Utukku, With Eyes Like Glass

There has long been a saying in these queer eastern lands, older than the hundred-ring trees or the wind-scarred cliffs, that it is not restlessness but the sleep of reason that produces monsters. I will tell you one such story. It happened on the third day of fighting after the reformation of the old church, in a small hamlet known as Bleakridge, where men and women slept soundly in the wake of war and famine. Nothing ever happened in the town called Bleakridge, and if anything did, it passed through shortly thereafter. It did not appear on any maps. Nobody reigned sovereign, and nobody ever would. They would hang the cold blue flags of the north, or the blood red flags of the warring south, and the township would remain unscathed. The cows would continue to graze, the chickens would continue to lay brown eggs, and the goats, like the people, remained stubborn and aloof.

There was a girl born in the village, on a day long since forgotten. She grew to have flaming red hair and piercing eyes, too large for her gentle cheekbones. Her legs were wider than her neck. She looked like no one else in the village, and for that she was ostracized for her beauty and uniqueness.

On the first day of her womanhood, when she was to be married, the men came not to elope but to gawk. Instead of flowers and honeyed words they brought with them sick laughter and cruelty. They brought rude songs and chants that went:

‘Red Rosalda, O so fair

Her arms as frail as bones

Not a man to give his seed

But all to cast with stones!’

And the men would throw rocks and sticks and sometimes rotten milk and eggs, and poor Rosalda would cover her ears and cry. As her body grew, so too did her hatred for men.

One day, while the men were out gathering and the women sewed and spoke of the tales that men are not told, Rosalda spoke to the eldest of the village.

“Dear elder, whose memories defy time and whose eyes hide uncountable seasons, who in this village has red hair but I?”

To which the elder replied, “No one.”

“How then could I be born of this village, if there are none whose hair burns like mine?”

To which the elder replied, “Girl, I will tell you the story, but only if you wish to know it. Understand that in your desire for truth you have already brought ill omens upon us. But you are a woman now, and such things should not be mine alone to know.”

“All the better to tell me, wisest of elders.”

And so, the elder leaned back in her chair and stared intently at nothing and told her tale.

“There was once a man whose hair ran red, and on the day of his manhood all the women came to watch, and instead of surviving his trial he was beaten and bloodied, and all the women laughed and sang evil songs, and cast him out. On that night, when the moon was brightest and fullest, he walked into the longhouse where the women slept and he stole their evening garments and their ceremonial cloaks, and he gathered them all and burned them on a pyre, and when the flames licked highest he walked into the fire, and was no more. The women, so distraught by the debasement of their dressings, scarcely recalled even the memory of the boy who walked into fire. All but I. You see child, I was awake when it happened, and I saw the boy scamper through the shadows, and I saw him walk over to my chest and take my things for kindling, and when he left I followed him out, and I walked in his footprints so as to muffle my presence, and when I saw him walk into the pyre, I saw him pulled in. There was no charred corpse to be found, just ash and salvaged jewels. It is my belief that this boy did not meet his fate in those flames.”

“Fair elder, of what importance is this to my being in this world?”

“Hush child, allow me to finish and you will know more than you ever wanted.” Her eyes looked into her own mind and drew from the wellspring of memory.

“In the thirteen seasons following I became eighteen and it was the wake of my becoming a woman. I was to be wed, and the men were to come, for in those days I was beautiful, and young. And as I slept, I heard a knock on the floor, startling me awake. As my eyes focused, I realized what had entered. It was a daemon, an imp in shadow. And it did not speak but it stared with glass eyes that burned through me. Once I was certain I was not dreaming, I asked it to declare it’s purpose for invading my bed chamber, for I no longer fraternized in that longhouse with the unshapely younger women. And then he spoke with a voice like gargling thorns. He said I am Utukku, and I was once a boy of this village. But ill, did my brothers and sisters treat me, and in their judgement came their avarice. I burned their garments, their dresses and their cloaks, and in their grievance for their newfound nakedness, my disappearance was all but forgotten. And so, I became a spirit. And so too, will you accept my seed, for this is the deal I have made. I remember those words because that is all that was spoken. I became frozen, and my mouth was sewn shut, and I was undressed and my maidenhead was claimed by such a foul spirit, and in the morning I shut my doors and windows and the menfolk gathered in file stretching from the fletchers to the north gate, and I saw none, for I was tainted. And in secrecy, I delivered a child, known only to myself and the others in this room, a child with hair red like fire, and eyes like glass. And we called that child Rosalda, and she grew outside my shadow, and know I look into the same glass eyes as those of Utukku, the incubus, and I am now morose, for it is not restlessness but the sleep of reason that produces monsters. And you are no monster, dearest Rosalda.”

And the girl called Rosalda wept, for she now knew more than she ever wanted to know.

“O, foul spawn of daemon! I would dash my head across the rocks to escape such an ill fate!” said she. And she ran from the village to the wind-scarred cliffs where waves crashed against the crags below and she leapt and was never seen again.

This is what they say in Bleakridge.