensitive skin until it shone pink and all traces of the ocean had been washed from me.

Before they stopped floating around in the water and adhered to my body again, I stood; only after I was standing did I realize that I had not felt pain when I moved. Truly that bath had been what I needed. Grandmother handed me a scrap of linen to dry with and after I wiped down my body, I wrapped my hair in it to keep it from dripping on my back and the floor.

I had a thousand questions now, the questions that I wish I had thought to ask her the morning before the cauldron, but I knew I could not speak. I was bursting at the seams to tell her about the water, how I had calmed myself, the vision of the feline faced goddess after the ritual. I wanted to ask if she had endured the same testing, to find out if she had also seen the same goddess I had seen or if each person who completed the test had a differing experience. And yet, I could not speak a word to her.

Grandmother was watching my face as I struggled to keep in all my questions and thoughts. “It’s difficult to have so much to say and not be able to say it, isn’t it?” She questioned. I could only nod my agreement. “Imagine; this is what it is like to be a newborn baby. You felt the great pull of the tide, felt the thrust and the struggle to be free of the small space and into the world. For a time, you were unable to move on your own, only able to eat and sleep. And now, like a baby, you cannot speak. Every person is born with ideas, dreams, thoughts, questions, pictures of the Divine and yet as a cruel joke we are unable to share them while they are fresh. Without constant attention, those first thoughts, ideas, dreams and questions are lost. A person could spend his or her whole life chasing after those thoughts – struggling to remember what was so easy to know when first we breathed air.”

“I will require you as a shadow tomorrow, as is the requirement of your term of service. But for today, take the time to sit in silence and commit to memory the freshness of your soul, right now. Repeat your dreams, thoughts, ideas and questions from the cauldron and after until you can remember them in the morning. Then each day when you wake, repeat them to yourself so that you will not forget them when the time comes and you are able to speak them aloud.” She kissed my forehead and pushed me gently towards my bedroom.

I pushed past the curtain and pulled on a clean night dress. I pulled the sweat stained and ocean covered sheets and blankets from the bed and brought them out to the bathtub where I soaked them, soaped them, and wrung them out. I brought the blankets and sheets outside where we had a piece of rope strung up between two trees and draped them over the rope to dry in the now sunny air. Patting the goat on my way by, I took the path down to the well and beyond, into the circle grove.

I walked the spiral path into the center of the grove and though I had not been there since my vision, I was not surprised that the world did not spin this time. Instead, I continued on the spiral path until I had reached the raised mound at the center of the circle. Here I sat, cross legged, to try and put words to my thoughts that I would be able to remember in a year.

Who is the cat faced Goddess with the horns? This was my first question. It seemed to me important to know who was watching me and to whom I was bound. Does everyone who survives see her? Again, important – I wanted to know if the visions were all different, or if there was a patron goddess of the cauldron that we all must please or be recognized by in order to survive.

Does everyone escape in the same way? What I really wondered was if I should have waited for the water to disperse or if it was acceptable, or even normal, to fight my way out of the cauldron with the out surge of the tide as I had.

I could not put words to the feeling of being inside the cauldron – most of the memories of the rising water were clouded by the panic I had been feeling during the experiences. The one memory that was clear to me was when I had struggled against death and I knew that this was a phrase I had to remember too: Just one more. I suspected that this phrase would get me through situations where I might have panicked before I was able to calm myself and truly feel the moment of now.

The other moment I fully remembered was when I was holding my breath inside the tunnel as the tide changed and I spread myself wide to keep from being pushed back into the cauldron. How could I express that moment in a phrase to remember for an entire year? What sentence could possibly capture the feeling enough to help me remember. Hold tight? Spread out when faced with adversity? I shook my head and laughed soundlessly at myself. None of these truly seemed to secure the thought in my mind.

I lay back on the mound and looked up at the nearly cloudless sky. Tight spots. Hold tight when the world turns against you and you won’t lose any ground. That seemed to be a sensible statement. I felt as if I were examining my experience and looking for the lessons, but I think I was still too close to the emotions of it to be objective enough.

I ran through my list in my head to see if I could remember it: Who is the cat faced goddess? Does everyone see her? Does everyone escape in the same way? Just one more. Hold tight against the tide. Five things seemed like a good amount to remember – the same as points on the star in the magick room. As I watched a tiny cloud move across the sky, I repeated the list again and again in my head to ensure that I would remember it tomorrow as Grandmother had suggested.

When the sun began to sink below the tree line, I retraced my steps walking widdershins around the grove and through the spiral to the well clearing and back to the House. Brilliant orange and pink streaked across the sky as I crested the hill and entered the clearing for the house. Wordlessly I entered the House and took Grandmother by the elbow, pulling her towards the outside of the house.

She followed without question or hesitation and we watched the colors play across the horizon until the sun fully set and the world was bathed in quiet darkness.