Adults
and children, half-asleep, shiver in their beds as much as from the
cold as from the disturbance. Yelps mean only one thing. A series of
them means a long howl will shortly follow.
These
yelps aren't the bark of foxes, and as it's night they can't be
hounds excited for the chase, the kill. The howl, that will come,
won't be that of wolves either. It will be dogs, unseen dogs. Though
of what breed nobody knows. Legend says these dogs are large or of
medium build; able to pull like a Husky and protect like a terrier,
and bred for a witch's use only. Their howls signal her approach.
These
familiars run ahead or alongside, or pull the sleigh on which she'd
ride if she was in native land. It is said her home is Lapland,
though others claim it is Thessaly. In Thessaly, she would, I
believe, run. Run with the dogs. Who might urge her to run faster and
nip at her heels. She is not Mistress then, she is one of them. Just
a woman who runs with dogs. In the dead of night, when the undead
awaken.
When
she's abroad, the moon is Queen, just like Marlowe says; when she's
home or visiting another land, the moon is Shelley's: a dying woman.
Lean and pale, wrapped in a gauzy veil, and tottering feebly in and
out and amongst the clouds. In layman's terms: the moon as woman
hides. Her power, and indeed her position in the sky, weakened by a
witch's presence.
Darkness,
the wife of Chaos, laughs. Adds the echo of her laughter to the howls
of the dogs. Sometimes she shuts the dying woman Moon in her chamber
so creatures of the darkest, deadliest night can do their worse:
instil fear in the beating hearts of men. All
men. And their children and their children's children.
Darkness's
daughter-in-law Night prefers an firmament with pinpoints of light,
but darkness must be allowed, for her child Light must rest or have
time to play with his sibling Day. A night-hag is, therefore, a
necessary evil, one that her father-in-law Chaos has permitted. And
found, like his wife, pleasure in.
There
are other signs, besides the dogs and the moon, to the night-hag's
coming. When it's as cold, as Toni Morrison was fond of saying, as a
witch's tit. If you've not heard that quip you're not keeping the
right company.
And
if anything of yours too shrivels up then that's a sure sign she's on
her way. She brings the cold to the warmest of countries. A sudden
drop in temperature, a chill air that clutches at throats; a bitter
wind that chafes hands and strips cheeks of their blush. She spoils
even the fairest of complexions.
And
yet they say, those that have seen Her (or one of her kind), she is
not a hag. Witch she is in name alone. Her good looks will blind the
freshest youth, the oldest man. Her sweet temper will beguile the
cleverest young lady and the wisest of women. If that does not, her
black dog will. For, in these sightings there is always mention of
one at her side, though the descriptions of this companion are vague:
wolf-like, mastiff-like, hound-like, hunting dog; small and playful,
a lady's dog. But always black. A deep, rich black coat.
The
oldest, the cheapest trick in the book. Beauty and beast. Beast and
beauty.
Victims
have been snared, victims have been spared. There have been
disappearances; attempts have been made on lives. Those snared, (we
presume), did not live to tell the tale, any
tale, whilst those spared were toyed with and drained of any mental
capacity to remember. 'A beautiful lady all in white...'; the rest a
blank. A dream, a nightmare that cannot, even with the probing of the
best doctors, be recalled.
Survivors,
unable to tell their tale, will feel the cold, a life-long cold.
Their pallor a blueish-white: lips, fingers and toes. Their skin so
thin, all their veins show. Black dogs, or ghosts of, camp under
their windows and howl. For a creature of Darkness has kissed them.
Picture credit: Woman with Lyre and Dog, August Macke (source: WikiArt)
Written January 2020.
