There are thresholds which offer impossible glimpses. An old woman with chrysanthemums in her hair climbs to such places, uncaring what the risk is. All she wants is to be lost and thus found. All she wants is to find petals hidden within nettles. Do you see her pry open her windpipe to let it outpour? Words spill out to tell a tale of what is yet-to-come, and she doesn’t mind if you overhear. Come, listen.

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

 

 

The angel of death, who has soft gray wings and whose name is Cordelia, suffered the sting of shame and humiliation for having the job she had.

She kept up with her work nevertheless. Leaping from a library made of towers in the sky, she unfurled her wings six furlongs in length to spiral down to the hazy earth below. And do what needed doing.

It wasn’t that Cordelia disliked roaming the earth in her bare feet and whipping gown, wand in hand. She was quite the sight if anyone had been able to see her, for her head twisted this way and that. Her unbound crimson hair blew about the heart of her face in a beauty unmatched. 

Listen! A fainting bell tolled as she sang a never-ending invocation.

Come out,

come out,

wherever you are!

Those on the brink of a last, tender breath would see—often through shut eyelids—Cordelia’s liquid black eyes. The sight was so astonishing that the dying would surrender all common notions of what it means to die. 

For who could have imagined Cordelia and her wand?

The angel of death would bend low and touch the tip of her wand to the windpipe of the fading one. And, move on, neatly parting ways with an escaping and fluttering soul whose destination she did not—as did so many others—pretend to comprehend.

You might be surprised to know that the still-living oft glimpsed the footprints Cordelia trailed in her windy wake. Yet they found themselves unable to make sense of such an impossible sight. For Cordelia’s footprints did not resemble the shape of heel and toes. Rather, they took the shape of Mystery.

This the people could not tolerate. They had forgotten how to practice the Way of Wonder.

Upon return to her library towers in the sky, Cordelia tapped the tip of her wand to fresh parchment pages bound in a book. Words poured forth onto the empty pages in a haunting script, filling them with the story of a life lived unto its completion. 

Storybook after storybook flowed from her wand and came to be placed on shelves. 

It was one of those jobs that had to be done. Yet the work nettled Cordelia and she longed to feel proud and more worthwhile. A thousand nights she sighed with collapsed wings from her perch atop a tower, watching the cold and pale moon in the night sky swing on its pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

One day a peculiar thing happened. Cordelia discovered an old woman waiting for her in the bookstacks.

“What’s the wand for?” mewled the old woman.

“Immortality,” said Cordelia. “My wand retrieves life stories so that they might be published for safe-keeping in this library. I’m the angel of death. It’s good work. At least, someone has to do it.”

The old woman sniffed. “You don’t sound as if you esteem what you do.”

Cordelia’s lips grew tight. “See here, I’m busy,” she said. “What do you want?”

The old woman drew near to the making of storybooks. “Are you quite certain you have a firm handle on the service you are meant to provide?” she pointedly asked.

Cordelia flung out her wings and stirred up a gale, knocking books from shelves. “I’ve been at this work for eons,” she snapped. “Literally, eons. I know what I’m doing.”

“Are you sure that’s true?” mewled the old woman, and she left the room before Cordelia could think up a smart reply.  

One day the old woman reappeared with a broom in her hand and set to sweeping. “You there,” she said. “I’ve thought a lot about that wand of yours, I can’t get it out of my head.”

“It’s mine,” said Cordelia, tucking it in the gray feathers of her wings. “You can’t have it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No. I just wondered if it works on things besides forthcoming corpses.”

Cordelia scowled. She did not approve of such talk. She found it morbid. Nevertheless, the old woman’s idea became a nettle the angel couldn’t leave be. Once alone, the angel touched her wand to a teacup. Next she tapped the wand to an empty page. To her astonishment, a melodramatic story unfurled, consisting mostly of who had liked or not liked the teacup and why.

Cordelia’s knees buckled. “Oh my.” She blinked wildly. “Why, there’s an entirely new genre of storybooks to be published!”

She quick got to work, roving the earth to collect the stories of wheelbarrows, hats, doorknockers, and more. I must tell you her enthusiasm for this project got wholly out of hand as she scampered and skipped and spun and tapped her wand upon everything in sight. For you see, in a frenzy of glee, she accidentally touched the cheek of a healthy—if drab and weepy—young maid at work in a castle kitchen.  

Both maid and angel of death gasped.

Cordelia flew in haphazard tempest back to her library towers.

The next morning the old woman went looking for Cordelia and couldn’t find her. She mewled:

Come out,

come out,

wherever you are!

Cordelia’ soft gray wing trembled from behind a bookshelf where she was hiding. 

The old woman drifted in the maze of bookstacks to find the angel. “Come see what you’ve done,” she said.

Cordelia wept but the old woman was unmoved. She dragged the angel up twirling stairsteps to the tallest tower’s look-out to gaze down upon the earth.

“Charming, isn’t it?” mewled the old woman. She pointed out a gleaming wheelbarrow reflecting sunlight, a vividly colored hat catching many an eye, and a doorknocker that so glowed with welcome that a lonely crowd had gathered.

Yet Cordelia wept.  

“Whatever is wrong, child?” mewled the old woman.

“I did a shameful thing to someone I shouldn’t have.”  

“Oh. Well, go and see if amends can be made. What else can be done?”  

Cordelia toppled out of the tower to plummet to the earth. She revisited the castle where she’d carelessly touched her wand to the drab and weepy maid. At first, Cordelia couldn’t find the maid and feared the worst. But then…

The maid twirled into the kitchen with a bright and shiny face. She stirred a pot of porridge as she swished her skirts. Even more bewildering, bluebirds arrived through a window to flock about the maid. Who smiled. Who held out a finger to make a tiny talon’s perch, and then—

Sang more beautifully than any soprano saint in a faerie-land church.

Cordelia withdrew and soared to her library where the old woman waited pretty as you please.

“I took a kitchen maid’s story by mistake,” confessed Cordelia. She paced, her wings quivering with curiosity. “Yet she seems well and good. In fact, the maid appears as content as a princess! I think…I think…those with lives left to live need my wand, too. Do you think this could be true?”

“Old women have sense. Of course I do.”

The pendulum of the moon swung back and forth, back and forth, back and forth whilst Cordelia worked overtime.

Late one afternoon the old woman stood beside Cordelia in her library, which was fast expanding due to the added work of tending to the living as well as to the dying.

“This is all so exhilarating,” said Cordelia. She sat heavily in a chair and took a long drink of seeded pomegranate juice. “The people are so fresh and new. They even smell like flowers. It’s as if a haunting is being lifted. Who knew?”

“It’s wonderful,” agreed the old woman. “But I don’t know how you can keep this up. You’re exhausted! If only you could coax those on the earth to do this work for themselves…” And she told the angel her impossible idea right there in the heavenly shelves.

Together the old woman and Cordelia created a legion of wands—but with feather quills added to fill with ink.

Come Midsummer’s Eve, Cordelia was ready. She delivered a quilled wand and book of blank parchment to every dwelling across the earth—and to pilgrims, too, those seeking types who travel to and fro. For the angel of death forgets no one.

Ever.

As you well know.

This is how it came to pass that any soul—whether servant, merchant, king, or queen—released the story of their day onto the crackle of parchment to render their minds sage green and pristine.

And so, each night brought fresh little deaths, with people being reborn come morning with a much sweeter breath.

And so, Cordelia beheld new dawns arrive on the earth, dawns spectacularly untethered to whatever had gone on before. 

“My work contained a treasure, and I never even knew!” said Cordelia to the old woman. “And I have you to thank for helping me find it. I’ve been meaning to ask. Who are you?”

“I have no idea,” mewled the old woman. “Yet here I am! I’ve been meaning to ask. Who are you?” And she snatched the wand from Cordelia’s hand.

“No, don’t!” cried out Cordelia.

Touching the tip of the wand to the angel’s windpipe, the old woman mewled:

Come out,

come out,

whatever the story may be!

Next the wand tapped a huge tome of blank parchment which the old woman had secretly prepared. Cordelia’s story soaked the pages. I can tell you this took some time, with many swings of a moon’s pendulum passing. And all the while the angel swooned and felt as if she might die.

When it was over, and the tome closed, Cordelia stood bolt upright. “But what is there to say about me now?” she asked, holding a hand to her forehead. “There’s no story left inside me…”

The old woman took in the sight of the angel of death. “I’d say you’re bright and new. True. With no story able to contain or restrain you.” 

Cordelia leaned against a bookshelf, toppling it. There came a cloud about her—it rose like ash.

“Oh my,” said Cordelia. “I feel as if I’ve just now been born. I must weigh no more than petals on the curl of a breeze. I have no idea what to expect of myself—or of this day in the world! It’s magnificent. Oh my. I am…I am…FREE.”

She lifted her wings in exultation. Bright hues caught the corner of her eye, and our beloved angel of death let out an infinite sigh. 

For the soft petal-gray of Cordelia’s feathers were no more. Instead feathers of orange, red, and gold blared like a holy trumpet.

Ever after, Cordelia wrote in her parchment tome with her own lovingly-fashioned quilled wand. How enraptured she was at the novelty of what she wrote each evening after her supper! Do you understand? Wondrous surprises, hidden in the Beginning and waiting to be brought into Being, come easily to days begun in wordlessness.

Ever after, Cordelia felt flouncy and free to be.

Ever after, when she roamed the earth, people gathered in Wonder over the prints of her bare feet. For they loved acquainting themselves with Mystery. And they would excitedly say,

“Look here, it’s the mark of the Phoenix!”

And they would smile at one another, take a New Breath, and commence the day’s hunt for petaled treasures in the nettles of their work. 

What came of all this was a New Earth…in the yet-to-come.

 

If you enjoyed this tale of finding hidden treasure in what stings, and wish to be further soothed into Wonder, you can receive new Crone Tales for free as they are written. I hope you SUBSCRIBE  🙂

Featured photo of towers in sky by Donna Kirby

Image of old woman is by Belgian painter Louise De Hem

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