Veļi

Many have seen only one side of the celebration.

The fun, the happiness, that dizzying crescendo.

That year it began on a Saturday, two days before the dates that were marked in red on the calendar.

Even on it, above the dates, was a painting of oak tree leaf wreaths and large see-through beer cups with unrealistic foam gathered at the lip.

The tradition stemmed from predecessors, and everyone from this modest, small country had been brought into it while still in their cradle.

The preparation had been grand.

Finding a clearing not too steep, not too bumpy. Gathering wood for the bonfire, thin and tall willows with their gaunt arms reaching for the sky. Cutting them down with a slightly rusty axe, tying them around the middle, and wheeling them back home in a wheelbarrow, trying to keep the balance.

Setting up a tent to shield the revellers from rain.

On the midsummer night, it rained so often that a saying was born for whenever it poured down heavily.

Just before the family and neighbors, and the man who bore the name of the day, gathered to celebrate midsummer, the grandmother set the table.

Cumin cheese in bowls she’d saved from her younger years, her own grandmother’s cupboard, and meat for the fire.

And just as the sky darkened, they set fire to the wooden spire, accompanied by song from the folk, those hearts familiar, and some only greeted on occasion. But on one of the shortest nights of the year, no one was a stranger.

The most celebrated man that night wore a thick wreath of oak leaves around his neck, woven by his mother, leaving the pretty flowers to the women. The daisies, the cornflowers, and the delicate weeds of the wild fields, all crowned with downy heads. His voice was clear over the crackling of the fire. It proudly carried over the heads of wild hair, nature thread into each strand, like the smoke thrown into the sky.

Coloring it darker while the setting sun painted it the color of fires that used to eat up these same fields.

Many years and many nights ago, people used to set fire to the yellowed grass on their fields, killing everything and watching it sprout better the next year.

Killing everything that had found shelter, warm and protected.

But for many years, it’d been a rare occurrence, and the greens grew by the edges of forests the way Mother Nature had intended, wild and free. Meadows of color and abundance welcomed you quietly on the sides of roads and by rivers.

With ants in your pant leg and spiders in your hair.

The light, sun-kissed boy appreciated it. He still saw color in bright splotches, rainbows in the sky in winter, and orange fish in puddles.

He kicked out his legs with a laugh when arms picked him up and raised him to the Heaven’s belt that shone particularly brightly despite the still setting sun.

His father spoke of how glad he was and called out to have a drink to celebrate his boy.

But his father was still the one to be celebrated, so the boy’s bare feet found the ground once more.

His father needed his hands empty for the beer.

The dew had already bloomed on the stems of wildflowers.

With each step the boy took away from the festivities, it grew colder but soothing.

The grime from his feet washed away as the song became a silent thrum of the world that he did not feel a part of.

Mist spun around his ankles as the sun slipped behind the towering fir trees.

They looked like giants to him.

He sat on his knees in front of the strawberry bushes hidden in the weeds. As many times as he wet his fingers with the dew and washed his face, the little brown dots from his nose never scampered away.

His grandmother used to tell him it was his punishment for crushing too many wren eggs out of curiosity and maybe some frustration he couldn’t make sense of. So the brown specks had grown on his nose and cheeks instead, painting him to become a wren egg himself.

So he no longer touched them; he even avoided the shells of hatched eggs that lay on the ground beneath the thuja.

This time, he rubbed his nose, cheeks, and eyes more carefully. With fussy fists.

He didn’t feel the freckles jump from his skin like fleas, but his disappointment was forgotten the moment he opened his eyes and color blossomed far and wide.

The strawberries stood out with their dark red cheeks, no longer hiding flustered beneath the leaves.

He picked one, cleaning off the dried leaf from it and wiping it against his sweater while he watched a frog leap away towards the river. It bubbled and churned as if the water there was boiling, and the air above it shimmered with gold specks.

At first, the boy with the golden hair thought they were fireflies. He’d never seen them before but heard of them, so curiosity got the best of him and he stood, pocketing the berry cap.

Fearing where a child’s curiosity might take them when parents were distracted by the festivities, many had warned their children of malicious forest spirits awakening to steal them away when the veil of the night came loose.

But the bravest liked to challenge beliefs.

Not that the freckled boy was one of the brave ones, with shaky fingers and loud breaths. But he was as curious as a lost duckling, seeking for something that might never find daylight.

A motherless child.

Where the water in the river was the deepest, where the bottom was unreachable, and a crooked bridge was built above their heads, stood nine women.

They wore white dresses that did not move with the current, and they were just silhouettes with many faces and long, unbraided hair.

Seeing the boy on the bank of the river, they stopped washing clothes in the steady flow and piled them back into a basket that, despite its weight, floated unnaturally.

As if carried by the still air, the women walked onto the bank, creating muddy footprints in their wake. Their bright, many-eyed stares were on the boy until one reached for him.

Kindly, but with cold hands, fingers on his shoulders, welcoming.

Familiar. Motherly, loving.

Their mouths were silent, but there was a song, and he knew it was not coming from the festivities uphill.

It was quiet with something so blatantly regrettable. With grief over the last rare flowers being torn out with their roots, the rivers forced to change shape, trees cut down, and meadows burnt to black soil.

In the boy’s chest, years of guilt that weren’t his sat on his heart, boulders in soft moss. Crushing.

They led him in a dance in a circle in the red clover field, hands swinging along with the song. Embraced him like their flesh and blood, a piece of their lost hearts, and taught him to braid their hair.

Until he forgot. Forgot the dew beneath his feet, his wren egg freckles, and home.

What color was the wooden fence around the house, beginning to rot and fall apart. The rusted nails no longer had the strength to hold them together.

How it was to bring the wool spinning wheel into grandmother’s room from the attic. How the strawberries tasted and how his father’s arms felt around him. That warm hold, rare but loving.

The lonely, grieving souls brought him to the edge of the river and held him so he wouldn’t fall. There was nothing malicious about them.

Longing and sadness, but no hostility.

The water was warm despite how the river used to be freezing that early in the summer. It did not awaken the boy.

Childless women. Loveless women.

Personifications of grief and rage.

Seeking love and peace, however they could, eternally.

Cool, tender hands led him into the tranquil waters.

A hand on top of his head, another at his back, one more covering his eyes until he lost footing.

The mud at the bottom of the river pulled at his ankles and calves. If he screamed, he’d open his mouth, and the water would soundlessly burn through his lungs.

Reduce him to spirit.

The top of his head, that light fluff that reminded his family of a duckling’s feathers in color, and how it refused water whenever he washed, had saved his life that night.

That and the stalling darkness, a half-light until the next morning’s rising sun.

A desperate embrace pulled him back up to the shore, frightened yet strong.

His heavy body, with the weight of the river.

Rigid, pale fingers instantly grasped the white braid.

His grandmother held him close to her chest and did not speak.

The woman’s timeworn face held obscure fright as she looked at the river. As if her sight had taken her underneath it, to the very bottom of it.

She waited patiently, but nothing came forth.

The boy was good on his feet after a while, unlike her.

Her knees barely kept her up, but she persisted, leading him back to the fire that still burned bright.

Innocent, clueless, and endlessly hurt nature.

The call of it towards seedlings like her golden grandson- it was dangerous and she’d been a fool to let him out of her sight on such a night.

On a night when this world’s defenses were at their weakest towards the wandering.

So she watched the river, with flowers and the cap of a strawberry in her hair, until the sun rose behind her.

“You look as if you’ve seen something very frightening,” a girl beside him said. “But also something wonderful and unforgettable.”

She didn’t say anything about the distant look in his eyes or damp clothes.

“Have you jumped over the bonfire yet? It’s finally small enough to do it.”

He didn’t respond, so she carefully took his hand.

“People say that if you do, it protects you from evil spirits.”

He didn’t think the spirits had been evil. But he jumped over bonfires and decorated his new fence with flowers each year.

And made meals that he carried to a bench he’d made by the river.

So anyone or anything passing by the festivities could rest and be at peace.