Chapter Text
Sleep took me quickly, my night wanderings having exhausted me but my dreams mixed with reality in a heady brew. I felt I was wandering a forest not unlike my own, a labyrinth stretching out as far as the eye could see and I was being pulled further and further from home. At the center of the labyrinth lay not a minotaur but a small cat. The cat clung to my dreamer's breast and I felt it sink its claws deep into my flesh and become a great, vast beast and I was trapped beneath. Needles sank into my breast and I cried out but no sound would come.
I awoke instead with a shriek. As I adjusted from the land of dreams to the reality of day I realized I was strangely alone. The sun hung high in the sky, its rays dancing on the edges of my small window. I rarely awoke this late only when I had laid abed with fever for days as a child, or caught the pox and my Mother feared I might die. Only then did I, a lifelong farm girl, manage to ignore the rise of the sun and bustle of the house for the cloying embrace of sleep. I tried to stand and the world felt awfully hazy, my room spun a bit as my feet made contact with the hard packed ground.
My shriek had seemingly alerted the only person within earshot, my sister Lila. She poked her head around the doorway to our bedroom.
“I can’t believe you slept this late! First you’re sneaking out at night, next you’re sleeping til noon. You won’t hear the end of this from Mother and Father, they won’t have anything to say about me and any goatherds if you keep this up!”
“Is it really that late... What happened to the time? I had such a strange dream.”
“Well you certainly haven’t missed anything from your favorite mysterious visitor, she also slept through all the housework.”
My mouth felt strangely dry and my tongue sluggish, each word was a new sensation. My body felt strangely foreign to me, in that moment, in the presence of another person. Like I had been floating off somewhere and suddenly got violently yanked back into reality. The guest.. Our visitor.. Xena.. the woods. I remembered for a moment the smell of the herbs on her hands, the moon shining above. I walked myself back through my memories, the snake, the shadow of the cat, the needles on my breast. I clutched my chest for a moment and felt nothing.
“Oh Lila” I managed to say. “What happened, I’m sorry I feel so strange.”
A shadow of worry passed over her face and some of her annoyance seemed to fade.
“Well you missed out on the goat escape this morning. I chased her across half the town!” She smiled at me fondly.
“Oh no missing my chance for a goat chase whatever shall I do.” I tried to change the mood, assuage her fears, and not dwell too much on the shadows cast by the noon day sun.
Lila seemed to relax knowing I had strength left in me for jokes.
“Well since you missed all the morning chores you should go collect more water from the river we are almost out.”
The matter of fact turn, from the unknown to the day to day seemed grounding to both of us. My feet felt the hard packed dirt below me, the sounds of the village in the distance, bird calls. No great beast dwelt in our hills no matter how many stories I spun, the land of dreams is merely an opaque glass into the land of the living. Security was felt between us as she helped me dress. My arms stopped shaking and I began to feel rooted back to the ground. I felt surprisingly strong by the time she hesitantly handed me the large water urns and saw I could hold them. I grasped the cool clay jug in my hands feeling suddenly as tough as that fired clay.
No creatures from the shadows would leap out and get me. I was Gabrielle, great adventurer, I had conquered my fear of snakes, a great hero could not stay in bed all day. The room may still have spun slightly for me, but I remained resolute and would not hide away. I had spent years hoping my dreams would come true and was intimately familiar with the limitations of prophecies hoped too dearly for. The veil between worlds is a fickle and strange thing. Remember that dear reader if you are looking for signs of what is to come.
Lila walked her way out of the house trying to put my strange appearance behind her. I knew she could keep a secret and would not breathe a word of her momentary fright, or my sudden screams to our parents. We had always sworn to keep those secrets between us in the face of their strictures. My traipse in the woods and unsettling dreams were locked up as tight between us as I kept her disappearances with certain goatherds.
Looking around the hearth and clutching the cool terracotta in my arms I realized Xena had been there the whole time. I felt suddenly embarrassed. Did she think me hysterical, or foolish for my outbursts? I must have flushed horribly as I often do out of embarrassment. I can remember so clearly even now staring down at her strangely small form curled in the blankets, her eyes the only indication she was awake.
Xena seemed different in the afternoon light dancing through our window. The strength and speed she possessed in the woods seemed a world away. I remembered suddenly how weak she had been. The two sides seemed hard to square with the woman I had seen last night picking through the woods quick as a cat. But there she lay blinking in the sun and I nearly dropped my jar in fright.
“Are you ok? Do you need anything? I’m getting water. I hope I didn’t wake you, are you sick, are you hungry?” The words came out faster than I anticipated and made me sound quite ridiculous. What must she think of me, some kind of lazy, hysterical host who stalks her through the woods. She stared up at me with her huge eyes, a glint of yellow to them suddenly.
“Oh Gabrielle I was just thinking I must attend a nearby river, would you care to show me the way?” She had suddenly fixed me with a strange stare and I shivered under her gaze. Eyes that could pierce through armor.
“Oh!” I squeaked “Of course I mean I was um just headed that way myself I can show you the town as well if you are feeling up for it!”
“I just need the river.” She was terse again, her nature seemed so hard to judge as she flitted between withholding and friendly at the drop of a hat.
She climbed out of the blankets languidly and I quickly turned away in embarrassment realizing she was wearing only a simple linen shift. I tried to busy myself with light tidying as she was getting dressed, my cheeks burning. I heard her fidgeting with her leather armor and the sounds of clanging bronze. I had tried when she arrived to offer what few clothes we could spare. Lone soldiers were distrusted in small villages such as mine and she didn’t need to stir up any trouble walking around looking ready for war. But she had brushed them aside, so attached I supposed she was to that second skin, she wore it all the time. She had arrived looking as if she should be armed to the teeth but curiously carried no weapons at all. At least none I had found in my impetuous snooping.
These thoughts danced around my mind as I absentmindedly tried to sweep. Averting my eyes and avoiding glancing too long at the sight of our guest stitching on her skin, that deadly looking armor from places unknown. If I caught a sidelong glance of her hair streaming down the side of her face illuminated in the sun and her awkward hands fumbling at the attachments yet still ethereal in that afternoon sun I hope I can swear you to secrecy on this matter reader.
She caught my curious gaze, and startled me by asking.
“Will you help me with my boots Gabrielle?”
I jumped, nearly dropping my broom and turned to face her. She sat clad in her armor resplendent yet winded on a little hearth stool with her boots awkwardly arranged next to her. She had the strange, quiet dignity of a great old warrior preparing for what might be their last battle. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. I leaned my broom against the wall and rushed to her side.
I knelt there, my hand on her calf as she seemed to tower above me sitting on that rickety old stool. I could feel her powerful muscles and her skin felt cold as a river stone. Her gaze was on me, boring holes into my back as I worked the stiff leather over her outstretched foot. Even the air itself felt heavy as I leaned closer working the laces with my hands up her long muscular leg. I paused when I reached the top and stared at her for a moment, my hands feeling hot and clammy against her cool skin. The leather that now lay between her skin and mine had grown slightly warm from my touch, my hand lingering tentatively on her knee.
With no signs I had done anything wrong I awkwardly broke the spell and stumbled over myself reaching for the second boot, my palm burning from where I had last touched her leather. I tried to fasten this one on more skillfully, the silence from Xena growing ever stronger. I laced the second boot up practice making me swifter. As I tied the final knot her hand caught mine on her knee and she said.
“Thank you Gabrielle, that was quite helpful.”
Burning from the feeling of her hand and the realization I had never been this close with a total stranger let alone help them dress I quickly stood up, the room spinning slightly. If it was the mood, or my illness or the feeling of her gaze that made the room spin like that, I cannot know.
~~~~~
“Oh little fish little fish caught on a line what can you bargain I have no time. Dinner oh dinner I soon await when you will be tossed on my plate!”
I sang absentmindedly as we walked down the well worn path to the river's edge. One of my little rituals was to make up songs as I walked to the river. I had been told by my Grandmother I had too many stories all stuck inside me and needed to let them out or else they would fall out my ears. I realized she was joking as I got older but I took her deadly seriously as a child, and had made the habit to sing songs and tell stories to myself whenever I undertook the boring task of collecting the water. The well trod path I had already memorized and not having to watch my feet always freed up my mind for wandering. Of course I was not alone and felt immediately very foolish when Xena asked me.
“Is this a common song around these parts?”
I couldn’t tell if she was being serious when she always asked things so strangely.
“No.. haha I just like to make up rhymes.. old habit.”
Xena didn’t respond but remained walking dutifully behind me holding the water jug. We continued for a few paces in silence until I decided to ask.
“Where are you from then, what songs do they sing there?”
She didn’t respond at first, pondering my question.
“I’m from somewhere far North of here” She paused “Though I have travelled so far I hardly recognize that place as home.”
“Oh.. I’m sorry, do you miss it very much?”
“I’m sure I must miss it, just as I miss so many other far gone things.”
She looked off into the distance not elaborating. Silence settled on us again as we walked on towards the river. All I could hear was the sound of birds and our footfalls upon the dusty path so familiar to me and yet so new with Xena alongside.
Soon dust broke to reeds and the river appeared before us at the bottom of the hill spread out blue and lazy, glittering in the afternoon sunshine. I watched Xena hoping to see a sign of what she wanted from the river had she told her comrades fleeing a hopeless battle to regroup here? Had she stashed some hidden treasure in the reeds? Oh the stories I spun.
The air always felt different by the river and a light breeze played in our hair. I saw her crouch down, blinking strangely in the harsh afternoon sunlight and place the great urn she was carrying softly onto the rocky ground. I hovered there on that precipice, the border between land and water waiting to see what she would do the clay urn cool on my tired arms. Her hands seemed to play in the rushing water and she murmured quietly to herself.
After a moment I joined her, kneeling down and dipping my urn into the rushing water, my eyes never leaving her. The water was a shock of cold on my hands reminding me of the night, the snake, the cold soil and Xena’s hands. I let the water fill the urn gazing at her all the while as my hair danced in front of my face. Suddenly as if seized by some strange animalistic urge Xena dove straight into the rushing river leather and all.
“Xena!! Come back!!! What are you doing?!” I yelled after her, shocked at her sudden transformation.
The water churned where she had dove in and I could see her struggling with something for a moment before disappearing under the current. My urn, still grasped in my fingers, bobbed freely in the current all but forgotten in the shock. I pulled it out mechanically, my body still remembering the motions well, and laid it half empty on the shore above. I grabbed my skirts about my knees ready to shuck them off and dive in after her until I saw the water change again. She surfaced suddenly, her head breaking above the waves with a fish grasped tightly in her mouth. The water rolled off her shoulders and her hair clung to her face. The vision of a soldier returned from battle half drowned and deeply alive. Her sharp teeth held the fish and she stood there in the swift water tearing at the viscera, blood dripped down her face. I stood stock still watching her stunned. She seemed to pay me no mind, but I stared, mesmerized, as the water running down her powerful thighs was tinged lightly with the blood of her catch, dripping down from her mouth.
I had seen her go from grave illness to the sleek powerful creature I saw before me only last night and yet it still seemed so shocking. Who was she what was she? Turning swiftly from one state to the next, wearing many faces, she seemed part animal. Could she be a great Goddess here to test our village loyalty, taking a changeling form to deceive us momentarily. What if she was here to bestow me with a quest or knew we had neglected in our offerings. I shivered looking at her as she waded out of the river water running down her in waves. She separated again from the wild world of raging nature and her solid form clad in dripping leather. I looked at her, my mouth agape and asked stupidly.
“Are you a great Goddess? A trickster? A changeling? Who are you Xena”
She looked at me oddly and knelt to wash the blood from her face.
“I’m none of those things Gabrielle. I think you have been listening to too many stories.”
“Well who are you then? I’ve never met anyone like you.”
She looked off into the distance a moment, moving into the shade, our task forgotten. The urns lay haphazardly on the banks of the river ignored as I moved towards her and reached out for her slippery arm. She met my pleading glance and did not pull her arm away. She sat for a moment and replied.
“I came from far away, I fought in a long war and I fled things you cannot begin to understand. I am not a Goddess, I am as mundane as you.”
“Yet you speak in riddles like one. Oh Xena, tell me of your adventures.” I gripped her arm so tightly like I was afraid she would disappear into mist.
“Well where I come from, war comes to you at a young age and leaves its ravages upon the countryside. My brother died young, killed when the warlord came to our village and I took up arms in retaliation. I have lived a life bathed in blood Gabrielle. You want no part of this.”
“Oh but I do! Do you know how lonely it gets in a town like this? They want me to get married!”
“You say you want adventure but know so little of it. You don’t know what you might lose forever.”
“But what do I lose if I stay here? Oh Xena if I’m doomed to be stuck in this village all my days can you at least spare me a story.” I pleaded and she seemed to ponder this for a moment before beginning.
“Once upon a time a great warlord came down out of the hills demanding payments or he would raze our village to the ground. Our offerings were in vain neither man nor God heeded our suffering so I marshalled an army but all that followed me was death. That’s what your adventures all lead to Gabrielle, death.”
I think her words must have shocked me then, her frankness on matters to come and what lies out there in the land beyond the woods when we all leave home. But I pushed forward, determined to know everything about her. Collect her words and keep them like a book close to my heart to color and shade in my dreams if that was doomed to be my only adventure beyond the town I knew so well.
“Where are you going? Why are you in Potidea?”
“Home, I have things I must do there… I was quite injured from a great battle you see. This river is just what I needed to rejuvenate myself and get my bearings. I may have to trouble you and your generous family only a little while longer”
She remained maddeningly cryptic.
“Oh it’s no trouble we love having guests!” I knew this was not the full truth but I lied anyways, hoping I could will it to be true. But Xena fixed me with a look that showed we both knew how tenuous this was. Like the rolling of the river things were destined for change. I knew she would be gone as swiftly as the leaf floating by would drift out of sight, and tolerance for strangers strange as she wears thin in small, hungry towns with little else to occupy our days with but gossip.
Silence resumed. I suddenly noticed in my great distraction that one of our great water urns was drifting out in the middle of the river. I rushed after it, hoisting up my skirts and wading into the shallows of the river with great, splashing haste. I scrambled after it, the rocks jabbing my feet and my arms reaching out tantalizingly close before a sudden current whipped it out of reach again and smashed the rich ochre urn on a rock downstream.
I gasped, I couldn’t believe I let my foolish distractions ruin one of our precious few urns. I would make double trips for water, barter with the local potter for more water vessels. My mind spun stupidly and I stood there still ankle deep in water feeling unbearably ashamed of something I couldn’t begin to name. It burned down me hot as I watched the remnants of that trusty urn bob and chase their way out of sight. I realized suddenly I hadn’t even taken my shoes off and they were hopelessly water logged. I also noticed Xena’s hand on my arm. She had stepped out of the shade following my useless splashing.
“There's trouble brewing in these waters Gabrielle. Something great and terrible is boiling in the headwaters. Death flows down this river. Leave it.”
I shivered, from her words and the wind ripping through my soaked and dripping clothes. I said nothing, just picked up the remaining urn pitched precariously on the beach and still only half full and we started our sodden walk back home. Xena mirroring my steps, close behind me like my loyal shadow.
If I had hoped we could sneak back without causing much of a fuss we picked a terrible time to make our reappearance. Oh as we walked down over the hill into town, and there stood all together my Mother, my Father, Lila and worst of all my nosy and suspicious Aunt Phoebe. How long we had been gone I didn’t know, but the concern on their faces was unmistakable. Whispers rose and accusations seemed to follow as Xena and I, half drowned as we must have looked made our way towards them.
“What were you thinking Gabrielle!” my Mother started with me, looking me up and down from head to dust covered, soaking toe. “Where were you?”
“I took Xena to the river..”
“The river?” My Mother was incredulous. “In this time of year? You look like you both nearly drowned. Why didn’t you go to the well? Where is your sense?”
Lila, betraying me asked. “Where did the other urn go?”
“Oh and you lost an urn in all this.” My Father suddenly joined in. “What strange ideas is this woman putting into your head Gabrielle you have better sense than this.”
“It’s just as I said, the omens were not wrong, great misfortune is upon us. The broken pot and the visitor. Be careful Gabrielle what you bring home I had three chickens dead just this morning.” My suspicious Aunt Phoebe added, so she must have put them up to this. I knew she had distrusted Xena. I used to yearn for her strange sayings and fortunes of the future but now they were turned against me, just when I hoped I had that great adventurer from my dreams within my grasp.
I stammered awkwardly and tried to explain how I was trying to be a good host and that I had simply tried to wade into the water after the urn, that Xena wished to experience the healing power of a good swim. That we couldn’t send her away when she still needed to recover. Half truths as I tried to avoid thinking about her shining, beautiful teeth and the blood mixing with the river water on her thighs.
Their chastising and worrying seemed to run its course, and anger turned to worry as they sat me down and mopped my brow, fed me soup and Lila even fetched the water for the remaining chores and meal. I suppose in all that confusion I hadn’t even noticed how low the sun had slipped in the sky while Xena and I dallied by the river’s edge. Xena in all of this had slunk into the shadows out of sight and after the accusations had died down she had been offered a blanket to dry by the hearth and broth she surreptitiously spooned into the fire when she thought no one was watching but I always was.
And there I sat doted on by those I loved yet my eyes kept returning to Xena. Sitting in the enveloping shadows the lapping fire reflected in her strange eyes. She sat as still as a stone, it seemed the warmth never reached her. The house bustled and filled with noise and all she had was silence. Did I know that time long ago I sat on a precipice? The talk and bustle of the evening chores, the warm familiar smells I still remember so well and yet despite the company, my home, the warm hands handing me bread I sat just as much in the silence, with the shadows with my strange new friend.
My Aunt Phoebe startled me, putting a hand on my shoulder and taking me aside, away from the fire to the threshold of our home.
“The threshold is the window into the soul of the home Gabrielle and great and terrible things are on the horizon. I saw it in the stars and smell it on the wind. Look at me Gabrielle.” I looked up at her, her face gravely serious. “Take these herbs with me. Scatter them across, yes just like that we must keep the great evil at bay.”
I nodded seriously, the herbs smelled pungent as she took my hands into hers and guided me, my hands and hers scattering them in a line across the doorway. Next she reached into her deep pocket and pulled out a bundle of those same herbs and pressed it meaningfully into my hands.
“Great change comes for you Gabrielle. Place this under your pillow for protection if the evil has entered this house it can’t enter you. We must increase our offerings. I fear the fate the Gods have in store for us and you most of all.”
“Thank you Aunt Phoebe.” I clutched the herbs tightly and shivering.
“I hope dear Gabrielle this is just the fears of an old woman the Gods are fickle yet even they are at the mercy of fate.”
I dutifully tucked the bundle into my pillow, the smell lingering in the air, on my fingers, in my clothes. I sat down on the bed exhausted from the day, the sounds of my family seemed far off just in the next room. I thought fondly of my times as a child following close behind my beloved Aunt begging her to teach me everything she knew. I had dreams of being a great prophet. How she taught me to read the stars, the many uses for herbs and wards of protection. The signs I was meant to read. I shivered, recalling Xena’s warning, did death really stand on our threshold?
Sleep took me before the hearth was put to smolder, while the sounds and smells of the living were still thick in the air. I slept a dreamless sleep.
I woke easily with the first crowing of the rooster with only pinpricks of dawn poking through the dark sky. The rough vegetal scent clung to my skin and lingered in the linen. Lila remained asleep and the whole house felt deathly still. I crept out in just my bedclothes, the cold clinging to my bare feet as I walked across the dirt floor. I crossed into the cold hearth room. I could not say what alerted me that something was different, for Xena had been our guest for only a scant few days yet the room felt amiss, rather lifeless and dead. I approached the pile of blankets in the corner and saw in the first dim tendrils of daylight that they lay empty.
I looked about in my confusion and crept quietly out the door. In the cold dawn light I must have looked like some kind of somnambulist, my thin linen shift buffeted by the crisp morning breeze. It would be in vain to try and recall the exact order of the sudden shocking turns my morning took as dawn crept rosily above the horizon but I shall try as best as I can dear reader. I was met with a shriek piercing the crystalline silence of that morning air and the appearance of a shadow settling down in the recesses of my sight just out of view.
First we consider the shriek, it had morphed into a loud piercing wail, a great loud mourning cry shattering the peaceful morning for good. A howl of grief and a mother running from her home begging for help. I stood there, in my shift stiff as a ghost as the cries went out for fate to spare her daughter, that the great plague returned. I was frozen in place as this great commotion bustled up around me.
Next we bring to attention the strange mist that hung in the air and unseasonable chill that had settled down on our windswept village. A sharpness in the air that clung to every passerby, lingered on the tongue and seeped under doorways and no hearth could keep at bay. In any other state I would have noticed my shakes and shivers clad only in my nightclothes but that seemed somehow so far away compared to the shock and howl of grief and terror that had suddenly gripped the village.
The smell of smoke hung in the air sweet and acrid worming its burning, purifying stench under door posts, into thatches and eaves as it danced slowly heavenward. The thick smoke billowed up from behind the home all abustle. The smell tickled the nostrils and clung to the skin. The first fire of many to come, first the sweet offerings begging for mercy and if that could not sway the Gods to spare us of our path the funeral pyre was sure to follow. Oh so many funeral pyres.
It seemed all a strange dream, what great agony to witness, my feet planted in the cold dirt below. The shadow passed before my eyes and disappeared like a ghost no stranger than anything else I saw. The commotion must have soon woken my family for I was quickly found wandering in my linen standing there in the cold, observing the frightful commotion. They must have wrapped me in a blanket and brought my shivering form back safely inside. They must have thought me such a sight, their fears manifest, plague, somnambulism, daughters that begin to wander.
Chores must have gotten done, words must have been exchanged. Gossip spread like wildfire of that I am certain. A girl had been found sick in her bed pale and trembling, wracked with fear. Tales of whole villages wiped out in plagues such as this. By noon the air was thick with sweet smoke as desperate prayers were offered to the Gods. This surely could not be the last. No less than eight different relatives came by as I was kept bundled by the hearth to look at my pallor, whisper of my turn to strange wanderings and speak in hushed tones of the girl slipping closer and closer to Hades.
A silence blanketed the town. Fear crept along every doorway and children were kept close by. I may have helped milk the goats or gone searching with Lila for a lost chicken but eyes were always following me. Eyes watched from behind doorways, out of the shadows, peering over windowsills the entire village had a strange fearful quality and a few extra glances were spared for our house bearing our strange and unusual guest.
I was quite conscious of the second glances and strange look in my parents’ eyes as if they were afraid I might wander off into the hills and never return. My mother gently implored I would be the best help tending the hearth and minding the rising dough, better to keep me safe and inside with such strange happenings about. A strange lonesome day full of whispers stretched out before me.
In all that commotion Xena had gone strangely unremarked upon. But there she sat, tucked into the shadows, beneath the blankets with only the light glint of her eyes letting me know she was there. The idea she had gone missing this morning seemed so strange, a faraway notion I must have imagined such emptiness in the shadows. For when Xena was near the shadows sang and thrummed with life.
The silent house, the pop of the fire, her eyes on me. How strange and small she seemed now compared to the powerful animalistic woman I saw yesterday with blood tinged thighs.
“If you won’t tell me where you came from would you let me tell you a story?” I broke the silence with an oddly bold request.
She fixed me with a long look. “You certainly love your stories.”
Taking the lack of outright denial as an opening I pushed forward. “I’m a storyteller you know, practiced all my life but I’ve never had an audience that didn’t know me in diapers, or well the chickens..” I trailed off trying to steel my courage.
“It has been a long time since I’ve heard a good story Gabrielle.”
She said my name with such a curious intensity it made my spine shiver. My voice stammered a moment when answering her.
“It must get boring wandering around all by your lonesome…”
“I’ve managed.” She remained maddeningly opaque.
“All right I first heard this story when an old traveling storyteller came to my village and I begged and begged him to tell it until I memorized it but I heard it only three times.”
“I’m not much of a critic.”
The woman seemed to be gazing off in some far off way like I wasn’t really in the room with her, but I was ever so curious and she was a captive audience so I pushed forth taking her words as if they were encouragement. I sat down next to her bedroll on a little stool and gazed up at her strange and beautiful face in the firelight. Plucking up my courage I began my story as I remembered it from the old storyteller but of course with some flourishes of my own I’d been practicing. In a slightly too loud and overly portentous voice practiced mostly to trees, chickens and whatever animals might have been listening on my walks to the well I began.
“Long ago a poor farmer had three beautiful daughters. His first two daughters had found wonderful matches but his youngest daughter refused to marry. She said father you are all alone. If I leave who will spin your thread, weave your clothes, who will plant your fields and care for you when you are infirm I will stay with you father. Years pass and the father is tending his field when he comes across a snake. The snake says you are an old man and your daughter is beautiful. Give me her hand in marriage and you shall live a long and wealthy life. At first the father resists but his daughter says I have no dowry, we have no money and the winters are hard. I will marry the snake.”
“Tough luck marrying a snake.”
Her interruption caught me off guard but the small smile I saw on her face made me push forward. “Shh let me finish!” I said with mock seriousness. I took a deep breath again and got back into my storyteller voice, the whole time I saw her eyes were on me, studying me. I brushed the feeling off and continued.
“Anyways on their wedding day the snake says to the daughter when the sun sets and you retire to our marriage bed do not light a candle or a lamp do not look for the light of the moon you cannot gaze upon me promise me this or we shall never marry. The girl agrees and goes to sleep alone and waits for her husband the snake. Every night though, instead of a snake, a man enters her chamber and lies with her as her husband. She has everything she could desire in the palace of the snake prince but each time she asks where he goes every night and who is in her bed the snake responds my wife this is the one thing i cannot tell you. Her curiosity grows each night to see who lies beside her as he is gone by daybreak. Her father who cares only for her happiness gives her a lamp to gaze upon this man while he is sleeping. Overwhelmed by his beauty she kisses him and drops of oil are spilled upon his sleeping form waking him. The man who was a snake said my wife you did the one thing I said you could never do, you have gazed upon my face. The cursed snake prince flees from the bed and says my mother the witch will swallow you up.”
“Oh witches are wandering through the countryside looking for young brides to swallow up? Couldn’t be worse than having a snake as a husband so slimy.”
I looked up startled for a moment, I’d been very focused on how I’d practiced my story and was flustered by losing my place. But upon seeing Xena was making a funny face and had her hands out like mock claws I started to giggle. She grinned at me and I caught the glint of one of her teeth, it looked quite sharp like a needle. I realized I’d been so nervous trying to impress and entertain her I had rushed through half my story and was quite out of breath. Terrible first impression! I took a deep breath and tried to sound a bit more dignified or my idea of a dignified storyteller voice and began again.
“The daughter weeps for her snake husband. His palace has gone cold and the finery disappeared. She soon sets out in the direction of a mountain to the setting sun where a witch lives in a castle far away. On her first night of travelling her feet tired and her mind ill at ease she meets a kindly old woman who tells her. My son is cold bring him his blanket so he may sleep and produces from her pocket a snakeskin shining gold and glimmering with jewels. The daughter asks if the old woman knows the direction of the witch’s castle and thanks the kind woman and heads off towards the mountain in the direction she pointed.”
I turned my eyes back to Xena studying her face again as I caught my breath. The dance between the shadows and the firelight upon her hair was entrancing.
“On the second day of her journey the young woman meets another old woman this time bent upon the ground, despairing that she shall soon starve for all her grain is strewn upon the earth. If only she could gather up the grain she would tell the daughter where to find the witch. So she labored for three days and three nights collecting the old woman’s grain and was sent off towards the castle. On the next night the daughter found a third old woman despairing, her son is quite ill and needs sparrow’s blood for his soup. She took her flask and attended her new and even stranger task. The woman thanked her for the blood but told her where she was going she would need the blood even more. It was said to cure all ills.”
I paused in my telling for a moment to collect my thoughts. I had perhaps stumbled over my words, gotten tongue tied. I may be smoothing out my recollections with the distance of time as I recount this now lending the moments a gravity or grace they did not possess. But with Xena there it lent everything a certain sense of newness that my giddy heart could not contain. Her eyes looked off into the firelight I’m sure but gave me a short nod that I took to mean I should go forward.
“As the daughter finally arrived at the castle gates another strange old woman stood at the door and asked what her purpose was. I come here in search of a snake and his mother, the witch. He is my husband and my heart is split in two. She produced the golden snakeskin from her bag and handed it to the old woman fearing he would be cold. The gates were opened and she was allowed to enter the castle. The prince he is very ill the witch told her he needs grains for his supper and blood for his wounds and the daughter produced each in turn from her bag. You are very persistent. The witch told the daughter you may be worthy of my son bathe his brow in sparrows blood and see if you can rouse him from my curse. She draped the snakeskin over this strange man, fed him porridge and washed his brow with sparrow's blood and from his slumber he broke free and said my wife has returned to me, you have broken my mother’s curse. I am a man once more. They married and were free to leave this wicked wood.”
“It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard a story, thank you Gabrielle.” Xena had a small smile on her face. “It reminds me of a story I heard once long ago as a girl.. Strange creatures running off with young women and all that..”
“Oh please tell me there is only so good a story can be when I hear so few and know so little. If you won’t take me with you help me grow my library so I can visit in my dreams. I am training to read the stars but what can I know of the future when I know so little of the past.”
“Maybe I will young Gabrielle.. Maybe I will.”