Birth of the Hero

Avert not your eyes: See the larva, the ghastly little lump made of the bitter and the pained, the reborn and the broken, the forsaken and the doomed – ashes stirring within the molten earth and the echoes of souls gnashing through the halls of time, brittle bones breaking in birth or growing ever stronger.

See two decrepit creatures, dragging themselves from room to room, awakened by the larva’s cries, looking at each other quizzically, then shaking their heads in their smoke-filled hut. The old mute man, by gestures, asked the old deaf woman: How come we got a little one? And the old deaf woman shook her fist in response. And thus Aidan, the Hero, was born.

Aidan was strong, but he had no soul, they said, for he was not born crying, his dry eyes glaring at them. Stomp on him, they said, lest he take a solid form, more solid than ourselves.

And Aidan tried to calm them down, and he told them that their dreams of the world would pass just as they themselves would, and they might as well make merry.

But the decrepit creatures shook their heads and prepared for the Ritual, and said that this was no way to talk to one’s elders.

And Aidan told them to put away the knives and untie him, and he reasoned with them to forget the ritual, and he even begged them.

But the decrepit creatures tied him to a bundle, sewed his lips together and pushed him off a skewed cliff. And then they believed him to be dead, so they went home to rejoice in their smoke-filled hut. And the myriads of gods who hid in the center of the Earth also believed him to be dead, so they rejoiced and turned their eyes towards themselves.

But Aidan was still alive, though broken. His skin was torn into shreds, his head a gaping wound and his reason gone with his memory; he had forgotten himself.

“Having beheld future fate,

how can I occupy the present?

Pining for the damp dark home,

a roughly hewn spear I have to carry.”

He danced through thorny bushes and leapt over ditches crawling with vermin. He ate green roots, mud and pebbles, and he was without knowledge or want. Unable to resist the cries of the milk-white lambs, he lived with the sheep, and in time, he learned how to love. But he quarreled with the sheep, for they were not like him, and he left them bleating in hatred. Then he lived with the wolves, and in time, he learned how to fight. But he quarreled with the wolves, for they were not like him, and he left them slaughtered on a meadow veiled in bloody dew.

(from Tirnancait)