The Horned Women

On a raw night when the wind fussed at the thatch and the fire burned low, a knock came at the door—soft, then not soft. The woman of the house, alone with her sleeping children while her husband drove cattle to fair, set down her spinning and listened.

“Who’s there?”

“Friends,” came a voice like wool scraping stone. “Let us in to warm ourselves.”

Her mother had taught her to be kind. The key turned. The door opened to twelve women in grey cloaks, their hair lank with weather—and each with a small horn, like a kid’s horn, at the center of her brow.

They sat in a ring and asked for work: “Give us your spinning,” they said. “Give us your meal to grind. Give us your bread to knead.” Their hands flew; the wheel hummed; the quern sang; the dough rose and fell like uneasy sleep. But the air grew thick and sour. Milk curdled in the pail at a glance. The baby whimpered though no one touched the cradle.

“Your hearth is a fine one,” said the tallest. “We’ll make it ours for the night.”

Fear is a poor counsellor, but it can send a woman running in the right direction. The housewife slipped out to the priest’s cottage, her shawl over her hair, her feet bare in the dark. The priest was at prayers but not too deep to hear a knock that braided fear and courtesy.

“Put this on your door,” he said, and handed her a bit of blessed chalk. “Say no name but one Name. Set no table for the uninvited.”

When she returned, the twelve were counting in whispers, their voices like moths. She drew a cross on the doorpost and spoke the old prayer that is less a magic than a remembering. The counting faltered. One by one the women looked up and their eyes slid away from the chalk as a hand slides from a hot iron.

“This house is not for you,” the woman said, and found that her voice had iron in it after all.

The tallest smiled with a mouth that did not learn the trick from kindness. “Then give us a token to carry on our way—a drop of your blood, a clip of your hair, a word of your true name.”

“Take a coal,” said the housewife, and dropped a dead ember into the tallest woman’s palm. The grey cloak hissed where the ember lay. The twelve rose in one motion like a flock taking air.

“Not tonight,” they murmured, and slipped through the door as if the dark had seams.

In the morning the bread was heavy as sin and fit only for the pigs. The milk righted itself; the baby smiled in his sleep and kept smiling. The woman swept the floor and then, because protection is both a mark and a habit, she chalked the lintel anew and pinned a sprig of rowan by the latch.

The horned women were seen that winter in other places where the chalk had worn thin, but not in that cottage again. And if the housewife walked a little taller after, who could blame her? There are nights when the world pushes in at your door. It is a brave and ordinary thing to push back.