Hoofprints in the Snow

Only a fool could confuse the Devil and the Horned God.
I’ve heard those words countless times from the Witches of my village. Normally, they were said in the context of rebuking the Church’s attempts to demonize our village’s pagan practices. But tonight, they held a different meaning altogether. 
Before me, in light of the Full Moon, in the freshly fallen snow, I saw two sets of hoofprints leading off into the sacred woods where I was to find our village’s Yule Tree. Those woods were under the protection of spirits who served the Great Goddess and Horned God, and to fell any live tree without their blessing was to incur their wrath. One of the sets of hoofprints before me had been laid by the Horned God himself, to lead us to the Yule Tree he had blessed for us to help ensure that we survived the winter and had a bountiful spring. 
The other had been left by the Devil, and they would at best lead me to death and at worst lead me to the wrong tree and trick me into profaning the sacred woods, causing our gods to forsake us for a year and a day. 
“Does the Devil really have nothing better to do?” I muttered with a sad shake of my head, the wooden sled slung across my back suddenly feeling a little heavier. 
Doing my best to focus, I recalled everything I could that the Witches had taught me about the Horned God and the Devil. They were adamant that they didn’t worship the Devil, no matter how fervently the Church said otherwise. The Witches worshipped the Triple Goddess and The Horned God, both deities of life and nature. The Horned God in particular is the god of the wilderness and the hunt, of sacrifice and resurrection. Each year at Samhain he dies to ensure his Goddess’s realm will remain safe and fruitful, descending with The Maiden Goddess Persephone so that she might take her rightful place by her husband’s side as the Queen of the Underworld. On the longest night of the year, The Maiden grants her father a grace so that he may be reborn in the Summerland, so that the days may lengthen once more. 
That was the god our village worshipped. He was not evil, but rather the epitome of what a man should be, to protect and provide for his loved ones even at the cost of his own life, an embodiment of the cycles of nature, how life cannot flourish without sacrifice, without death. In some ways, his daughter was more like the Devil than he was, preferring to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.      
Not that the Underworld was Hell, as the Church understood it, nor was Hades the Devil they so feared. Souls were not sentenced to the Underworld, but simply drawn down to it by the weight of their own sins, just as earthly matter is held down by gravity. It is far from a pleasant place, but neither Cold Hades nor Dread Persephone are there to torture them. Indeed, nearly all hope that exists in that gloomy realm comes from them. 
It was not always clear to the Witches whom the Church was even referring to when they spoke of the Devil. On occasion, it seemed they were in fact speaking of the Horned God, but at other times it appeared they spoke of his antithesis; Moloch. An ancient and powerful demon of uncontested brute strength, which he has no compunction against using to subjugate or mutilate others. He desires only dominion and suffering, and gnaws forever at the taproots of the World Tree where he is imprisoned, in the hopes he will one day destroy all Creation.
But most often, the Church seemed to be speaking of a glorified trickster god whom the Witches could not quite place in their Pantheon. Though he purported to be the second most powerful being in Creation, he was largely hamstrung in using this power, lest he rouse the one being mightier than he from their usual deistic apathy. Thus, he mostly had to rely on cunning and subterfuge to achieve his goals, and seemed to immensely enjoy doing so.
And here he was tonight, trying to stop me from getting a Yule Tree. 
I studied the two sets of hoofprints briefly, but quickly deduced that they were identical in shape and depth. The Horned God, along with the other Elder Kin, had forms that were a reflection of their true identities and nature. As a god of the wild, Cernunnos walked upright like a man but on the legs of a stag, and of course, had a great rack of antlers sprouting from his head. 
The Devil on the other hand was not so limited, and could take on any form he pleased. He was the goat-headed Baphomet when it suited his purposes, a man of wealth and taste at others. The physical dimensions of the hoofprints meant nothing then. 
Instead, I remembered what the Witches had told me, and focused on how the moonlight fell upon each set of tracks. The Moon was of the Great Goddess, and her light would reveal which tracks belonged to her consort. 
In the tracks to my left, the moonlight reflected off the snow with an exaggerated luminance, almost as if they had been sprinkled in diamond dust. The tracks to my right were the opposite, dark and dull as if the Moon itself was trying not to shine on them. They also, I noticed, carried a subtle but distinct smell of brimstone with them. 
That was enough for me to make up my mind. I followed the set of tracks to my left, matching their stride as closely as I could. This was not only to ensure I didn’t lose them, but because it was supposed to offer me some level of protection against the spirits that dwelt within the woods. 
The Devil was still somewhere in those woods too, I had no doubt, and he wasn’t about to give up just because I didn’t fall for his first and easiest trick. 
The winter lack of foliage meant that the forest was not so impenetrably black at night as it otherwise would be, but the bare branches still obscured much of the Moon’s blessed light. Every crunching footstep in the snow, every snapped twig or cracked branch seemed amplified a hundred-fold in the unnatural silence, and the skeletal shadows of the trees robbed the place of any sense of holiness. I took great care never to stray from the trail of hoofprints no matter how bad my visibility got, as getting lost now could prove a fatal mistake.       
Fortunately, the strides between hoofprints were fairly consistent, so whenever I wandered under a thicket of branches dense enough to completely shadow the forest floor, I was able to match my stride easily enough so that I did not stray out of sight when I returned to the moonlight once more. 
It was not until I had strolled into a moonlit glade that I first heard the sound of another creature in those sacred woods. It was the sound of footsteps in the snow, coming up behind me, at a measured and confident pace. It was no beast, for I was sure it was walking upon two legs, and both its pace and lack of stealth suggested I was not being stalked by some woodland predator. Gripping my axe firmly between my hands, I slowly turned around to see what was following me.
At the edge of the glade, standing in both my footprints and those of the Horned God, was the Devil. 
Tonight, he had taken on his Baphomet form, wearing a huge, crimson goat’s head atop a body shrouded in a scarlet cloak. The goat’s great horns, long ears and pointy beard were all positioned to form an inverted pentagram, and the gleam from his golden eyes created a halo around his head to make it an inverted pentacle. He was taller than I was, even though he was stooped as if by age, leaning on a great wooden staff for support. 
“Nice night for a walk,” he commented casually, as though we were but two ordinary men who had happened to cross one another on a hike. When he spoke, it was not mist but smoke which he exuded from his nostrils, a sign of the great infernal heat inside him which could not be quelled by any winter.  
I looked down in despair at the tracks in which the Devil now stood, realizing that I would no longer be able to trust them to lead me back out. 
“You dare to despoil the omens left by another god?” I demanded. While I made no attempt to hide the anger or frustration in my voice, I let my axe fall to my side, knowing there was no point in threatening him.
“I’m the daring sort,” he retorted. “But these woods are not meant for mortals, omens or no. So, I would say that your presence here is far more daring than mine, wouldn’t you?” 
“You are correct that these Winter Woods belong as much to the Summerland as they do the Living Earth, and that they are thus not meant for the living – or the Damned,” I replied with confidence. 
“Well, if neither of us are welcomed here, then we should leave together, eh? I’ll keep you warm and you keep me company. We’ll double our chances of making it out unscathed,” he offered. 
“I know what it is you seek, Baphomet! You wish to make my village your followers to cement the Church’s view that we are heretics and sow further discord between us!” I accused vehemently, spittle flying from my mouth that froze before it hit the ground. 
“Me? Cause trouble? Never!” he said with a sly grin. “I’m trying to save you trouble. You’re here to find a Yule Tree, are you not? Chopping it down and dragging it back on your own is hassle enough, and yet here you risk offending the gods themselves if you fell the wrong one, through no fault of your own, I might add. If you ask me, your gods are every bit as capricious and unreasonable as the Delirious Dreaming Demiurge the Church serves. Do you not weary of their mysterious, ineffable ways and fickle tempers? I, as you may well have heard, prefer contracts with clearly stated terms. Do you really want to break your back and risk your life for a mere token of your gods’ goodwill which they may or may not choose to honour? Come, stand by my side and keep warm. We’ll share drinks by the fire at the tavern and work out a contract, where both our obligations are laid out clear as day. I can do everything your gods do for you and more, and I’m sure we can agree on something you can give in exchange that would make it worth my while.”
“If you do not mean me harm, then why did you not make this offer immediately instead of trying to lead me astray with your hoofprints?” I demanded.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re referring to. I only just came upon you now, and if you came across any footprints I may have left earlier, that was sheer coincidence,” he insisted. As the moon moved across the sky, I saw him take a small step backwards into the shifting shadows to avoid its light. 
“You claim to be more powerful than the Great Goddess, and yet you cannot even endure the light of her Moon?” I scoffed. 
“Moonlight is so cold. I prefer warmer forms of illumination,” he replied, snorting a puff of flame out of his nostrils that was instantly snuffed out when it was touched by the light of the Moon. 
“Be gone, Baphomet! You’ve wasted enough of my time!” I said as I turned my back to him, confident that he would not pursue me through the moonlight. “I’ve got a Yule Tree to find.” 
“Oh, you’ll find it. I’ve no doubt of that!” I heard him shout as I marched along the trail of hoofprints. “But you’ll never find your way back out without my help!” 
He was lying. Going back the same way I came in would have been ideal, but the sky was clear and the Moon was full. So long as I knew where the Moon was in the sky, every shadow was a compass. 
The deeper I trekked into those woods, however, the shadows became fainter and fewer. Everything from the snow to the trees seemed to be absorbing and radiating the hallowed moonlight, until everything was bathed in ambient light that cast no shadows at all. Since I no longer needed to fear losing the Horned God’s footprints in this unnaturally bright light, I forwent their protection and dared to walk just beside them so that I might leave my own distinct footprints to follow out. 
This was perhaps a riskier choice than I first realized, for I soon found myself surrounded by Spectral Satyrs that I’d failed to notice until they were almost right in front of me. Though, it is perhaps more likely that I didn’t so much fail to notice them as I was simply unable to see them until they allowed for it. 
These were servants of the Horned God, humanoid with goat or deer-like attributes, but none possessing a fully inhuman head as Baphomet had. They possessed no physical form and were made only of soft, incorporeal luminescence that left no trace in the snow. There were several of them hiding warily behind the trees nearest to me, but one of them knelt directly in my path, staring at the hoofprints with somber reverence. 
“He’s still following you,” the Satyr bleated, nodding his head behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw Baphomet in the distance. He had drawn his hood over his head as some protection against the now ever-present moonlight. “He’s not welcome here! He would burn this whole wood to ash out of malice if he could! Always he seeks to sow discord between spirits and mortals, to keep our planes separate. He hates your kind, you know; is outraged that souls born of flesh should be counted among either the Blessed or the Damned. He will offer you worldly boons, or physical safety, only so that you may more easily scorn blessings of spirit, and always at a cost that will earn you the ire of the gods!”
“I’m sorry I brought him here,” I apologized, shivering as much from the cold as from the thought of having profaned such a sacred site, however unintentional. “But I’ve come only to claim that which the Horned God has offered us. Our village will not be safe without his protection.” 
“So you care more for the welfare of your village than you do for the sanctity of these woods? The Witches chose poorly when they sent you in here then, and Baphomet chose well when he decided to follow you,” the Satyr accused me, his fellow fawns hissing at me in disdain from behind the trees. “I will not forbid you to go further, even if I had the right to do so. The Yule Tree already belongs to your village, and a gift given cannot be rescinded. But, I ask you to stop here and think before going any further. If the Devil is still following you, are you willing to risk leading him where you’re going?” 
“I am not leading the Devil anywhere. He is merely following the same hoofprints that I am, and would be able to do so just as easily were I not here,” I argued. “Should he choose to profane these woods further beyond his mere presence, my turning back empty-handed would do nothing to abate that. Nothing! I will have offended the Horned God by refusing his gift, bringing a year and a day of misfortune upon my village. Spirit, if I had to choose, beyond all doubt, between saving this forest or my village, I would choose this forest. But as it stands, I can only see my sacrifice being for naught, and I will not betray my village because I happen to be stalked by the Devil against my will. Now please, allow me to complete my task, and both I and the Devil will be out of your woods all the sooner.” 
“Very well, then,” the Satyr said with a succinct nod, moving out of my path and gesturing to the hoofprints that remained before me. “But stay on your guard. Old Baphomet has not endured the moonlight this long only to give up now.” 
I nodded gratefully and continued on my way, still feeling the scornful glares of the other Satyrs as I insisted on defiling their sacred woods even more than I already dared. 
“Not a very welcoming bunch, are they?” Baphomet asked, appearing behind me the instant I was out of the Satyrs’ sight.    
“I imagine they’re more hospitable when the Prince of Hell isn’t trespassing through their woods at his leisure,” I retorted. 
“Well, if this is the welcome they give a prince, imagine how poorly they treat the rest of the riffraff!” he mocked. “I must say, this ‘gift’ you’re so intent on retrieving seems to be a bit of a White Elephant. It involves a rather substantial amount of work and risk to reap the benefits of, wouldn’t you agree? You’re clearly freezing, and if you so much as nick the wrong tree with your axe, you’ll incur the wrath of your gods upon not only yourself but the rest of your village, whose only sin was trusting you. The Satyrs themselves have implored you to abandon this foolish quest for a Yule Tree. You’re putting everyone in needless danger. I must implore you as well. Please, for the sake of all involved, not least of all yourself, come back with me to the tavern; to fire, to ale, to supper and singing, and let us work out a contract. It’s not as if I’m asking you to sell your soul or firstborn for a Yule Tree. I’ll give you the cheapest one I have for some ice water; something you have in abundance this time of year, but is always in high demand where I’m from.” 
“I’ll give you some yellow snow if you’ll leave me be,” I snarled at him. He snorted some more fire, apparently quite offended by my audacity, but I knew he wouldn’t dare to spill blood in these woods.
I pushed onwards through the deepening snow and plunging temperatures for a few moments more before I finally came upon the grove of sacred evergreens at the heart of the woods. Their needles were as close to being blue as green could be, and all as short and soft as fresh buds. Droplets of frozen starlight twinkled upon their snow-laden branches, with sparkling silver pine cones dangling and spinning in the chilly air. Strands of iridescent, imperishable spider’s silk encircled them from top to bottom, and their crowns had been capped by strange dreamcatchers woven by the Satyrs themselves.
“Hmmm. Pre-decorated. How convenient,” Baphomet commented with a mocking nod of approval. “Though it does look like a herd of dear trampled through here not too long ago. Hopefully, it hasn’t muddled those hoofprints you were following too badly.”
Prying my eyes away from the wondrous site of the Yule Trees, I looked down upon the ground to see that it was covered nearly completely with crisscrossing hoofprints. 
“Deer?” I asked incredulously. “Those are goat tracks. Moreover, they are tracks from a single goat, and one with a penchant for walking on its hind legs, at that!”
“Most peculiar,” Baphomet softly bleated, nodding as though he were deeply pondering this mystery. 
Shaking my head in disgust, I set off through the grove to find my Yule Tree. 
“Where are you going?” Baphomet demanded. “You can’t tell which tracks are which now, surely?” 
“I’ve been walking in my god’s hoofprints all night, Devil. You could gauge my eyes out now and I would still be able to feel when I strayed from his path,” I boasted. 
And it was a boast. I was not certain that the feeling of hallowedness I got from standing in those hoofprints was not all in my head, but since they were now too trampled to tell apart from the Devil’s, it was all I had to go on. Only a fool could confuse the Devil with the Horned God, after all, and I would soon find out if I was a fool. 
“Folly!” Baphomet accused as he stomped after me. “Tracking hoofprints was one thing, but now you’re going to gamble your village’s future on blind faith? There are over a hundred trees in this grove! Pick wrong and your gods will forsake you! I’m offering you guaranteed salvation in exchange for ice shavings! You are betraying your village, all but dooming them to death and despair by rejecting me!” 
I didn’t humour him with any sort of response. I followed the trail as faithfully as I could, until at last, I was standing before the tree that had been intended for me to fell. Kneeling on one knee and leaning upon my axe, I first laid out a small seedling to the Satyrs in exchange for the life I would take, and recited a prayer of gratitude before I began to chop.
“Blessed be the Moon Goddess and the Horned God for their watchful benevolence. Blessed be my feet that walk in the path of the Lord and Lady. Blessed be my knees that kneel at their altar of nature. Blessed be my eyes that see the path of spirit. Blessed be my bones that may endure the chill of winter. Blessed be my heart to resist both wicked Men and wicked spirits that may malign my path. Blessed be my village for a year and a day by the grace of the Horned God. May the love of the Lord and Lady forever surround and guide us. So mote it be.”   
I bowed down, touching my forehead to the snow, before standing up again and raising my axe high into the air. 
But before I could swing, its weight suddenly became so great I could no longer hold it upright and it dragged me down with it to the ground.
“Fool!” Baphomet shouted, his voice dropping in pitch as it raised in volume, taking on a timber of preternatural rage. A shroud of smoke grew around him to protect him from the moonlight, a fire within him growing ever brighter as he seemed to slowly increase in size. “If I cannot make you see sense through words, then perhaps a vision of things yet to be is in order!” 
In a waking dream, I saw the entire sacred woods burning, the smoke so thick it was impossible to tell if it was night or day, and I saw my village burning with it. I saw our Witches bound to stakes surrounded by kindling waiting to be lit. Some surviving villagers, seemingly the least able or least willing to fight back, were knelt down on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs, forced to watch the execution. 
Fanatical Knights, clad in shining plate armour that reflected that blaze around them, stood in a menacing vigil as they rested their hands on their hilts, ready to draw their swords again should the need arise. A cloaked inquisitor stood before the crowd, ranting and pontificating about how the Witches were the brides of Satan and were an evil that must be purged from the world, then angrily throwing his torch onto the kindling. 
“You cannot stop this,” Baphomet said to me as I heard the Witches’ agonizing screams as they were engulfed in flames. “Your gods cannot stop this. The Church is too entrenched, too powerful. They decide what counts as heresy, and what is to be done with heretics. You will convert, or you will burn, but either way, your village will be no more. Ironically, the only way to protect yourself from the Church is to embrace me. I will do more than give you bountiful harvests and ward off misfortune; I will bring woe upon any who would bring misfortune upon you. You will have no need to fear hellfire when hellfire is what will protect you from the torches of your adversaries! The inferno which engulfs the forest you hold sacred will instead devour their rat-infested cities! All who oppose us shall be rendered too destitute to raise their armies, too wizened from famine to raise a sword to fight, too wasted from plague to charge into battle! Their suffering will be such that even the most devout will be forced to accept that their God has forsaken them! The very faith that fuels their fervour will be extinguished, and you will have no enemies left to fear! Leave that axe where it lies, forget these garish and inept totems, and invite me into your village to discuss a contract! Only under my protection will you have any hope of remaining –”
I threw a snowball right in his face, and that put an end to his lobbying pretty quickly. He screeched in misery as the refracted moonlight in the snow scorched him ferociously, dropping him to his knees as he frantically tried to swat the offending substance off. 
“I… wish no harm upon anyone, Devil!” I rebuked him, rising to my feet and picking up my axe once more. “If you can only protect us from suffering by bringing suffering down upon others, then we will have none of it! ‘An ye harm none’ is our rede, Devil! And you, it seems, would harm many. That is why we will never serve you!”
Wasting no more time in berating him, I swung my axe into the trunk of the tree. I waited a moment for any sign that I had chosen wrong and had committed some great blasphemy, but no such sign came. I chopped quickly then, felling it to the ground in short order. By the time I was binding it and loading it onto my sled, the Devil had mostly recovered from his injury and was back on his feet, glaring at me with a cold and quiet loathing. 
“Plenty more snowballs where that one came from,” I warned him. 
“Well; it seems like I’ve lost a sale,” he conceded at last, taking a slight bow as he turned to leave. “Perhaps I’ll call again come midsummer. You’ll need music, and I’m awfully fond of the fiddle.” 
And with that, he was gone; vanished into the dark, along with all his hoofprints. The only tracks left were those of the Horned God’s, and my own. Sighing with relief knowing that my trek back would be easier, I began pulling my sled back home, taking pride in the knowledge that it would be safe and blessed for another year. 
And, that I had beaten the Devil in a snowball fight.
Category:Demon/Devil
Category:Gods
Category:Nature
Category:The Vesper's Bell