Competition Sixteen Winner: Three rites for a passage by Sarah Royston
I.
Women crown me with water-mint. Mournweed. Leaves prick my new-shaven jaw. The warm air shivers, wild with silt and reeds. I hurl my amulet, my sword, the sheath worked with my name. Drown them shadow-deep.
Collan grips my shoulder. In the shieldwall he’s steadfast at my side. Now his fingers clench with fear. I’m ready, I say. This is my sacrifice: an old life for a new. I step to the brink. Fall.
The rush snatches breath, sight, sound. Freed of leaden limbs, I’m a feather in the flood. All I am—son, brother, fighter—all this I let the river claim.
Gasp on the shingle. Stone-stripped, scoured clean.
II.
Men chant in the flax-fields. Goldweft, grow high as my balls! Last year I sang with them. Now I watch from the weaver’s hut. Nameless, I wait between worlds.
A spinster gives me a needle, bone-fine but fierce. The linen is moth-wing in my hilt-rough hands. She helps me sew the fragments, shaping a new form.
Girls join the revels, dancing like hares. I stare as they flock round Collan, my thread taut with longing. He ignores them all. I turn my eyes to the half-made garment. To what it might become.
III.
Children gather birch-brush for my bed. Cradlewood. I lie naked in the cave, poppymilk bitter on my tongue.
A spiderwoman spins a swaddle-cloth, a shroud. A skein to lead me through the maze of dreams. I follow till she speaks a single word.
At sunrise I blink like a newborn. Lace my lop-stitched gown. Birds sing welcome—sister, daughter, bride—as I step into the light.
Collan is waiting. His eyes outshine the dawn. Fingers tender on my brow, he gives me a may-blossom crown.
I whisper to my love: the spider’s word. My true name.
Sarah Royston’s writing draws inspiration from queer ecologies, folklore and the landscapes of southern England. Her short fictions and poetry are published in Popshot Quarterly, Full House Lit, Ellipsis, and Crow & Cross Keys among others. She lives in Hertfordshire, UK, and works as a sustainability researcher at Anglia Ruskin University.
Website: https://hedgeways.wordpress.com/
Image courtesy of Sarah Royston
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