Out of their mouths swam fishes

There was a beautiful young girl who lived in the forest with her jealous stepfather way out there, and she wore chrysanthemums in her long black hair. She was lonesome, for her family had been taken away from her and at times she would walk the yard and sing,

“And the winter comes, swelling white
To chill us to our bones tonight
Beneath the black oak we will go
To frolic in the blood stained snow.“

She lived with her stepfather since her father had died of the cough and her mother, her mother, oh she missed her mother. She’d think about her mother dear, who that night long ago came home late from the market, bearing thread and meat from the fancy fair, and she’d worn lilies in her hair.

Stepfather caught mother at the door and he disdained her as a whore, and he smote her there, grabbing her by her long blond hair, and he’d opened her up like some shellfish and bent her back then struck her hard.

Into her neck he tore, right there in the yard.

He’d turned to our beautiful girl after the act, axe in hand and covered with red, her mother sleeping in spreading blood and in his hand he held her head.

And it was then he’d said,

“Sweet young girl I love thee.
Help me to bury mother beneath the twisted black oak tree.”

They’d buried her when the night had veiled the tree, but of her head, her stepfather said,

“This I will hide for I can not bear
To have a witch like her, whole down there.”

And when her stepfather walked, he swirled with demons, for he was a man of complicated circumstance. Jealous and zealous was he, with his morbid sense of Christianity.

There was a day our beautiful girl did not wear those flowers in her hair,
when she ran free to the lake to swim with her sisters and brother,
Before her stepfather took an axe to mother, before her loneliness had yet come down.
For her sisters and brother he did drown.

And her siblings slept now beneath the pond,
And spoke to her in riddles by the round and round
And her mother dear beneath the black oak slept
Disengaged was she about the neck.

This beautiful young girl now lived in the shack with her stepfather and his bible and his whiskey. When he was drinking, in the midst of his confusion, he consecrated holy communion, late at night he came to her, drunk the stink upon his breath and there he slipped off his vestments and poured into her his jealous scent and left her with sacraments, wet with the will of god.

After he was gone, she would make her way to the lake and sing,

“And the winter comes, bringing ice
The dying soon smell twice as nice
Beneath the black oak we will go
To frolic in the blood stained snow.”

When she tarried out by the lake her sisters and brother to her would speak
But when they talked, she could hardly hear, for beneath the water their voices were, and fishes came out of their mouths when they spoke.

And though she could not understand, to the beautiful girl they always said,

“Find our dear lost mother’s head
and where it was rent, place it right
to give her life and restore her sight.”

She would then visit her mother’s grave beneath the twisted black oak and shed tears for her there. She would also leave chrysanthemums from her long black hair. So she spent her days in mourning, yearning to be with her mother and sisters and brother.

One day her stepfather sent her to town to return with provisions and at that time she met a boy, at the crossroad market did they meet. It was one winter afternoon when a shadow fell across the path and ripped that canopy and sun fell down, spread out warm across the frozen ground.

She bled into him her pain and he soaked the tears that fell from her lonesome eyes. He took her love, he took her sorrow and he said that they’d be wed tomorrow.

He said,

“Steal away with your life my love,
For free to be, I shall make you free
Meet me tonight by the twisted black oak
from its branches we will swing
and I will give you everything.”

So she returned home and went to the lake to listen once more for her sisters and brother. It was then that the snow fell down and all was frozen about. Her siblings below then began to shout and the water turmoiled beneath the ice with splashes and swishes and out of their cold dead mouths swam fishes.

Then suddenly she heard them plain as day. She finally heard what they had to say.

To the beautiful girl they always said,

“Find our dear lost mother’s head
and where it was rent, place it right
to give her life and restore her sight.”

So she ran to the woodshed where her father sometimes hid and it was there he communed with his god and did what he did. Behind the tools and the axe in the wood she found a secret place into which she stared at her mother’s face. She grabbed her mother’s head and to her room she ran, singing all along,

“And the winter comes, bringing blight
I will leave this place tonight
Give my mother back her head
And she will be raised from the dead.”

She then put the head beneath her bed and as night fell her father drank and read his worn bible aloud in the sitting room, the room that fell deadly with gloom and dank.

As she slipped out her window, she remembered the words that young boy had said to her at market,

“Steal away from your father’s home
before he comes for you all alone.
Run down past the lake where your sisters and brother play,
do not listen to them today, turn away I say.
Though they yearn for you to come and join them,
Make your way to me and we will flee.
For though it is them you miss,
resist the urge to give them a final kiss.
Continue tonight and duck past the shed,
that place where your dear mother bled.”

Here she carried her mother’s head and made her way past the lake where her sisters and brother slept, then taking a spade, she made her way to the hill to where her mother lay.

Beneath the moon, with those white daisies straining and glowing upwards to the snowy moonlight, she dug and dug until she found her mother there in a steaming, fetid, headless mass. She longed to lay down at her side, to sleep with her and let the worms do what they may..

But she heard her stepfather shouting behind her, smashing the shed and screaming for her mother’s head.

She remembered again what the young boy had said,

“Steal away with your life my love,
For free to be, I shall make you free
Meet me tonight by the twisted black oak
from its branches we will swing
and I will give you everything.”

Just then her stepfather rose up from the darkness and saw her with the head in her hand and he let out a shout that echoed across, near and far around the land. He took her by her long black hair and led her forthwith to the lake and then her young body he did break and drown her down in the swirling reeds in the swooshes and bushes, she did bleed. She let out a sigh as she finally died saying,

“Free to be, I am finally free,
To swim with my sisters and brother
An end to my pain you have given me
To finally be with my mother.”

At which time the stepfather returned to the twisted black oak to retrieve the head, but when he arrived, the young man was there calling for his maiden fair.

The young man said,
“You ghoul, you have crushed my flower, my love, my life.
Your stepdaughter was to become my wife,” then he brandished his dagger and ran that old man through and he hung him from that twisted black oak to die and freeze against the cold dark skies and ravens came and picked out his eyes.

Then the young man sat at the opened grave of the young girl’s mother and he turned to her head then he sang thusly,

“And the winter comes, bringing death
My lover beneath the lake now rests
Her stepfather hangs from the twisted black tree
And her mother’s head now stares at me.”

And suddenly from the lake he heard a chorus rise up from the sisters and brothers and now his lover saying what they’d always said,

“Find our dear lost mother’s head
and where it was rent, place it right
to give her life and restore her sight.”

The young man took the mother’s head and placed it fast upon her shoulders and beholden to him she sat upright and her skin congealed and the worms all peeled and fell into the snow. What she did then he did not know for he could not bear missing his lover who lay in the lake down the hill so he again pulled his dagger and pierced his broken heart and then into that cold dark lake he fell.

It was then that the mother rose from her cold grave and she surveyed that sad scene. She stayed in the forest, way out there and she wore chrysanthemums in her long blond hair. At the lake she sat with her son and her daughters who spoke with her from beneath the waters.

Soon springtime came with a sudden breeze,
while sun fell precipitously through the trees
and the sunlight got lost in haphazard places
and it smelled like dirt in thawed out spaces
like spring ice flows and cemetery dwellers…
Or roots stored up in cold dark cellars

And still the beautiful girl’s mother sometimes walks the yard and sings,

“The spring continual comes, and with it sun
For the undead, my deeds undone
Beneath the black oak I will stay
And beneath the lake my children lay.

However all my darlings have rotted away so please,
Meet me tonight by the twisted black oak
from its branches we will swing
and I will give you everything.”

2006