The cloak
Under a huntress moon - full, ripe, clear - the giantess reached into the back of her sled to throw me 12 pelts and skins still stained with blood.
You gathered them over a lifetime. These are yours to stitch. This feather and fur, scale and claw will become the cloak that turns day into night, that shifts your shape at will, that protects you from the fierce glare of the sun when you fly close to its furnace. The cloak that sounds the battle cry of Clontarf across Wicklow mountain tops. The cloak that you will stitch your tears into.
Deep in the ice cave where low flames catch ruby and diamond encrusted light, I have been stitching, bleeding and blistered, for hours, days and years. The edges are trimmed with my white tiger who greeted me with clawed paws at Oslo station, her fur as soft and deep as the Norwegian snow. She growled.
When you were seven you took me to bed every night; you loved me, and I gazed down from the wall at your sleeping head. You've found me again in this city of seidr and old souls. Climb onto my shoulders and let my roar become yours.
The back of the cloak is almost luminous in the half light, shimmering a thousand winking eyes in emerald and gold. This is the tail of my peacock that lives in my boots. These are the eyes that followed me that hot afternoon in Mexico City as I walked the gardens with Dolores Olmedo; one of those afternoons where I could lay in the long grass wondering how El Sapo dreamed so large, and if I could dream with the same bug eyes and paint in the same colours.
If you look closely at the eyes you'll see a silver silk overlaced thread, gossamer thin, catching the cave light. Here is spider who long ago caught me in her Javanese web, in a dreamtime of spice and incense, with old bells chanting in the temple sun.
On the shoulders, bat wing epaulets are membrane stretched, claws gripping and pulling the cloak to tuck in my prey, headfirst, close to my breast. Bat taught me how to feed in the twilight of gardens, forests and groves where the dead lie quietly sleeping, or sometimes dancing.
The hood is fringed with thick black horse hair from the mane of the strongest, fastest stallion I ever rode. He greeted me in the field, cock hard, nostrils steaming, fierce hoof stamping. I can see through his fringes into the past; I come from horse people. Paskadi takes me far and wide into my mythography; his hoof is my hoof.
The clasp of my cloak is a white bear’s claw, sharp as the diamonds and teeth that litter the cave floor. A claw which holds Chi-In, my monkey's tail, so tightly that even his frozen brass balls could not break the lock. This cloak will not slip in flight.
The lining is the softest of skin that holds all the song lines of the deep ocean, and which has been with me since birth. This is the skin of my blue whale, who carries me to the bones of my father, five fathoms sunk in that place where drowned sailors swim to. Her song lines wrap me in the warmth of protection that only a fylgja can bring; the protection that came when I was born with my blue whale hand to the whale bones I now carry in my basket.
These are the songs lines that sail me to the mountains, where the wolf waits patiently to howl back to the dark seas on a cold winter wind. My wolf cries far within me, for I swallowed her whole in the deep forest - in that strayed place inside the hollow yew, where the magician visits in dreams. Her fur lines my hood, so I hear her howl when I bury my head in her soft folds against the lightning night. There I drink her milk.
Writhing up the front of the cloak are two adder skins, zig zagging, twisting; the ones I shed at the edge of a mine shaft looking out across Pendeen to where the Cornish chough dive bombs down the cliff face into the Atlantic, red legs flaming. These were the first of many, the newness of their scales still shimmering in the crystal cave. These snakes are dancing up, up, to meet my sea eagle Sika. My cloak spread becomes her wings - her feathers folding outwards, bearing me to her eerie nest where three golden eggs lie warm to the touch. I have danced with her in the ashes, and now she is taking flight from Clare down to Wight, from Ireland to Isle. I see so far with her eagle eye, and her wings so strong bear me up.
I have stitched and bled, stitched and bled - my blood has fallen into the snow, seeping down into the permafrost, melting its heart and unlocking a deep love, an old love, a love that’s wrapped its roots around the hollow of my tree. The blood becomes my dragon blood, and with its scales I stitch the final letters into the inside pocket of my cloak. For every cloak has a secret pocket, a pocket where wisdom is kept, the wisdom which is gathered over a lifetime. It's taken many years, but my cloak is done.
I hold it to the light, the most magnificent garment befitting a giant hunter. She is pleased, she tries it on for size, admiring her reflection in the frozen waters of the mountain lake. This is a cloak fit for a shapeshifting queen; she fixes it around my shoulders. This cloak is yours.
Twelve pelts
Twelve skins
Twelve years
Plus one to let it settle
Thirteen years
The age of your ghost son
Twelve skins
Thirteen years
A cloak
A birth
A cloak
A life
A cloak
A death
A cloak
A rebirth
The holy cup of tears is full
Bless this cloak.
