Mere Woman

The placid waters, glistening with grit, lay sullied only by mud, not yet reddened by blood one day to spill. She trod through them, disturbing the surface with well-balanced footfalls. A mother long-gone had once called her Godgyfu—her gift, her gift of God—a god that himself had treated them with fury alone, more harshly than even these wilds’ most unforgiving days. Today, at least, was not such a day. 

The slumbering fens heaved around her, tranquil with the humid breath of life. A shallow inhale, a swallowing of the damp air in the same way it had, by now, swallowed her, echoed in her throat as she sank downward, her mighty arms stretching out like the branches of a towering tree as she leaned back to float atop the mere. The sea thrashed someplace beyond.

Water pooled about her form, welcoming her valiant, extended limbs and sending strands of hair bobbing outward atop itself, like the spidery stalks of the nearby marsh grass. A solitary mayfly jutted through the air before landing on a yellow flower, gently nestling there among its bristles to await its more rancorous swarm.

She watched it settle as she floated, its wings shimmering in the rays of the sky’s candle. The insect took flight once more as she approached, however, as though it were shunning her for some guilt she bore, some ancient grudge she did not know. Surging upward from the depths, in that moment, leaping into the air, a fish snapped, snagging the fly with its mouth and dragging it down to be devoured in its grave.

The lady let out a breath, watching this killing unfurl, but surging silently upward too, accepting the way of things, she pushed herself through the waters back toward the shoreline. The sturdy sword and scabbard waited, belted hilt radiant in the sun. The weapon was massive and well-wrought, struck by giant hands, and she hefted it easily into her own to fasten it once more to her waist, where her cloak still dripped and pooled puddles in the earth. Beside it was the silvery dagger, and lifting it too, the lady secured it across her shoulder. The warrior, then, stood now, made whole.  

Foliage rustled nearby, a low, crunching noise, and shoulders stiffening, she turned to stare, to watch as a pure white stag emerged from the brush, head high, its powerful antlers jutting outward to pierce the ether. It watched her too before stepping to the water’s edge to drink. At last, it turned to forsake her, unwilling to remain in this place.

Offering it one final look, regarding the untouched glimmer of its fur, the lady pressed her own feet onward from the mere, stepping into the weeds, which bowed before her as she trod.

The woods appeared—green, splintering tree by green, splintering tree. They burst from the ground along rocky faults and tufts of swaying grass, their lurching, creaking branches obscuring the sky as she stepped deeper into their bowels. Still, even as cool shadows spread across her, their dark tendrils pulsing like serpents wrapping around her flesh, she pressed nobly onward, the sword and dagger rocking along with her intrepid gait. Fog crept in with each step, rolling among the roots in claggy, white waves. 

As she emerged into the clearing, she heard the intruder before she beheld him. His mail and his belt clanked around him, echoing heartily against his limbs, bobbing with each surge of his marble torso as he appeared from the rising haze. The very earth seemed to protest against him, however, groaning as his feet pressed into it. The lady stepped to conceal herself behind the powerful trunk of an ancient tree, hand darting downward to find her smaller blade, gripping it with strong fingers as she watched, breath swelling in her throat.

Blind to the one observing him, though, the man walked a circle, looking, looking, his flashing, burning eyes wide and alive beneath his shimmering brow, lit with the fire of the hunt but none of the steadiness of his vocation. The youth peered into the trees, his carven bow resounding in brilliant splendor against his magnificent back. It could shatter the stillness of these wilds as he conquered them in his sight. 

His frame glistened with sweat as he sought his unseen prize, peering, peering, and a mane of yellow hairs fell down around his head, pooling, as if from the mouth of a golden river out around his sun-touched shoulders and bearded jaw.

She watched him, her grip tightening on the dagger, when a sound even mightier than he, with all his bluster, rattled the very woods. The trees themselves seemed to cower, then, bending and swaying as if to flee this savage roar that harrowed the whirling haze, birds and bugs taking flight to vanish in its wake. With shaking, splintering steps, a gargantuan beast of bear clawed its way from the darkness, a great mass of wiry, hirsute black, its eyes ravenous scarlet and its maw gaping, rancid with the heat and putrid odor of fresh death.

The huntsman spun, wavering, stumbling, pulling his bow as if to fell this foe, foolishly to claim this glorious prize, but the animal moved forward with a blistering paw, striking and tearing the archer’s leathered bracers and dragging fleshy strips down the arm that rose to guard his face. The man cried out, plummeting backward to the ground, landing among the weeds, bow bending and splintering beneath him as he himself became the quarry. The beast’s breath swept over him in starving, desperate bursts, roars of victory, teeth blackened as they drew back to feast.

With a mighty battle cry too, she rushed from the tree line to swing the sword down and deal a determined, killing blow to the animal’s neck, tearing through fur and flesh and bone with ease, staining the earth and the man with the bear’s lifeblood as she, the hero, soared like a mighty light in this verdant dark. The beast toppled, and she exalted in this deed.

The man stared with still frantic, flashing eyes, clutching his wounded arm, the tatters of the gauntlet, and she towered above him, looking down, torso heaving. He shielded his face, waiting for this new end, for the warrior's smiting blow, but hiding her mighty, slaying sword in its sheath, the lady extended a firm hand to tug him upward to his feet. 

He shook, trembling, frightened, small, looking up into her face, framed still by soaked hair, and then turning to the beast dead at their heels, he fell once more, bowing in humility or deference or thanks. She bid him to rise.

A nod of the head signaled for him to follow, and catching bravery’s return in the quiver of his spirit, he did. She ducked down to heft the bear’s remains over her broad shoulders, using her strength to claim it for her own, and together, the pair of them passed from this sullied spot, back to the wilds, through the fog, to the hidden stone hall where she dwelled.

A fire roared in that place. She mounted the sword among the other treasures already hung there, wrought in gold for those who might regard them. The huntsman did, enthralled, in awe, or envy, by so many conquests hard-won. His uninjured, covetous hand played along mighty armor and the giant, feathered wings of some great sky-beast, dead and skinned. The bear too would soon be mounted there.

Rebuffing him, though, pulling him from her trove, she slid the ruined gauntlet from his arm. Calloused fingers playing along his warm flesh, she wrapped it around and around and around, tight with herbs and flowers and fabric. A bronze basin of water of the mere was heated to wash. They spoke of many things in the fire’s flickering glow. 

They spoke of ancient heroes and battles well-waged long ago, wars shrouded in the grimy fog of bloodshed and forgotten to the memories of the honorable slain. She spoke of the mayflies and of the white stag. She spoke of the sky-beast and a dragon that dwelled in hidden caves beneath the earth. He spoke of the stars that mapped the sky and created paths to follow through the dark. 

The golden flame danced in his golden hair as they sat. It colored the amber lines that trailed around the edges of his eyes as she watched him, her own gaze flashing, finding a glimmer of the passion that dwelled still in his own. They spoke of the bear, and he sang, like a poet-mason, who could link together rough-hewn notions into a crafty stone wall of words, of her heroism, of her bravery, of her might, and of her smiting sword, the sword of giants. She smiled. She accepted the epic he thrust upon her, beast-slayer. He sang, and together, they sat. They spoke.

Night fell upon the world like a fraying black cloth, settling first at its split, gray edges before making way for the black of its full, billowing center. They ate, and they spoke. He whispered of others, of men who would search for him, of brothers who would seek him out and find only a stained patch of ground littered with the splintered wood of his lost bow. He allowed his heart to ache in his breast.

She rebuffed him once more, assured him that morning too would come, as it always did, and with it, there would once again be light. The huntsman believed her because her words rang true. She had been his saving beacon this day. The fire surged in its hearth, and so too did they find themselves surging, bodies tangling together like the twisting roots of the wild, uniting, as the darkness, as promised, did pass.

They awoke together, not with the dewy, inviting sigh of morning but with the harsh clanking of metal, a throng of men hollering, barging through the doors of this stone hall, armor crashing around them as they trampled along its floors, weapons and helmets gleaming. The invaders allowed their gazes to sparkle at the sight of the treasures displayed there.

One wretch, large, with a gnawing, monstrous mouth, reached for the gleaming, mounted sword, allured by its power, as if to plunder it, and she, leaping from her bed among the bowers of the hall in a sudden frenzy, seized to grapple him, tossing him to the floor in one mighty throw, where he fell along the bear’s prized carcass. The youth stirred too, then, rising upward and recognizing his brethren. He cried out in protest as the lady drew her dagger, pointing it at those who dared encroach on this sacred place. 

Their fallen comrade climbed to his feet, deciding, in terror, that he discerned in her formidable form, some guilt, some stain, the whisper of an atrocity long-forgotten. She was not like them. She dwelled here among those cast out, those who could not dwell among them, he declared, as if in saying so, he could mollify or conceal the greed blazing in his eyes, as if he could disguise hunger as righteous anger. 

Their throng thrashed, swords swinging, swarming into alignment, finding rank against her among one another, mail clanking, weapons clashing. They spoke of glory. 

She looked to the huntsman, and he stood on unsteady feet, eyes aglow, darting to his kin, his kin who had come to rescue him now from her who dwelled here. He stepped backward with frantic steps, joining the front of their formation, unarmed and foolish, abandoning, in his ignoble cowardice, the one who had not abandoned him. He dared not meet her eye, allowing it to fall instead on the slain bear. 

Alone, betrayed, forsaken, then, she planted her own feet, stance valiant as she tugged the sword from its mounting once more. Flame itself almost burst forth as it gleamed over her head, filling the place with a light as though from the candle of heaven, and she brought it down, tearing through where the hunter’s wounded arm met his shoulder, slicing it to sever as she pushed her way out the hall and back into the wilds.

The men, ravenous now, compelled by blood spilled, pursued her, monstrous, clamoring with the fierce cries of battle. Finding footing in the open wood, she felled another, throwing him to the earth and digging the dagger into his chest.

The others gave more chase as she ran, then, bolstered, rallied, filled with rage, through the trees and their writhing, rootlike shadows, past the clearing, stained now with the blood of the bear-beast, through the fens, the marsh grass scraping at her legs as they carried her, sword and dagger gleaming in her fists. She came soon to the edge of the water, safe for only this moment, body heaving, breathless from the flight.

The water of the mere seemed to churn under her gaze, rippling with the fury in her chest, alive now with the scales of strange, unknowable sea-beasts, summoned to the surface, awakened from ancient slumber by the noise and the slaughter. These waters were the abode of monsters.

The white stag appeared, then, emerging from the brush, but it did not drink. No stag would drink there again. It stood, and it watched. An arrow took flight from an unseen bow, piercing the animal's throat and sending its slumped form collapsing into the boggy pond, staining it red. Cornered, then, as her pursuers clamored across the fen, the air pungent with the sulfur of peat and the iron of blood, she too found herself falling backward, into the water, struck by a second arrow.

It did not kill her—for she was mightier. It did not kill her, but still, sliced by its jagged point, she fell. She sank, abandoning her senses, clinging, with strong hands, to the sword and to the dagger, deeper and deeper into this whirling abyss as the water itself pulsed above her with the monstrous forms of the writhing sea-serpents, an army to close ranks around her.

Strange visions came to her, then, as she plummeted, unseeing, through these blackened depths, sinking to their murky bottom, sainted, euphoric visions, perhaps conjured by the very god who had abandoned her—her, this cursed descendant of Cain. She saw, and in seeing, she knew. Her curse, then, was to know, to wait.

The unquenchable thirst of rage bubbled within her. One day, she would rise from this place to avenge her fallen kin, as if to undo the sin of her forefather, who had slain his own. That same kin would be her vengeance, scourge of Heorot, rooted only just now within her, half-wrought by the damned huntsman, by the very beasts who had condemned her here. 

She would abandon her very self, her name, no longer Godgyfu, but only that which all those who dwelled beyond demanded she be—daughter of the brother-killer, source of evil, enemy of the Thane, mother of fury.

They would mold her into their horror, as if in doing so, they could make themselves pure. They would call her warrior, demoness, foe, monster, this accursed mere woman of the mere. She sank, sank, sank, reaching the bottom in a cloud of frothing earth, when came a cavern, a hiding place, a new hall to be filled with fire, where the water could not touch her, where she would one day hoist yet another mighty bear to slay. 

She saw her unborn son, not yet formed, but only sparked, before she rested—this final grave image in the eye of her mind, a taunting, cataclysmic vision of her fate.

Hwæt! Grendel, poor Grendel, fury, wind of the storm. Your mother shall not forsake you.