Chapter 34 - Butterfat and Ash
Camp of Oma, Leva soils. SE Britain
Torixe’s young wife dances alone and naked around the cooking hearth of her husband’s new lodge. Amaia has smeared butterfat over her bruised body. A pot of foaming beer is cradled into the hot ashes of the fireplace. Seven times she dances around the pot, and as she does so, she recites her magic spell,
‘Athiratu Frog-mother, I dedicate myself to be your vessel. Bless me with spawn of life, for I Amaia of Oma, am no more than ash for your seedlings to germinate within. A heifer for your calf to grow. Athiratu, accept my gifts as sacrifice, and grant to me a strong baby’.
This dance-spell complete, Amaia pauses to chew a cluster of leaves and berries. The purge which follows is almost instant. She vomits into the pot of frothing beer. When the reflux subsides, Amaia wipes at her acid mouth with the buttery back of her hand.
She adds another prayer for her deity,
‘Athiratu Frog-mother, stop my husband from hurting both I and the concubine. Lest we both join Xagu in the Underworld. Athiratu, protector of witches, please I ask you to send back the spirit of Xagu to reside within a belly’.
These prayers added, Amaia wraps hide straps around the pot and lifts it away from the heat. Still naked and smeared with butterfat, she carries this pot outside of the turf-walled hovel, and down a trail where she reaches a freshwater pond on the edges of the marshes. Here she tips the pot as her offering,
‘My gift to the frogs with which to make their spawn of life’
On return to her husband’s new house, Amaia places the now empty pot back onto hot cinders and rubs more butterfat into its sizzling interior.
Torixe is away damaging the woods with his father. Amaia’s only role is to birth strong sons. Her husband is cruel. He’d no need to hurt Amaia like that. The butterfat soothes her injuries. Torixe enjoys hurting females, and Amaia knows he has hurt the concubine much more. She saw Ur’salla stoop, bent over with pain, collecting water to her den. That isn't right, Amaia must take action. She adds ingredients into her pot to make a stew.
Amaia takes charcoal, and ash from the hearth edges, and begins to smear it all over her sticky body. She prepares a new spell. No longer is Amaia the cheerful girl, who runs around with flowers in her long brown hair as she plays with younger children. Torixe doesn’t know he has married a young girl descended from frog-witches. His torments have fostered something residing deep inside. Something ancestral.
Ash has been smeared over her forehead, and across her rosy cheeks. She adds this mess to the butterfat dripped over her small breasts and onto her belly. Using a slender fingertip, Amaia then makes swirly patterns over her ashened nakedness. Finally she rubs the charcoal around her eyes. Brown eyes darken.
The young witch chants, ‘Raspu, bringer of destruction. Make Torixe suffer as he has done to myself and to the concubine. Spirits of sickness, enter my husband so he may not further harm us’.
The Frog-witch pulls a small section of dried sheep gut from her bag of herbs. Into this gut, she packed the ground powders of the deathcap. She adds a pinch to her husband’s dinner,
‘Not too much. Just enough to weaken him’
Then those eyes burn much larger and darker with thoughts of his cruelty. Amaia adds the whole gut to the broth.
He really should have been kinder.