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Crow Sisterby Bill West
There was once a goddess who lived beside a lake. She was known by many names, Crow Sister, Shadow Mother. Her eyes were as green as leaves, her hair as red as worms in leaf-mould. She was the friend of every creature, save the wolf.
Wepwawet lived amongst shadows in the deep forest. He was older than hills, stronger than iron-wood. He could uproot trees or crush bones with his jaws. He was a shape shifter, sometimes a man, sometimes a wolf, sometimes a basilisk. When he was a man, no woman could resist him. When he was a wolf all that lived was his prey. When he was a basilisk he could kill with a look, or with the smell of his urine.
One day they met beside the lake. He climbed naked from the water and took her hand. She saw the most beautiful of men. He praised her hair and her eyes. They made love beside the water and when she cried out the rivers ceased their flow and the sun darkened.
In the Spring she gave birth to a boy and a girl. She loved them more than sunlight. When she suckled them flowers bloomed. When they played beside the water her love filled the world with joy. They grew quickly; tall and well formed, and they were strong and cunning. She did not notice when they pinched the wings from dragonflies or pulled snails from their shells.
When snow fell Wepwawet returned from the North as a wolf. Full of jealousy he snatched up the children and took them to a high place. He tried to eat them but they wedged his mouth with a stone. In rage he pressed them into the earth and threw up a great mound, their prison. For seven years he chewed on the stone until it was small enough to swallow. Then he returned to the lake as a basilisk.
The crows saw him first. They knew of birth and death and the secret of the World’s ending. But the goddess ignored their warning cries, that the smell of the basilisk’s urine or a single glance would kill her. She went down to the water to find him, to demand news of her children.
The crows attacked her. They pecked away her nose so that she would not smell him, and they tore out her eyes so she could not see him. Mutilated and blinded she fled into the sky, and became the blank-eyed Moon.
Trapped beneath the earth the brother and sister talked of the savagery of their father, their abandonment by their mother. They nurtured their hatred in the darkness. They bred beneath the earth, became mother and father of their race, and plotted their revenge.
And that is why wolves bay at the Moon, for the Moon is the Shadow Mother who searches the night for her children. The oceans are her tears. At the end of time the crows will fly up, her eyes dangling from their claws. They will return her sight and lead her to the land beneath the earth to join her children. Then the descendents of the goddess and Wepwawet will be released upon the world, and the rivers will cease their flow and the sun will darken, and the world will end in darkness.
© West, 2007
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Bill West lives in Shropshire, England. He is a member of the Bridgnorth Writers' Group, I*D Writers' Group and a number of on-line Writers' Communities. His work has appeared in Thirteen Magazine, FlashQuake, Mytholog, Heavy Glow, Right Hand Pointing, 21 Stars Review, Zygote in my coffee and Bewildering Stories. http://www.writewords.org.uk/bill_west