Baring my teeth, I hiss at you and implore you to listen to me. Listen to me now, NOW, before the maiden returns! I am the hag. Cailleach. Spit my name the way I spit at you. Do not turn your head. Pick your eyes up from the ground! Look at me. LOOK AT ME! Look at me while you listen to what I am about to say:
Cats die. CATS DIIIIIIIE! They get old and weak. They lose their fur and their hips pop out from under what’s left of their tabby coats. That half-tailed, nicked-eared cat of yours will return to me.
Babies die. BABIES DIIIIIIIE! Their mothers scream to me in the night and at daybreak and even under the brightest sun.
You cannot stop this. Not with medicine or prayer or cleanliness or order or any amount of petitioning. I will take them, your cats and your babies. When it is their time.
These are the things you do not wish to hear. That you do not wish to see. Open your mouth and taste these things! Taste the bitterness of knowing that you cannot govern me! Drink this in: you do not have to govern me. It is bitter, but it will nourish you.
Feel my hands, child. Touch me. Remember how the skin felt on your grandmother’s knuckles. Her palm against your face. Breathe me in, the scent of wood smoke and damp. I do not wish to frighten you. Though I may frighten you. I do not wish to harm you. Though I may harm you. I do not wish to see you struggle and fight, denying me my place.
The decay. The rot. These are mine. And they are yours. You too will die. Do not spend your days trying to save the cats or the babies or yourself. Slip softly into the decay that is all around you. Let it be a bed of moss to you. Shed your fur. Collect scratches and callouses. Become the wild thing you always have been. Teach your babies to hunt mice and lizards. Find bits of lichen in your pockets and twigs in your hair. Take up a staff and scream with me. Say all the things no one wishes to hear!
✍️: Michelle Kathleen Elder
🎨: Jill Smith
Comentários