A Dream of Unknowing

A Dream of Unknowing A.
Hanson
Introduction
The White Carpathians In the winter of 2012 eight recordings were made over
several weeks of conversations with Marus Pohansky. He
was 68 years old and soon to die. Each recording was
made at length, some recordings being more than six hours
long, and were mainly records of his life as one of the last
Carpathian Witches; a tradition that dates back in this
region many hundreds of years.
He was a direct descendant of Jakub and Anka Pohansky,
the infamous Witches of Osikovce, whose story is told later
in this book, and also descended from Alex Koza who
witnessed the tragic killing of Dr. Ladislav Horvath, also
retold below, a crime which still haunts the beautiful hills
of this region today.
I was fortunate enough to meet him, listen to his stories,
get drunk with him and hear him sing his songs during that
long winter, and it's a time I look back on often with
fondness. As the Carpathian Mountains change forever
under the cold rationale of progress, the likes of Old Marus
and his tales will become more and more important if the
traditions are not to be lost forever.
However, there is a new generation of Carpathian
children, more enlightened than their parents perhaps,
who do not see the glitter of gold or look with longing at
the latest plastic gadget, and I met a number who had
come to see Marus Pohansky the winter I was there. They
were ardent, youthful and seeking, and came in search of
A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson
things that science and the rational world told them no

longer existed.
In the evenings we talked of Myth and Magic, and recited
legends that filled the room with a hundred generations of
understanding. As the room grew hazy with the smoke of
cigarettes and the sweet warmth of plum brandy, our host
would speak of many things, and we, like children would
hold our breath in wonder at a world so far removed.......yet
just beyond the haze of reason. There are not many people
you meet today who can hold an audience of adults spellbound with a fairy-tale but that is exactly what we were:
bound by the beauty of his words, and wrapped in the
images he painted before us with such clarity and
familiarity, that it seemed as if he himself had experienced
these things.
He was a story-teller, mystic, witch, poet, and a man who
believed that only by keeping the traditions of our
ancestors did we have any chance of surviving past the
arrogance that science and technology has bred in us - and
it was good to see his words struck a chord with some.
In the few months that I was with him he was never
short of visitors; a constant stream of people, mainly
young, was coming and going having heard about him
from a friend of a friend. They came from Slovakia,
Hungary, Russia, Austria, Lithuania, Germany, the Czech
Republic, Serbia and of course, myself from England. Some
stayed only an hour and some months but I think the
impact he made upon all of was the same. He left us feeling
hopeful in a world (especially the West) where a belief in
something afar is seen as a foolish thing.
One such pilgrim who made a big impression both on
myself and Marus, a woman named Bea, arrived just before
2
the end of January and stayed with me in my house for

several months. She very quickly formed a special bond
with Marus, and it's my belief that she reminded him of his
wife who had died many years before: Bea is her in spirit,
he had said to me once, yet never said exactly whom he
meant.
I always assumed he meant Aneta, his wife, who had died
many years before. He told me when I first arrived that he
had been married and that his wife had died within days of
delivering their stillborn son, yet it was something he had
not spoken of since, at least not to me.
However, when Bea arrived he became more reminiscent
about the past, and I would sometimes see him watching
her as she moved about the cramped kitchen or in the
evenings when we sat by the fire. I dont think she noticed
it, herself, but I would sometime see Marus lay down his
book, or stop in mid-sentence and glance across the room
towards Bea; never sad, I would say, but contented as if the
final piece had just fell in to place.
Bea herself was a mystery and the only thing I learned
about her was that she had been born in Nyirbator in the
East of Hungary. She had studied literature at University,
spent time in a commune in Scotland, and been married to
a farmer in Moravia before turning to religion.
She believed herself to be a Wiccan by the books she read
half-heartedly, but had failed to be satisfied with the makebelieve silliness she had found there. And so, on her 26th
Birthday, she had sold what little she had and headed for
Osikovce to find true Paganism.
She had travelled up from Hungary, hitchhiking for three
days in sandals and a thin sheep-skin jacket that barely
kept her warm, to listen to a man who some believe to be
the sole remaining Carpathian Pagan.
3
She had not called ahead of her visit, yet Marus was not
surprised when she arrived on his doorstep frozen to the
bone with barely enough money in her pocket to pay her
bus fare home. He didn't bother to ask her why she had
come, or when she would be leaving; he sat her by the fire,
gave her tea flavoured with rose hip and dried hyssop and
asked her if she would mind cooking our dinner.
It turned out to be a homecoming of a sort.....but more of
that another time.
The reason I mention Bea is her arrival in Osikovce
seemed to stir in Marus a sentiment for the past, and it was
during this time when the stories in this book were first
told.
Jakub and the Green man was the first tale I heard and,
as was his way, Marus just launched into the story without
prelude or warning.
We, myself, Bea, and Marus, were standing in his barn: I
was boiling water of over a metal stove, Bea was draining
the blood from a chicken which was to be our dinner, and
Marus gazed out in to the garden, smoking a cigarette with
his usual contentment.
Shes buried there you know, he said pointing into the
Orchard. Bea and I looked at each other and could tell by
the tone of his voice that something was coming. I put the
kettle down -wed pluck the chicken later- and slipped my
recorder from my pocket.
Who? asked Bea.
Anka. Anka is buried just there beneath that old Walnut.
Ah, but she was so beautiful to see, the most perfect
creature..too good for this sad world, she was.
Who is Anka? I dont remember you telling us about
her, I said.
4
Well, she died a while back now, 1560 or there abouts. I

dont quite remember now the time but I do remember
her. And so the story began.
Marus was not a natural teacher yet everything he did
was worth studying. He seldom had us to a 'lesson', but
more just went about his business and we, Bea and I,
stumbled behind trying to learn from what he did. At the
most bizarre moments he would come out with some
instructions, or start to tell us a story that only later we
realised had a profounder meaning.
I asked him once if he would 'show me' magic or allow
me to witness some incantation or ritual (in fact I was
looking for anything arcane or mystical to add to this
book) but he just looked surprised and said that every
action a person takes is an act of magic, a ritual. It just
depends on the reverence with which we do it, and the
meaning we choose to give it. For Marus Pohansky every
action in life was a spiritual act and therefore infused with
magic.
Before we get in to the stories he told us, and of the many
I have only written four for this book, it might be an idea
for me to give you a sense of his beliefs.
In this day and age of labels and definitions its difficult
to fit Marus into a category. I call him a Wiccan, but he had
never heard of the term himself, and chuckled at being
termed a witch. When I asked how I should describe his
beliefs, he scratched his chin, blew a cloud of smoke into
the air and replied: not learned.
So, there we go Not learned. It took me a while but I
eventually realised, and Marus talks about this in Jakub
and the Green man, that he believed all real knowledge
and wisdom was not transmitted from one person to
5
another, not learned; but was absorbed through

meditation and an awareness of Nature.the way a sponge
absorbs water, we drink in wisdom from the very earth
Herself.
To give you a further idea of the man Marus was I have
written out a transcript of three conversations he had with
Bea when she first arrived. He was a great one for Socratic
meanderings and he seemed to believe that a novice
should find their own answers - he simply prodded us in
the right direction.
Conversation 1
Bea: How do I become a Witch?
Marus Pohansky: You already are.
Bea: I've never been initiated or studied, I'm not even
sure I know what a Witch is. How can I be a Witch already?
Marus Pohansky: You were born a Witch, as I was.
Bea: So I inherited it from my mother, or grandmother?
Marus Pohansky: Perhaps, that's one way of looking at
it. But we are all born to Paganism. All of us. Paganism is
the natural system of the world we live in; every person,
every animal, and bird; every tree, plant, and all living
things are born pagan. The very earth itself is pagan.
Bea: But still there needs to be some study involved,
right?
Marus Pohansky: Perhaps. Some people like books, and
are happy to read what others think or have to say. But our
beliefs are written into us, into the land and into the world
around us. I would rather listen to what the forest has to
say, than read a book, myself.
Bea: But every great religion has laws, creeds, rituals,
and liturgies. Paganism can't be proper a religion if it
doesnt have a unified code, can it?
6
Marus Pohansky: I never thought we needed one.

Christians need a Bible because Christianity is unnatural,
that is, it doesn't come naturally; same with Jews and
Buddhists. Being Christian is like riding a bicycle: it's
something you have to learn to do; but being Pagan is as
natural as breathing. No one needs to learn or be taught
that.
Bea: So what do I need to do?
Marus Pohansky: Nothing, you are already doing it. Just
be as you are.
Bea: But there are so many organisations, orders,
groups, covens. There are hundreds of books, blogs, online
communities and 'experts'. When Ive tried to research or
find out what being a Pagan means there are always a
thousand different answers. Its totally confusing.
Marus Pohansky: No it isn't. And most of what you read
in books or on-line is just Hollywood nonsense anyway,
nothing to do with neither true Paganism nor true
Witchcraft. In truth, girl, there is only you and Nature.
Nothing else, and no one else is important. Everyone calls
their gods by different names, dress up their rituals in
different ways; some join groups, some practice alone;
some like to tell everyone what they think, some go all
secretive. But there is only you, and your relationship with
Earth that matters. Don't fret over it....relax, breath, and
you will find yourself drifting towards your own wayin
time. As I said, Paganism is a natural force, we are driven
towards it despite ourselves. We don't need to go looking
for 'it', paganism is not a quest or a journey: we are already
found, we are where we are meant to be. If anything the
hardest part of being a Pagan is understanding this.
Bea: I don't get it.
7
Marus Pohansky: When Adam left the Garden of Eden,

where do you think he went?
Bea: East, so they say, but who knows?
Marus Pohansky: Well, here is a Pagan secret. Adam
never left Eden. His, and all of Mankinds, punishment was
to become blind to the Paradise he lived in. To search and
yearn for what we already have. Paganism is knowing that
nothing is lost and Heaven is right before us.
Conversation 2
Marus Pohansky: Youve come back then. I didnt think
you would. I imagined you to be half way back to Hungary
by now.
Bea: And whys that? I am serious in learning all there is
too know.
Marus Pohansky: Aye, I can see that. And what things do
you think you need to know?
Bea: Well you said I should not worry about rituals, that I
should be myself and then it would come. So I have come
to learn how to be myself.
Marus Pohansky: And that is the hardest thing to learn,
true enough; but not something any one can teach you.
Bea: Well I guessed that, so I decided to focus on myself
more. I wrote a list of my good points and my bad points,
another of my dreams and fears. I also made a few notes
on things I dont like and want to improve about
myself.and, Ive set myself some goals in my life. Do you
want me to read them?
Marus Pohansky: No, I want you to burn them.
Bea: But why, this is how I will come to know myself, be
myself, isnt it?
8
Marus Pohansky: What, you think you will come to

know yourself by naval-gazing and self-absorption? Oh,
what a creature you aredid you get that idea from some
self-help book? Well, you can burn that too. In fact go now
back to you room, bring out every book on Paganism you
have their and you can burn them here in the stove.at
least theyll serve the purpose of keeping my arse warm.
Bea: How can examining myself, trying to understand
myself possibly be wrong; its what you told me to do?
Marus Pohansky: No it isnt. I said you have to BE
yourselfthat means strip away all of your pretence and
artifice, not spend your time up your own arse.
Bea: Youve lost me again.
Marus Pohansky: In the old days Druids, Witches, and
holy men of all faiths, would spend time in isolation. Here
theyd choose an isolated islet, a woody grove, a hill top,
anywhere away from people. Some would stay a short few
weeks, others a lifetime. Even the Old Christians wandered
the loneliest places to talk to their god. Why do you think
they did that?
Bea: To talk to God, as you said?
Marus Pohansky: Nonot really, but to talk to
themselves; to be free of other eyes, to relax into
themselves, to give voice to themselves in freedom.
Bea: So, you think I should spend time in the wilderness
like Jesus or Buddha.
Marus Pohansky: Or like Merlin who made the
woodlands his home. Yes. Go to the wild, be free even if
only for one hour. Be as a child unencumbered by others
expectations and then you will begin to BE yourself, then
you will begin to understand what it means to be a true
Witch.
Bea: So I go to the woods and what?
9
Marus Pohansky: Sit, be still, breath. Stand if you want,

or lie down. Listen to what your body tells you. Eat when
youre hungry, cry when your sad, laugh, be naked or sleep,
or perhaps just enjoy the beauty of Naturebut do
what you feel to do, not what you think you should do. Live
on a whim, inspired by the moment. See where you take
yourself: down valleys, up hills, to woodlands, or sea
coves.dont question your motives just BE/DOand you
will begin to know yourself, and be surprised.
Bea: Surprised how?
Marus Pohansky: Well I never cared much for
mountains, but I loved the sea. However, my soul took me
to the mountains constantly.
Bea: Why?
Marus Pohansky: Because it was the mountains that
spoke loudest to me, and where the Awen flowed greatest
in me. I would never have known that if I hadnt allowed
myself to be, hadnt listened to myself. Id be still sitting on
a beach somewhere and probably quite lost.
Conversation 3
Bea: Ive been reading a book about Paganismit was
really very good. I think I learned something.
Marus Pohansky: Aye, and what have you learned?
Bea: I learned that modern Witchcraft has little or no
connection to the past. That its all made up. I learned that
modern Witchcraft in the West, Wicca, was invented in
England a hundred years ago; that most, if not all, Pagan
beliefs are just extensions of the whole fantasy world
created by the likes of Tolkien. Pretty similar really to the
people you read about who think theyre Jedis or
descended from Aliens. Its all just made up.
10
Marus Pohansky: And I reckon by the tone of your voice

this is a disappointment.
Bea: Well of course it bloody is! I thought I was learning
from the traditions that stemmed back to the ancients. I
thought I was rediscovering my lost heritage, that I
was following in the footsteps of Merlin not acting out the
fantasies of some old hippie with a beard, bad breath and a
how-to guide to making mint tea. If I wanted to pretend at
Spirituality I would have moved to California!
Marus Pohansky: And modern Judaism, Christianity,
Buddhism, Hinduism is different how? The Buddhism of
today is a far-cry from its original form 3000 years ago,
Christianity would be unrecognisable to the Christthey
have all evolved and become modern, and most of the
modernisers would have been beardy hippie types, that is
the odd balls with bad breath and a vision.
Bea: But they have provenance. They have written
records, archives, histories which connect the modern
believer to the original source. Pagans have nothing: a bit
of archaeology, one or two written and incoherent records
and thats it.
Marus Pohansky: What does the word Pagan actually
mean?
Bea: Im not sure. I know its Latin.
Marus Pohansky: Thats right. It is Latin and has no
religious or spiritual meaning in itself. Paganus is the
adjective form of Pagus meaning a place outside of the city,
a rural area, farm country: uncivilised, wild and untamed.
Nothing to do with religion at all really, but it does tell us
something important about modern Pagans and the
provenance weve got.
Bea: And that is?
11
Marus Pohansky: It tells us that our beliefs stem from

wild, that they are not the beliefs of city intellectuals with
their big books and fancy words. Paganism was born out of
the beliefs of the little man, the villager who, with no
education, had no way of recording what he thought of life.
The Greeks with all of their reason and logic were the first
to remove themselves from the superstitions of Pagan
belief. Later thinkers, closed behind city walls, and
wrapped in stone cocoons then began to invent new
explanations for the things around them. The Christians in
Europe sat in Rome making up fantastic tales that placed
Mankind at the centre of the world and at the right hand of
God..a Pagan farmer on the fringe of the Carpathian
Mountains would never have been able to come up with
such a ridiculous theory. He knew, struggling as he did
with the vagaries of the land, that Nature/God held Man in
no such prominence, he knew that people were levelled
alongside the rest of creation. Only a fool lost in a
Labyrinth of brick and stone could ever believe that Nature
cares more for him than She does for the next creature.
Bea: Okay, but that doesnt provide modern Pagans with
any greater insight. Very few of us today live a Pastoral life,
most of us live in cities, most Pagan writers too probably.
And without a written connection to the ancients we are
just as far from the essence of real Paganism as before,
right? Modern Paganism is being made up by the very city
intellectuals who you claim deserted it in the first place.
Marus Pohansky: True.
Bea: And.????
Marus Pohansky: The Real Paganism, the real
Witchcraft you are talking about is not in books. If you
remember I told you to burn the lotyou obviously didnt
and look at the result!
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Bea: If not in books then where? You tell me nothing

except dont read books, so where should I find the Old
Truthswhere?
Marus Pohansky: Probably in the same place our
ancestors looked 3000 years ago, probably by seeing the
world as they saw it, hearing it as they heard it, breathing
it as they breathed it, feeling it way they felt it. Its there
that I find the provenance of my Paganism.
Bea: But how can I do that? How can I know what a Iron
age farmer in the Carpathian Mountains saw, felt, smelt
etc. if its not documented? How can I possibly experience
what he experienced?
Marus Pohansky: Because the world he knew is still
there, nothing has changed, Bea. Cities have changed but
Nature, she has remained constant; and people think they
have changed/developed but they havent, not really. In a
forest the smell of the wet earth after rain is the same now
as it was when our farmer trod the land; the wind sounds
the same as it ever has, the beauty of daisies on a hill side
has not changed, the feel of the rough skin of an oak is just
as coarse. Our ancestors experience is not so different
from ours as we like to believe. Our strongest
senses/feelings of love, hate, fear are the same: a mothers
love is just as fierce, a fathers fear is just as profound, a
lovers sadness just as tragic, they have not changed. And it
is here the Pagan Heritage that you lament is to be
found.much stronger than any written book, much more
tangible than a lengthy, dry history, much more real than
the fantasy of recorded religion because Paganism is a
living thing, its encoded into us and into the Human
experience.
13
Bea: So youre saying that modern Paganisms

connection to the ancients is constantly being replayed in
us, in our own experience?
Marus Pohansky: It is, because a man today is no
different than a man 3000 years ago, Nature today is no
different to Nature 3000 years agoin fact all things of
importance have remained the same. Only things in towns
and cities change, only temporary and therefore
unimportant things change. If you want to know what
Merlin knew, felt, thought, how he saw the world all you
need to do is go to the Wild as he did, sit beside an oak as
he did, close your eyes as he did, and absorb Nature as he
did. That is paganisms provenance.
recorded December - January 2012/13
This should give you an idea of his beliefs which were
founded in the land that he had lived on all of his life. He
was not a small minded man, nor a man of no Education as
some might think due to his never having travelled much.
He was well read (despite his burn your books speech),
and one of the few people I have ever met who actually
listened to what was being said when spoken to. He could
quote Shakespeare, loved Mozart and had much to say on
the world as he saw it, though his views were not as
politically correct as many right on folk would have liked
him to be.
Yet despite his intellect he was far happier in the forests
of Krajnanska Hora, his back garden as he termed it, than
in the company of men. He was at home in the wild wood,
much more relaxed with animals, and far more content in
Nature than anyone I have ever known.
14
In this book are a collection of four short stories he told

me. They tell the tale of the small hamlet of Osikovce over
four hundred years and are, I believe, allegorical in that
they hold a much deeper meaning, but then there seemed
to be deeper meaning in everything Marus said and did.
They are his and I have simply copied them down as they
were told to me. They are true, according to Marus, and
attest to the true Pagan heart of the west Carpathian
Mountains.
A. Hanson
Osikovce, 2014
________________________________________________________
15
The First Tale

A Dream of Unknowing
This is the cave where Witches were made M. Pohansky
A deep forest, remote and isolated from the chaos of

men. At the heart of this forest is a cave, known to few
the cave delves deep beneath the earths fragile skin
into the heart of the world. In this place, and since the
beginnings of Humankind, a woman has been sent
down in to the pit to discover herself by self-forgetting.
Shedding herself, skin and bone, like a serpent she
'dies' a death that will free her and that links her soul
to that of the Void, the Peace that was before all time
and worlds were created; and is so doing Anka
discovers creation, the false god who gave us life, and
the sorrow that came thereafter. Close beside her are
those who keep the Wake, men sent to protect her and
to await her return from the dead. But one man must
go down into the pit to bring her back, to die himself,
so that she can return. In this way Jakub Pohansky met
his wife and, through her, learned to see the world for
what it truly is. A deceit.
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Introduction
Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,
It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,
It longs in thy cells to deposit its load,
Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,
Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away,
And Bigotry's bloodhounds lose scent of their prey.
Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o'er,
What awaits on Futurity's mist-covered shore?
(A Dialogue) P.B. Shelley
17
The First and Last Chapter Oskiovce 1558

The gum was thick and heavy on her fingers, and stuck
with eager relish to her skin. She rolled the sap between
finger and thumb shaping the mass into a milky ball before
placing it carefully into a square of beech leaf. Quickly
folding the small package she then tucked it into a pouch at
her belt with a dozen others before her blackened fingers
began their work again. She scanned up and along the
knotted bark before her, and soon spotted another leak of
resin oozing from the body of the tree. The liquid was
almost golden in the quiet light and seemed to signal, in
her imagination, of a greater wealth - an ancient wealththat slumbered within the pines impassive trunk. She
pressed her palms against the solid flanks of the old tree
and felt the long weight of years lean back against her; it
was imperceptible but there, an awakening.
The sun crisply gilt the edges of the woodland leaves as
she moved between each pine and oak; her leather store of
resin tapping against her hip as she wove in and out. The
sounds of her feet were muted on layers of fallen needles;
the swish of her gossamer-like skirts the only charge to
inflect the soundless air. And from that air she felt the last
tendrils of the night withdrawing from the mount of day,
and flow before and away from the grasp of invasive light.
It was a good time, a clear hour, before the raucous clack of
the forest, raised from out a thousand desperate throats,
cut the still and unspoiled peace. A peace found only in the
hours between day and night.
A blackbird scrambled amongst the dead wood,
scratching at the earth and mining out the soil; and as she
knelt, the better for to see, the richness of that dark black
earth enveloped her. It was not earth, not in the true sense,
18
but a half digested maze of leaf and bark and root, close
woven in a web of sweet decay. Its scent was heady and
rich, filling her with a longing to rest her cheek against the
cool mulch and be absorbed. She inhaled and tried to hold
inside her the forests impress, to mark herself within. The
blackbird leapt and was away, and she knew that were
many things that she must do, and many miles to walk. She
could not lose herself when so much was yet to be done.
Along the streamlets edge, and not too far from the
source from it flowed, a grey fletch of light plumed and
fringed the dark silhouettes that quietly moved in her
wake. They would not see her for some time, nor did they
expect to, for they knew that she was rare to be seen. Their
leader trode with careless steps but even so was the
quieter of the four; he, like her, needed no signs nor path
to guide his way but allowed the waters course to direct
him. The small river knew where she went, and he would
not let Anka stray too far ahead, and knew he would not
lose her in the labyrinth of trees. In his left hand he carried
a sprig of meadowsweet, its splayed blossom luminous
against the dark green of the flowers stem; in his right
hand he had a tendril of ivy clutched and wrapped in
spirals until the wrist; the flowers were still in bud and not
yet come into the world.
In a small place, where the soft mosses grew, and the
stream began to lull itself to sleep in shallow meanders,
the forest formed a circle round a patch of standing grass,
it swept against her knees and thighs, and curved before
her as she moved, parting to reveal a well worn path. Wild
strawberries crushed beneath her feet as she walked and
filled the air. Comfrey bells clanged their silent chimes
before shifting back to hide beneath the shade from leaves
above. The glade was cool and fanned by the swish of
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grass. From her satchel Anka pulled a knife and, by the

streams bank where the grasses were thick with green, she
gathered moss and cut and bunched them there.
She did not need much, for there was only her, so took
little, and then stripped the leaves from willow tails
plaiting them into a rope to tie about the moss. Next, and
where the forest over hung, she found the oak mushroom,
dark and brown against the earth, and with scent so rich it
flavoured the air on picking. Again she collected only a few
and wrapped them in a cloth basket, careful not to abrade
their soft skins. And last to the mild oaks where acorns
strew the ground from yester year and here she cut the
leafy wands, hung heavy with their unformed flowers, and
threaded them through the leather strap of her bag.
And far back, the stream whispered of her doings and
guided on the men who patiently stood and would not dare
approach for fear of failure. Their leader looked up and
saw the distant moon, now full and pale against the deep
blue of the sky, and he knew the oak mushroom to be out
from beneath the rich soil, and that she would be eager to
search the glade before the boar and fallow deer could
sneak away her prize. He signalled the other men to sit,
and he himself hunched down and waited. It would not
serve his cause to startle or rush her, he must be patient
for what she would do could not be hastened; there was
still one more night; one more night and three more days
until her death, and his.
The verberation of a woodpecker echoed through the
trees and emphasised the quiet as few other forest sounds
could. It was a good sign and he scanned the tree tops for a
sight of the bird. It sat high on a dead branch and seemed
imperious, possessive of the woodlands in its care. Its
scarlet crown bobbed a time and then it flew; a black and
20
crimson flash against the canopy. It was good, he felt sure,

to see such a bird at this time. A pecker bird, curer and
maintainer, the forests own apothecary.
The forest grew thicker as she moved on, and the old
elder trees, thick laden with their heavy white flowers,
blocked her passage and forced a thousand detours.
Sunlight slid obliquely through the higher trees slicing into
the damp underworld of lichen, brush and stone. The
floors uneven swell washed before her as she wove
between green banks of moss covered stones, ducking to
evade the elders that trailed about her. The entrance to the
pit was not much further and it would be well before dark
when she arrived.
As it always was with her, at this time and on the eve of
their meeting, she began to feel a steady calm pervade her;
she knew this detachment and welcomed its creeping
arrival. It had been the same, she was sure, when they had
brought her mother before her. The fear of the darkness,
the pummelling drums and screeching whistles had all
dissipated in the final hours, when her mother had made
her way into the cool and reassuring precincts of the pit.
Yet there was not the same clamour for her, she had
chosen to travel to the Pit alone.
During the night, as she waited for the following dawn,
that sense of well-being would no doubt continue
culminating in euphoria when, at the first glimpse of light
to the east, she would slip her bridal skirts and descend
nude into the dark womb and, descending blind, encounter
with herself and self-unknowing.
A mile from the pits entrance she settled for the night,
pulling down the rich mosses and made a chair. She
collected tinder and pine branches and heaped them in a
small hollow before her seat; and took down the thick
21
elder limbs and, separating the pith from the stem, struck
the fire and funnelled air to raise the flames. A small pool
of water enrapt in Roman stones and fed by a busy spring
was sat nearby, and she kneeled to clean the fallen leaves
& twigs. She would bathe once more before the dawn but
not until the darkness came and she was safe from the eyes
of those who followed close behind.
The men did not light fires, nor did they make seats or
beds from flowers. They ate little and drank only water
from the stream. When the light faded their leader
signalled to each of them in turn who then quietly, and
without words, moved off into the dark forest. Each man
held an assigned place and knew without direction to
where he must go. Whilst Anka slept they would watch
and, in forming a protective circle around her, this wake
ensured that no other could threaten or do her harm.
The leader knew her to be close and closed his eyes. In
the dim quiet of the evening he sought to hear and by
hearing perhaps to know of what she did. But she was
silent; as were his men, and so the animals and birds too.
Nothing moved, nor spoke; it was a vibrant stillness, so
close to death yet quivering with life. Yet he knew she
would be at her task, and moving to prepare. She must
remove herself from flesh and bone, and having been
loosed from the meagre senses, she would descend into
the clay, into the confining earth.
As night fell Anka dipped herself into the cooling waters
and felt its softness. The ancient pool was lined with silken
stones worn smooth by time and motion, and rendered to
such softness they felt no more solid than the water they
contained. The water smelled of soil and grass, and in its
reflecting surface the trees shimmered and wavered in the
dark light. She made a ball of the mosses she had cut
22
before and scrubbed them against her skin, she then pulled
the tangles and knots from her hair and wove a plait down
her back. Then stepping out into the warm air she held her
arms aloft and allowed the breeze to slowly dry the water
from her skin. She would not dress now until her return so
folded her clothes and lay them by her seat. The flames of
her fire plied her with warmth and she stood savouring its
touch as it wove of flickering fingers upon her. As a bride
might upon the eve of her wedding, she enjoyed a moment
of pleasant fear, a sense of the unknown danger to come,
and yet how could it be unknown when she had been the
bride to many such a groom.
From her bag she pulled out the solid balls of sap and
placed them on a flat stone by the fire. Taking one, she
unpeeled its leafy cover and stepped astride the flames.
The resin gasped into liquid as it landed in the fire and she
smelled its fumes fan out around her. The scent was
pungent and sweet, curling up between her thighs and
wrapping itself around her waist. A second, then third ball
of resin dropped into the embers, their smoke then
climbing into the air, smoothing over the soft curves of her
skin, cleansing and purifying as it enraptured her senses
drawing them away, and luring her deeper. Her arousal
was not sensual, for her senses were denied, but the smoke
of pine, oak and resin tended her, weaving around and
through her, soothing her flesh with its liquid touch.
Pacifying and goading, it drew her out, making her suck in
her breath in erratic spasms. Yet she was unaware and
distant, no longer linked to the heady suffering of
embodied things.
The men heard her cry out, and watched the flickering
lights of her fire warmly blanch the canopy above her. The
shadows of the over leaning boughs writhed as if alive, and
23
strained their clutching fingers into the night sky. The fire
spat and cackled to itself, and these echoes joined with
hers and leapt from tree to tree becoming more amplified
with each explosive bound.
The men still remained at a distance, and by their aching
limbs and grumbling bellies marked the hours as they
passed before the dawn. And the forest too was pensive
and hushed the normal clamour of the night. The owl was
still, the deer at rest, the nightjar tamed from the air, and
even of the smaller beasts who through the fallen debris
root and rake, there was no sign. Even the tremor of a
passing breeze slipped with silent flight and dared not
break the calm.
Dawn began and the gloaming roamed; and through the
ancient stand of trees the quickening light flickered and
filtered filling out the dark with sharp intensity, making
the blackness blacker to behold. The cinders of the fire
barely glowed and hid beneath their flaking skins,
protecting what dwindling life therein remained. And that
life was not ill-spent but warmed a brick of stone laid
across the embers, heated half the night and now charcoal
black. Anka split the oak mushrooms with her thumbs and
lengthways lay them out along the heated plate. They
would dry and harden; and ripen from bitter to sweet
purging themselves of the violence at their heart, making
them edible and less cruel to the taste. Their liquid popped
upon the stone and in warm clouds drifted into the air, and
she inhaled and tasted his breath.
For they were his, as was all life, and she felt it mingle
with her own breath and descend down inside her. It
spread through her lungs and transfused into her blood,
and she felt him move and stir within her. Timid then she
took and ate the first, tasting its foul bitterness on her
24
tongue, her throat was taut and unwilling. She clutched her
stomach as heat rose from her core, coating her arms,
breasts and neck in rivulets of sweat. The heat grasped her
by the throat and bile rose through her mouth and nose; he
purged her, forcing out her adulterated self, draining with
her vomit the equally corrupt contents of her soul.
And then the shadows began to blend into shapes, and
the formless dark that had surrounded her grew shallow
and began to blur as if some fog or mist were gently lifting;
and from this dark haze the world solidified into moss,
flower, rock and tree. The twilight was as yet liquid and
transforming, the world still unsure, and form and angle
still unclear and ill-defined. The air was thick with
moisture which had settled in the night. The dew was
sweet and cool, and gathered against her skin in a fluid
film.
And her skin glistened and became like silver in the
encroaching light as night began to evanesce and fade into
the brilliance of the day. She moved then and without
sound, her breath barely flowing, her motion smooth and
unseamed. Her feet pressed against the earth in silence,
cushioned by the fallen leaves and rich mosses that laid
her path. Her skin was prickled by the cold, and pink hues
flushed beneath her cheeks and curved beneath her
breasts as warming charms to ward away the chill. Her
eyes were distant and unconcerned, she did not look side
to side but ahead to some exclusive vision that led her
forward. And before her the air was still and nothing
moved, and what vague sunlight filtered down from the
trees above was delicate and frail. In both hands she
carried her oaken wands but they were held loosely in her
grasp, and trailed beside her in the grass threading moist
lines through the dew.
25
As she moved the earth moved also, and turned in upon

itself in speculation. The men sat and watched as the
divine awoke and became animate within itself; and they
felt the earths awakening, like some giant who, through
the millennia, is aroused by degrees infinitesimal to men.
This quickening blossomed beneath the soles of their feet
in inchoate vibrations that had begun when the land was
still young and had still not reached their fullness. Yet it
rose and fell with her pulse, as if timorous of its own
worth, and would remain beyond us til she called him
forth.
And their leader traced the air with meadowsweet and
strew the flowers in a circle around him. They would
engender life and weave the sacred into the humble fabric
of sense and reason, vitalizing what is into something
immeasurably more. Through allegory, he knew, vague
experience becomes a fuller reality.
The darkness consumed her; she was embodied yet
without perception and cast adrift within herself. The
slope of the pit descended and the blackness was complete.
Water oozed from the earths pores and eased her passage
as she slid beneath ponderous rocks that, satiated with
stillness, contemplated the deep in quiet repose. The air
was damp and scented; it ached at her passing which
flushed it into mild vortices disrupting the deep stasis of
the inaction and oblivion of the earths self-forgetting.
Ever downward and there was no end, each descending
step became immeasurable covering days and years; and
time crept forward on ragged, bleeding feet uncertain of an
inch or a yard. Within her, her heartbeat calmed and
slowed until it pulsed in a long and heavy cadence. Her
breathing too had slowed and she drew in long and heavy
breaths which filled her heart with a rich ambrosia and
26
this fed her divinity. She was light now, nursed as she was
on such sacred meat, and through the repetition of eupnoia
she became less of substance; the logos of herself
transposing into myth, into the silence of formlessness.
So it was that held within these far reaches, and deep hid
from the light of the sun which cruelly casts the world in
lucid relief, a serpentine fissure slit the earth and rock. And
its depths were warm and dank, and contrasted brutally
with the cold, visceral maze of the pit. She stooped,
running her fingers along the florid contours of the
opening; the silken stone was moist to the touch, and the
lurid air expelled from below spoke of life and of primal
purity. She wormed herself through the cleft and slithered
upon her belly; and the cavity pulsed with her bearing and
drew her in. The atmosphere was cloying and pulled at her
lungs forcing her to dredge in the air as the warmth and
humidity filled her. Yet her breathing was tranquil and
fluid becoming now an extended ebb and flow, as every
ounce of her being was focused on the perfection of this.
And percolating through the fundament, through the soul
of the world, the whisper came. It was not audible to the
senses nor could she grasp and hold it, but it entered her
with subtlety and she did not feel it slide and thrust, but
felt only her body as she rocked with its rhythm. It
overtook her and she became distant and proximate. It
reverberated within and without her until she was but a
shell, hollow and vapid; and the tone was by her consumed
as she was by the earth, sightless and silent. Musteion, the
whisper came again, and repeated on with gentle
insistence. She drifted on the word and she was enervated
becoming weak and weaker still until she lay upon the
cusp of waking and sleepfulness, spanning the chasm of
logos and mythos; and retreating still into the dream of
27
unknowing and further from the bewilderment of the

enlightened.
Close wrapped by the warm, caressing earth she laid and
yet her sepulchre of clay: of blood, flesh, and of bone
confined her to the terror fields of being. But here, in this
place, she was comforted and defended from the blaze of
mortal fear. Here she was confounding and perverse to the
fragile precepts of the material world for she was not
burdened by the strictures of possibility. She existed
freely; locked deep within the earth she suffered release.
She drained herself, and was absorbed into the nihility. She
was, here, without time or dimension, and set within the
vast emptiness of the mind of God. Oblivion was here and
nothing existed. Yet all things were potential and nascent
in form.
A dawning, golden in its hues, but as yet unthought of,
lingering below the horizon of being, soon to rise, and cast
shadow upon the deep void rupturing the stillness with the
vulgar chaos of animation. And all was displaced, turbulent
and cold; and beauty came to be and bloomed, and the
golden dawn swept into the darkness bringing light and
promethean relief to the void. At the birthing of the word,
when the void was corrupted, a pitiless rend split the
emptiness and the whole was shattered from its
perfection; and Lucifer was ascendant, and he bore with
him light and knowledge crying out I am light & life. And
he wept to see the dawning of the day and knew that he
was the bringer of that light and the first star of the day
that plunges all into bold brilliance. And she wept with
him, for she could not tolerate to see him despair so, as on
the tempest of life raged through the tranquil absence.
28
And they were wed; he and she, and they lay upon the
shores of night and day. She was the numen and led him;
and he, of higher elements, followed. They sought to salve
the fatal hurts of the whole but the light could not be cast
in shadow, nor the darkness bear the rationale of light.
Upon great mountains she led him, and weeping still he
could not conceive of the evil he had wrought, not the
thread of discord spun throughout the void. Oceans and
plains wrapt the jagged hills, and forests grew beside the
verdant fields of crystal streams. Canyons and valleys
opened up across the wold lending bleak symmetry to
natures perfections. Birds flew on rivulets of air and
animals crept from beneath the earth bewildered by such
beauty and the cold indifference that lay below. And the
sun shone and scortched the darkness, burning it from
their eyes until they feared his absence from the sky.
Lucifer, watching all, reached out in his sorrow and
grasped the burning fires of the sun and wrapped the
flames about him in mourning; and the cloak seared his
flesh that all might know him as the light, the architect of
day and the wrecker our union with the whole. He had
tempered tranquillity and rend it, mythos from logos, into
contending twins who cannot bear to part, and yet detest
each the other. He, Lucifer, flaming from the hills above
descended and created worlds enlightened by the logoi of
awareness.
And he crowned himself Epiphanes and she, Amka,
singing in her lamentations, build for him a caduceus, a
sceptre made of earth and dust, and of all things over
which he was now regent, and bid him breath upon it and
imbue this agent of himself and of the burning light with
life. She was before him and praised him as our father, and
taking carefully the caduceus from his unfortunate hands
29
she laid it there, upon the ground the ground from which it
was made and sanctified the law as it was born.
But the light was not absolute, nor was life complete and
victorious; for the deep stillness of the whole continued,
and the great silence of the void was present and not lost
in the chaos of being. It slid beneath the fringes of knowing
and concealed itself far beyond the new born world. It
crept beneath the stones and sought-out havens, residing
in depths seldom sought. It drifted over desolate moors at
night seeking sanctuary from the day, and nestled within
the roots of trees and, wrapped in the quiet earth, sought
peace and respite from the vibrant furore of the living; but
no harbour was inviolable, no bastion safe from the lights
persistent rage, but one.
At Lucifers right hand the Sceptre rested and, child-like
in its pleasures, knew nothing but the light and loved it for
it was made by his hands. And coming as a shadow into the
light the Oneness bled into the Sceptres heart and found
refuge there in the heart of man. There, hid by the
burnished light, the Stillness cradled in the soul of the law,
and contrasted with peace and silence the havoc of the
enlightened world.
The Sceptre felt the darkness within itself, felt the primal
peace the rested at its heart and could not be at peace.
Heavy, the Sceptre roamed the land and hills in solitude
burdened by the weight of the Oneness at its heart. It was
named for the earth & as Adam it walked amongst the
animals and trees, and felt as a kin to them, each sharing
with him mortality. But the void within him would not let
him be and he could not rest fully in the world or fully be,
in the silent hours of the night, whole. Yet Lucifer, the
father and author of the light, propelled Adam forward and
lost him in the spectacles of the day, and turned his head
30
from introspection showing him all the kingdoms of the

world laid out before him. Lucifer, the light, promised him
all the fruits of this temporal life and the knowledge of all
things. And the father loved the son for the son was crafted
in the image of the word and the light, and composed of
logos and the anima of being. Yet neither the father nor the
son knew of the mythos, of the void, for she was set deep at
the core of Adam and, in silence, made a trinity of daimons
within him.
And Anka sat beside Lucifer and was enthroned upon the
mountain tops. She watched as this folly unfurled before
her feet; and all the while Lucifer wept and rent his hair.
He washed his limbs and face in dust and sang a song of
grief that flowed like water through the world, saturating
and engulfing, til no place remained untouched by his
regret. The earth shuddered to hear such sorrow and was
diminished by the Fathers lamentations, shining less into
the void and dimmed. Yet Anka soothed him and talked of
Adam, the sceptre of Creation, and of his guile and
yearning to return. And how this child of light might undo
the harm his father had wrought unto the void.
And so the deep stillness of the void was secreted away,
and lay hid within the core of Adam, the sceptre of the
light, and within the silent places of the earth. Nestled
there, and cloaked by luminescence, the oneness was
forgot by all cept in the yearnings of the quiet self, or
gleaned upon the cusp of dawn when shadows harbour
peace, and wonder still casts her spell on hapless Man. And
Anka was with peace, and she crafted from the air songs
that hummed and sighed, and spoke of the silence at Mans
core in soundless notes that played throughout creation.
The songs sang above hearing and did not start nor end
but played eternally; caught by lesser creatures the songs
31
brought solace, though to Adam, to Man in his enlightened

state, the songs were silent, and so in silence Man found
true fear. Man shunned the silence in terror and turned
away from the stillness in anxiety and sought company
were the songs of unknowing could not seduce or beguile,
nor speak to the stillness of the heart. And the songs were
blessed and devoted to God, and called by Him Anathema
which became a name of evil intent, and Man cursed the
name and spat upon its passing.
Lucifer now, in weeds of golden light, held his hand
above mankind and washed with tears creation, anointing
and sanctifying he brought them in to him, into the fold of
his keeping. And in bitterness he loved them and would
walk amongst them crying out, ravening in his
earnestness, and most startling to behold. Sitting with
them he called upon the Son, Adam, and he was anointed
before Man as the most high, and Paraclete to whom all
must in sorrow turn and, requesting sufferance, seek to
nurture faith and deliverance from the void. For in the
void, in the depths of stillness, Man would be lost: far from
the reaches of the light, distant from the heat of life, parted
from the peal of cultic thunder that harrows at the hearts
of frightened men.
Unknown and unseen a cancer formed and grew in the
new born world. It pervaded the light and was birthed
from it, and cast from out its burning midst a more fearful
bane than was ever before conceived. It sucked at the soul
of Man, and of all living things, and clothed all life in regret;
it moved unceasingly upon the earth and, taking Adam by
the hand, it was to him wedded and became his quiet
companion until death. Its titanic breadth encompassed all,
even the earth crumbled at its touch and light itself was
harnessed to its sway. Lucifer, witless and undone, staved
32
the creeping surge from his imperial heights but failed

Mankind who fell bereft of hope beneath the sweep of
indifferent Time.
Adam, ashen, fled the fields where life and death appear
in the pastoral hues of Nature, and serve only to reflect
Mans brutish self; calling to mankind of prophecy, he
builded sanctuaries from out the soil to keep him, and
tamed the songs of unknowing in his heart, songs that
spake of telos and form , til they were not heard and only
the old did time then terrorise.
Deep beneath the waiting earth Anka slept on. The cool
braids of rock and root had formed around her, binding
her in solicitous arms to the stuff of being, divesting and
loosing until she was but soul; and her soul was free to slip
from the recesses of stark perception, birthed into the
serenity of abeyance. She was suspended, inanimate, and
without time; the rush of headlong vital light was still to
her and she was removed. The knowledge of gods and
men, clutching measuring rod and astrolabe, staggered
feebly on pursuant, though of them she was now oblivious
and to their rote of rumbling mockery that steered men
clear of presentment, and gave them solid earth on which
to stand.
Her skin fell away, unfurling from her core in frail curls,
sagging flaccid against the moist stone; her bones,
disjointed now and mildewed, edged deeper into the
cavern and melted into the dust of their former selves. The
soft soils complied and drew them in, buried them deep
until the infusion of her was complete and the Carmen et
error she had been in life was restored from exile to the
cipher of non-being.
33
And she, her perfect self, rose up, wending through the
brackish night of cloying earth, she twisted through the
pathways dug by small and venal hands; hands that pulled
the sodden soils and rotten barks, that, in breaking nail
and claw, dug and pawed to find the light. The earth then
turned from rock and massive stone that formed at the
centre of the world and became the broken shifting silt of
living clay. Here the curled fingers of living trees and
plants reached their deepest and held onto the land
dredging up the dead with eager relish, siphoning at the
wet ground in greedy indifference. Here life began, and
Anka wove, ever ascending, passing through the mesh of
life, the elan vital of created things, and on into the
scorching rays light.
Beneath the turf sod she lingered, here at the outer rim
of the world she stayed sealed by layers of dust beneath
the lands fragile skin. She felt the sun and its heated rays
pummel at the withered soils; searing away the Earths
drapery, burning downward in search of darkness, seeping
through the cracks and fissures, seeking out her sheltered
places and dousing what lay protected there with a wash
of bold light; it strove to extinguish, to weather away the
carapace of the land with a tireless tide and, once
shattered, char the soft flesh that huddled low.
The light was indefatigable, persistent, and never waned
in its intensity. It burned with all the fury of mankind; its
brilliance, lustrous and flared, spoke of mens selfappreciation, as it blazed upon the land in lambent
tyranny. Though below, in the most antique sanctuaries of
the earth, in the deep cuts and punctures of the ground, in
cisterns well hid, silence still reigned despite the babble
from above. Anka, now well steeped in this substantive
death, the death of all things eternal and lifeless, bled forth
34
from the land and was expirated thus into the repressive
air of begotten things.
And the light thundered down upon her in clamorous
waves, each undulating swell roiling mercilessly from the
skies. A great splendour, illuminating and sweeping
through the lands, bathing all in its yield; wresting contour,
aspect and pattern from the bleakness of obscurity, adding
dimension. The light became perception in this world, and
thrashed around, a whipping rod above, below and about
her. The light was a flowing, a movement unstoppable that
thrived on its own momentum, blending and sapping from
the heavens into all things pierced by its ray. Light itself
was imbued with light and each living thing breathed with
the breath of light, respiring the very stuff of their defined
god.
Yet she rose up unharmed, the light passing through and
around her but not touching or impairing her. It could not
reach the darkness within her nor blemish the serenity
that was her. She was secure and was not afraid nor timid,
for the Stillness kept her, the Oneness held her, the Void
tended her; she was cradled in the depths of this formless
triumvirate, and though the light was hurled against her
she was oblivious, tranquil yet in the dream of unknowing.
Hankering wisps of ancient silence gently glided over the
land; fascinated by her they trailed behind and up, a dark
catenation in sequence, binding themselves to her. They
were elusive, no more than flickering shadows half-seen,
umbra that drift through the darkness of the night. And
upwards together, she and they, upwards drawn; mixing
and turning infiltrating each the other until they were
blended to a single compound, becoming an single element
and unique. She was thus annihilated, the bright
separation of creation and extinction was closed before
35
her and she was neither born nor dead. The suns of the
world burned around her and the cold spectrum of
darkness and light fanned out across the skies in
impotence and futility: an empyrean beacon of Lucifers
offense.
And below, in devolving turmoil, creation ran lurching
into life, bounding from one generation into the next:
progressive, awake, and enlightened. The young and new
made, born in blood and bitterness, were soon distorted
and came to relish life. And the light became synonymous,
cloaking itself in vestments of dark stillness until things
created and sophic were believed to be all, and things
mythic and insubstantial were believed to be nought.
They, living things, were perplexed and acclaimed the
shimmering reflections before their eyes as truth, not
knowing the world beyond their mean hollow. They were
proud of their achievements, lauding praise upon
themselves and setting themselves apart and above; they
lavished fine decrees on their laurel heads, and coveted
and prized meagre things above all else. They were Helots,
grubbing in the Earth for pittance and proffering half their
fortune to Lucifer, the god of substance. All this, in their
ignorance, they called civilisation, when in fact it was part
of their slavery.
Anka, now, long suspended, adrift above the Earth, being
and non-being. She was as her will would have her be for
she was unbound and indifferent. She passed upon the
world, drifting through the seas and forests; mountains,
rain, and men; all things she passed and no thing impeded
her or diverted her whim. She was no more confined nor
lost to herself, and in the vast stillness of her there was
restored a deeper nescience, the peace of unknowing.
36
And now, seated in the morning sunlight and rimmed

with flowers, purple blooming violets hidden in their
grassy homes, the men who had waited through a day
lulled and soporific, dulled by peace and mild, continued
waiting on. The sun was soft in the sky and gently
descended from the clouds soothing the day and resting
easily upon them; and they drifted, borne along and
golden. The grass too was warm and smelling sweet, it
hummed in the air with incense: fragrant and richly
cleansing, it pacified giving those blessed by its company
few reasons or cause to harry the hour. It was sickly on the
tongue, filling the air with a halcyon balm and, wreathed
through with dust and light, making the day to drowse.
And together the green was deep and smelled of sodden
soils, warm and dripping pleasantly; and afar, beyond an
arms reach, leaves moved and tripped upon the breezes
blown by shiftless winds. They sounded in the stillness
meek and coy, uncertain of their way and having no way or
path to find. An owl moaned, wings hefting the heavy air in
mournful repetitions, as she scoured the woodland floor.
Heart of the woodland soul, the owl circled in the waning
air, resting now upon branches rich with decadence;
creeping ivies trembled briefly holding tighter still as she
wove from bough to leafy bough, her flapping wings quiet,
still despite their easy chore.
Tumbling brooks, a rill half submerged in mosses,
banked by ferns cascading to the waters and bending
vainly towards their own delight, poured from out the
rocky floor and soothing weary away with happy tunes.
Sunlight too was descended, falls of brilliant light upon the
land; adored verdure basking and absorbing every golden
drop, a pure stream of divine nectar pouring from that
distant god, Paternoster, and source of all life.
37
The owl hoo-ed as the sun came to rest beside her; her
plumage, crisp white, plumed at the touch of sun, rimming
her in hazy crowns of light; hallowed she, a regal acolyte.
He, who most revered the day and leader to the waiting
men, arose from his seat and, meadowsweet twisted
beneath his palm, strode forth into the dawning night. The
night, dark ivy roaming through the day, with gentle
osmosis, drew him in absorbing and digesting until he was
vanished, a thing gone from sight and no more seen. His
men did neither move nor show concern. He was life, a
well of deepest green; a man of dust and earth and light.
They hunkered down; it would not be long now.
The dark of the forest blinded him but he could see by
the stars and the warm residual light the earth kept hid to
bide the long silence of the night. Insects collected in the
air and whirred in their delight, unseen and unmarked, but
he was happy for their minute songs that kept him
company. The fox waited, a cowering vixen as yet
uncubbed, sloping through the grass. She brushed his
knees mewling and keening, urging his steps forward but
she would not follow him, a step or two perhaps but
nothing more. And the owl, now full and white against the
forest dim, flowed upon the air as if by some goddess sent,
worried from tree to tree. The nightjar too complained,
milk upon its tiny bill, swooping from above, descending to
him and swiftly on, back into the livid sky. She would not
rest this night, or any other night, until the day returned.
And so, despite the lightless world and distant friends,
he was not alone. The entrance to the pit was not too far
and he knew she would wait for him, but he must search
her out.
38
By the deep sap that had led Anka into the earth, that had
secreted her from the illusory light of Knowing and into
the more peaceful precincts where Angels sat in dark
silence and abeyance; in this place, in regions held yet by
the brothers Minos and Rhadmon, the Angel Lacrimosa,
never leaving this site, this entry from the profound earth
that dwindles then into light, sat and marked the aeons
passing by the affliction of the moon which, more than any
other woe, was cast cruel companion to the sun; even the
nights dark empery was defaced by her, refracting an
aberrant gloom upon the lands far below her mocking seat.
Here he came, silent by the cave, the warm breath of the
summer air still light upon his skin; and with gentle smiles
he looked kindly down upon the somnolent meadow
enclosed about by ferns and harsh forest trees that lilt and
trail their hairs onto the verge. Dark clouds reamed by
unhappy winds skim in widening circles above the woody
dome and harrow at the distant stars, scattering in their
silver vines of dappled light across the dark Cimmerian
world below, that never should the bright sun look down
on them.
Smooth stillness meets him there, unearthly yet more
natural than any other sense in his long life. The mouth of
the pit beckons before him, and he feels the first
quickening of fear, but it is not fear more a grave
anticipation, an horrific charm spelled by the deepest
reaches. The blackness spread before him, a cool draught
of air rose from the earths depths, the land exhaling some
ancient air from a place more lifeless, more tenebrous,
more still than he could ever recognise, and yet it lured
him in despite his primal reflex.
Deeper still his soul revived, awakening from a sleep long
slumbered since that antique dawn when life was made, it
39
mixed within him clouding his disquiet with faint

recognition, and so the light dimmed within him. The
world was now silent, all breath and life suspended; the
meadowsweet loosed in his fingers and began to untwine,
the ivy coiled tighter about his wrist. He looked once upon
the stars and died.
And there Anka met him, and after she had raised him
into death, into the darkness of absolute peace, there she
tended him with revelations. She spoke to him kindly,
relieving him of care and easing away the life that so
hounded men until the palliating effects of her words
began to cloak the light that blinded him and dimmed the
movement in his breast; and made him kin to easeful
Death* and to slumber.
To slumber still whilst all about him the roar and clack of
a universe enamoured of itself crooned unto to its own
image reflected in the wells of conceit. To sleep and shirk
debility, where constraining fibres of the flesh are forced
away and we breathe free for the first time, a true
inhalation drawing in the winds unto the last. To know the
end of mean things and view greatness poised upon the lip
of known ephemera, which glides away beneath our feet
til we are left alone, a still and fixed point in the expanse of
this serenity.
There she kept him safe, locked deep in the heart of
the world, and mumming as if to a child she held him fast
until she felt that her arms must break, and still she did not
let him go. Slowly, as the deep wells of quiet hummed the
eternal song, she brought him back that he might hear, and
placed her hand upon his unbeating heart. She breathed
into him, placing her lips against his, and exhaling. Her
breath was soft and deep, and she felt his chest expand
with the life of her. Her hand began to feel beneath his skin
40
a movement; she breathed again, harder now and kissed

his eyes awake. His skin was cold, snake like and dry, and
she brushed her hand across his face feeling the warmth
that rose from out his timid core. His pallid skin dulled, its
death sheen becoming dun, and red lines across his lips
forced his blood to fire.
He drew breath and choked, weeping like a child at the
new life which invaded him, ripping him form the stillness
and hurling him into the day. Like a child forced from its
mothers womb, he bled into the cold living world and
wailed at the terror of it all, clutching her tighter to him,
sobbing at her breast.
Crooning she, wakeful of him, rocked back and forth until
she felt him sleep, that blissful imitation of death, and
hummed a waiting in the darkness until he returned to her.
How sad the world to forget such simple joy. She held
to him and felt the worth of love in this embrace; so
antique and primal to our kind, this enfolding of another to
ourselves. So Human and unlike our ragged race who
break the bones of others with joyful ease, and then return
childlike and search for comfort in embraces. Yet this
ancient comfort woos us still and is not disdained even by
the broken warrior, who, dressed in battle gore, calls upon
his enemy with dying breaths to take his hand and share
the moments of his passing.
A sad and mournful regret. She kissed his eyes, and
rocking to and fro, whispered to him of things to come. The
darkness kept them both, and she did not know if it were
night or day for time had stopped and the world was now
just in them.
Three days she sat and held him. Three days and nights
were the earth returned to her, her soul becoming
wrapped in dirt, and grim muck dripped from the
41
overhanging eaves coating her face, legs and arms in living

clay.
Her breast rose in bird-like flutters as lousy air drifted
down from the cavern walls, wisping through the dank
night of the cavern. Her feet were lain in mud from calf to
heel, and slow moving creatures from the loam drained up
and out across her thighs, and withered from the touch of
her warm skin. A bat, flapping in the beams above her
head, twisted knots into her hair and clawing at her eyes,
screeched its murky song which echoed from the walls.
Another answered in happy rhyme, the twain dueting; and
sadly away their notes floated unheard by any but Anka,
who rasped her ears to stop that awful sound.
Her soul compressed within this murky clay, her heart
thrummed and life was again in her. She wound her fingers
tight into his curls and pulled his face to hers in
consternation. The pain of this rebirth crucified her, she
was stunned and dumb, and could not move nor speak
except to wail in silence; her tender throat gasping at the
unclean air of life, her breasts slick with sweat and tears as
the Light clawed her back into its jealous view, dragging
and hauling on her slim resistance until she was again
birthed, with all the pain and misery of living things.
He awoke at the entrance to the cave and she beside him.
The green light of trees and tender sun softly girt the
world in a peaceful warmth that lulled him as he came
awake. The air was rich and, inhaling, his chest heaved
with pleasure at this aroma flushing out the stale of night
with florid value, drawing in the dawn and summer bright.
A wind moved, stirring through the grass and raised up
dandelion heads from their sad decline. A white moss of
42
seedlings trembled on this breeze and drifted on their

many journeys; each indecisive capsule wandering hither
and back, drifting upwards and winding through invisible
mazes, flowing on alone yet surrounded by their kin to
some expectant shore, where life would bound again from
out the land. A squirrel rushed across the entrance of the
cave, his copper lines more autumnal than the greens
about him, and upon the wild chest nut that stood aged by;
skirting up the heavy bark and across the lengthy boughs
the fleet-foot ran vanishing into the bleached light above
and was gone.
She stirred beside him, rousing from her Dream of
Unknowing into the precincts of sense and its illusions. Her
eyes were stung and could not comprehend of all they saw;
the intensity of shape, colour, and contour wove unsteadily
before her half illusory, half corporeal. Half lost to us
through conceptions formed on so limited a view. She
scrunched the earth in her hands, her nails scooping up the
debris in cool yet scathing spoons, and tested its veracity:
squeezing. Squeezing til the pain confirmed her living self
and any doubt her mind may have of this state was quickly
pinched away.
She turned upon her side and saw him as he lay bound in
morning rays of sunshine, robed in living air his sides rose
and fell with breath, sweat pooled about his throat and
chest, his muscles still 'cept for the pulsing at his temples
where his life flowed and beat upon his browse in steady
time. He was turned away, staring from the caverns mouth
into the forests deep; there whatever he now saw made
him sigh, she watched him rise and fall with this
exhalation, and saw the tears flow across his cheeks and
fall upon the soil beneath his hair. She touched his side but
he would not look at her; she whispered to him, calling his
43
name softly but he did not answer her, but simply stared
into the green wildwood as if seeking something lost. The
sun moved quietly across the sky and time with it wended
on slowly turning the hours of day behind it.
He could not turn to her or countenance the things that
she had said. His limbs were heavy, limbs of clay, and he
could not bear to move nor look around. He locked within
himself her revelations, her songs of life and how we came
to be; he mined a deep and glorious pit tooled by sorrow
and delved the truths of knowing deep beneath the earth
of conscious mind.
That man, nay all of life, was but misfortune, the folly of
mischance that wrought the world, yet left the soul of God
desolate was far too much for him to bare. In burying so
the awful seeds of man he wept for how could this life of
beauty be catastrophe, how could the world of men be
undivine? He looked into the world from his earthen bed,
he looked to the flowers and trees and saw it was perfect
and could not twin with this of so much evil, nor believe
within himself the Devil as a friend and maker.
Anka lay beside him still. His naked form, as hers,
silhouetted in warm rays and shone a golden hue,
hallowed in Grecian light, surreal and masterful, a thing of
most imperfect human beauty. Youthful tones sculptured
his chest and abdomen, soil and earth underscored his
proportion in pure delicacy, and leaves and bark adorned
his hair which curled down in dark golden loops beside her
face. His scent was heavy and she inhaled him, musk and
ancient clay, and felt herself contract from such carnal
flavours. Her breath grew shallow, and the light around
her seemed to grow, expanding of itself, engulfing her. Her
heart was rapid in her breast, pulsing in her ears and
heavy; all noise around her dimmed, the only sound
44
cocooned within her chest drumming out a hoary rhythm

in desperate time. Her lips parted for breath, yet still the
air was not enough. A weight was on her chest and she
drew in deep and hard pushing the air to the furthest
reaches of herself. She gasped, her lungs exhaling hard,
pushing the air across the tripping leaves, across the
matted aurilion hair, across his cheek rouged by tears, on
to lips he parted to inhale.
They parted, filled with the other and weakened in the
twilight hours. She slept then as a child and he with her,
drowsing 'neath the pleasant arch of sleep they rested rich
in their serenity. Cool dusk was come and a light chill
brought them from their slumbers. She watched him wake
there upon the sonorous grass and held his hands against
her, smoothing back the sleep 'til he was woken and
reaching back for her. A pale moon was o'erhanging,
flowing on the trees above their heads like water, soft and
rippling making the forest less consistent, less mundane;
as if some magic was about and oozing from the heavens in
silver draughts of light than rend the world we see to
glimpse the reality behind. So she felt; the esse of the
world was now a poor imitation of a greater truth, a
greater thing unseen.
They walked through the night. Their clothes were wet
from dew, and dawn was come as the birds now chucked
and whistled in their leaves. It was a beautiful song and his
heart was lifted by its sound. He walked ahead and Anka
behind; he treading softly finding ways that would not
bruise her feet or cause her to stumble in the unclear light.
A hind walked beside them, her head gently turned
towards the forests rim as she scented open grass and a
vision clear across the gentle hills. Two great oaks were
standing high, a sacred gate towering above the land a
45
thousand years old each and more, they had lived as long
as hills and streams yet they were living souls who
watched the world and saw what takes an age to see.
There men waited and smiled to see their leader close
before them. They wrapped him in bagging of some
fiberous kind, rough and unkind to the skin, and led down
across the fields rejoicing in their cries. A crown of nettle
was placed upon his head and thorny briars were laid
beneath his feet as strong arms lifted him and held him as
a brother.
Rank water was joyously offered and stale bread served
that he might eat to give him strength and celebrate his
glad return. At the village women came before him
weeping with relief and happy glees, dead flowers were
thrown before his way to guide him to the home where
he'd been born. They laid him in a cot filled with stones
and cutting plants, and covered him in lousy skins peeled
from long dead beasts that lay bloated in the fields and
stank of death. They bid him rest a day whilst young ones
ran between his knees and youths clamoured without his
door, banging on their drums and stamping feet.
The joy of his return thrilled the village and he was
offered wedding gowns and gifts with which to decorate
his bridal home. A new killed pig was hauled before the
fire and fowl were carried down and boiled in sweet
smelling soups, thick with onions and fat dry beans. Old
men, scared by time and war, sat beside the flames their
sheep skins draped across their knees and talked of older
times; their wives, now plump and bent, washed with sand
their wooden plates, and children slept curled in gentle
balls against their mothers feet. The young men had
brought down new hay, sweet and crisp, and laid it out
across the ground where now the ladies sat, their colourful
46
skirts splayed across their knees and tall boots set aside.
And in all this the fields were empty and shied away from
working hands; the sun was warm and life was cherished,
and free from rigorous moil.
He sat upon the fallen leaves and wept to hear such joy.
He watched them play and sing and dance, and could not
find it in himself to join their happy song. His home was
decorated with twigs and leave with rocks upon his bed,
these to remind him of his place on earth, to bring back to
them from amongst the gods.
They sang of his return, a Grecian triumph from out the
netherworld he came heroic (his '...brow in sunlight
glow'd'*) yet like some Euridyce she could not return; his
wife now never to return. She was captured by revelation
and lived in mists where men were sore afraid to go; she
would not dance with children at her knees nor slumber by
the fire with friends and kin, nor would she dress her
sisters for their wedding or weep beside their open graves
in death. She was lost to them and now a thing of wonder;
a sylvan witch whose words were tender consolation, a
grey foreboding who spoke of dreadful things. Her
husband, he must span this anagogical divide and deliver
to the people of her soul.
She sat beside a lake of clear water and listened to the
quiet. The hind was beside her and had walked with her
the many hours since he had gone. The forest was cool, the
air moist and damp, and tasted of the waters at her feet.
The sun was warm in the sky and golden light fell in slivers
upon the land. Across from her a small house was built of
wood, with wooden shingles on the roof. The windows
were coloured a soft green and the paint was slipping from
the sills for so many years they'd seen since they were
47
made. The door was thick and bowed but likewise faded in
blue tones, and gently greying like a winter sky. The house
had but one room, for what need she to live behind closed
doors? She was a child of Nature and at home, and far
removed from the cruelty of men.
She rested, her hand gently laying on the hinds
drowsing head. Her golden hair, in boyish curls and tied
about in stalks of rye, her spring green skirts draped
across her knees, her soft blue sleeves close about her
wrists and collar loose of shallow beryl, parted to reveal
her neck and shoulders. Green woodpeckers, their red
heads bright, slipped across the pond, and blue kingfishers
danced on fragile stems, their armour bright in flashing
sun and then they were away. The serenity of her home
was pervasive, the silence replicated from the void of
ancient memory. No more the shallow glare of hollow
things preside for here the peace of god throughout the
wild unfolds.
That men would come to find her and quest her aid,
that kings might her implore and princes beckon to ask of
her a kindness, and bring with them sweet vows and casks
of gold or threats they knew would never do her harm;
that all these things may come was not her care. She gave
no fleeting glance to trifle things. For in the coming spring
he would come and live with her, and share the world
away from all these things; for in the spring she would a
woman be, fourteen the age that she may take him in.
She smiled, her eyes darting bright; a home for her and
Jakub in this place kept her heart warm as darkness came
to hail the day as done.
A hare, awkward in his long limbs, limped across the
sandy banks towards the water, scenting the air and ever
watchful in his ways. She watched him graze the water
48
with his snout and wondered at such delicacy. Butchers

broom, with low spiny leaves, grew beside the rocks on
which she sat, and she collected roots and took them to a
table near her door. The root would soothe many pains,
and mixed with wine was well said to heal the stomach
and was often used, or so her mother had once said; and
beside the broom Ploughman's Spikarnard grew with
yellow flowers half hid beneath the bud. She collected the
leaves which cured cuts and hurts, and may rid a house of
pests, or so she had been told.
It was, she had been told since birth, that deep within
the essence of any living thing the primordial stillness
slumbered on: cleansing, whole and pure. A single drop of
absence that lingered still; a strength out from which the
Awen flowed, from which the grains of magic trill along the
sacred wand, from which love, beauty, harmony break into
the souls of men, and the healing aspects of such simple
plants she gathered now gain source.
On the 13th day of April a child was born to Anka, and

breathed the sweet spring air rich with scents of life and
promise. Women crowded round the girl and washed her
in the silent streams, anointing her with the lands rich soil,
and dressed her in wild daffodils. They frilled about her
bed with snowdrops whose breath would mellow make
her rest in peaceful slumbers. A light mist hovered in the
trees where those long dead were gathered and calling
softly to the child and mother that they were come, and
there was nothing of which to be afraid.
An Adder, sleek and long, rested in the crib beside her
sleeping form and lapped its tongue into the air as if to
49
taste of threats or what harm may come. And herbs were

placed about the wooden beams and hung warmly,
softening the arch of blackened timber where cooking pots
and ladles o'er reached the little room below whereat the
child now slept.
A window stood ajar and little lights ascended from the
lake and sparkled in their patterns on the sills, and music
played far off amongst the rushes where napping coots and
tiny finches render what they may.
Anka rested too, her pains subsiding with the dwale,
and hemlock root was steeping by the fire. She watched
the fire burning: of how it swam against the blackened
heath and wove in rivulets against the stone, of how its
warmth arose and slowly circled through the air in waves
to gently maunder where it wilt, and lighting now upon the
rose, upon the cheek of her sleeping child.
And he was seated by, long limbs stretched out before
the grate and head lain against the chimney pile. His beard
was tinged with orange from the flames, and broad bands
of leather wrapped his hair above the nape. His back was
turned, his breathing slow and deep, his eyes closed but he
was neither sleeping nor oblivious to their child; he even,
she was sure, noted how she watched him in the now.
She closed her eyes and stilled her breath, and in the
room the air was quite 'cept for the whisper of the babys
breath. Soon, she was gone and with Jakub descending
deep beneath the land, far above where ages reach to the
very rim of waking. And thence she tumbled over into
sleep and into silence and into peace, and into the very
precincts of unknowing.
50
1. John Keats: Ode to a nightingale

2. Alfred Tennyson: The Lady of Shalot
51
Conclusion
Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil
The shadows that float o'er Eternity's vale;
Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love,
That will hail their blest advent to regions above.
For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway,
And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.
Hast thou loved?Then depart from these regions of hate,
And in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate.
I offer a calm habitation to thee.
Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
(A Dialogue) P.B. Shelley
___________________________________________________
The Second Tale
52
Jakub and the Green Man
This story is based on the infamous Carpathian

Witches Jakub and Anka Pohansky. Husband and wife,
they lived in the hamlet of Osikovce on the edge of a
vast stretch of primeval forest. Anka died at a very
young age two days after child birth, but Jakub lived on
in virtual isolation for forty years until the summer of
1600 when he was hung for murder, witchcraft and
conspiring with the Devil. Strangely, despite what you
are about to read, Jakub and Anka have remained
fondly in the hearts of local people and despite her
young years, it is Anka, they say, who was the true
Witch of Osikovce
53
The Legend as it is told

The forests are deep here, and crossing them can often
be a perilous undertaking; it used to be said that to cross
the great forests of the Carpathian Mountains you needed
to be mad or desperate. The mountains are not high, not
here at least, but roll in broad bands from the Hungarian
plains in the south, to Moravia in the north. Madmen,
priests, and brigands roam the wooded margins preying
on those foolish enough to walk alone. Some begging for
alms and charity, others brutal enough to kill; and legend
held that far worse lingered deeper still.
Fables often dull the truth, and in the mountains no one
can ever be sure of the tales that trickle down with a
travellers passing; a man in need of a meal and a warm bed
with gild any lily. But mothers chided their children to
steer clear of the wild depths, keeping them to the shallow
woodlands closer to home; and farmers are never men at
home amongst the wildwood and its muggy confines.
Hunters, foresters and poachers were the exception, of
course, and they paid for their ale with tales of what they'd
seen. For most people the stories were taken with a grain
of salt as a good yarn on cold nights, but as most had never
seen what lands lay beyond the forests they could never
tell the truth of it. The forests were vast you see, and
stretched from the Danube to as far as anyone knew, but
the end, when it came, was long beyond civilisation.
The Carpathian hills were the great arc, the spine, of
Europe and along its length the arteries of a continent ran.
The Turks ploughed their way along its length burning,
killing, and pillaging; they razed entire towns building
shrines in human bones, they impaled the weak and stole
away the young to raise as Muslim swords, who would in
54
turn rage back along the hills to sack their own lands. They
were a land of great wealth and beauty; but they were hard
to navigate, labyrinth-like and lay for the most part
undiscovered.
Yet here, in the quiet alcove of this tale, the Turks were
seldom seen and this region remained unnoticed.
Here most villages hugged the hills and low valleys
protected from the harsh winters by the vast trees that
surrounded them; forests which, despite their dangers,
provided an abundance on which the villagers depended.
Bears and wolves roamed the higher hills, and although
these creatures were seldom seen they had woven their
existence into the very fabric of local folk lore. Wild boar
and graceful antelope slipped like shadows through the
woody fringes providing meat aplenty after the hunt; it
took a brave man however to face an angry female down
when her young were close at hand.
Wild garlic was collected in spring and forest
mushrooms in early autumn. Summer was a time of plenty
when fields burned yellow with wheat and rape; winter
however, came dark and cold, and was a time when plum
brandy warmed the bones of old and young alike, and
death took of these in equal measure.
In the December of 1599, the time in which this tale is
set, the winter came hard. Snow had come from the
mountains to the north in great flurries as early as
September, and by the weeks before Christmas lay two
metres deep across much of Cactice. Rivers froze and
fishermen could cut the fish in ice blocks from pools and
brecks; even the great Vah did not flow for several months.
And it came early the winter that year, weeks before the
turn of autumn, when the corn was yet still in the fields; it
came with a suddenness too, from one day to the next, so
55
that the lambs died and the fruits could not be saved.
Winter came as an onslaught and spread across the hills its
cruel hand.
That summer died such a short and quick death is a
wonder. There is a saying now in this region; 'a cock may
crow in summer today, but fail beneath the snow
tomorrow'. It means that we should not take tomorrows
blessings for granted, or be surprised when fate does the
unexpected.
In the villages people crowded around fire pits, their
wool cloaks pulled tight about them in an effort to keep out
the cold which seemed to creep in through every gap in the
walls, doors and windows. Even the forests knew of the
hard burning cold, for in the icy silence mighty cracks
could be heard to echo through the stillness, the sap of
ancient trees freezing to expand and rip through gnarled
trunks. Fruit was left unpicked as it froze upon the trees,
and whole fields of wheat sagged beneath crusted ice to be
lost. Grain stores where empty, root cellars bare, and new
borns were left to die for lack of food, mothers
preferring to feed what little they had to those who might
survive.
It was said that several hours ride to the east a shepherd
had found his entire flock frozen as still as stones, their
eyes and mouths still open where the ice had sealed them
in an eternal, uncomprehending gaze. The shepherd had
wept to see all he possessed so quickly taken away, and
died himself not two days later, hung from a hempen cord
and sad despair. And though winter had brought many a
poor family to the edge of starvation, it had also brought
added perils beyond the cold.
56
Packs of half-starved wolves began to roam beyond their

usual winter ranges with sightings becoming more
frequent. This set man and wolf against the other for what
little could be hunted down in that icy wilderness; and it
was even rumoured that in some of the more isolated
settlements the dead were spitted and roasted before the
priest could make his way to save the corpse for burial.
The truth of this was never revealed; but one of the
villages oft mentioned vanished at the dawn of spring
leaving nothing behind them, the priest himself said to
have been their final meal.
But such are the legends of Cactice: half-truth, half
fireside fable. Yet one thing that was fact that winter was
the awful suffering which the gods chose to inflict upon the
woodland people. Even to this day it is well remembered,
and a weathered stone cross still stands on the site of a
burial pit where three entire villages are interred.
The stories are numerous and there are far too many
connected with this part of the Carpathian Mountains for
tired story tellers to relate, and too much wine has
changed the tales that they have now become the stuff of
children's bedtime fables. But, of course, they are all
overshadowed today by the crimes of the Countess of
Cachtice, Elisabeth Bathory; whose fame as times most
prolific murderess casts a long shadow.
But the story of the Witch of Osikovce; well, that's a tale
that never changes, nor probably ever will. What happened
in the village of Osikovce, a half days march from the
towers of Cactice castle, is sometimes said to be a story
made to frighten the wee ones, and yet by others sworn to
be a dreadful truth brought about by human arrogance.
There is no evidence left now, and only a few bother to
57
visit the grave where the witch was buried, and fewer still
to the site of the house where he and his wife lived.
The story is of a man named Jakub, who lived alone in the
village of Osikovce. The stories say he was a good man, but
seldom socialised since the death of his wife Anka. She is
seldom spoken of today and, I'm told, no one cared to
speak her name even when she lived. She died aged 16,
and did not receive a church burial, no one I have met
blames the church but simply say she did not want to leave
the green, and had made Jakub vow to keep her home. The
village also preferred it this way. It's said that Jakub lay her
beneath a wild walnut tree which is still living today
thanks, some say, to Anka's care.
She was the real witch others claim, and Jakub just an
innocent. It was her, not him, that brought the cold, and
through her that dire winter that the Devil himself walked
the hills, and at Osikovce made his rest.
Whatever the truth is, what is sure is this: The hills and
the people have never been the same since that winter.
The churches are empty, and have been for four hundred
years; the graveyards untended with few new burials. The
people are quite, reserved and kind, and go about their
business as they always have. There is no industry here,
work is slight, and farming still sustains the majority.
Herbalism is a common practice with people travelling far
to consult and buy remedies villagers here take for
granted.
The forest today is vast and still, and provides timber for
building and wood for the fires of most homes. Life is slow
and close to the land. The roads are quiet, and up to the
hamlet of Oskicovce quieter still - where you can go
several days and not see a soul. The trees hide the hamlet
58
as they did in Jakub's day, and you need to know it's there
to find it. The foresters road that leaves the last house
behind, still looks impassable until you part the elders that
bar your way, and head up the small avenue of oaks that
takes you into the cool heart of the forest.
Not far, perhaps an hour's walk, you come to a place
where the oaks are gentle with age, and there is small
shrine built of rotten timbers. It leans with antiquity and
barely stands; people said years ago it was soon to fall but
still it continues. It's often damp and home to mice and
owls, and a place not favoured by people - except for some
-; and will not be there for many years more...perhaps.
There is a stool in the shrine, a half log cut by hand, with
rough edges and far from comfortable. It's the only dry
place to sit and from there you can look out of the
shattered door, across a narrow del, to the old trees and
beyond to Osikovce. I met the Green man there, and this is
the tale he told..
59
Osikovce, Summer 1599

Warm breezes still caressed the verdant fields and the
sun hung heavily in the sky. The path that wound its way
up to Osicovce was parched, cracked and dry as no rain
had fallen for several weeks, but the cool shadow of the
forest kept the travellers comfort.
Few made their way to the high village of Osikovce for
there was little reason to visit. The hamlet of only four
houses was banked on three sides by woodlands, with
broad fields descending down to the valley below. The
forest was a mixed blend of oak, beech, wild cherry, and fir
with thick verges of elder and witch-hazel, which in turn
sheltered brambles thick with blackberries interwoven
with tansy. The fields themselves were soft carpeted with
wild violets, and field strawberries. Small avenues of
walnut counted the yards along some track ways in the
distance and leant a civilised, ordered air to nature's gentle
chaos. It was a place richer than any kings' treasury, and a
place few people ever cared to visit.
Several tracks led around the edge of the woodland,
some heading to other settlements, some accessing fields
laden with the summers harvest. Orchards of plum,
apricot, apple, pear and peach dotted the hill sides. This
was not a special place nor in any way different from other
similar hamlets: to come to Osicovce was to pass through
and forget. Yet pass through you could, for one track led
beyond the fields and orchards, through the wood built
houses and hay barns, and up into the forest.
The wood cutters lane was mainly used during summer,
and was kept clear by the few horse-carts that trundled
down bringing fresh cut logs out for sale; sold mainly to
local wood merchants the oak, beech, and walnut made its
60
way to the Vah and from thence downstream to the great

cities along the Danube.
Beyond the clearings, where the woodsmen had felled
their annual quota, the track continued deep in to the
forest. No one in Osikovce could quite remember where
the track led and none could remember having seen
anyone emerge along it save the odd cutter or poacher,
and yet the track was there. Not neglected as you might
expect but cleared and seemingly well-trod.
In Osikovce and some neighbouring hamlets it was said
to be a faerie path and therefore should never be blocked
or obstructed; to anger the forest sprites was a folly as all
people know. The less superstitious claimed it was a deer
path mocking any suggestion of elves and goblins, yet still
they crossed themselves casting a wary glance into the
forest gloom. Who amongst us hasn't shuddered to be
alone in the dark woods a-night?
At the end of the village where the forest met the world
of farms and ordered fields, the last cottage of Osikovce
snuggled against the hillside. The foresters track ran past a
small vegetable garden which bordered the house itself,
and a thin wisp of smoke trailed off from the kitchen
chimney. There was no sound from the house, but from the
barn the steady crack of an axe splitting wood echoed
along the tree line. The air was still and, except for the axe,
all was silence.
The traveller waited: he leaned against the wooden gate
post, a crooked walking stick tucked beneath his arm.
Despite the heat of the day he wore a heavy woollen coat
with silver buttons, long tarnished, and deep brown
breeches clasped at the knees. His shoes wore heavy
61
buckles, but they too had seen many a day without a

cleaning.
He waited patiently: a warm breeze wafted the heavy
odour of fruit up from the orchard. The sound of the axe
blows had melted into the quiet and he knew the owner of
the house would emerge from the barn soon. His clothes,
though not old, were covered in dust and the leather of his
shoes were scuffed and beaten, he had travelled many
hours that day, and gazed now over the roof tops of the
village below him, to the walls of Cactice in the distance.
The Castles bloody dealings were well rumoured and even
know, at this remove, it brooded over the landscape with a
menace that disturbed him.
The sound of the barn door heaving shut brought his
attention back to the present; he looked towards the sound
in time to see a stout yet tall man emerge carrying a bundle
of wood that would have broken the back of any horse.
Calloused hands and a wide, sun browned face told a life of
labour in the fields. At first the man didn't notice him and,
when he did, seemed startled as if visitors where not
common to him.
'There'll be no food or charity for you here, stranger.' the
farmer called out,' I've enough for my own fare and no
more'. His accent was thick with the soft rhythm of his
region but it also held a gentleness that came from a life
close to the land.
'I mean you no disrespect friend', he said 'but what I
have is little enough', he stooped, putting down the log pile
and straitened with a smile.
'However, if its drink you want there's plum brandy a
plenty and time to spare'.
'It's a welcome offer and I accept gladly', the traveller
replied, pushing his way through a wicker gate, ' but water
62
I would have and a cool shade, and save the brandy for
better days'.
The farmer looked at the stranger more closely. It
seemed an odd thing to say and he wondered what bad
fortune could affect so young a man. Yet times were hard,
the constant Turkish wars and brutal Hungarian rulers had
left many people lost. True, the traveller was thin and
perhaps a closer acquaintance of hunger than any man
would like to be, but he looked hale and spoke with an
accent that suggested learning. His clothes too were of the
city, but had no doubt seen better days.
The stranger smiled, brushing dust from his breeches
with a stained hat, and looked around perhaps
embarrassed by such scrutiny.
The farmer dismissed these thoughts, and waved the
traveller to a stool beneath a ripe lilac tree beside the gate.
Water came in a stone jug filled from a shallow well and
was cold despite the heat of the day. The times, Jakub
knew, had been hard for many with the Turkish campaigns
dragging many noble families into despair, perhaps this
stranger was one such unfortunate: a man whose wealth
and station had been reduced by the Turks insatiable
desire for Christian lands.
He sat beside the stranger, spreading his long legs out on
the grass before him. White frilled daisies spread across
the grass, gathering together in little islands amidst the
green. Jakub had cut the grass only days before, and yet
they had returned more bright, more beautiful than before.
The farmer smiled, and turned to see the stranger
watching him.
Youre not frustrated by their obstinacy?, he said, 'at
how they will not leave you be?'
63
'The flowers? no.', replied Jakub, 'What they do fills my

days. Perhaps you should ask if they are not frustrated by
my own stubbornness. They make such efforts to live, yet I
will not let them be'.
At this the stranger reached across and patted Jakub on
the shoulder. To them living is not an effort, but a joy.
Something we Humans have forgotten, hey? At least some
of us."
"But not today, friend, not when we have warm sunshine
and a good drink", laughed Jakub. He poured himself
another glass of brandy and leaned back into the Lilac
tree.
The afternoon descended into twilight whilst the two
men sat. They talked little, the traveller seeming to enjoy
the peace and Jakub happy to share company without an
effort to polite conversation. When he did speak, the
stranger spoke of life beyond the hills, he spoke of towns
and cities, many of which Jakub had never heard and had
little desire to visit. He drank little, sipping at his water like
a mouse, and seemed to care little for it. His hands
continually smoothed the grass at his side, as one might
stroke a favoured animal, a caress both gentle and bold
that matched the mild look of affection in his eyes.
For his part Jakub talked of things he knew: he talked of
the planting and how the spring melt has left the ground
too wet 'til April; of the fickle lambs who had refused to eat
winter hay sending him, scythe in hand, on a daily walk
down the valley for new grass which had not yet come to
Osikovce; and of how the apples would not be as big as last
year in such a dry summer as this. These were things Jakub
knew for sure, and he was not one to speak on things he
had no understanding of.
64
As darkness began its westward march the strangers

glance seldom strayed from the forest where blackness
appeared to radiate from the trees spreading night across
the land. The sky became more blue above the trees, and a
thin line of mist came to hover through the orchard. The
stranger appeared to sigh inwardly as if he longed to walk
the forest, its now aphotic avenues tranquil as birds
shushed their songs; as if he longed to breath in the depths
of serenity that only the woodlands harboured...but he did
not move. He sat in silence watching the old trees drift into
darkness.
The traveller seemed to shake these thoughts from his
head and notice that the farmer was in turn watching him
intensely. It had once been said that the world was no
place for a good man, the traveller thought, and for this
they were seldom met and oft despised. The stranger could
not vouch for the truth of this but his experience of
Mankind had left little to impress him. It was not that all
men were bad, he had reasoned, but that so few were
good.
He had often considered mankind a rather bland
creature with few interesting qualities, except perhaps for
the human penchant for self-absorption and narcissism, a
truly unique characteristic; but the tar of reputation does
not spread evenly and in amongst the blackened brood of
Humanity were sometimes found men such as Jakub, brief
specks of light in the chaotic glomming. He smiled now at
the farmer who sat passively beside him.
Taking this as his cue, Jakub stood.
'Come friend', Jakub said, 'it's late and the day is near
done. I would not leave you without shelter and warmth,
and as for supper: I've little bread but brandy enough I'm
sure'.
65
Something about the stranger intrigued the farmer; he

had noticed it when the stranger had first appeared at his
gate: there was an intensity about his silence, but more
than this there was an unusual familiarity about the man,
something he could not place. The way he had stood and
the manner in which he held his head when asked a
question; and there was an air of sadness about the man
and yet also of expectation. He seemed to be waiting, and
to have waited long as if for some unreachable event or
unattainable desire. The stranger seemed held in
readiness, and had been held in waiting for many a year
for an inevitable coming that none could prevent.
Motioning the stranger towards the door Jakub led the
way. The traveller rose from his stool ungrateful to spend
the night behind closed doors, this was not a need he
envied in others, but desirous to weave the gentle farmer
towards his destined place. He smiled in feigned gratitude
and followed Jakub indoors.
66
A Conversation
Inside the cottage was small but kept clean and, as was
usual in these regions, handmade wooden furnishings
were set about the room. An iron stove smouldered in the
corner with a big metal pot full of water above it, and a
solid oak bed stretched along the opposite wall; a low
rocking chair sat beside the stove, and Jakub dragged a
stool from the foot of the bed that the traveller might sit;
his hospitality did not extend to offering errant guests his
only chair.
It was obvious the farmer lived alone as no woman's
effects hung against the walls and the bed would barely
accommodate its owner never mind a wife as well. There
was no decoration, and the house seemed more arranged
for convenience than comfort. He did not entertain often,
the traveller thought, for one plate, one mug and one
spoon, all of wood, sat on a low shelf. Above the stove an
old fujara hung and by the darkened finger holes along the
pine body it seemed to be well used. A mouse sat quietly
and unafraid on a low block of wood by the door, watching
and listening. Jakub raised his hand to shoo the mouse
from the door, a gesture of friendship almost rather than
annoyance.
The men ate in silence; meagre enough the food was but
the stranger was grateful for what little the farmer could
offer him. He was not one who ever felt hunger yet the
farmers' generosity deserved his enjoyment. The farmer
ate slowly pushing the thick goulash around his plate.
There was no meat in the meal, for which the stranger was
67
grateful, but it was filled with parsnip, nettle, dried

mushrooms, and soft tasting wheat dumplings.
Jakub finally laid his plate to the floor and filled his pipe.
The smoke was thick, and when it grew thicker still and
hung in a soft haze above their heads Jakub could hold his
curiosity in check no longer. He leaned forward to speak.
The traveller was gazing into the flames of the open
stove and idly poking the embers with a stick. A pine log
burst a small bubble of sap and hissed its hot breath across
the ashes; the stranger raised his foot and nudged the
wood further into the flames. The heat had turned his face
a burnished red and the farmer noticed his hair, despite
his young years, was flecked with grey. The mellow glow of
the flames played idly with his features as he turned his
head in the half-light: that familiarity, Jakub thought, had
he met this man before?
Ask friend', the stranger said, turning towards him, 'Your
hospitality requires some recompense and I have no songs
to sing'.
At this he smiled, and in that smile Jakub saw the great
weight of sadness that the traveller bore. That a smile
could convey such a sense of grief startled the farmer, and
yet, he realised, that every action, movement, look and
sound made by this unusual man cried of loss; a spectre of
despair dogging him like a loving hound. The ill fortune
that Jakub had sensed on first seeing the man was
pervasive, as if the stranger had suffered years of grief and
it had now become a part of him.
The travellers gaze returned to the fire, a fire that
cracked and hissed filling the air with its own discontent.
Jukub opened his mouth to speak but found no words,
merely speaking seemed a poor enough way to
communicate to such a man. He felt the urge to stand and
68
leave, to be outside in the clear air where his mind would

not be fogged, where his tongue would craft great things to
say and he would not be left dumb as now; a fool in his
own home.
The stranger twisted on his stool, turning to face Jakub.
Gently he took the farmers hands in his own, their cool
clasp soothing as a spring breeze. Jakub smelled the wet
scent of soil and decay and it reminded him of rotten wood
buried beneath the fallen leaves of autumn.
'Jakub', he said, 'The forest breathes and has life, not like
an army of individual men, but as a single soul; and like
unto a soul the forest has senses by which it may enrich its
being'. The fire clacked in the grate, spluttering sparks
against the stone place. The air grew dim and smooth,
lightening the space between the two men. The air was
cool and smelled of hawthorn, soil and damp. The young
man released Jakubs hands and sat back.
"Do you understand this Jakub, does it have meaning for
you?"
Jakub stared at the young man sitting before him for
some time before replying. The travellers words in
themselves made little sense to him. As a man raised on
the edge of ancient woodlands talk of esoterica meant little
to him, and he had little time for the clucking of clever
men. He had not read books, nor felt the need to, for in his
opinion there was little to be discussed in this world. An
education only seemed confuse a man more and Jakub was
happy to keep the clarity he had been born with.
Yet the intensity of the travellers words brought
meaning to them. Jakub was no poet, yet had he not,
himself, felt a sense of spirit or a presence of life in the
wilds? Had he not wondered at the rites enacted yearly by
the villagers, did these not attest to some half-forgotten
69
understanding that here stood more than rock, wood and

river; that wrapped within their gnarled and rude skins
the great forests of Carpathia were something far more
than we would take them for? He thought then of his wife,
and of the things she had told him.
She had, she told him, as a child, once believed that trees
whispered, and her mother had told her so on many an
occasion. She had taken Jakub and showed him an Ash, as
old as the forest itself, and pressed his ear to the great
roots that sank into the wet earth. The heart is below the
ground Jakub, she had said, below where men can do it
harm and trees whisper from their hearts. Jakub sighed at
these memories.
'I believe I do, yet to believe is not necessarily to
understand. Is it not women's tales you speak of, fancies
for children and the like?', Jakub asked.
The Traveller smiled: ' Any man born of woman has a
knowing of such things, yet this knowing is misted by our
fear of the truth. Children know until they are steered
away. Through an infant's eyes do we see verily, my
friend.' At this he smiled with genuine warmth. He rose
from his stool to put more wood in to the stove. As he
stooped he collected twigs from the ground and reached
for Jakubs wooden cup that rested near the pile.
'Now tell me, what would you have me burn....wood or
wood?' he said, holding both the cup and kindling before
the flames.
The farmer raised a hand in protest; he had carved the
cup himself from the best pine sold in the markets of
Cactice. Passing the cup to his host the traveller continued,
'Wood is not just wood, so it would seem, but then how
may we believe a forest is merely a thing of passive intent?
Your cup has substance because you have given it
70
meaning, and this is a dead thing! Yet it is cherished and

valued; but Men struggle to accept that nature has
meaning and purpose because they fear what that purpose
may be, so unlike your cup they have denied its qualities
and denigrated them to faery tales and lowered Natures
value to a utilitarian level. They cannot deny it is life, but
they say it is life with no purpose beyond basic instinct.
This, friend Jakub, will be Man's undoing as surely as I sit
here.'
He gazed at Jakub as if gauging his credulity.
And tell me this: how many times may a man beat his
dog before the beast turns to rip his masters throat; before
the power, savagery and cunning of a once trusted
companion is turned against a bullying fool?
'What,' joked Jakub 'you expect the trees to take up
against me? Good grief! I have heard fine tales in my time
but none such as this. How did you come to believe such
nonsense, have the towns become so filled with terror
tales? Ha, 'the oaks are against us, the ash comes to take us
and the willow to flay us'." He chuckled deeply at this final
mimicry.
'The cities are full of fools, Jakub, this I agree with. Men
more concerned with the tone than the quality of their life,
that's true. But this is not a foolish man's flutter, for I have
never in my life set foot upon cobbled stone, and nor will I.'
The stranger poured water in his cup and drank deeply.
His hair was long past his shoulders but tied with a thin
piece of knotted flax. He undid the ties and pulled his hair
free. As his hair fell loose stray bits of grass and flecks of
dried leaves fell onto the floor. He looked at Jakub,
sweeping some of the debris from his lap into the fire.
'Too many nights asleep in forest inns', he said by way of
explanation, 'The woodlands provide me a softer bed and
71
more peaceful sleep than any rowdy keep I know of'. He

laughed gently and fell to watching the fire.
Perhaps it was the firelight but the traveller looked now
much older than before; deep lines creased his cheeks and
forehead, and his already gaunt face seemed more slender
with bruised bone knots dug beneath the pale, pale skin.
Without glancing up he half whispered, ' I believe Anka
loved the green, Jakub, the wild sets of nature, and the
peaceful ways of grassy lanes. She knew the truth of it'.
Jakub did not catch his words at first, but jerked to his
feet a breath later. The stranger did not move, but
remained passive. He did not look to Jakub, and his
expression was still; he pushed a slim stick of wood deeper
into the flames with his toe, nudging it gently.
'You knew Anka?', Jakub barely spoke. 'How can you
have known her? She died before you were born some
forty years back. Are you family, Kin? Her brother still I
know, but he does not speak to me a more nor has since
we were young. Is it him who sent you?'
Jacobs tone grew harder as he spoke, the brandy edging
his words.
'Aye, Jakub, I did know her many years past. I am not so
young. The stranger said no more.
'When, when did you know her? I knew her since we
were children yet I have never in my life seen you; and
there is no one unknown to me in these woods.'
'Anka and I knew each other for a time afore she died.
We spoke sometimes when she came to the green looking
for peace. I would meet her on the pathways and walk
awhile with her. She was a good woman; wise and with
sense.' Here the stranger looked up from the flames.
72
Jakub, she was not made for this world. For the Gods
choose wisely whom to love, and she was loved more than
most'.
The final words the stranger spoke were all too familiar.
Jakub sat back in his chair as if winded. The stranger
seemed even more aged his withered hands now almost
skeletal, bat winged beneath the skin.
Jakub drank back his brandy. The two men now silent.
The room was almost dark except for the shallow light of
the fire. The brandy had numbed the farmer and he felt his
age in years seep through his bones and settle him into his
chair.
Yes, thought Jakub, his Anka would probably have agreed
with the traveller, but then she had been a one for strange
ideas. She'd often spoken of unholy things, of how the
birds sang and what their songs told of; she'd talked of
trees of how they were often wont to misstep a man and
throw him off his course. She'd talked of secrets held
beneath the ground, of darkened wells and ancient cisterns
where the old gods lived; she'd spoken of the Fallow Race
who, saved from Adam's sin, lived still amongst the green
as we once did. She had believed all these things despite
the priests and those who only saw what others said was
there.
It was she who had taken him to the pit, a cave three
hours from here, and told him of the time she had gone
down alone. The darkness had taken her and she had slept
three days alone before her cousin had come for her and
brought her home. She was a child, thirteen, and said she
had been lost in the woods before finding the cave, her
adventurous spirit proving near to deadly as the allure of
the cave had been too much for her to turn away. Yet her
cousin, drunk at her funeral, said that all the women in
73
their family were sent into the cave. Jakub had never
known why.
Jakub struggled. He wanted words, good words to show
he understood the stranger's thinking. He knew the truth
of some things: aye, the trees were living souls but they
were not Men. Not things of human worth, surely. The
strangers eloquence and surety had sucked the air from
Jakubs chest, and he could think of nothing to show himself
to a man of thoughts. Yet, Anka had chided him often for
his lack of imagination, for his inability to see what she
herself could.
He closed his eyes, the brandy making his head heavy
and his mind to wander: his mother had left him by a
stream when he was no more than knee high. The sun had
shone, and dandelions coated the grass in a yellow haze.
He remembered the smell of new grass and the heady
drone of bees as they meandered from flower to flower.
The air was still and hot. A deer had come timorously from
the forest, hovering near the thick tangle of rose that
barricaded the wild from the tame. She shimmered in the
stillness, and stepped forward. Young Jakub had been
transfixed by such pure beauty. He had known, even then,
that here was more than just an woodland creature; she
evoked in him a sense of something other, a memory
perhaps, of a place, a state of being, long lost to us.
But that last step, that final reach across was still too
wide.
I think, nay, believe' the farmer said at last, 'that the wild
is but a tamer side to our selves, but that God has placed us
in our place. We are in the place He has chosen for us to be.
We must hold man above all but God, for to deny
superiority is to deny our purpose. How can we claim
equality with vulgar creatures; and a tree, what be a tree?
74
A thing of beauty no doubt, but to me, no philosopher, an

ash, oak or beech is merely a material for heat,
construction, and convenience. This is it's value to me.'
He was silent a moment and then continued, '....But ay,
there is more than meets the eye to Nature, this I agree
with. Within the plants and herbs, within the flesh of
animals I find my harbour and security; they are gifts, a
store from which I may draw sustenance without which I
would surely perish as would all men. Within the forests
enclosure I find my solitude accompanied by pleasantness,
my thoughts elevated to gentler provinces; I find myself
more greatly comforted and domiciled amidst the greener
fields, but to define such sentiments as akin to manly
spirituality is, I say, naught but dangerous heresy for
which the ungodly burn. Take heed, my friend, for such
musings may not fall so benignly on other ears.
The stranger did not look up from the flames of the
cooling fire but seemed held by Jacobs words. A smooth
rush of wind glazed the thin panes of the house with a
keen breath as it winnowed by, an immigrant of meagre
intent. It drew a mellow rise from the fire-place, elongating
the flames simpering glow in a shadow fray across the
walls. A warm whirl resonated down the chimney huffing
the apple smoke into maiden hairs flaying yester-years
aromatic scents about the room.
Well said for a Churchman, friend Jakub, but your tone
denies true belief in what you say, the traveller said at
length.
If Man were truly placed in prominence atop Gods
hierarchy what dependent monarchs they are! As you
yourself said: all life, comfort and sustenance depends on
Natures charity, for without Her charity what a penurious
aristocracy we would be; beggar princes and plaintive
75
lords all.' The laugh that came with these final words
chilled Jakub.
'But this you know Jakub for have you not yourself hailed
the lesser gods: in reaping have you not blessed the earth,
in sowing called upon the sun, in tending not petitioned
the very elements the vicars of God command you to
consign to paganism?
'So you do as rote, afeared of shadows and foul
phantoms that have never existed, nor play any role in
Natures theatre, but that are wielded as a brutal weapon
by the Church of men. Priests have turned Nature into
some devil, some evil snipe who will, if given leave, lead
you all to cold Hell. But these Spirits, these old gods, are far
older than the hills beneath which they now live and
despite Mans modern scorn they love you still, yet weep
for your return.
'Jakub, this is not heresy to you as it is to others, this is
what you have ever known and felt, but never sought to
understand or put words to. This is what you wife
intimated day after day. When she took you by the hand
and led you to the Oak pools, up in the high fields; when
she sang of the winds as she undressed you, and washed
you in the cool waters. When she led you higher still to the
Clearing, to the stone pillar that stands alone and lay you
down amidst the chamomile and there made you her
husband. All these things she did to cleanse your heart of
fear that you might be ready to travel home.
'How could you know these things', whispered Jakub,
'how in Gods name?
'And it is in the name of the gods that I am here. Anka
awaits you, for the world has no place for us now. All that
Men have despoiled is now theirs to relish, but we will stay
no more.'
76
The Traveller lapsed into silence staring deep into the

flames of the fire. During their discourse the farmer
noticed he had unconsciously removed a metal disc from
his waist coat, and sat now turning and pressing it
between forefinger and thumb. The disc was no larger than
a one crown piece, and was marked with a curious symbol
that seemed to resemble the head of a man. Well-worn
from constant rubbing, it was difficult to make out the
features of the figure but, in the flickering light of the fire,
they seemed to be moulded from interwoven sticks and
branches, roots and fruit; in fact the head itself resembled
a wicker design.
Jakub craned his neck slightly to better view the symbol
when the Traveller glanced up suddenly from his reverie
slipping the disc quickly away. Disconcerted Jakub felt
himself flush as if he had been caught prying into a most
private moment. He coughed to clear his throat and raised
himself from his chair.
Fancy talk, friend, he said, but sure as I stand before
you there is nothing that I fear in my own home nor
anything that disquiets me. Sprites there may be in the
forests deep, but none I know of and I am born to this
house and this woodland. We, who know the forests and
depend for our sustenance upon its virtue, may lack the
poets tongue but we do not lack the faculties of
understanding.
'You mock me for a cup? Well, it is a cup I crafted and
made, and I would have nought to drink without it: and
without an excess of money should I lap my water from a
bowl like a dog? Yet, twigs there are aplenty, I need only
stoop and I will regain what you have turned to ash.
Mayhap there is greater volume in Gods creation than I am
privy to, but what god would place Man, with all our
77
reason and creativity, beside a rude beast and see no gap

in genius betwixt the two?
Jakub stopped now. The traveller was still, his faced
turned towards the window, a look a sorrow on his face.
'Say on, friend Jakub, do not stop your pains now. Justify
to me this greatness of Man'
Does he make a fool of me, thought Jakub, and take me
for a village simpleton. Jakub's anger rose and he jumped
from his chair:
'Have the deer mapped the planets or pigs writ on love;
have the fowl tabulated mathematical truths or any, any
but Man, knelt in supplication of God? Nay friend, for they
know not that God even exists. What you speak of now,
what you fear, friend, is not some forest devil beyond the
rise that flits before your imagination or lurks in some
leafy shade, but the lack of the sure protection of stone,
brick, fashioned fabrics and the squawk of other men. City
folk such as ye, though you may deny being so I hear it in
your tones, and whose knowledge of Nature strays little
beyond the confines of manicured parks may indulge in
whimsies and assign anthropomorphism to twigs and
leaves; but we who must needs grub in the dirt for our
livelihood and live with natures indifference to our rise or
fall know only too well of her true character: one of
irrefragable constancy. She may not be importuned nor
manipulated with threats or pleas for she is no thing of
sense nor sentiment.
'Ay, the forests keep us, none know this better than I, and
I would weep to see them gone but they are not as you see
them. They are trees of wood and sap possessing not soul
nor mind. I do not know what misfortunes or terrors ail
you but there are none here. All is peace here as it has
78
always been. Nature does not act nor react, this is given to
God, nature simply is
The farmer heaved to draw in breath. He had not spoken
so long on any subject for years but the stranger unnerved
him. His guest stared intently at Jacob.
Ha', cried the traveller standing also, 'Once again you
intone falsehoods like a priest. How far that cursed Church
has dragged mankind from Eden! All is far from peaceful
Jacob, but you have stopped your ears and shaded your
eyes. Year on year Mankinds lot becomes harder, your
yield less. Nature: once a larder to your needs now offers
her fruits begrudgingly, is more frugal to your
requirements, and why Jacob? What has compelled a once
most generous hostess to withdraw her favour? We are
reduced from wine to water, from meat to porridge yet we
act as if nothing were amiss. In fact you act like a king who
cannot see his castle crumble about him. You know the
truth of this Jacob; you know every facet of these
woodlands, can you sit before me and say in all honesty
that all is peace here, that you have not borne witness to
what I say?
Jacob made no reply, stung by the passion in the
strangers tone. He turned and walked harshly towards the
door. '
'I am no fool. I do not know what trickery you have, or
how you came to know my wife, or what things you know
of me but I will not be pulled in to heresy for your
amusement. The hour is late and I must away to bed', he
said gruffly, annoyed at his own embarrassment, and
suddenly irritated with the stranger and his pointless
ramblings. He did not like to admit fear, but this was also
part of his anger.
79
He indicated a fleece that hung from a peg near the door,

'That will keep you 'till morning but I would have you gone
by first light'.
The stranger said nothing but acknowledged Jakubs
bidding with a slight nod of the head. As his host left the
cottage door to relieve himself the stranger stood and
stretched. His discourse had fell, no doubt, onto deaf ears
but such was always the way. A changing of times had
come to the peaceful cloisters of such hamlets as Osicovce,
and the stranger knew that it would be the innocent that
bore the brunt of Natures change of heart.
Innocents such as Jacob whose quiet certainty in the
sanctity of Nature was inviolate, but whose purity of
thought had been subverted by the priests of an unnatural
god, now tottered at the edge of the abyss and it was his
unfortunate task to goad them to resolution and bring
them home. And no home coming would await such as
Jakub without cold tribulation; as a child must suffer the
passion of birth, so men must suffer the torment of
deliverance in order to relinquish what they had ever
believed to be true.
80
The Death of Innocence

At dawn the farmer rose to find his guest risen and gone.
The wool fleece was replaced on the door and no sign of
the strangers visit was recorded beyond memory. Restoking the fire Jakub collected wood chips from a pale and
placed them above the glowing embers and blew deeply.
The heart of the fire still glowed buried within the ash and
in moments a breathless whoosh announced the flames
reawakening.
Stepping back from the stove Jakub listened to the
satisfied crack of the fire as it took hold. As he leaned back
to gather more wood a dull glint caught his eye amongst
the previous evenings dispensed embers which had been
swept to one side. He reached down and pulled out the
silver disk his guest had toyed with the night before.
The reverse side of the coin was clearly marked with a
distinct image of a dying stag with the words innocentiae
scribed beneath. Obverse to this was the wicker head
Jakub had seen earlier but now, on closer inspection, he
could just make out, intertwined within the vinery, thorns,
briars, and prickled fruits the word sophiae.
The unease he had fought to dispel since his
conversation with the stranger began to re-emerge, yet
this time his disquiet was not accompanied by uncertain
fear but by an awful sense of loss, a loss he knew well over
too many years. The sensation was as violent as it was
sudden, and it filled his innards with a desperate lead that
had him slump against the wall like a drunk. The weight of
81
sorrow pulled at him and he felt his legs begin to buckle;

he clung to the iron range like a child to its mothers skirts
seeking not only support but comfort.
Tears brimmed as he struggled to crush the sob of grief
in his chest and he thrust himself violently from the
fireside ramming the disk into his pocket. He felt the
breath squeezed from his chest and cramp his throat. He
groaned as the disc burned still in the palm of his hand. He
brushed his sleeve across his face in frustration, and forced
the memory back from the brink.
As quickly as it had come the sensation moved, til
bewilderment at his turmoil in turn gave way to the
blinkered immunity from feeling Jakub usually imposed.
He would not revisit grief, though in truth he dwelled in it
daily, it was his to own, a surrogate spouse accompanying
him over many years. It seemed that time did not heal all
wounds, but simply made each day the longer to sustain.
He grabbed a water pail and moved out into the
sunshine.
Heat began to climb from the stove as Jakub returned
from the well with water. The warmth outside was
beginning to match that of the kitchen fire and so,
collecting bread and some early pears from the table, he
moved to sit beneath the apricot tree his wife had planted
before her death. Here a breeze often stirred amongst the
hyssop and mint lending a fresh fragrance to the
sunlight. He ate slowly as was his wont and thought of his
wife.
He chose his memories with care filtering only those that
brought comfort. The tree, beneath which he sat, now close
to its own mortality, offered the farmer little shade but he
felt the presence of his wife in the trunks solidity.
82
She had known, oh yes, he nodded quietly to himself.

Tears crept beneath his eyes again and he rubbed them
back with his sleeve. As the child grew within her; his dear
Anka had known that the progression of months led Jakub
further from the family he so desired, and closer to the
loneliness he now endured. She knew her days were
ending but had not the heart to break him, and so Death
himself had undertaken the awful revelation.
Anka, now dead 43 years, was still his purpose,
remaining ever present in his existence and Death himself
only knew when they would sit again, as they had often
done, counting butterflies in the morning air. Married at
17, and Anka a year or so younger, Jakub had built this
house himself with the land his young wife had brought to
their union, and the money his father had lent him.
She had loved it from the first and whilst he had busied
himself with construction of their home Anka had planted
a garden filled with over ninety herbs and plants, with fruit
trees and a vegetable garden which never seemed to
demand anything but the simplest of care. Ah, but then
mayhap it was the effortless way in which Anka held
commission over her small dominion, an inherited skill
from her mother and grandmother no doubt. Both well
known to possess green fingers.
The peculiarity of Ankas skills, which would see her
harvest at night, sow with the phases of the moon or
seeming to endlessly converse with her charges, Jakub
ascribed to eccentricity; nor had her love for wandering
the woody lanes about their home when all was night and
darkness had their neighbours fast behind closed doors
unsettled him despite the whispers of others. Anka trailed
a freshness in her wake unaffected by daily strife that
some called a naivety whilst others condemned it as an
83
unawareness of kith and kin, a selfishness. Though Jakub

knew well of Ankas compassion, and knew that it extended
well beyond their turbulent neighbours; her love drank in
all and her winsomeness was nought but an ecstasy that
led her unerringly towards beauty. Even in death she had
smiled for the joy of loss.
She often spoke to him of things he scarce could
articulate as they strolled the woodlands close to home;
but this notwithstanding she expressed his own clear
sense of sacred indivisibility, that is: a unity borne of earth
and sky, light and dark; and despite the quiet practicality
that debarred him from joining her flights of fancy, she
never grew impatient when he failed to fully see what was
so obvious before her eyes. He had even joked once that
she would find a lifetime of pleasure in an upturned stone,
to which she had laughingly replied that it would be upon
that stone she would stand to view all eternity.
She had then fondly named their home Athanaton telling
Jakub it meant to live forever, and so she believed they
would until, so it seemed, the Erinyes had descended
striking down their own mothers most devoted acolyte as
if in retribution for some unknown crime. She had died in
the midst of giving life and in her delirium had begged
Gaea to restrain her daughters for the sake of the child but
to no avail. They had died as if by some cruel irony on the
cusp of winter when the Great Mother, Gaea, is herself
waning.
Jakub had never known a companion since their time of
parting and had not sought company. Ankas soul
remained daily with him, and he found no shame in
admitting that he would oft hold lengthy conversations
with her during the long winter nights. He judged her to be
as present now as the first time he had lain with her, and
84
any thoughts of marriage to another were to him a

betrayal of one so loved. Her gardens he had kept tended
and even with his ploughmans hands the borders, hedges
and seed beds were encouraged with the gentlest of care
despite needing little nurture. It was if Anka, or some other
unseen hand, readied her grounds sparing Jakub the chore.
And it was there he would sit when lack of work made
him idle, and with closed eyes envision her movements of
over a score years past. He smiled to himself now as his
minds eye reconstructed memories that at some times
seemed more corporeal than the world of today: her belly
swollen in the 8th month she had come to him on warm
afternoon breezes that shimmered down from the forests
verge. She had knelt beside him sitting as he sat now and
pushed back his fair hair, her breath heavy with the scent
of pear, her mouth glistening with its ripened juices.
She had stared searchingly at him for long moments, a
smile on the edge of her lips. Jakub, she had said, The
gods choose wisely whom to love and we are loved more
than many. In this life a man is seldom free to make
preferences for religion and philosophy have become his
shackles; but we, my love, and others besides are called to
home for our Mother loves us dear.
She often spoke in riddles as now, her words weaving
their own meanings, for language is seldom equipped to
communicate more than the most simple of sentiments.
Her words were merely pedestals on which higher truths
was enshrined: The world contained the animate and
inanimate husks of men; some born into the mean service
of self, whilst others were granted selflessness and
emancipated from the toil of self-gratification. They were
liberated, she had told him, into a communalism with
Nature as opposed to the desolate singularity of
85
egoism. And it was to these that Nature daily called and, so

his Anka had believed, it was to these whom Nature now
chose to separate from the chaff of Humankind and return
her children to the Elysian fields of home. All men were
created equal but once born we must choose the qualities
we keep.
The sun lifted itself above the roof of the house and Jakub
knew the day could not be delayed any longer. There was
wood to be brought from the forest, which must be split
and stacked for next years winter. A big man, he could cut
and cart one tree of soft wood in a day; but it was the oak
he wanted now. This meant several days of hard cutting
and dragging to remove the lumber from deep within the
forest where the oaks grew to huge proportions, then of
course, the arduous toil of chopping and splitting would
begin. Lifting himself from beneath the apricot tree he
collected axe, rope and saw then made his way into the
forest.
Blackberries hung heavily at the woodlands verge and
Jakub collected a pocketful, the brambles almost grateful
to be relieved of their burden. As the sticky syrup stained
his blunt fingers the scent of fermenting juice rose in the
air, it would not be long now before the fruits of summer
would burst their skins, and the mark of winter would
begin to appear upon all that now seemed to tire of life.
An old Bore tree slanted across the path forcing him to
duck his head to avoid the sagging splays of heavy fruit, he
would collect these elderberries on his return, its pungent
syrup a sure protection from winter colds.
The track wound its way upward between the trees
which leaned inwards from its verges as if trying to hide
the paths intrusion. No matter to Jakub for he knew no
86
path better and had been known, in the dark months when
Anka had slipped away, to spend his sleepless
nights drifting through the woods hoping to lose grief in
the forests labyrinth. Dotted about the forest floor large
parasol mushrooms towered about their smaller
neighbours; if time was with him he would have them
before the pigs, snails and heat ruined the tender skins but
the day was soon set to pass with so much work and he let
them be.
He trod the path in measured, sure steps and felt an
immediate calm which descended as the forest closed
about him. His thoughts meandered through the days tasks
ahead: the cutting of wood, the hole in the barn roof that
needed fixing, the fruit that needed picking and emerged,
without expectation, on to the previous evenings
discussion with the stranger.
How incredible his sentiments were, Jakub thought. The
dependable constancy of Nature, its fidelity to its own solid
ethic was the only true contract that mankind had between
himself and his gods. It was here, in forests and mountains
that the Spirit had chosen to live, and yet it was here that
men felt most afraid, most vulnerable. For despite the
cathedrals of stone built by kings and priests, this was
Natures own tabernacle and here She showed herself in
every turn of season.
The fear men had of the untamed wilderness was, to
Jakub, a testimony to how far Adam had fallen, how
scorching had been the fires of Prometheus. That we as
children might fear our mother, build barricades against
her affection, strive to remove ourselves from her grace,
and live rather in the cold stone of palaces were She may
not go was surely a most tragic fault. He shook his head in
wonder.
87
He remembered how, in the days when he was newly

wed, a priest had come to Osicovce from a village down the
valley. He'd arrived in the heat of afternoon, and Anka had
welcomed him in and sat him beneath a flowering blossom
tree. He drank the water she gave, and smiled as she talked
of her garden, and how the house would be done before
the first Holy night.
'And why are you not at church, Anka?' the priest had
asked, 'you're missed by us who know you.'
'We have no need to travel far to be with God', she
replied, and pressed her cool hands against the warm
cheek of the young priest, ' we are with God daily, speak to
him hourly in the church that he has made.'
'Ah, Anka, you know this is not the way. Our own mother
and father watch the door from their pew each Sunday. If
not for me, come for them that they can see you and know
that you are not lost. And there are sacraments....'
His voice trailed as he knew she would not come.
'Brother, mine. In drinking from the well, I drink of
God; in eating from the gardens, I eat of God; in stepping in
to the wild woods I am surrounded by God's fellowship,
and hear his sermons in the call of birds. I am not lost but
truly found'.
'The church is our Holy Mother, Anka. And only
through her can we be saved. Not by this heresy'.
'The church, brother, is not for such as I, nor Jakub.
The church is for the town to comfort city men. They have
never known the green, and for them God is a far and
distant thing. We are neither so far nor distant here.' She
kissed her brother and stroked his hair. 'God is in his
heaven, brother, but heaven is not beyond the clouds as
the Clergy say'.
88
She pulled him to his feet, and wiped the dust from his
jacket lapels. Her older brother by ten years, but still a
child at heart. His red hair needed cutting, and she could
see the fray at his collar was old with no woman at home
to care for him. She led him to the gate; the hour was late
and he would not be home before dark. Heavy bees
hummed in the comfrey bells, and a pheasant croaked
somewhere across the fields.
'This is Eden, brother, and we are with God. Do not
look so hard and so far for what is right beneath your nose.
And do not fear, for there is nothing which can harm us
here, for all is peace here'.
He smiled and kissed her cheek, 'I will save you
sister, you mark this day, I will have you back in to the
church before that man of yours becomes a father.' She
tucked loose strands of hair back behind his ear, and
looped her arm around his thin waist as they walked to the
lane.
'Say you'll come this Sunday, Anka. Just once. Mother
said it isn't well for the village to see you shy from church.
We know well what we are, what you and mother are, but
times are different know. The old days are past, Anka, and
so are we.'
'Oh hush, brother. What I do, I do in secret. Not even
Jakub knows of the family. What we are, were, was never
bad, was it? We simply carried on the tradition, thats all.
And I now, what do I do?...I talk a little to the forest, mix
my tonics for Jakubs health, and look for God where he is
to be found. Nothing else.'
'People talk, Anka, they always do. We are safe now
because of me, mother is safe. But you will soon be making
you family, think of your child-to-come and of Jakub. And
yes, Anka, it is bad....the old traditions. Only through Christ
89
can you be saved, not through some magic from another

time.'
In the lane below the house she stopped and
watched her brother leave. As a child he had loved the
woods as much as she, but now? He'd left the green behind
for books and buildings in faraway towns, where clever
men worried each other over things they did not know.
He'd returned a cleric, having lost God along the way, and
now feared what had always meant to be loved.
Yet, so men chose to live and suffered as a
consequence. Jakub had strained to understand the
antipathy his fellows felt towards the home the gods had
made for them, for surely their work was well done, but
had long since failed. It was perhaps the nature of men to
despise what loved them most, be it mother, lover or
God. It was but one further facet of Mans fear to ascribe a
malignant personality to our land; to rend Nature down to
some placable and petulant goblin.
Perhaps this was the original sin, our first folly: the
misguided belief that all benefactors must perforce desire
some payment be it in kind or in obsequiousness. But
Nature was not like this. You cannot change the will of the
gods, he thought; you cannot weave spells of magic and
expect Nature to respond, or think that faeries dance at
night with leaden feet and break the flower beds. Nature is
passive, constant, unthinking.
This may not have been Anka's belief, but how in all
reason could a man believe a few flowery words to have
power over the winds, and the clouds; how could some
poetic phrases fix a sickness, create love from indifference,
or turn an enemy's milk cow to a barren beast, how? He
shook his head in wonder.
90
Jakub soon arrived to a place of ancient oaks. They

towered from the forest floor, and gently lay against the
other where their great arms entwined. Jakub walked a
pace or two and stopped. He closed his eyes and felt, nay
heard, the hum of age land gently all about him, the
murmur of the forest was a sound audible only to the soul,
and Jakub had known its melody since the day that he was
born. He sighed and drew in the silence of unknowing into
his heart.
He opened his eyes, in to the light, to begin the course of
his work. The oaks were sacred to the spirit but a man
must eat and drink.
The steady labour of felling numbed his mind, and
quickly the rhythmic hack of the axe tempered his
thoughts until a meditative quite descended. His mind was
calm, and nothing but the warmth of the sun and slight
breeze moved about him. This was where he was most at
peace; the hard physical task of felling a dance, the steady
thwak of the axe blade resonating through the trees, the
inhalation on the back swing, exhalation on the fore swing
and on, and on.
In time the oak yielded its ancient life and the sweet
smell of sap clung to the blade and haft. Jakub watched the
giant fall with a sense of pride and sorrow. The crash came
unnaturally loud in the quiet, as the old oak thundered to
the floor, a solid and heavy thud that shook the land.
He placed a careful hand upon the fallen tree and rubbed
the gnarled bark with his fingers, feeling the rough skin of
the tree slide beneath his own calloused palm: what
stories, what thoughts had this old man to tell if only Jakub
had the sense to hear. He patted the trunk once again, and
cast an eye to the young saplings close to hand. They, who
91
would now thrive in the old oaks stead, would surely

continue the old mans dreams and be witness to the ages
until their life, like his, would be asked for the sake
another.
Such was the way of nature and yea, even of man; that
we might be of service to another, or sacrifice for the sake
of those unknown, had not a host of gods not tried to
remind man of the tithe that all must pay? But all too true
to Human nature we would have the benefit of what we
had not earned.
His work continued with the sun heavy in the sky. Jakub
rested often, his age creeping up upon him. His hands were
stiff now and he wondered how the coming years would be
with none to help him in his work. A blue tit, far from
home as they scarce enter the forest, settled for a while
and chatted of unknown things. Jakub smiled to listen, and
was sad when the little bird flew on its way. He brushed
wood dust from his knees and stood.
A young stag had ventured out beyond a wild cherry tree
and gazed impassively at where the oak had cracked and
shivered before collapsing at Jakubs feet. Without fear the
deer now approached scenting the berries, now crushed, in
the farmers jacket pocket hanging loosely from an elder
bush. Laying down his axe Jakub crouched low, eyeing the
deer. A rush of wind ruffled the branches above, the trees
around bowing to a fallen fellow. The stag moved closer,
the strong smell of its odour weaving its way to unite
intoxicatingly with the scent of the old oak in a heady
blend. A cloud passed over the sun bringing a chill to the
summer, and an unnatural silence arose. The deer froze,
perhaps at a sound inaudible to Jakub, its eyes fixed on his,
and the stag wavered seeming unsure, the berries
forgotten.
92
He remembered the stag he had seen as a child. For a

moment he wondered if this could be the same one, but
too many years had passed. He heard his mother now, ' the
deer often look sad, Jakub, have you ever noticed? That's
because they are the kindest of creatures, and yet are
condemned to eternal flight. Do you know why?
The young Jakub shook his head.
Jakub felt the desire to reach for the young deer. It was
an odd sensation; such beauty, such innocence that it filled
him with a desperate desire to see it destroyed. His fingers
twitched with the need to pick up the nearest rock or club
and batter the fragile creature into the ground. It shook
him, this sense, making him shamed. How now, faced with
all that we no longer are; faced with a child's innocence
and love of life, or confronted by the uncompromising
affection of a loyal friend or lover, appears the weaker,
blacker self that begs to rip that veil away, to ruin what is
pure.
The deer approached closer, its lean flanks twitched in
the readiness of flight. Jakub did not move, did not breathe.
The stag bowed a little scenting the unfamiliar. Jakub felt
the quick anger of seconds earlier lessen, how could so
weak and vulnerable a creature not fear him?
The story his mother related returned to him:
'Well, your grandmother told me that when the gods were
building trees, a great storm came over the hills and
knocked the forests down. All the animals ran to hide, and
the deer were the fastest runners of all. The next day the
gods began to rebuild the forests, but they were worried
another storm would come so they called the Lord of the
Deer. Send you fastest deer to stand at the gates of the
woodlands, they said, and if the storm should come tell him
93
to run to us with a warning. This the Lord did, sending a

young hart. The hart spent the day watching the horizon
and no storm came. The next day and the next, he was sent
and each day his gaze never wavered from the skyline of the
new born hills.
On the fourth day he went, and took his position as before.
By noon dark clouds threatened in the sky, and as the first
rain drops began to fall the young stag turned and ran to
warn the gods. As he turned, his young horns caught a briar
rose and snagged him fast. As the storm began to gather and
the winds pushed hard, the hart fought with all his strength
to free his antlers, 'til finally the briar snapped. Covered with
blood from the thorns the hart ran as fast as he could but
arrived at the gods too late. The winds swarmed across the
hill sides snapping the small trees, and ripping up their
roots. The next day everything was destroyed.
'The gods were furious and summoned the Lord of the deer
and the young hart. Explain, the gods thundered. The young
hart quaked before so many angry eyes, and too humiliated
to tell of what had happened: it was wolves, he said, wolves
attacked and prevented me from coming in time. And he
showed his wounds that slashed across his flanks. The gods
roared in anger and banished all wolves to live alone and
hunted.
'Days past and no one knew the truth of it. Except, that is,
for one magpie who'd sat high above the hart, and watched
his struggle in the briar. The magpie kept his counsel and
told no one but, as magpies are well known for their long
memories, he did not forgot and made a bargain with the
stag. Stay by me, he said, and watch for coming storms to
keep me safe in open fields.
94
'But, replied the hart, there is danger in the fields for men
roam there, and I cannot flee to tree tops beyond their
reach.
'No, said the magpie, you cannot fly but consider well
who you fear most: the gods or mankind.
'And that is why, Jakubs mother told him, magpies and
deer are never far apart; but the poor deer suffer much, for
in following the magpie to the fields they are oft killed,
whilst the magpie is unafraid.
'You see, his Mother said, there are many things to fear in
this life, yet the gods and mankind are the most terrible.
Jakub blinked back to the present.
The sun twisted through the trees, its long beams
descending on to the ground, and the stag shivered. A tear
sat beneath his eye and threaded its way through the dun
fur of his cheek, his head lowered and then a second, and
third tear. An age passed and Jakub realised that his breath
could not regain the open. He exhaled low and long not
wanting to startle the weeping creature that now shivered
before him.
The weight of the deers sorrow seemed to bow its
slender frame, and its forelegs slipped from beneath it as
he sank into the sour mulch.
Jakub rose slowly, he felt a quake about the knees and
sweat began to pour down his neck and back; the great
barrel of his chest throbbed with a heart that neither knew
nor understood the grief that now sank before him. The
deer rolled onto its side, its gaze returning to Jakub. The
tears had gone but these were replaced by a
comprehension that bore into the farmer.
It was this, this knowing, that was hid deep within the
flames Prometheus suffered to provide us; that lay at the
95
core of the apple proffered by the Serpent; but still

remained unrecognisable to the innocent until the end:
Death.
The stag fell as did Adam in those moments before the
light left him; as an infant, uncomprehending, might in its
final moments realise that all radiance, beauty and love is
about to fade and be extinguished, so the deer, descending
into the darkness, became illuminated.
A keening mewl seemed to exhale from the earth
beneath Jakubs knees, and he heard the roar of silence that
death brings as the forest, and all things about him, slid
into a clarion rage of stillness. The quiet pounded at him
forcing him to cover his ears to stifle the torrent of
nothingness that bombarded him and, like a
claustrophobe, Jakub became enveloped by a cloyishness
that stifled his movements as if some web had looped him
to the emptiness that surrounded him.
He felt the void, and knew it was a godless place, as if
some shift had occurred, and the foundation upon which
all things comprehensible sat had melted away, and now
the ground had turned to mush and there was nought solid
for reason to grasp.
The birds were silent, and the wind dropped from the
trees becoming still beside him. Jakub watched the deer
now stone dead, its youthful face empty, bland. The forest
seemed cowed and the oppression of the silence
suffocating. He wished for a noise in this muted desert: the
crack of a twig, the swirl of a leaf floating to the floor, the
wail of a falcon high above but there was nothing.
A cloud trailed its shadow across the woodland floor
cooling the air as it went, Jakub shivered slightly. He had
seen many a dead stag in his day, but never one to just lay
down before him; his chest tremoured, thrilled by the pain
96
of what he had seen, and he sucked in his breath over

trembling lips.
It is just a deer, Jakub told himself, but it was not. It was
much more.
97
The Green Man

And then from the stillness, from the emptiness of death,
the roar came. It began far off, far beyond the trees and
hills. It started near the oceans, perhaps beyond even
them, beyond where any man had been, but it came
desolate, reaping, and with a rage that shook the land. The
noise grew, building upon itself, towering and furious,
though at this remove it was audible but as yet intangible.
The forest remained still, no leaf moved, no grass stirred,
and no breath of air whispered by his cheek.
The rumbling crescendo intensified and became like a
dragon thrashing the air with its mighty head, slashing
through the waves of sound its huge tale; a disjointed
rumble growing and threatening.
At Jakubs feet a soft mummer came from the grasses
which stirred gently, bobbing in a breeze unfelt by him.
Seeds wafted in an infinitesimal current above his head,
their brittle hairs softly moved. A shimmer in the leaf tops
above his head, feint but passing constantly overhead; a
smooth brushing of his shirt by unseen hands that lifted
his hair from the nape of his neck, caressing, turned his
head. A gentle draft rising from between the trunks of oak
which trilled the green leaves, wending like a snake
through grass between the maze of trees; a gust, no more
than a gentle sigh, flipped and tossed across the floor
tumbling as it went flapping the hems of his pants and
moving on. A creaking of limbs above him, branches touch
and tenderly pet their neighbour, grinding smoothly; a
slow wave of air moves across the tree tops, and the air
shivers with motion. There is a lull; a second of quiet, and
the then winter came.
98
A cold wind swept the forest floor, a roar amongst the

airy limbs above rumbled in the distance furiously
dragging itself over the woodlands, drawing ever nearer;
shade deepened and became a pale darkness that cut all
warmth from the air. Jakub remained transfixed by the
corpse: the eyes of the deer forever set, petrifying him as
immobile as the very rock on which he knelt.
His hands, still locked on the axe, began to sting as the
cold breath of the wind swept in eddies about him stirring
the mephitic stench of decay that blossomed from the
earth beneath him. The mouldering remains of summers
past, the blessed breath of Nature herself, raised about him
in a fetid stink catching his throat and smarting his eyes.
The stag himself seemed to baulk at its awfulness as the
mildew of rot spread across his fur and flank; the first
bleached rib splitting the skin in a sweet rend, and then
chalked and crumbled in the noxious air.
Retching Jakub rose onto unsteady feet and tried to
inhale a cleaner air from the breeze that whirled about, but
could draw none. He turned for the path, his eyes blinded
by distress, and stumbled intoxicated over root and leaf
raised by unseen hands to misstep and fell him; for certain
the path had known no obstacle nor debris earlier. Yet he
surged on driven by the hounds of fear, desperate to be rid
of the place.
The cold wind seemed to urge him on as he struck for
home: never had such a thing been seen. He reeled on, his
lungs clearing of the heavy decay, and images of the
stricken deer receding. The winds grew, pushing him down
the track, their noise hammering at him from all sides. His
pace quickened, a shower of autumn leaves swept down
from above and danced groggily along the forest floor,
each choosing a bed for winter, each framing the path. The
99
cold drifted up from out the land, whispering to itself;

clinging and sucking at the warmth, it crept on dreadful
feet through the forest hunting down the weak and the
timid. It wrapped about the life of things sinking deep into
their marrow where life is wont to dwell.
Jakub realized his jacket still hung from the elder where
he had left it in the heat of work and summer; he pulled his
loose shirt tight about him as cold seeped into the forest.
The clouds loured deeper still urging and goading him into
ever quicker steps. The axe hung loosely in his hand its
blade cold to the touch, the sap of the tree had hardened
against the metal skin rippling in thin lines of blood. Sweat
sluiced Jakubs back despite the cool air and even now his
heart pounded in his chest in protest at such a strange
event.
His gaze ranged across the forest, across the great swirls
of falling leaves, their yellowed patterns browning as they
tumbled. Beyond an old fallen oak he had played on as a
child he knew there to be a spring of fresh water and made
his way towards it. Fear had dried his mouth and tongue,
his head throbbed like the echo of cheap wine, and
perhaps the purity of this small fountain could quench a
deeper thirst.
A timorous squirrel chatted noisily on a low branch
pawing at green acorns that hung beyond its reach as
Jakub passed. A nest of dead nut hatch fledglings spilled
from the branches above as a gust of rough wind shrilled
through the bare limbs and branches. The nest caught the
wind and spun its small contents to the earth as a man may
scatter corn, yet the chicks huddled frozen in aphonic
complaint at their mishandling.
Jakub reached the spring and barely registered the cold
as he broke the ice with his fingers to reach the waters
100
beneath. He gulped down the silver draft, tasting the purity

of his native land in each drop, absorbing the earths very
soul with each swallow of liquid. He lay back against the
massive weight of the old tree and felt age in its solidity.
The tree, rooted in its history, gave Jakub a sense of
permanence and he relaxed against its firm bark. The tree
yielded itself to the man offering a harbour against the
biting chill. Jakub pulled his thin shirt tighter still when the
crack of wood brought him up.
A wild pig snuffled through the light flurries of snow no
more than a yard away. It plaintively turned over the
sodden mulch in search of food. Mournfully the starving
creature pushed the dead leaves in vain hope oblivious to
the man, oblivious to all except its famine. Its end was
clearly marked and cried for empathy, so pathetic was its
pursuit, as nothing would sustain a body in this frozen
waste.
Jakub eased himself up and dusting snow from his boots
he pushed his way downhill. The frozen earth cracked
beneath his feet; snow fell hard, yet in the hoary silence
the snow alighted the ground in a rhythmic crackle which
effervesced in steady time. The darkness in the forest was
now acute and he could not see without difficulty.
The hour was still early but dark cloud and snow formed
a cruel blind which Jakub struggled to penetrate. The rise
sloped down and gave out to a small clearing in which he
regained the path. It was now only a short way to Osicovce
and Jakub moved with an urgency born of hope.
That hope may bring an end to misfortune is an unholy
artifice, but Jakub hoped and in so doing abdicated all
pretense. He had hoped from the moment when death had
taken Anka; he had clutched at it throttling it in
desperation. When he woke, and even before his eyes were
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open, he forced hope over fear, thrusting it hard into the

fore, forcing it to smother all other feeling in him. Yet, hope
had become his greatest friend and fiercest enemy,
promising him much yet always denying him at the end;
but since Anka it was fear, not hope, that guided him.
Tears lined his cheeks as he burst from the elders and
brambles that bordered the orchard of his home. The snow
was now above the knee, and it took his greatest effort to
reach that gate of his house. Leaping the gate, for there was
no way to clear the snow to open it, he reached the door
and pulled hard, shoving the snow back until the gap was
large enough for him to squeeze in.
The chill damp that met Jakub smelled heavily of must
and neglect. The fire in the hearth slept wrapped in the
embers of another age, yet his hands were so numb that
whatever memory of heat there was still extant barely
penetrated his cracked skin. Frost fingers laced the
windows and his breath hung in frozen clouds.
Shivering he placed wood dust onto the ash and struck
flint after flint until finally he watched as a lazy line of
smoke struggled towards the chimney. He draped a thick
woollen rug over his shoulders and crouched before the
fledgling flames in the hope of warmth, but the cold had
sunk so deep into the marrow that his very fibre seemed
frigid.
It was a cold unlike anything he had known brought on,
he knew, not only by the elements but by something that
failed explanation. The fire took a little within the stove,
and its blaze lit the room with a sense of normality. Jakub
scraped the ice from the window and gazed out into the
twilight of the day. Snow still fell and the wind blew in
stronger gusts, the fear of the forest was passing, slowly
seeping from him, but not the uncertainty.
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The fruit picked the day before lay rotten in the basket
where he left it; thin layers of dust coated his table, chair
and floor. The very house itself held an emptiness borne of
time neglected. It was as if he had been gone an age. Rats
had eaten through his grain sacks in the pantry and
potatoes stored for winter had sprouted. The eyes he had
not yet removed desperately searching for light and
sustenance in the dark of the cellar.
His nearest neighbour was old Marian who lived a short
way down the hill and Jakub resolved to solve this mystery
in company. Placing more wood on the fire he made for the
door and squeezed back out into cold wind.
Another inch or more of snow had fallen in the short
time since he had arrived home and it now seemed even
colder than before.
A roar of complaint emanated from the forest as the
winds fleeing the Moravian lands to the north battered the
woodland fringes. Shielding his eyes against the raw blast,
Jakub looked back towards the direction of Velke Javorina
and Moravia but the world was lost in a haze of frozen
mist. Looking down the hill he tried to discern any of the
low lying villages but in the brief moments when the
clouds split to lift the veil shrouding Osikovce he saw
nothing of the expanse he knew.
The naked fruit trees of the orchard glistened white with
hoar frost and a deathly silence hung about the air despite
the winds lamentation, for it was no audible silence this,
no stillness born of noisome things but a quietus of the
vital elements, of living things. Long stemmed wheat
clacked in Marians field: uncut and frozen in a wayward
dance, the crop shimmered in a coat of silver ice, ruffled by
the winds that blew. The mud beneath Jakubs feet was as
103
hard as iron, sloping and slipping its way along a thin ditch
towards a neat two room house.
No smoke came from the kitchen stack and no light
burned in the windows. The dogs were quiet as he
approached, and this more than the hush of the house
unsettled Jakub. Such was the quiescence that, as a man in
a cathedral, thoughts of uttering more than a nervous
whisper seemed profane. He rounded the house and
mounted a low wooden stoop. Outside the kitchen door
was a crude wooden bench were on a warm afternoon
Marian was wont to sit smoking his pipe, breathing the last
of the afternoons warm sunshine.
And so he sat now, a lifeless burlesque of a contented
man. The pipe hung rigid at his lips, the frosted spittle
glistening in his beard. He looked beyond the barn
oblivious to all time and change about him. Lina, his old
dog, lay curled at his feet in amaranthine dreams.
Jakub croaked a groan, his throat still refusing to utter
the words necessary. Marian posed in perfect serenity, a
figure void of agitation, a man at peace: his death had been
swift and unannounced.
As Jakub struggled to frame this terrible scene he
noticed the bloody stumps where Marians hands had once
been. His arms rested peacefully in his lap but with both
extensions lopped off. The frozen blood dripped crimson
crystals that fell to shatter on the floor by Linas head, and
yet the wound had cauterized so quickly with cold that it
now seemed to flow still.
Magda!. The scream that came from Jakub was carried
on wings of hysteria.
Magda! He called the name of Marians wife as he
barged the kitchen door open; his prodigious strength
104
coupled to fear near flung the door from its thin wooden
hinges.
Magda!
Magda stood at the stove bent slightly over a pot. Her left
arm was partly raised and hovered over the ice crusted
kettle as if about to stir, but no hand held a ladle for, like
her husband, Magda's hands had been cleanly sliced away.
Her faced was turned in half profile, wisps of grey hair
tucked beneath a house bonnet to be kept clean. Her
appearance, like Marian's, was utterly composed and
tranquil: they had died innocent to their fate.
Jakub felt a heave of desperation rip through him; a
blackness narrowed about his eyes, his vision narrowing
to the point of infinity. His being stiffened as bewilderment
and belated presentment struck. He struggled for control
over his senses and dragged his mind back to the reality of
the bizarre horror that surrounded him. What had
previously been a mystifying and frightening natural
aberration had now become a thing beyond natural
understanding.
Jakub cascaded back onto the stoop racking in lungful's
of air. He landed on his knees before the sleeping face of
Lina whose peaceful dreams seemed at odds with the
terror that gripped Jakub. He stared, half hoping she would
wake, but she slept on.
The wind gusted cold against the side of the house, and a
shadow moved in the half light. The Green man stepped on
to the porch, his long hands smoothing back the fur of
Line's coat as he stooped to look at her. His touch was
gentle as he swept away the film of snow along her back.
So you have crossed the Garden Gate, Jacob. You have
stepped beyond the arbour of the senses.
105
With this the Green Man turned a vacant gaze towards

the forest. A Slim breeze rustled in the eaves of the house
as Jacob fought with comprehension. It seemed an age
before the wicker creature moved, its movements
shimmered in the glomming, and its light reflected off
frosted leaves. It wove on unsteady feet, a rhythmic
swaying like reeds at the edge of a stream.
It was a horror to behold, but not fearsome, and despite
the macabre atrocity of his surroundings Jakub realised
that he was not afraid, not any more.
The creature shifted slightly and moved into the dark of
the porch. There was a long bench against the wall, and
Jakub was unsure if it stood or sat. He raised himself up
slowly and moved towards it, his heart beating hard but
his mind restful. He reason said run, but his soul said
otherwise; not flee, not run but simply be in the presence
of this green and wicker man. Its sylvan features, though
grotesque, greeted Jakub with a kindness and tranquillity
unexpected. The wind about them dropped and all was
quiet.
There is so much Jacob, that you have failed to
understand...so much. That Men have been so positively
uncomprehending, that you have failed to realize in spite
of all the most obvious of signs has brought us to this."
The creature seemed to keen a little forward as if in pain,
as if the bleakness in its words caused it to hurt.
"And yet all was such simplicity, and therein lay this
Earths majesty, and your confusion. A garden, a place of
such infinite beauty with sufficient provision for all things
was yours: light to see by, darkness to sleep by; clear water
to quench your thirst and fruits of every size and calibre to
sustain; flowers and images of such splendid beauty to
delight; and fellowship, nay love, by which even the rudest
106
of things becomes the most priceless of jewels. And more,

Jacob, you were free: unfettered by hardship and toil nor
any other demands, for there were none. Nature asked
nothing of you but to revel and rejoice in her prosperity.
Outside darkness had fallen and the deep silence that
only night and snow can afford. The Green man seemed to
watch the snowfall with sad satisfaction, watching an
expected end. He continued to watch the skies as if seeing
something far off.
And so you lived: Adam and Eve, man and woman in
nature; a paradise of the most exquisite kind. Heaven. But
the simplicity of being wasnt enough for Man, to reap the
Earths bounty was insufficient, to hold all the wealth of
heaven and earth in the palm of your hand did not satisfy.
You were the benefactors of all created wealth, recipients
of a world that loved and adored you like a child wrapped
in its mothers arms. Yet it was not enough. To possess all
things, yeah even the very stars in the sky afforded you no
contentment; because there was one thing you did not
own
The Green Man turned his hollow gaze finally towards
Jacob, and in the gloom of the twilight they reflected wells
of deepest sorrow, reflections of Natures saddest regrets.
Jacob shifted uncomfortably but found himself inexplicably
enchanted by this tragedy.
'Authority, Jacob, it was this that Mankind so
desired. Mastery over a world you believed to be no more
than chattel to your whim: lifes goodness had always been
yours, Nature gave it freely, but now you take without
gratitude believing all things to be your own; but more
than this you want to rest the very sceptre of power from
Nature Herself.
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'So, sciences you invented to exact this authority as

knowledge gave you power to control, and the more
control you had the more you wanted. And now the
authority is yours: the Garden is manicured as your
scientists see fit, the flowers sit in mathematical rows, fruit
is grown to an exact hue and colour, animals creep out of
sight in fear or lay shackled for future use.
'The streams are dammed, the forests cut and valued to a
stick, and you have cast the shadow of your omnipresence
upon all things. Bird song has been calculated, the flight of
the bee examined and even the deer of the forest are
numbered, marked and designated according to your
science. And what fruitless labour this, Jacob, what
purposeless endeavours! Does lavender smell the sweeter
for understanding or the rose bloom to greater perfection?
No, they do not.
'And you made your new God in man's image, and no
flower or beast is allowed in your philosophy. You left all
of us behind, preferring your own company to ours. The
old gods, we, were mocked and made little things, whilst
children squealed to hear of fairie kings, and laughed with
glee as our rites became their games. You turned us into
devils: wicked, cruel and lurking whilst you raped the land
of all that's shared and killed for nothing but your
pleasure.
So what have the sciences brought you Jacob, greater
happiness, a more refined contentment? Mankinds
researches have only served to engender an arrogant
contempt for all things, including yourself. Nature, the very
mother of all things, the very god which gave you life is
made a bonded whore, a tool to satisfy your needs.
Oh Jacob, what outrageous presumption, what foul
ingratitude, what ridiculous and comic airs you have
108
displayed. You have become Masters of nothing as your

avarice and greed has laid this kingdom to waste.
The night was now with them and the cold deeper still.
The cold crept into Jakub, burning down inside of him,
reaching his depths. It was not the cold of the wind or
winter chill, but a coldness of the soul. It was the chill of
abandonment, the same a child may feel as he stands
knowing his mother may never return.
And so death has come, Nature has turned her face away
and hides herself in grief. The forests are still, all life is
gone. All men frozen in their acts: suspended. Cold, Jacob,
so very cold will your future be without the Mothers
grace. For Her grace is gone and the only mother you shall
know will be of cold rationale, and science will be the new
lore.
'You will no longer love but lust, not admire but envy, not
cherish but desire. You will no longer create but construct,
not nurture but rear, not flourish but succeed. And what
successes you will have, what glories you will devout to
your own genius. Toil will no longer be Mans companion
but leisure you will now have in excessive abundance. No
archaic morality will hinder you as reason and scientific
approval will wipe away all objections. All restraints will
be removed and nothing that imagination can conceive
denied you. It is all you have craved.
'Selfcongratulation will be your highest praise and your
every effort will be devoted to safeguarding this phantom
of supremacy, and as you parade about your garden
empire it is not love and admiration you shall find from
your inhuman subjects, but loathing and pity. Such will be
the greatness of Man'.
The Wicker man's gaze swept about the frozen
landscape before Marians cottage and Jacob found himself
109
similarly gazing beyond the ice encrusted farmyard to the

frosted field and forest which steadily declined into the
shades of night.
Despite the harsh cold about him Jacob felt no such chill,
in fact he felt remotely detached from the savageness of
nature's retreat and the words of the Green Man. Cocooned
and remote from the devastation around him. He looked
down at the icy features of his old friend and felt no sense
of loss or grief. Even the fear that had gripped him earlier
had given way to a calm indifference.
'What you feel, Jacob, is ambivalence, now a most human
emotion. Not even the gore of your friends severed stumps
can impinge upon your sense of serenity. You are
inviolate, as a stone. Only self exists, and only a threat to
self can now disquiet you. You have reached an apotheosis
of the self, no greater god shall there be beyond your own
divinity and that of your sciences. Mankind now walks
alone Jacob as all gods must, for an emperors throne is a
lonely seat. You are separate and distinct, kin only unto
yourselves. Master of all yet familiar to none.
'The bloodied hands of mankind, tools you have
employed to such bitter ends, I take for would we had
given you the wit to live, but not the mechanism to enact
wit.
The creature knelt with a phlegmatic tenderness usually
reserved for chattel or a favoured beast and contemplated
Marian's cruel wounds. The sons of Iapetus are twinned
for good reason Jakub, but Epimetheus, oft mocked,
viewed well the consequences his brother was blind to;
how Prometheus, in his kindness, condemned all other
creatures to death by his gifts, and how the gods wept to
see such folly.
110
The Green man moved towards the garden where the

snow shone in the clear moonlight. He stooped below the
eaves of the house and turned his steps towards the
silence of the trees, his rustling gait crisp and sharp in the
frozen air.
Without turning back he called one last time to Jacob, his
words no more than a whispered breath: Mankind is
forsaken, Jacob, but not abandoned. Serve all, revere all as
you so serve and revere yourself, and mayhap the most
humble of earth's creatures will deign forgiveness. '
And with this he was gone.
111
Conclusion
When Jacob died a hangmans death in the spring of 1601
the crowds cheered the death of a pernicious criminal
responsible for the murder and mutilation of his aged
neighbours. His corpse hung a week in the square of
Cactice. The sun shone high on the day of his death; the
blue sky seemed heavy laden with summer as it hung
above the crowds suspended.
After the winters thaw the Countess of Cactice had
ordered a survey done to gauge the extent of the damage
such a harsh season had done to her lands, and the results
are recorded as horrific. The numbers of old and infirm
who died are in the hundreds, with thirteen hamlets and
over twenty homesteads completely lost. This number
would rise in the spring as disease from the large number
of dead animals began to take its toll. Starvation came soon
after as the lost autumn harvests left grain stores empty.
The countess had applied for aid from the King in Vienna,
and from her cousin, the King of Poland but to no avail.
When her men arrived in Osikovce the place was in ruin.
Jakub's roof had partially collapsed from the weight of
snow, and they had found the remains of Marian and
Magda where they had been left by the brute force of
winter. Wolves, stray hounds and time had left little for
burial but the clean slice of a blade across their wrists had
left few in doubt that their deaths were anything but a
tragic accident.
Jakub was found soon after by wood cutters, living wild
and sleeping in a pilgrimage shrine a few miles from his
home. The shrine was dedicated to St. Mary of the forest,
said to be a place for the healing of monsters. Legend had it
that in the old days, a thief had lived close by, and his wife
112
had given birth to a child too deformed for description.

The child was considered more animal than human and
was hidden away. The wife considered it a punishment
from God for her husbands evil ways, and begged her
husband to stop stealing from those who travelled through
the forest, but he refused.
One day, the wife sat weeping near a rocky crop in the
forest when she saw a figure wrapped in mist. The ghostly
form showed her a steam pouring from the black stones
she sat upon in a vision, and directed her to bathe her child
in its waters. The wife jumped up and ran all the way
home, she collected her child from its hiding place and by
the time she returned a small spring was pouring from
beneath the rocks.
She gently washed her monstrous child and prayed there
for two days and nights. On the morning of the third day
she unwrapped her childs blankets and was amazed to see
the child whole. A small wooden shrine was built by her
husband, tended and later added to down the years. It was
here Jakub was found lying when the men came, seeking
shelter from monsters, so he had said.
Jacob did not offer a defence when questioned, nor gave
any resistance when they had dragged him from the
shrine. They say he wept to see his gardens, and begged to
be allowed a moment there. He said nothing as they
manacled him, and tied him to horse, nor had he
complained when they dragged him through the dust
roads, down from the hills and into the Cactice castle.
A priest was sent to see him as he awaited trial, but Jakub
spoke of nothing but ghosts, forest monsters, and old gods.
It was enough to send him to the gallows with the church
raining excommunication down upon his soul.
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On the day of his hanging the murderous witch of

Osikovce, as some now called him, gazed above the heads
of the assembled crowd, beyond the wooded hills of
Cactice to his own woodlands not many miles away. Local
dignitaries, including the Countess herself, sat well placed,
but Jacob seemed oblivious to what was taking place. He
was a man, it was said, who almost looked relieved.
Jakub allowed the hangman to bind his arms before him,
and his gaze shifted track to the crowds that jostled to see
him. The heaving mass of people had swelled since
morning, there were to be three deaths this day, and the
excitement radiated from people.
Children played and cried, wives searched for their
husbands, who in turn searched for younger girls. Donkeys
complained at the heat and at the cruel snap of a stick
across their flanks. The air was humid and flecked with
insects. Roosters sat on upturned vats, whilst dogs liked
the grime from out the gutters. Bored soldiers eyed the
gallows with indifference, whilst young boys aped the old
and strutted with the crows.
Jakub watched all this, this theatre, and felt nothing.
During the long night of winter the Green man had seldom
left him, sitting with him as the cold dug deep into the land.
They had talked of many things, and spent many days in
silence, whilst the snow fell and the land slept. On the last
day of April Jakub was left alone, as he had been when
Anka died all those years ago. It would not be long, the
Green man had told him, it was nearly time to leave this
place.
In Cactice his eyes wandered yet fixed on nothing. The
baker, Jaro, he could see was there, along with his son new
born this spring. And there his neighbour from Konkusova
who'd called upon him the previous summer seeking help
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with a sick foal. Then he caught sight of a familiar figure:

dust covered boots, tattered coat and haggard face a
mirror of their last encounter.
Jacob glanced at the coin clutched in his left hand, at the
ragged sylvan feature of the Green man imprinted on the
disc. He looked back into the crowd. The stranger stood
stock still, his eyes never leaving Jakub, his smile warm in
its welcome.
A shadow moved across Jakub as the priest muttered a
final amen and the hangman placed his right boot on the
back of the stool on which Jacob stood.
God be with you, the priest intoned as Jacob felt the
stool tilt forward. He glanced once more at the coin in his
hand and at the face in the crowd. As his feet began to slip
from their perch he saw the awful resemblance twixt the
stamped impression and the man before him. The rope
snapped his head back but did not pop the bones of his
neck and the crowd began to cheer.
Jakub's eyes bulged from his skull and he swivelled at the
end of the rope. His vision was failing but he saw the sun
and the forest that rimmed the far hills, they were green
and rich, and despite the burn about his neck his heart was
happy.
A fiddle struck up in the throng and the shout dance,
dance roared along with the jeers and laughter, this is
what they had come to see. Jacob strained to suck in air
but his eyes never left the strangers face which remained
impassive throughout.
His vision began to cloud as the stranger smiled and
raised his left arm. Jacobs brain struggled to focus as a
force pulled him to the right as the hangman lent his
weight to end the gallows jig. An audible groan escaped the
crowd; dance, dance they continued to cry.
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A blackness began to surround Jacob as the stranger

turned and pointed up beyond the masses to the dark
forests of Osikovce and the Carpathians. The strangers
voice rose above the wailing crowd.
Here is home Jacob, where Anka awaits. Come with me
and I will show you the way.
The Green man finished his story and sat back
contentedly. The hours had passed and I was surprised
that I could be so held by a tale. The sky had clouded over
and my legs were stiff from sitting too long. I lit a cigarette,
and offered the bottle of brandy to my friend.
Do you believe that's a true story?', I asked.
The Green man left out a long sigh after taking a drink,
and looked thoughtfully at the end of his cigarette.
'It doesn't really matter, does it? It's a good tale', he
replied, 'and good stories live whether they are true or
not'.
Aye, but you said at the start that this was a real story of
real people. Did Jakub really exist?'
'Maybe. He's real enough to me, and folks have always
called this place Jakubova Studna or Jakub's well, despite
its real name being something to do with Mary. So it could
be. And the house where you live, Jakubs house, has that
old walnut where Anka is meant to be buried, and I
remember that walnut always having been there. The
stories could be true.'
'But if Jakub was tried and hanged there'd be court
records or something, hey? Death certificates for him and
Anka, maybe even marriage records! Was there a land
registry back then? Maybe there are old parish records.
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It'd be great to know for sure if he really existed. To have

some proof that the story is real'.
The Green man took a long pull on his cigarette and
shook his head.
'That's exactly why it's not important to know if the story
is true or not.'
'What do you mean?' I replied.
'Because then you miss the point of the story. Will the
story be any better if it's true, will the things that
happened to Jakub be any less if they're not real? In the old
days, long before Jakub lived, if he lived, people believed
that once a tale was told it became true whether there
were facts or not, and that's the way it should be. Jakub's
tale is true because it's been told, and now you know the
story so it's twice as true as it was this morning.'
I laughed. 'But then every story is true, and nothing is
fact. That's madness. Anyone can say anything, and we'll go
about believing it just because it was said.'
'But it's like that anyway, 'he replied,' we always just
believe what other people tell us. Someone says the laws of
physics work like this, and the rest of us say "oh, ok!" and
we believe it. Someone else says the stars move like this, or
like that and we say 'Oh, he must be right'. It's the same
thing. Someone says something and then it becomes true.'
He chuckled at what he must have considered a good
joke, picked up his stick and stood up.
'The point is,' he said, ' truth is a human notion, Nature
has never really cared much about facts, and neither
should we. For someone like Anka life was about mystery,
in that way she was very much like a child I suppose, but it
was the mystery of life that moved her. For Jakub, he didn't
think too much about facts or mysteries, for him things
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were just as they were. In this way he too way child-like,

he didn't look for causes or reasons he accepted what was.'
'But it's in our nature to question, to want to know
why...it's what makes us Human?'
'Exactly', he said, emptying the brandy bottle of the last
dregs,' and that's our misfortune, in fact I'd say it is our
prelude to Hell. When we unveil the truth of a thing it often
becomes less in our imaginations. When a child is told that
faeries don't really live beneath that hill, or that stars are
merely floating rocks, how much less they become to their
minds, how sad is their reaction? And when that magic is
stripped away, when a thing becomes less to us, we stop to
wonder at it, and most importantly to care for it. Look at
how we came to treat the land once we had reduced it to
chemical compounds! '
'Half the time I don't know if you're pulling my leg or
telling the truth', I laughed.
'Well, things have a value because we give them value, is
what I'm saying, just like Jakubs cup; and familiarity
breeds contempt, as people say'.
We moved outside the little shrine and were quite for a
moment.
The Green man leaned back against a wooden post that
barely held the shrine upright, and lit another cigarette.
'You know, when I was young we had lots of wars here
and people were always fighting for this, or fighting for
that, and I think a lot of people were tired of the fighting
but no one knew how to stop.
On this hill, close to where we are now, there was a huge
battle and hundreds of soldiers died, and when the fighting
stopped the women came out of the forest to find their
husbands and sons. Most of them were dead, of course, and
for days and days all you could hear was the sound of
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crying and women weeping for the dead. But in the village
down by the road there was a young girl who was born
different. She wasn't too bad, just a bit naive and like a
child in some ways.
Anyway, amidst all of the weeping this young girl, maybe
twelve she was, could often be heard singing, and she
loved to walk by the river singing away with not a care in
the world. This made people angry, and one day the priest
came down to the river and said ' Woman, be silent we are
in mourning and your singing mocks our sorrow'.
He stopped talking for a moment and listened to the
forest. It was quiet. He nodded towards the path and
walked into the early evening; we headed down the track
to Osikovce. Owls and crickets sang, and I wondered if
Jakub would recognise these sounds if he were here today.
'Well,' he continued, 'the young girl was saddened by this
and promised not to sing again. The next day she was out
by the river again but she did not sing. People saw her
down by the stream, her hair was wild and coated in ashes,
her skirts were ripped, and she wailed and wept, calling
down curses from the heavens.
Again the Priest was called, 'Woman, be silent. We are in
mourning and your melodrama mocks our sorrow'. On the
third day, she again went down to the river yet didn't sing
nor weep, but sat quietly in the tall grasses sowing patches
of cloth together.
The villagers came out of their houses, and looked down
to the river: 'What is she doing', they whispered, 'sowing
and stitching whilst we mourn our dead'.
They called again for the priest, 'Go down there and tell
her to stop. It's not right how she mocks us'.
Well, the priest, despite his calling, was a good man, and
he looked down to the river and said, 'I cannot see that
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what she does mocks us in our grief. She merely stitches

cloth. Go home, good people, and leave her be.'
The next day the girl visited every house, knocking
quietly on each door. To each woman she gave a small
cloth pouch tied together with braids she had cut from her
own hair. She warned each woman not to open the pouch
for it contained their hearts desire, and should they open it
then they would lose what they wanted most.
'Well, of course, as soon as the girl left the women
standing at their doors, one by one, they did exactly what
she has told them not to do. When the women opened the
pouches they found nothing inside and were furious. They
gathered together and called the girl out of the house she
shared with her mother, father and brother.
'What is the meaning of this empty gift. Why do you
mock us so when we are in the midst of grief?' the women
cried, 'you said it contains our hearts desire, yet it is
empty'.
The young girl stepped from the house, 'Oh foolish
women, that bag did contain your hearts desire if you had
but trusted me and kept the pouches closed, but now all is
gone'.
'What?', the women cried, 'But, the bags were empty!'
'They were only empty because you looked', replied
Anka.
The Green man broke into a broad grin.
"So, as you see, things are as you would believe them to
be, at least according to one witch I knew'.
_____________________________________
120
The Third Tale

The Lament of Doctor Ladislav Horvath
Set at the start of the 19th century this story is based

on real places, a compelling legend and, some say, real
events that happened on the edge of the Wildwood.
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Part the First. Osikovce 1803

A steady stream of dust drifted through of the windows
of the carriage as Dr. Horvath wafted another layer from
his unread book. The driver seemed determined to make
his two passengers as uncomfortable as possible, as each
jarring rut in the uneven road bounced the tired pair
against the hard backboard. The horse-hair padded bench
on which the doctor sat was as hard as a cotters bed and
filthy pieces of rag hung across the windows, yellowed
with grime and dust, the leather seats themselves were
worn smooth and flaking with age. For the tenth time in
the last hour, he longed to be done with his journey.
It had taken three arduous days of flea infested Inns,
stale meals, and cruel rural highways to get him this far
and he was not sure how much more he could take.
The driver shouted above the creaking carriage urging
the ragged horses on, using whip and threat in equal
measure. He forced them up the steep slope of the hill until
the ridge levelled out onto broad pastures, and the road
softened into an avenue lined with walnut trees and
twisted apple. Here the road seemed to settle, the ruts cut
less harsh and the endless creak of straining wood mellow
to a coarse rumble.
Horvath relaxed a little a looked over at his companion.
The man was asleep, and had slept most of the journey.
Horvath pondered how this was earthly possible, as he had
not slept a wink since leaving his small but pleasant
lodgings in Trnava. Caught between the most
uncomfortable carriage in Europe and the zoo of insects
that inhabited most of the beds he had slept in since
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leaving home: sleep had been elusive and he was now

exhausted. He took a sip of tepid water from his flask and
sighed. He hoped all of this effort was worth it.
Beyond the fluctuating film of airy grime the doctor
looked out of the window at the spring that wove into
view; the deep forests that flowed across the landscape
called for his attention with an ancient charm. Such a
vastness of nature was both alluring and disturbing, and he
could not decide if the rawness of the untamed lands he
would now be a part of could accept a man like himself:
urban and curbed from the natural world. It was
disturbing, he thought, to be so far from things unnatural.
From the high vantage of the road the woodlands
seemed endless, and the few huddled villages he could see
appeared less nestled, as the poets may have termed it,
and more cowed by the great weight of nature
surrounding them. They appeared as small islets lost in a
vast verdant ocean, small things and impermanent, as if at
the flick of Her wrist Nature could sweep them away
without a moments thought.
Felled areas dotted the landscape, especially along the
valley floors, striped the dark brown of tilled soil; and
further still, along slack terraces, regimented orchards
lined the forests edge, their order sadly determined
against the chaos of Natures rule. Here people lived at as,
when and how Nature allowed.
He jarred against the headboard as the carriage hit
another new level of Purgatory and the winnowing creak
of the vehicles beleaguered axels complimented his own
muffled grown. If not for his trunks, cases and other
baggage he would have hired a horse for this, the final leg
of his journey. He only hoped he would find a wagon for
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rent to cover the last half mile once the carriage reached
his roads end.
He was sure it could not be far now as they had already
started their decent into the valley below, and he leaned
himself forward, pushing aside the useless flap of curtain
hanging down, and peered at the soft roll of hills that rose
around him.
Alongside the road weary labourers stepped aside as the
carriage passed, farm workers Horvath assumed; nonsmiling, hard: their eyes glazed with fatigue and contempt
for those too moneyed to walk.
Horvath raised a hand in a half-greeting to those who
would perhaps be his new neighbours but the response
was nil; though a youth smiled, his teeth milled by coarse
grains, and yellow and pointed. Pushed from behind, he
moved on with eyes caste back to the floor. An older man
laughed at the youth and grabbed a blackened thong
around his own neck, pulling it out from his shirt. He
waved it towards Horvath: a black talon, a crows foot. The
claws were long and cutting, and only briefly shown before
they were thrust back beneath the stained shirt, and the
carriage was away.
Horvath sat back inside, the dust now a swirling cloud
that coated his lips and throat. Hed heard of the old beliefs
still held by people here but had not expected to come face
to face with them before even arriving. The reputation of
the mountain people was not a kind one in this respect,
and he wondered how much of this reputation may
actually be fact. He scanned the hill tops, their dark slopes
thick with ancient timbers; who could, he mused, escape
the pagan spirit here?
Yet even for the less superstitious the Sylvan heart of the
Carpathian hills, these mellow reaches, held threats that
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made Horvath reconsider his impulsive decision to make

this land his home. Wild pigs were not the most malicious
creatures to wander through Moravias forests, with wolf
and bear often sighted in hard years. The young keeper at
the last stage had happily told him of the deaths of three
woodsmen; ripped down by the claws of a half-starved
bear the year before, they had not been found til the stink
of rotten meat had drifted far enough to call in a hunters
dogs.
Brushing these dark thoughts from his mind, and another
layer of dust from the book in his lap, he smiled at his own
foolishness. If he continued like this he would scare
himself all the way back to the Danube before the summer
dawned, and give his brothers at home something to mock
him for into the bargain.
Another jolt of the carriage heaved the battered dray, for
so it now felt, up a final slope, and brought him back to the
solid world around him. The driver shouted the horses
back to a walk, as on the curve of the road ahead a whitewashed cross signalled the final end of their torturous trip.
The doctor felt himself long for the clean air that had
been so suffocatingly denied him these last few miles of
dusty road, and hastily gathered his few articles together
and made to open the carriage door.
His travelling companion grumbled a farewell, a large
bulbous man, and tried to readjust himself to endure the
last haul into Krajne village, the final stage and resting
place.
Stepping down Horvath appraised his luggage and
acknowledged no losses or damage to the driver with a
curt nod and looked about him.
The small hamlet of 6 houses stood back from the road
whilst the dust covered cross announced the juncture of
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the main road to the larger village of Krajne to the south,

and eastwards to the smaller settlements beyond the
forests verge. Northwards ran the road along which he had
travelled, and a smaller but metaled track leading up a hill
veered west into the trees in front of him.
The hamlet which would become his home lay along this
forest track, and was said to be larger than the one here at
the crossroads, but deluged by the dark forests that lined
the low hills and cloaked from sight.
No doubt once he organised a good horse he would be
able to cover the mile and a half to the main village of
krajne in quick time if business extended that far. This, if
he were honest was something he was not overly hopeful
of, as the opening of a medical practice in such backward
territory was seen by many of his peers a clear lunacy, and,
looking around him now, he couldnt help but agree.
His home of Nitra was by no means a large metropolis,
nor the University town of Trnava where he had spent the
last six years studying, but here was a land removed. The
houses that bordered the junction were ramshackle but
not lost to despair, and small flower gardens fought
against the dust of the road to add a little colour and care
to peoples homes.
Ay, there would be not fortunes made here he thought.
However, he had never considered money a motivation,
and secretly relished the time to be spent in these
untrammelled hills And whilst most of his friends were
headed for the large cities to practice medicine, he had
chosen Konkusova Dolina: a small hamlet, in a small region
of small wealth but a land rich in solitude.
A bank of corn flower stalks attracted his eye, and he
wandered over brushing his fingers softly along the prickly
heads of last years grasses, now dark and forlorn after a
126
long winter. The corn flowers stood equally sombre, their

glory long spent in a now distant summer, but as ever they
waited and would soon reappear with the better weather.
He had always loved these flowers, their quiet
dependability; their never failing surety that spring would
come. Their cold woody stems in winter were a stark
contrast to their almost ethereal beauty in summer, and of
course their choice of habitat: rooting in the bitter rubble
of a roadside, choosing the hard earth cast by men over the
softer issue of natural forms. As if they, like him, chose
hardship over ease.
His spirit rose slightly within him; no, despite the dire
warnings of his tutors and friends, this was the place for
him. Riches were one thing, and there was money to be
had in the great cities of Vienna and Pressburg, he could
even venture to Budapest, were all a man need do was pick
the fruit of wealth from the trees that lined the cities
overburdened boulevards, but he had greater interests.
He heard the carriage pull away behind him, and
shielded his eyes and mouth from dust. As the soft rumble
of its wheels droned into quiet he questioned a few people
at the roadside about transport up the valley.
The people were shy but kind and it seemed unused to
strangers; they were unsure of their answers and looked
confused by his questions. Eventually, a little boy pointed
him in the direction of a fair haired man who was, as
Horvath stood speaking to him, preparing a low slung cart
to return to Konkusova Dolina.
The price agreed was reasonable enough considering
that his wife and two daughters would now have to walk.
The man introduced himself as Milan and showed a polite
disinterest in the Doctors thanks and explanations, merely
pocketing the money as he heaved Horvaths various bags
127
and boxes onto the cart without comment. Loaded, the cart
began to totter up a steep lane towards a low rise and then
descended into the shallow valley beyond, the valley of the
Konkus family.
Milans daughters and wife chatted amicably as they
followed the cart up the hill impervious to the prick of the
spring chill. The scent of wild garlic filled the air and, as
the snow drops continued to fade with the receding snows
that still, even now, clung to the higher and more shaded
woodlands, the bright eyed daisies and other ragged
adventurers could be seen creeping out of the dark soil. A
pale pink haze hung over the fringes of the forest as wild
cherry came into bud and a similar brume, like a wintery
green mist, drifted about the woodland as life regained the
trees and winter starkness hid behind the new born
fronds.
The sun hung in a blue mist above them barely managing
to penetrate the cool seeping from the woodlands on
either side of the road, it would be midday by the time the
ground warmed, and white patches of night frost still
remained in the grassy hollows of the verge. A cock
pheasant barked beside the track and took off in flight, it
skimmed the head of the horse and flapped down towards
a mass of dog rose, running as it landed deep beneath the
thorns into the briary dark to disappear.
The doctor breathed it all in. The sciences had brought
him a deep appreciation of natures richness and despite
his learning as a physician it had been a love of botany that
had coerced him into this recklessness he now found
himself involved in; a recklessness that would within a
year bankrupt him should he find no patients for his
medical knowledge. No easy task this given that every
family in Moravia possessed itself of at least one aged
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relative who ministered to the family, if not the

communitys, health.
Like a Jesuit on some foreign continent wresting men
from darkness, he would struggle to bring the local people
into this new faith, that of science. They would not be so
easy to beguile but he felt sure that with a few cured
confessors turned to him, he could keep the wolf of penury
from the door.
Next to him Milan had become more talkative and
chatted amicably, but Horvath barely listened. He smiled
occasionally to show interest and responded to the odd
question but other than that he was content to simply sit
and view his surroundings.
It seemed the house the doctor was to rent had belonged
to Milans wife through her aunt and had been empty since
the old ladys death the summer before. Milans brother-inlaw, whom Horvath had met in Trnava to secure the house,
had had little interest in the family and had not been seen
in the valley in near thirty years.
As soon as the old lady had died however the errant
uncle had been quick to claim his inheritance, and now
hoped to earn his way to comfort off a land he cared little
for.
As the highlights of Milans narration drifted on, the
doctor scanned the small houses and fields that sat beside
the road. They ambled over a small brook and the potent
smell of sodden earth rose up from the banks of the berm
and seemed to cloy the air with its dampness and bitter
balm. It was all nectar to Horvath, and it drenched his
lungs in a long forgotten aroma of the land. A primeval
sense of belonging arose within him, as it always had since
his childhood; like the smell of sweet mown grass, the
scent of wet earth was an ancient reminder of home.
129
Milan grunted encouragement to the carts struggling

horse as it crested a second rise. The young gelding
seemed as relieved as its owner to have made the steep
ascent and trotted easily down the path.
They had now entered the butt of the valley and, bowllike, it contained the last remaining homes before the track
became no more than a path that drifted off beyond the
line of trees. The houses, still some way off, appeared neat
and trim. Perhaps boasting one or two rooms, a wood
store, out-kitchen, and animal pens; they served more a
function than a fashion but each one expressed the finesse
of its owner and builder, with personal motifs and
depictions adorning walls, gates and outbuildings.
Away from the flap and bluster of the highway, these
homes, though not wealthier, seemed more at peace and
less worn out by the traffic of men. Here, surrounded by
the hills and trees, they possessed a gentler character than
those of lower folds.
Small wicker boundaries circled the inner properties but
the orchards, meadows, and paddocks were unfenced, and
as Horvath looked on he could see well-worn paths drifting
between cottages. A communal pool sat happily neglected
in a low dell, high surrounded with reeds at one end, the
other trampled and churned into muddy mire.
Circling the valley like a defensive wall, the tree line
wove an unsteady ring across the hills. Great banks of trees
then rose up on either side in an endless wash, towering
above the valley and giving the place a hidden feel; offering
the village perhaps some sanctuary from the world
outside.
Yet this sanctuary could only ever be temporary for
should the villagers fail to keep the woodlands at bay it
130
would surely inundate the vale, losing it forever in the

mighty stillness of the trees.
Milan pointed off to the left of the road where the land
dipped and was halved by an earthen path. Six ancient
walnut trees lined the south side of the track which wound
its way between an unkempt hedge of mixed bramble, wild
rose and stunted cherry. Above the hedge, and lower in the
dell, a large redbrick chimney jutted and was accompanied
by a smaller adobe one that listed with the weight of years.
As Milan drew the cart to a halt a penetrating silence
crept out of the landscape, a sweet and awful stillness.
Horvath drank in the quiet and scanned the rich woodland
that kept the cottage on three sides. A mix of oak, plane,
cherry, pine and untamed walnut descended on the house
which stood small against this wild backdrop.
Light shone from the tops of the trees and seemed to
surround this little garden, keeping it lit against the gloom
that strayed from the forest. A pair of black and red
woodpeckers skitted across the road and skimmed a
decrepit tree stump that appeared to mark the entrance of
the doctors new home and whatever feelings of
trepidation had haunted him before fled at the sight of this.
Milans polite cough brought Horvath back from his
reverie reminding him that the luxury of a day spent
musing was not to be enjoyed by all.
The key to the house was to be found hung from a nail
beside the door, and Horvath wandered down the track
leaving Milan to unload his belongings. Cow parsley stood
against clumps of grey grasses, their white heads sadly
drooping and relieved of their bitter smell til the seasons
turned; and comfrey too was there in dark shades of green.
A small circle of stones lay overgrown at the entrance
to garden and he could see hyssop and thyme, and many
131
other plants and herbs he did not know had been planted
there. He realised it was a small herb garden, and knelt
down on the wet grass to pick and scrunch up a hand full
of small leaves. The smell assailed his senses, stinging his
nose and brought his eyes to water as he sneezed, laughing
as he did so. Oregano, as strong as the exotic black pepper
sold in the cities from faraway lands, and growing here
tucked beneath the straggling mint.
He rose to his feet, and as Horvath descended towards
the house he heard the chatter of Milans wife and
daughters flowing down from the road behind, their voices
sounded unnaturally shrill in the quiet; a noisome
intrusion that rang loud in the deafness of such a place.
Once past the hedgerow the sound of people
dissipated and Ladislav surveyed his house and garden.
The grounds themselves were unremarkable: before the
house was a large area of what had become scrub grass, it
was bordered with rose which attempted to convey an air
of civility upon an obstinate wilderness; two large lilac
trees were sadly neglected either side of the main entrance
to the house, and an overgrown thicket of more herbs:
again hyssop, and mint, rosemary and what looked like
chive, or perhaps onion, spread beneath the kitchen
window to the left of the door in what Marta had perhaps
once used as a herb garden. And on closer inspection the
unhappy remnants of disordered lemon balm and a
stunted bay jostled each other in a sunless patch beneath
one of the lilac trees.
The aspect of the house favoured the south west which
would provide the garden, kitchen and front living areas of
the house with afternoon sun which would no doubt be
cheering in the winter gloom; but the house was
dramatically overshadowed from the rear by tall plain
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trees that would block any light even on the boldest of

summer days.
The whole timbre of the house and gardens about
was one of forgotten melancholy, as if old Marta had had
no longer the energy to preserve her home from the efforts
of decay. The house was far from crumbling but Horvath
had the impression of a place unwanted; as if since the old
ladys death, no one had thought or cared about the place,
and that no one had seen a value or a purpose in the house.
This struck him as strange, it being a fairly large
building, well made and with land. He looked for signs that
the villagers had been: tracks across the garden, fruit taken
from the orchard, perhaps a shepherd had grazed his
sheep or cut grass for winter in the paddock, but nothing;
almost as if the place had been avoided.
But was this so unusual? After all Milans wife, niece to
old Marta, had perhaps insisted no one enter what was
now partially her property, perhaps village custom
respected some unknown agreement on the death of a
neighbour.
He looked once more about the garden acknowledging
that perhaps his imagination was also at work as no doubt
a little attention was all that was needed to restore the
character of the place, and stooped his head below the low
porch roof.
The key hung on a rusted hook before the door and slid
easily into the lock; a three quarter turn and the door
seemed to shudder under the strain of unfamiliar use.
Heaving his shoulder and knee against the wood Ladislav
pushed before popping the handle and key, the old wooden
door grimaced in annoyance before finally giving way.
Inside thin motes of dust drifted in the disturbed air and
a cool chill radiated out of the orphaned rooms. Horvath
133
took a step inside and listened, aside from his own breath
the house remained quiet: not even the timid scurry of
squatting mice disturbed.
To the left was a small sitting room and on the right a
simple kitchen with stove, wood table and chairs, and a
stone sink. Directly before the front door a flight of stairs
led to what he had been told were two bedrooms, one
destined to be his study.
The house smelled of disuse, not unpleasant but
torpid, and it seemed to cast as lazy peacefulness which
reminded the doctor of deep sunlight. He noted how
different the air felt in the house compared to outside. The
air drifting out and past was cold from winter and, trapped
within these walls since Martas death, felt old: unused air
of another time. It intoxicated him, as he felt like he was
stepping in to another realm. He drew the air in to his
lungs and it was not unpleasant, mildewed or damp, but
there lingered still, on the fringes of the draft, the hint of
womanhood, the scent of a life long gone.
He sighed, a great wave of contentment surged within
him, and he was surprised by its power. For a moment he
felt himself lifted, perhaps mesmerized even, as if on the
verge of sleep and a scent of lavender breezed throughout
the house and yet vanished before his senses captured its
delicate strength.
He stared around the entrance hall anew, it was a fleeting
presence of something other; as if Horvath had
momentarily stepped outside of himself and glimpsed
anothers view: the house and rooms remained as solid as
they were before, but its collective features of character
and experience wafted a hazy image before him.
Like dreaming but awake he sensed that things were
other than they should be, but was unsure why. Ecstatic,
134
he struggled to regain a sense of his time and place, and

inhaled again deeply. He was mildly startled by the
intensity of this feeling, a dizzy spell maybe.
Slowly the air about him settled, he felt the warmth of
spring through the open door and the sound on Milans
wife upon the path. He descended into normality, the
lavender was gone to be replaced by a mildewed damp and
dust aroma, and he placed a steadying hand on the rough
stone of the porch to prove to himself that that the world
was safe beneath his feet.
The experience had taken mere seconds, a dj{ vouz
without the sense of familiarity yet more a voyeuristic
glance into a moment beheld by someone else.
The sun coming through the door behind him
anchored his senses and he pressed his back into the
warmth of his skin to reassure himself, like a cat arching
away fatigue. Perhaps long hours of travel or the
expectation, not to say fear, of his new surroundings had
lightened his head, but the smell of lavender, had it not
been too strong to mistake for fancy?
Straightening himself he exhaled long and low, blowing
out whatever airs had fuddled his mind and swept away
the illness of ease that now seemed to bait him. From
euphoric contentment to nervous wreck in a few seconds,
he smiled to himself, if nothing else he needed to unpack
the brandy.
At that he heard a shuffling behind him as Milan lugged a
hempen sack to the door way. Horvath turned to meet him
and saw Milans wife and daughters struggle the remaining
box down the track. He was in no mood for conversation so
paid and ushered them off a quickly as politeness allowed.
135
Before leaving Milan pointed some features of the house

and showed Horvath where, hid by overhanging trees and
ferns, a small spring provided the house with water.
Milans wife, now said to be called Mirka, would return
in a day or two to undertake any chores the Doctor found
necessary and bring along Josko, their son, to help with
heavy work; not least of all being to cut back the knee high
grass that fanned itself across the sloping lawn to the side
of the house.
When the family had left Horvath made his way into the
kitchen, the long day and constant jolting of the carriage
and cart he was sure had tired him and, no doubt, brought
on the dizzy spell he had suffered earlier.
He inhaled the dank air, reassured that it bore no hint of
lavender, and exhaled once more watching the whirling
dust motes caught in the mild vortex of his own breath as
they drifted through the afternoon sunlight. The reasoning
spirit of man is an extraordinary thing, he mused, and
smiled, for so must it be. If we allowed ourselves to
contemplate each and every glimpse of the unreal that
dreamlike appears to all of us, we would no doubt lose our
tender hold on sanity.
Like a sailor aboard a ship in mid-ocean we must trust,
for hopes sake, in what is solid beneath his feet for to stare
into the fluid reaches of infinity is simply to grand a thing
for our minds to manage with. His own teacher of
philosophy had once said that the sciences and reason seek
only to reassure men, not to enlighten them.
He moved his bags and trunks out of the way, there
would be time to deal with these later, and briefly walked
about the house. The building was dark inside with little
natural light being filtered through the small windows, one
136
to a room. He would be grateful for this in winter when the

house kept its warmth, but still the gloom was tiring and
would make reading difficult even on the sunniest of days.
Beneath the stairs he found a small cupboard filled with
broken pots, and some small glass jars filled with a pale
liquid each containing a walnut still within its green husk.
Odd, he thought, putting them back.
Further in the cupboard he found more jars, these filled
with apricots; and two large stone jugs that looked firmly
sealed with cork stoppers. He shook them and heard the
swish of liquid lap against the sides, and struggled to
remove the bung of one with his teeth, the cork flying free
with a satisfying pop.
He sniffed and smelled nothing, before tipping the jug
and pouring a small amount of the contents into his palm.
He sniffed again and dipped the tip of his tongue into the
liquid. Neither taste nor smell but the distinct sense that
this was mere water, what strange a thing to keep below
the stairs.
As he tipped his hand to allow the water to fall on to the
ground and he saw the shine of sunlight in its drops, how
beautiful they were, not golden as the sun but softly blue
and folded in with green. He closed the little cupboard
door, and licked the palm of his hand.
Horvath sat down at the kitchen table and tried to
focus his attention on the tasks at hand and realised that
they were plentiful. Beyond merely settling in he would
need to confirm his arrangement to hire the cleaning skills
of Milans wife as the house, judging by the kitchen, had
not been cleaned since Marthas death.
He looked about the room tracing the cobwebs from
corner to corner; his sense that the house itself lay like
137
some sleeping creature returned. He could not keep

frightening himself in this way, he knew. Fifteen minutes in
the house alone and he was already imagining far worse
than cobwebs but it was there, the sense that the house
and gardens waited, as if by some loud or vulgar sounds
they may awaken. He felt the irrational need to speak in
whispers or await the welcoming return of the households
rightful owner to allow him in, make the introductions
needed that he might stay.
Well, perhaps he was not far wrong: Marta had been
born, loved and died here, and the house still held her. Like
heat or cold, damp or dry the resonance of a person long
dead has the facility to seep into the fabric of a thing, and
there forever be as a record of his presence or actions. A
phantasm is such a thing, Horvath reasoned, no ghost or
drifting soul, but an earthly impression upon the fabric of
place of a person who is no longer present, akin to the
odour of a meal, lingering still, but long since eaten.
So Marta, long dead and now, no doubt and hopefully,
resplendent in the presence of God, perhaps may suffer
some expression of her former life to stay as part of the
buildings soul.
He rose and went back out into the hall. Lifting a number
of boxes full of books, he eventually found a small wooden
case in which he had packed several bottles of his fathers
wine, and a bottle of brandy gifted to him by a college
friend on his leaving. He uncorked the brandy with a
rusted knife he found on the window shelf and, not being
able to find a clean cup, drank deeply from the bottles
mouth.
The hot liquid burned to the bowl of his belly, and he
grimaced at the taste so unfamiliar. The haze of the
138
presentment he felt was slowly replaced and he corked the

bottle with a slap of his hand.
The dimming of the sun beyond the windows recalled
Horvath to more mundane thoughts and he began the task
of bringing his remaining bags and belongings into the
house. Stacked within the hallway and overflowing into the
living room, he decided to leave the unpacking until the
next day and prepare for his first evening in his new
home.
The was a light chill descending outside, and the house
itself was cold from lack of use, so he light the stove in the
kitchen with wood he found stacked in nook in the pantry.
He had seen a stack of damp looking logs piled up around
the side of the house and would have to bring as much as
he could in before long, standing out in the weather for
more than a year it would need drying before it could be of
any use to him.
Milan has sold him some bread and a few other
supplies, and he had found apples stored in the pantry off
the kitchen; neatly wrapped in old straw there were
perhaps two dozen in a small wooden crate that seemed to
have survived the winter. The thought occurred to him
that someone must have kept them here after old Marta
had died as the apples would not have survived since her
death.
Hed speak to Mirka tomorrow and pay her, or whoever,
for those he was about eat. Alongside the fruit he found
two large stone pitchers upturned in the corner which he
dusted off which a handkerchief, they would be perfect for
bringing in water from the small spring that poured from
the rocks at the far end of the garden.
139
There was no well to speak in Martas garden, Milan had

told him, as none was needed thanks to the spring, but the
community maintained a large and deep well a few dozen
yards away down at the nape of woodcutters road where
it bowed into the forest, and all were welcome to take from
that.
Picking up one of the stone jugs he shuffled himself back
into his overcoat and made for the spring. Leaving the
house he walked across the garden towards the jumble of
rocks and overhanging roots that he assumed must be the
water source.
A pheasant called somewhere in the orchard and was
answered from far off. He began to hear the sound of
water trickle as he neared but could see no sign of the
spring. The ground appeared dry and no run off wound
away that he could see.
A dark spruce hung deeper over the craggy mound and
its soft needles padded the floor as he trod beneath its
arms. The spring was small when he found it, a delicate
thing that gently poured itself upon the land. The fountain
intrigued him, and as he approached he saw a small basin
of stone had been crudely fitted to capture and direct the
flow of water. It was surrounded by ferns, and the earth
near the basin itself oozed beneath his feet, a perfect home
for the willow that stood sadly by.
The water drifted away from the basin, seeping through
a jumble of natural stone and back into the dark soil
beneath; the waters brief appearance above the ground
almost magical to behold as it glimmered into life for a few
determined moments.
As Horvath watched the waters tumble from the rock he
noticed, cut into one of the larger stones, an inverted
triangle with the words Ad fontes inscribed beneath. The
140
carver had taken care in his work for despite the triangles
simplicity the angles appeared precise and lines clear. This
was made by no child wasting away an idle hour.
He traced the symbol with his finger and felt the time
added smoothness glide beneath his skin; the cool of the
water added to the sense of the shape having a polished
finish, as if someone at some time had spent an age tracing
and retracing the image as he did now. Unconsciously, he
cocked his head to the side, his forefinger still trailing
lightly over the image, and realised he was listening to the
spring as is bubbled into the rock basin.
The sound was cooling and carried with it a small breeze
that seemed to have been liberated from the rocks along
with the water. The humble rapture of the spring and its
accompanying air sang its chorus in such peaceful tones
that it seemed to be ignored by all except Horvath.
The towering trees, shrubs, ferns, and moss covered
rocks stood imperiously by as the little spring babbled its
joy to all and none, but impervious to their neglect she
rejoiced. The Doctor scraped away the moss around the
triangle clearing the symbol for plain sight as if it might
hold some special significance. He had no idea was the
triangle might have meant to the carver but he was sure,
for some reason he couldnt express, that it did have
meaning.
He cleared away dead leaves from the pan, and tried to
readjust the stone trim of the basin as best he could. He
would need to lay steps across the damp earth when time
allowed before it became a mud pool in the April rains, and
prune back the willow before the warmth of summer crept
further in.
The spring, by no means a grotto, seemed somehow
removed from the garden, a small and unique place that
141
calmed the space around it; it mystified him, as perhaps all

fountains do to those who care to sit beside them, and he
was loathe to leave and head back into the grim musk of an
unclean house. Yet the shadows stretched across the
garden and a chill had now descended making him shiver
as he filled the two flasks. The water seemed to illuminate
the dark stone from within as he walked back across the
garden and the light from the failing sun leapt about the lip
of the jug in unexpected waves, carrying with it the song of
the little spring.
The sunlight slid behind Krajnansk| hora, and Horvath
sat before the remains of his evening meal: Bread, sheep
cheese, apples, and dried sausage made up a feast for a
king; and he drank deeply of the fresh spring, a water of
which like he had never tasted before. He had scrubbed
clean an old wooden platter and cup, and now filled the
latter liberally with water that even now, in the gloom of
evening, seemed to reflect a sapid light. He cleared the
kitchen table, and began to search a small trunk for books.
Clearing the dust of travel from the several volumes he
had brought with him, he shifted his candle against the
shade and checked their titles. Placed upon the table they
were mainly medical books with a few volumes of poetry
including Horace and Goethe; a few novels, which had
become fashionable in recent years, and a bible given to
him by his father when he had left Nitra to study. Not much
for an evenings entertainment, but then his small bible
caught his eye. He collected it carefully, and unwrapped
the newspaper that bound it. Gently tracing the leather
binding with his finger he lifted the cover open.
His father, now dead more than a year, had been a
devout man and had taken to underlining passages in the
142
bible for his sons reference should the need arise for
guidance away from the family.
The doctor sat now and leafed gently through the pages:
despite his love of science it had never ceased to amaze
him that within this simple book lay a store of knowledge
compiled from the words, thoughts, and deeds of the
worlds most inspired men and women. He may not be the
most devout man in Christendom but he believed in God,
and the writing He inspired.
As his placed the book back on the table the pages
fluttered from his fingers and he saw, lined with a thick
stub of pencil, 1 kings 13:18 :
and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord,
saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he
may eat bread and drink water.
In the failing light Horvath reread the passage; mayhap
the turns of the day had left him vulnerable to outrageous
foolishness, but he relaxed against the arm of the chair and
smiled. Who knew what brought men and fate together,
but at this time he raised his cup of water, her water, in
acknowledgement. Old Marta, mistress of this house and
attendant to the garden spring, had, he believed, welcomed
him in.
143
Part the Second

During the following weeks Horvath set to a routine of
life that saw him begin to establish himself as a trusted
member of the small community.
Mirka came at intervals to care for the house, Milan and
Josko tended to the outdoors, and his practice had slowly
garnered a few regular complainants who, despite being
by and large healthy, liked to sit for a while and share their
burdens. His earnings were minimal as those who sought
his care had little to pay with, but rather than spurn his
neighbours for the sake of a few crowns he accepted
payments in kind.
Most of his patients had the normal run of the mill
illnesses and, being as isolated as they were from the
world at large, seemed healthy beyond reason, or at least
healthier than many who struggled to live in the filth of the
city. Those able enough came to his door but, out of
deference to his stature he assumed, they preferred to be
remain in the garden rather than enter the house, and as
the summer months continued he would set his kitchen
table beside the herb beds and see his patients there.
By noon on most days he was free to follow his most
personal passion and wandered the hills and woodlands
collecting plant specimens. He had seen the women
collecting grasses and herbs out beyond the meadows, and
spoken to them at length about their properties, noting all
in his neatly written journal; it was amazing to him how
such common weeds as mouse tail could be used in a
variety of different ways, curing everything from stomach
pains to rheumatism.
144
And animals too, he came to know as deer often drifted

down from the forest in the early mornings, moving
silently through his orchard, beautiful like some winsome
shade they pruned the hedgerows of their fruit in the dawn
mist; whilst the nights played host to noisome pigs that
chapped like old men as they rummaged through the
undergrowth.
His life established a simple pattern, and he came to
enjoy the long hours he spent alone in the garden after the
last of his daily patients had left. Josko and Milan had
advised on the planting of a vegetable garden, and by
midsummer pumpkins and courgettes had overtaken the
side of the house sheltered from the sun, swarming like a
broad-leafed morass on the damp soil.
As time passed and his reputation spread beyond his
neighbours he found himself being called to visit more of
his patients at their homes due to the distance many would
have to travel carrying the elderly or very young.
A lad named Alex was given the task of fetching the
doctor, as receiving visitors in the garden had also lost its
novelty for many, and yet for reasons he could not fathom
the villagers who did come still politely refused to enter
his home. Despite trying in vain to encourage those
needing his care to come into his admittedly cramped
surgery, he was nevertheless expected to haul his medicine
bags to and fro between garden and hamlet. It seemed that
he, like any other plying a trade, must accommodate his
customers.
He had still not managed to buy a horse, and on longer
journeys the boy Alex met him at his roads end with a
handcart acting as both guide through the labyrinth of
hamlets, and porter.
145
The pleasantness of the local people had beguiled

him and he had become to think of them as more than just
acquaintances; being Catholic in a predominantly
protestant region meant he did not attend the church but
he had befriended the cleric who stoically held service
despite the few who cared to attend. The irreligious nature
of the Carpathian people, especially these people, was
known to Horvath but he found little in them to be
unchristian if by a mans deeds and actions you might
judge him.
He was still, no doubt, considered by them to be an
outsider but he was confident this would change in time.
Most folks in Konkusova dolina and the surrounding
hamlets seemed endlessly related to each other and
perhaps this sense of extended family encouraged a
reticence and maybe even distrust in the world beyond
their home. But perhaps this was not so unusual, for even
in the large human reservoirs of Vienna and Budapest the
native born felt obliged to mistrust any and all who were
not of them; and in these masses, where no semblance of
kinship could possibly exist, the urbanite strove to unite
himself to others in an effort ward away the foreign and
exotic.
Even at college he himself had seen the scornful look on
friends faces as they contemplated life outside their little
world, looked down upon a rustic villager in the market
place, or spoke condescendingly of a neighbouring
town. So, was it so surprising that here in these small
hamlets, where a man might be born and die without ever
leaving the valley, and where a neighbour was most likely
also kin, that they too might be a little wary of a stranger?
In this wise, it was probably the most natural think in the
world.
146
However, his sense of isolation was growing, a

feeling of merely being on the fringe of community. He was
respected, even greeted and treated warmly when out and
about or visiting the sick, but there was always a reserve.
As if they waited for him to leave before they could relax
and return to being themselves.
But one event, one extraordinary event, would turn this
sense of alienation into cold reality. It was brought home
to him at the end of his fourth month in the valley, and
made his a glaring and obvious exclusion. It came as the
eve of the summer solstice melted into a clear and starlit
night.
He had set out from Konkusova dolina just after
sunset with intention of visiting the cleric, Miroslav
Schultz, as he had done on most Sunday evenings since
soon after his arrival. The cleric lived in small 3 roomed
cottage on the edge of Krajne village; he was unmarried
and, having been disfigured by small pox in his youth, it
seemed unlikely that the kindly man would find a wife.
Rumour had it that he had formed an attachment to a
Czech widow in Stary Hrozenkov, a small village in Czech
Moravia a day by horse from Krajne, but Horvath was
certain the rumour was unfounded.
Miroslav Shultz was a priest, and more importantly a
good man and the idea that he may have gotten himself
involved with this village in anyway was unthinkable.
Some believed Stary Hrozenkov to be the bolt hold of
witches, diviners and, so the more outrageous claimed, of
necromancers. These stories amongst Moravian villages
were ever present but in Stary Hrozenkov the reputation
had stuck, and the Doctor assumed a man such as Schultz
would avoid any connection for good names sake.
147
Horvath was sure that the rumours were false but people
talked and for this reason alone he convinced himself that
Schultz would never be seen in such a place. For despite
the church, despite modern ideas, and perhaps even a lack
of proof viable to even to most gullible, folk in these parts
persisted to believe the ridiculous; and the belief that Stary
Hrozenkov was in some way a place of magic and dark
dealings lived on.
And this was the fundamental problem with Moravia
and the Carpathians at large: whilst the rest of civilised
Europe had put an end such bed time stories, primitive
beliefs lingered on here. Such was the extent of their
superstition that Horavath had seen dogs impaled on
sticks in the belief that human wolves or werewolves
would be warned away; life size figures of women were
paraded through villages and symbolically drowned in a
river or stream to fend off the vigours of winter and even
some educated aristocracy had taken to exhuming the
dead to ensure no vampiric activity.
The hysteria created even as far away as Osikovce over
the death of Eleonore von Schwarzenberg had been
enough to convince anyone of the lack of rationalism in
closed communities such as this.
However, Horvath, on this early summer evening,
hummed quietly to himself as he meandered past the first
few cottages of on his way down the hill to Krajne. The
evening was still and he enjoyed the rich scented warmth
that exhaled gently from the heavy wheat fields beside the
road.
Milans house could just be seen beyond the walnut trees
that lined his sheep fold. Ordinarily, the chatter of his wife
and daughters could be heard drifting down from the rise
148
but this evening the house was uncharacteristically quiet,

no lights burned in the window.
The next property along the road was old Jan Orlaks
place, a sprawling and untidy cottage that showed well
enough the lack of a womans hand since his wife had died
at the birthing of their first child 40 years before; beyond
that Samo and Katka Koza and their 4 children. Milan once
told the Doctor that Katka, in her youth, had been
considered one of the most beautiful women in district
until Samos drunkenness and fists had reduced her to a
sour faced harridan best avoided.
As he passed each of the cottages he noticed their
vacancy. Windows dark, animals penned, dogs leashed to
gate or door posts and the quiet. By the time he reached
the edge of Krajne, and still had not seen a single soul or
sign of life, he had grown to fear that some disaster had
occurred and he had remained unawares. It was not only
the fact the hamlets seemed deserted but also that there
was an air of abandonment that hung heavy. Washing still
hung on the lines, chickens scratched amongst the dust but
they were gone, the people.
Stopping at the brow of the low hill that dropped down
to Krajne he strained to hear any man made sound. There
in the trees, the breaking of sticks! But no, not Human.
Then he heard a distinct human cry. It was far off but
certain. He held his breath and turned towards the hills
behind him, looking up towards the Karjnaske hill that
dominated his own valley, he willed the sound to return
but it did not. Only the raw silence of the world et non
hominibus, an Edenic quiet filled with the desolation of
Adam, was to be heard.
Horavath turned and hurried down the hill. As he
hastened towards Miroslavs house he was relieved to see
149
the lighted windows burning brightly in the eerie darkness

of what had begun as a benign summers eve.
His friend heard the lych gate swing out on corroded
hinges and pulled open the door to witness the Doctor pale
and shaken. Ushering the Doctor in, Schultz took his
friends walking stick and hat, and smiled; seating him
down at the kitchen table he gave him glass of watered
wine and tried to explain.
The wine returned the doctor to safety and, in the secure
harbour of Schultzs company, he felt his manner may have
been over acted, but still where had the villagers gone? His
friend sat opposite resting his large hands on the rough
skin of the table.
Horvath noticed how in this light, with the fast fading
summer sun muted by the kitchens dark wood furniture,
the clerics scarred cheeks looked almost smooth and
unmarred. His soft hands nervously stroked the wooden
table top between them, soothing his thoughts and
pacifying.
It was a tradition, he said, that none of the villagers
were keen to talk about. In fact there was little to be said
as few knew its origins or meaning, but like cows to the
corn they simply followed what others did, and so the
tradition continued. The church, or rather Schultz in his
official capacity, had spoken out against it, hed tried to
deter participation with services held in open fields on the
same night, hed forbade their going but nothing had
worked.
Whatever meaning the villagers found up there in the
dark forests this one night a year, it was far beyond him to
end. To put an end to what those to whom hed spoken to
believe to be the crux on which their livelihood depended
must be left to better men than himself. What little
150
information he could gather, what little his neighbours

were willing to tell was scant but sounded grotesque to the
incredulous Horvath.
The locals would leave their homes before sunset
gathering with them the elderly and young alike, each
laden with bundles of clothing and food. No signal was
needed to gather the folk for they each made their
individual or familial way through the lanes. No doubt
Horvath had missed his neighbours departure due to the
secluded location of his house, but they would have
intended to avoid him, and used the forest paths that led
up above the village.
Many of the paths converged and diverged throughout
the woodlands and their neighbours and kin would meet,
silently greeting each other before moving swiftly on. Little
would have been said as there was little to speak of, each
new the course of their direction and their only interest
would be to navigate the near invisible trail in the dim
light of the forest.
No torches were carried so sure footedness was
essential, infants were carried by their mothers and the
young were responsible for maintaining the old. The men
folk would lead the path and like bees drawn to a flower
the villagers would unerringly arrive at the clearing
within an hour of midnight.
The clearing was a large patch of natural pasture that
sloped eastwards from the crest of Krajnansk| hora, and
was unremarkable except for a solitary stone megalith that
raised itself the height and half again of man yet with the
girth of a young girl.
The stone was said to be older than history but was
unnatural to its environment so the presumption was that
at some time men of extraordinary ability had transported
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it to its current location, but none knew for what purpose.

The cleric himself had not seen the stone nor had any
desire to do so, but had he been so inclined he doubted the
villagers would be enthused by his curiosity.
It was theirs and he, and being like the Doctor from
beyond the valleys surrounding Krajnansk| hora, it was
not of him despite his twenty years of residence.
They will return by mid-morning tomorrow but I
urge you not to intrude upon their...event. The Cleric
continued, I do not try to imagine, Horvath, for it is not my
place to judge. I minister to them and try to encourage a
more Christian way of life but should I, or you for that
matter, ask of them more than they are willing to concede
then we will be shunned. And this I do not want. A little
influence is better than none, is it not?
The two friends sat late into the night. Their talk
ranged between their chosen professions of science and
God, before meandering on to all things the wine allowed.
As the first light of dawn cast upon the sky a timid blue the
doctor rose from his chair on unsteady legs and headed for
home.
He looked long at the dark forest that sat back across the
wheat fields and, in his drunkenness perhaps, yearned to
know of what they did. Up there in the clearing, along
pathways hid and barred by protective gates of woven
woods, his friends and neighbours explored a world
unknown to him; a world evil perhaps, but a world wholly
seductive in its mystery.
As Schultz had predicted signs of returning life
reappeared to Konkusova dolina the following morning,
but the villagers were not forthcoming and Horvath did
not see much of his neighbours for the next several days to
come. A blissful lethargy seemed to have descended upon
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the community which continued until the first sheepish

arrival of a patient heralded that enough time had passed
for the Doctor to be readmitted into their lives.
The wheels of daily life turned on as the village came
together to harvest their wheat, each field and each
families winter store being brought in before the village
moved onto the next. And as the days passed the Doctor
would wander across new mown fields to sit and watch a
community, a family, at work and in harmony.
Everyone worked to their capacity, from the eldest who
cared for the infants and prepared food; to the young,
some barely thigh high who ran with water to the sweating
men scything in ordered rows, and to the women raking
and baling, backs bent a dozen yards behind the swinging
blades.
The sounds of men and women calling to each other
drifted in the heavy summer air, laughter or annoyance,
but it was a timeless call; one which had had been heard
for centuries, the sounds of life close to the land. Children
screamed in happiness and sang in their tears, parodied
their fathers and held their mothers; running from one
generation to the next they were rebuked and loved;
hurled to the sun and dropped sprawling upon the earth as
the days wended seamlessly to into one another.
Horvath began to rejoice with them as the last days of
summer brought the harvests to an end, he began to note
with satisfaction the full barns and cellars of his
neighbours, to feel their relief at a season well rewarded.
He brought in his own small clutch of vegetables from his
garden, dug potatoes from the ground with his bare hands
revelling in the satisfaction of this. There was a patrician
sense to all of this, a feeling of true responsibility for the
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land and a perception of being legitimately rewarded for

that care.
By the end of September young Alex, son of Samo and
Katka Koza, had taken up the post of Horvaths constant
companion, arriving at his door before seven in the
morning ready to carry out any small jobs needed. Milans
boy, Josko, was also a frequent visitor due to his duties
about the garden, and Milan himself had spent much of the
month chopping and stacking wood for the winter to come.
And when Mirka called the Doctor to join with them to
celebrate her daughters eighteenth birthday he had felt a
new acceptance.
They had sat beneath a lilac tree on wooden stools and
logs, whilst Mirka sang songs of the forest and the hills.
They drank rough brandy made from plumbs and pine,
eating greasy lumps of pork pulled from the fire hot and
dripping; Samo Koza slept in the grass snoring loudly
oblivious to the booted toe of Katka, his wife, as she poked
his ribs, and she, dressed in the pale blue skirts of her
grandmother swung old Jan by the arms making him feel
young.
The girls, Milans daughters, had tied their hair in white
ribbons that he, Horvath, had gifted them and looked shyly
from the kitchen door, smiling pink cheeked at their
mothers song. Alex sat beside his fathers sleeping feet, full
bellied and weary eyed, stroking the grass with a faraway
content, looking now to smile at Horvath who, himself,
smiled tears at such a place as this.
The air was rich with the smell of wood smoke, roasted
meat and the pungent, earthy smell of human sweat; this
combination blending with the scents of dry grass and the
warm sheep fleece lain beneath his head was as ancient as
it was beautiful. He smiled across his neighbours and saw
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beauty in the girl that Katka had once been as she swayed
to the sound of her own song. Her limbs were long and
browned by the sun where she had hitched her skirts
above her knees. Beneath the flow of her dress her skin
was firm due to hours of labour in the fields, and her arms
were toned and muscled yet tapered into thin delicate
fingers which wove their secret symbols on the air as she
danced and laughed. As she sang her voice was coarse but
designed for melody, and Horvath found himself slipping
from the crowd and in to dreams of women wild and
untamed by the times.
He came awake as Katka knelt beside him, her eyes as
blue as the sky that framed her, and took his hand to raise
him up. She sat for a moment contemplating him, a sage
smile about her lips, then pulled him to his feet.
The sun was low now, and darkness was drifting through
the light. He must leave for home and she, still holding to
his hand, led him through the gate on to the path. She did
not say goodbye but left him by the verge as the warm
breath of evening lifted from the fields.
The events of the solstice began to recede and Horvath
managed to push the stories that Schultz had told to the
back of his mind; and when the sun shone and his friends
were all about him he could quite believe that perhaps, in
this case, the evidence he had seen on that night as he had
walked to the clerics house betrayed the truth.
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Part the Third

Late autumn had arrived by the time the cold had
started to infect the evenings and Horvath found himself
more and more confined to the indoors as nights
continued to grow shorter. The days however had become
luminous as the translucent autumn light appeared to clear
the air of all impurity and enhance what summer had
sought to mellow. The forests green faded by degrees into
the russet tones of copper and his meagre meals were
supplemented by the vast array of mushrooms that now
arose from beneath every fallen leaf.
Raspberries framed the verges and his orchard
demanded more of his regard than he felt he had time for,
but he diligently collected all apples within easy reach and
had Josko and Alex take the rest for their families. As most
if not all the locals had plentiful orchards themselves
Horvath knew that apples collected by the boys were not
for eating, as a good, strong alcohol could be cooked up
from spare fruit or that unfit for eating. In this time of
harvest he came to realize that nothing was wasted and
the villagers joked that the bruised apple or pear we threw
disdainfully into the forest today, would a fruit to be
dreamed of come winters end. Spring was a time of
hunger, a lean time of year in the hills as the winter store
of food was near gone, yet the fields still new planted. As
old Jan had once told him: Spring was a time of birth and
death.
Despite the open courtesy of the village Horvath had
given up any thoughts of a deeper sense of friendship with
the people whom he would have liked to consider his
friends. He continued to be invited to special occasions; he
officiated as a witness to their legal disputes and was
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called upon to give advice. They respected him he felt sure

but it was obvious to him now, and had been since the
solstice, that there was to be some measure of distance
between himself and them, a narrow gulf perhaps but one
of abysmal depths.
If Schultz, after several decades, had been unable to
traverse the barricades of local reserve he surely couldnt
expect much better. It was a sad but true fact that he would
forever remain an outsider, someone accepted to a degree
but someone still not of them. This did not trouble him too
much for like any interloper he would have to be satisfied
with what his adopted home was prepared to share with
him and be grateful, or, of course, leave. A thing he could
not now envisage himself doing.
Rough and sometimes crude these people may be, but
they were the salt of the earth and Horvath had found in
them a sense of belonging, even if it was only on the
periphery of their lives, that he had not known in the
shallowness of the city.
He came to understand that despite what some may
see as their ungodly conventions, the folk of Konkusova
dolina and the surrounding hamlets had a very crystalline
sense of propriety. Their orthodoxy was based on a simple
and acute belief in what was right and what was not; they
lived as within the laws of the land as any others Horvath
had met, treated cruelty, theft and dishonesty with
contempt, and performed the acts of good citizens not as a
sense of duty but out of faith in the rightness of what they
did.
They may act out the rituals and rites of a more primitive
era but they did so in the knowledge that the wider world
no longer appreciated the veneration of the old gods and
carried out their celebrations quietly. There is little room
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in this world non-conformists and, he thought, that

perhaps the majority of people spend their lives never
speaking the truth as they saw if for fear. Perhaps if all
matters of faith were conducted as privately as was done
here men would feel little antagonism towards others of
differing views.
By the arrival of November he was beginning to
see less and less of the world outside, being only
summoned by Alex Koza if he was needed. Most people
were content to stay home after the hard work of summer
and visited less. The boy, Josko, was no longer needed in
the garden, and Milan had finished the main house repairs
and had stacked enough wood behind the house for two
winters. Horvath now had the solitude he enjoyed.
The day of St Martins feast had been, in contrast to
his usual quiet routine, an eventful one. He had walked
down to an empty church in the morning, more out of
solidarity for his friend Schultz than anything else, and
then had been called to the death of an elderly woman in
the hamlet of Jeruzalem. As he had left the grieving family
a young man had appeared running up the lane shouting
for his attention. They rushed off together to the laboured
birth of a little boy back in krajne who arrived howling into
the world, fit and hale despite his mothers pains; neither
location being far off in themselves but both being
equidistant from Konkusova dolina in opposite directions,
they took time to reach.
On his return home after several tiring hours trudging
back and forth across the fields and muddy lanes, he had
found young Alex shivering in the garden waiting to take
him to Jan Orlak who, being drunk the night before on his
brothers plumb brandy, had spent the best part of the day
vomiting convinced of his near end. The Doctor had half a
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mind just to ignore Jan who should by now know well

enough how to manage the after effects of too much drink,
but turned himself about anyway and slithered back of the
wet track.
As Horvath arrived at his cottage Lenka
Moravecova, an elderly lady whose standing in the
community as a healer was slightly more respected than
Horvaths, appeared at the gate. She fluffed him back out
into the lane with her flapping hands and heaving chest
before telling him that she had administered her own
remedy of chamomile and mint to alleviate his nausea,
valerian to help him sleep and ease his stomach. Her
intention was no doubt to let him know that he really
wasnt needed with his fancy pills and tinctures, but he
smiled politely as she passed and moved on up the path to
the old mans door. The peeling paint on door was a mild
blue, similar to a cornflower, and was a traditional colour
often used in this area, and the black latch that hitched the
door to the frame was a rust brown that seemed as natural
to the door as the flaking paint. He knocked and entered
without waiting.
He found Jan curled like a child in bed, submerged
beneath a quilted blanket and sweating profusely. The
sweet smell of stale liquor hung in the air and the old man
made a pitiful picture groaning as the doctor poured him a
mug of water and urged him to drink. A thick bean soup,
long congealed at the base of a pan, sat on a cold stone in
the pantry off the kitchen, and Horvath rekindled the fire
and heated the meal adding pig fat and water, stirring it in.
No doubt the old man had eaten little in the last twenty
four hours and the warmth of the broth would ease his
stomach. Jan sat mournfully against the headboard as
Horvath spoon fed him the first few mouthfuls neither
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speaking much. The old mans frail hands shook slightly as

Horvath handed him the spoon and bread before leaving.
Failing to provide anything beyond the gentle
remonstrance his position in the community required of
him in such cases he left Jan to his broth and water, and
returned home.
As he walked the twilight gave itself over to a full and
starless evening; there was to be no moon this night and
the blackness that descended was total. Stray features
were illumined in the lights periphery and these guided
him to the turn of his road. Orion was not present in the
stars and the great weight of blackness that spread about
chilled him. It seeped into the world as an emptiness, a
void filled with absence, if such a thing maybe. This fear of
night: that all familiar things that in the clear sheen of
daylight could reshape and rework itself in darkness to
become cold and fearsome was, mused Horvath, Gods
starkest evidence of his self: when the reassured atheist by
day turns whimpering supplicant by night.
A damp chill could be felt descending from the trees, an
invisible mist of cold that seeped into his clothes making
him pull his thick coat tighter still. Despite the cold he did
not rush, but steadied his pace and inhaled the coming
winter, breathing it deep into his belly where if filled him,
leaving him cleansed. A fox barked, eerie and painful, as he
kicked the mud from his boots against his door post; the
vixen shouted again from further up the hill as he closed
the door, turning Martas key against the night.
He left his soiled boots and hat propped against the
wall and walked into the kitchen. The house was still and
quiet, and as he felt his way along the table top to the
corner where he had left a candle, he shivered slightly
against the darkness. An owl screeched in the garden but
160
his candle was lit now, and he took the flame into hearth of
the fire, lighting wood and dry grass, restoring his home
with fire and light. A glass of strong wine and he settled,
the bottle close to his hand, and the night close by and
hung about the walls.
It had become Horvaths custom to sit each evening
before the fire in his living room and read. He had set two
armchairs opposing each other by the fire for when Schultz
visited, which was not so often now that the weather had
turned; and had had Mirka sew up heavy drapes of cloth
across the windows to exclude the cool nights air. Old
Marta had pasted old newspapers around the walls to
serve as an insulating agent, and an aged fire rug had been
found by Mirka which kept the chill from radiating up
through the thin gaps in the floors wooden boards beneath
those seated before the fire.
His small store of books was stacked next to the fire
place on two rows of shelves and within easy
reach. Although the doctor was far from penury he
finances were at best unhealthy so he used the local tallow
candles for lighting, preferring to light only one an evening
and then he would wait until the ambient light and glow
from the fire were sufficient to read by.
The room itself was small at barely three paces across,
and the sombre grey plaster coating of the walls around
the fireplace, which had not been covered in newspaper
and dull enough in summer, gave off a warm blush from
the fire which added a cosseted feel: as long as doors were
kept closed an hour or two into the evening he would be
warm enough to remove his over coat and relax. The
comforting quite of the house at night often led him to
sleep as he was, propped up in the chair by horse hair
pillows, with his thick over coat as a blanket. It was a time
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he had come to treasure, wrapped there in the warm heart

of his house whilst the chill of early winter circled the
walls beyond.
It was on one such an evening that he had first met
Marta.
As he sat before the fire that evening Horvath positioned
himself as was usual with his feet propped on a low
wooden stool and a thick woolen fleece across his knees,
and his coat draped around his shoulders. He had mixed
himself a jug of red wine and honey which was warming
before a fire that swayed with the oncoming drafts of cold
air that simpered down the chimney. A cool wind had
picked up as the evening had progressed, and the lilac tree
beyond the window could be heard whispering and
tapping against the prohibitive glass. The room had
reached a level of comfort and warmth, and the doctor
flicked idly through a book of translated poetry. He found
the Hungarian language awkward on the tongue but
perused now the passages of English verse rendered
through a Magyar sieve, and hoped to glean some trace of
original sentiment. He skimmed the lines of love, beauty
and despair, all convictions of the modern age; and then of
loss:
Lady, art thou real?
Nay, a dream, the flight of simplest fancy
Dost thou thyself conceal from love?
I offer the tenderest to entrance thee.
But love. Dost thou know this word,
Has thou spoke, let pass thy lips this sound?
Or has thou found in others more preferred
A greater note with which thy heart shall resound?
162
A meagre man am I to sing thy praise.

No lute nor lyre nor harp accompany me;
But mine a voice in harmony with love betrays
The greatest sympathy. No worthier am I of thee.
Of heaven thou surely art.
For no earthen creature resembled in thy form
Trod this ground nor wounded so the human heart.
And I, the first to be succumb and be reborn;
A planet am I, a satellite revolving my eternal quest
Round thy sun. Once extinguished to be extinct.
All this am I and consider myself blessed,
For in thine arms I am with heaven linked.
A steady draining of life, a percolation of essence until
all that remains is a form containing what was. Had this
poet power to trade a million lingering lives for one
immediate death no doubt his love would cease in an
instant lest the cold progression of waste take what was so
valued. The decline of beauty is inevitable, thought
Horvath. Even the Great Pyramids must crumble for
nothing is set to last or endure; and at the end of all will
the gods themselves dissolve into serenity and leave our
annulment unremembered?
The doctor leaned his head back upon the chairs
rest and closed his eyes. The ancients feared to be
forgotten for in forgetfulness is the souls oblivion and our
darkest fear; and if all our works and deeds were to be
mislaid upon our death would our efforts in this life have
been in vain?
He opened his eyes half amused by such philosophy
and looked upon her of whom the poet sang.
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She sat before him without movement, her hands

folded before her, her gaze into the fire an attitude of
placid repose as if the flames entranced her from the hours
about; or maybe their pagan dance sung such lullabies that
only she may hear. Her dark hair hung in willow tails and
spirals, and flowed into her lap in a tranquil succession of
rivulets that contrasted starkly with the pure marble
clarity of her skin. She did not appear to notice him but sat
as one accustomed to solitude, a meditative aesthete
unattached yet present. The fires glow surrounded her and
pushed into shade all else until a shallow niche of light
enclosed and kept her. Her shallow breath hushed the air
and was the only sound between them.
Horvath himself did not breath, nor any sound or
movement make. He mirrored in his stillness the wraith.
His mind tried to summon fear, conjure horror or at the
very least provide him with some sense of trepidation; any
tangible sense that what he saw should not be believed,
but nothing came. Perhaps this was some Morphine play
or Hypnotic theatre (yet such a vision could only be by
Prosepine sent), and that his tired mind had formed this
fantasy to while away the dormant hours. He would awake
and find the room and all about him cold; the fire in
embers and Marta merely a vaporous image memory
would fail to hold.
And yet she still had not moved but gazed unseeing into
the grate: expectant? But no, she was not waiting; she sat
composed at journeys end, and it was this inhuman
serenity that tapped upon the posteriori lens of the
doctors rationale; that offered solid confirmation for
things already evident but beyond the simplistic realm of
science. Neither dream, nor anything of mankind made
could present the absolute sense of quietude and peace
164
that Marta now displayed. For Horvath it was akin to

staring into the furthest reaches of a forest glade that no
man had yet defiled.
Her apparition did in no way startle him, but
strangely he feared the smallest movement he might make
would send her from him and make away from this
extraordinary meeting; like one who steps before a timid
creature Horvath held onto each passing second in the sad
knowledge that soon, in the span of a moment, she would
be gone. He knew, felt, that this was an unnatural thing; he
was certain that in the true world and in the true time that
passed outside his doors, this image of a young Marta, a
living Marta was to be dreaded. But he could not find such
feelings in himself. His heart hummed in his ears, and his
breath came in shallow takes that perhaps might be held
up as some sense of fear, but Horvath new it was not fear
for he had no desire to run.
And then she glided out of stillness, a silken
transition from inobservance and disinterest; it was a
small shift but it thundered through the room: a slight
tilting of the face and head so gently performed as to be
missed had not all the doctors senses been focused on
observing the minutiae of her. Her eyes shifted from the
fire and fell upon him.
In the moments after she had gone he would try to
recall all that had passed, but so little had. The eternity of
those seconds during which they had gazed upon each
other had been mute in all except intensity. He had been
thrust panting into the stark appreciation that here sat the
dead and this had been juxtaposed by an equal
presentment unconnected to her aethereal state. For in
opposition to the shock he felt at this ghostly sighting came
a rampant and brutish realisation. One quite unfamiliar to
165
him and perverse in its present context: that of pathetic

recognition. In Marta he knew love and felt as one
desolated.
He did not sleep but sat until dawn and waited.
Throughout the night the smell of lavender had haunted
him as an intermittent reminder of her company, but she
did not materialise and the start of day greeted him
feverishly as if afraid to break his vigil. For love: it can be
ill-mannered guest when uninvited, and beggar those who
are not quick to act. Yet Horvath sat and stumbled through
the day regretful of the nights passing and found himself
continually returning to the fireside in hope, but hope was
not to be satisfied. He walked out to the spring desiring
more than water and inhaled the chill air; it burned his
lungs and throat, and flooded his being with the liquid
scents of earth, water and autumnal decay. His eyes were
stung with the cold of a long breeze that ruffled down from
the boughs above him, and he sought in its cleansing flow
some abreaction of the soul.
He had felt the slow creep of yearning rise from out
the fetid pit of love, its taloned hooks set to pin and bind,
and reason fought against this. He cast about for a previous
anchorage, a safe harbour that would tie him to a sturdy
quay, securing him from drifting on wild seas but found
none to preserve him and knew, with all the desperate
force of certainty, that no sanctuary could now be found. It
seemed to him a nightmare, a waking torment, that he
should know love yet find it mockingly without his grasp.
He judged his mind to be frail, the wine perhaps, the
loneliness; the hours spent without another voice to
rationalise, to keep him bound to what is solid in the
world. But no, he knew, deep in his better self, that Marta
was as she had come; and he was now lost to all cept her.
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He knelt before the spring, wiping back the dead and

fallen leaves of yesterday, and dipped his hands into the
crystal cold. His hands became immediately numb and he
relished the senselessness as the water splashed into the
jug he held. The inverted triangle gleamed in the winter
light at the waters edge and he recognised its femininity:
the water mark, the well from which all life emanates; the
shrine before which all men must kneel. From this time
and forward all things could only be perceived through the
prism of her and what subjectivity he may once have
possessed shimmered in its frailty; all was now, for
Horvath, founded in her.
The next several days passed without her return.
Horvath prowled the house like a caged cat, refusing to
leave and yet desperate to be unconfined. He tried all
manner of rationalization but the sense was always there,
like a rumour that never fades, the tone of which is ever
present in all the things done and said. She haunted him
with her absence and he grew from fret to anger to
despondency in the space of minutes in ever more frantic
cycles.
On the fourth day he left the house for the first time,
left the gardens and the orchard, and walked hard and fast
into the dull grey of the forest. His feet pounded the
narrow trail that wound its way up and along the ridge
above his house. His clothes flew about him, unkempt and
untied, yet he barely felt the prick of cold that brushed
against his bare skin. Rain fell turning to snow, and the
winds shook the hills and trees turning fleet footed across
the standing pines and icy streams. The earth became thick
and heavy on his feet, a wet sapping clay that gummed him
to the floor whilst sliding beneath his boots. He stopped
high above the valley, his breath beaten and ripped
167
between his lips, and stared down upon his home. His
house, hers also, sat small and vulnerable below him
wrapped in sleek webs of mist that strayed from out the
clouds and ran across the hill sides.
The rain was now far heavier and he felt the sting of ice
as it bounced across his face. He looked about, and further
up the hill but he could see no signs. He was sure it could
not be much further; but no, he was not sure. It could be
miles still. He slumped against the bark of a small oak,
exhausted from his climb and several days with little sleep.
The clearing was sure to be close, beyond the next brow
perhaps or through the next stand of trees. He had walked
so far. He felt drained by the weather, by anxiety, by
hunger, he could hardly remember the last time he had
drunk water. His mouth was slick with dry spittle and
tasted sour from the wine he drank. His fingers shook, and
his legs lay like lead weights splayed out before him. He
clothes were soaked and for the first time since leaving his
house the cold began to numb him.
He pulled himself to standing and again gazed down to
his house almost hidden now in near complete cloud. As he
looked the wind dropped slightly and the clouds drifted
apart on the fallen wind; the valley was shown him for the
briefest of instances, the dreary lane of mud slick from
winter, the orchards of his neighbours, his own house
where smoke curled from the chimney to be whipped
away by in the blustery wind. She was not on some high
hill, to be found roaming the dark shadows of winter or
waiting at the old stone beyond these lightless trees. She
was home, he felt, where she had ever been.
When he returned to the house Alex Koze stood
bundled in an oversized coat in the porch way clutching a
note from the cleric Schultz. It invited the doctor to dinner
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that evening and as it had been a month or more since the

two friends had last met the cleric was, no doubt, sure of a
positive response. Horvath hastily scrawled a brief reply
claiming a lack of sorts as his excuse; a lack of sorts best
remedied by an early night and laudanum to ease his
bodies ill humour. He would be down in Krajne in a week
or so and bade Alex reassure Schultz not to be concerned.
Giving the boy a half crown and dismissing him he
brushed aside any misgivings he may have had with his
lack of probity and hurried into the house. He ate sparingly
and felt his stomach cringe at the invasion of food so full
with anxiety had he become. He raked and laid the fire for
the evening early and by the time the sun had slid behind
the tallest beech trees in front of the house, and still an
hour before dark, he was sitting pensively at the Kitchen
table.
His only time piece was a pocket watch and it lay on the
table before him, time scarcely moving itself around the
watch face as he waited, hesychast-like, intent upon his
own depths; and what limited outer-world could penetrate
his introspection was by Aion had: his eye ner left the
ticking hand as it nudged the day into blessed night.
He felt sure she would come but he must prepare
himself. She would not just arrive, no, she must see that he
was ready - that he paid the tribute that such as she
required. She moved in beauty, like the night and such a
creature cannot be summoned but must be lured with
adoration.
And so the night finally oer laid the world and
Horvath sat before the quivering fire. He had set the stage
as their previous meeting, and in his nervousness had
drunk a quart of wine but his heightened senses kept the
fog of drunkenness from him.
169
The same book of verse was open on his lap and the
same poets words slid beneath his finger as he read and
reread the lines. In him was some arcane need for ritual,
that if this night was identical in all detail to the last, then
she would reappear as she had done; as if he could by rote
of action fool time and have the past reissued in a present
frame.
He even sought to re-enact the style in which he had sat,
the thoughts of which he had thought, and perhaps most
particularly of all, the state of consciousness that had
brought Marta forth. He tried to relax but felt the
nervousness of a new lover who waits unsure.
He drank more, the cramps in his stomach clawing still;
another draft of laudanum, yet he could not rest nor be at
peace. He strained to hear, to see at every small sound or
flicker of firelight that crept about the room, but the hours
passed and he was all alone.
He knew not what time Marta came for sleep had over
taken him but he was certain the hour was late. His left
arm was locked against the arm rest of the chair and no
feeling remained in his hand. The book of poetry had at
some stage fallen to the floor and lay upturned, its spine
twisted in complaint and reflecting his own discomfort.
The candle had faded into a pool of grease and the room
was barely lit by what survived of the fire but despite the
lack of flame the room was suffused with vermillion
warmth; and in this womb-like hemisphere he strained
against the fetters of sleep, and emerged into the lavender
dream of Marta.
As before she sat and gazed into the embers, and as
before Horvath too gazed and tracked the individual
perfection of her face until hed memorised each line and
flow. He felt now not to expect a word or gesture for she
170
communicated all in her presence, she radiated essence or,

perhaps he thought, in her disembodied state all masque
and visage had been flayed away by death and what
remained, liberated from the fleshy artifice of being, was
the elemental aspect of her. She had no use for words as
she displayed all if Horvath had but the wit to
comprehend.
With a deftness born out of desire not to startle, he
rose himself into a full sitting position and placed his
hands squarely on the arms of the chair. In this position he
could view her from toe to head and marvelled at her
proportion and vividness. This was no transparent ghostly
shade but gave the impression of solid mass, as tactile and
sensory as anything living. She filled space and had
dimension but she also possessed an unreal perfection as
some idealised image of womankind, a Dantean muse
whose very presence refers us to our own mortal
imperfection.
As the moments passed he found a reflection of her
calm pervaded him and he relaxed back into the chair. He
steeped himself in the warmth of her contentment. It was a
sensation unlike any he had experienced before but not
unlike the surety of a child held in its mothers embrace, or
that of the weary mendicant who, having wandered lost, is
led home by the compassionate hand of God.
There was nothing more to rail against or tasks to be
completed; no journeys to be undertaken nor future to be
carried through. There was only this instant of being, and
all else before and to come was an annoying irrelevance.
Time had no place here and when she turned to meet his
stare Horvath could not say if they had been sat together a
moment or an age.
171
As before her movement was slight, the smallest shift of

her chin bringing her focus in line with his: her smile was
the merest cant of her upper lip and the soft crease of the
lines about her eyes. Her motion was of such subtlety as to
have not occurred but it was perhaps more properly
represented as the barely perceptible spark of intention
that ignites the aura, or the shock of instinct that perceives
what cannot be sensed.
He felt himself inundated and born aloft. He was
cocooned within her confines and unbound from the
purposelessness of his former independence. The natural
selfishness of European thought had served to pour scorn
on the Eastern philosophy of submission, and yet how
liberating was this new captivity.
And then she was gone; fading into the night as gently
as she had come and vanishing so, as softly as the dark
pales into light.
Each night followed a similar pattern and the ritual
of Horvaths life evolved into a daily incantation brought
forth from his awakening fear of loss, the fear of Martas
refusal to return. He measured his day by repeating the
actions of the previous and so precise had he become that
by the first day of December he even awoke from sleep
with an exactness of time that varied little from the day
before.
He would eat as he had done, always sitting in the same
space: spoon, knife, cup, and plate as before. His clothes
were left unchanged and he feared to shave or in any
manner alter his appearance.
He had turned Mirka, Milans wife, from the door on
several occasions when she had come to clean and, in fact,
had refused entry to any and all that had come. The last to
172
visit, perhaps more than a month before, had been Alex

Koza calling him to attend upon a broken hand but the boy,
for his pains, was castigated for his lack of kind and cuffed
from the door.
So intent was he to preserve the mis-en-scene of each
day that he felt the slightest alteration in atmosphere or
deviation from habit would break the some thread that
looped him to the previous night.
Horvath himself scarcely left the house except for his
daily pilgrimage to Martas spring, a place he now felt
certain was her asomatous keep, and a sanctuary of
hallowed significance. The blessed flow of water that
issued forth, to the Doctor, became akin to the vary stuff of
Marta herself and, by drinking from it, he drank of her. A
sacred homophagy by which he meant not to be only with
her but to be part of her: a consummation that would bring
about their androgynous whole, a Platonic reunion; no
longer cleaved at the whim of vainglorious gods but at long
last re-joined.
The cleric Schultz had sent messages twice in the
preceding weeks. Upon the first occasion Horvath, who
had taken to bolting the doors and shuttering the windows
in his efforts to encapsulate himself and conserve her
from unwelcome influences, had secreted himself from
view. As Alex Koza had pounded on the door and begged
the doctor to show himself, Horvath had hid upon the top
of the stairs landing barely able to contain his fury at such
a callous attempt to breach his sanctuary.
The boy, in his trepidation, had sought the help of Milan
and between the two of them they had, to Horvath's mind,
proceeded to assault his home with all the venom of a
Tartar invasion, and the loud knocks, bangs, and hollering
173
yells seemed a personal attack designed to shatter and rob

him of the solitude he had for himself created.
They had, he thought, circled his home like wolves,
prying at windows and probing weaknesses in his
defences. They had called his name, howling their threats,
until the winds picked up their call and shook the
foundations of his home with their assaults.
As darkness fell they soon gave up and left no doubt
plotting a return but finally all was silence. Horvath
descending the stairs, he spotted a slip of paper, and
reached out to pick it up. His fingers were stained and
cracked with blains, and shook with a tremor he had not
seen before.
The handwriting was neat and precise, and he
recognised as the clerics.
It read:
My Dear Dr. Horvath,
What end is this? Whatever terror haunts thee
casts no shadow on solid ground, tis but imagination unrestrained.
I leave this now but will return in person.
Your friend,
M. Schultz
And leave the messengers had done. Horvath stood

within the door and held the clerics note. Not long past the
familiar, cursive hand would have delighted the doctor,
and Schultzs use of middle Slovak would have, as it often
had, amused Horvath trained in the more assertive
western script. But as he read and reread the words his
friend had written he felt the acid taste of revulsion enter
beneath his tongue. His hands trembled and he felt the
burn of the rough paper between his finger and thumb as if
174
the very fabric of the note itself contained nought but

malice.
His lips were now parched and grimed with the nights
flavours of red wine and laudanum - the one exception he
had made to his habitual routines was the use of this
medicinal opiate that had now become an intermittent yet
constant refrain. His lack of sleep and poor diet failed to
assist him and he struggled daily through the fog of
sleeplessness and barely suppressed hunger, and the
laudanum gave him strength and clarity.
But now, as he stared with impotent indignation at the
worlds intrusiveness, he shook with what he saw as the
clerics heresy. His fingers traced the lines and he squinted
to ensure himself of Schultzs words: Whatever terror
haunts thee casts no shadow on solid ground, tis but
imagination unrestrained.
Imagination unrestrained! The words smouldered on his
tongue: hypocrite, heretic. That he, Schultz, a priest and
man of God should deny divinity in such vulgar terms, that
Marta should be so vilified and mocked as a thing of his
imagination. That fool Schultz, who talked of love from the
pulpit yet had never known its touch nor taste, who spoke
of God and yet had never stood before the divine like a
child before the oceans roar.
He threw back the doors bolts and stepped out into the
pale winter sun. Blinded he cast about for the Cleric, who
surely must have delivered this note himself, but he was
gone. Running as a rat to return no doubt to his cold and
clerical isolation save the ever present company of his god.
Whilst he, Horvath, blazed with a new found glory and
supped from a cup that Schultz could only dream of.
Horvath smiled through the smear of grime that caked
his lips: To know what is love and to bask in its glory
175
A light snow fell but beyond this the air was frozen in
a deep and icy chill. Horvath pulled his cloak about him
and cocked his ear but all was silent. The meddling cleric
was gone now for sure. He pushed towards the spring
more in need of Martas presence than water and knelt in
reverence before the ice bound grotto.
The cold soaked his knees but he did not feel it. He
focused his attention on a hymn that was scrawled upon a
paper held by a rock above the little cascade. In fact, he
reminded himself, it was no hymn but a prayer: a prayer of
adulation that she might know of his devotion. For he
thought of himself as truly blessed, and like Adam before
the fall, before Eve, he, Horvath was unique as the only
child of his personal god.
And so he knelt now before Marta, clasping his hands
unto his breast and recited his prayer as a lover might, as
perhaps Dido prayed before the pyre '...how my dreams terrify me with anxieties!
Who is this strange guest who has entered our house.'
He knelt as a submissive suitor before the immaculate
and begged for life in her:
Lady, thou art real.
No dream nor flight of simplest fancy.
Why dost thou thyself conceal from love?
For I offer the tenderest to entrance thee.
176
Part the Fourth

The days passed bringing with them a pall of heavy snow
that left the valley near impassable. A drift banked up
across the road that was near as tall as a man, and it was
only after nearly two weeks that men from the village
could make their way beyond their own front gates to clear
the road. The path to Horvaths house remained
untouched; no sign had been seen of the Doctor except on
the odd occasion when a thin line of smoke drifted from
the chimney in the late afternoon.
This was the only indication he still lived. However, once
the snow was cleared enough to allow for it the cleric
himself chose to visit, and hastened up the icy path
towards valley with an ever increasing sense of
trepidation. It had now turned two months since anyone
had last had contact with the doctor, and a sighting of him
by Samo Koza a few days past had filled the cleric with
dread.
Kozas retelling often changed the details, but the
essence was as such:
Koza had been out with his dogs checking snares which
had taken him up behind Horvaths holding into the tree
line. From this vantage point he had peered down on
Martas neglected fruit gardens where the naked stems of
raspberry, red current, and gooseberry stood harshly black
against the white of snow. The fruit bushes were unpruned and this more than the dearth of winter seemed to
emphasise summers spent glory.
In fact, despite the efforts of Milan and his son to keep
the place in order, old Martas house and garden appeared
to have withdrawn and, as if by some conscious will the
177
property no longer wished to be, and was attempting to

evade being.
The house itself seemed less defined and, if one did not
focus upon it, seemed to blend itself into the well-trimmed
and cropped, yet uncontained, surroundings. The garden
seemed at once kept and unkempt as if he had caught the
grounds in mid-transformation, as if it were trying to mask
its own departure into the wild by trailing out a lingering
visage that would gently, subtly meld into none being. And
perhaps, if done in such a way, none would even notice its
absence.
Koza huffed warm air into his cupped hands. As the day
had worn on the temperature had steadily dropped and he
knew that by night fall the cold would have buried itself
deep into his bones. He picked up two young coneys that
now lay rigid by his feet and pushed further up the path to
the last of his traps that sat beneath the spreading reaches
of an old bore tree.
As he rose to a turn in the path he caught sight of a
jagged movement down below the verge. Again the
movement and Koza leaned forward and searched down
the bank to the forests edge.
At this time of year hungry pigs were often emboldened
enough to range during the day and perhaps an old sow or
boar was tilling the mulch in search of anything edible. The
trees skimmed Martas, now Horvaths, orchard and then
cut in at a sharp angle of 45 degrees were Martas well had
once been dug. The well had long since collapsed and, as if
annoyed by this blockage; the subterranean flow had
surfaced some way above the gardens and now descended
collecting itself in a small basin. And it was at the small
pool were Samo Koza saw a barely recognised figure.
178
Koza crouched low and stepped a few paces forward to

gain a better view and, despite the rumours spread around
Konkusova Dolina, he was still little able to reconcile the
shadow that moved before him with the man he knew it to
be.
The dark outline of Ladislav Horvath sat hunched by the
side of the spring. His limbs shook as if affected by extreme
illness and it was this sharpness of agitation that had
caught Kozas eye. He seemed knelt in an attitude of prayer
but was slouched in such a curious position that he seemed
set to tumble, as if he had fallen into sleep.
On straining against the breeze Koza could hear the
doctor as he croaked through some kind of liturgy; it was
as though he sang: a monotone canticle half hissed out on
ragged breath, half-forgotten upon the tongue; the words
needing to carry themselves out upon their own
impetuous. He directed his words downwards into the
depths of the pool and appeared oblivious to all about him.
His trembling continued and, as Koza edged further
forward, seemed to intensify and subside in a rhythmic
series of wavelets, perhaps marking time in accord with
the doctors words.
Across his shoulders was draped a dark cape, and even
at this distance Koza could see it was heavily stained and
appeared frayed at the hem. A deep cowl was pulled
forward to shield Horvath from the chilled breeze and this
obscured his face from view, but despite the cloak the
doctors frailty was evident. Edging still further to the
brink, and signalling his two dogs to remain still, he raised
himself into a full standing position resolving to hail
Horvath and aid him if he so needed.
As he rose he dislodged a clump of snow that hung from
the limb of a smothered pine and this in turn poured itself
179
into desperate flurries and sloughed onward from the tree

and was gone. Such a small eruption barely heard but in
the quiet of the moment it appeared as a bugle call.
Horvath spun on his knees and sighted Koza
immediately, who had in an instant of indecision half
raised his hand in greeting and simultaneously sunk for
the protection of as snow clad stump, before climbing
unsteadily to his feet. As Koza watched Horvaths lips
continued in their unconscious recitation but the full force
of the doctors attention faltered as if caught between two
incomprehensibilities, as a child wrenched from sleep
struggles to reacquire the day.
Horvath swayed on his feet and he seemed struck by a
vital uncertainty; his look leapt from Koza to the spring
and back again, and was immediately repeated.
Flight was clearly contemplated but this was seemingly
countermanded by a desperate desire to not abandon the
waters. Casting one last baneful glance at Samo, Horvath
lurched back towards the house. As he did so the breeze
flipped at the hood of his cloak, tossing it back and
revealing the doctors emaciated features for the first time.
A gaunt alabaster profile surged forth from the hood but
for Koza, used to the privations of winter and the ravages
of the seasons sunless skies and scant provisions on a
man, this did not over startle him. The matted crop of
white hair and similarly bleached, derelict beard, however,
here succeeded and caused Koza to stumble back and
reach for his staff as if to ward off a renewed assault from a
distant assailant.
It was remarkable to him that a face so familiar could
appear so perverse like some cruel parody of the actual, or
the lined and creased features of age transposed upon
remembered youth.
180
The transformation of Horvath was replete in its severity

and swift in its accomplishments. A wealth of possibilities
dawned on Koza and he was well aware, but had never
encountered, the urban plagues that effected townsmen,
but what illness could turn a man so rapidly and so
completely leaving only ragged, blistered skin pulled
taught across the sharp bones of a desperate figure?
A loud thud cracked across the air and by the time Koza
had regained composure the door of Martas house was
shut and bound, and the doctor vanished. But the image
stayed as he collected his dogs and near ran through the
knee deep snow propelled by disgust, of that he was sure;
but also by something more desperate, fear.
The news reached Schultz by the days end, and with the
help of supplementary anecdotes supplied by wagging
tongues, the vulgar interpretations of some of the local
people had propelled Horvath from ailing doctor to
something far more malignant.
And so now he, Schultz, pushed his way through the
knee deep snow that was barricading the untrod path from
the road to Horvaths house. His thin leather house boots,
which he had neglected to change such was his haste, had
quickly soaked his feet and rubbed painfully against his
chapped and raw ankles.
He glanced quickly up at the chimneys as he rounded the
hedgerow but saw no sign of heat or smoke rising into the
frigid air. To not have a fire lit in this weather was clear
madness and he pushed on with renewed vigour and a
heightened sense of foreboding.
As he approached the front of the house he noted the
drawn curtains and almost hermetic way the windows had
been sealed against light. The doctor had pasted pages of
his valuable medical journals against the glass and stuffed
181
the inevitable small gaps between the frame and wall with
lichen.
As Schultz approached the door the snow gave way to a
beaten patch were foot prints had stamped down a clear
area that trailed drunkenly in the direction of Martas well.
It seemed, or so the Cleric assumed, that whatever
disturbed Horvath he was mobile enough to venture
beyond his door and lent credence to the improbable tale
he had heard related by a near apoplectic Katka Koza.
All previous efforts at gaining access to the doctor had
failed and for this reason Schultz did not trouble himself to
hail or try to raise the house. He stood before the main
door and strained to hear any sounds from within, he
could hear none. He circled to the back of the house but
here also the windows had been shuttered with pages
ripped and pasted upon the pains. Looking more closely he
could see that Horvath had taken meticulous care in
sealing out the light as each page had been lined with
precision against its neighbour.
It was clear that the doctors intention had been to
insulate himself from the world to such a degree as to be a
veritable act of entombment: but what could drive a man
to such a condition?
Stepping back he glanced again towards the roof and the
chimney that led smoke away from the kitchen. At first he
saw nothing unusual but as he was about to turn away he
caught sight of what at first appeared to a blackened heap
piled upon the chimneys mouth. Moving further back he
raised himself onto a snow covered pile of logs and peered
again at the roof of the house. Straining to see against the
opaque skyline he realised it was nothing heaped on the
chimney but rather something stuffed through it.
182
It appeared, in his madness, that Horvath had plugged

the chimney from within, wedging sackcloth to close up
the aperture: but for what possible reason?
Schultz moved back to the front of the house and, as a
seeming anomaly, the spout directly above Horvaths living
room appeared to be free of obstructions.
The cleric then systematically checked all windows and,
as he had previously thought, all appeared to have been
obsessively sealed. Once again he arrived at the rear of the
house and continued his scrutiny believing, and perhaps
for lack of other alternatives, that details would reveal a
larger accuracy. He stood gazing at the rear door and
began to run his fingers along the jam and frame feeling
the knotted wood slide by until, in the gloom unseen, he
felt the sharp cold of metal.
Along the seal of the door six nails had been driven from
the inside crosswise into the outer wooden frame pinning
the door closed; and stooping to inspect the lower part of
the door he spied the lock clogged with cloth and coated
with melted candle wax.
Circling to the front, the lock of door there proved to
have been untampered with and it was plain from the
footsteps all around the door that Horvath had ventured
forth, as evidenced by Samo Koza. It seemed that the
doctor had gone to extreme lengths to secure the world
without, but for what God given reason?
The sun was now well below the tree line and darkness
was fast approaching as Schultz pondered his friends
possible motives. The change of appearance had been
drastic enough to frighten Koza which was no mean feat,
and this coupled with the clerics own experiences now and
the tales of others, convinced him that his friend was
183
suffering in the extreme but, the question was, from what

malady?
And then with a creeping sense of unbelief the cleric
began the steady and involuntary process of realisation.
Despite the cold, sweat rippled across his brow and back
as his breathing quickened and his heart began to quicken.
But could this be true? As a student he had heard of
another such similar instance but, as he had read the
rather inflated description of the unfortunate in Linz, it
had been clear, at least to Schultz, that the tormented soul
in question had been clearly mad, a deranged victim of his
own demonic dreams.
This could surely not apply to Horvath whose sense of
reason, if not his ardent faith, would safe guard him
against such ridiculousness. Schultz did not deny the
existence of the devil, in fact he believed Satan to be a part
of our daily lives. However, he also knew that many a sad
lunatic who had claimed to be the devils kin was nothing
more than lost to himself.
But what other explanation could be had? This
transformation of his home into some hermetic anchorage,
his reclusiveness and transfiguration spoke of a spiritual
agony in which Horvath must desperately be engaged. And
there is but one source, as Schultz knew well, of such a
malignant power. If Horvath was to be saved, if his friend
were to be wrested from the hands of Hell then he knew
there was only one possible option.
He ran for the road determined and terrified. He would
send for the Bishop, or the Holy Franciscan Fathers in
Hlohovec, but time, there was the urge of time. He was
alone amongst a godless people in a heathen land.
His breathing rose and he felt the tendrils of panic play
within him. There was but one other choice, as unchristian
184
and unholy as it may seem. The ancients had known the

Devil well and it was to them that he must now turn.
He broke into a hurry as he turned on his heels and
made for the home of Milan, his uncertainty resolving into
clerical ire with each passing step.
By the time he stood before a startled Mirka demanding
to see her husband his ire had turned to the righteous
certainty and he quavered with a heady mix of fear and
rage. There would be hell to pay this night for the Devil,
despite Horvaths call, would not find a welcome in
Konkusova dolina.
Ladislav had ignored whatever beast or man had circled
his home, the world beyond this moment was a trifling
thing, as poorly relevant to him in significance as the dust
beneath his feet, for she had come.
The fire flickered kindly in the grate and soothed the air
with a blush of warm light, the glow of which enrapt them
in a cell of quiet darkness. Martas skirts slid against the
wooden boards of the floor and trailed upwards in an
amber flow above the curve of her knee and wrapped itself
snugly against her waist. Her bodice reflected off the light
of the flame and moulded smoothly against the pale hue of
her skin, and this in turn wavered in the fires shadow play
from alpine white into subterranean dark and back again.
Her hair trailed down from crown to lap and descended in
rivulets of black meandering curls.
But it was none of these things on which Horvath was
focused for he wandered in the Elysian precincts of her
aspect. He was as one unaware, bound by threads of
stronger worth than any cast iron chain, and absorbed not
what was before or beside him but whatever ephemera the
gods had spun on the day that Marta had died.
185
He seemed infused in her and she in him, yet it was his

self, his flesh and bone that appeared devolved and less
corporeal. He had drifted into her and knew of no sweeter
manna.
The pale blue of her eyes rested on him and smiled so
that he might know he was not alone and he was reassured
by her and leaned forward to touch the cold lightness of
her hand. He slender fingers tapered into an interlaced
pattern, threaded, as they were, in an attitude of prayer
and lain upon her thigh.
As on every previous evening she never spoke nor made
but the slightest of movements; she had appeared to him
without fail and had sat with him through the long nights
as dispassionate in her presence as one uncaring. But it
was in this seeming indifference to all about her that
Horvath had seen her Edenic serenity.
She did not desire, love nor pine for she beheld all things
and, if paradoxically, held to nothing. The meaningless
nature of her previous life had slipped from her and all
that had been of value to her had fallen away leaving her in
divine poverty, divest of clay and clad in Kenosis.
She had become the emptiness within the vessel, the
unfilled void in which all possibility exists. She sat at the
core of peace which poured forth into and about him
drowning out the monotonous half existence of the
living. She passed into him a fresher air that becalmed and
bore him from the tides of ceaseless motion into perfect
inaction, into the oblivious unity of the whole.
The flames of the fire continued their melody of change
as the hours past unnoticed. Horvath now knew that she
would not leave him, and he traced the lines of her face
with his outstretched fingers and felt the brush of her hair
against the back of his hand.
186
Although not solid made his senses perceived her touch

and he inhaled her breath, sweet with the taste of lavender
as she exhaled, as if she were a mere woman.
The poets had not spoken of this, how could they have?
What words had men for this, love? Could such a grunted
syllable equate or transmit her that others might
understand? Never. The rut of men, hung about with
tinselled praise as it was, that passed for our elevation and
sat god-like in our estimation, was nought but the demisense that perhaps some men retained of their own divine
union.
And that the torments of his days without her loomed, as
great in him as the prospect of any cruelty the gods upon
man had yet inflicted, he endured for she would return to
him and salve the wounds that she herself had inflicted.
During the day he circled the barricades of his home
safeguarding its fastness, and awaiting her return like the
sons of Seth awaiting the return of the daughters of Cain,
as the Nephilim await their own return to grace. Yet he
now existed without care, a keen and willing victim of the
horrors of her hiatus, for come the night so would she
come, a bearer of light to him, a daemon of the Seraphim
who perhaps rebellious of the detached tolerance of a God
impervious to mankind, stooped to hold the hand of man.
It was for her, and her kind, which the entire world had
so yearned; as a child, now become an adult yearns at the
memory of its mothers touch, for that familiarity of
keeping so antithetical to the cold speculation of God.
She came to annihilate the chaos of life, to release him,
Horvath, from the modals of human action and bring him
home into the primordial quiet, to the fathomless stillness
of non-being.
187
The hour was now late and dawn, and Martas leaving,
would not be far off. Horvath stooped and pulled a crude
candle from a lacquered box by the fire. The candle was of
a rough mould that he had fashioned himself from the
leavings of previous nights. It would hold the flame until
the hearth and grate were cleaned and reset, for his flint
had long been lost; and so this flame and fire at night were
nurtured and revered.
His body ached with privation and he struggled to stand
and move about the room. His ragged sense of perception
elasticated the space around him and he reeled as one
aboard the tossed deck of a ship as he moved clutching
mantel and chair back for direction. He placed two
spindled fagots onto the fire and listened as they crackled
into ignition. From the corner of his eye Marta raised
herself beside him and pressed her lips against the sunken
hollow of his cheek. His tired frame sagged against her in
relief for their time of separation was soon to be at an end.
In the grey pre-dawn a light snow drifted down masking
the winters solstice with a monochrome hue. As if the dark
had sucked all colour and tone from the spectrum of frozen
light, the day awoke to find the land in shades of absence,
and this was amplified by the sombre men gathered now at
the end of Horvaths track.
Milan, Schultz and Koza formed the core whilst several
others grouped around about them with Jan Orlik shaking
his head as Samo Koza spoke. He related his sighting of
Horvath the day before, explained the doctors change of
appearance and his flight when seen and hailed by Koza.
Several of the men asked their questions and many
offered explanations as each man pondered the wisdom of
what was said. As they spoke five more men arrived
188
stamping clogged snow from their boots and they were

trailed by Alex Koza who had summoned them from their
beds. The men had come down from the higher hamlets of
Osikovce and Hlavac, and were none too pleased to be thus
roused.
And now the thirteen men stood and lost themselves in
claim and counter claim, and in the clamour of conjecture.
Jaro Lachovic, who had come perhaps the furthest from the
mill in Podkylava, a good hour in this weather and in the
dark, silenced all before signalling Schultz to speak. It had
been the cleric who had called them, and he who must
justify this killing of a man.
When Schultz stepped forward to speak he felt, with a
clear instinct, the full authority of his Protestant God swell
within him and he knew, with the iron conviction of one
unused to certainty, that which must be said and done.
When he spoke it was of Hell and of Heaven, and of the
shallow vale that rims Gods paradise; he spoke of Christ
and Lucifer, and of he who brings light to the darkness; he
spoke of goodness and of evil, and of what it was to be the
instrument of justice, to be the first stone cast by God.
His voice rose above the silent morn as he told of Linz, a
tale now transformed to harrow their fragile disbelief, and
of how the wretched oftentimes seek comfort in the cold
caverns of hell mistaking the clasp of Satan for the
embrace of God. He spoke of love and its sacrifice of
torment, as Christ himself had sacrificed for love; and of
Longinus, who, possessed by a quickening of the heart and
enraptured by a state of divine love, had killed and
rendered unto man and God alike a merciful release.
As he spoke the mens, nervousness grew and they
hobble-stepped from foot to foot in their cold and angst.
The Devil himself was hid closer to their hearths as each
189
man knew, for every priest and penitent had warned them
to have care. Their pagan rituals, it was said, would one
day draw the darkness in. And so the words Schultz spoke
bled any discontent from the men about him as he pulled
upon the final cords of their apprehension and, unbound
from ethical polemic, allowed it to slip away unnoticed.
The old ways knew how to chase the Devil from his den
and it was these ways which the Priest now invoked. He
grabbed each man in turn and by his hands, and they
agreed that Catholic charms and Lutheran rites were
feeble when balanced against the Pagan hammer.
Within the house Horvath sat at the kitchen table and
tried to steady his trembling. The warm ease of laudanum
was slowly seeping through his system and he knew it
would not be long before the cold chill that seemed to
encase him since Martas departure would begin to ebb
and fade. He pulled upon the stained fringe of his coat to
insulate what meagre warmth his body still held, and blew
warm air into his palms wincing at the sting of raw and
cracked chilblains. He looked out towards the garden half
hid behind a lace of frost that scaled the lower half of the
window and saw the men of Konkusova dolina descending
on his path.
Marta had told him they would come and for this he had
removed all blocks and barricades from the lower doors
and windows; for hearts become feint in hesitance wake,
and for Horvath their feint hearts would leave him lost.
In his left hand he now held a text that Marta had given
him, pulled, miraculously so it seemed, from the basket of
waste scrap paper, wood shavings and kindling used to
light the fire. It had come, he was certain, from a book of
meditations given him in his youth but he could not place
190
the author nor did he fully know to whom or of what, in

this instance, the writer spoke. But she had pressed it into
his hand upon their parting and to him it told of the mans
most sacred longings:
Thou calledst, and criedst aloud, and forcedst open
my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and chase away
my blindness. Thou didst exhale odours, and I drew in my
breath and do pant after Thee. I tasted, and do hunger and
thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.
The first thud against the door stirred him and he
gently folded the paper and replaced it into the pocket of
his coat. His hand lingered upon its edges and he felt the
recitation of the text through the thin folds: thou calledst,
and criedest out aloud and forced open my deafness; and
another stroke hit the door.
Horvath moved to stand and pushed his unsteady frame
upwards, he stood back to lean his weight against the cold
stone of the pantry wall. Another bang against the front
door and he heard his friend Schultz calling out above the
echo and the further raised voices of all those sent.
A mirage passed beyond the frosted pane of the window
and he inhaled, the image across the glass twisted to and
fro in an effort to see and be unseen. Horvath stepped
towards the window and clutching the counterpane
expelled the warmth of his breath onto the ice.
Glass broke; he heard the music of its fall and felt the
cool rush of air, behind him. The window at the door
perhaps, but Horvath did not turn, yet wiped against the
pane before him as young Alex Koza stared back at him
through the frost and began to howl with fear. Wood
191
splintered as the door succumbed to rock and boot, and to

the cries of delighted anger from those without.
Horvath turned to face the malaise and closed his eyes
to grasp, lest courage fail him, her image. thou didst gleam
and shine, and chase away my blindness. Her breath upon
him and the hands of men about him, he opened his eyes
and saw the terrible fear of Schultz as the clergyman cried
for tighter bonds.
The boy Koza wept and would not meet his gaze. Milan
pulled him roughly by the hair and he felt himself beaten
onto the floor but there was no hurt though blood and
cudgels fell. Rough hands pulled and pushed, and ripped
away the rags from of his limbs.
He was now in snow and lapped by whiteness. A rope
swirled about him limb and wrist as they pulled him to his
knees, and he heard, sweet, the flow of Martas water trill
across the garden waste. It sang and gurgled in its basin
and merry-made to the rhyme of grunting men; she
chapped upon the waiting stone and in the cold and
freezing air she sighed and spun her breath in webs of air,
releasing the long forgotten hours of summer - and
Horvath heard her song: Thou didst exhale odours, I drew
in my breath and do pant after thee.
He hung between their arms as they stripped him to the
skin, and could not find a way to stand. Knots dug deep
into his bones and skin was flushed with the chill his
nakedness had allowed. His feet were blood stained and
bruised as he skimmed across the snow and buried rocks
the forest held. The path upon which he stumbled arose
and fell, and he no longer knew the woodlands nor its
lightless bowers.
His hair hung in rats tails pleated with sweat and grime
but his hands no longer moved to twist away the blinds
192
from his eyes. They stumbled up and he felt the heavy

tread of those beside him, spurred on by the clerics
righteous tongue. A branch of pine flayed the path and
Horvath did not find a way to overstep and fell then rose
again. His men, comrades in his salvation, unyielding in
their care as they propelled him onwards to their meeting
place.
And now the wind was taut with winter and rushed
about the trees overhead, and they in turn danced and
wavered above him. Horvath felt the keening of the wind
to be upon him and knew the strains of its melody as its
many fingered hands strummed the naked boughs. It was a
song of ancient memory, a song of unarticulated poetry
that played not upon the ear and faculties but hummed
unto the timbre of the soul.
It trailed out across the landscape, unearthed, from
wherever deeper regions list and remain unnoticed til the
coming of their hour. It chanted of our blacker day and
whispered of what things may come when we are gone and
the world is emptied of our flurry.
The lamentations reeled upon the eddies of the air and
bucked against the chomp of boots in snow; and like a
vapour swirled about the doctors nose and mouth, a
melody of wisp and smoke, tangible and yet not. Horvath
gasped and felt its tang upon his lips, tongue and teeth like
an antique and stale draft, and yet elusive it remained, for
the elegy would not be tied to him, not yet, but played him
on.
Upon the air, and from out the Jeremiad wind, she gently
made: I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. And he knew it to
be her song of a new and dawning life.
193
However deeply led the forest so did the men walk on

until, alerted by the sudden rasp of light that bleached the
snow before him, the forest ceased and Horvath sank. His
blood flowed freely upon the virgin plain but faster still it
was erased with each passing moment as great banks of
snow teemed upon The Clearing. The cloying wetness of
the stuff rose up above his elbows as he, dog-like, lurched
on fours towards the centre of the sleeping meadow, as if
meaning to out-strip his fellows and flee. But he gurgled
back at them through broken teeth, a spume of spittle
spray upon the wind, and felt with gratitude the stout
hands of his neighbours as they pulled him free and
carried him onwards with reels and kicks.
The dark clouds lowered yet and Horvath strained to
raise his head, to push back the winds insistence that
swept away his vision leaving the world opaque and
blurred; the snow sought to hound where the breezes
failed and he blinked in defence against their assaults. He
knew that Marta was there but could not fix upon her. He
heard her still in the winds chilling frenzy; her words
winnowing free from the chaff of sounds about him and he
tried, like one lost, to cling to her passing song and words,
and trace them to their origins. But they would not yield to
his grasp.
The cold was now deep within him and he felt as one
discarding leg and arm across the field as each useless item
became as a thing cast away, fruitless and idle, to his cause;
the cold wrapped around his naked form enshrouding him
in cool detachment and numbingly released him of the
burden of bone and flesh. He felt the sluggish rhythm of his
chest labour on in obstinate indifference to the failing
purpose all about it.
194
And at this time the world became still and the fury of
the wind abated. The snow, still rife with the madding
foam of winter yet becalmed, hung as if suspended upon
the invisible tips of some many fingered beast that now
withheld its breath and stilled the falling flakes. All sounds
contracted within themselves and ceased; and cradled
within this absence of noise was a purer note of quiet.
Horvath raised his shattered head to marvel at the
suddenness of change.
His comrades now bore against him, their backs arched
and brows furrowed; their faces set and determined as
men compelled, the set of men toiling at a task most
odious. He tried to spur them on and bark encouragement
but in the great stillness that prevailed his words were
muted, did not gather pace, and failed upon his lips.
Horvath saw then how the winds and cold were still
cruelly cast against them, and how the roar of chaos
bellowed about them as if some angry press of discord
thrummed between their wavering figures. He raised his
arms to encircle and harbour them against the tempests
savage maw which loomed as a darkness threatening to
engulf their world of frenzied movement and sound, but he
was somehow now restrained by peace and immobile
made by passive bonds.
The men heaved their burden, him, against the blast and
Horvath felt himself straighten and elongate. He felt
elevated and a drifting free as if he were being raised up by
inhuman hands; and all about him in these listless airs a
canopy of ease mocked the bitter gales sweeping across
the fields.
He felt the brutal force of the men as fingers, knees, and
shoulders pushed into him, holding him upright, and then
the lash of crude twine, meant to sustain him, and the
195
fetter of crude ropes around his legs, midriff, chest, throat

and brow. And then the cold rasp of stone and ice as his
thighs, buttocks, spine and head ground against the stone
plume that had awaited his arrival. The vital sting of its
trunk, whose moss and lichen sought to bruise and cut,
relented to his touch and Horvath sank into its fleshy folds
as a child sinks in to the dreamless night of sleep.
He felt the warmth of the sun upon him but it was an
indirect impression and he was unsure if it was a sensation
remembered or one valid to this time, but it drifted over
him, wafting down on sepia wings, their lavender flights
timid to reveal their origins or from what source this
bounty had been sent. And the light was vibrant and had
form, it resonated with a brilliance that was more than
visible but also solid; the light was sensual and touched
him smoothing back the beauty of these hours to reveal a
profounder artistry.
Horvath blinked and tried to clear the blood from his
eyes and focus upon the glory he beheld. It was then, upon
the cusp of argent light, that Marta sang once more, the
final words of a seekers lament: Thou didst touch me, and I
burned for thy peace.
Her words shimmered in the light before him and
seemed to resound, echoing through the rays that swept
around his eyes. And the source of the light appeared to
sway upon her words, a darting streak that wove in circles
hither and back. It taunted and beguiled him, and he
strained the harder for to see its shape and kind; yet still it
danced before him.
From the wind, and descending fast, his own words
returned to him and he heard entwined within their
cadence of his reflected voice those of Marta. Her voice
rose and fell with his, pushing through the stillness that
196
enclosed him though seeming to glide without disturbance

upon the silence, effecting only to enhance his sense of
peace as a star in a moonless sky serves only to enhance
the darkness of the night.
They sang in unison, an epithalamium bourn upon the
light that shone and that now had clarified and grew shape
and shade. His throat burned with the sweetness of her
words and he sought to recognise her face as it came to
him, as her features materialised out of the light. Her eyes,
he saw now, were a blue grey and rimmed with blood for
the weeping and sorrow she had made afore they met. Her
cheeks were stained with tears, and rouged with earth and
ash as she now mourned him and his mortal life. Her lips
were split and peeled, and her mouth twisted, broken
toothed, smiling as she sang; the passion of her melody
exacting wounds upon her tongue and cheek.
The wind had gained in ferocity and pummelled the men
from all sides with a rare ruthlessness. Samo Koza and Jaro
Lachovic pinned the sagging doctor against the stone pillar
and looked to Schultz for an end. Dark and ravening clouds
rolled across the sky and surged upon the encircling trees
in a rush of sound that forced the men to shout to be heard.
Snow layered their capes and leggings as they fought to
strap Horvath standing against the stone.
Alex Koza squatted down, hunched beside the men in an
effort to protect himself against the wind, and fearfully
eyed the cruel and incomprehensible tragedy play-out
before him. Old Jan Orlik seemed to share young Kozas
fear. He clutched at Schultzs sleeve and pleaded for a
hearing but the Cleric did not notice. He raised his hands
and signalled for the men to part and stepped towards the
doctor.
197
Horvaths head wavered and gyrated against his fetters

as if he sought to catch sight of a thing behind and beyond
them. The men shuffled uncertainly on frozen legs glancing
back towards the trees, now wrapped in a cerecloth of
dark snow. The doctors long hair was matted with blood
and earth, and Schultz gently traced the lank strands away
from his friends face and, gazing deep, found no man he
recognised. Horvath appeared oblivious to those about
him; his eyes were vacant to the attendant time but stared
instead into a more distant present. He grimaced and
maundered through some unholy hymn, his words bestial
and perverse, performed to an infernal chant.
Schultz felt the fear of ages grip him as the sounds of
Horvaths devilish song was caught up by the wind and
whipped back upon him. There was a primal ugliness
about the words, a deep evil that gnawed at him, and was
at once sickly and foul, and yet beguiling. He felt nausea
run through his gullet and the bile of it burned upon his
lips; and within him a deep arousal, an arising of a
dormant thing of ancient lineage, consigned once to
oblivion but now remembered.
He pulled upon the remnants of his resolve and slipped
the edge of a honed skinning knife from his pocket. The
blade writhed in the dull light and stroked against the
palm of his hand in heady anticipation, it raised itself and
hung between them at eye level, flashing in the sallow sun.
The cleric eased it fore and back, and watched the gilded
shimmer etch across the torn features of his friend, as if to
pierce with reflected sun the gloom of Horvaths distant
mind; and thence to thrust the daggers image into the
doctors remote psyche and return him. Yet Horvath
remained still borne beyond them, still adrift on the
cadenza of this, his evil lament.
198
In the warmth of their seclusion Horvath longed to move

and enfold her as she wove before him. The rapture of her
burned upon his eyes and he was transfixed, immovable as
stone. He now felt a quickening within him, faint at first,
but then more insistent. Martas broken image wound in
front of him, and the words of her song reduced and stilled,
and he felt too the slow declension of his own voice as
their words seeped into the wider stillness.
He was struck from below. He felt propelled from
within; a thrusting upwards from the gut, a sweet
exhalation that whipped the air from his lungs and
suffused him with a sharp warmth that pummelled up
through his core and entered his head with a stinging
clarity. The quickening coursed through his limbs, drove
the blood from his temples, and prickled the skin as a jolt
that shook him. Marta had gone but he now felt the touch
of her within as she moved about enlivening him; she
sapped him and he felt himself draining into her depths.
And all was still.
From without, from the heavens perhaps, he heard his
own voice, now indistinguishable from that of Marta: Cado,
Cado.
And so he fell, and she with him; and she held his hand
and would not allow him to lose her, as she led him ad
fontes .
And with that the winds dropped and Schultz
stepped back from his friend. Blood dripped from his wrist
and fingers, the knife blade dulled in the red stain of life.
199
Krajne: 2012
In the days that followed Horvaths death Milan was
tasked with his burial. Schultz steadfastly refused to have
his friend interred in holy ground and so a grave was dug
in the Marthas garden. It was left unmarked, and as the
decades passed the small mound of earth under which the
doctor lay vanished beneath the green. No one who was
present at his death ever spoke of it, nor was Martas
house ever lived in again. It seemed best, so the villagers
said, to keep the old place empty. Yet Schultz was not a
man to forget. Troubled for years by the events of that
night he finally confessed all, relieving his soul before
taking his own life. His confessor was David Koza, priest
and son of Alex Koza.
The house declined and was barely rubble when the
Second World War started. A partisan group fleeing
German patrols bedded down in the ruins of the house,
and was using the old fire place as a hearth in which to
cook a meal. Late in the night Villam Orlik awoke, troubled
by the sound of voices he roused a comrade and the two
men crept beyond the ruins into the quite of the night.
Skirting the tree line they checked and circled the house
and grounds, finding and hearing no one.
What happened next made for strange hearing:
Now 92 old Villam stood in Krajnes communist era pub,
a half drunk beer in his hand and a strong cigarette
drooping sadly from his lips, his listeners were unsure
whether he was just good at playing a crowd or serious in
what he said. Waving a leathery hand towards the window
and the dark hills beyond his voice quavered, the words
difficult to find.
They had come back to the sleeping camp, he said,
lighting cigarettes and sitting beside the embers of their
200
fire. Orlik had looked back towards the old spring, and
there in the gloom, enrapt in the glow of a distant moon,
sat a man and a woman. They neither appeared to speak
nor move, they simply sat. She with him and he with her.
______________________________________
201
The Fourth Tale

In Lilith's Garden - The last Vision of a Carpathian
Witch.
In 1939 the Nazi's arrived in the Carpathian

mountains and, as many parts of the of their new won
territory lay isolated beyond their reach, they set
about building roads and bridges to bring these
ancient lands under their heel. Yet it was not only
about territory.
Hitler was facsinated by the Occult and had ordered
his men to track down the famed 'Goddesses' or
Witches of the White Carpathians. One such Witch
was Olga Pohansky who, despite her age, refused to cooperate with the Germans. She was imprisoned and
subsequenlty died at the age of 103, or at least this is
the age she claimed.
Several days before her death she was visited by a
young SS officer who had befriended Olga. Named Jan
Weis, his mother had been a Czech from Moravia and
so he spoke the Slovak dialect of old Olga. During their
time together it's assumed she asked him to write
down her last vision, and the last vision recorded of
any of the great Witches of Carpathia, which is written
here. Jan Weis mailed the Vision to his mother in
Munich and three days later commited suicide.
There is said to be a deeper tale within the vision.
202
Introduction
And does she know of life?
For she has given her resemblance in shape and form
To all things encompassed in her cell.
All things that she in glad manner has borne
Bare the mark of her sweet simplicity,
and belies a profounder sense of complicity.
A. Hanson
autem hominum dementiam
203
The Vision Osikovce 1941
i
I stood upon a high place and like Christ had all the
dominions of the world laid out before me. The world was
below me yet I could see all regions and note the small
lives of animals and people to a minute degree.
To the right lay Asia, her long flowing hair splayed out as
Oxus, Indus and the veiled Tarim. The form of her heavy
breasts crowned with seeping milk, these a symbol of her
bounty and maternity. Her arms encircled a vast rock of
basalt that stretched from the heavens into a bottomless
void, where ice clung like scrag to the column reflecting
the distant aspect of the sun in its cracked and faceted
surface. And all about her feet were planted lilies, the
heady perfume of which soared up into her nostrils with
every breath and on exhalation emerged far sweeter than
the alchemy of any bloom.
To her left lay Europe, her mouth agape as she screamed
the fury of the north wind. She sat astride a bull which lay
ridden to exhaustion, its great chest heaved with the pulse
of the earth. The beasts blood stained flanks oozed the
venom of its attempted crime, and in her fist she held the
argument of form and this was circled round and bound by
blind reason. Her pale throat was shackled by a great torc
that cut deeply into the skin from which flowed a golden
nectar whereat the lower nations drank. About her slim
waist was tied a sash weaved from the hair of the dead;
204
and as I watched she twined her fingers, long and slender,

into the thickness of the cloth.
And before me lay Africa, her dark skin spread like a coat
of mail across her supple limbs. She wore about her head a
high crown of jet wrought from the solid earth by
absinthian fire which flamed from her mouth and scorched
the land with all the rage of hell. She, like Penthesilia,
bound her single breast and gloried in her mutilation. Her
knees, hips and arms were bound by a single thread of gold
that held mighty Afric in her wrath, and at her feet a
serpent coiled; cast in bronze its emerald eyes surveyed its
mistress in her web of gold. Its sliced tongue lapped up her
mewling children and thrashed the oceans with its tail.
All this I saw from my pinnacle but my vision was not
complete. Between these mighty lands I saw a battle field,
and stretched across the hills the dead lay beyond
counting. And I stood amidst the slaughter and beheld as
the angels of another age walked amongst the butchery. No
inch I saw was not macerated by blood; I smelt the rot of
men and yet more than this death I was most horrified by
the fate of Angels. Each Cherub, Seraph, Throne and other
bore not a single mark upon their perfect forms, no sign of
injury or hurt did I see that would cause a body grief; yet
never have I seen more a piteous display of anguish and
supplication unto God. Cried they so much that I began to
fear this rage of battle had felled their own angelic
brothers and not mankind as I supposed. And then clarity
betook me: although each angelic countenance bore the
strain of supplication, more did I see of pain, and then to
my shame I saw how each aethereal creature suffered of
the blows the bloody dead had struck upon their kin; that
each sword and battle stroke in spilling human blood had
carved a similar wound upon a heavenly counter-part in
205
this inhuman army. I could not bear to see more and

turned my face away. At length I slept.
ii
I awoke to find that all had gone. There was no sound.
The silence that pervaded seemed to saturate my soul and
I was content to lie upon the ground and not to be the
breaker of such peace. In time I moved to a higher ground
where light winds swept away the heat and from whence I
could survey the battle fields. The gentle hills upon which
such scenes of horror had raged where now full swept of
brutal abandon and all I saw was as the natural gods
created. The sun above me shone and pleasant birds sang
in happiness, yet to my alarm I marked that the day had
not progressed one moment in its course. It seemed the
day was still in time and would not proceed into the night
til some designated sign was given. The sun shone bright
and although its brightness marked me there was no
power in its beam, it was as if the air about me was a
master of its own, and expelled a gentle warmth.
I did in time walk up to a distant hill. This I had espied
when I had first woken and, the distance being just a few
miles hence, I wandered with little haste or care allowing
the soft path to unfold beneath my feet. As I came upon a
small rise near the crest of the hill I heard the clear chime
of water and sat before a spring which fed a shallow
stream. A small and broken olive rose beside the pool and I
sat beneath its shade; and there fed and drank me
well. Although this restful Eden gave me over to repose I
could not draw my thoughts from yesterday (as so it
seemed) and all the terror and beauty I had seen. My mind
was lost amidst the past, and yet time seemed to bare no
relevance, when to my left a sweetness in the guise of
206
melody came across the still and silent air. As I rose I saw
a thing that gave me to wonder:
Her grace was surely gained by sweet illusion as she
appeared to hold more of the gods than that of men. Yet in
her I saw strength and reason for she was surely no divine
person but cast within the mould of mortality. In her
movement was the touch of innocence as she tended to all
life that about this garden grew. And she sang with a voice
that knew no equal and would the finest instruments
confound. She finally, and in silken movements, came and
sat beside me, and gazed with me across the great expanse
that lay before us, and upon the plains were Men played
their battle games.
She spoke, her voice like pollen on the breeze. Oh child,
what see you in all this?
I replied. I know not of any comparison to match this
evil thing.
She laughed and said, To gods all things appear fair and
good and right. But men hold something to be wrong and
others to be right.
As she spoke a steady fear began to creep within me, a
foreboding and yet I knew not why.
Lady I began but she spoke across me. Oh Child,
view how degraded is our quest
And with these words an image came before me, one that
I had already seen. Afric, Asia, Europe and all the lower
lands were trapped within a cycle of their own devising.
My daughters these, said she, sweet, kind and gentle
in their youth. Here in this place, they ran like hounds at
play, their happiness flowed across the vastness bringing
joy to all, whilst I myself kept careful watch that they might
not suffer harm. All the Universe was theirs and the gods
smiled upon my children. Now see, Asia: a whore. Witness,
207
Oh child, how she caresses our superstition! And Europe,

warrior queen, rides down her mount upon the frail. And
Afric, laid low by envy, bound by torpor. These, my
daughters three. What say you of this?
And I replied, Lady, forgive me, but I do not know
what can be said. Tis to God you must for answers look,
for He contains all.
He laughter floated out like clear water as she rose and
took my hand. Oh Child, to God all things are fair, good and
right. And with that she left and I was alone.
iii
I was afraid to leave that small hill and found some
comfort in being still. The garden, for so it now seemed,
stretched out into the distance and I noticed that the
flowers and herbs were of every single kind. And because
of this I did not lack for food and ate-but more from habit
than need- and was contented. The perennial light and
warmth appeared to render us in stasis so I grew not tired,
thirsty, hungry or in any way out of harmony. All manner
of companions I had in birds and other gentle creatures
who were unafraid and appeared oblivious to mans legacy
of harm. They played about me as if I were some friendly
oak and party to their satisfaction.
In such a place as this, as in the warmth of after sleep, I
sat beside the little stream where my small companions
splashed and dipped in casting water over themselves in
play. When, and of a sudden, a mewling sound of tragic
discontent came faint and distant, as if from a great
distance; I stood to look around but saw nothing. I then
walked upon a small hill close by to see what unfortunate
sang so heavy a song. I hid, and like Adam before his God
208
peeked with fear, that I might not be seen; and there

beneath a broad apple tree I saw the origins of the aweful
sound.
The keening ground upon my senses like a rock, no tune
or harmony this, but some anarchic formula of sound. The
creature rose, and only then did I see that this mourner, for
so it appeared to be, was human. She lay all wrapped in
leaves and filled her mouth and ears with dirt; whilst all
about this sorry soul was in wretched flesh that hung from
her pitifully; as if the penalty of hunger had been inflicted
on her amid this Edenic splendour. And she was old,
ancient so it seemed. She moved upon her knees and
elbows like a hog, her matted hair was grey and dim, and it
trailed out in her wake and was matted with leaves and
sticks.
I came and stood before her but she did not notice me
but grovelled in the earth and continued on. I followed her
until she came to the small stream and drank. She then lay
beside a rock and gazed upon the far reaches of the plains
below. I stood beside and watched as her rheumy eyes
looked down with sadness.
Oh, Child, she said with a voice as coarse as
splintered wood. What see you in all this?
Mother, I replied, That is a question that one before
you asked and still my answers contains no
comprehension of this place nor the things that I have
seen.
At this she raised her face and in all my years I had not
seen a more hideous thing, instinct bade me flee for I was
revolted by her sight. Yet I was rooted to my spot and
could not move nor look away. Licking her shrivelled lips
she raised a gnarled hand and pointed out into the
expanse.
209
Look again, she said, and spoke as one in deep

despair.
And in looking I looked upon the fields where death
had played before, and saw the furrows of men, ten
thousand strong at least, stood opposed to each other
across the plain. Their weapons, spears, cannon and pikes,
razed with sharpened edges were arrayed across the
virgin tracts and gleamed in magnificent splendour hungry
for the day. I saw the battle roar from idleness to bloody
waste in the bat of an eye, I saw the havoc and the tragedy
in cool objective form; I smelt Death and heard the cries of
fear, defeat and barbarity. I wept and cried to my god to
spare the few remaining; I prayed and called that he might
end this destruction, to halt the Devils game. Yet it did not
end. On and on the the slaughter raved 'til the blood was
deep beneath the land, soaking the earth, choking out the
life of it; the screams and terror roared higher and
resounded in an ancient tongue, a tongue that spoke of
primal things and mindless passions: yet I could not see
the impetus nor define from whence this madding came.
For looking down I saw only fear and appall at what they
did.
And she, the crone, remained silent and watched the
slaughter with dispassion, as one immune. And when all
was still and all were dead, and once more the angels took
to the field and roamed weeping amongst the scattered
remains of men she sighed. But I, enraged, shook my fists
and stamped the earth and raged against the Angels for
their complicity; that they, in their majesty, did not but one
man save was to me a crime of cold indifference.
Dear God, cried I, but they are no Angel folk but more
of Demon kind. No thought they have for Human life....A
mans soul mayhap they save but how much more the
210
worth of a mans life, such a rare and fleeting commodity?

That they should leave us so, our Angel Guardians, when
we are victims of such cruelty, shows nothing of love but
more of malice.
The hag sat silent by and not a word she said but
continued to watch as the Angels cried and rent their
clothes and hair.
And then, They act according the their nature and to
the laws of God unto whom all things are fair, good and
right. Upon hearing that phrase and, looking down to
where she sat, I gleaned the resemblance: Simplicity, Oh
Child, there is no confusion here, it is man who draws
distinction between beauty and monstrosity. Whist all
other things cannot their nature change nor sway. Angelic
souls in their simplicity of heart are denied a prejudice of
any kind and merely act out of consequence to what men
and God inspire. They do not decide on matters of good
and evil, for it is mankind who holds some things good and
others to be bad.
I looked again and saw the open plain laid out where
rose loader now the cries of supplication and then I saw
the tortured sisters laid low by youthful innocence and the
flame of that innocence dwindled on the verge of
extinction.
But what of God and his power to amend?, I asked
the Crone. But she was gone as was the gruesome theatre
on the fields.
iv
I then became more venturesome and walked
beyond my demesne to see the things that til that time I
had only imagined. My spirit joyed in what was all about
me for never had I seen such beauty. How plastic nature
211
must have seemed to the architect who had set this world
about with flowers of every colour and design conceivable.
Every type of plant and animal I saw that was familiar
from my travels and many more besides that I had never
seen. None was waning in its capacity, nor could I find any
example or mark of deficiency. All life was here in
unalterable perfection and yet no sign of other men did I
see, nor any evidence of their having been to this place.
Often I was lulled into quiet meditation by the
gardens beauty or wooed by its gentle breeze and summer
scented bowers. I sought to find the Lady and the Ancient
but knew within some secluded part of me that they abide
not here, but in some secret home beyond the world I
knew.
All was well here but still I would return to thoughts
of the evil I had seen, and quietly prayed that I would not
be charged to witness more. So juxtaposed were those
sights to this place of tranquillity that they seemed now
beyond belief and a cruel disruption to this haven of peace;
I could not quite bring myself to believe that any man or
god would willingly exchange this paradise for those
turbulent meadows. I could not fathom the dimensions of
the garden but where eer I came the green pathways
unfurled before me, laying over the hills and streams, and
along the byways and meadow glades. But should I stray
one hour or ten I never found myself lost and returned to
my resting place as if I had gone but several yards.
And so I was content though I knew it was an
illusionary state. The fantastic character of this world
which I had come upon had been brought about by no
earthly prince. Yet I was compelled by a heady state of
inertia to dwell unconcerned by the past or future, all
appeared to exist in a static solution, animate but without
212
a single purpose but to revel in the joy of animation;

existing in an eternal distinct moment of perfection for no
other reason than the bliss of doing so. And day by day, as I
became a more customary immigrant, my silent
companions became a ready audience to my lessening
resolve to return to my distant home. I thought less and
less as to any purpose, and only of perpetuity. But to each
man his end, and fate would not her intention reign about.
I returned once more to the olive hill and on
approaching came to see a figure, faced away and beneath
the grove, and looking out beyond our timeless view. I
approached that she might see me and not be afraid, but
she did not look nor turn to face me. Her shoulders were
wrapped in a dun cloak, her pale hair hung loose to her
breast. Her countenance was not unattractive but did not
remark itself beyond being merely pleasing to look upon.
She sat peacefully, and as I came beside her a gentleness
oer took me that seemed to radiate in subtle emanations,
like mild emissaries of her truer self. She nursed a child
which suckled restfully, perhaps intoxicated by so serene a
transfusion.
Madam, I am here I said.
I know, she replied, as if I were an intimate who she
had long expected.
I sat beside her and looked across the void down upon
the whole of creation. She did not speak but continued to
observe the immense pantheon of life that swirled before
us.
And thus I saw the birth of human souls; born of God
from out the aethereal dust and, so being, by contribution
of the lesser elements, yet retaining their divine
quintessence, formed. I saw this sensuous creature linked
to God by spirit, and so in trinity uniting in a single vessel
213
Heaven, Earth, and Knosis . And the first of our kind had, of
this unique polarity, an excessive quality unknown prior to
our rise; and how between divine and base we would flow
without opposition not unlike some Mercury, yet never
being one nor the other. And I saw how God had given over
to man self discipline, and how this accorded to the nature
of man for whom temperance would correct the balance of
his nature should body or soul be neglected. And how this
union, forged in man, of sense and intuition formed a pivot
upon which all things of Gods creation, material and
immaterial, rested; and the equilibrium of which was
perfect. I then saw how God viewed his completed work
with satisfaction and how his constancy commissioned our
regency over the earth, and how our moral sense governed
a just and godly state.
In such a base environment we counterpoised with
spiritual inspiration, and how in time we did compare
ourselves to higher things, and in praising God
commended ourselves for his inspiration and art. And thus
began our folly, for in believing ourselves to have a greater
value we gained a deceitful impression of our worth and
standing. Neglecting gold for lead we sought a
transformation of the universal whole and, not
comprehending its purpose, we recreated its meaning as a
server to our priority. I saw how the prize of our
investiture became too great a burden, how independence
had not been our liberty, but had instead bound us to our
mortal selves likes a thrashing wave shackled to pacific
seas. And how a self-appointed centrality in our
philosophies superseded wisdom with an imperfect
reason, and I saw this presupposition render us incapable
of objectivity. I saw in all this how the universal scale of
good and ill sat upon a now precarious pivot, resting over
214
the quivering backs of men. And I saw man, like a scorpion,

raining poisoned blows upon himself yet ignorant from
whence the blows fell. This uncomprehending Atlas of
heaven and hell would time and again take to the battle
fields and rape and scorn the art of Gods creation as a
lesser thing, and then weep with bitter sadness at the
result.
All of this I saw within a moment as if the career of
man had lasted no more than a childs breath.
Sister, I said, is this true and real; this carnival of
pride and folly?
Aye, tis true, she said, I have watched all the turns of
men from end to end. And tis true from end to end. Your
priests have said that God would have you in fear and
death and penitence, but what arrogance is this? Tis not
God who sharps the blade or beats the battle drum.
I watched again as once more men betook the fields
below; their fevered prayers appealed to God to deliver
them, to put this to an end. How the men wept and
bemoaned their fate; and how they cried of happier days
before this day, and how they cursed God, a God who
would allow this thing to be. For despite their selfprofessed autonomy it was surely God who directed them
to this bloody end.
All things are as you will have them. It was not the asp
that took the apple, nor the apple that propagated evil. God
showed you all things and gave you choice to choose. For
to God all things are fair and good and right but men hold
some things to be wrong and others to be right.
She left and the vision paled. I looked about the hill,
the tree, and the fountain pool and saw within their fruits
and flowers the impassive glide of Nature, and felt the
215
tender breath of winter in the air. She was gone, her

gardens to attend and I was left alone.
After this I awoke and found myself below.
________________________________Fin________________________________
216
The golden age was first; when Man yet new,

No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law, where none opprest:
The law of Man was written in his breast:
No suppliant crowds before the judge appear'd,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,
E're yet the pine descended to the seas:
E're sails were spread, new oceans to explore:
And happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,
Confin'd their wishes to their native shore.
Ovid (Trans. Dryden)
217
218

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A Dream of Unknowing A.

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

things that science and the rational world told them no

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

the end of January and stayed with me in my house for

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Well, she died a while back now, 1560 or there abouts. I

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

another, not learned; but was absorbed through

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Marus Pohansky: I never thought we needed one.

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Marus Pohansky: When Adam left the Garden of Eden,

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Marus Pohansky: What, you think you will come to

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Marus Pohansky: Sit, be still, breath. Stand if you want,

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Marus Pohansky: And I reckon by the tone of your voice

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Marus Pohansky: It tells us that our beliefs stem from

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Bea: If not in books then where? You tell me nothing

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

Bea: So youre saying that modern Paganisms

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

In this book are a collection of four short stories he told

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

The First Tale

A deep forest, remote and isolated from the chaos of

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

The First and Last Chapter Oskiovce 1558

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

grass. From her satchel Anka pulled a knife and, by the

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

crimson flash against the canopy. It was good, he felt sure,

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

As she moved the earth moved also, and turned in upon

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

unknowing and further from the bewilderment of the

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

from introspection showing him all the kingdoms of the

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

brought solace, though to Adam, to Man in his enlightened

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

the creeping surge from his imperial heights but failed

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

And now, seated in the morning sunlight and rimmed

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson

A Dream of Unknowing A. Hanson