It began as music.
A harp of glass, strings tight and brittle, that shattered at the slightest touch. Its breaking became a whispering and then a thin, uneasy laughing. Finally, with a wild-eyed cackle and snarling roar, the ice shattered.
Voices growled, hoarse, guttural. Drums beat and feet stamped. But the mountains seemed not to hear. Onwards they stared, with ancient gaze unbroken. Onwards and up at the featureless sky.
Finally, frozen lava groaned. Jagged fingers of rock released hands of blue-white ice. And a mouth, gaping black and toothless, appeared amid the sea of white.
As we approached, the echoes of its opening grew louder. That this was impossible only dawned on us far later when the strange and savage rhythms we had heard finally ceased to beat within us.
For now, as darkness swallowed us, all we could think of, all we could hear and see, smell and feel were the chanting, ever clearer, and the drumming, faster still.
Then, from the blackness, the orange glow flames that spat at the dark and the cold. And wild faces with white eyes that stared and white teeth that gnashed and white earrings of bone that flashed in the firelight.
Bodies that writhed and voices that chanted and arms beat their chests. Backs that arched and mouths that howled and legs that crumpled to the floor, only to leap up once again.
A golden chalice filled with liquid fire that sent flames coursing through veins. A potion that melted the flickering firelight and the flailing arms and the driving snow together into one single, seething mass.
And then, the knife. Grey as the sky and cold as the ice and merciless as the watching mountains. Rising deadly and wild, rising wicked and sharp.
Then falling.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I wrote this because I’ve been thinking about the Rite of Spring a lot lately.
About how easy it is to take it for granted.
About how, in a world of stories that end in Disney resolution, it’s easy to skate over the ones that don’t.
About how this does make life easier. But also means we miss out the kind of moments, the gripping, pulse-racing moments that can elevate our lives and make them truly memorable.
Sure, the Rite of Spring is ‘dramatic’. And certainly, it is ‘exciting’.
But are we alive to the fact that it’s terrifying? That it’s a story of death and bloodlust, where the lighting cracks and the wild mountain Gods roar, where the resolution is one of brutal, frenzied sacrifice?
I wrote this to reawaken those Gods. To go back to that time when mist hung low over the bubbling swamps. To see again the strange creatures that roamed the earth, to feel the thrill of life hanging by a thread.
You’ve read this now. So come with me.
This post is a reimagining of the Ice Maiden Discovery – the finding of an Inca mummy on the slopes of Mount Ampato in 1995.
A blow to her head and a variety of ornaments, sculptures and offerings scattered about her suggest she was a sacrifice.
She is so revered in Peru, that out of respect her remains are kept hidden for most of the year.
I remember looking at her and knowing this, seeing the eerie perfection of her body (preserved so perfectly by the ice that even the blood in her veins and her last meal remained intact) made that ancient primal rite seem almost within reach…
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