Winter is here. Ice hides the sun and winds blow shadows dark and white. Build fire ‘neath the cauldron with forgotten spells to summon maiden, mother, and crone—for here comes the night. A story is born. Listen.

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

 

 

Not merely once upon a time, a being with billowing wings wished to be born into this world despite its threat of ice. 

First came a heavenly ceremony, a sort of sending-off. The being ate a ladleful of stew from an ancient cauldron. And it was said:

 

What are faeries made of?

Daggers, questions asked, and a world of looking-glass.

That’s what faeries are made of.

 

The being fell asleep and a faerie wakened far, far away in the high icelands. Silver graced her tiny wings and a caterpillar’s silk draped her curled body. She exhaled sparkling breath in her faerie mother’s arms, content even as wind shrieked amongst the blue mountain peaks.   

And she was named Verse.

Her mother told her all the sacred fae stories alongside a spitting fire. Verse learned of how the world began—water poured from The Foxglove in the sky to freeze into the shape of every form she could see. She knew that dreams were caused by moonlight catching in her pointed ear, and that everything she ever did would be preserved in the ice of the Eternal Past. 

Verse often dreamed that she was made of daggers, questions asked, and a world of looking-glass. She had no idea what this meant but feared it.

The other faeries didn’t like her much at all. When grumpy, Verse couldn’t seem to stop herself from caving in the snow tunnels of hares. She often broke the strings of violins, wondering afterward why she had done such a thing. Perhaps worst of all, she had a talent for telling lies—smooth as ice.

Verse’s virtue, however, surpassed her vice. For never had a daughter so loved her mother. 

One day, Verse made a cage of permafrost twigs and entrapped an aurora bee to keep as her own.

It was this last stunt which brought about the Bad Day.

“What is wrong with you?” her mother cried out. Verse saw reproach and horror on her mother’s face at the sight of the imprisoned aurora bee.

After this, Verse could fly no higher off the frozen mountain than the length of a foxtail. 

One hundred years passed to make Verse full-grown. It so happened that she was gifted a daughter of her own with sparkling breath. Looking upon the sweet babe in her arms, she crooned a faerie’s lullaby.

Verse hoped the babe would not be like her. She imagined for her child a lived life of good deeds, like in the old tales of the Butter Fly.  

Carefully, she named her daughter Joy. 

Many winters went by. One glittered and embittered blizzard’s night, Joy made a scene. She stood before the assembled faerie host and insulted the revered faerie queen.

“Your breath has lost its sparkle and you don’t sound so almighty wise to me,” Joy smarted off.

A collective cry escaped the faerie host.

Joy looked about herself, uncertain. She knew she was a bad faerie, but never before had she seen so many stares and hands clutching at throats. 

Frightened by what she had done—by what she was—she turned to her mother, Verse, for help.

But her mother stood frozen, a fisted hand held to her open mouth.  

Joy pretended. With a laugh, she turned to saunter away. But suddenly there her mother was, taking fast hold of her by the wing.

“What is wrong with you?” Verse hissed, her face gone blood pink.    

Joy’s eyes widened. She hardly recognized her mother, so fierce was her face. She knew the other faeries held no lasting fondness for her, but her mother had always loved…

With a lurch, Joy ripped herself free of her mother’s grasp and fled.

It was days before Verse found Joy hiding beneath a snowdrift, stiff and blue. She gathered her daughter into her arms and wept to see what had been done.  

It was a thing Verse never wanted to do, a thing she never imagined she could:

For the sake of embarrassment before the queen, she’d lashed out and torn her daughter’s wing.

Though Verse treated this wound with kisses and sweet nothings, it remained. It festered and became a part of her daughter. Never to be undone.

This is how Joy came to fly in circles, as happens with a broken wing. She stayed close to home to make herself safe, never venturing far to where other faeries might shun her.  

And Verse knew all of life had changed. Nothing, nothing would ever be the same. The truth of her failure as a mother could and would never be undone.

It was forever preserved in the Eternal Past.  

Verse’s despair over this brought a bad moon. It leaked dim, chilled nightmares of what-might-have-been-but-now-will-never-be into her ear.

Thereafter, Verse took up the habit of pulling her wings forward so that the tips covered her eyes like a veil. But she couldn’t hide her tears. They flowed and froze to stick out from her chin, not unlike a daggered beard. 

“Dawn can never come,” she said over and again until the words formed a belief as solid and real as anything else.  This provoked suffering until Verse couldn’t help but to whisper into her snowy pine pillow—

A Question Asked.

“Why was I cruel to the one I love most?”

Verse asked this of herself so many times that it came to sound like the knocking on a door.

One early winter’s dusk, Verse sat upon a hollow log squeezing purple berries to make ink. Yet her mind dwelt upon Joy’s torn wing, wishing it were not so.

By this time Verse had shed so many tears that she wore an astonishing beard of frozen daggers upon her chin.

Looking up from her berries through bleary eyes, she caught sight of two white bears at play. Spirit-bears, faeries know them to be. Verse sneaked through the windswept mountains, following the spirit-bears to a branching river covered in black ice.

She felt soothed and comfortable in the presence of the spirit-bears. But alas, the holy creatures found a hole in the river’s ice and slipped into the water to vanish.

Verse kept vigil at the hole in the ice, gazing down into water black and rippling. She wondered that she could not see the white of the spirit-bears in the deep of the river and grew worried they had drowned.

The wind ceased of a sudden. Verse felt chills along the fluted edges of her silver wings—never had she known a moment in the high icelands that did not blow with wintry winds.  

A strange sense of something more than natural tingled upon her lips.

It felt like being in a dream. Kissed.

With the wind snuffed out, the water inside the ice hole became immovable and level as glass. Verse’s fingers trembled as she reached to dip a hand into the cold where the spirit-bears had gone, but the surface of the water was solid as stone.  

A spell which Verse did not know that she knew escaped her lips. This sort of thing, a rare grace, happens to faeries less often than you might predict.

“Alohooya brecken tre alayyaa ser wollyan.”

A sheet of water framed by a twisting black veil lifted from the river. It stood itself upon the ice, three foxtails high. Verse tilted back her head to see. 

Her exhaled breath snapped and popped with sparkles.

She fell into wonder until the twisting veil reached to encircle her neck and flutter at her face.  Verse choked, and in a panic she pulled the black stuffing from her mouth.

The looking-glass shivered. A mist gathered, which is a sure sign that what is past is about to make a reappearance.

Verse’s knees went weak in dread at what she expected to see. But when the misty fog coalesced into a shape deep within the surface of the looking-glass, Verse saw it was not the bad day of the torn wing after all.  

“Mother!” she blurted in surprise.

But her mother within the looking-glass did not respond, for she was remembering her own bad mother’s day.

The day of the caged aurora bee.

“It’s my fault my daughter can fly no higher than the length of a foxtail,” her mother said as she huddled alone inside the looking-glass. “For I did harm to her with my cruel face and words.”   

Verse witnessed her mother pull forward her wings so that the tips covered her eyes. Yet Verse knew she wept, for tears flowed down to form icicles like a beard of daggers on her mother’s chin.  

The looking-glass shivered.

Verse sat back on her faerie bottom, stunned. For behind the image of her mother stood another looking-glass and within it her grandmother, who wore an even more impressive beard of icicle daggers.   

The looking-glass shivered bittersweet. 

What Verse was given to see was this:

The haunted past, grim and reaped. 

Reflections within reflections. Looking-glass after looking-glass revealed itself in a descending serpentine gloom. Each held a mother faerie, an ancestor, framed by a veil and dressed in a river glass tomb.

Verse saw that each faerie was wounded by a mother, each used a dagger of cruel words on a child, each veiled her face in shame, each wept and dripped tears of endless, heartbroken regret.

“I know this pain,” Verse rasped, for she could barely breathe at seeing their grief so recognizably unmasked. She wept. Nodded.  

“I understand you.”

Though she didn’t know it, her voice passed through each looking-glass in a timeless translation for every mother and child to hear. And the translation went like this:

“We are the same.”

The looking-glass quaked. A new scene revealed itself to Verse in an unasked-for revelation:

She was a being with billowing wings who had been born into this world.

First there had been a heavenly ceremony, a sort of sending-off. There was an ancient cauldron. And the swallowing of a ladleful of stew to make her who she would seem to be. The ingredients included every pair of contraries known: courage and cowardice, hope and despair, generosity and greed. Love and fear. And more.

It was a recipe called Faerie, with some beings getting more or less of this and that ingredient, depending on what measures of virtue and vice happened to be ladled up.

There on the lonely ice by a winter’s river, Verse blinked. If a faerie’s qualities came of a ladleful of stew…if they were given, not chosen…

Verse buckled when comprehension struck. Truth buzzed in her ears louder than any aurora bee.

“We are innocent,” she exclaimed in astonishment. It was so shocking, she felt as if she might crack open.  

“If this is true, before taking a swallow of stew, I am like…what, or who?”  

She did not know.

There was no ‘might’ about it now. Verse cracked open. But in a good way. An entirely new kind of knowledge, the kind that passes understanding, worked inside her in ways that could not be expressed or easily spoken. 

Yet, it is fair to say it tasted of forgiveness-not-needed.

A great wind came to blow away the bruised clouds in the sky. Verse looked over her shoulder.

Rising out of the winter came a bright orange sun. Its rays illuminated each and every looking-glass. The daggers melted from the chins of all the mothers.

This is how Verse came to see them as they were. And she knew she was like them. 

A thrill more than natural lifted the wings of Verse. She flew higher than any conceivable number of foxtails.  

With Joy.

 

EPILOGUE

Verse spent the next three hundred years digesting her share of an ancient stew. She took great care and responsibility to eliminate what tasted bad. Without complaint.

She savored what tasted good from the stew and offered it to all others without discrimination, for there was no judgment inside her. This sharing made the flavor all the sweeter.

Verse became a good steward of her life, of what she’d been given.

And when the Seer took Verse’s frail hand upon her death, she viewed her entire life’s story of daggers and questions asked. It had all happened in a world that was, as it turned out, nothing more than a looking-glass filled with reflections of herself, for she was all the world.

Please understand. This review of Verse’s life was not a judgment. Rather, it was a careful measuring.

To be stirred back into the stew of an ancient cauldron.

Such happens with the lives of faerie and non-fae folk alike. Each life lived out holds vast significance, for each life upon completion lends a flavor to EVERYONE who comes after.

You may not have realized the potential and importance of your life, but now you know to pay attention. Because life is hard. And many are hurting.

 

What is a life made of?

Daggers, questions asked, and a world of looking-glass.

That’s what a life is made of.

 

And I say,

It’s all right. 

The past doesn’t exist, so drop your daggers of regret.

Peer into the ancient cauldron and you’ll find no eternal past. This is because the recipe is constantly being changed. Herein lies grace: the stew is only ever as it is now.

You are only ever as you are, Now. 

Look!

Here comes the sun.

 

And now we bring The Beatles onstage… 🙂

Here comes the sun, (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here

Here comes the sun, (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

Little darling, the smile’s returning to their faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here

Here comes the sun, (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear

Here comes the sun, (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

Here comes the sun, (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun
It’s all right
It’s all right

(Songwriter: George Harrison. Here Comes the Sun lyrics © Concord Music Publishing LLC)

An applicable quote: “…you are literally at the very edge of evolution itself, and thus your very thoughts and actions are contributing directly to the Form or structure of tomorrow—you are a genuine co-creator of a reality that every human being henceforth will pass through. Make sure, therefore, that to the extent that you can, always act from the deepest, widest, highest source in you that you can find…” ~ Philosopher Ken Wilber, from Integral Meditation

A LAST NOTE: Besides my favorite song above, this Crone Tale is inspired by author Elizabeth Gilbert, who happens to be one of my all-time favorite crones. (Remember that when I say Crone I’m referring to the archetype of the Wise Woman.) In a social media post, she wrote of hearing women speak of how their mothers had inflicted (psychological) wounds upon them. 

And Liz suggested this:

Have mercy on the mothers.

 

~If you found meaning in this story (this looking-glass) you may wish to receive new Crone Tales for free by email. I write one or two a month. SUBSCRIBE HERE.

Thank you ever so much for reading!

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW SO THE CRONE CAN KNOW HOW HER TALE WAS RECEIVED 🙂 

 

Featured image by Kinkate

Image of bee by Anne-Marie Ridderhof

Image of sad fairy by Hussein1

Image of polar bears credit: <a href=’https://pngtree.com/so/animal’>animal png from pngtree.com</a>

Image of looking-glass with veil credit: <a href=’https://pngtree.com/so/ink’>ink png from pngtree.com</a>

Image of icicles by Nyeia

Image of cauldron by Gretta Bartoli

Image of sunrise by M. Maggs