The Rebirth of Pan

THE REBIRTH OF PAN Jo Walton
Copyright Jo Walton 1997

Creative Commons License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Table of Contents
1. NO GOOD FRIDAY
2. LORD OF THE VINE
3. MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT
4. LADY OF DESIRE
5. THE BROKEN MAN
6. LORD MAKER
7. THE BURNING TREE
8. GIVER OF FRUITS
9. WATERED WITH BLOOD
10. LADY OF WISDOM
11. XENIA KOPELLA
12. MOTHER EARTH
13. GREAT PAN
14. LADY OF SILENCES
15. THE ASSUMPTION
16. LORD OF THE WAVES
17. MAGIC IN THE REALISED WORLD
18. SKY FATHER
19. MARE NOSTRUM
20. LORD OF LIGHT
21. WHO ARE THESE COMING TO THE SACRIFICE?
22. THE LORD OF THE DEAD
23. THE SICKNESS OF THE PEARL
24. LORD OF BATTLES
25. LITTLE DOUBT GOD WAS A MAN
26. LORD MESSENGER
27. THE REBIRTH OF PAN
28. ATROPOS
ATROPOS
Not mine to cast the lot or spin your life.
Not mine to set the count or sew the shape.
Not mine to say how you may fill it out.
But mine to watch, and cut the final thread.

1. NO GOOD FRIDAY
(Raymond)
The dust, the crowd, the heat, the hill, the cross;
the trees, the waiting knife, the nymphs' lament;
the empty tomb; the petals white, still white--
The death of gods is not a trivial thing.
The cross looks authentically heavy. The man carrying it has the beard, the tattered loincloth, the crown of thorns. Scourge marks are visible from time to time when His short cloak pulls away. Even His expression is convincing, exhausted, strained, suffering. His soulful brown eyes are familiar from centuries of religious paintings. This might have been Rembrandt's model. He looks exactly like the pictures on the walls of my grandmother's house, in school, in the illustrated children's Bible I won for good attendance in Sunday School. He isn't terrified like the others. Nobody is making him do this. It isn't hard at all to believe in Him.
Only the crowd spoils the illusion, too few dressed in the fashions of Palestine two thousand years ago, too many in the fashions of today, jeans, sweatshirts, baseball caps. They wear their technology dangling visibly about them, black plastic curves of cameras, telephones, walkmans. Sweat trickles down my back. I try to concentrate on the man, the man who is taking upon himself a martyrdom more truly than he can imagine. He is a Christian, chosen from the most devout in the region. Or so it says in the book about the re-enactment I bought back home in Lyons and read on the train south. It gave his name too, but I ignored that. I want to think of Him as the Son of Man.
The incidents along the way are re-enacted faithfully. Veronica wipes His face with her handkerchief, and holds it up to the crowd, showing the photographic likeness. A clever touch, it is a photograph. I cannot feel impressed, cannot see it as a miracle, though a fat woman is weeping over it. She wears a black dress, splitting slightly under the arms, and has a faint moustache. Her tears are genuine. For her it is real, but to me it is only a trick; photographs are too familiar. For a moment the gimmick jars me from the state I have worked so hard to capture and this hot and dusty town is Siena, not Jerusalem. Everything has too much focus. Lest I should look at Him and ruin everything, finding Him only a man, I glance away, into the crowd. My gaze catches on the bare neck and covered breasts of a suntanned woman in a white dress. She is close, almost touching me. A small gold cross dangles around her neck and rests on her skin just above her neckline. Her brown hair has fallen forward and I cannot see her face. I concentrate, to get back into the right state of mind.
Around me tourists are taking photographs. The locals do not. I do not touch the camera that hangs around my own neck. It is not yet time. We process up the street, following in His wake. The Wandering Jew refuses to carry the cross. He is a stereotyped Shylock, with a long nose and a rueful expression. I wonder if he is really a Jew, or a Christian in disguise, or a rationalist for that matter, and what he thinks of this anyway. He slinks away. Most of these people have been involved in the re-enactment since last Sunday, from the triumphal entry under the palms of Siena. They repeat this re-enactment every three years, the book said, since Medieval times. It says the faithful come from all over the world. The streets are crowded, but there are not so many faithful as all that these days. Every three years for more than half a thousand years. There is a power in that, and this will be the last time.
Joseph of Arimathea staggers up the hill under the cross. The thieves are strung up waiting. I suppose it would have spoiled the drama if