Hunter Tremayne

TIME: Long ago

PLACE: A desolate island off the coast of Scandinavia.

AT RISE: Lights up.  Silence.  LYNN lies on the ground, her long dress in tatters.  The sound of a RAVEN CAWING.  The sound of a LARGE IRON GATE opening with a loud creak.  At the sound LYNN jumps to her feet.  ARIANE enters from stage left, her face painted white, her lips scarlet: a terrible vision dressed in a black gown. At her belt is a black-bladed dagger.

LYNN

Mercy!

ARIANE

Mercy? 

LYNN

(desperately)

It was never the desire of my heart that these wicked things should come to pass!  Forty leagues north-west the Nfalgar, the ship of dead men's nails, sailed: he and I the only survivors.  Plague took the others, or a madness from the catching of it.

ARIANE

It is true then.  The Ragnarok -

LYNN

(interrupting)

Has taken all, destroyed all.  The Gods are dead.  Mankind is dead.

ARIANE

Hardly so.

LYNN

But for you and I and the man.

ARIANE

The man?

LYNN

I left him in the boat.  He is too weak to move.  Do you have healing -

ARIANE

He will get no succor from me.

LYNN

Say you so?  What do you do here?  What is this place?

ARIANE

Do?  In still night I stroll the shores of this forgotten land, walk these empty halls so old even their ghosts have failed at last.  Ruin took this land long ago, and now no book nor scroll remains to say what name this city had.  So I have named it Attercop, the spider castle, for only they disturb its eternal slumber, skittering on its marble floors, spinning on its sundered timbers.

(pause)

They used to call me Ariane.

LYNN

(in fear)

Ariane the witch?

ARIANE

Just so.

LYNN

Then I am doomed.

ARIANE

Are you?  Have courage; have courage.

LYNN

Courage?  Where does courage begin?  I read the runes, and they said to come to this place, for there lived one who could read the future of mankind in them.

ARIANE

I can read the runes, but I shall not.  Where does courage begin, girl?  Girl.  I was a girl, once; a shy girl.  Yes, you may laugh, to see me now, black and terrible, with no fear of any creature that yet dares walk this ruined earth.  Yet shy I was: skittish as a salmon; wary as a wren; furtive as a fox.  I would tremble at an unfamiliar footstep, shake at a voice raised in anger, quake at the thought of speaking to a serf, let alone a king: in his presence I would shiver like a snowflake on my sleeve.  Where does courage begin?  For me it began with a breath on a mirror that I put to my mother's lips as she lay dying on a beautiful, terrible midsummer day.  For the pattern of her breath had lessened as her canker grew: it was now the shape of an apple that had once been the size of a grape.  I laid my arm beneath her neck and raised her head to the mirror again and again, and again and again the mark of her breath on the mirror diminished, until at last there lay no mark at all, and all there was in the world was the rattle of her breath as she eased into death.  I held her tight with such pride, wept as I lay by her side, held her hand while she died.  I do not know how old I must have been, but however many seasons I had seen, how many springs, cold and crisp and green, they became as dust on a windowpane that the merest gust carries away, while you mark the motes circling in the air, one moment there, the next no-where.  Forever is a day, the old women say, whether babe be born or hair turn grey.  To watch your mother die is both blessing and curse, to be with her is pain, never to feel the like again, yet not to have been with her, worse.

ARIANE

It was her desire, from the moment she knew her doom had come at last, to be burned upon a pyre, to have her soul burn forever in supernatural fire.  Not for her the earth, no rocks piled on her bones; from the moment of my birth it was ordained: no mother of a true witch goes into the ground, for what is buried may one day be found.  Promise me this, my mother had said while she still had breath for words.  I answered with my kiss and gave my word on all the beasts and birds.

ARIANE

Yet when I went to the king for the wood he told me no.  For there would in winter be snow and these were old customs, the old way and he would be lord of a bright new day.  You see, the king did not believe I was a witch.  In his eyes I was just a girl: skittish as a salmon; wary as a wren; furtive as a fox.  He laughed in my face, and all there laughed at that sound, and bade me bury my mother in the ground.

ARIANE

And on any other day I would have fled the hall, my face beet-red and followed by the cat-call.  But that day I did not flee: my mother was dead and I would not let things be.  I stepped towards the king and called his name.

(powerful)

"I am Ariane, ninth-born of a ninth-born, sister to the Norn.  And if you deny me this thing, I shall curse you, mighty king.  I shall curse you.  Your sons shall feed the worms of the earth.  I shall curse you.  Your strength will fail and your blood will boil.  I shall curse you.  Men shall rue the day you were given birth.  I shall curse you.  Our farmers will till a poisoned soil.  I  shall curse you.  Give me what I ask of you."

ARIANE claps her hands twice, slowly.

ARIANE

"When I clap my hands thrice my curse shall fall on you."

(beat)

He gave me foul words and called my mother a whore.  He said that he was the king and all of the law.  He said all that he could.

(beat)

Then he gave me the wood.

(pause)

But you have courage, girl.  Courage to sail to this isle...

LYNN

It was not courage; it was desperation!  There is nowhere else in the world to go!

(beat)

But I was cursed as surely as you would have cursed the king, for I see that this is no safe harbor!

ARIANE

Ah, you are bitter!

LYNN

Bitter, and who can blame me!

ARIANE

They said that I was bitter, like wine too long in the cup.  They mocked my womb as if I were barren.  They named me frost-maid, and needle-shy, the last because it did not suit me to stitch and sew, but these names were said behind my back, for none would dare to say them to my face.  For I was ninth born of a ninth-born, a born witch, and we, as all knew, could never die.  We had power: we could wither with a word, gut with a glance, slay with a smile.  So I did not speak in the great hall, looked no-one in the eye neither, nor laugh at the Fool.  Yet there were those who spoke to me, watched my body as I grew and smiled upon me.  Men.  Men; they thought me fair.  They would come to me in the night, fumbling at my breasts and thighs, panting with lust, blindly stroking my hair while yet stoking their fear.  For all who came to me trembled with more than passion.

ARIANE

Some were married, some were boys, some great raiders with faces more scar than flesh.  And as they pushed up my dress I would lick at their ears and breathe on their eyes, and tell them to enjoy themselves tonight, that they would have joy beyond compare and that after they would sleep, and while they slept I would whisper into their ear their True Name and cast a spell, and they would never wake again, would not die with sword in hand, that they would be forbidden to enter Valhalla.  Then their manhoods would shrivel like they were a swimmer in a frozen lake and they would depart in haste, never to come again. 

(Laughs)

Never to come again!

And now you think me cruel and cold, a hater of men, a stranger to love, but this is not the truth, for I loved once; oh how I loved!  I loved so hard my love was like a wonderful bird, yet when it dared to fly, to speak its name, that bird fell.  And as it fell so fell my heart, and when it stopped falling my heart grew fell.  For the man I loved did not love me.  He was brave; as brave as the boy who stands with spear against the wolf, but he did not love me.  He was beautiful; as beautiful as the sun rising over the fjord, as beautiful as the midwinter moon, but he did not love me.  He was kind and full of joy, fleet of foot, with the grace of a god.  His voice was strong; his laughter was like a bell; he shone like a star and he did not love me.  He did not love me.

The nights stretched like leather on a sea-corpse.  The days were endless pain, like a toothache on a mountain.  No story gave me succor, no wine could slake my thirst, no jest could bring me mirth.  I walked the frozen earth and searched the sky.  I prayed to gods alive and dead.  I drank poison that could not kill me, swam in a sea that could not drown me, longed for a death that would not have me.  For I was ninth-born of a ninth born, a born witch, and I could not die.  I could not die.  And in time the winter became the spring that became the summer, the summer fell to autumn and a winter came, a supernatural winter, the Fimbulwinter, the first of three before the Ragnarok.  And then did the old one-eyed god Odin have mercy on me at last, for as that dread winter began to kill all growing things on this earth, it killed my love at last.  One day I awoke and there was no more pain in my heart.  More: I had no heart at all.  In its place was a rock that no man might crush.  I knew peace with a heart of stone, for I knew that I would never love again.  The world became a dream and time became a stream.  I had been sundered from all joy, and I was content.

LYNN

(with realization)

So you came to this place.

ARIANE

Yes.  There is no place in the world for those who renounce love.  There is no map to this land.  The Norns guided my craft.  They brought me here, to this place that no man knows.

LYNN

Yet the tales of you persist.

ARIANE

Tales persist.  Who can kill a tale?

LYNN

Soon all tales shall fail.

ARIANE

Indeed?

LYNN

They must.  For you and I are the last women on this earth.

ARIANE

But you and this man...if he lives...

LYNN

I am barren, dread witch.

(pause)

Only you can continue the race of man.

ARIANE

I? How do you know my womb is not as barren as your own?

LYNN

I have read the runes, fell Ariane.  I have the gift of them.  They brought us here to these nightmare shores and safe through the rocks that guard it.  And they have told me that you are not barren.

(bitter)

They did not tell me your name.

ARIANE

I? I shall never lie with a man again!  Heard you not my tale?

LYNN

Heard you not my own words?  Now all tales must fail!

(pause)

Will you read the runes?

LYNN produces a bag of runes.  She shakes the bag and they rattle.

LYNN

See for yourself if I lie or no.

ARIANE

I tell you I shall never love again!

LYNN

Then surely the runes will tell you that, O mighty witch?  Cast them, and if they do not speak true...

(beat)

Then kill me.  Murder me and the man.

ARIANE

No.  I dare not!

(beat)

LYNN

Where does courage begin?

(pause)

ARIANE

Damn you!  Damn you!

ARIANE grabs the bag of runes.  She casts them on the ground and reads them.

ARIANE

(shaking with emotion)

This cannot be true.  This cannot be true, for then what will I do?  Can the world, destroyed as it is, be yet so cruel to me?  What crime deserves this punishment, what sin merits this reward, what slight delivers this blight?  It is dead; nothing remains.  I killed it long ago; forewent it, forgot it, for ever and a day.  And even if it were true, if madness has not taken me and I read these runes aright, this born anew, and this terrible thing set free, on this longest day after darkest night, even if it were true, even if it may, even if it might, is there such spite left in this sundered realm to remain, to ruin me, to visit upon me such pain, to ravage me, to render me insane?

She falls to her knees.

ARIANE

(with despair)

For this I did not suckle the nipple of the Norn!  For this I was not of all joy forsworn, for this I did not suffer my soul's safe harbor, in despair for then, for now, and hereafter!  Gods!  Goddesses!  Spirits of the water, of tarn and lake, of stream and sea, let this thing not be!  Spirits of the sky, of wind and storm, hail and rain, let me not endure this dread thing again!

She starts to weep.

LYNN

But Ariane, the gods are dead.

ARIANE seizes LYNN by the shoulders.

ARIANE

I cannot bear it!  Ask anything you will of me.  Here are my arms, take them!  Here are my bones, break them!  Pluck out my eyes and make me blind, smash my skull, shatter my mind, for I have drunk of this well, its waters so pitiless and unkind.  Oh, I have drank deep!

She collects herself and rises.

ARIANE

(with fury)

Well, I will not countenance this Grim.  This gift I do not accept.  This doom is by my will denied.  His voice I shall reject.  From his embrace I shall eternal hide.  Let him be fairer than the spring on the breeze, or the longship returning on the tide, I will never love him.  For he is the bearer of disease, his wish to do me harm; I spit on my palm and curse him, I give blood to the earth and bury him, I give tears to the rain and drown him.  Let his passion wither, his seed go to waste.  Let him come thither, his blood I'll taste!  So let the gods play dice on their thrones, I shall never give birth.  Let the gods roll the bones, I shall never give birth.  Let them cackle like crones, my womb will be filled with stones and I shall never give birth.  I shall laugh with merciless mirth, be the last woman on the face of the earth and I shall never give birth!

ARIANE withdraws the dagger from her belt.

ARIANE

I came here long ago, seeking that which I was promised by the Norn, yet found it not.  And now I know why.

LYNN

What was it you came here to seek?  What was it you came here to find?

ARIANE

I came here to find peace.  I know that I shall never have it while any still walk the earth.

(pause)

So all must die.

LYNN

(with despair)

I wanted to save the world!

ARIANE

Save the world?  Child, you cannot even save yourself.

ARIANE stabs LYNN to death.

ARIANE

And now the man.

ARIANE walks with dagger in hand towards stage right.  She halts.

ARIANE

All things are settled, are laid to rest at last.  My mind is metal'd, every doubt has passed.

(beat)

This is no litany of tragedy, of ill-starred loves and cursed vows; there is no legacy of bitterness: just silent fields with idle plows.

(beat)

And in the shattering of dusty time, in the forgetting of what has passed, I shall sail the sea eternally, pure, and wild, and last.

ARIANE raises the dagger to her eyes and kisses the blade.

CURTAIN