Samhain's damned soul – Part 1: Birth

The looks of the regular customers converge to a beanpole, sat apart, absorbed in melancholic and intimate confidence with his pint. The ageless man scraps his dark mop of hair, raises his tired yellow eyes and gives a disenchanted look at the audience:

-« All right, you asked! »

Rhast supplies the town with peat, collecting the clods in winter, drying and delivering them all year round. But his rough groundbreaking also made him Thalion's gravedigger. He buries the dead, maintains the wells and mends the fence when the town can allow it. Taciturn and observer, he speaks scarcely but to good use. Some pretend he is Messer Finran's former comrade-in-arms – others, that this penitent mobster flew Tharbad for his life.

Obviously, his famished weasel's face, his tall arched silhouette and his detached gait have owed him the brat's bogeyman status and several unflattering surnames. Rhast frightens somehow whoever knows him not. His disenchanted and sharp gaze pierces any secret, giving any soul the unpleasant sensation of being stripped bare. His presence has the power to root out of the mortals heart, the turmoil beneath the reassuring family well-being or the assuaging domestic comfort. When one runs into him, one remembers that dark terrors will one day take us to the grave. He knows the horrors of the under-world. But he seems to fear nothing, and that is weird.

It is rare Sire Finran asks him for a tale…

And just before Samhain, the dead's nights ?

So be it.

.oOo.

A couple of farmers are walking back to their cottage. The young wife, pregnant and nearly at term, braids a crown of flexible branches. The young husband, panting and bending under a huge firewood bundle, can hardly follow her:

-« We shall call him Tordemir, like my father! This is a family tradition, from father to son, since our ancestor, the butler of his majesty Malvegil of Arthedain!

- Your father was a drunkard, hardly able to remember his own name! His memory could only recall back to his last booze! Maybe, Tordemir the ancestor was appointed to the trash can, if he ever existed!

- Stop speaking ill of my family! Anyway Tordemir, that's a beautiful name!

- A bumptious name. That stinks low nobiliary, idle and haughty. I prefere Tuisog!

- … boaf ! That is not a name, that looks like nothing!

- It means « Prince » in my ancestors tongue!

- Isn't that bumptious now? Are you sure it will be a boy, at least?

- I tolf you a dozen times, I come from the shamans of Prenn Lûth… I can read the omens!

- Yes of course! And you were tought in the guts of your mother's uneatable roast boars?

- Torgil, let my mother's soul rest in peace! Do you wish her to roast your feet during your sleep? I know she would fancy that, you Arthedain pig!

- Oh, stop your silly dunnish non-sense tales! What is that good for, this play-acting, giving birth in the woods, calling for visions, planting trees at night, read the guts, listen to the spirits… Please live within your time!

- oh yeah, let's talk about your degenerate customs! You probably mean hanging out with your sloth buddies and get drunk at the Goose! That's for sure, visions, you do not need to call them in the open, they naturally come in the vapors of boozer! Let me tell you this cushy Arthedain bourgeois's life of yours is definitely over! You're going to get to work! Soon you will be a father!»

.oOo.

In the midst of the pinkish swellings, the child appears, contained in congested and tight muscles. His hand is hanging out of the vulva. The small hail hand, which cyanotic fingers open convulsively, is grasping for help in this world. For a dozen hours, the stomach's efforts strive to drive this cumbersome life, tearing screams of pain from the body, twisted across the poverty linens. In this profile decomposed with suffering, the appalled father recognizes not the slender girl with impish traits and bewitching charm, who ran in the hills, a spray of heather in her arms.

Old Sarff, the village midwife, rolls terrified eyes. Curse! The Lord of the Dead's black hand has cast anathema to the household. She's a somehow a witch and this bode gives her cold sweats.

Suddenly a croaking slaps in their back, nearly stopping the old woman's heart. A big crow, dark as soot, watches them with its cold and evil eye, perched on the table. A viscous carrion flap hangs at its gray beak. Where does this one come from?

- "Get rid of it, quick!", whispers the old Sarff.

Trembling with mistrust, Torgil grabs a broom and opens the door. The bird leaps on the edge of the bed with a hoarse cry of contentment, like a host pressing before mealtime. The angry husband strucks a blow that gets lost but forces the bird to give up its dark intentions.

- "Do not kill him, whatever! ", yelps the witch.

The crow must retreat. Passed the door, the bird looses a cry of protest and hate while taking off. As soon Torgil closes the door, elements seem to awaken around the cottage. A mournful roar rises from the depths of the earth, invading the air and insinuating by all the slits.

The mother, entering new contractions, jogs to the vindictive rhythm of the wind's assaults on the door. The midwife repels the small arm, returned it to its original egg. A din of evil crows is unleashed on the stubble.

-"Guard the door!", curtly orders the witch to the husband.

Then she sings the call of spring, trying to cover the malice of the Lord of the Dead by her quavering voice.

With lard, the midwife coats her fingers, she slowly introduces as a wedge. Penetrating slowly with a rotating motion of the wrist, she expels mucus oozing with disgusting sucking sounds. Torgil, livid, empties his bile in a bucket. With an effort grin, the witch sinks again, adjusting the posture of the child, while the other hand rests on the belly and guides the repositioning.

A silence settles as a satisfied smile passes over the midwife's face, overcome with fatigue. But a low growl and beast snorts are heard behind the door of the cottage. The fears of the night come forward when the body is exhausted and the hearts flex. A wild beast is prowling around the cottage, sniffing the hesitant beginnings of life, tracking the flickering steps of the weakened prey.

Then the whole body of the mother suddenly shakes; it seems she is split with a heavy cleaver, like she saw the oxen cut at the castle. On her bed of misery, her revolt breaks out so violently at the rhythm of thunder, that she twists with an irresistible stiffening of the neck and the child slips from the hands of the midwife. Blodwen violently relaxes her legs with the fixed idea of getting rid of that witch who tortures her by quartering from the kidneys to the belly. The rage of Samhain slips into her while the growling animal scratches at the oaken door and pushes with its broad shoulders. Blodwen insults her torturer and tears her face with her nails.

Torgil rushes to calm his wife.

- "Gard the door, imperiously orders the witch, We must hold on yet!".

Torgil buttresses on the door where beats a bad wind. The spent midwife finally releases her hand, gently leads the little feet while ending the version motion. The witch sighs, forehead in sweat, breathless, as after a violent effort. The thundering warns that her enemy has not given up. The wind and rain are twice as strong, blasting on the groaning hovel. Torgil pushes the table against the door and resists the blows of the Night.

There are few appalling moments, the unfortunate mother screams even louder, as the head comes out and pushes the flesh, that round in a wide livid ring. The child falls into a final effort, under a rain of blood and dirty waters.

At the same moment, the beast, drunk with the smell of blood and the pulsating life, forces the door and tumbles its defender. When its rumor invests the cottage in a victorious roar, the fire dozes, plunging the modest interior in a darkness of over- world.

Horrified, the old witch shrivels on the tiny, still and sticky being, blowing pathetically in his little lungs, again and again.

But during the night of Samhain, mortals may not summon life with impunity. The Lord of the Night comes forward to take his due. A large shadow spreads its powerful scrolls as inhuman muscle that darkens the entrance of the poor cottage.

Torgil sees fangs in favor of a flash and brandishes his fork. A low rumble throws him to the ground, panting and bathed in his blood. An impenetrable cloud looks at his victim, savoring the unique aroma of flesh palpitating with terror.

But the annihilated witch gives her breath to the child till she has none, expiring life's hope and inspiring only death's blandness. She blows again and again, as the Lord of the Night greedily contemplates her pitiful attempts to postpone the inevitable.

Then the rooster crows. The rooster announces the return of day, of men and their domination. The black cloud of malice thrills with a breath of doubt, and advances to finish this.

But old Sarff finally feels a slight shudder of the tiny mouth under hers. Suddenly the child launches his first cry. As if struck by lightning, the shadow creature rolls on itself, flowing back toward the door.

Then the rising sun throws at the window, the red shadow of the great barrow, which summons fear back in its den. The darkness vanishes, leaving its prey, yet overcome, in a sinister roar announcing frustration and thirst for revenge.

.oOo.

Old Sarff comes home, by the grove in the evening. Last night, she defeated the Lord of the Night. She subtracted from Him a new-born prey, that the carelessness of his parents had not protected with a saving elm. She usually avoids that night, using subterfuge to advance or delay the labour. But this time, He almost overcome her...

Exhausted, the midwife slowly walks towards her house. The works of the last twenty four hours have ripped her of any other wish than her poor mattress. In addition to that horrible night of Samhain, spent in watching and fighting, she has attended two other patients. It is not for people her age... She should perhaps retire, she thinks distractedly. She could join her younger brother, who settled near Bree after the war. She would dedicate to her nephews, finally ceasing to wander...

Twilight feeds her melancholy while the last rays bath the valley with an uncertain glow. At the way's next turn, she will go up the slope to her left and will be home. She speeds up like an old horse near the stable.

While the sunlights greet her with one last blaze, Sarff chills with fatigue, cold, and an indefinable doubt... What has she forgotten?

Searching in her old memory what awakened her anxiety, the midwife hardly recognizes this path that winds through the valley. It's weird, this mist... The path is now lost in a cold mud where she wades while chilling her old feet. A little further, the witch stops, confused. A stale smell of decay and sulfur slowly rises from the marsh. The old lady, distraught and very miserable, tries to position, but thick clouds ghostly veil everything around.

Suddenly, a gurgle sounds behind her, as muffled by the fog. Sarff's breath accelerates. Was it really a foul exhalation of the swamp? A buzz goes to her head while her heart is racing. She has to get out of there! She soars at random, at once pursued by a rumor that swells with low and sinister rumblings.

When the old woman stumbles and falls into the icy mud, the contents of her bag spreads on the floor. Then the witch remembers what she forgot. Blodwen's placenta! The placenta she had kept for ritual burial to neutralize the Lord of the Night's evil! She forgot, miserable!

Alors la chape d'ombre et de nuit la submerge. Elle ne peut même proférer une incantation, alors que la chasse déferle sur elle, broyant son cœur d'une douleur fulgurante et fouillant ses viscères avec acharnement.

The next day a cowherd finds, in the middle of his field, the corpse of old Sarff, who seems to have succumbed to a heart attack. Stray dogs, probably attracted by a placenta that she had kept, had horribly mutilated her body.

.oOo.

With his cuffs, Rhast wipes his lips full of a foam. Placing his empty mug, the gravedigger with a weasel's profile turns his jaded look, to a silent audience who fathoms him with amazement.

- "So what? Must not go out on a foggy night with a fainting heart!", he says with a sly grin.

The room does not appreciate his humor any more than his tale. Rhast is not gifted to lighten the mood.

- "It was inevitable someone should give this stolen life back..." he says with a shrug.

This drought funeral arithmetic deeply hampers the assistance. Would Rhast deny men the right to fight the long defeat? Would the time of their death be a foregone conclusion? Peasants and town dwellers revolt at the idea. Yet many feel powerless and fatalistic, especially on this night of Samhain. Faces, outraged and silent, scream their unanimous need to exorcise this odious insinuation.

- "Well, all right, let's finish this! Here's more! But then, do not you come and complain if the moral is not for you either..."

.oOo.

NOTES