#i wrote and edited sleepless and feverish

[westmoor]

and above the lilies weep (2/2)

< Part One

The door screeched loud enough to wake the dead when Geralt finally wrenched it open.

Forcing the hinges to give and stepping inside, the noon light filtered in through clouds of dust kicked up by his movements and the sudden draft. Seven decades of disuse permeated each musty whiff of breath but the interior looked in otherwise good repair, despite most locals being too scared to spend a night there it still saw some use as day shelter when local shepherds collected their flocks from summer grazing.

The single room within was sufficient, if not spacious, for its purpose - small enough to be efficiently heated by the tall turf hearth bricked into the far wall. A spare stack of sods filled the space under the bed on the right-hand side, overhung by lofty shelves creating a rather cosy alcove. Beneath a small window on the opposite wall stood a rough wooden table and a rickety chair, and a short bench took up the last of the space.

Before he could set his pack down on the narrow bench to properly examine his lodgings, the first droplets of rain tapped the tiny windowpane. By the time he dug out some candles and kindling, it had built to a steady thrumming.

He decided against a more thorough search of the perimeter, the lack of elevation leaving miles unobscured to a simple glance and the premise of the stories suggested any disruption would seek him out if it so intended, and instead set about organizing his supplies and settling in for the long evening ahead.

Daylight faded quickly, driven away by darkening clouds blown in from the northeast and the wind picking up to whip against the sheltering walls. They were thick, however, and once the turf got burning a single candle was enough to keep the encroaching night at bay for a while longer.

Rifling through the few possessions left by previous inhabitants he went to yank the heap of rags and blankets from the bed, meaning to hang them up and chase out what moisture had settled there. While not intending to sleep on the job he could at least lay down flat to meditate, make the most of whatever rest was offered.

Something rattled. He paused.

Pulling more carefully and divesting the cloths on the floor, he bent to investigate the wooden bench of the bedframe. Upon some prodding the innermost board came loose and uncovered a hollow space beneath, hidden from the rest of the room by the pile of turf cut for burning. The darkness of the recess from the shine of the light was a challenge even for his eyes, and he reached in blindly, bending and searching until his fingertips brushed a smooth, solid object. Gingerly wrapping his fingers around that of it which he could reach, he hoisted it into the light.

It was a lute.

A valuable lute even, by the looks of it, elven made or a decent copy of elven made if the elaborate carvings were anything to go by.

Geralt knew little of music and less about instruments, but he did know craftsmanship, and turning it over in his hands he saw quality not just in the intricacies of the pattern weaving across its body but in the wood itself, in the make and fit of each individual component. At first glance it seemed almost new, unblemished and gleaming, but inspection soon rectified that impression: It wasn’t unused as much as it was well-used, tended to and cared for by one whose hands knew how to properly maintain it, like a smith’s favourite hammer or his own silver sword, old but not worn down by age.

Later, he would have no concept of how long he stood as entranced, weighing it in his hands and pondering the whereabouts of its owner. There had been a musician involved in the first incident, he recalled, but that notion was quickly pushed aside. That would’ve made it near a century old, and drought and moisture, the rise and fall of the seasons should’ve long since contorted the wood, warping the neck or snapping the pegs from their holdings. One of the shepherds then, maybe, an unusually gifted one. People met so many odd fates.

He turned it over once more, strings sharp under his fingertips as if daring him to strum but he kept them fixed - even in this solitude it seemed a violation to tinker with an instrument so clearly possessed by another.

Instead, he set it gently down on the bench by the table, leaned it upright against the stone wall. And then he turned back to the sheets and blankets, flipped and spread them out for the heat to take hold.

Nothing seemed in a rush to disturb him, and Geralt was glad for it. Although he should be pushing to progress his current undertaking and move on to the next contract - ideally a little closer to civilization and for a far better salary - perhaps at least the miller had spoken truly: He might just be in for a quiet and peaceful night, undeniably comfortable as warmth seeped into every enclosed corner and crevice, and soon enough he had the thick waft of brewing mutton stew to go with it.

He had pushed the old chair back against the wall and sat at an angle from the door, let his eyes fall shut. Those weapons not attached to his person were within easy reach and no sight was required to find them should anything succeed in catching him unaware.

Instead, his attention drifted to the hiss and crackle of the fire and the stew slowly thickening in its hanging pot. Of the fabled music of the moor he heard nothing, save for the howling of the gales through the tall chimney, what had earlier been a stiff breeze now battering and breaking against rough but sturdy walls like a great starving beast.

Knowledge of what wreckage such weather would’ve wrought on a common camp made shelter all the sweeter, and despite himself, Geralt sunk into it how one might sink into a steaming bath.

Tension seeped from taut shoulders, but the more he leaned into the quiet the more disconcerting it became. The sounds of fire and food, of his own heartbeat and breathing, should be enough to fill the small room but they weren’t, it sounded to his ears as though something crucial was missing and once acknowledged it couldn’t be shaken, digging into his mind like an unreachable itch. He couldn’t pinpoint its source, or lack thereof. Across the table, the lute stayed as silent as any shrine.

---

Supper was long since finished, half of it left to mull until morning, and the day would’ve long since faded even without the cover of storm clouds when Geralt was roused from his thoughts. He had paid no attention to them at first, dismissed as just another trick of the roaring wind, perhaps something knocked loose and toyed with. Their hurried approach snapped him out of it.

Footsteps.

Not the shuffle of four-hoofed ungulates and lacking the stealth of any predator, they dragged and stumbled heavy through heather and bracken, sounding absurdly and distinctly human.

Fixating each of his senses on its trek beyond the windowless wall Geralt could hear breathing, shallow and ragged, wet and sputtering as though they - or it - had already inhaled half the bog.

He leaned toward the window with furrowed brow as a shadow passed it but the single candle in the room held little against the thickness of the night beyond, and rain washed down the pane in heavy waves, twisting what shapes he might otherwise have made out into unrecognizable phantoms.

His hand grasped the hilt of his dagger in the same instant as something heavy crashed against the door. Rapid knocking saw him on his feet in the next, only mild hesitation before he flicked the latch. After all, ghouls and drowners were rarely polite enough to knock.

Whoever, whatever he had expected to meet at the other side of that door, this wasn’t it.

The boy - or man, rather - was lean, and smooth-faced, and clung to the doorframe with hands that shivered so badly it must’ve hurt.

Any colour in his face was washed out by chilled torrents and sparse light, pallor accentuated by flattened dark hair that clung to his brow. But his heart hammered in his chest, rabbit-quick, eyes bright if frantic where they sought for Geralt’s in the darkness. They were blue.

Belatedly, Geralt realised he was silhouetted and standing in shadow, his face likely completely inscrutable to human eyes. Later still, he realised the stranger was talking, rambling, voice pitched high to pierce the rush threatening to steal it.

“- know it’s hardly an appropriate time to be calling on decent company but I saw the light, and I - I seem to have lost my horse, you see, something must’ve spooked her, the poor dear, and…”

Geralt said nothing - or he might have, too taken aback to be certain - but pulled away to leave a gap wide enough to pass through. The youth needed no further prompting and tumbled more than walked into the offered refuge.

Sharp eyes followed every movement the newcomer made, even as Geralt shouldered the door shut and firmly replaced the latch, no twitch or turn dodged his scrutiny. He noticed, then, how the room and cabin itself barely received a cursory glance, while Geralt’s own belongings - his packs, cloak and swords - were subjects of far more interest. He also noticed how, no longer straining against the throes of nature, tremors ran up an ill-clad back, arms wrapped tight around his torso as though it would keep each breath from rattling through his chest.

The doublet he was wearing had once been fine, now soaked so thoroughly in grime he looked to have fallen in the mire and crawled back out, it’s colour indiscernible. His breeches were in much the same state, sodden boots trailing mud across the floor.

«You’ll want to take that off,» Geralt grumbled before he could consider his words. Their recipient spun to face him, wide-eyed and tense. He tried again, less gruffly: «Or you’ll freeze.»

That was met with a halting nod, and a darting look searched his face before slow compliance saw the first soaked garment pulled from hunched-in shoulders. The likewise stained shirt underneath was so finely woven water might as well have dissolved it with how close it clung to skin, no imagination required to behold the gentle tapering curve of his waist nor the smooth swell of muscle in his upper arms, sharp point of a collarbone accentuated by shadows cast by candlelight.

Geralt promptly averted his eyes, the walls he’d seen as lofty mere moments before suddenly drawing stiflingly close, trying to provide some modicum of privacy despite the unwillingness to fully turn his back on someone currently so close to his own swords.

Lack of distractions and senses far too sharp to be a blessing in the moment left him still all too aware of the activity at the corner of his vision, bent first to divest of the boots then straightening to full height, and even as numb fingers fumbled with the fastenings that cinched the breeches high at his waist, Geralt’s mind was drawn to a performer he once knew in Vizima, all strong and slender limbs and fluid motions.  

Cleared of the heavy silk and velvet and before those hands could venture near the gossamer-sheer chemise - fabric that thin would dry quick enough - Geralt grabbed his own woollen blanket and thrust it at the man, and waved towards the narrow bench where the lute still stood propped against the wall.

Only once the table provided a modest barrier between the stranger and most of the things that could’ve been wielded as weapons did the witcher move his hand from where it hovered near the hilt of his dagger and turn to the hearth, revived the fire with another sod, and reached for the copper pot.

“Thank you,” the present companion said and leaned in to cup his hands around the bowl that had been set in front of him, seeking its heat. He sounded earnest even through gritted teeth, jaw still clenched tight to keep his teeth from clattering. “My name is Jaskier, by the way. Since you asked.”

“I didn’t,” said Geralt, settling on the chair opposite.

“I noticed.” Even without fully looking, and the bowl obscuring the lower half of his face, he could tell Jaskier was smirking. “I also noticed you didn’t give me yours.”

“It’s Geralt.” Idle chitchat had not been part of the contract but the words spilt into being before he could divert them, and for a fateful breath he felt as though petering on the edge of something he couldn’t identify.

“At the risk of coming across as overly direct, Geralt, what regrettable decision led you all the way out here?”

Geralt chanced a suspicious glance at him, but the man - Jaskier - seemed utterly unperturbed. Was this a game of some sort? “I’m working.”

“Ah!” Jaskier raised a hand and tilted his head as though in realisation, in honesty or mockery Geralt couldn’t quite make out. “It’s funny,” he said, nodding to his right where the lute still lay upright. “You didn’t immediately strike me as a lutist, in fact, with those two very scary-looking swords I would’ve sooner taken you for a wayward Witcher. But I understand now that I must’ve been mistaken.”

The half incredulous, half-amused huff Geralt failed to contain garnered a victorious grin, beaming even as he turned his attention back to the stew.

“So you are a Witcher,” Jaskier continued at length. “And you are here for a job, and you do not play the lute.” He had a pleasant voice, an innate ebb and flow of tone that made for easy listening. “Are you here to kill me, then?”

Geralt regarded the lad carefully, weighing his options. His hair had started drying, he remarked, tawny brown and no longer plastered down but curling slightly across his forehead, the smouldering fire giving him a russet halo. The pallor of his skin had also faded, warming instead to a healthy flush that could’ve been a trick of the light, but also could’ve not. The line of his blanket-covered shoulders, the tapping of his fingertips against the now-empty supper bowl, nervous energy and ease in equal parts. Something unnamable tightened in Geralt’s chest.

“I suspect I’m a bit late for that.”

An outburst would’ve been expected, a shock or a scene, but instead it earned a full-bodied laugh, rich and zestful like summer wine.

“I suspect you are.“ And then he extended his arm, blanket slipping back off his shoulder and the lute, thus far remaining a silent spectator, found its way into deftly knowledgeable hands.

Time passed in relative peace, bard strumming and tuning and the witcher mulling, before Jaskier again broke the silence. “You didn’t quite answer my question.”

Sensing the sudden gravity in the air, Geralt turned to fully face him. He wasn’t one for sweet lies. He never had been. “As long as they have cause, they’ll send others.”

“I didn’t - They don’t!” Agitation sparked as a flame in dry grass and for the first time since entering the cabin, an edge of desperation crept back into his voice. “Those two - the sons of the town blacksmith, I believe - the first ones, they told me to meet them here. Gave their word that they would help me, promised a way through this desolate hell of a country and I know it was naive. I’m not a fucking fool. But I had to get to Cintra, that was my chance, but then when they showed up and they…”

Despite decades of experience in human disfavour, Geralt felt a chill run down his spine.

Slumping in his seat, the outpouring faltered as though the words he tried to speak had clogged his throat and wavered, motioned toward the windowless western wall and beyond it, to the bottomless mire into which single tracks of bootprints now strayed each morning after rain or storm. That from which nothing was recovered, and where nothing could decay.

Some moments went by before he could speak again, before the wet in his eyes no longer threatened suffocation. Geralt let him have them. “The others, the ones who came after… I didn’t mean to. I only meant to scare them off, I swear to the fucking Gods, Geralt. I never hurt anyone who left me a choice.”

At a loss for anything better, Geralt could only nod. There was always a risk he could be lying, a steeled voice chimed in his mind. He didn’t think he was.

The lute was set down lightly on the bench. “I’d leave if I could,” its owner said, voice more collected. “But it seems I’m either in here,” and he leaned his elbows on the table, mostly-dry chemise rolled back over wiry, delicate wrists. “Or I’m out there,” his eyes fastened on the opposite wall as though he could pierce it with a glance. “Or I’m nowhere at all.”

In the tender glow of their sparse light Jaskier seemed near otherworldly, unreachable as though the great moor lay between them in its entirety, and yet Geralt had wanted nothing more in that moment than to cross it, would’ve travelled every wretched wasteland on the Continent just to feel the angle of that cheekbone underneath his own fingers, to know the curve of that lip for himself.

He did.

---

“I expect I’ll hear no more of you.”

The storm had abated and the sky cleared enough for a moon just past full to peer through. Jaskier sauntered ahead of him, shiver-thin shirt billowing slightly in the lingering breeze, looking as white and luminous in the cold light as the heads of cottongrass below.

“If you do, will you come back?” The weight of the implication did little to temper the spark of mischief in the eyes that turned on him, as deep and as blue and bright as the heather-framed pools filled by rain, now still as mirrors and gleaming through wisps of fog. Slender fingers not missing a note where they found and plucked the strings underneath them.

Geralt felt more than formed the fond upturn of his lips. “I might come back if I don’t.”

The laugh it earned him rang pure and true as silver, chiming like bells it would carry for miles if the wind blew right.

[thelovelygods]

As a teenager, Sylvia Plath vividly understood the extent to which her body steered her. "If I didn't have sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time," she wrote in her journal in 1950. Ten days before her death, she had come to believe that "fixed stars/Govern a life." It turns out that Plath was probably right -- more right than she could have possibly known -- about her biology and her fate. But when Plath's journals were first published in 1982, what was most obvious about her was the supercharged nature of her emotions. Whatever causal agents may have been governing Plath's life, they were blown back by the force of her personality.

As unmistakable as were Plath's volatile emotions in the 1982 journals, the heavy editing of the text necessarily made it hard to discern the patterns to her moods. Even so, there did seem to be a detectable pattern, and it did not seem then, nor had it seemed to the people closest to her during the last years of her life, to be merely a function of temperament. In the weeks before her suicide, Plath's physician, John Horder, noted that Plath was not simply deeply depressed, but that her condition extended beyond the boundaries of a psychological explanation.

In a letter years later to Plath biographer Linda Wagner-Martin, Horder stated: "I believe ... she was liable to large swings of mood, but so excessive that a doctor inevitably thinks in terms of brain chemistry. This does not reduce the concurrent importance of marriage break-up or of exhaustion after a period of unusual artistic activity or from recent infectious illness or from the difficulties of being a responsible, practical mother. The full explanation has to take all these factors into account and more. But the irrational compulsion to end it makes me think that the body was governing the mind."

For at least the past 10 years it has been generally assumed that Plath fit the schema of manic-depressive illness, with alternating periods of depression and more productive and elated episodes.

The hypothesis that Plath suffered from a bipolar disorder is persuasive. But in late 1990, another, even more intriguing medical theory emerged. Using the evidence of Plath's letters, poems, biographies and the 1982 journals, a graduate student named Catherine Thompson proposed that Plath had suffered from a severe case of premenstrual syndrome. In "Dawn Poems in Blood: Sylvia Plath and PMS," which appeared in the literary magazine Triquarterly, Thompson theorized that Plath's mood volatility, depressions, many chronic ailments and ultimately her suicide were traceable to the poet's menstrual cycles and the hormonal disruptions caused by PMS.

Thompson pointed out that Plath unwittingly recorded experiencing on a cyclical basis all of the major symptoms of PMS, as well as many others, including low impulse control, extreme anger, unexplained crying and hypersensitivity. She also suffered many of the physical symptoms associated with PMS, notably extreme fatigue, insomnia and hypersomnia, extreme changes in appetite, itchiness, conjunctivitis, ringing in the ears, feelings of suffocation, headaches, heart palpitations and the exacerbation of chronic conditions such as her famous sinus infections.

Thompson compared Plath's reported mood and health changes with the journals, letters and biographies and found that her symptoms seemed to appear and disappear abruptly on a fairly regular schedule, with clusters of physical symptoms and depressive affect followed by dramatic changes in outlook and overall physical health. Those patterns can be directly linked to the dates of Plath's actual menses, particularly in 1958 and 1959, when she most habitually noted her cycles. Judging from the pattern of Plath's depression and health in late 1952 and in 1953 until her Aug. 24 suicide attempt, Thompson posited that "it seems reasonable to conclude that this suicide attempt was directly precipitated by hormonal disruption during the late luteal phase of her menstrual cycle and secondarily by her loss of self-esteem at being unable to control her depression."

Thompson showed that a well-known journal entry from Feb. 20, 1956, is clearly traceable to Plath's menses, to which she refers directly a few days later. The journal fragment takes on new meaning in light of having been written during the physically and emotionally debilitating luteal phase of Plath's cycle: "Dear Doctor: I am feeling very sick. I have a heart in my stomach which throbs and mocks. Suddenly the simple rituals of the day balk like a stubborn horse. It gets impossible to look people in the eye: corruption may break out again? Who knows. Small talk becomes desperate. Hostility grows, too. That dangerous, deadly venom which comes from a sick heart. Sick mind, too." On Feb. 24, the same day she notes in her journal that she has a sinus cold and "atop of this, through the hellish sleepless night of feverish sniffling and tossing, the macabre cramps of my period (curse, yes) and the wet, messy spurt of blood," Plath wrote a letter to her mother blaming her dark mood on her physical health: "I am so sick of having a cold every month; like this time, it generally combines with my period."

By the fall of 1962, the poems (which Plath carefully dated as they were completed) seem to follow a pattern of metaphorical renewals and optimistic transformations for roughly two to three weeks of artistic production, then jagged, seething accusations and aggression for a couple of weeks.

Thompson's PMS theory has been largely ignored by Plath scholars. But it immediately gained two important supporters: Anne Stevenson, Plath's controversial biographer, and Olwyn Hughes, Plath's former sister-in-law, whose letters were published in a subsequent issue of Triquarterly. Though oddly defensive in tone, Stevenson's letter does commend Thompson for her "invaluable contribution to Plath scholarship ... Certainly no future study of Plath will be able to ignore the probable effects of premenstrual syndrome on her imagination and behavior." And it states that she wishes she had been able to utilize Thompson's insights in the writing of her own work on Plath.

A letter from Olwyn Hughes also congratulates Thompson for her scholarship, but unlike Stevenson, Hughes practically stumbles over herself in amazement at the PMS theory. Hughes, who was quoted in Janet Malcolm's book "The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes" as characterizing her long-dead sister-in-law as "pretty straight poison," wrote to Thompson: "It is quite a shock to digest all this -- after thinking for so long that Sylvia's subconscious mind was her prison, and to suddenly realise it may well have been in part, or wholly, her body. But it certainly tallies with Ted's mentions -- he has always felt some chemical imbalance was involved."

Hughes further points out that Ted Hughes had spoken of Plath's ravenous appetite just prior to her periods and asks, "I wonder if that is a known characteristic of PMS?" (According to the PMS literature, it is.) But most tellingly, Olwyn Hughes explains that "one of the reasons I was so bowled over by your piece is that Sylvia's daughter, very like her physically, suffers quite badly from PMS but is, in these enlightened times, aware of it and treats it."

Dr. Glenn Bair, one of the leading experts on PMS treatment and research in the United States, confirmed to Salon that PMS is typically passed from mother to daughter. In a rare interview about her parents, Frieda Hughes told the Manchester Guardian in 1997 that after the "collapse of her health," including extreme fatigue and gynecological problems, she underwent a hysterectomy in her 30s.

After a careful review of Thompson's article, of a seven-page monthly breakdown of Plath's symptoms for 1958 through 1959 and of the documented evidence of Plath's pregnancies and postpartum symptoms of 1959 through 1962, Bair said, "If you hack through the PMDD criteria, I think that you'll find that she fits the PMDD profile."