The Hand That Feeds.

 

The Hand That Feeds.

The man carried his father on his shoulders and felt numb. The old man was finally gone. He carried the dead weight wrapped in animal skins from the bothy made of evergreen boughs down through the forest to the place of ritual. 

This last responsibility lay upon his shoulders. He could feel the corpse growing even colder as his breath steamed in the starlit air. He was the only one left to fend for the old man. His mother had died last winter, and they had carried her on this same journey together. His father had stopped at the stream where, racked with tears, he had let slip her beaded necklace into the waters. The beaded necklace, his first love token to her then, was now offered to Danu deposited in the waters of life. 

He reached the stream. He lowered his father gently sideways onto the bank. What could he offer? Despite the biting cold, he reached beneath his clothing to remove his purse. Loosening the thong, he slipped three gold nuggets into his palm. He went to select the smallest one. He hesitated. What if She were watching him?  He selected the largest nugget and gave thanks for his father before dropping the largest gold in the stream. It sank to the bottom and settled staring up from the silted bed. Once given, never taken back. Once offered forever sacred to the Goddess. 

He hoisted his father’s body and, stepping through the stream, he made sure to grind the nugget underfoot so that it disappeared. As face flickered beyond the glassy surface from the otherworld. A fleeting ripple from another place silent, separate, unseen. The shush of water gently laid a cloth of living sound beneath the whispering trees.

Soon the ground levelled off and he was within the sacred grove. He stopped where the mouth of the cave opened. He thought of all the bones within. Warriors, wisemen, beloved women like his mother. Bones without flesh, ashes lacking warmth. Only the breath of dawn carried their voices now. His father would soon join their company. Would they welcome him? Was his mother waiting there? Did the dead love as the living did? He shook his tired head and set about the ritual.

He crouched beneath the lintel stone and lowered his father’s remains to the ground. He turned the corpse around and laid hold of his father’s heels. Then crawling in, he dragged the body to the stone bowl and the kindling waiting at the end of the passage. He lifted and folded the old man’s body into the hollow stone bowl. He arranged kindling and wood over the body. Reverentially he poured oil over the remains. The rich smell of pine resin soothed him. 

A clear sky let grey light spill over the eastern horizon as he came back out of the passage. He was almost out of time. He dribbled the last of the oil over a torch lying in a small circle of stones nearby.

He rubbed a hazel stick between his palms with its sharpened end in the hole that he had cut in the split fir log. More light spilled over the horizon. He rubbed faster and faster. Smoke began to smoulder. He fed it dry straw and leaves. The world around him began to warm into colour and he thought he could see a line of gold peer over the horizon. There was a steady stream of smoke now coming from the straw. He rubbed frantically and then there was a lick of flame. He added more kindling and heard the snapping, crackling sound. Then ‘whoomph’ and the twigs took the tongues of fire which licked over and consumed them. He grabbed the torch and held it in the dancing flames.

 He scuttled down the tunnel to his father’s remains holding the hot flames ahead of him. Thrusting the torch into the wood he watched the oil catch fire and his father’s remains were alight. Suddenly he felt a horror at his actions. He wanted to reach in and save his father but he dared not. Once given, never taken back.

The eye of the Sun stared down the passage at him, seeking the offering, looking for the life laid there in the throat of stone. Along the shaft of sunlight, something slipped away. The life that had burned within his father was gone and only he remained. Dropping his torch back in the fire he threw back his head to the warm blue sky and howled.

***

He must have been five or six years old when it happened. He was following the track his father had left in the woods. This was to challenge him but it was no child’s game. His father, the great hunter was waiting somewhere in the woods to leap out at him roaring and shouting to startle him. He hated such moments. 

The killing was worse. His father made him sharpen branches and dig a pit for a wild boar or a deer. Then they would wait. ‘The trap is a hunter that never sleeps’, his father said. When they heard the animal squeal or bellow, they came running with their long spears and killed the stricken animal. Sometimes his father would make him paint his body with blood or eat some of the animal’s still warm flesh to honour and capture the animal’s spirit. 

On that day as he stumbled down a strange defile he heard a deep growl. He stood transfixed as a brown bear emerged from a cave and rose on its hind legs. He was terrified and stood rooted to the spot. The bear’s enormous shadow fell over him and he could smell its hot fetid breath as it growled. Then through the bear’s chest a bloody spear emerged, catching him in the shoulder and making him cry out. The bear toppled over and there in its place was his father’s white face. The bear twitched and went still but his father just pulled him close and held him for what seemed the longest time. Then, packing his scar tightly with moss, his father swung him upon his shoulders and carried him home.

*** 

The howl disturbed a wolf. It had been two days since it had fed. The winter wind was now biting through its thick fur. Scents haunted the wind. There was man’s sour stench overlaid with sweat, resin and fear.

And that other smell it hated. The dancing yellow shrub that burned. Man had tamed it and kept it like a pet. It lived in his hovels, shared his food and guarded his door. The wolf would never forget its evil bite. It drew no blood, but its bite kept on biting long after its teeth disappeared. 

The dancing yellow shrub allowed man to see at night and kept him safe. He held it in his hand on a branch, perched ready to fly off into the trees or leap down to the dry grass and leaves. Each little flame hid its own snarling pack and gave birth to its children instantly upon contact. There was no rutting in the night under the stars. There were no yelps and shying away to seclusion. There were no suckling or stumbling balls of fur to be protected. It bred suddenly and furiously. It raged through a burning forest cracking the trunks of trees and throwing off unimaginable heat in its insatiable hunger.

The wolf had seen it consume a whole forest in one unforgettable night. That was the day when he broke from the pack. It happened when a great tree came crashing down through the flames in a clearing as they milled about surrounded by fire. The wolf spotted a pathway along the blackened bark of the trunk over the flames with a patch of light at the end. In desperation it leaped and ran towards the light through the tunnel of flame. The young wolf heard the leader’s howl of despair as it could not follow. When the leader stayed the whole pack stayed. Stayed and died. He could still see them running to and fro, pelts aflame as the dancing yellow shrub ate their living bodies. The wolf sensed that this thing was its enemy.

The wolf had tracked the man carrying the body through the woods and over the stream. Now it lay in the furze a little way off from the passage grave. It had found the man’s lair. When he howled the wolf responded with a low growl. 

***

The man heard the wolf. Immediately the howl died in his throat. He held up his torch. The growl came from where the furze was thickest. He cursed himself for coming without a spear or an axe. All he had was his father’s iron dagger tucked in his belt. What use was one small dagger against wolves? His heart hammered in his chest and beat a tattoo in his inner ear.

He spied a low dark shape crouched below the bushes. He searched around in the soft light of dawn for the rest of the pack. He could not see them. If it was a lone wolf his chances were considerably improved. He considered himself a match for a single wolf, especially one as thin and hungry as the one that crept out of the bush to face him. He grabbed the torch in the fire, hoping that his wolf was afraid of fire.

The man began to growl back at the wolf. With the burning torch held in front of him, he exuded menace and defiance. He silently addressed the creature “You picked the wrong place and the wrong time wolf. This day my father’s spirit leaves the earth. I stand as his guard. You come hunting me in my grief, but I will make a no meal for you.’ 

The wolf started up and crept forward, legs bent and tensed, hackles raised, crouched, canines bared. It was clear to the man that the animal had to be crazed desperate to approach him with the flaming torch in one hand and his ready dagger in the other. Yet he dared not leave his post. Filial duty demanded he stand his ground.

The wolf’s eyes never left his and he felt scared. What did the arrival of this wolf mean? Had it come to avenge all the wolves his father had killed? Was this a spirit- wolf filled with hatred for men who hunt its kind? The wolf advanced to within a few body lengths and the man tried to guess how far it could spring.

With the death of his father, there was nobody left to miss him if he died. There was no hand to help him. The difference between his living or dying was a thin line with no one ahead of him and none left behind. His death would flow out like a silent expanding circle in a still pool and quietly disappear. He meant nothing to anyone now except to this wolf.

The wolf flew at him now through the air the moment his gaze dropped. Its teeth snapped shut on his wrist where he grasped the torch. He felt the canines clamp down on his clenched hand and he roared in pain dropping the torch. The creature was surprisingly strong and bore him backwards to the ground. Now the wolf had its four feet on the ground and was vigorously shaking his wrist back and forth trying to break his bones. 

He plunged the dagger in his left hand towards the wolf’s eye but the wolf saw it coming and released its grip and averted its head. The knife grazed the wolf’s powerful neck and drew some blood. The wolf spun away and circled back to within the length of a second bound. It resumed its low growl.

The man saw with dismay that the torch had rolled and gone out. He tried to use it as a club, but the fingers of his right hand refused to grip. His right hand was all but useless.

‘Up,’ he commanded himself ‘it isn’t finished yet’. The wolf stalked back and forth presenting a more difficult target. The man backed himself up against the passage and held the bloodied dagger in his weaker left hand. He saw the wolf watching the moving dagger. He would only get one chance and he couldn’t wait for the wolf. He had to strike first and strike fast.

The wolf crouched to spring. The man leaped. He saw the wolf rising in the air to meet him. They collided and he wrapped his arms around the animal's chest and pulled it over his left shoulder. Then they hit the ground with a thump and he could feel the wolf shuddering and shaking violently to get free but he gripped and held on to its body. The wolf’s paws scrabbled for purchase. The man rose to his knees with a roar and bashed the wolf’s head against the overhanging passage lintel stone. The animal went limp in his arms. He collapsed.

***

At midday he watched the wolf awake only to find its feet were tied and it was tethered some distance from the grave. He was squatting by the fire, chewing some meat and watching it. He tossed over a lump of rabbit meat to within reach of its jaws. The wolf gobbled down the meat. He threw over the rest of the animal. The wolf gobbled the rest then looked at him licking its chops. 

Then the man lifted the device he had made. It was a long pole with holes bored through each end. Through each of the holes was a strong leather thong which ran the length of the pole and back through the other hole into his hand.  He approached and slipped the noose he had fashioned at one end over the wolf’s neck and drew it tight to the pole. He then tied the thong running through the other end to a nearby sapling before cutting the wolf’s restraints. The wolf jumped up and went to snap at him and tried to run away but because of the thong and the pole the wolf could neither attack nor flee.

 He imagined his father criticising him for what he had done as he watched the sapling tire the wild animal out. His father’s voice in his mind told him what he had done was unnatural and that he would be punished. He ignored the voice and concentrated on the heady possibilities.

***

That night he kept the fire lit between himself and the wolf. Through the flickering flames he could see the animal’s two eyes watching him. As he fed the flames the wolf growled, and he noticed that the dancing flames were distracting the wolf’s gaze. He had tied the animal securely, but he was still on edge. At night his fears magnified as the light declined. He spat in the fire just to hear it sizzle.

The flames slowly died to the fading crackle of the wood in the fire. His eyes began to droop, and he fell into a deep sleep.  

He dreamed that a young woman in a fawn deerskin crept into his camp. She wore a thin torc of gold around her neck and she stared at him with deep interest. She pointed a wand at his chest and uttered some musical words. Then she slipped back into the woods. His chest opened and two wolves leaped out. One was a muscular grey wolf with thick fur and a black tip to its tail. The other was white wolf with dark eyes and a pure white coat. The grey wolf made to attack him but the white wolf stood between them and snarled, baring its fangs. The grey wolf ducked his head and flattened his ears before wheeling around and loping into the woods. The white wolf relaxed, turned to look at him and then lay down beside the fire.

When he awoke the next morning, all that was left of the fire was a white ash. His grey wolf was awake with its head resting in its paws, watching something. Sitting by the ashes of the fire was a young boy of about six years of age dressed in a brown bearskin. The boy had pure white hair and dark eyes. He had a white scar on his left shoulder. He held out his hand for food.