City Limits

 That’s the thing about this city… it was built on another that was built on another that was… ad infinitum. Well, not really… only since Neanderthal times. The river and the fertile soil make it an ideal place for a settlement.

That is why it abounds with entities, both seen and unseen.

Some call us angels; some call us sprites, spirits, ghosts, saints, nymphs, deities or other numinous beings; some call in the exorcists, and some are adamant that we do not exist… according to which religion, superstation or folklore, or none, they subscribe.

Y’all know the sing Tie a Yellow Robbin Round the Old Oak Tree?

Well, at the place (plane?) where I live (?)m there is something like that. In human terms, it’s called a Clootie Well, and it’s constructed over a sacred spring. The waters are so fresh and pure that there’s quite the cult around them. Indeed, some people can sense me, because the waters set off their sensitivity.

I am directly descended from Ahina, the Makzai river goddess, on my mother’s side, and Zuhana, the Brwpho lake deity, on my father’s side. The Neopagan camp organise regular pilgrimages to here, moving as they do along ley lines, as they pay homage to Earth Mysteries; it has always been a universal human instinct to revere water.

The extant belief behind wells such as mine is that, when people hang a piece of cloth on the tree beside it, it exemplifies their illness, circumstances, and worries. As the cloth fades and wears away, so do their troubles. That is why many choose to bring strips of cotton cloth or lace, rather than synthetic fabrics – they disintegrate sooner. Some people made tiny bags containing locks of hair – and some threw coins into the well itself. These days, people hang symbols of faith as well; perhaps they confuse them with lucky charms. Someone should write a book about such bizarre eclecticism.

It is widely believed that if you wash a diseased part of the body with a cloth, and then hang it on the tree, the illness will be borne away by the wind as the cloth flutters in the breeze.

You all remember the upwelling of water from the rock, when Moses struck it. Since time immemorial, water has been viewed as healing and miraculous, the giver of life. That is why there are so many pilgrimages that, as I have said, include wells and other water sources in the itinerary. However, some visit my well simply for sight-seeing.

Water, besides being therapeutic, is also entertaining and fashionable - note how “taking the waters” at spas was once in vogue. Religious, antiquarians, and folklorists all have a lot to say about water. They all have their own theories about why a supply of clean water is a pivotal issue for civilisations to flourish; it hydrates the body; it cleans people, things, and places; it helps in the preparation of food; it provides a back-up supply when there is a drought.

They tend to disregard us, however; because if they do notice us, they view us merely as indescribable flotsam and jetsam adjuncts to the main theme of life. If only they knew.

When the first city on this site was being built, then Shaman hung a pelt on the oak tree that he had trained to bend over the slight kink in the river. In later years, this became a meander, and then, an oxbow lake. Then someone decided to dig a well – and when I was floating in the ether, I saw that no entity had yet taken up residence… so I made it my home.  

The oak wish-tree is now big and strong, its roots deep in the banks of the lake. As a corollary, there are more branches than ever for people to hang their rags on.  

But I don’t follow people’s expectations, or lore. I don’t wait for Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, or Patron Day, when people expect miracles to happen. I just look at the cloths, and decide which one signals the most need. And then, I do my thing.

Call it magic, call it bending the laws of place and time and physics and space… call it a miracle, or what you will. Oh, and did I mention that I have a what you humans call a sense of humour, and that I only help females?

Let me give you four tiny examples of what I do. Alycia was a five-year old with an incurable tumour that was pressing against her skull, making her epileptic and causing her to go blind.  She was an only child, conceived after three miscarriages. It was not only legitimate, but also logical, to cure her.

I put feelers into her brain and squished the tumour into almost nothingness. She sneezed, and it came out as a hard pellet from her nose.

Then there was Rhona, whose husband had fallen for a (much younger) scam artiste. He went abroad to ‘follow his dream’ – which inevitably turned out to be a nightmare… But that is another story for another day. Meanwhile, Rhona ‘somehow’ got the urge to fish out from the wardrobe what used to be her favourite jacket, to pass it on to a friend.  Worry had made her lose weight, but it would fit her pregnant friend perfectly.

When she was turning out the pockets, to get rid of fluff and bits of crumpled-up used tissues… she found two thick wads of €20 notes; higher denominations would not have been as easy to use.

Then there was Mary. Her encroaching dementia meant that her husband began thinking of committing her to a Home; not because he wouldn’t take care of her, but because he couldn’t; he had bad arthritis and would not be able to cope if anything untoward happened. It just so happened that Mary decided to ‘disobey’ her husband. He had ordered her to stay put while he hung the clothes out on the line… but she wanted coffee, and decided to make it herself.

She slipped on the rug, fell, bumped her head, and fainted. By the time her husband came downstairs, she had come to, made the coffee, and was sitting placidly down at the table, doing the Sunday Times Crossword – which she had not done for months. Her dementia had not only been halted in its tracks; it had been reversed, and Mary was once more her bright, intelligent, lively self.

Ruthie found a better-paying job, and decided that she could now afford a car. Her parents had taught her to save up for what she wanted, and not to get anything on the never-never. One day, she called her father to pick her up from the crossroads, because, she said, she had been in an accident.

When he got there, she ran up to him, laughing. “Is this a joke?” he asked. “Well, if you want to see it that way…” she said, as she pointed to her car, which had been totalled.

Another motorist who had seen the accident and stayed with Ruthie until her father came, swore that the other car was going so fast he only saw a blur, go figure that he couldn’t read the number-plate. “That car!” he said, pointing at Ruthie’s Mazda, “It flipped over three times, I swear.” Perhaps instinctively, he made a vague gesture toward The Tree and my well. “Somebody loves you, young lady!” I had wrapped myself like bubble-pack around her.

There have been many, many incidents like the aforementioned, that have been attributed to ‘flukes’ in this particular city, over the years. Some of them have been my doing; other entities have done the rest.

In the first conurbations, the Witch Doctors took credit for what we did. Then came the priests of the Heathen gods, and following on their footsteps were the Healers and the Preachers, and the ministers of sundry sects and religions.

I laugh, and let them be. Hubris and revenge are not my style.