The Wedding Processional

It was early afternoon, around the time of day when Psyche used to walk from the palace to the village and back. This afternoon, though, she would walk through the village and into the unknown.

Clouds more dense than anyone had ever seen blocked Sun's light, submerging the Kingdom-by-the-Great-Blue-Sea into a gravelike gloom.

Outside the palace, people lined both sides of the road. They held torches so they could see Psyche for the last time. No one spoke. There was the occasional sound of weeping and sniffling, and then the silence returned as thick and heavy as unshed tears.

This reminds me of my weddings. At all six of them, the bride cried; her mother and her sisters cried; and, in fact, every woman there cried. The first couple of times, I got mad because I thought they were crying because the bride was marrying me! But I eventually understood; marriage is different for women. No matter how much a woman loves the man she is going to marry, a part of her is terrified. For a woman, marriage is a journey into the dark unknown, and she doesn't know what might be hiding in the darkness. Maybe more couples would stay together if men accompanied their brides into the unknown and, once there, began again.

Psyche sat on a stone bench in the palace garden. "Is this what it is like to die?" she wondered. She was leaving everything and everyone she had ever known and would never see them again.
She was glad the very day looked as if it wanted to weep. It would have been cruel had the sun been pouring down its warm light when she felt as cold as the moon.

Psyche heard the gates to the garden open. She stood up and turned. Her parents were walking toward her. She embraced first her mother, then her father. The three stood in silence, the parents gazing into their daughter's face, and she into theirs. They had tears in their eyes, but no one cried.

Finally, the king said, "It is time."

They left the garden and walked in silence along a corridor until they came to the great doors of the palace. The three paused. They wanted to say something, but their minds were too numbed for even a letter of the alphabet to say its name to them.

Finally, Psyche looked at the guards, nodded once, and they slowly pulled open the heavy doors. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and walked out without a backward glance at the palace. In front of her went four of the king's soldiers, each holding a torch high. The king and queen walked behind Psyche, guarded on each side by a soldier with a torch. Behind them came four more soldiers also holding torches.

Psyche walked slowly, her head held high. She looked into the faces of the people lining the road something she had never done—and saw sorrow on every face.

"We love you, Psyche!" a voice called out.

Then came another and another. "We love you, Psyche! We love you!"

Eventually everyone called out softly, as if they were singers in a chorus, "We love you, Psyche! We love you."

Now, when it was too late, Psyche regretted having been closed to the love the people had offered.

The sad processional made its mournful way through the village, and there, on the other side, a heavy and dark silence covered them. Ahead was the forest path that would bring Psyche to the top of the mountain, where her husband waited.

Psyche stopped, then turned to her parents.

"You do not need to go up the mountain with me," she told them.

"But—"

"It is better if I go by myself."

"We don't want you to go up there alone," her mother interjected in a trembling voice.

"Thank you, Mother, but even if you were with me, I would still be alone. Each of us must meet our fate as if we no longer have a mother or father, brother or sister."

Psyche hugged and kissed her parents. Then, taking a torch from one of the soldiers, she started up the path.

Chapter end