Orphic Hymn, Unnumbered

First posted May 2022.

Even in silence, there is no peace. A high-pitched note that neither wavers nor fades rings day and night, in quiet solitude and in noisy crowds, in anger and in sorrow. In joy, she might once have said, but that was before she knew what joy truly was.

Fraying ropes dig into soft flesh as they are pulled tighter and tighter, burning lines of angry red into her skin. She remembers the first time she heard that note — the first time she knew she wanted more than she was to be allowed. ‘No,’ they told her, ‘you cannot run, you cannot play that way.’ Frowning faces of disapproval looked down on her with mouths that continued to move, but their words faded into the ringing note, needling in her ears. She tried to flee but fell back, struck in the throat. As she gasped for air, the sound grew louder, but always the same note, shrill and endless.

‘No,’ they told her as she tried to drown out the noise, ‘you must not shout. It isn’t dignified.’ Dignity, they spoke of, as they bound her so tight she could not breathe. ‘You must not complain. You must not be ungrateful.’

Tuneless cacophony filled her mind and she could not hear her own screams over the piercing, constant sound. Every day it grew louder, with each restriction and each limitation placed around her like bars of an iron cage. The ceaseless note shrieked as she pressed at the sides of her too-small cell, as the ropes wore through her skin to abrade her bones, as she dreamed of ripping her bonds apart with her hands and gnawing through the bars of her prison.

In the howling darkness, suddenly, there was a flicker of light: a hand extended by a god with thunder in his laugh and wine dripping from bared teeth. At his touch, the cage clattered to the floor, the metal echo fading into the ringing note — dulled now, as if its source was distant. The ropes loosed and dropped, and she gasped incense-scented air down her raw, aching throat.

His eyes reflected dim light like a wild cat. Warm breath washed over her bare shoulders as he moved around her, his voice momentarily blocking out the muffled note as he whispered, “Follow me.”

In a forest clearing, the flames of a bonfire licked at the starry sky. Soft, pliant grass beneath her feet was cold in the night air, and with a shiver, she stepped closer to the fire’s enticing warmth. From between the trees emerged women in loose dresses, with ivy woven into their long, unbound hair and overflowing cups of wine in their hands. The god raised his hands and the women roared, their exuberant voices drowning out the dull ringing. With wild, whirling abandon, they danced around the crackling fire, singing and laughing and shrieking.

Standing outside the circle, she looked up at the god beside her. Sparks from the fire floated around him, wreathing him in a reddish glow.

“What would you have me do?” she asked.

He laughed as reflected flames leapt in his eyes. “Be you. Be all, be nothing, be free.”

Beating drums and trilling pipes rose and fell as she joined the circle. She stretched shaking hands towards the other women, and felt a surge of warmth and comfort when they took her hands in theirs. The panicked thumping of her heart in her chest mellowed into a rhythm matching the drumbeat: excited no longer by fear, but by joy. There were no prescribed steps to their dances, no chance of putting a foot wrong. Laughter long locked away by propriety spilled from her lips, hoarse and awkward from disuse, and whirling colours surrounded her in a wall of light.

She did not realise the ringing was gone until it came back the next morning. Muted and distant, the sound resumed as she awoke. Her mouth went dry and she clapped her hands over her ears to no avail. Beneath the rustling breeze in the trees above, beneath the chirping songs of birds and insects, still it rang.

A warm hand on her shoulder startled her. “Do not worry,” one of the other women said gently. “We shall drive it away again tonight.”

So it was and so it is, every night. The wild frenzy resumes, the god watches over, and the ringing is quiet, for a time. They wake in silence that is not silent, and bear the incessant sound until sunset heralds their liberation. Though the sound and the ropes and the cages are there, lingering in the corners of their vision and murmuring in their ears, they are frail shadows of what they once were. Most days, she can feel the ropes brushing her wrists and falling away, coming and going like the push and pull of the tide.

But on this day, the ropes are pulling tight again. She feels them burning her skin, dragging her down to the ground, crushing her lungs and still tightening, more and more with each passing second. The endless note rings louder and louder, a steady crescendo of piercing noise that resonates in her skull and echoes over her thoughts.

A man walks by the riverside, strumming the same note on his lyre over and over. “No hope,” he sings, “no love, no joy, no more.” The note echoes off the trees and rocks, reverberating in the ears of the women in the forest.

“No love, no song, no more,” he continues. “No, no, no.”

His words pull taut the ropes around their throats and ribs, and his fingers pluck the note whose repeated chime clangs in the iron bars clamped tight around their waists. “No,” he sings, and “no,” they hear, the word that imprisons and binds and restricts. The shrill, sour note resounds without end in their minds and in the air around them.

Purple-stained fingers touch their bindings. “Be free,” says the god, as they break out, their fingers stretching into claws.

From the forest, they prowl like panthers down to the river. The singer walks with heavy, slow steps, out of time with the single note he repeatedly plucks. “No,” he sings, “no, no.”

Blood rushes in their ears. The ringing grows louder.

“No,” he sings, and cannot continue as their fingernails scrape the skin off his lips. Biting and tearing flesh from bone, they sink into the softness of his arms, cold as if he were already dead. His lyre makes a discordant sound as it falls to the ground, and the crack of the wood echoes the crack of his skull beneath their blows. The sun glints sharp like daggers into their eyes as they tilt their heads back, drinking his blood like wine. He tastes of earth and decay, of fruit and rot, of metal and ash.

She watches his dismembered remains float away down the red river. Exhausted, she drops to the ground, and beneath the sound of her heavy, panting breaths, a high-pitched note still rings.