Ringlorn: Where real and ethereal mingle
A work of short fiction
Ringlorn. The feeling was overwhelming. It was as though I’d been sent back in time, back to when man and beast and forest were one, when there were still perilous quests to devote one’s life to, when one’s oath was as sacred as any chalice. A time when myths were told like history at the fireside, when good was pitted against evil in an epic battle, and whether the battle was won or lost, to die was to die in glory.
Even as this feeling nearly lifted me airborne, I knew that my feet were firmly on the ground. And that’s where ringlorn comes in. It’s the wish that life could be as it was, or at least as one feels it was, as life looks when the scratched and distorted lens of time is turned toward the distant past.
The ground where I stood when ringlorn overcame me was deep in the lands held by the Forest Dwellers, a delightfully opaque group of Pagans who lived here in The Forest. I’d been here before, but never under these circumstances.
Although named The Forest, there were spaces within it empty of trees, large swaths of open land where crops were grown. It was in one of these areas, apparently where corn had been recently harvested, that tonight’s ceremony was taking place. Around the edges of the corn field, some on the flat land and some where the land rose in gentle hills around it, were small fires, placed like sentinels to ward off evil spirits, or to keep out the gawkers, the disbelievers, anyone who might scoff at the rituals and ceremonies taking place tonight, anyone for whom this odd mixture of what was real and what was ethereal would be too much.
I was an outsider here. An observer. Alone and separate. Isolated from the communion, the spiritual unity of everything before me and—if I were honest—from life in general. The role of observer was not foreign to me.
Someone came to stand beside me. I turned to see Myra Langtree, and suddenly I felt less alone.
We both smiled.
“Where’s Johnny tonight?” I asked her.
She let out a long breath. “Johnny says he has nothing against Paganism, but all the sturm and drang of the rituals is a bit too much for him.”
“Sturm and drang. Not an expression I would have associated with The Forest.”
She laughed quietly. “Yes, well, I am an apostate, you know.”
“I don’t believe they see you that way.”
“Maybe not. But at times like this, I feel like that.”
I feel like that most of the time. But I didn’t say that aloud.
She rubbed her upper arms as though to counter the chill of the late October air that found her despite her jacket. We stood silently watching as the ritual progressed. I wondered whether she felt pulled to join in; after all, she had lived here as a Forest Dweller for three years, and she’d been in a Pagan community in Sedona before that. Now she was on the outside of rituals, mysterious and exotic to me, that were once part of her life. I was tempted to ask why she had left this life behind her, why she would choose a life outside of the protection and harmony of The Forest. But that discussion felt out of place at this moment. Maybe another time.
The sky was darkening, and I could now barely see the naked branches of trees whose leaves had fallen away. Without any artificial light nearby, and no moon tonight, the clear sky looked minute by minute more like a midnight-blue cloak studded with tiny diamonds.
At first, almost too low to hear them, light drumbeats thrummed and grew gradually louder. The distant fires became brilliant fingers rising from the earth, and around each of them I could make out dark figures. Next I saw more, smaller fires spring to life as the dark figures thrust sticks into the fires and ignited lanterns.
One by one, around the edges of the field, more lanterns began to glow as though the light had passed from one to the next, carried along on the beat of the drum. The figures began to circle the fires, gently swinging their lanterns as they walked.
I whispered to Myra, “Where’s the drummer?”
She pointed to a spot in the field, maybe three hundred feet from where we stood. There, a massive pile of wood seemed to crouch beneath countless dried cornstalks huddled around it as though shielding it from what was to come, the inevitable conflagration that was its destiny. It was so dark there in the center that I wouldn’t have seen the drummer, maybe twenty feet from the cornstalks, if Myra hadn’t shown me.
The scene reminded me powerfully of a performance. But wait: It was a performance, just one where the audience and the players were the same. Except, of course, for Myra and me.
Samhain. Sow-hen, as it was correctly pronounced. The original version of what had become Halloween. But only the chill and the darkness seemed to connect the two. There were no costumes here. No ghouls or ghosts or black-garbed witches with pointy hats. But that didn’t mean there were no spirits.
Living so close to The Forest, I had learned that at two times of the year, Beltane (or, for non-Pagans, May Day) and Samhain, the veil between what was and what is grows thin. Samhain, it seems, is traditionally the time when this veil is so thin as to be almost perforated, and the spirits of the living and the spirits of the dead can connect. But it’s not a time of fright. It’s a time of love.
All the distant fires were lit. All the figures were circling their fires. And then the drumbeat grew stronger and faster. Over the drum I could barely hear voices, chanting something I couldn’t understand. The figures from the small fires moved slowly toward the center of the field, and I feared the cornstalks would be unable to protect the pile of wood from its fate.
I wanted to ask Myra what the people were chanting, but I didn’t want to interrupt the feeling of agitated anticipation that was causing the hairs on my neck to rise.
Still chanting, with the drum still beating like a hundred heartbeats, all the lantern-carriers converged on the cornstalks. In my imagination, I could hear those cornstalks quivering, the dry remnants of their once-green leaves scratching out a warning: Here it comes! Here it comes!
As the circle of lantern-carriers around the pile of wood was complete, their chanting grew so quiet as to be nearly whispers. Two figures I hadn’t noticed before approached from either side of the shivering stalks, each carrying a flaming torch. When I squinted, I could barely make out that I knew these two people, if only slightly.
One was Elaine Gault, the Forest Elder. She was not tall, but she moved with a grace that made it seem she almost floated. Her long robe, which the light of her torch revealed as dark gold, drifted behind her. Her long, silver hair seemed to be woven into the fabric’s folds.
Opposite her was Erik Stillman, who was essentially Elaine’s first lieutenant. She made decisions, with his input; he saw that they were carried out. Eric also wore a long robe, which I think was dark green; hard to tell in the limited light. Its hem brushed the earth but did not trail.
By some signal I did not see—or maybe it was a change in the drummed rhythm—together they thrust the flames of their torches deep into the corn stalks, shooting through them as though they were insignificant; the true target was the log pile they hid. Their sacrifice was almost painful to watch, for they were consumed by the fire meant for the logs.
As soon as the fire was well and truly underway, Elaine and Erik stood back, their torches now part of the fire. The drumming took on a very deliberate rhythm, and the chanting rose in volume as figures began to circle the burning logs. Lanterns swaying, the figures circled and chanted until the drum beats reverberated through my bones, through the very bones of the earth.
Gradually the chanting grew quieter, the drumming faded, and the figures moved more and more slowly until, connected by something I couldn’t see, they stood still. The bonfire’s flames reached up as if to steal light from the stars.
Someone handed their lantern to Erik, and he walked away from the fire to a spot at the edge of where the forest began. He extinguished the lantern’s flame and stood, facing the trees, his eyes searching for—for what? I turned to Myra.
She had tears in her eyes, the moisture reflecting light from the bonfire. Her voice quiet, almost reverent, she said, “Many years ago, there was a fire in The Forest that burned many homes. Several people died. One of them was Erik’s mother.”
“I didn’t know that. But—”
“You know about the veil?”
“It’s at its thinnest tonight.”
Myra nodded toward the woods where Erik stood. “When it’s as thin as it is right now, sometimes we can communicate with someone who has passed. Erik’s mother has met him there almost every year since he was old enough to wait for her.”
She turned her gaze toward the bonfire. “See how some others are walking away? They will douse their lanterns when they don’t need them to see. The light of a fire can keep the spirits they seek from appearing.”
She was right. I could see some of the lanterns, lighting paths for people, moving away from the fire in different directions.
“So they’re all going to meet someone?”
“Yes. And when they’re ready to come back, they’ll turn around, and someone still at the fire will carry a lantern to them and lead the way back.”
“They can’t see the bonfire well enough?”
Her smile seemed to hold secrets. “They might not be able to see anything in this time well enough.”
“In this time? What does that mean?”
“The spirits they seek are dead. Their time has passed.”
I had more questions, but they would not form into words. All I could do was watch the scene before me. Lantern lights far from the bonfire disappeared, one by one. No one spoke. There was no chanting, no drumming, no sound but the crackling protests from the logs as the fire consumed them, and the occasional call of an owl from somewhere in the woods.
Myra moved away from me so quietly I almost didn’t hear, though there must have been twigs and dried leaves beneath her feet. I turned and watched as she walked slowly—her path unlit by any lantern—toward a large tree, its leaves mostly on the ground. There was barely enough light for me to see that she placed her hands on the thick trunk and leaned slightly, her head bowed. She made no sound.
It seemed she had not left this life entirely behind.
Fires on the hillsides and around the field were burning low. I watched each one sputter and die as someone doused it with water.
Suffused with a confusing mix of emotions, I contemplated the phenomenon that had unfolded, that I had observed but that had not included me. There was the wonder and beauty of the ceremonies. There was a disquiet, edged with something that was closer to exhilaration than fear, that came from witnessing something so alien to what was familiar to me. But what rose to the surface with the most power was something like anguish, and I felt tears on my face as I contemplated what it would be like to wait all year long for the chance that maybe, just maybe, I could connect again with someone I had loved, someone who had died.
Standing there, alone, I realized that even if I were to follow Erik’s example, there was no one whose spirit I’d want to reach, no one who would want to reach for me.
The cold was gradually overcoming the protection of the jacket I wore, and I began to shiver. There were gloves in my pocket, I knew. Yet I didn’t reach for them. Something deep inside, something without words, told me that this was my lot. That I was to stand outside of life, of joy, of love, observing but never sharing. The fate of the cornstalks and the log was fire. The pain of cold was mine.
My weeping was silent, gauged not to attract attention, not to draw concern from others. That would disturb the isolation that defined my fate.
Through a watery film, my eyes locked onto the figure of Elaine Gault. There was just enough light from the dying fire to capture the lustrous gold of her gown, the shimmering silver of her long hair. It lit her face, an otherworldly mixture of nobility and benevolence.
I watched, transfixed, as that figure gradually grew larger and larger. But the change wasn’t Elaine’s. It was mine.
As if drawn forward on a carpet of moss, I moved closer and closer to the fire, to Elaine.
She turned and saw me. She smiled. And she stretched an arm toward me.
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I’m an inveterate observer of human nature, writing stories about understanding and connecting with each other. My primary goal is furthering the acceptance of people who appear to be different from “us,” whoever that “us” might be. Check out my books on my website.
What a beautiful piece of work. Your talent amazes me, and I love that you're so pro-paganism. As you know, I'm a solitary witch, but I dream of living in a pagan community. A liberal pagan community. You perpetuate my dream, and I thank you. Blessed be.