Her wail spit the air.
“How… How could you let this happen?” she crooned as the young boy lay motionless in her arms, blood trickling from his cracked skull. “Why choose him when there are so many others?” Inconsolable, the mother stood and limped back to their home where she placed his still body on a rock bench.
The afternoon and evening spent grieving, she finally drifted off to sleep. In her dreams came the answer, but not one she expected.
“Do not shed a tear for the young one, he was meant for things unkind in this world and could not have stopped himself, Giver of Life.”
“Things, what things? Couldn’t stop himself from what?” the mother asked of the Taker of Life.
“Things I cannot explain. Things that would break you, tear him from you, make you wish you’d never given birth.”
Jerking fitfully, even her dream mind could not fathom a world in which her young son was taken before manhood, before he was old enough to claim a wife who would bear him children of his own. She spat at the Taker of Life, “Nothing could make me wish such a thing! You took him because of greed and corrupt desire – do not claim nobility as your cause. You’re evil! I should tear your effigy from the temple, you do not deserve our reverence.”
As her heart seized, the winged God sighed. “Woman, I speak the truth. He was not destined to be mundane; he would have brought about an end to all. Do you not see what resides in his soul?”
But a mother’s grief can never be sated with prophetic words, nor could she see beyond the love that tinted her sight. The Taker knew of this but did not wish the breeder to suffer. “Kind woman, hear me clear – your boy would have brought ruin to the village, he would have led riots that would have crumbled our civilization, MY civilization.” The Taker is not without compassion. “I can seed you another, kinder child.”
“No! Insuetti was my child, I do not wish to carry one of your kind. I want my boy back – damn your village.” Wracking sobs fed the small gasp heard in the waking world.
“Giver of Life, open your eye, see your boy. Do you not see that his blood runs black as the night? Do you not understand that he was the antithesis of all you are? Must I show you the atrocities he would have wrought?” The mother refused to wake and accept her child for what the Taker claimed him to be. Where there was darkness, she could see only light. Where there was malice, she could remember only his joyous grin. Where there was deceit, she could perceive only childish antics.
Left with no way to console the Giver, the Taker showed her a glimpse of what would have come to pass if the child hadn’t fallen to his death. He showed her images of greed and cruelty, of her sweet boy grown to manhood, of the acts of violence he would commit against their people. The plague he would bring upon the land. He showed her fields barren of crops; their village in ashes; men, women and children slaughtered by the droves. All because her child was brought into this world.
Once again, the Taker prompted for her to wake, to see Insuetti with clear eyes, and she did. She woke, looked upon her son with the reflection of the dream-vision playing against the back of her eyes. She could not deny that she had glimpsed the things the Taker of Life spoke of, but she could not accept them into her heart either.
Climbing upon the stone bench the child’s body rested upon, she straddled the young one, drew a sharp rock across the soft flesh of each inner thigh, and bathed her boy in the blood that gave him life with fervent hope that it would bring him breath again even as it stole the air from her own lungs.
∼ Nina D’Arcangela
© Copyright Nina D’Arcangela. All Rights Reserved.