The Crone
By Angela Cheveau
She comes to me in the dark mostly, but not always. Outside, the winter darkness creeps ever closer, pressing its face up against the window, icy breath frosting the glass. The only sound I hear is the dull thud of my heart. Tonight, she looks at me from behind the mirrored glass in the wardrobe door, eyes glittering in the shaft of moonlight spilling through the open curtained window. She watches me carefully as we stand opposite each other, her luminous eyes searching my face, her withered fingers lifting to the glass to gently stroke the area of purplish skin beneath my eyes. She can’t touch me of course, her fingers merely stroke the other side of the glass but I know, in my heart, that she is trying to help in her own way. I lower my head, unable to look in her eyes as shame burns deep inside my chest.
A sound in the middle of the room makes us both turn our heads. I look over my shoulder towards the bed where he is sleeping off the rum he consumed earlier. The sound of his breath ragged in the darkness, the shape of his bulk looming large beneath the twisted sheets, the sharp scent of sweat and stale alcohol fumes pungent in the air. I turn back to the mirror and see her gaze upon his sleeping shape, the amber of her eyes flickering with a fierce flame I know little of. He snorts in his sleep, heaves his bulk over onto his side, a long wheezing sigh escaping his mouth which hangs open loosely. My heart flutters in my chest. If he was to wake now, to see me standing here at the mirror in the darkness of the bedroom, if he was to see her standing there inside the glass, what would he do to me? To her? A shiver slithers down my spine making me shudder, the hairs on my skin rising in response. I catch her eye. It falls on me like a shadow, her eyes are an eclipse, the pupils two dark moons moving in front of the amber suns of her iris. She stares at me defiantly and I shake my head.
No!
Sometimes she comes to me in shadow, not like tonight when I can see her more clearly, but sometimes she seems to be a slight displacement of air in the corner of the room. She is a shadow slipping around the corner of my eye, a dark shape drifting in the gloom. Sometimes she drifts in and out of my ribs, the scuff of her boots on my bones as she passes, the swish of her skirts felt deep in my chest, the scent of damp earth and woodsmoke in my nostrils, I sense her even when I cannot see her. Sometimes, when things are really bad, when he does those things to me in the dark, she takes hold of my hand and together we run.
Hand in hand we run through the darkness of the forest, twigs snapping beneath our boots, the crackle and crunch of dried leaves crinkling beneath our feet we slip into shadow. The sweet smell of wild garlic pungent in the twilight, the night sky spiked with starlight we run, our breath bursting from our lungs, we run. To an old stone cottage deep in the woods, it’s rickety roof plush with moss and damp slate. We push open the rotting wooden door and enter the gloomy depths our hands still entwined. There, beside a crackling fire spitting glowing embers into the stone chimney we sit, just us, my head in her lap as she smoothes gnarled fingers through my hair, soothes my fevered brow with a poultice of herbs and flowers. The scent of sage and lavender curling through the air, she holds me. Whispering something beneath her breath she sings to me in symbols and signs, a strange language I do not know yet feel I have heard before, something that resonates deep within me like the faint strains of a long forgotten song.
Sometimes I feel her eyes burning deep in my chest, two glowing torchlights searching the darkness inside of me, pushing through the brambles and bracken she wanders my dark paths, my shadowed alleyways alone. With the wind in her wild hair, shivering with leaves she comes soaked in sea salt and spray, mildewed skirts swishing with the smell of mould and decayed mulch. She is a tiger prowling my hidden pathways, stalking the edges of me with her rain drenched pelt dripping. Sometimes, she climbs the stairs of my spine, peers out of my eyes, lights candles in the windows to banish the dark. Sometimes she whispers to me from corners, babbling words that make no sense, yet I wish I could understand. Sometimes she hurts me. Pricks me with her needles, tosses ice cold water from the rusty pail she carries by her side down my spine to shock me, it rushes in glacial rivers down the rocky ridge of my spine, seeping through my skin. Sometimes she bangs so hard on the locked door of my mouth that I feel she will burst out through my throat, come kicking and screaming like a child having a tantrum. Sometimes, when I float above my own body and the girl below is suffering, then she comes to me as a wolf.
Slick beneath the silvered light of the moon we slip through shadows in the wooded deep, our fur bristling beneath the cool breeze blowing down from the mountains. We are sleek. Primed to the pulse of the night we are wild with the light of the moon, noses twitching we search for the scent of others like us. And they come. Pieces of the night they come slowly, seeping from the shadows. They come and we, find solace in them, in the scent of their fur, we nuzzle each other fondly, paws padding lightly through the ways of the wintered dark.
Sometimes, when I am alone, I let her out. She perches on the windowsill of my room, beaded eyes peering in through gaps in the curtains watching for movement, waiting for the silence to shatter. On nights when fear squats in my chest and throat she bursts into the room, beating her big black wings against the stifling air. I feel her midnight feathers fluttering against my ribs, the peck of her razor sharp beak on my bones, claws digging into my skin where she is tethered by her ankle and I am unable to stop her, unable to keep her inside. It is those nights I fear most, the nights when her rage and frustration are so strong that I cannot keep her tethered any longer, cannot keep her restrained.
Tonight, is one such night. Tonight, when the veil between darkness and light is stretched gossamer thin and the night is sweating stars from its fevered skin. Tonight when the moon outside the window floats like a shark eye, cold and fathomless, she came knocking. Like I knew she would. When bruises blossomed beneath my skin blooming like violets across the snow of my face I knew she would come knocking. Knew she would come whispering. Hissing from the shadows, muttering her incantations with her withered tongue, the fire in her eyes ablaze, flicking embers into the darkness of the room. I felt her footsteps along the corridors inside my mind, felt the latch lift at the back of my eyes and the nails slide out from the wooden boards across the cellar of my throat. I felt her climb out from the silent darkness of my mouth, slipping behind the glass of the mirror so she could finally face me properly. Face to face I come with my own ancestral history embedded in my bones. Face to face I come with myself and see her for who she truly is. My protectress. My wildness. My intuition. My strength. I am her and she is me.
She steps out from behind the glass, dirt stained and mud streaked she raises her fingers to touch my skin, her papery skin rough against my cheek. We look into each other’s eyes and nod, slowly turning to face the sleeping figure on the bed. She bristles with rage and repressed emotion, thunder crackling beneath the folds of her garments, lightning flashing in her eyes. We stand together over the sleeping man, he sighs deeply in his sleep and makes a snacking sound with his lips, vulnerable in his nakedness. We stand a while, watching, waiting, our hands hovering above his nose and mouth. It would be so easy. So easy to just stop this now. To end him. But that is not who we are. That is not what we came here for. We came here to save ourselves. To save each other. Power surges through our veins, ripples through our skin. Hand in hand we hold within us the surge of the storm, the seething sea, the silent strength of stone, we are women, we are warriors, we are wolves.
We have no need of him.
Together, we slip from the room, the sound of his snores drifting on the air, we slip down the stairs and out into the star pricked night. From the shadows hundreds of pairs of glowing eyes light up the darkness of the winter night, they pad slowly over to us, nuzzling our skin with their wet noses, our fingers buried deep in their pelts. The first few flakes of snow are falling, they flutter past streetlights and land on our tongues. We are free. We chose a different life, a different story. We chose ourselves. In the dark she showed me the way to the light, in the dark she showed me my strength, in the dark she showed me what it meant to be loved.
In the dark she showed me myself.
Angela Cheveau is a writer from the United Kingdom. She has been published in numerous anthologies such as the It's Not Ok and Turning The Tide anthologies with Writing On The Wall. She writes poetry, prose and memoir and was a recent finalist in the Pulp Idol fiction competition with Writing On The Wall. She hopes one day to publish her own collection of poetry and short stories.
Instagram: @xxangiecxx
