Grail

short story

From the roots of the hemlock tree the grail was woven and placed at the center of our table. Knuckled in prayer at dawn, at dusk our hands cup the grail. From the heart of the hemlock the grail served its wine. From its cup our mother sought an abyss.

That the hills hear our heart. That the hills ward the wolves from men. That the hills give crypt to children lost from our home. That the hills harden the hunted with the scent of the hunter. That the hills stiffen against our spade.

That the hills, their skin green and their blood black, give one salvation from their wilderness. The hemlock tree split by lightning and hewed in the angles of wisdom and crucifix. That the hills know our exile from Eden delivered us to ravines.

Mother is missing. In my valley glory is rapture. Mother is missing. I do not expect to follow a trail, but gypsy moss and talking trees spring before us. Nor do I imagine that a lust became a love so enraged that a mother, my mother, would abandon home and hearth to howl at the hills.

The mountains have heartbeats. In my valley the river boils the water white. The mountains have heartbeats. Mother is missing. Snowcaps and saddles and peaks, cairns of ridge and scree, I do not expect to find her silhouette in their sky. I imagine her mumbling into their old rhythms that sheer and quake.

In my valley the water is restless, and if one drinks, one corrupts. Mother is missing. At the commandment of glory that a mother shed her second son to root the tree into the hill, many mothers have gathered in restless waters, fastened their necks with rocks, and clouded the current with breath.

In my valley the second son is sacrificed. I will, he will, seek reflection in the grail and then drink the blood of the hemlock. My death is not a destiny strangled from the labors of life. In my valley the first son is blinded. He will not see my ascent. My death is a destiny blessed with resurrection. In my valley the second son is sacrificed. I will find our mother and she, and she shall lose me to the hills. In my valley the first son is muted. He shall not sing of our sorrow.

At the sacrifice, grief wears a mask of glory. We serve it with no words, no book, and no act of worship. At the sacrifice, the second son is sowed into the hills like a seed. They give me the shield. At the sacrifice, our mother is the maker. We give her the sword.

The second son is chosen. I look within. Glory, meet my eyes. The second son is the caretaker of his mother. He alone hears her wail.

The first son was raised to serve the second son. From solitude he learns wilderness. The first son without reflection from the grail, is not given light nor song. He holds himself as dirt holds water. From his silence I learn my voice.

On sacrifice the hemlock bleeds. The second son begat the first son. The second sin stops the first sin. Mother is missing.

No sanctuary is offered to the first son. He must ordain the world without song and light. Some have collapsed, ran off cliffs, stood in fire, some have become civilizations lost to glory and blind in vengeance. Their eyes composed of quartz that we dug from the heart of our hills, that we gave to our own restless hands to rub and squeeze the crystal from shard to orb, their eyes see no light other than glory…dawn on the garden.

Mother is missing. From us she could have run, beat her way through the devils’ club and briar on the bottom, and sunk herself in the land. Mother is missing. From us she would have been torn.

That last meal Mother prepared. Squash roasted in honey and butter. Dandelion greens and nettles gleaned from the lees of the forest, she blanched and stirred with carrots, lard, and lemon. Mother stuffed and fried rainbow trout that the first son and I caught in the mountain creek.

I waited for him to finish his duties for the day. The first son dragged the gourds off the vine. He bent over, hacked them apart, and scooped out the seeds and rinds with his fingers and flicked them back into the loam. He stirred the pumpkin patch and crouched to the garlic thatch. Their ramps tossed with wind, and he plucked them from the till. In a basket woven of fish bone, the first son arranged his harvest. It is a ritual, it is a ceremony, one he feels, one I perform, that I carry the harvest to our mother. Then I filled his hands with our fishing poles, and he smiled, and I led him into the ravine.

We let ourselves fall through the forest. The trees augured the sky, their limbs ladled before us. The first son climbed down to the creek with certain and careful steps. We perched over the whitewater that melted the bedrock into a basin. A waterfall spindled from the evergreens, and needles and cones tumbled in its sweep. We caught rainbow trout from a pool that shushed into meadows and marsh.

Mother threw a cloth woven of pig weed and cattail over the table. Look upon the cloth, look upon me, the second son, and hear our currents, hear the glory, hear the restless water. We hold belief that if we give then glory will not take. Around the grail we set our table. There will be no flood. There will be no drought. There will be no fire. There will be glory.

I am the second son. I am the wool of my shepherds. Mother is missing. I must find her and give myself to her. There will be no locusts, no swarm, no pestilence, but glory.

That last meal before our mother went missing, she sat across the table from me. The grail in the center, the rainbow trout stuffed with garlic ramps and honeysuckles, the squash, and the greens to the sides. The first son at the head of the table, and mother wove her fingers into the grail, raised it, and set it before us.

The tongue, the craft of prose and poem, the tongue of the first son is taken at the birth of the second son. And if he gives anything but his hands to me, the second son, he is struck. No sight seen, no sound said, I am deity to him, and he is dirt and furrow to me. If the first son could speak, could sing, could read poetry to me, then we might find our world without glory. If the second son is not born, the first son’s throat will be cut instead of his tongue. Mother is given the sword. I am given the shield.

That last meal before Mother went missing, she read her story in the grail. Once upon a time shadows from the forest iced our blood. And a mother sat in ritual like our mother, she stared into our heart, and she spoke a song that moved through us like our water, restless. And she cut her tongue out to stop her spell as she cut the first son’s tongue out to stop his rule by the Word, but the story she spoke would not be denied nor forgotten, it is written within us. When this song stopped, words of silence wailed from her mouth.

I speak now, I spoke then, and I will speak again. I am a stone of sacrifice. I am the second son. I am the spring of glory.

Mother set the grail before us.

The first son took the grail from Mother, and the roots tore at his lips. He will not rule with song. The blood of the hemlock rippled on his quartz eyes, and the roots pried at his scars. He will not rule with sight.

What do you see? Mother said to the first son.

He turned to her and upturned his palms as if they held glory.

He cannot speak. I reminded our mother.

He has spoken. I heard him.

I did not.

Give him the grail. She ordered.

The first son set the grail before me.

What of the world did you see? I asked the first son.

He turned to me, and mother struck him until he turned back.

He saw what you shall see.

You do not believe in our glory?

I cannot say.

You must.

I will not.

I imagined the taste of the grail, that I would hear prayers.

What did you see? Our mother asked.

I did not answer her. Instead, I brought the grail to my lips and drank. I saw her become lost in the forest, and she did not remember the names of her children. I saw her swallow the sky, and she did not fly. I saw her climb across the mountains, and she did not pray. And I saw her cradle the hemlock until the roots gripped and gathered her.

I find no path to her. The way to the hemlock on the hill is without touch. I follow the gypsy moss, their locks pale and strewn, our mother, I know, our mother danced through them on her way to the heart. What I should confess, is that the hemlock on the hill, the heart of the forest, the root of the grail, the ward to the children lost in the forest, that the hemlock on the hill gives one passage. With leaf and spirit I must drift.

Climb to the light, and our mother, missing, could be found here at the whispers of dusk. I did not dream, but the wind grated across the ridge.

I fell to the river, and the ripples were frayed with islands. There I sat and contemplated. To whom and what hook shall I cast? Here the salmon swim in the sky. There the fishermen wait like wraiths. Mother, missing, our mother waded into this current, she did not swim. And the river parted at her feet.

Dawn delivered us a sanctuary of shadows. We found the first son at work in the garden. He dragged his hoe and made furrow on the lay of the morning light. And back and forth, side to side, the first son without eyes to behold the world, nor a voice to sing of sorrow, wrote stories on the dirt. A tree grew in one plot even though he had never seen one, but he heard the wind whisper through the grove. The crescent moon crept, stars cascaded, he painted this plot without a constellation, but he heard coyotes tell stories to the carcass.

That the river, that the mountains, that the hills, that the forest, all is a form of glory. Exiled from Eden, we grow our own garden, we mock the snake with our own snake. And I screamed at the first son, and I ran to him and beat upon him, where is she? Where is she?

He drew a map into the dirt.

I will go to the hemlock tree.

I will follow moonlight into the heart of our hills.

When the children lost in the forest remembered my name and wailed, they walked me into the hemlock. My hands held our heart. My bones broke into the wood. My skin crawled into the bark. My face hardened with grain.