Note: This is the sixth piece in this series. Yes, they’re all true, or as much as words can bear the burden of truth.
These can each be read separately, but they’ll make much more sense in order.
“The answer you are seeking is in the Mabinogion.”
That’s what I heard just before sleep one night. It was a few weeks ago, perhaps as long as a moon ago.
The voice was both sweet and stern, and sounded like stars whirling in the night sky. The Crown of the North, I’ve called her, which is also the name of her castle.
Seven stars compose the constellation called in Latin the Corona Borealis, the “Northern Crown.” It’s the crown Dionysos gave to Ariadne for their wedding, which he then placed in the night sky. In some tales, Ariadne gave her crown first to Theseus that he might escape the labyrinth by its light, and then Dionysos set it into the firmament.
In Welsh, though, it’s Caer Arianrhod, “the castle of the silver wheel.”
I know her voice by now. She speaks only when I’m ready to listen, which is an event too rare for either of us.
The answer I sought was in the Mabinogion, then, but I didn’t know yet what question I was asking.
In a room full of gods within the labyrinth of a museum in the oldest city in Germany, Dionysos gave me his crown. Old stone statues, sculpted as gates to places we can rarely enter otherwise, watched with unmoving eyes as I tried not to cry from the joy of it all. Stars wheeled above, hidden by ceilings of concrete and light, while the crown itself lit a path out from a maze I’d forgotten I’d entered.