RED/GREEN

Red/Green

By Aoife Nally

So unripe, so unready. Oh my God, the thought of it, walking in silence beside him into a dark wood. A man so many years my senior. I’d never felt as young as that. It was the green of the year; first shoots brushed the cuffs of my upturned jeans. A place he didn’t show just anyone, a secret place only a few had ever heard of. We walked through the cathedral of trees, I felt verdant eyes blinking down on me, watching from ancient places. I was not prepared for this. There was a strange undulation on the forest floor, as if the earth had been carved out. A wild place forced to comply over hundreds and hundreds of years. I’d heard stories of men in vines and leaves, stag horns and heavy leather, up to strange rites in ancient places. Never heard of girls going there. I wondered why he wanted to show me this. I knew his sister, while she was alive, she was kind and quick and smart. Maybe he missed her so much he wanted to spend time with me. I knew they had been really close and sometimes in my dreams I could speak to her. I’d ask her about the oak wood and her much older brother and the men who danced in leaves. I never told her that the first time I met him the chain around my neck broke the heart shaped locket fell into my hands or that the first two words in my head when our eyes first met were “have me.” “A heart unchained” that’s what he said, taking the locket from my hands. I felt very naked without the weight of it on my neck. But for the first time I could feel the breeze across my throat. I guess he kept it. I haven’t seen it since.

Legend tells of a time, when a girl would be ready to be introduced to the deeper mysteries, she would be taken to a sanctuary washed, pampered and fussed over by all the women she knew. They would touch and tickle her, tease and arouse her, make her curious to discover more. All those women, they would do this. Make it all a kind of game, a sort of sacred petting party. Easing her over the threshold, to move into the house. Literally a house. They’d walk her into town, all in white and flowers and music. People would lay fruit at her feet and cheer and cry. She’d be brought to the centre of the circle, the big stones that witness everything. The timekeepers, the star gatherers, the bluestone giants holding the sun and moon in their circle. And there would be a little red house, a little red house. The men would be off with the boys, deep in caves, rattling old bones, banging drums, high off their heads after days of fasting. Only one way to make a boy a man, tear them away from the arms of their mothers, shove weapons in their hands, isolate them in the darkness. Bring them to the edge of their courage. Boys need to die, in one way or another, to be men. And they have to be men if they want to come to the little red house and find a maiden there. I guess they need to get all that destruction out of their system. Girls just have to bleed. To see death on their hands each month, death and life, life and death. The body does it for the girls, their death waits in the little red house. Ready or not.

The Three deep pits dropped away from just where I was standing. I felt drawn to the bottom of them, mossy dark and smooth. Little rooms I could snuggle in, safe as the grave. It was so quiet, not even the leaves rustled, as if the wood was holding its breath. He took my hand and lead me to the edge, “This is where we trap the stag.” Did he mean stag? His voice suggested it could mean a man. He said it more like it was a title, like an honour or dangerous secret. Like something he longed for and feared.

My father hit a stag once, late at night. It jumped up out a ditch at the side of the road and their eyes met as the car crushed his side. I remember pulling out the short red hairs from the crumpled bumper. I kept them in my pocket, for the life of me I can’t tell you why. My father was devastated, went for a run the next morning and ran so far and fast, we thought he’d gone forever. He’d never run like that, I felt the Stag was with him, part of him. Maybe when you take a life you carry it with you for the rest of your life.

“We choose a new one every year.” His voice brought me back to the deep wood, low and hushed “He works hard.” The way he said ‘works’, I knew there was bloodshed. I looked deep into the pit and was struck with a vision of a wild naked thing in antlers and mud, scrabbling at the bottom of that pit, erection straining to burst. A wild frenzied whirlwind of food and ale. Women sliding down the moss, dresses slipping over their heads. Loud music and laughter, toasts and jeers. Old rattled bones and torches lighting the cathedral wood, the trees dancing in the firelight. Green giants, swaying in an impenetrable circle. Growing stronger with each thrust, every cry, each grunt, every drop of blood spilt. I shouldn’t be here, I started to panic, this is something I should not know about. “He has his fun…” he laughs with an envious smile I didn’t understand, gripping my hand. I could feel his pulse throbbing in his wrist. His breath was heavy, his eyes were wide, he smiled at me teeth clenched. “But he needs to save his strength if he wants to get out.” He is laughing, I can’t tell if he is angry or aroused. He is staring deep into the pit. I could feel a pulse within me too, but from a deeper place. My knees felt weak, about to give way. He crushed my hand and I clung to the dark green sleeve of his canvas jacket. The pit groaned before me, I wanted to get out and get in. The light was fading, and night was falling on the forest. The shadows were growing deeper. I was repulsed and compelled. The moss was so slick at the edge of the pit, one step more, that’s all it would take to slide into that slippery velvet darkness forever.