Daughter of Albion (14 page)

In Ceremony, we are fully in accord with the Mothers.
In Ceremony, we are kin to the world.

W
HEN I OPENED
my eyes I was on the riverbank. My body was bruised and strewn with tendrils of reed. A violent cough brought silt water erupting from my stomach. Exhausted, I rolled onto my back and looked up at the sky, pale and pink, through the canopy of trees. The day was young.

I sat up. I had washed up on the opposite bank from where I had entered the river, yet my robes were beside me. How had this come to be? Had I lost my memory? It had to be so, although Taliesin and the fish hung strikingly clear in my mind. I dressed quickly and walked downstream, looking for a place to cross back. Cookmother would have woken and I shuddered at the reprimand that awaited.

The sun broke into the forest, setting every wet leaf ablaze. Although I was only across-river from a familiar path, there was a strange otherness in the scene around me. All was as it should have been: wind on my skin, lark-song in my ear and grass at my thighs when I squatted to piss. But the colours were more vivid, the shapes more distinct, as though every tree, blossom and stone were proclaiming itself. I quickened my pace, keen to be free of the forest's magic.

Soon I had walked long enough that I should have been at the forest's edge, but I was still deep amid trunks. The shadows were shortening. Cookmother would be sending Bebin out to search.

At the next step I stopped. Once again, I smelled fire and heard faint voices drifting on the smoke. Was it the women? The outcasts? Perhaps they could guide me. Perhaps they would have some knowledge of Taliesin. I left the path and walked toward the voices. This time there was no river between us, no veil of smoke. This time I was on their ground. Cookmother had said they were women of violence. I had to go carefully.

I stopped just short of their clearing and watched from behind a wide beech trunk. Their fire was yet mightier than when I saw it first. The women walked a circle around its edge. Over the roar of the flames I heard their chant, rising in pitch as they completed three rotations and began in the opposite direction. Others worked bellows at the base of the fire, shouting to align their blows. Their arms were muscled and patterned with ash. They did not look like outcasts. They were as gracious as any women I had seen.

As the sun lifted over the trees their chant became louder. The fire surged and its radiant heat warmed my face as I peered from behind the trunk.

One woman stood on a raised platform, calling the chant. She must have been a journeywoman or some weaver of magic, for although her fleshform was only of moderate height she carried a glamour so tall I had to tilt my head to see her face.

Abruptly her magic receded and I saw her in her earthly scale. Her short hair was dark and woolly, her eyes like blades as they searched the forest. She lifted her hand to silence the women. ‘Where are you?' she called into the open space.

My heart thumped as I drew behind the trunk.

‘Show yourself.'

She was speaking to me. I stood frozen. I had no choice but to go forward. I emerged from the trees and walked into the clearing, bowing my head.

‘Name yourself,' the woman called.

‘Ailia,' I said to the ground.

‘Address me by name.'

I looked up. Her eyes were upon me. ‘Forgive me. I do not know your name.'

‘Address me by name!'

I was faint with the fireheat and the fear I would condemn myself by this ignorance. I closed my eyes and drew deep breath. Without warning, there was a name at my lips that had formed itself outside my knowledge. ‘Tara,' I murmured. Then louder so she could hear: ‘Your name is Tara.'

She laughed a warm, throaty laugh and called me forward.

I approached warily, Cookmother's warning ringing in my ears, but when she thrust out her hand to be kissed, I was soothed by the touch of her. ‘It is good to have a visitor,' she said. ‘We were not expecting it. Take some milk, then join the work.'

‘What work is being done?' I asked.

‘We are strengthening the fire,' said Tara. ‘Tonight, if the metals are willing, we pour a sword.'

Smithing was men's work in the town, sacred work, and I had heard only snippets of it from the crafthuts. How the favoured days for sword-pouring were few and how on such days the fire must burn long to trap the daylight, so the power of the sun itself would be captured in the sword. It was not craft for the unschooled and I told Tara I had no learning in it.

‘Baah.' She waved me off. ‘You have come. You will learn.'

One of the women took me to a hut, where she gave me a heavy leather tunic and a long horn of sheep's milk. ‘How did you come?' she asked.

I thought of the fish and my thoughts clouded. ‘I am not sure.'

Worry passed briefly over her face. ‘Come. There will be time after the rite for the figuring of you.' She walked to the door.

‘Please,' I said. ‘Tell me who you are.'

The woman turned, frowning. ‘Are you so unprepared? We are the makers of weapons.'

‘Are you…outcasts?'

‘No,' she said, bewildered. ‘We keep the wisdom of fire.'

They were some class of journeywomen. But of which township? And why had Cookmother told me they were outcasts?

Outside the women had resumed their chant. I stepped into the circle, into the space they made for me. The chant was long and intricate and at first I could not voice even a word of it, but after some hours and many cycles it came as effortlessly as breath.

Thoughts of Cookmother and Cad faded as I circled and sang. These journeywomen admitted me to their ritual without skin. I should have protested it, but I did not.

Daylong we worked the fire. As evening came, I sensed the rising anticipation.

Tara called and two women left the circle, returning with a crucible that they set upon the pulsing embers. They left again and returned with pieces of copper and tin, metals that had not been used for swords in Cad for many summers.

The metals were given to the pot and the singing began in earnest. My voice was hoarse from chanting and my feet ached from the ceaseless walk, but now I saw that the day's work had been only a prelude to the true song. I opened my throat and let the sound flow out of me.

For many hours we walked, sang and waited, through the night, for the metals to shift their form. Each woman worked the bellows, swapping as they tired. I did my turn, resting my legs yet tiring my arms as Tara called us to raise the heat higher and higher.

Finally we saw the first sign of magic: the faintest reddening at the crucible's centre. The metals were changing. All our energies were renewed as the redness lightened to orange. Corners softened, peaks bent and spread in the base of the pot. We hastened our movement, strengthened our song.

‘Watch as you walk!' called Tara. ‘The colour will tell us when it is ready to take form. It must be pale like the sun.'

I did not know how long we continued to circle the bronze. It may have been minutes or hours. The night was lost to the ritual and I could not tear my gaze from the metal to look skyward for the moon's hour.

‘Stop!' commanded Tara. ‘Watch!' We all stared as a single bubble slowly birthed itself in the orange liquid, its languid beauty so miraculous that I began to weep as others were weeping. The sun's blood was in our pot.

‘Now,' shouted Tara. ‘Step back!'

Two women stood in wait with wooden paddles. They wore pads of sheepskin over their arms and chests. For the first time I noticed the earthen mould propped with sticks in a pit beside them. The two women stepped forward and lifted the crucible. A branch near the fire ignited.

‘Quickly!' Tara called.

The bowl was brought to the mould. I feared it would spill. I had heard stories of smiths burned to death in this rite before.

The women positioned the crucible above the mould's small entrance. Others prepared smaller paddles to dam the charcoal that had flown into the bowl.

All of us were chanting loudly.

‘Pour!' screamed Tara and the bowl was tipped. Molten metal ran from the crucible deep into the mould. The women howled in pain but they held firm to the paddles. The mould filled and the surface sank as the fluid settled into its shape.

‘Again!' screamed Tara and the women prepared for a second pour. They had seconds before the bronze was too hard—already it moved more slowly.

‘To the water!' cried Tara once the mould was filled. The women rushed it to a trough where the water boiled as the mould was plunged into it.

We were drenched in steam. The mould hissed and spat until the water worked its power and the sword was silent. The women whispered incantations to bless the bronze and hold the sun spirits within its form.

The first streaks of the new day coloured the sky as we gathered around the mould, which had been placed on the ground. With a small axe, Tara carefully broke it open and inside, too hot to touch, was a perfectly formed grey-yellow sword.

‘We are blessed,' said Tara.

The sword was laid in a grove of oaks to rest and we went to the huts to sleep. For all the next day I lay between black lambskins in a dreamless oblivion that rested my aching body more deeply than it had been rested for weeks.

At evening time, we gathered around the embers, sipping sheep's milk and honey. I listened as the women chattered, their cheeks rosy and chafed from yesterday's fire. Of the twelve houses in the hutgroup, three were used for sleeping. The others, I was told, were forge-houses, store-houses and places for the design and blessing of weapons. They were simple huts, built in an old style of river stone and daub. There were still some of this type in the oldest streets of Cad.

Tara was not among us. They explained that she sat alone in communion with the sword and would return by tomorrow. One of the women replenished our horns with milk.

‘Thank you,' I said as she poured mine. ‘I will need the strength to face what awaits me at home.'

‘Home?' said the woman who sat beside me, the same woman who had attended my arrival. Her name was Meb. ‘Why do you speak now of home?'

‘Why should I not speak of it?'

The others stopped talking and turned toward me.

‘Do you know nothing of why you have come here?' continued Meb.

‘No,' I whispered, my fingers tightening around my cup.

‘You are here to learn. Only when you have learned will you be free to go home.'

My pulse quickened. ‘And if I leave now?'

‘You may try,' said Meb. ‘But you will not be able to.'

I looked around at their strong and beautiful faces. I knew Cookmother and Bebin would be frantic by now, and that Fraid would never forgive such an absence, but it was as if I had drunk of the henbane, lulled by an assurance that all would be well. ‘What, then, am I to learn?'

The next morning I awoke to see Tara beside my bed with the fresh-cast sword in her hand. ‘Come,' she whispered.

I dressed and followed her to the forge-hut.

She placed the sword on a bench and began to work the blade with a piece of leather that had been coarsened with resin and river sand. It was a small sword, like the ancient weapons, barely two handspans long. A sword for use, not Ceremony.

She handed me a second piece of leather and showed me how to buff the bronze. The fine frill of metal around the blade edge, where the bronze had seeped into the tiny cracks at the mould-joins, had been chiselled off, along with the pouring cup at the sword's tip. ‘Firm strokes, do you see? It will take a day to work it to a half-sheen, then we will form the cutting edge. Two more days buffing after that.'

‘And then?' I asked.

‘Then you will learn how to use it.'

I looked up, speechless. In Cad swords are made only for Elders and tribekings and only once in their lifetime. Even lesser warriors had to go to battle with arrows, knives and spears, so powerful were the swords. ‘Is it to be mine?' I asked, unbelieving.

‘Perhaps,' she said.

I rubbed the bronze in silence, lost in the fathoming of these events. It had been two nights since I met with Taliesin in the forest, or was it three? My sense of time was drifting.

‘So let us begin,' said Tara, continuing to polish. ‘What did you learn from the pouring of the sword?'

I opened my mouth then closed it, mute. It was wondrous and I was changed by it but I could not say what I had learned.

‘Then answer me this,' she said. ‘The tin that was dug from the ground and put over the fire. Does it now exist?'

I thought for a moment. ‘No, it does not.'

‘Yes, it does.' Her black eyes burned. ‘It was changed by heat: deeply, irrevocably altered. But it still exists.'

I nodded, wanting more.

‘This is the lesson of the fire. Form can be changed. Shape can be shifted. But nothing is lost.' She stroked the sword steadily. ‘So it is with the human soul. It will pass through many births, many bodies, but the soul, like the cosmos, is indestructible. This is what feeds our courage. This is what is true.'