Seeing Ritual

In a distant time and place, an elder seer guides a young woman through a sacred rite.

“Let my hands become your eyes. See through my fingers—not in the spaces between, but through them.”

I felt the cold touch of her skin over my brows and nose, but her palms were warm over my ears. I could feel the chalk nestled between her skin and mine.

“See,” she said. “See—”

I tried, but all I could do was feel the chalk dust on my cheeks and lips. I entertained memories of just minutes ago when they painted my body with thick oil, dripping from brushes, colored by ash from the fire. It was rough against my skin. I felt uncomfortable, naked in front of so many people, embarrassed, and wishing that I hadn’t gone and asked for new sight.

“You’re entertaining thoughts,” said the old seer behind me. She adjusted her fingers on my face. I felt the prick of a long nail against my nostril. “Let go of them. Listen to the sound of your breath. Press into the space ahead—see.”

She pressed harder against my ears. But I wanted to leave suddenly, toss off her hands and cover myself with my favorite shawl draped at my feet. I could just reach down and throw it over my head. Was it always like this for someone new?

“Remember what you came here for,” she intoned.

I remembered my grandfather’s farm. I remembered the chickens below the hill. I remembered the forest fire, and how we had to move across the plains and cross the mountain. I missed those chickens. Now, my only friend was a crow who came to peck up the seeds that didn’t germinate in the rough soil.

“And what did he say?” asked the seer.

He said that my grandfather knew I missed him, and that he did his best to move us before it was too late, even though I didn’t want to. I was too young then. Even as a young woman, I didn’t understand why until it was late—after the sun had set, causing the sky to glow through the smoke. I watched it set—rise and set, rise and set. I watched the crow come and go, pecking at the ground. I watched vines overtake the ground, and the wisteria blooms fade and grow back again. I watched the angel’s trumpets unfurl, their petals as pointed as a tattooer's needle, and I watched the seer mash their thorny apples to paste.

“Continue,” she said.

Rains. Rains replaced glaciers.  Ice floes moved quicker and met the sea, melting away. I couldn’t stand it. Was this how the future would be? The old men wouldn’t find their fish and would have to go farther and farther south. The white bears would go farther and farther north. The new tools we made set in motion a new civilization, and we’d never be around to see it; our wisdom would be buried with us. New generations with powers to count and collect, but not one of them remembering the struggles that brought them there—our struggles.

I saw a woman off in the distance, combing her gray hair by a hearth. The seer? She walked into a mound hut. I followed, and inside I smelled mildew, straw, and stew. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling; purple flowers shriveled but still fast with color, and a mortar and pestle in the far corner.

I asked: “For what? Where will we moor this moldy seaship? The whole land is drifting in a wine-black gap, and there isn’t a destination except where we are, spinning: dust motes on dirtballs among games of gods.”

I approached the seer at her hearth, pounding the seeds. Pungency. I tasted cinnamon and star anise between my teeth. Or was it a tang of iron—blood in my mouth?

I reached to touch her hair—to comb it with my fingers. Its waves were like the dull waters of the lakeshore at calm.

She stopped popping the shells of those apples as I touched her, and she pricked her finger on its horn. She brought the pierced pad to her lips, sucking the blood up. She turned to look behind her, to look at me—but it wasn’t her. It was me decades hence.

“Good,” said the seer behind me. I felt the chalky hands wrapped around my head release, trembling. “Now you see through the fingers. Open up.”

I opened my eyes, blinking, my vision blurry and doubled. The chalky smoke felt dry up my nose. When it cleared, I looked down at my hands.

The fingers were wrinkled: an old woman’s hands. The nails were long, black, and split.

I looked over my shoulder. There was no one. The seer was gone and the witnesses too.

It was just me.