Spirit Tapestries

Excerpt from Chapter Six, The Sophia Secrets, Savitri's novel-in-progress

The day before New Year’s Eve I took a hike up St. Sauveur Mountain. A sunny, cold day. Water trickled down through the moss that covered the rock outcroppings. Miniature icicles hung underneath crevaces darkened by forest shadows.

At one point I realized I’d lost the trail. I’d been up this mountain many times and never lost the way. With bright blue markers painted on trees and boulders, it wasn’t possible to stray off the trail, but apparently the mischief-makers of the forest were at work leading me around and around. Rather than backtracking I searched for a way through the red spruce trees and blueberry bushes, hoping to meet up with the trail.

I chanced upon a clearing just below a granite ledge where pitch pines, like Bonsai trees dwarfed and shaped by the wind, clung with shallow roots. A single wide-spreading sugar maple seemed to bless from where she stood in the middle of the open area.

Suddenly a stag leapt from behind another tree. Suspended in air, and then twisting in slow motion, he landed noiselessly to face me, not more than ten feet away. With circles of cream around his black nose and eyes, and with horns branching into three points each, he paused under the old sugar maple, his gaze fixed on mine.

I held my breath, drew myself in, doing my best to mingle my thoughts with the trees so I could melt into the environment. I made the inflow and outflow of my breath soft and slow, so I could enter the black holes of his eyes. Time spread out wide, to the other side of the world, to full moon nights and memories of legends of Avalon where more than once a young man wearing antlers during Beltane had sneaked up on the Lady of the Lake to join.

Who knows how long we faced each other, the deer and I, gazing eye to eye, somewhere in time. I lifted my gloved hands in prayer.

I longed to hold him there, to dance and wear a wreath of leaves. What magic wand, what incantation, what spell do those who speak with animals and fairies use? Flute music, a voice inside me said.

With hands still pressed together, I dared to hum, an awkward tune to be sure, but my heart was fully in it. I had remembered that in ancient India men hunted in pairs, one with a flute to attract the deer and the other with the bow and quiver of arrows. The deer seeks the mesmerizing tone of the flute and finds an arrow in his heart as the reward, losing a life for love.

My voice was no flute, but I experimented to see if I could imitate one. My stag endured, twitching one ear. When my tune rose beyond my range, the cocked his other ear, which I assumed meant he didn’t like it, or thought it strange, or didn’t know what the heck was going on.

After a few minutes, my improvised arpeggios must have had some effect, as he relaxed into chewing on something already in his mouth, probably whatever he had been grazing on before I appeared. All the while, he kept me in his gaze. Then I suspected he was bored because he turned sideways, showed me his full body, lifted his white flag of a tail and dropped dark brown pellets from his bowels and settled in to grazing.

I sat under a pitch pine to enjoy the view of the many islands beyond the harbor and then thought of the old women and her connection to wild animals.

All at once the old woman appeared. Slung over her shoulder she carried a long leather satchel, like a quiver only larger. She pulled out a dark wooden bow and a few arrows with stone arrowhead tips. I glanced around to check on the deer who had raised his head and was cocking his ear, staring.

“Do you know how to shoot this?” she asked.

My body trembled. “What’re you talking about?”

“You know. Do you know how to shoot this?”

I stood and backed away from her. Words stuck in my throat. I knew how to shoot and was pretty good at it, too, but I wasn’t going to tell her I knew how. Not now. Not with a deer right there. A deer I’d made friends with.

Then she pulled an old wooden flute out of the satchel. “I’ll play this. Then you shoot him.”

The stag’s ears twitched. A frosty steam, rose inside of me like dry ice.

My teeth chattered. “You’re crazy.”

The old woman, expressionless, thrust her arm forward for me to take the bow and arrows out of her hand. I backed up and bumped into the sugar maple. My insides burned with fire and ice. The old woman crept forward, crouching, inching toward me with the bow and arrows in one hand and the flute in the other.

I eyed a long sturdy stick a few feet away. I grabbed it and held it high. I growled. “I will not shoot that deer. I don’t care how powerful you are. You can not make me do it.” Yet something in me must have thought she could or I’d never have threatened her with a stick.

A distant part of me witnessed the absurdity of the scene, but nothing could stop my fury. I flew at her with my stick. She dropped the arrows and the flute and blocked my blow with her bow. Then she whacked my stick with a loud crack. I charged and walloped her bow. “Take that, you old bag!” I said.

Her shawl dropped to her shoulders and as she swung the cloth around and around with her other hand, the deer leapt away. The old woman’s silvery braid flew into the air as she took another shot at my stick. “Uh!” she grunted, striking at me yet again.

With all my force I slammed my oak stick into her bow, yelling, “Idiotic old women. You can’t make me do it.”

She parried with ease, with a hint of a smile on her lips that raised my ire further. I swung at her and would have smashed her head but she ducked with ease.

I yelled and I came at her again. “You can’t make me do it!”

She swung at my legs. I jumped and fell back. I rolled out of her way, got up and flew at her again, slamming my stick into her bow. “Take that! You stupid old woman!”

“Uh!” she grunted as she aimed at my legs again.

I leapt out of the way. My wool cap fell off, my hair was moist with sweat. I tore at her, backed her up against the old maple. She twirled her bow and then slipped around to the other side of the tree.

As I rushed around after her, she tripped me with her bow. I raised myself, leaning into the tree, wiping dirt off my face. She took advantage, walloped, swinging her bow through the air, zing, and into the tree, missing the top of my head by inches. I thrust my stick at her towards her chest.

She slipped away, causing me to lose my balance and tumble to the ground. I pushed myself up again and struck blow after blow, that now missing more than hitting. I thrashed and swung and beat the air around her.

After a while, my voice rasped through spent vocal cords, my limbs grew limp as a cloth doll. I dropped my weapon and fell to the ground face down. My body heaved with sobbing. After a while, as my weeping subsided, I rolled onto my side and curled up in a bed of dead leaves and pine needles.

There was only the sound of the breeze through the trees.

When I looked up, the old woman was sitting with her back against the sugar maple, shawl pulled over her head. “You were angry about a lot of things. Mothers who didn’t take care of children. Fathers who didn’t honor mothers. You were angry because of no love in your childhood, not in this lifetime or others. And because when you gave love it wasn’t returned.”

I couldn’t respond right away.

The old woman picked up a twig and chewed on it.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Let the Big River clean out the drainage ditch of your mind.”

“My mind’s a drainage ditch?” I shivered from the cold and wrapped my arms around myself and crawled over to where my cap had fallen and pulled it on. Then I lay down again. “I’m the cause of my own suffering, aren’t I?”

A husky laugh bubbled from her. And then she got up and tugged at me from under my armpits to lift me to my feet. “We’ll walk down the hill now.”

After we negotiated the tricky section over boulders and three-foot ledges, she pulled out her flute and played. The sound slid down inside of me like honey.

As we strode through the mossy wooded section of the trail, I recalled her face during our fight, the sparkle in her eyes, the hint of a smile that never left her lips. As we walked and her flute music continued its mellow tune, I was aware of the absence of an inner burden and a swelling in my chest that bordered on love, the same love I’d felt when she’d given me the visions of the Goddesses.

The old woman’s truck was parked next to my car in the parking area. She signaled for me to leave ahead of her. As I pulled out and down Fernald Point Road, I kept an eye on my review mirror, but I didn’t see her there.



In the evening, I sat for a long time on my couch in the candle light, pondering Goddess Bhairavi, the Warrior Goddess. I lit a stick of incense, poured the milk and honey and rose water over my Kali image and then chanted a few of the names of the Goddess.

"Om Bhairavyai Namah, Salutations to Her who is Bhairavi, the terror-generating deity
Om, Salutations to Her who is frightful to the ignorant
Om, Salutations to Her who is victorious
Om, Salutations to Her who has shining fangs
Om, Salutations to Her who wards off all forms of death
Om, Salutations to Her who has the thunderbolt and other weapons
Om, Salutations to Her who destroys demons who embody the forces of evil
Om, Salutations to Her who leads a mighty army
Om, Salutations to Her who is the giver of Supreme Knowledge

Afterwards I drank the milk and honey.