Not Ready to Go (282 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by SpikeGoddess (View user info) at 2005-08-02 08:14:41 EDT
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"They thought it a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path."
~13th century text on the Arthurian Cycle, as quoted by Joseph Campbell
I was half-asleep in Connor's lap when I heard the news anchor's voice chirp,
"Sad news from the Baltimore Zoo tonight---the three ravens, Edgar, Allen, and Poe died this afternoon from unknown causes."
Every muscle in my body seized up. Three ravens. Three ravens had started this whole thing.
She continued,
"The playful birds had been the city's mascots since they first came to the Zoo shortly after Baltimore welcomed The Ravens football team. A press release from the Zoo this afternoon stated that there is no reason to suspect West Nile Virus, and that a full epidemiological investigation is underway. At this time, no other birds appear ill."
Three dead ravens... I could only begin to imagine what it meant. I don't remember Connor turning the TV off. The next thing that I remember was the jarring ring of the telephone and feeling him gently untangle his limbs from mine so that he could answer it.
"She's grown very silent," I heard him whisper. "Yes, I will. Don't worry." There was a long pause. He sounded agitated when he spoke again.
"Yes," he snapped. "I know what I have to do."
He handed me a massive sweatshirt and ushered me into the car with a look on his face that ached for answers. I didn't have any to give him; my own mind was whirring with questions and memories and fears about the signs---three dead ravens... He put his hand gently on my thigh but said nothing. We slipped into the October night and as the bare trees reached out like arms toward the car window I felt myself shifting into a light trance—that happened a lot now when I was in the passenger seat, something about the rhythmic hum of the pavement underneath and the blurring scenery outside the window.
Three ravens had started this whole thing. That was a memory that I needed no second-sight to retrieve...
This all began the day I'd set up camp in Barnes and Noble with towers of books shielding me on all sides, "The Tao of Physics", "The Golden Bough", "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", "The Mabinogion," "Advanced Tantric Sex"...(ok, it was "Tantra for Dummies") I'd read them all before. At the next café table a little girl was casting spells on her frappuccino. It refused to move, or change color, or grow a prince, but her magic was not to be discouraged. She danced around the coffee concoction with elaborate arm movements and secretive whispers and when she felt the magic was complete she sipped the potion and looked up coyly at her mother who was scrawling something into a tight black book. I briefly considered asking the mother to grant me custody; they were that clearly mismatched. A few minutes later the mother tucked a copy of a big red book with Dr. Phil's face on the cover under her arm and took the little witch by the hand, dragging her toward the checkout line. I sighed and went outside for a cigarette.
I sat on the curb with my legs splayed out to the sides, my white thighs reveling in what would probably be their last day in shorts for the year. The sky was black with birds and I craned my neck to watch them. It was one of those flocks that seemed endless, blanketing the whole sky. Everything disappeared except for the beating of hundreds of wings until I heard a small voice next to me say,
"Look. Those three ravens are talking to you."
It was the little frappuccino witch. She was standing right beside me pointing at three black birds that had perched themselves on the hood of a car directly in front of me. I've never seen such unnerving stares as the ones belonging to those birds.
I blinked. "What are they saying," I asked, unsure if I was humoring her or asking her to humor me.
The girl leaned closer to me and whispered, "Morrigan, it's time—"
And with that I heard the sharp voice of her mother call, "Get over here! You know not to talk to strangers."
The little girl cried, "I'm not ready to go, Mommy!" and she no longer sounded so mysterious. The ravens were unmoved by all of the loud human dramatics. Her mother was unmoved by her whining.
I sat still and stared at the ravens. Morrigan...did she call me Morrigan?
*
The night got darker as we passed from the suburbs out into what's left of the farmland out in the western part of the county. Connor's hand vanished from my leg. Something wasn't right. I reached over to rub the back of his neck and felt the subtle resistance I'd noticed before in so many other people, an auric blockade that feels almost like the push of two magnet ends with the same charge. I pulled my hand back.
"I'm sorry," I said.
A fox ran out into the road and Connor hit the brakes.
"Why are you sorry, Tessa?"
"Because I've done something to make you want to leave me." I tried so hard not to sound emotional. "Either that, or you know something about what's happening that I don't know..."
He turned the car down an unlit gravel road. Our bodies bumped and jostled as he navigated over the rocks. Something was very wrong. Connor was not a creature of moods and silences like me, not a secret-keeper. His warmth had drained leaving behind a mechanical man performing his function of driving me safely to Cathvad's farm.
All he said for the next two miles was, "No...you haven't done anything."
We turned down Cathvad's narrow driveway and the branches of his weeping willows scraped at the top of the car.
"I'm to let you go here...not supposed to wait..."
"Connor, don't do it like this! Please! You've been my ballast since I started this whole thing, the only person who understood what it's been like for me to have to open myself to see the unseen, the only person who has loved me even as I've transformed into this new person..."
He was silent. The willows scraped the roof.
"Connor, the ravens weren't for you. Don't be afraid."
He stopped the car.
"Cathvad is about to tell you a lot of things." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Please know that I really do love you. It wasn't part of the plan, but I swear by every god and goddess that I know to swear by that I love you and I wish that I could follow you."
"I never doubted—"
"You will."
"You can follow me anywh—"
"No, I cannot."
He pulled the car up to the doorway.
"Goodbye, Morrigan," he whispered. He pressed his lips into my cheek and the tenderness of the kiss made it hard to keep breathing. I pulled back.
"What did you call me?"
His eyes were shining with the premonition of tears.
"Morrigan. It is your name. I wanted to be the first..."
He kissed me on the mouth, holding the back of my head gently with one hand. A loud whack on the car made us both jump. Cathvad was looming beside the car, looking even more like an ancient wizard than usual in a hooded cloak, his icy eyes glowing. He'd smacked the car with his prized staff to get our attention and was shooting Connor a look that would make anyone cower. Conner turned away but I heard him whisper,
"I know you can do it. I'll always love you."
I could ignore Cathvad for an hour just to stay and ask Connor all the questions I needed answered. His stares had never frightened me.
"I'm not ready to go, Connor. I want—"
"You're ready, Morrigan. You have to be."
Connor unlocked the car doors and Cathvad grabbed the handle and flung the door open. He thanked Connor and offered me his hand. I walked with my teacher into the house and refused to look back as the man I love drove away.
Morrigan. Two pairs of three ravens... Somewhere Connor couldn't follow...
*
Cathvad's house was more like a den and an alchemist's laboratory than a home, filled with assorted jars and books and the smell of burnt sage. His owls hooted all night—he was an avid falconer. Though he made a concession to change the spelling for ease of pronunciation by 'ignorant modern people,' he'd chosen his name after the prophetic druid from Irish myth—the one who predicted a life of sorrow for Deirdre by hearing her scream when she was still inside her mother's womb.
"I can't wait any longer, Cathvad. What is happening? What is it about the ravens?"
He offered me a seat across the oak table. Everything in his home was made of oak.
"You know what three ravens mean. You know what physical death means. It is time that you stop relying on me so much, my dear."
He'd never used words so tender. I recited like a kid in Catechism class.
"Alright...ravens are the bird of The Morrigan, and she signifies strength in battle, ruthless feminine warrior energy, the threshold of life and death, justice and revenge... She's a triple goddess, existing in three phases like the moon...The dead ravens are a threat?"
He handed me a cup of tea. He always brewed some in advance of my visits.
"Come now, think metaphysically. What does death mean?"
I finally understood. My voice came out in barely a whisper.
"Irrevocable change. Movement from the physical to the spiritual. A shedding of identity..."
My teacher smiled.
"Tonight is your long-awaited initiation. You've been nearly ready for so long now but I had to await a sign. This is it, my dear. From now on we will all know you by your true name, your true nature."
I was holding my breath. All I wanted was Connor but all I had left of him was an echo of his voice saying, "I know you are ready...I really do love you...I know you are ready..."
Cathvad stood and motioned that I should do the same. I followed him out into the garden where he picked up his broadsword and indicated that I should kneel. The ground was cold on my knees. The metal felt surprisingly warm as he rested the sword on my left shoulder.
"From now on, be known to yourself, to the world, and to the world of Spirit as yourself. Be known as Morrigan. Be known as Morrigan."
My head felt suddenly heavy and the next thing I knew I was coming back to consciousness on the couch in Cathbad's den. He looked slightly amused.
"Have a nice nap, Queen of Battle?"
I rolled my eyes. "Very funny."
"Listen, the transformation is happening, Morrigan," his eyes were so intense that they seemed to have absorbed me. "That's why you see the old religion bucking and kicking and desperately trying to hang on. It's why they are writing best-selling series about Revelations, why they are so obsessed with Apocalypse. They know that Christianity's period of control is almost over, and they're not ready to give it up yet."
I wondered why he was going over this again. Everything from the astrology I'd studied to the comparative mythology to a simple understanding of historical cycles had made this obvious from very early in my training.
"Of course, their prophesies are correct in so many ways," he continued. "The inaccuracies are not in the things that the Biblical prophets saw but in their interpretation of the visions based on their own values and in subsequent errors of translation and editing as the books were canonized, but you've already learned these things...I suppose the time has come for me to stop dawdling and tell you the meat of the matter." He rested his hand on mine and made a visible effort to soften his face.
"You know the mythology of your name, Morrigan. You know the warrior goddess crying out over the battlefields and you know the goddess of justice and death. You know that she comes as maiden, mother, and crone. You know her three ravens. But if we've done our job correctly, you don't yet know what the word 'Morrigan' actually means."
I nodded my head in ascent.
"—rigan—" is a Celtic root meaning "queen". You see it in other goddess names like Rigantona, and so forth. The prefix "mo" means "great".
I felt a damp coldness crawl up my back.
"You are not merely an incarnation of the goddess. We are all incarnations of all gods because the gods were created to express that which is ineffable and eternal and holy and larger than any single human being—yet they came from us and they are us. No, there is another reason you have been given this name."
He encircled both my hands with his and spoke with all the gentleness his gravel-scraped voice could muster.
"You are the Great Queen, Morrigan. The Great Queen of the next age, the Warrior Queen who will issue in the golden dawn of humankind's next enlightenment, and who will teach us how to honor the darkness of the womb, the darkness of death, the darkness of the unknowable secrets."
The moment seemed too cinematic.
"I don't want this, Cathbad. Lord...I'm not ready for that kind of responsibility. I want to go home to Connor, ok? We can talk about this soon, maybe work something out. And what does all of this Christian prophecy make of me, if I am to do what you say I am to do?"
He towered over me, evoking an almost Rasputin-like mystique.
"It makes you the Whore of Babylon."
I couldn't help but laugh a little.
"Listen, this is all very flattering in a uniquely pagan way...but I'm going back home to Connor."
"Connor is not there. His part is over now and you will not see him again."
Yes I will, I thought. Yes, I will.
"Connor was chosen as your guardian until this time. It was essential that you fell in love with him so that you would let him protect you," my teacher let a little softness come into his voice. "It's time to let go of those illusions, Morrigan."
An ocean of rage welled up inside of me and I let go of a tremendous scream that sent the owls into a fit. They continued to make wailing sounds as I crowed at my teacher,
"I am NOT READY and I DO NOT ACCEPT! If I am Morrigan as you say that I am then you must know that I will pursue justice, that I WILL NOT ACCEPT being manipulated by any false installment of love. I WILL NOT BE USED FOR YOUR PURPOSES, CATHBAD!"
I am nobody's whore, I thought.
I walked out into the night. I could be at home in the darkness, in the unknown. The willows draped over the pathway making it resemble a cave, or a birth canal. In my mind I could hear my teacher whisper,
"It's alright...you're just not quite ready to go."
I kept walking.
"But very soon, you will be. You will be..."
(to be continued)
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