Skin (20 page)

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.'

I set down my leather cloth and stared out the open doorway. The day would be cloudy.
Tara's words led my thoughts to Taliesin, and I wondered if he had learned the lesson
of fire. If he was nourished by this truth, as I was.

‘Why do you cease?' asked Tara. ‘Are you troubled?'

‘No,' I shook my head. ‘I am thinking of a knave I have met near here.'

‘A knave?' She sounded surprised.

‘Yes—of some height with dark hair.' I looked at her. ‘Have you seen him? Do you
know of whom I speak?'

Her strong brow furrowed. ‘No,' she said. ‘He has not come here. And it would not
be well for him if he did. This is a women's place. Men are not permitted here. Men
will not survive here.'

I was trained by Tara herself. We ate more flesh than I had ever eaten, we worked
our bodies for all the hours of the sun. At night I slept, exhausted, by her side,
more soundly than I had ever slept.

The sword that I had watched being created was made complete with a bone handle carved
with secret messages. Every morning I trained in its use. Less the use of the weapon
to render a kill (although this, of course, we learned), than the opening of my spirit
to that of the sword, the summoning of the forces that had formed this weapon.