Anxious villagers pray to be delivered unto the next world. Enamored of spirits, angels, and misty places, they hide away their earthly stories and cover their faces. Meanwhile the Crone sits in the sun and brushes her hair—at the market cross, of all places. She has in mind the tale of a tiny beast. Come. Listen. 

It’s up to you to find what meaning you will.  

 

 

Whilst wishing to be a spirit, a parish woman earned her keep caretaking an aged priest and a church.

She preferred staying hidden to being seen, and could often be found with her knees upon the stone floor, praying. This helped her to be left alone by a steady stream of parishioners. Though her days were reasonably easy and she feared in no way for her safety—

This woman could not find her way to peace. She’d be the first to admit it was inexplicable, yet she could rightly be called a nervous Nellie. She was always and ever-anxious.

There were so many things which wanted to be done, if only she didn’t possess the uncharitable desire to be left to herself with nothing to do. This is how she came to be jealous of spirits and ghosts. How easy and unexamined their lives must be!

One dark day as she peered out the parish church window at a flood of rain, she saw a figure in a white cloak coming up the rutted, muddy road. The parish woman felt the familiar flutter in her belly when she realized someone was about to need something of her.

Wind and water blew inside the church when the white-cloaked figure opened the door to step inside. The hood pulled back to reveal a dark oval face framed on one side by braided hair the color of quill’s ink.

Putting a smile on her face, the parish woman bowed her head in silent greeting to the stranger she would rather had not arrived.

The woman in a white cloak gazed at the parish woman as if to take her measure. She used a third eye, so this did not take long.

“You think life is a string of tasks to be done,” the stranger in a white cloak said. “But it has never been so.”

The parish woman trembled inside. She silently wished to be small and unseen, to not have to deal with this—or anything. “Who are you?” she asked. “How is the hem of your white cloak clean of mud?”

The woman in a white cloak ignored these questions and instead gave her attention to the unspoken wish of the parish woman. “Your wish shall be granted,” she said. “With a prophecy of what is to come, a riddle, to live out and solve.”

There came the sound of acorns falling, and the flutter of a single crow’s wing. The woman in a white cloak spoke an instructive riddle:

  

Come back to your senses.

When you do, ask the right question for you.

Last, catch a falling full moon.

 

When the parish woman woke the next morning, she found herself buried in the thin blanket of her bed—with whiskers, round ears, and scrabbling feet.

The aged priest was confounded to see the parish woman had been changed into a mouse. He frowned, displeased. “How can you dust the altar? How will you tote potatoes from the garden? How shall you make tea?”

She stared back at him with beady eyes. She was not upset. On the contrary, she felt delighted and freed.

No one could want a thing from her. What could one expect a mouse to do for them? Why, nothing at all.

After this she spent her days scurrying between parish church walls or past the swishing robes of the Others, as she came to think of them. Being a mouse was not unlike being a spirit or a ghost. Rarely was she noticed or seen.  

Life for the parish mouse became a life lived with ease. The reason for this is because there was nothing which had to be done, and no one she could possibly please.

There was no way whatsoever for shame to visit her.

There was nothing wrong with her anymore.

She lay down for a long, long sleep—profoundly relieved.

When she woke, her mousy nose twitched at the scent of adventure which inevitably hung on the air. Off she went to the to the village market.  

There were tasty morsels of dropped cheese for her to find, not to mention spilled mead,     or even wine. Smelly cheese melted on her tiny tongue—such ecstasy!

She eavesdropped. Her round ears heard bawdy  tales, whispered sweet nothings, and excited gibberish about things that might happen or be done.

She felt the touch of wind on her fur and gritty dirt beneath her scrabbling claws. An opportunity presented itself to get naughty. She rolled herself in the soft silk of a merchant’s fallen wares, without apology.

Life as a tiny beast was an astonishingly SENSUAL affair.

One day as she lay relaxed in the warm sun by the market cross, she longed to do and make things beyond the wherewithal of a quiet, unseen mouse.

And so, she asked the right question.

“Is it possible I never knew my soul is in mad love with this world?”

The answer came. Every last one of her senses answered true.

At that very moment, the swish of a white cloak with no stains upon its hem passed by. The parish mouse watched a hand reach into a purse. What she saw next appeared to be a falling full moon.

She fetched the moon out of the mud and rolled it home.

With no fanfare whatsoever, she woke the next morning in her bed as the woman she once was. Wisdom in the form of a pearl was clutched within her human hand.

She was no longer a mouse. Still, she retained her beastly senses. Her belly fluttered with nerves. And yet…

The flutter was only one of the many, many things she was given to notice. Not only that. She had many delicious ways to notice them.

The parish woman dusted the altar and did not fail to have eyes to see tiny worlds spinning in a shaft of sunlight. In the garden, she smelled the pungent richness of the earth when she went to dig up potatoes. By midday she was enjoying them with creamy, fresh-churned butter upon her tongue.

She made tea for the aged priest. He wondered over how slowly she poured the kettle’s hot water, at how she leaned in to feel the steamy heat upon her face. She looked so content he later tried the technique for himself.

By evening the parish woman relaxed by the window to the pitter-patter of rain.

This is how her fear was made insignificant. Small. Just a ghost of a thing, leashed.

Whereas her soul in the world was like unto a roaming, purring beast.

Yours is the same. If ever you feel overwhelmed and wish to be like a ghost, left alone and unseen—

Come back to your senses.

When you do, ask the right question for you.

Last, catch a falling full moon.

 

The soul experiences life as a sensual wonderland, without taking seriously what can never eternally matter. The reality is that the world goes on spinning for soft animal bodies. I offer Mary Oliver’s beloved poem as evidence:

 

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

 

The Crone says it this way:

“You only have to let the soul love what it loves.”

 

Hello! Cricket here 🙂 I write a new crone’s tale once or twice a month to share. If you found meaning in this tiny, beastly tale, please know you may SUBSCRIBE.

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