THE ROWAN CANTICLES - Canto XXII - Outcasts
A Tale Told in the Ancient Manner
The Rowan Canticles is an epic poem written in doggerel tetrameter. In other words, although each line contains eight syllables and rhymes with other lines nearby, like Shakespeare, I’ve used enjambment (one line spilling over into the next) here and there, especially in dialog sections. Mostly, though, I’ve striven for iambic tetrameter, which makes for a nice rhythm. You’ll notice that couplets, quatrains and other rhyme schemes refresh with each long Canticle. The old school language of The Rowan Canticles can be dense, but hey, it’s fun and it fits the fantasy.
Each week I will post a fresh Canto here at Substack, adding to the story. You’ll find ninety-nine Cantos in all contained in the three Canticles. The work is 13,000 lines long, about the length of Homer’s The Odyssey.
I hope you enjoy it!
Odds Bodkin
Don’t forget to download the companion Glossary below for definitions of archaic words to smooth your read!
CANTO XXII
OUTCASTS
If all things are but quick displays
––Scintillant blurs of yeas and nays
Competing in creation's fold––
Then nothing can be new or old.
Instead, a combination thrives
As conformation quick contrives
To order things so that they'll stand,
Before to chaos they remand.
As if her spirit rose and fell,
Unmade, remade, a passing swell
Whipped up by chaos' random will,
Gudrunlod sat, spellbound and still,
Unsure whether to smile or weep.
Harcto was unable to sleep.
That he complete his narrative
Loomed suddenly imperative,
As if confession's deep release
Clove to these words that would not cease.
The embers in the sand glowed dim.
She'd moved and sat down next to him
To intercept the onshore breeze
And shield him from his cough and wheeze.
"T’was Nembagrog. Above the roof."
"Yes, daughter. Or some send, aloof,
Half visible, yet charged to spy.
One sees them often in the sky."
"You overheard Old Bretta's claim?"
"I heard it loud from in the flame."
"Though mad, you knew, there in the room."
"Madness makes ears like flowers bloom.
Though catatonic in my dread,
Her words, half sensed, lodged in my head.
Not til later, when after you
And she . . ." he stopped. The times were few
Gudrunlod had observed his tears,
As if, over his anguished years,
Behind his eyes, buckets had filled,
As if backwards all tears he'd willed.
"Perhaps that gaze, so strong, so straight,
Is held firm by their counterweight,"
She thought, wrapped sadly in chagrin
As he, a coughing capuchin,
Stared longingly past mem'ry's bars
To uncaged nights when, under stars,
The former wizard and his love
Had with their newborn looked above
The closest stars to dim cohorts
Of nebulae, whose pale exports
Of travel-worn incandescence
Washed an aura of senescence
Across the otherwise young sky.
"Are they just small and close, or high?"
Silya had asked, contemplative.
"Oh, high, I think. Or else some sieve
Beyond whose holes burns vaster light,"
He'd answered, turning from the night.
"'Tis chillsome. This one should go in,"
He smiled, touching the baby's chin.
Six moons had bowed, then faced away
Since Silya's moans had given way
To his fine daughter's caterwauls.
He'd grown conversant with her calls
For milk, for sleep, for being held.
And with each day, his pride had swelled
As home he'd sailed, fish catch in hand.
He fished alone now, far from land,
His company eschewed by all
Who, ere his fall, his name would call
As down along the strand he’d stride.
He suffered, solemn in his pride,
The ambit of his daily troll
Outskirting theirs, while in his soul
He labored, will-forms to repair.
He felt encouraged. Seemed his flair
For coaxing winds was still intact.
Fish filled his nets. His sails, unslacked,
Propelled him homeward to his marsh
With gentle magic, not so harsh
As Demon-leashing in the breach
Between the worlds. Norns, out of reach,
Seemed uninvolved in his mild spells
That puffed up breezes on the swells.
Silya, for her part, bore it well.
Peloon’s townsfolk could hardly tell
That in her heart she thought them striped
Like cowards. Privately, she griped
To Bretta of fairweather friends.
They’d all refused to make amends.
"I've done nothing! It’s them who've crawled!"
She snapped, changing the baby, sprawled
Upended and held for the chore
In open diapers on the floor.
“Their husbands' fear infects them so,
They cannot their true feelings show."
"Silyie, time will fog this over.
Know this: married to a hover,
He don't hove fish home? Well, you starves.
Normal's returnin' to the wharves.
Just give 'em time. Fear kills off care."
"I'll give them nothing!" Silya's stare
Swept out the window, past the yard,
And past the sandy, thinning sward
That gave off to the village road.
Far off, as if her thoughts to goad,
The Ocean Temple thrust its spire
Into the sunset's drifting fire.
"For months, no portents have appeared.
No storms. No stinks. All that they feared
Is gone! The Mages have withdrawn,
As darkness does when comes the dawn.
Harcto says they've obeyed their law,
And now are satisfied. No flaw
In their proud number does remain.
From their white cloth, they've purged his stain.
Why, then, are we stared at like trolls?
The townsfolk act like tied up scrolls,
Each tight and upright, words faced in,
A ribboned, parchment mannikin
Tied shut by fear! I hate them all!
May knife points fly from out some squall . . . "
"Hush now! What words!" Old Bretta shushed.
"You're lucky you and him ain't pushed
Beyond the borders hereabouts.
In town there’s plenty toughs and louts
To do it, aye, so sew them lips
Before you on your own words trips!"
She hissed as Harcto stepped inside,
A net of selps hung at his side.
"How now, ladies! What hot topic?
From the heat, you'd think some tropic
Had floated north and landed here.
Pray, what is it? Eh, Bretta? Fear?
Fear of the toadies in the town?
Fear that some mob will hunt us down?
Ha ha! Yes, that will be the day,
When erstwhile friends their fears relay
To one another, back and forth,
Until their compassed hearts swing north
And us they remake in their minds
So guilt no way into them finds,
'Til they, in anger's righteous bliss
Force out the Mage––and accomplice––
Like splinters from their worried flesh."
He tugged a dead fish through the mesh.
"Oh, husband, please. Your tongue wags wild
As Bretta's. But, at least you smiled
When you just spoke," she teased her man.
"Quite right. I do the best I can
To echo Bretta's fine insights."
"You smiles! You laughs! You takes wrong rights
With me, just tryin' to be of help!
Forget it, then. Pass me a selp.
I think I'll dine 'for walkin' back."
"Crisp words, Bretta, you do not lack."
"Crisp fish, you two, is what we'll eat,"
Laughed Silya, rising to her feet.
"Please husband, hold this willful thing.
She's small, and yet she's learned to sing."
"Fine melodies, indeed. Each note
Sounds like a cat that ate a goat."
"Now, now. She's spirited, that’s all."
"Is that what that is? I recall
A peaceful home, once long ago."
"'Twas all your doing, that we know,"
She answered pertly, scaling fish.
"Husband, you hold your deepest wish."
"My deepest wish is to be fed,
And then," he winked, "to go to bed."
Continue to Canto XXIII →
The frightened fishmen of Peloon plot to drive out Silya, Harcto and the infant Gudrunlod, still fearing that those dwellers out at the marsh are a jinx on their lives. Warned of the coming attack by young Galdie, Harcto convinces Silya to take Gudrunlod and flee to the Shoal Isles for safety, while he waits to confront the mob of former friends.