Hökunótt

We rose before dawn. I wore my grandmother's gold plated necklace. My heart aches and we drove past a dead owl along the edge of a southern highway.

We had prepared ourselves as best we could. We reminded ourselves that we must not be surprised when we are told what we already know.

Hökunótt is a night to call upon our ancestral feminine wisdom: a Hag night. Sharing the night with my sister, far from the comforts of our home and immersed in painful history, we ate, we talked, and we cackled. We beheld one another in light made precious by time shared in the dark.

Something poisoned the well from which our foremothers took water.

It is not ours. It is not us. We draw from that well no longer. We speak the unspeakable truths. We turn toward the darkness. We turn to Ward the Darkness. We step away from the line drawn before us in our own blood.

I awoke at 3:00 a.m. in a dim and unfamiliar room to find my grandmother's necklace clutched in my hand.