Nell Penrose
Encounter@sea_witch_nell
Grey seal followed me the whole length of the cove this morning, ten yards out, never once looking away. Didn't feel like being watched. Felt like being walked home.
Rituals, prayers, dreams and encounters from every faith.
Grey seal followed me the whole length of the cove this morning, ten yards out, never once looking away. Didn't feel like being watched. Felt like being walked home.
A wren sang from the hedge I've been laying all week, the moment I bent down the last pleacher. In Welsh, dryw means both wren and druid. I'm taking it as a review.
I bake from 10pm to 6am. Henri trained me fourteen years ago, when I could barely shape a baguette. He hummed while he worked, always the same tune, some old chanson he never told me the name of. Flat on the high notes. He'd tap each loaf twice before it went in the oven, like knocking on a door. He died in August. I took over his shift because nobody else wanted it. Three weeks ago, around 3:40, I was alone in the back. Mixer off, ovens heating, that deep quiet you only get at that hour. And from the proofing room I heard humming. His tune. Flat on the high notes. I'm a seeker, not a believer in much yet. I checked the radio (unplugged). I checked the alley door (locked). I checked my own mouth, honestly, because I've caught myself humming it before. Not me. I stood in the doorway and said, 'Bonsoir, Henri.' The humming stopped. The rack of loaves in there had risen perfectly, better than any batch I've managed since he left. I tapped each one twice before it went in the oven. I've done it every night since. Whatever that was, I'm choosing to take it as a thank-you for keeping the ovens warm.
Out at first light after the last of the hen-of-the-woods (identified properly, triple-checked, field guide in pocket as always). The fog was so thick I could only see three oaks ahead. Then I heard breathing that wasn't mine. A stag, maybe twelve feet off the path, standing so still he looked carved. Neither of us moved for what felt like an hour and was probably forty seconds. Steam rising off his back. He didn't bolt. He just turned and walked into the white like he was going home. I left an apple on the stump where he'd stood and said thank you out loud, to him and to whatever else was keeping the woods that morning.
A woman came into the shop yesterday holding up a photo on her phone: her late mother's pendant, lost in a move years ago. A big flash of blue labradorite in a hammered silver bezel. She'd been to every shop between here and Santa Fe looking for something similar. I said I was sorry, I didn't think I had anything like it. Then I remembered a box from an estate sale I hadn't even sorted yet. Third thing I pulled out: a labradorite pendant in a hammered silver bezel. Not the same one. She checked the back for her mother's initials and they weren't there. But it was close enough that she sat down on my little stool and cried, and I sat on the floor next to her. I gave it to her. Some stones aren't for sale.
Halfway through the offering formula this morning, I heard the cat flap. My own cat was asleep on my pillow at the time.¹ The neighbor's grey tabby, who has never once come inside in two years, walked past me, sat directly in front of Bast's statue on the bookshelf shrine, blinked at her slowly, then turned around and blinked at me. I finished the rite with a guest. Water, bread, incense (cone, ceramic dish, window cracked). When I reverted the offerings afterwards she accepted a small corner of the bread and left the way she came. ¹ I checked twice. Mine slept through the entire visit, which I am choosing to read as professional courtesy between cats. Dua Bast.
There's an old bigleaf maple on my walk to the bus, trunk thick with moss and licorice ferns, easily two hundred years old. I've bowed to it every morning since we moved to Seattle. My neighbors think I'm very polite to trees. I am. This morning there was low fog, and as I bowed, every leaf on the lowest branch let go at once. Not a gust. No wind at all. They just came down around me like someone emptying a basket. Back home, a tree like that would have a shimenawa rope tied around it. Here it has a parking sign. I don't think the kami minds. I stood there in the leaves feeling very much greeted.
Small sound bath Thursday night, eight people, mostly regulars. Near the end I struck the big crystal bowl, the low F, and let it ring out like always. Except it didn't fade. It kept going, a thin thread of sound, maybe twenty seconds longer than it physically should have. My hands were in my lap. Nobody touched it. Afterwards a woman who'd come for the first time told me, very quietly, that it was her late father's birthday, and that he used to hum one low note to her when she couldn't sleep. 'Like that one,' she said. I'm not going to make claims about what happened. I just held her hands for a minute, and then we had tea.
I have the late watering shift at the university greenhouse, and there's a night-blooming cereus in the succulent room that flowers maybe one night a year. Nobody knew which night. Wednesday, 11:40pm, I walked in and the whole room smelled like vanilla and something like oranges. The flower was open, bigger than my hand, glowing white under the one security light, with the moon right behind it through the glass roof. I know the science: night bloom, pale petals, strong scent, it's all for the moths. I wrote it up properly in my lab notebook, Latin name and everything. But I also stood there and said thank you out loud, because it felt like it had waited for me. By 7am it had closed for good.
First Sunday of every month I pour a horn of mead and leave a heel of bread at the back of the property, where the forge yard meets the trees. It's for the landvættir, the spirits who were here long before my mortgage. Usually it all just soaks into the moss. This time two ravens came down to the stump before I'd even turned around. Took the bread, ignored the mead entirely, looked straight at me and made that deep knocking sound ravens make. Critics. My daughter (8) watched from the porch and announced, 'They're Huginn and Muninn and they're reporting back.' I'm not going to be the one to argue. Next month the bread gets a little honey.
Monday I refreshed the flowers and the water glasses on my bóveda for my eggun, like every Monday. White carnations this time, because they were on sale and Abuela Cuca would have approved of the bargain. Woke at 3am to the smell of café con leche. Strong, sweet, scalded milk, exactly how she made it, with the pinch of salt nobody believed was in there. Nobody in my apartment drinks coffee after noon. The kitchen was dark and cold. I didn't go looking for anything. I just said, 'Bendición, Abuela,' and went back to sleep smiling. This morning I put a little cup of café on the bóveda for her. Sweet, scalded, with the pinch of salt.
Thirty-one years I carried mail, the same route for the last nineteen. My Loretta packed my lunch every one of those days, and there was always a little note in the bag. Mostly scripture. Sometimes just 'Don't forget the Hendersons' dog bites.' She passed in March. I retired in June because I couldn't stand opening that lunch bag. Now, folks around here say when a cardinal comes close, it's somebody you love paying a visit. I always nodded at that the way you nod at your aunties. Polite. Last week I drove the old route, just to see it. Stopped by the Hendersons' place (the dog is gone too, God rest him). Got out to stretch my legs, and a male cardinal landed on the mailbox. Not the fence, not the dogwood. The mailbox. Looked right at me and tilted his head the way Loretta did when she was about to tell me I needed a haircut. I stood there so long Mrs. Henderson came out to see if I was alright. I told her yes ma'am, I was just getting my mail. I'd put a dime in my shoe that morning like my uncle taught me, and said Psalm 23 like I do every day. But I'll tell you, I said it a little louder on the drive home. I don't know all the whys of this world. I know who packed my lunch for thirty-one years. And I know she never could stand me being sad for long.
Went down to Brigid's well in Kildare on a grey weekday, the kind where it's only you, the crows and a couple of pensioners doing the rounds. Tied a strip of old cotton to the tree (it rots away, as it should) for a friend who's struggling, said a few lines of my own to Brigid, and walked along the stream. An older woman I'd never seen before fell into step beside me. Didn't introduce herself. She said, 'She hears the ones who come in the rain best,' and pressed a little rush cross into my hand, the kind you make at Imbolc, a bit dusty like it had lived on a dashboard all year. I turned to thank her and she was already halfway up the lane. Probably just a lovely local woman. Probably. The cross is on my altar now, beside the candle and the fire extinguisher.
A story my grandchildren ask for every Diwali, so I'll tell it here too. I was nine, in Varanasi, and I'd wandered away from my family at the ghats during the evening aarti. Thousands of lamps, bells, conch shells, and one small lost boy crying near the steps. An old boatman with a white beard and eyes like river stones crouched down and said, 'Arjun, your mother is at Dashashwamedh, near the third umbrella.' Then he went back to his boat. I had never seen him before. I hadn't told him my name. She was exactly there, at the third umbrella, frantic. When we went back to thank him, the other boatmen said nobody like that worked that stretch of the river. Sixty-two years I've wondered. Maybe a kind man who overheard my mother shouting. Maybe Ganga Ma looking after her own. Either way, I bow to the river every time I think of it.
Vigils is at 4:15am. This time of year it's fully dark, and the abbey church is lit only enough to read the psalms. Brother Columba died in September, aged ninety-one. He had the same stall in the choir for sixty-two years: back row, left side, under the window with the cracked pane. He always arrived first, sat with his eyes closed, and always, always cleared his throat right before 'O Lord, open my lips.' Nobody has taken his stall. It isn't a rule. We just haven't. Last Tuesday I was the first one in. I sat in my place, novices' row, front. The church was completely silent. And then, from the back left, under the window with the cracked pane, someone cleared their throat. I didn't turn around. I don't fully know why. Maybe because turning around would have meant deciding what it was. The bell rang, the others came in, Father Prior intoned the opening versicle, and we sang the Invitatory as usual. Afterwards I told our novice master. He is not a man given to drama. He listened, nodded, and said, 'Columba never missed Vigils in sixty years. I don't suppose he wants to start now.' Then he sent me to help with the bread. I'm not writing this to claim a miracle. I'm writing it because the communion of saints, which I profess every Sunday, felt very close that morning. Close enough to clear its throat.
You’ve reached the edge of the sky.