Magdalen Rising (3 page)

I am a small child—maybe three or four years old—crouching nearby, playing with smooth, cold stones that are beaded with moisture. My heavy cloak is heavier with damp.

Now see my mother lift her arms. She is making a cup. She is a light-bearing chalice. Her radiance spreads out in ripples. Feel that heat touch your skin; feel it enfold you as it enfolds me. I close my eyes. The world swims with hot gold. When I open my eyes again, the fog is gone, the sea leaps with light, and my mother is so bright I can't look at her. But I know she's there, all around me. And there is nowhere I can go in the whole world that she is not.

Some of you may have noticed that my mothers' names belong to Celtic goddesses, bean sídhe, hero women. Whether they were those mythic figures or were merely named for them, even I don't know.
Reincarnation makes everything so complicated, don't you find? I do know that old female archetypes never die; they just retire to the Shining Isles, as the Celts well knew, and as I know better than anyone.

There was some controversy among my mothers over what to name me. There is a Celtic custom of giving a newborn a childhood protective name. If the fairies or the
sidhe
knew the child's true name, they might spirit her away. Some of my mothers wanted a childhood name for me, my womb mother Grainne among them. Looking back, I can see that tall, blonde Grainne was more Celtic than the other mothers. They were smaller and darker and looked like the queens of earth they were reputed to be: remnants of the old people who were native to the Holy Isles long before the Celts came and more or less conquered.

“But we don't have to worry that anyone will steal our babe, Grainne,” Fand insisted. “Don't you understand? For all intents and purposes, we are the
bean sídhe
!”

Though no one ever admitted any such thing, it occurred to me later that my womb mother herself might have been a stolen child. I never knew much about any of my mothers' lives before they came to Tir na mBan. Oh, they told stories, lots of stories—with no concern for consistency whatsoever.

“But it's traditional, Fand,” argued Liban. “It can't do any harm.”

“Let's give her a child's name now,” suggested Boann, “and let her true name come to her when she's ready for it.”

“Make it a powerful name of protection,” urged Grainne.

Fand took a deep breath, as if absorbing all the air so that no one else could use it. Then she spread her arms in that flashy liturgical way of hers, and pronounced:

“She shall be called Bride's Flame!”

With that, she expelled all her breath and fixed each one with a glare, daring anyone to dispute her poetic inspiration, her prerogative as prime namer.

So it was that I came under the protection of Bride, also called Brigid, mother and/or daughter of the Dagda, goddess of smithcraft, poetry, and healing, who survived the coming of Christianity by turning into a saint—(I told you, they just won't quit, those old girls) – and not just any saint. According to lore, Bride was the foster mother of Christ, which makes him—don't you see?—my foster brother.

In my lifetimes, I have been called by many names. Or, you might say, certain names have called me. More than one of those names begins
with the letter you know as M, a compelling shape in Latin script, echoing the shape of breasts, mountain peaks, sea swells, the wings of birds spread in flight. And if you take the Latin letter B and tip it on its side, you see that shape repeated. But it was many years before I learned any form of writing or inscription. Raised in the oral tradition as I was, I'm still not convinced that the written word is any improvement over the spoken. After all, talk never killed a tree.

Meanwhile, despite Fand's authoritative naming of me, my womb mother called me Little Bright One, and the others soon fell into the habit. And that is how I knew myself in my earliest years.

W
HAT AMAZES ME ABOUT the time my foster brother stayed behind in Jerusalem playing child prodigy at the Temple is not his nerve or precocious wit, but the fact that nobody missed him till they'd gone a day's journey. Cosmic twins separated before birth, we grew up so differently. Compared to me, he lived among throngs. Also the child-parent ratio was different. Her perpetual virginity notwithstanding, Mary did have more than one child. I had more than one mother. He had a whole country to lose himself in. I had one small island. So my determination to give my mothers the slip and be about my own business required more ingenuity. Oh, I know, I know. He wasn't just being a bratty, worrisome kid. He was about his
father's
business—and he didn't mean Joseph's. “Wist ye not,”—I love that word wist; that's why I'm using the King James version—“Wist ye not,” he said to his dazed, uncomprehending parents, “that I must be about my Father's business?”

It wouldn't have occurred to me to go about my father's business. He seemed to have matters well in hand. The tides went in and out on schedule, and he often left gifts of whelks among the rocks. Though I had never seen him in the way you understand seeing, he was not invisible in that annoying, omniscient way of some gods I could mention. We were surrounded by his kingdom, Tír fo Thuinn, Land under the Wave. He was no less than Manannan Mac Lir, god of the sea.

On this point, at least, my mothers were agreed. They loved, of an evening before the peat fire, to narrate my conception. The details varied considerably, depending on whose turn it was to tell the tale. There were always some interruptions and corrections, but, in general, poetic license was granted. A tale was “true” if it was well told.

Manannán Mac Lir was a god who lent himself to invention. He was a night prowler, visiting women in the dark “as the dew visits the earth, making it moist and fertile,” so Fand liked to express it. And he was a shape-shifter. Yahweh with his angel messengers and Zeus with his swan feathers had nothing on my father. See the bone-white gleam of that twelve-point rack of antlers? That's him. Feel a sudden gust of
wind from a rush of wings? There he is again. And that huge white seal slipping from the rock into the sea? Now you see him. Now he's gone.

In some stories he came to Grainne—whom the others described with utter lack of envy as the loveliest of all—on the shore, taking shape from sea foam. Sometimes he appeared in the oak grove. In yet another story he entered our round hut, his greatness expanding the walls to the breadth of sky. Then he and my mother became the earth and the moon and the others, the circling constellations.

Only Grainne made no contribution to the vast store of conceptual lore. At the time I took this omission for granted. She'd had the glory of being my womb mother; let the others be the mythmakers. Not until much later did I have cause to consider that her silence might have had another meaning.

Did I miss having a mortal father? Did I long for my immortal one to appear and stake some claim, whisk me away from the world of my mothers to some great adventure? In one sense, I did not miss him at all. As I've said, he surrounded me and any male animal potentially housed him. In another sense, I did not know what I was missing until much later. I had never seen a human male, much less sat in a male lap, breathing the scent of musky sweat or rubbing my cheek against stubble or beard.

Yet perhaps I intuited something. My mothers told a story of my father's magical bag made from the skin of a sacred crane. This bag contained odd wonders: the shears of the king of Caledonia; the King of Lochlainn's helmet; the bones of Assail's swine; Goibne's smithhook; Manannán's own shirt; and a strip from a great whale's back. When I was a little girl, I longed to see these treasures, and more than once I slipped out at night to wait for Manannán Mac Lir on the Western bluffs. (I was sure he would come from the West.) I have vague memories of being carried home half asleep in some mother's arms.

On the whole, I lived happily in the female hive and lacked for little, certainly not for attention. No one ever said to me: Get lost, kid. If I wore out the patience of one mother, there was always another to take up the slack. They all had something to teach me: herb lore, weaving, animal husbandry, bareback riding, elementary—and yes, elemental—magic. They all had the knack of making work indistinguishable from play. I roamed within reason, usually with some mother following in my wake to make sure I didn't fall into a bog or jump off a cliff. You see, I had ambitions to fly. I'd seen the birds plunge into the air. Why couldn't I?

(I'm going to leave that an open question. You may think the answer is obvious, but you haven't heard my whole story yet.)

Year by year, my mothers extended my circle of freedom, as a tree grows, in widening rings. They enforced these boundaries with binding spells—the original invisible fencing. By the time I was twelve, with fresh, green hormones beginning to rise like sap, I'd developed a positive ambition to get lost. Who knows? Maybe my know-it-all witch mothers had it all figured out ahead of time. They must have known that if they made one thing forbidden, that would be the one thing I'd want. So there was one place I was not allowed to go. “Until the right time comes,” they said with maddening maternal vagueness. “Then we will take you there ourselves.” I had very early learned the knack of getting one mother to say yes, after another had already said no. The united front was not their strong suit. But on this prohibition, they were each and all immovable.

The forbidden place was the valley between Bride's Breasts, two mountains on the northern side of the island. As my own breasts began to rise from the once flat plain of my chest, I became obsessed with finding that hidden valley. On my own.

One Spring morning I woke early and went outside to the trench to relieve myself. I enjoyed the contrast of my steaming pee and the chilly dawn air. (Life is full of small, unmentionable pleasures.) As I squatted, I gazed toward the mountains. Milky light dripped down their eastern curves. Mist ringed one nipple. Far away, and so tiny I could barely see it, a bird floated down into the forbidden valley. My new breasts ached. I slipped a hand inside my tunic to cup one of the soft mountain shapes.

Growing pains, my mothers had explained the aching to me. How big would they get, I wondered? They already overflowed my palms. And when would I bleed? My mother's stock answer,“all in good time,” was worse than no answer at all. I also did not appreciate their jokes about torches flaming at both ends. That's right; my pubic hair had grown in as bright as the hair on my head. I can only be thankful that they did not know the story of Moses and the Burning Bush or I never would have heard the end of it. Clearly they were guilty of great parental crimes. They did not take me seriously enough or regard with sufficient awe the volcanic changes in my body. Worst of all, they knew things that I did not, things that they could not or would not teach me. Today, I resolved
as I shook the last drops from my fiery thicket, nothing would stop me. I was going to find that valley. I'd waited long enough.

Luck was with me. After we milked the goats and ate our oatmeal stirabout, my mothers fanned out: two planting barley; another two pruning the orchard; two in the forge mending spears; and two more out on the moors gentling the wild horses. I took care to spend some time with each pair. That's the advantage of having so many mothers. By the time I'd made my rounds, each pair could assume I was with another. Before midday, I was on my way, the pockets of my tunic stuffed with flat, round oat cakes. By the middle of the afternoon, I had reached the edge of my known world.

The boundary place was mysterious enough itself: a grove, primarily of oak, that had been growing in the sheltered center of the island ever since this isolated bit of earth had surfaced from sea into air. Who knows how the acorns got there? The spoor of some prehistoric flying boar? Or perhaps a voyager had landed, traveling with a herd of swine. Our own pigs rooted about in this wood from
Beltaine
to
Samhain,
and I'd helped drive them back and forth. The day I ran away, the trees were not yet in full leaf, though some had baby leaves, perfectly formed, that looked almost comical in contrast to the massive limbs and trunks.

I decided to rest for a moment and eat some of my oat cakes. I'd need all my strength to cross the invisible border. It was very quiet in the oak wood. When I'd been here with my mothers, I'd noticed that our voices had sounded unnaturally loud, yet also flat, as if the wood absorbed any floating vibrations. Or as I'd put it then: “The trees are listening to us.” Eavesdropping. Now the sound of my own chewing roared in my ears. I was glad of the burbling indiscretion of a small stream that meandered nearby. Politely offering part of my oat cake to the grove, I took a drink, then rose. I made my body as compact and unyielding as I could and marched straight to the edge of the grove. Twice the power of my mothers' spells hurled me backwards. The third time, I dropped onto my belly and slithered through like a snake. I stood and looked back. “Don't tell!” I whispered to the trees. Then I turned, my breasts pointing towards Bride's, and walked on.

Hers were more massive than I'd imagined. They loomed above me, endlessly pouring blue-white milk into the bowl of sky. Still a child in my perceptions, I thought I must be almost there. For hours I scrambled up a long, gradual slope through patches of heather and clumps of furze, leaping many brackish tarns, and still the mountains remained incomprehensibly
remote. Nor was I prepared for the way they appeared to shrink from me when I did get close. I felt disoriented, and the path seemed much less obvious. When I turned and looked back over the way I'd come, I got a shock.

The oak grove had disappeared behind a swell of land. I could not see the orchard or our fields. I had never been so far from the sea in my life. The distance made it appear strangely silent and motionless. A cool wind sprang up, and a huge storm cloud moved inland and swallowed the sun. The cloud's shadow rushed over the way I'd come like a black wave. For a moment, I wavered, picturing myself running back home, back down to sea level, away from the naked slopes of Bride's breasts to the safety of the sixteen breasts that had given me suck. Then the sun found a break in the cloud. A cuckoo called, always a good omen. I scrambled up the ridge and then—Ah, look.

Did you know? Maybe you've seen this place in a vision or remember from some dream of your own. Between Bride's Breasts is a green valley. The light there is gold. People have spent lifetimes trying to paint that light. They'd fill skies with it and place the earth-colored robes of saints before it. Or birds would fly there, delicate specks of darkness. Painters would take that gold and put it around his head and his mother's. But to me the light in the paintings looks too heavy and dead, gold cooled to metal, something you can take off and put on.

This light isn't like that, though I won't say it isn't heavy. Its heaviness is warmth and sweetness and languor. Living gold. It lives in that valley. You can taste this light. It's food, you see, and drink. You can feel it flow through the rivers of your arteries and veins. In the heart of the valley wells a pool. Nine hazelnut trees grow around it, bending their branches over it, dropping their wisdom-ripe nuts to the salmon swimming there. Five streams flow out from the pool into all the holy rivers of the world.

The more literal-minded among you may be wondering how this spring on this tiny (and, I bet you're thinking, fictitious) island in the Outer Hebrides (that's where you've decided it must be) could give rise to any rivers besides a creek or two on the island itself? Moreover, Celtic scholars have located the Well of Wisdom in Ireland. Listen, it's not my job to explain the mysteries. But I will say this much: Did it never occur to you that all the sacred rivers—the Ganges, the Euphrates, the Nile,
you name it—might be connected? That there's a sisterhood under the earth's skin of holy waters and wells? It didn't? Well, it will have to do.

Now, see me walk down the soft, grassy slope. Imagine how it feels to my bare feet. When I reach the pool, I kneel beside it, just as you would. I have enough sense to hesitate to touch the water. I was raised by eight witches. I know strong magic when I see it. And I am, after all, in the heart of the forbidden place. So I just stare into the water for a long time. Stare and stare.

First the water seems black, as if it gave onto the bottom of the world—or led to another world. Then it turns into a mirror, reflecting the hazel branches and the golden light. I lean farther over, and there's my own face. The surface is smooth and unruffled. The image holds, and I can even see the hazel of my eyes. Maybe it's the strange light that seems to come from everywhere, from the air itself: the light has gotten into my hair. To compare it to fire is no longer hyperbole. My hair flames. Talk about halos! The delicate lights around the saints pale by comparison. The fire around my head is the real thing.