A Dream

The night was filled with the chatter of insects. The moon was a pale sliver, swallowed by darkness. The ground was hard beneath her feet, worn bare by the tread of all those who had come before her. She could not see the others, but she could feel their presence in the woods. The old women, mothers and grandams all. The ones who had told her what to do, had hinted what to bring, not directly, never directly by sign or word, but in veiled suggestions and portentous statements. It was not spoken of openly, even among the women of the village.

The rabbit quivered in her arms, and she held the furry body close, feeling the warmth of it on her naked breasts. If anyone caught her thus...but she pushed the thoughts out of her mind. She could not go back now. Not when she was so close.

The moons had swollen and darkened, and always her blood came. The women whispered among the fires, where they thought she could not hear. Barren. They clutched their swollen bellies and held their squalling babes to their bloated teats. She wanted that. Wanted it so badly...

The path wound around the bald hill, down into the little valley where none went. In old days it had been a midden, a place for unwanted things. Dung that would not burn, children that died in the womb, enemies that none would claim, the unclean parts of beasts and the rotten scraps of hide... the path wove through piles of old debris. Yet no rats squeaked, no owls hooted, no serpent crept among the bones.

A cloud passed over the moon. Too dark to see, she shuffled forward on the path, eyes wide in the night. Her eyes drank the pale foxfire that grew here and there. Her feet were treading the path, but it was turning, turning...she pictured herself, and found it a spiral, circling in and in again. She tripped, and panicked, clutched the rabbit too tight; felt its teeth sink into her tit, right above the nipple, but stifled her scream. She dare not let it go, but held and stroked it, even against the pain. Circling in to the center...

The shadow moved from over the face of the moon. The idol was there. The Dark Mother, strange and potent, rested before a kind of shallow bowl of stone. Yet it was dry and empty of debris. As though it had been prepared.

"You have come far," the voice startled her. "Do you know what you must do?"

She turned and looked.

The witch stood pale and naked as a woman in the night, the black curls of her hair stretching down to her ankles. Blue-black were the spirals painted on her flesh, with wide dark circles around her eyes. In one hand, she seemed to clutch something.

"Daughter of light, daughter of darkness. All your choices in life have led you to this one moment. Now, you may choose your destiny. You may yet turn back and live as you were. Let the gods decree if your womb ever quickens. Or," and her eyes flashed as though with reflected lightning. "You may take fate in your own hands."

She nodded, and held forth the rabbit.

The witch smiled, and held forth a dagger of sharpened stone.

"Lay down before the Dark Mother," the witch said, and she did. Her back against the cold stone, the witch gently parted her thighs. Cold fingers took the rabbit from her hands. "You see the mark of her? You must mark yourself."

The woman grimaced, but took the blade of the knife. Pressed the tip against the soft flesh of her belly, just below her navel. The pain was sharp...but not as bad as she imagined. Working by moonlight, she drew a shallow spiral, a single sweeping arc down to the hair of her pubis, then back up again, curling around.

"That is the gateway through which her power will flow," the witch crooned. "Now...a life, for a life."

The witch held the rabbit above her. The legs kicked at the air. Yet she had killed rabbit before. Drew the sharp edge of the knife across its throat quickly, swiftly. So it might not suffer. The hot blood fell on her stinging wounds...and she saw with a gasp, did not splatter or fall off of her, but seemed to soak into her stomach.

"Once," the witch said, as she held the rabbit over her. "A man with the power of gods took a demon to his bower. She took his seed to quicken her womb. To marry the powers of heaven and hell within her. When he discovered this deceit, he was wroth...he spoke a word and lightning fell from the heavens...it struck all about her...no place was safe for her...so she took a ball of dirt and placed his seed and her blood within...and then the lightning struck...he thought he had destroyed her. Yet it was only her image...and what power it held."

Cramps gripped her, as the last of the blood drooled from the hanging corpse of the rabbit. Her stomach felt hot and tight, the stinging pain of her self-inflicted wound almost lost in the terrible pressure within. She looked down and the belly seemed to rise before her eyes, a pale dome in gentle mockery of the gravid idol she glimpsed through her parted thighs.

"Too soon, you think? No, no, child. The Dark Mother is fair. One life, for a life." The witch grinned fiercely as she wrong the last few drops from the rabbit, bones crunching through her hands. "Yet the animal you brought was already pregnant."

The witch's laughter haunted Lois as she bolted suddenly awake in her bed, aware of a sudden pain in her gut.