Goddess of Doggerland – 3961 words

by F.K. Carlson 

     Two shirtless men in leather breeches crossed the velvet moss of the meadow. Untamed as the men’s beards, blooming wildflowers played host to butterflies and bees that flitted from one to the next. Spiraling blue tattoos covered the bodies of the men, ancient symbols of protection and power. One of them carefully balanced a steaming wooden bowl in his hands. The other gripped a small handaxe. He steeled himself to use it, should the need arise. Ancient conifers, towering like shadowy guardians over the edge of the field, groaned and swayed in the wind. 

     Overgrown by multicolored flowers, an earthen mound stood in the center of the clearing. A foul odor emanated from the entrance to the ancient barrow, mingling with the fragrant bloom of wildflowers. Two narrow stones as tall as the men formed a frame set into the mound. A rough-hewn door hung from a crude set of bronze hinges that creaked in the breeze. The men exchanged nervous words and laughed. Their eyes darted about. They hung back, hesitant to face what lie in wait on the other side. Steadying his shaky hands, the man with the bowl spoke firmly, and the man with the axe nodded. He removed the pin from a rudimentary hand-crafted hasp. It was a small piece of wood secured to the face of the door with a rusted spike. It kept the door shut against the intrusion of scavenging animals – and prevented what was inside from getting out.  

    Bowl full of stew in his hands, the man waited while the axe man eased the door open. The hinges groaned, and the opening cast a slim line of vertical light on the interior of the barrow. Widening, the crack of light revealed the face of a child. A girl of about six, the source of the stench. A girl with matted hair, wearing tattered, filthy clothes. A trail of residual mucus was crusted under her nose, and her chapped lips were peeling. Blue as the summer sky above, her unblinking eyes stared at the men. 

     Heart pounding, the man lowered his eyes to avoid her gaze and held the bowl out for the girl. Like a coiled serpent, she snatched the bowl from his hand before he knew it. One filthy hand shoveled the gruel into her mouth. Light receded as the door closed on the greedy sounds of grunting and slurping.  

     The men waited. They heard shuffling as the bowl clattered against the door, then fell to the ground. The doors rattled against the hasp. She growled. 

     Again, the doors opened, throwing light on the girl’s face. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. The man reached for the empty bowl. She leapt forward, grabbing the man by the wrist as a torrent of gibberish flowed from her mouth. No words. Nothing that made sense. Vowel sounds followed by a scream that struck like a spear through his head. Her rageful noises flooded his mind, until he heard nothing else. He finally met her gaze and felt the loss of himself within.  

     The man with the axe broke the girl’s grip on his friend’s arm. He put his shoulder against the door and shoved with all his might. Wailing and thrashing against the door, she could not stop him from slamming it shut.  

     The light is gone.  

     Reeling from the girl’s keening, the two men outside the tomb covered their ears. Chest contorting, the bowl carrier vomited. Undeterred by the free flow of blood from his nose, the other man planted his axe in the skull of his friend. Suddenly rigid, the bowl man twitched helplessly. Working the axe handle back and forth, the man freed the axe from the other’s head. Striking again, and again, he hacked the other man until the twitching stopped. His mind held no thoughts recognizable as his own. All he knew was red. Unquenchable rage. Pain, as if his brain were tearing itself in two. White hot knives stabbing behind his eyes. An undefinable urge to kill.       

     Frothing at the mouth, he stumbled and ran. Spittle mixed with the blood leaking from his nose, and the girl’s screaming faded behind him. 

     The axe man waded into the central part of a settlement composed of simple plank houses with thatched roofs. Screaming, a woman carrying a basket full of berries and yams stumbled and coughed up blood. Withdrawing the axe from her back, the man hacked at her body. Cries erupted throughout as the villagers took note of the maniac killer. Some fled. Others retrieved their own primitive weapons and charged the murderer. 

     Foam spilled freely from the man’s mouth as he battled his friends and family. Two other men pierced his side with spears. His axe fell to the dirt. As the haze cleared from his eyes, he mumbled something in an old language and collapsed, dead.  

*** 

     Sitting around a large communal fire, a woman rolled up four small pieces of beeswax between her fingers. Finished, she handed two of them each to a pair of men seated nearby. They put the beeswax in their ears. One of them grabbed a wooden ladle from next to where a large cauldron hung over the fire. He scooped stew from the cauldron into a wooden bowl. Looking at the other man, he nodded. Ready as they could ever be, they headed for the barrow to feed the goddess.  

     It was pitch black, and there was no sound. A void of sensory perception. Nothingness only, punctuated sometimes by the howl of wind, and the creaking of the door’s hinges. Once daily men brought food. She had no memory of anything other than darkness. Her thoughts formed without words, as she had never learned the language of her people. Her only thoughts were feelings. Urges and impulses. Fear. Hunger. Rage. In the darkness, it was all she knew.  

     A slim line of vertical light illuminated a small part of the young girl’s face, she was older than before. Accompanied by the squeal of the hinge, the widening light revealed the still filthy girl was now an adolescent of fifteen or so winters.  

     Keeping his spear leveled at the girl, a man opened the door fully. A memory came to her then – the spear. She knew, remembered hurt at the end of it. She rubbed her forearm, where an angry pink scar ran the length from wrist to elbow. An etched in flesh reminder of what this man and spear would do. The other man held the bowl out for her. 

     Leaping forward, she snatched the dish from the man. Grunting all the while, she devoured the food with animalistic fervor, scooping it from the bowl with one dirty hand. Most of it went into her mouth. Some of it fell on the rags that passed as her clothing. Her gaze fell on the men. She licked her hand clean as the light disappeared, leaving her in the cold, familiar darkness that was her entire existence.  

*** 

     Two men put beeswax plugs in their ears.  

     A crack of light revealed the girl’s face. Grown now, with twenty winters behind her, her face still a mess, her hair irreparably matted up and dirt ridden. Her teeth are rotting. She was calm as the door swung open. Two men rushed into the barrow chamber with the woman. She thrashed and wailed. One man grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms against her side. Her legs kicked like she was running. The other man braced against the kicks and stuffed a bundle of rags deep into her mouth.  

     They gagged and muzzled her, cramming more rags in her mouth until her resonating wails were stuck in her throat. They tied her to a beam. With one end of the beam on each man’s shoulder, they carried the goddess from the mound. Unprepared for the intensity of the light, she winced at the sun’s brilliance. Though her eyes were closed tight, it was still bright enough to fill her vision with red. More memories came to her now. Scenes of festivities. With no concept of time, she didn’t know the occasions. Only that people gathered around her. They ate and sang and spoke gibberish at her.  

     She is tied to a post near the center of the village while the women prepare her for the Midsummer’s Day festival. Several women bustled about, cleaning the accumulated filth from her as best they could. They wove wildflowers into her knotted hair. They dressed her in a clean blue dress. Her eyes seethed. A permanent scowl graced her brow under a crown of flowers. Her efforts to scream through the gags did nothing, and all the women working near her had beeswax plugs in their ears. She wanted to leave. To run. But where? Anywhere. She knew only the darkness and yearned to return to it. Out here was only terror. Growling behind her gag, she fought against the bindings. Blood dripped down her raw wrists to her hands. It was no help. One of the young maidens in white fastened an iron triskele necklace around the feral woman’s neck. The maiden said something to her, but she didn’t know words. It felt kind. The goddess didn’t know love. The girl quickly turned away and left, as the wild menace behind the goddess’s eyes was too terrifying to face. 

     That night the central fire raged high. Torches lit the village. A feast laid out on tables for the festival. Men drummed a hypnotic rhythm. Unable to resist the pulse of the drumbeat, women danced. Their bodies translated the music, fluid in movement, alluring in motion. A bard sang. Stories of the people and their ancestors down across the ages. Of mighty hunters and triumphant hunts. Of lustful lovers and boastful liars. Everyone was drinking. The aromatic scent of venison filled the air. Two roast bucks set atop the long tables; their many-pointed crowns of antlers still intact. Folk at the table were eating, drinking, chattering in their long-forgotten language. They sang songs passed down for generations, the memories of their people, forever lost in time.  

     The barrow woman was lashed to a post at the head of the table. The festival was in her honor. Everyone in the village knew it was because of her that both the harvest, and the hunt were bountiful, year after year. And every Solstice, every equinox, and every mid-point between them, they brought their goddess out of her barrow and feasted to her continued benevolence. Everyone in the village knew the Goddess was powerful. Wrathful, angry, and vengeful, her voice brought ruin upon any that heard it. They had learned to gag her, and to keep beeswax in their ears when working near her. Even so, sometimes unlucky folk would slip up. To hear the voice of the Goddess was to perish in madness. To violently berserk until put down by others. It was risky, feeding her, trotting her out for the eight yearly holidays. Despite their fear, the villagers felt a sense of reverence for her power, they believed risking her wrath was a necessary sacrifice for their prosperity.  

     As the festival continued into the year’s shortest night, a young couple approached the post where she was bound. They chattered at her in their unknown language. They laughed. They bowed low. They kissed each other, quick first, then long and sensuous. The kiss of two young lovers completely consumed by the presence of the other.  

     Behind their goddess, her hands and wrists caked with blood; she finally worked the knotted rope loose enough to slip one hand free.  

     She tore the rags from her mouth and grunted entreating sounds at the couple, her eyes pleading. Struck dumb by her suggestion, the young couple had no choice. They untied her legs. Freed, she hopped down from her perch at the base of the post. Her teeth clenched; her brow creased. Thunder pealed above. She harnessed all her wrath and hate into one ear-shattering wail.  

     Everyone in the village covered their ears to block the painful sound of their shrieking goddess. Assured of her gagged silence, only a few kept earplugs in. Everyone within earshot succumbed to her terrible voice. Some fell over. Others turned and attacked anyone nearby. Inside of a moment, the festival became a bloodbath. Driven insane, the folk knew only the drive to kill. Two burly men with plugged ears ran to the post. The young couple intercepted them, trying to defend their goddess. The couple was swiftly beaten back by the warriors.  

     The goddess roared at the men. The force of her psychic blast hurtled them through the air. Her feet lifted off the ground. She held her arms out and levitated as chaos intensified around her. She hovered over to one of the tables with a buck on it. Landing softly, she buried her face in the roast deer and tore off a hunk of meat with her teeth. Each hand filled with venison, blood and juice dripping down her chin, she set about sating her feral and starving hunger. 

     No longer afraid, she was oblivious to the bedlam. Hunger drove all other sensations fleeing before it. She tore a leg from a roast bird and devoured the meat. She tossed the bare bone behind her and snatched up more meat as the villagers slaughtered one another. Having eaten her fill, the goddess of the people wandered into the darkness, away from the village, leaving the sounds of the screaming and dying behind her.  

*** 

     Ten long winters passed since the goddess disappeared. The people were fallen on tough times since. Summers kept getting longer. Once lush valleys lay parched beneath an unforgiving sun. Crops withered as the growing seasons changed. Migratory patterns of deer and other prey were in flux. Word traveled far and wide of floods in the lowlands, and the wall of ice retreated further north every summer. Elders told Jurgen and the younger hunters of fearsome beasts that required a whole tribe to bring down. Beasts with tusks long as a man was tall. Beasts covered with thick fur, and a whip-like appendage they would use to grab and throw a person. In times of plenty, the days of yore, the clan hunted such beasts by driving them off a cliff edge. Stored in the ice of the glaciers, the meat would feed the clan for months. No one had seen one of the creatures since before the goddess left.  

     In the years since the goddess’s disappearance, more people were moving west and south over time. Driven by changing weather and rising waters, they were forced to abandon long-established settlements. Jurgen’s people met entire migrating clans traveling past the village. They told tales of rising waters. A day when the ground shook, and a giant wave came over the land, washing whole tribes away with it. Floods surged over riverbanks, swallowing the land and never receding. Some of the elders said that the waters were always rising, and that their people had been migrating to higher elevations as long as could be remembered. 

     Jurgen was not yet a man on that fateful night the goddess escaped. He and his betrothed avoided the massacre because they’d been swimming in a creek near the village. Now grown and married, Jurgen was a powerful warrior, and a skilled hunter. He was emerging as a clear favorite to shoulder the mantle of leadership. 

     When the first excursions to retrieve the goddess returned empty handed, they prayed for the best, to her speedy recovery and return. At least once a year, folks tried to track her down, but never with any luck. Without their goddess, the people despaired that conditions would only worsen. For a time, they tried replacing her with others, but it never worked. They went as far as sacrificing some of the children. Still nothing. Just when the clan reached a point of rebellion against the cost of their sons and daughters, an elder hunter returned with word of footprints and other evidence that someone was living alone, high up in the hills near the Gray Mountain.  

     Jurgen would lead the hunt.  

     A band of five set out for the Gray Mountain. A seasoned guide, Jurgen’s senior by two generations, one of Jurgen’s peers, and two young hunters. It was the first of such expeditions for the younglings at the dawn of manhood. Eirik, the youngest, was sometimes too eager to prove himself.  

     His once prosperous clan lay under a spell of despair. Jurgen knew his people would need to move soon. There was less food every year. He did not believe they would fare well without the goddess at the front of their caravan. Jurgen’s parents were among the dead, ten years ago at the Midsummer festival. There had never been time to grieve for them. Survivors of every age had to step up and fill the void left by the dead.  

     His grief faded long ago, the fiery hunger for vengeance replaced by more pragmatic concerns. The clan was doomed without her. If these youngsters were to reach adulthood – if Jurgen and his beloved were to become elders and meet their children’s children, they needed to find the goddess. They needed to bring her back. 

     Jurgen’s party ascended the foothills of the Gray Mountain. The guide who had spotted the tell-tale signs of someone dwelling here led them to the tracks. They found spiral symbols carved into trees, and a long-dead squirrel hanging from a simple snare. They climbed beyond the tree line, where the trees gave way to shrubs. The shrubs then gave way to snow-covered rock. Snow crunched underfoot, and the going slowed. Frigid wind bit their faces. Over ridge and across stream, the guide took them at last to a cave in the side of the mountain. 

     Jurgen would take the young folk into the cave. The guide and the other man would wait outside. They all took beeswax from a pouch and rolled it up, pressing the lumps into their ears. Each of them tied a length of fabric around their heads, adding more protection for their ears. They all remembered the effect the goddess’s voice had on people.  

     Peering into the depths of the cave, Jurgen crept forward. Fear and hope filled his heart as he thought of the goddess. Flickering light cast by his torch threw shifting shadows on the jagged rock walls. The light revealed symbols, some black, made with charcoal, others the dark red of dried blood. Spirals and wheels that Jurgen’s clan associated with cycles of life and death. Humanoid figures, the sun, and game animals that seemed to tell a fragmented tale of creation and destruction. If there was a story here, Jurgen could not decipher it. These were not the carefully crafted artworks of one of the learned bards. No, this was the work of his goddess. He knew it.  

     The young folk behind him chattered in hushed tones, eyes wide with fear as they gazed on her works. A portal to the raw creativity of her undeveloped mind, none of it made sense. How could they know the goddess’s heart? She was an incarnate representation of primal creation forces; how could mere men know what realms her fractured mind walked? They knew only that her presence once brought bountiful harvests and joyous seasonal transitions, but without her, starvation stalked them. 

     At the bottom of a steep downturn, they discovered a gently flowing stream. Back up the other side, a broad shelf. Bones and carcasses littered the area. Damp bundles of leaves and straw were scattered about. The smell of death assaulted them.  

     There she was. At the far end of the flat area, sitting cross-legged. Her hands rested on her knees, and her head slumped forward. Matted hair obscured her face. Jurgen signaled the hunters to be silent. He readied his spear as they fanned out behind him.  

     Slowly, they advanced. Jurgen’s footfalls were a whisper on the cave floor. He worried his breathing was too loud and would wake her. He paused, listening intently for any movement. His heart thundered in his chest, and his grip on the spear pulsed with every beat. Jurgen’s mind raced with memories of his parents and the devastation left by the goddess’s punishment. He held his breath as he took another step, heartbeat pounding in his ears like a drum. The weight of his clan’s future pressed down on him as he inched closer. At last, he was upon her. She had not stirred.  

     Jurgen stopped. His breath turned to mist in front of his face. Looking back at the young folk, he nodded. They were ready. Each of them was ready to kill the others if her voice infected any of them.  

     She was in a terrible state. Her skirt was nothing more than rags hung around her waist. Her frail upper body bare of clothes revealed the sunken lines of her ribs across her chest. 

     Jurgen swept the hair out of her face with his spear, revealing a gaunt visage with lips drawn back. Her eyes were closed. He tapped her shoulder with the spear. Frozen solid. 

     She was dead.  

     Laying his spear on the ground, he crept closer. To be sure, he grabbed her wrist to find a pulse. Her skin was freezing. There was no pulse. Their goddess was dead.  

     There was nothing to do but bring her back to the clan. Removing the headband around his ears, he signaled to the young men to do the same. They lifted her over Jurgen’s shoulder. Scarcely more than skin and bones, she weighed less than a child.  

*** 

     Generations passed, and memory of Jurgen’s quest to rescue the goddess became legend, retold by bards in song long after his passing. The people took great care to preserve her husk and brought her out at every solstice and equinox. The iron triskele necklace still draped her desiccated neck. It may have survived to the modern day, a neolithic artifact made by people with no writing. The breadth of their lore and knowledge was woven into song and story, passed down by the forerunners of the druids. Though traces still lingered in the Bronze Age cultures of Northern Europe, most of it was lost, disappeared as the warming seas washed above the plains to become the North Sea. Few traces remain to remind the world they ever existed, but the people of what is now called Doggerland fled and mingled with other peoples. Their existence is lost to the mists of prehistory. Not even a memory, they exist only in our imagination.  

     One Midsummer’s Day, long after Jurgen returned with her body, after the clan had fled Doggerland for the banks of what would eventually become Scotland, the tribe brought their goddess out to preside over the festivities.  

     The dried leather of her lips was drawn back, baring her teeth. The skin of her body was as a sleeve holding her bones together. Tied to a high post, her now ancient corpse overlooked the gathering of the clan. Fermented grain beverages flowed freely. Song and dance peppered the green grass. Lovers frolicked beneath the diffuse glow of the maple canopy. As the sun set at the end of the longest day of the year, it glinted off the goddess’s triskele necklace.  

     A maiden in white with flowers in her hair approached the goddess with an offering of fruit and a cut of meat. The goddess’s eyelids fluttered and opened, revealing eyes as blue as a Midsummer sky.  

     The goddess opened her mouth and screamed. 

* * * 

© 2025 Frank Kenneth Carlson IV “F.K. Carlson”