Shadow Woman
Once there was a shadow woman that lived in the cold, hard mountains. The cruel winds blew her around and the storms would lash her. Just a shadow, she had no weight to hold her down against the onslaught of the fierce gales, thunder and lightning, and they would toss her around the jagged, sharp mountain peaks. When the storms calmed, she drifted without purpose through the frozen land, leaving no trace of herself, touching nothing, and nothing touching her. She was as thin as a breath and was of a darkness made by the absence of light, an ashen, empty darkness, with no rest or respite to fold into.
The shadow woman drifted for years until she was blown by a particularly violent storm down from the snowline and into a tent of a wise woman, camping up in the mountain forests on a pilgrimage in the dead of winter. As the shadow woman was blown in, thin and empty, the wise woman drew her to the fire. The wise woman tried to wrap her in blankets, but they fell through her, she could feel no warmth from blanket or fire.
The shadow woman keened and sang her grief and sorrow, how she had been blown about by storms for many years, alone and untethered, weightless and hollow. The wise woman looked into the flames and thought. The fire cast a ruddy glow onto the wise woman’s face, but didn’t touch the shadow woman at all. After some time the wise woman roused herself and sang out into the winter forest, calling all life to her. Slowly, some birds started to approach, landing on the ground by the entrance to the tent. The wise woman laid out some of her bread rations, and then asked them to take a message out. The birds ate and then flew away out into the frozen air.
Over the next few days, women started to arrive. The shadow woman had laid herself against the inside skin of the tent, so that she could not be blown away, and did not move from this place. It took nine days for all the women to arrive. Twelve journeyed there, so with the wise woman there were thirteen. The wise woman built a fire outside the tent, on the ground kept from freezing by the protection of the trees, and only a light dusting of snow flakes that had drifted between the thick dark fir branches.
The women sat around the fire with their packs that they had carried up the mountainside. Out of their packs they drew stories and songs, words and wisdom. Some were bright and fiery, some flowed like river waters of healing. Some were hard and heavy like mountain stones, some were full of life and some were full of death. They slowly started to weave the words of wisdom together into a rope around the fire, stretching between all of them, each of them threading and weaving in their own strength. The rope grew longer, thicker and stronger as each woman added to it, twisting the fibres of their experiences in. During the day they wove in sunshine, and during the night they wove in moonlight and starlight.
The shadow woman watched all of this with sad eyes, pressed against the tent wall. She watched for three days and three nights as the women spoke and sang and chanted. She watched as the rope appeared in their hands, coiled and powerful like a snake. When they finished, the women presented the rope to the shadow woman. The shadow woman held it in her hands, and it didn’t fall through her like the blankets. She could feel the raw power that pulsed through the rope.
She bowed her head in thanks to each in turn, then silently drifted away back up the mountains. The wind tugged at her, but the weight of the rope allowed her to steer her own course. Up and up she drifted, until she reached the top of the highest peak. Dark clouds shethered and gathered around the mountaintop and the wind started to blow frantically. The shadow woman looped the rope around her and around a jagged piece of rock that jutted up from the mountaintop.
The winds picked her up and tried to throw her around, the storm came in ferociously and tried to batter her against the rocks. But the rope held her firm. All the wisdom, power and love of the women contained within the rope held her fast to the earth. The storm shrieked and howled, but it could not pick up the shadow woman. She felt the solidity of the earth and the warmth of sisterhood. She gripped the stone with her hands and feet, and felt life pulsing through them.
The storm raged all night, but in the morning it cleared to bright and fresh, a new dawn breaking on the horizon. The shadow woman looked down at herself and saw the flesh of her limbs and body. She put her hands to her face and felt her skin, her hair. She unwound the rope from her body and the stone and coiled it up over her shoulder. With tender feet she started down the mountain, walking towards the rising sun.
© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2022