Wyrd Woman is an audio drama from Broads and Books Productions. The show is written, performed and produced by Amy Lee Lillard.
Music comes from the Ghosts albums by Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
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Episode Transcript: Night 8
Intro voiceover:
Wyrd Woman is intended for an adult audience, and discusses mental health, history, and other tough topics. Take care when listening.
Music*:
01 Ghosts I, Nine Inch Nails
Sound:
Record button on Voice Notes
Woman:
Night’s almost here. It’s night 8.
It’s almost – tomorrow is the first day of Fall. The equinox.
I’ve been waiting all day, waiting for the sun to go down, or at least the gray clouds to turn black.
They always came at night. The women. Night time was their time.
First with dreams, then without.
I’m waiting, and hoping, they come.
And her. The new One.
She was there for just a moment last night, and then she disappeared.
But that was ok. She was there, and I saw here.
So I know she’ll be back. And the others too.
I’m not alone.
So I’ll wait. Night will be here soon, and one of them will be here too.
During the day today I realized how truly scared and freaked out I was yesterday. I was keeping it at bay a little. But I was… I was getting to that place. Of seeing no way out.
I’ve been there so many times before. Where I hurt so much. And the world is so scary. And there’s no clear path forward.
I’d been able to keep that at bay a while, lost in the adrenaline of moving out here, of taking action.
But when the women disappeared, oof.
I’m here. I got past it. For now, and that’s all that matters.
Major is at the window and the door again. He’s more and more frantic. Like he knows something, or his longing is just… too much.
She looked old. Not her body, not herself. I mean, from a very old time. Far older than even the Old One from the 1500s.
She spoke… I think it’s called Old Norse now? She smelled like the sea, and her body was strong and tough, and her hands, they still had a bit of blood from – I think an animal sacrifice?
She had markings, like old forms of tattoos. There was something, like, fantastical about her. A Lord of the Rings vibe. But also something very real. Like, grounded in the earth, and the woods, and… yeah.
The stars are bright out here. Less light pollution. Maybe that lends itself to that idea. A time before lights, before we stopped looking up.
I feel it.
Music: Original One theme (22 Ghosts III, Nine Inch Nails)
Someone is coming.
Original One:
So many of you. So many maids and crones, facing destruction. As unto me.
I knew not what I would do, when I made the sacrifice. I knew not how many, how much I would see.
I knew not how truly connected we are.
Woman:
You, you’re, wow, you’re from Viking times. I see it. I know it. You – were taken from home in the Norse lands to, um, what’s now England, I think.
Original One:
Our men, our raiders, kept returning with new stories, new gods. They must convert to the Christ religion to visit the trading posts, so they did. Some in name, some in meaning.
I saw the destruction that was to come. The way this law of Christ would crush our ways.
And when I voyaged to Angle-land with the war chief who claimed me, I found the crushing under way.
Woman:
I see it. The way you saw it. The ruined farms, the burned-out keeps, the… the desolation. The path of the raiders, and the pride of the Anglo-Saxons, and the fierceness of the Welsh…
And the monks circling, trying to curry favor, to convert all of you.
And the man, the chieftain… kind in his own way, but still rough, used to war, to taking who and what he wanted.
Original One:
I was not sad. But I felt a fog. Like I was dying, like we all were. Our gods – Freya and Frey, and Odin, and all our land spirits.
And our ways. Our lives.
And … I will admit to haste. To the lick of fire within.
I thought of nothing else but our Norn, the sisters who control the thread of our lives.
And of the heathens here, in this land, with similar ways, hiding in their holes, in their woods, whispering of the strange powers of this earth beneath us. Their own spirits and gods.
I yearned to understand. To look beyond, into the long stretch of wyrd, to see how we may survive.
I made a sacrifice to the gods to see.
But I saw only more destruction.
I saw all of you. And your worlds ending.
Woman:
Oh - oh. You were the start of this.
You’re the … Original One.
Original One:
I struggle to understand what I see, what all of you see. But it is. And that’s all that can be said.
Woman:
Wyrd. You mentioned that, you said that word, but I know in my mind it’s spelled w-y-r-d. I’ve heard that before, but what…
Original One:
That is one reason I cannot understand. You do not see wyrd. You do not think as we do.
I … hear your head, trying to find the word of your time. Fate. Destiny. Yes, but these are incomplete.
We are all now.
We are all on a path.
We all act, and our actions affect others. Those before us, and those after us, all affected by action.
Our life thread is tied to others’.
We are all connected.
Woman:
Yes. But if – wait. It sounds like you’re talking about predestination… but also free will?
Original One:
You think in the Christ way. The way that leads you all to fire.
Wyrd is not an end. It is happening, now.
We have a path, but we can twist and turn on that path.
Our path is not moral. Our path is not punishment or reward.
Our path is not the whim of a jealous god, or a crushing power.
It just is.
Woman:
There really is no changing anything. Is there? There’s really no changing anything.
There’s no, there’s no point.
Fucking hell, I was looking to you, to all of you, for hope. For a reason to keep going.
I mean, what’s the point? What’s the meaning of anything? Why do we keep living in the face of destruction? Why keep living at all?
Original One:
No. You do not understand.
I looked at the path, I saw the Norns’ threads. I see wyrd.
And it is a cruel fate that we all move towards.
But we must not simply let it happen.
We must have the courage to face our fate. Even fight it.
There is no honor in passivity. No honor in giving in.
The point, as you say, is to try. To make a life of action. And to know our actions are all connected. We are connected.
Woman:
I don’t know if I understand.
And – I keep thinking of – you say wyrd, and I know it’s spelled w-y-r-d. But I think of weird. A modern word, maybe. W-e-i-r-d.
There were the Weird Sisters in Macbeth. A trio of witches. Maybe they were based on your Norn.
And they predicted something, and with that prediction, Macbeth made awful choices, and made it happen.
Weird meant, I guess, supernatural. Uncanny. Strange.
And now – I guess it means, maybe, disturbingly different? Because it’s a label, a word used to target.
Original One:
All words become weapons.
Woman:
You were looking for hope, too, when you found a way to look through time.
But then you saw all of us.
You saw me. All of us at the end of something. The ends of our worlds.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry we couldn’t give you hope.
Original One:
Not in the way I expected, perhaps. But I found all of you, connected. By powers that defy the gods of your times.
I found the connections. I found the truth of wyrd.
What path may come for me is what will come. I will face it, I will fight it.
And I know that what I will do will echo, and push you to action.
It will connect us. And those after us.
Woman:
Our world, my world. It’s closing in. The leaders, they’re destroying us. And they’re coming for people like me. In the name of Christ, and capital, and a sort of communal masculinity. They’re trying to be more like the men of your time, taking what they want and destroying everything along the way.
Original One:
Yes. Our ways can be cruel. I am not a whole being in this world. Just a vessel for men to control.
But I fight against that. I refuse to be cowed by it.
Woman:
Look, I’m scared. I don’t know how to fight, not really. I can write, and I can read, and think. But none of that protects me. None of that will protect me.
I thought running would protect me. I don’t think it will.
My … my thread, my wyrd. It’s going to destroy me. Because I’m the type of woman this world wants to destroy.
Original One:
You do fight. You have cried out in anger and defiance, and you have found me. And all of the others.
You fight, and you have been granted vision. You have seen that life is the fight. That life is the same story, told again and again.
The world’s end is always happening, and always will.
You fight, and you create a life that affects others, that encourages others to fight.
Woman:
But come on… there’s so few of us. It’s not enough.
Original One:
We are but one circle. We have found those who we need to find.
There are other circles. Others who connect through the threads, and find the strength to carry on.
Woman:
What now?
Original One:
Tomorrow comes. The end comes. How will you face it?
Woman:
Yeah.
Sound: Record off.
Music: Outro theme (12 Ghosts II, Nine Inch Nails)
Voiceover:
Wyrd Woman is an audio drama from Broads and Books Productions.
The show is written, performed and produced by Amy Lee Lillard.
Music comes from the Ghosts albums by Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
Find full episode notes, transcripts, and show details at wyrdwomanpodcast.com.
If you like what you hear, tell a weird friend.
Thanks for listening.
* All music comes from the Ghosts albums by Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
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