Calennig

It was terribly cold; the snow fell softly, but determinedly, through the rolling, darkening Welsh hollows. This, the last night of the year, bore grim reminders for Eira. There were dark things in her future, she sensed, and moreover, she hated the cold for it caused her bones and joints to ache terribly. She felt this way every year. Winter brought with it terrible memories. She was old and so by now she had gathered many memories which she cared little for, but the worst of them were born in the deepening winter.

Her table was set but only for one when many years ago it would have been set for five. Before that it was three, when it had been her husband and son. After her son married it grew to four, and after her granddaughter was born the tiny, rickety table sat five snugly, knee to knee, and shoulder to shoulder they would be, laughing and drinking and singing and yelling or fighting. Even the arguments were missed now for the silence which replaced them was ever more terrible. The shadows her family left were like sooty spectres stained upon their familiar spaces—where they once sat, laughed, worked, Eira could scarcely stand to look; so she moved the chairs from the kitchen and only ever kept one placemat out upon the table, for herself and nobody else, because to see the empty chairs about the table’s perimeter was to be reminded of her family’s absence. Oh, how intrusive, how obtrusive, how maliciously corporeal could absence be!

She sat down and the simple, common act brought back a pleasant memory, but she banished the smile from her lips for she remembered she had little to be happy for. That night, as it had been for years, she was alone.

She ignored happy memories as best she could because they often arrived in the form of gifts wrapped with bright papers and bows so as to be deceptive. She did her best to let those parcels remain wrapped, and so they sat piled up in the dusty corners of her mind like some sad, interminable Christmas Eve where the day of giving never came.

Eira had been to the store that evening, and made it home before it snowed. On her way there and back again she shielded her eyes with the brim of her hat from the town’s graveyard. In town folk bade her good-mornings and afternoons and smiled at her. Some still, she knew, fought the urge to ask after her family. She did not begrudge this but it would always spur her on her way because she could never stand the sight of their cringing and abashed expressions. So it was tonight that she came home in a blustering hurry and put the kettle on and fixed herself a meal. It was a joke, her son’s joke, which had made her smile, and the stifled laugh which followed brought the familiar, bilious tang of longing back to her.

She had just begun to cry softly, her lips pressed to the crepey skin of her hand when the knocking came.

Who could that possibly be? She wondered, dabbing at her cheeks with her palm.

It was now dark, and the wind whipped up whorls of snow flurries so fiercely that Eira could only catch glimpses of the world outside. Surely, she thought, she had been mistaken. A branch fell on the roof, or perhaps it was just the settling of the house. She had just satisfied herself with these theories when the rapping, harsh and staccato, startled her. She put a hand to her chest to still her beating heart. There was someone at the door!

“Hello?” She called. “Hello, who’s there?” She shuffled from the kitchen to the front door. Who could it be? She lived comfortably outside of town—not a long walk, but certainly not a quick one, and not especially pleasant on a cold, dark night. “Hello?” She called again, looking at the door, expecting more knocking. None came. She moved to the window and pulled the curtain aside and squinted into the dark. A mound of snow was heaped outside her door.

That was odd, she thought, but then the snow moved, and then she realized it was not snow at all. Certainly, the mass of white silk or cloth was covered in snow, but it fell from it as the thing moved. As Eira looked she saw the horse skull come into view, its neck craning toward the light filtering out from the window. Gold glass baubles sat snugly in its eye sockets, and steam poured from its nostrils.

A Mari Lwyd? Eira couldn’t believe it. Tonight? It’s not out of season yet, but who on earth would decide that a night like this is fit for wassailing?

“Are you mad?” She called from the window, though she couldn’t tell if the Mari could hear her. It shook its head idly, like a horse might. “Hey!” She called again, tapping the window. “I got nothing for you, come back tomorrow night!”

The Mari turned its face to her, the glass bauble eyes looking at her. It clicked its jaw defiantly but did not look away, a plume of white steam issuing forth from its nostrils.

Eira bit the inside of her cheek and furrowed her brow, perplexed.

“Well?” She called. She was waiting for the Mari to begin the pwnco, the rhyming battle in which all Mari’s begged entry from each townsperson. She was not ready for a pwnco, but she figured that whoever was under that cloth must be freezing and desperate to escape the cold; yet, it just stood there. Where were the wassailers—the procession of merrymakers—anyhow? A lone Mari, in the freezing cold? Whoever was under that sheet was as mad as a hatter, Eira thought.

She shuffled to the door and threw it open, clutching her robe as the winter wind poured past her into her home.

“Get on with it!” She pleaded.

The thing only clicked its teeth again, snorting and shaking its head, another snake of steam rising and coiling in the frigid night air. The Mari was made impeccably; so lifelike it was, with its distended, hunched body, so wonderfully articulated beneath its white sheet, humped at the back with its long equine neck. A wreath of brambles adorned the horse’s skull which made the head, with its eyesockets filled with golden glass which seemed to glow in the dark. Long thin chains of gold and silver were crisscrossed over its crown and collar. It snorted again, as real as any horse, and the heavy, musky scent of a horse’s breath preceded the following white breath. Whoever piloted the costume must have been strong, for the Mari was large, taller than a real horse. Where were the wassailers? There should be at least one other man there—a Punch, or a Sergeant, or a Merryman—but there was only the Mari.

“You’re supposed to begin, you know?” She stood there, pleading, shivering, desperate to get out of the cold when the Mari made a noise. At first she was unsure if it was the Mari, for the noise seemed to come from far off. It sounded reedy, dry, tinny, but distant, as if someone across the snow-laden hollow were playing a flute. It was sad—doleful. Had she gone mad? She wasn’t sure.

“Well,” she sighed, standing aside. “Come in. I don’t have much but it’s best you eat so you can be on your way.”

This was how it went when a Mari Lwyd came to one’s door, only normally it would challenge the homeowner to a pwnco, and only if it won could it enter with its accompanying wassailers to be fed by the host. This, Eira reasoned, was a special concession. Surely that was what it (they?) had come for.

She stood aside to allow for the Mari to enter. It bowed and snaked its head and long neck through the doorway. Soft, padded footsteps were all the noise it made, save for a few courteous clacks of its teeth. Flurries of snow followed it inside, sticking in its mane and bramble crown. It walked straight for her kitchen with a familiarity that she found remarkably earnest, if not a little rude, and though she watched it carefully she could not for the life of her find a single sign of the person beneath the cloak. It reached the table and stood over it.

Eira entered the kitchen after the Mari and walked to the stove where the remains of her cooking simmered in a pot. She stooped down, withdrawing the still-warm bread she had made from the cooling oven, and placed it and a bowl of that night’s pottage before the Mari. Its head angled down alarmingly quickly and then, after inspecting the food, it snorted and snapped its head back up to look at Eira with what she took for confusion.

“Go on,” Eira said. “It’s good eating. My husband used to eat two bowlfuls before I could finish half of my own.” But still the Mari just looked at her. “What? Don’t like stew? Well I’m afraid that’s all there is.”

Clack, clack, went the Mari. It looked down at the food, then back to Eira. She noticed that its head was nearly scraping the ceiling, and its neck was stiff and straight. Eira was unsure of what the Mari was after until she heard the soft padding feet beneath the white sheet. It sounded as if the pilot of the Mari were marching in place, and then it stooped slightly, and rose again.

“Ah,” said Eira, realizing what was being asked of her. She walked to the closet—the closet where she stored the placemats and chairs that her family would use—and pulled out the large chair that her husband had liked. Her heart hurt seeing them all in there, covered in dust. She wiped her husband’s chair clean and then placed it at the table, begging her pardon as she bade the Mari move, and watched with fixed interest as it sank—more like slid—into place. She walked back to her seat and almost sat down when the Mari nudged the bowl and bread with its snout, huffing with exaggerated frustration. Eira apologized, for she had foolishly assumed the Mari would eat using only its mouth like a horse. She grabbed the utensils from the closet, a pang of sadness biting her gut again as she did, and walked back to the table and set the silverware astride the bowl and bread.

Once again, she began to sit, when the Mari reached its head across the table and sniffed at the placemat and napkin which adorned Eira’s setting.

“My God, you’re impossible!” Why had she suddenly gotten so angry? She was annoyed at the intrusion, this was true, and the Mari had been less than the ideal guest, and yet she felt her anger was misplaced. She stomped back to the closet once more and found the source of her annoyance. It was not only sadness she felt upon opening that closet door, but shame for banishing her family to such a place to collect dust in the dark—to be made into a home for spiders. She sighed, grabbing a napkin and placemat, and came back to the kitchen where she properly set the table for her strange guest.

She sat down finally, across from the Mari, watchful for its next complaint, and when none came she began to eat. She ate slowly, as she was wont to do, and as she did she was aware of the Mari. Bony, pale hands on spindle-thin arms reached out, filling a spoon or tearing a chunk of bread, and then drawing back beneath the cloak where the food would disappear without sound. How strange this dining companion was, she thought, and yet the scraping of silver against porcelain, the thumping of shifting bowls, and the general presence of another in that room with her was like a recalled harmony from a song long forgotten. She almost could not believe that she and her family would make such music every night.

She watched the Mari pull food under its cloak and felt grateful for its insistent arrival. Before long, its food was gone, and it stood from its chair and turned wordlessly to leave. She felt sad again as she watched it head for the door, and almost begged for it to stay, but stopped when she saw its vacant seat and empty bowls. She felt as she often did after her family dinners, when her son, his wife, and their daughter would depart, and the spaces they filled would fill her with longing for the joy they had only just shared.

The absence of a thing is no less real than its presence. She watched the Mari go, and it seemed now to be so impossibly large, until it eventually disappeared into the flurry of snow which fell from the grey sky above. The white shine of the moon bled through the oppressive, woolen clouds. She closed the door and cleared off the table, but allowed the chair and placemats to remain.