Of Ob Der Tauber

There was one last ingredient we needed for my funeral on Friday. Young men with halos for hair carried it down the Middwuth Creek in the faded oranges, yellows, and blues of their skirts. Bishop Weir tried to climb the hill past them, but we had to cling to branches of the brambles to pull ourselves along. My shoulders brushed theirs, and one young man’s straw halo licked past the bare skin there. I turned and watched him go, his gold collar hanging so low you could see the nape of his neck and his spine. I watched until he disappeared.

The lime deposit we found wasn’t the typical faint yellow you’d see in any old creek, but was this pearl white, glistening like whale teeth. Some maiden now also passed with a fiery skirt full of the luminous limestone. Bishop Weir plucked a piece from her skirt and sighed, amazed.

“I think God himself showed you the way to this stone, Sotter. You know I’ve given it thought and I think we should start a new wing with this lime we have. It’ll be small, starting with your tomb, but I’d like a new dais and perhaps waterwell attached. The old boys say it looks good enough we can have construct something less than forty paces in length. The separate dais would be still church affiliate, what do you think?”

“Oh, well I think- You- we could- oh well I wouldn’t want to over do it, not to be prideful you know.”

“Nonsense!” Bishop Hunger Weir, who was unusually young for his position but had wealthy family in the church, smiled brightly. “Glory was made by god when he himself made the face of this earth so beautiful, and glory is given to when we carve the images of that face once more for his seeking eye. You my friend can be as modest as you like in your tomb, but let's give our eyes to this Waterwell. What did you have in mind?”

Bishop Weir will be the organizer of my funeral and will eventually pray my last rites among the bishopric and clergy. His peculiarity was his taste for finer beauty and art, and though the holy Roman Empire never spared the coin when it came to erecting monuments to god, Hunger clearly had a softness for the arts, most particularly sculpturing. Though I’ve never seen themes myself, he often spoke of how he adored the Ancient monuments to the Greek demonic pantheon he saw in southern Italy.

The only private conversation we ever had, as now we were still in sight of other worshippers, was inappropriate. He told our congression beforehand of the marble that looked soft and pertinent, yet what seemed to ignite passion within him the most was the figure of hyacinthus. Later, I approached and asked him what Hyacinthus looked like. He said the Hyacinthus’ face looked like a split-open Orchid. I revered and sanctified these words in my mind later in the evening. I brushed my hands across the bluebells behind the church, which Hunger said resembled the real Hyacinth flower, and imagined the marble as soft as these petals, so my hands brushed Hyacinth’s face.

I then reached up and brushed my own face, imagining I was Hyacinthus made of petal soft marble. And trapped alone on a sinking shore for years, men in blistering white crossed the salt marsh to behold me. And there amidst the procession, was a younger Hunger Weir who’s breath was stolen before me, before reaching out to feel my cheek. And I had not known human flesh for many years due to my damnation behind the salt marsh, and I likened it to the touch of peaches laid among other things at my feet by the sinful and naked Greeks who cried and begged at my feet, overcome.

I fell so deep in that fantasy I disturbed myself. I felt no longer safe in the nighttime that took hold and scurried back to the church where I reformed my twisted thoughts by compiling verses on wheat in the kells pages. In my nunnery, though I had not been allowed to write, being allowed to read from kells pages, that would be copied pieces of the book of kells which is our translation of the bible, I had a great passion for compiling verses that came together and it brought me a peace and stability unlike any prayer. Especially from the straying thoughts I would occasionally have.

This was a long seven months ago but set the course for me to be where I am now, crawling up these brambles with Bishop Weir to find the church boys who were still chipping away at some limestone. We two together, along with Jute and Belissendis who caught up with us filled our skirts, or in the Bishop’s case frock, with the grubby rock.

“I think it would be nice if we carved some false lattice? That way vines such as morning glory or roses could weave their way through.”

“Ah, I hate to say but we don’t see any morning glory at our church because-” Jute cut in, “They choke the other flowers”

Hunger shrugged, “Which is a shame, but killing is the only way those sweet things know how to bloom.”

“Like the dev-“ Bellisansis started.

“Like us.”

“Hmm?”, Hunger thought misheard, and one of the men pushing bolts into the rock face looked.

“Oh, you know because we have to eat animals. You know they were made for us to eat, but we love them anyway. I mean I used to play with the free chickens as a child and then just one random Sunday they’d be on the table.”

Last fast Sunday, Hunger had asked me what I would like to be my last meal. I didn’t know what to ask for, because while the last meal thrilled me, I feared if I enjoyed it too much I'd be trapped thinking about it for the rest of my life where my meals would never be any richer than plain wheat and almond milk. I did not think I would miss food after my funeral, but I wanted to step down from the rug, not feel it ripped out from under me.

I asked for mustard, put on something, maybe on chicken pie. Hunger advised it would taste better with fish and since he was the only one of us who tried it before it was a go. Britania owned the mustard grown in Asia, which we were much closer to, so when the purchase would be made, we’d be eating mustard from seeds that rode thousands of miles past us already. I thought that was aberrant.

It was four days later, and I could still smell the lime that was burned in large cauldrons and when it was smothered with even tempered water, screamed. I had to get up and step away because the beautiful roiling steam had no other intention than biting my face. I stumbled back into Hunger, who I didn’t know was behind me.

“Oh! Oh…. Sorry”

He laughed, his chest shaking under the loose cloth with it. I had backed into his chest not a moment ago, and with some strangeness there was a real man under the frock, and not the wall of light preceding and post ceding his every step. Hunger Weir also felt strong, but this was probably because he grew up on a farm and not a fortress like his uncle, who married a German duchess.

Well, the light may be an unorthodox prose for a woman of the church to make, but it’s only a backwardly spun sonnet for the egregious piety of the church. That is, women do not step within five feet of him. Five feet of surreptitious sin or five feet of light, and I don’t like to think of Hunger as a man of this world.

“No worries, I’d almost caught a faceful of that sick cloud myself! Zolner, you did add enough sand to the lime? So as not to kill us?”

He turned, speaking to me and only me, “there wasn’t a grain of sand in there I bet. Cover our noses,” he backed further away implying I should follow, and I let the five feet come up again.

“Are you nervous?”

“About the lime?”

“No, about the funeral. We’ve yet to build the dais, but you’ve not seemed to patter this way and that, such as a woman entering her grave should,”

I did not know what to say. It’s not a grave. He told me so, two months ago when I asked him to do this. In fact at the time he called it a heavens gate upon earth, and I, he said, would be as a gatekeeper. Well except I would take my last breath there, and then I could really talk of gates.

He had a strange look on his face, but it passed with the cloud above it, “go walk the canal! I won’t let anybody down the middwuth and you could wash your hair for Friday.”

Oh, I thought I could wash it Friday….. or just not at all.”

“Wash it Friday then too. And get pick me some bluebells, the ones that have strayed past our courtyard. You’ll see what I do with them later.”

Then he turned his face towards the clouds still rushing by.

He looks young and old. Godlike and childlike. Unseated, yet rested. He was too young when they made him Bishop. At the time I was fourteen and he never spoke to me, but our congregation. He was no preacher but spoke like a dreamer. In his first sermon he held the Bible, which he alone in the room knew how to read, and told of Samson's beautiful hair that was cut, that he was meant to protect. He made the stories come to life, like they were not rocks of humility to keep in your throat but dead songs, lyrics we read knowing there was a tune we are ever looking for.

He talked to us after too, and told of his adventures in Italy and Prussia. It was then I had my first unright thought, that didn’t seem confessible because there were no words right to confess. And so I hid it away, but listened to him every day.

The thoughts though, they sometimes had pictures. And in these pictures, I was wearing a frock. I was in the choir. I was an adventurer. I was a farmer. I was with a coarse voice giving my own sermon, inhaling the breath of my congregation and exhaling God in my bronze trumpet of a throat.

I was undressing in the creek in the dark, and when I unlaced the shoulders and let them drop down, it was not my chest I saw faintly reflecting in the water, but Hunger’s.

My funeral was delightful, and Hunger was right, the Mustard on salmon was mouthwatering. Littered about on the tables to was fresh bread and butter, curdled cows milk, chicken pie, apple pillows and cucumber salad.

I would, unfortunately, remember and crave the mustard on the fish, but maybe it would be a sweet dream to pass my time and not a yoked yearning. We laughed and talked, and choir boys sang hymns but they turned into some folk rhythms. One of them, two years older than me had Apple Pillow filling streaming from his nose, gaffing with another. We proceeded not so quietly down to the courtyard, and I sucked my bottom lip to taste the lingering mustard.

The lattice was there, just like I pictured, and Hunger got enough drunk men quiet enough he could lead my last rites, I laid on a Lime table with bloebelles in my hand, but after ceremony was done we giggled and passed out the last of the curdled cheese. Only Hunger seemed to find any solemnity on this occasion. He was not his usual lighthearted self.

The old boys approached the window made by the fact this chamber was half below ground, and finally took the remaining mortar and lime to seal the large window up. Hunger disappeared from my view, he couldn’t seem to bear watching this part. I craned my head awkwardly to have a last glimpse, suddenly flooded with my own strangeness again, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He must feel bad for me, because to him I am just a child.

In the six walls of lime, the shimmering stone is still not reflective enough to take the brick sized hole in one wall’s sunlight and give me a reflection. Nor enough light the dreams hanging above my head can be seen. It’s five times the sun comes to look inside before a shadow that’s not mine graces the wall.