The Song
Five grizzled judges entered the dim chamber. Single file their hooded robes dragged the floor. With hunching backs and moving slowly, they limped on two legs or on canes. Lanterns flickered their twisted figures about the large room. They clambered past the curtained stage, up the stairs of the judges’ platform, and into their ornate seats. With hidden countenances and silent mouths they waited for the two bailiffs to pull at the ropes, raise the stage curtain, and reveal yet another hooded figure.
“Sirs. In secret conference we have determined the temple girl’s guilt,” spoke a young man’s voice. “Because she is unmarried and with child, having conceived while in service to the gods, as two priests have avowed upon seal, death by exposure is required.”
“Unless she offers a sign,” one of the five hoarsely spoke, as he raised a dark sleeve to reveal a bony finger.
“Yes. Unless she offers a sign.”
“Bring her forward.”
The two bailiffs bowed, clicked their heels and disappeared into the shadows beyond the raised curtain. A large door creaked open and slammed shut. Chains rattled until the bailiffs returned with the gaunt figure of a tall girl. She wore shackles around her ankles and a sullied temple robe hung from her emaciated body. Her matted, black hair concealed her down turned face, but did not cover her swollen belly.
“We did not order this girl be starved. She is nothing but bone with child.”
“She refuses to eat,” explained the young voice. He then he turned to her and spoke,
“Girl for your iniquity, you have been condemned to death by exposure. However, the Laws provide that should you offer a sign, the penalty may be mitigated.”
“A sign?” whispered Gayla.
“Yes, a sign. For instance, should a raven appear, fly down and land upon your shoulder, or should a holy voice speak in your defense from vacant air, the Court may be convinced you should not be exposed.”
Gayla slowly nodded, raised her head and moved her hair aside to reveal her unaffected face. Though it was nothing more than skin and skull, her beauty had somehow remained. Her weakened thighs trembled as she began to lower her body to the floor. The bailiffs assisted. Each took an arm and helped her to her knees. Gayla clasped her hands in prayer and her hair fell back over her face as she bowed.
“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor,
Exhale the answers to our prayers,
Offer our devout ears the rustling leaves,
The whispering wind,
Amen.”
The chamber remained silent. Motionless.
The bailiffs glanced to one another with softened countenances.
Hooded face turned to hooded face and heads shook.
“There is no sign,” spoke a stoic, old voice.
“Agreed. There is no sign.”
“Agreed.”
“Aye.”
“Aye.”
And so Gayla, gravid of belly and too weak to stand, was gently helped to her feet by the two bailiffs and led back to prison.
The bailiffs went to a tavern for ale. Both were filled with sorrow at their table and they didn’t clank their mugs together, as they always had before, before taking a swill.
“I don’t know about you, but there was something about that girl. I felt it in my belly when she prayed. Or maybe it was her face? It just doesn’t seem right, her being condemned and all.”
“I know what you mean. It probably was a priest that knocked her up. No other men could have gotten to her in the temple. She was so young, and beautiful.”
“The judges didn’t seem to care. They never do. Maybe it’s because they don’t have to show their faces.”
“I know. We did. We couldn’t hide from her. We didn’t get to hide in robes and be the Law instead of men. We had to be men.”
“I’m never going to forget her face.”
“I know. I know. Me either. I wish we got to wear hoods too. Be something else when being part of somebody dying.”
“Barmaid! Two more of your darkest in your biggest bowls! Swine need to swill!”
The land thawed. Row after row, Claytus continued singing as he guided the ox. The ox always seemed to be smiling, especially when he strained against leather strap and steel buckle, leaving upturned soil in his wake. As the soil turned, those with life mourned the death brought by the terrible chill that had swept the land. As the pillars of smoke rose skyward from the smoldering, piled up corpses, tears soaked the ground and lament filled the air. In seeking balance, freshly planted seed began to dream of birth from death, from darkness into light. Hope to grasp living days from the depths of earth’s stillness.
As the moons passed, one after another, days mulling into night and back again, the seed continued growing. It sprouted limbs and a head the size of a plumb. He began making his presence known to his child-mother, for her bleeding stopped and her sickness started.
Gayla whispered and cried into her pillow each night,
“Caelum, why? Why? WHY!”
“It can’t be! Please make it not so.”
“This can’t be happening to me! It cannot be!”
She knew Caelum couldn’t hear her pleas, though a part of Him remained within her since that night. IT, he, a bastard, continued taking shape, filling her womb, drinking the last of her youth and purity straight from her porcelain navel. A son.
On heavy feet, Gayla continued climbing the rebuilt spire each evening. She kept tending the altar fire in that desecrated place. There she always felt faint and angry as the dusk turned to darkness. As she poured hecatombs with shaking hands, her offered words to Him were not prayers. They were curses.
“Caelum, you wretch! Why? Why! Why did you defile me? Why did you have to thrust your dripping phallus in my dirt? What will I do when the priests discover my purity’s loss? You swine!”
No immortal ears heard her words as her delicate hands worked in tremors, as the swine blood continued flowing, burning into smoke and rising into the air – an offering to a murdered father. All the while the son continued partaking of the uncooked blood of his father’s killer, the life in his mother’s veins. Nourishment blessed with salty spite.
More moons came and went, and the signs of Gayla’s gravidity were reflected in her sisters’ mutterings and whispers.
“Just look at her. She’s getting fat.”
“She eats like a pig.”
Silently, Gayla swore to herself in her fright,
“I cannot be discovered by the priests. What will become of me? I’ll be put to the whip, hanged or stoned, or worse! I’ll starve the child from me!”
And her fright became hatred as her tears melted into greater spite. First it was hatred for Caelum, and then it became hatred for her son as well.
“How dare he do this to me! How dare THEY do this to me! I’m just a girl!”
She refused to eat another bite.
“Aren’t you hungry, sister?” the other girls began to ask as the days passed.
“Are you sick to your stomach?”
They were beginning to notice her frailness, as her cheeks became hollow, her eyes dark, and her breasts flattened.
“Something is terribly wrong with Gayla,” they whispered.
Her famine failed to starve the child. Once her blood ran dry and her smooth, girlish curves melted into jaggedness, he began sucking the very gristle from her bones.
“I’ll show you!” she seethed each morning, as she squatted in the latrine and gritted her teeth without success.
“Get out of me!” she raged.
In her dreams she would sneak into the woods and vomit the child’s stillborn flesh from her body. Leave it for the wolves and worms.
In the end, her skull began to shine straight through her face, and her bony knees and thighs became too weak to climb the temple’s spire. Yet her stomach had finally grown to the size that it belied the secret her famine had tried to conceal, or to kill.
The final night of Gayla’s stay at the temple, as she lay awake and waiting in the darkness of her chamber, the priests and the soldiers came.
“Take this whore away!” demanded a priest from the shadows.
She did not resist as the men roughly handled her weakened body. She did not mutter a word as they locked and bruised her wrists and ankles into chains and carried her away to prison.
With knees trembling and torn, Gayla descended the spire. Naked, she crept through the temple's shadows and narrow hallways, her tiptoes seeking safety. The echoing voices of chanting priests were missing for the first time, but from behind many doors, the muffled whimpers of her sacred sisters could be heard.
"Caelum, please do not leave us. Take back your holy seat between the milky pillars."
"Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky..."
"We beg of thee to keep giving light to the blinking stars and glimmering moons."
Undetected, Gayla escaped to her chamber, sponged off what she could into her washbasin, and poured the filthy water away. As tears streaked over her face, she kept her silence. Not knowing what else to do, she covered her body in sacred garments and crawled into her blankets to hide.
Though it was the season of tilling and planting the rows, a great freeze immediately overtook the land and lasted three days and nights. Rivers became ice, livestock froze in the fields, many men and women died in their beds, and the streets were void of life.
"I think the shit's frozen in my belly!" trembled the Shoemaker to his wife from beneath his blankets.
"Don't talk like that!" shook his wife. "Put another log on the fire before my tits turn blue and fall off!"
"What must we do?" shivered one High Priest to the other. "What must we say?"
"Caelum is angry," said the other as he warmed his hands over the glowing altar fire. "There must be greater tithing. When He is appeased, we will point out the new place He has taken in the sky. Any bright star."
"There will likely be a sparse harvest."
"Those suffering hunger will give more to the temple."
When the freeze ended and the land thawed, aged Claytus buckled up his boots and returned to the fields with his old ox, plow, and new seed.
He stroked the animal's wide head. "I'm glad I didn't lose you to the cold, my loyal friend. By many years you've outlived my wife!" he chuckled. "Let's give this planting another chance."
And so the two went to work. Worn and wrinkled they both were, gray with years, but still having broad shoulders and strong backs.
Claytus sang as he tilled the earth, his plow guided straight and churning it up into rows.
"Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky.
Once shining forth from your throne
Between the milky pillars.
You have become the Four Winds
And are among us, down below.
The air we breathe
Always with us.
Thank you for the sacrifice
Of Heaven and Sky.
Praise the firmament's dark places.
Amen."
As he tills the earth, plow guided straight and churning it up into rows, the broad back of an old ox rippling under the sun, moving slowly but never pausing in rhythm, the old farmer sings, and he still sings today, wherever you might find him, wherever the fields are being prepared for yet another season’s birth and growth.
“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky.
Once shining forth from your throne
Between the milky pillars.
You have become the Four Winds
And are among us, down below.
The air we breathe
Always with us.
Thank you for the sacrifice
Of Heaven and Sky.
Praise the firmament’s dark places.
Amen.”
Whenever the plow turns up the rows for the season’s birth and growth, the exposed richness, the blackness of the soil, manifests the dust of many things crumbled, joined together, and offered to the earth. It is the feathers and hollow bones of birds that have fallen from the heights. It is the excrement of beasts and what the fishes eat, scattered by the farmer’s hand, stirred into the fields.
So he sings as he tills the earth, his plow guided straight and churning it up into rows. The broad back of an old ox is rippling under the sun, moving slowly but never pausing in rhythm.
With night growing old, and glinting dawn yawning and verging to peek open her eyes, Gayla and her lover were still perched high above the city. Leaning against the altar to keep from falling over from weakness, she sobbed and shook. Her naked, blood-dirtied body was tied into a ball, arms wrapping shins, knees to breasts, matted hair hanging and concealing her countenance.
He just lay there, cooing, and satisfied:
“Goo goo. Gah gah.”
“What have I done!” she cried.
Mustering the strength, she untied. On trembling limbs she crawled to the edge of the open platform, stretched out her neck, and looked up past the stone canopy’s edge, into the firmament. The clouds were gone, and all the countless stars seemed brighter than before, but for one of them.
“Caelum, where are you?”
I’ve never been good at finding him up there without looking twice, but I know he’s the brightest star. He shines forth between the milky pillars, and there they are, the milky pillars, right up there. But there is only darkness where He once sat upon his throne.
“Caelum?”
Once more she batted her eyes and looked up. He still wasn’t there. The pillars still stood, but the throne between them was empty.
I must be dreaming. The ceremonial smoke I inhaled before coming up here has given me temporary madness. It must have.
Gayla sighed, took a few breaths, and rattled her head to come to her senses. No one but me is up here. It’s only me. I just need some rest. A cloud or dust must be covering Him up, up there. He is still sitting on his throne. He has to be. Caelum is still up there, watching over us. But he was still missing when she looked up again, and there were no clouds or dust.
She closed her eyes tightly and spun around. I’m alone up here. I am alone.
Slowly, she opened her eyes.
He was still there, jerkily kicking his feet and clenched fists.
“Goo goo. Gah gah.”
“It can’t be true!” she swore as she reached down between her thighs to confirm her purity, but she was opened up, torn, bleeding, seeping his lust.
Gayla was unable to cry any more. She just sat there, staring at him with the emptiness of regret trying to claw out from her bowels. Regret, hatred, loss of piety, no longer pure. Cursed? She didn’t care. It was too late.
“I’m still so young. Now I’ve lost everything.”
“Curse you Caelum. Curse you!”
He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.
“Goo goo. Gah gah.”
There was no way out. Whether or not she had given herself to Him, this was the answer to her prayers and sacrifice, or to the prayers and sacrifices of the priests, of men. Either way, the Lord of the Sky had now abandoned the night, and perhaps every night to come, whether it was folly or intentional abandonment. He was no longer on his throne, between the milky pillars. She was no longer a virgin.
“I’m only a girl! Curse you Caelum. Curse you!”
With unshaken resolve and strong knees, Gayla stood tall, and she was taller than most men. She walked over to him, cleared her throat, leaned over, and spat in his face.
“Bastard.”
He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.
She grabbed him by the ankles and began dragging him across the platform floor, tearing his naked back across the stone, leaving a trail of glistening blood.
“Gah! Gah!” he cried.
With little effort she tugged his body to the edge, so lithe but full of strength.
She let go and his feet dropped. She turned and looked down over the jagged cliffs and turbulent sea. The darkness combined with the distance concealed the vast waters, making them appear a bottomless void stretching past the horizon.
“I’m only a girl!”
Without hesitation she put a heel into him and sent his body spinning into the air, helplessly flailing and falling fast, into the abyss.
“Spread your wings!” she screamed.
“Gah! Gah!”
To no avail he jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.
And so Caelum’s body smashed into the cliffs and tumbled into the sea.