Skin (33 page)

I saw the signs of a ritual slaughter. Hoofs, ribs and knuckles of spine, stripped
clean by birds, lay scattered along the path. ‘Taliesin?' My voice snagged in the
silence. Doorways were closed and no one answered my calls. Beyond the last house
was a stream that ran from the hilltop, and beside it on a fallen branch sat a small,
trance-stilled woman with moon-blonde hair. Her skin was translucent, the flutter
of blood visible in her upturned wrists. With the crunch of my footsteps, her eyes
flickered open.

I startled at their lightness. A blue so pale it was almost white. ‘Tidings,' I ventured,
stepping toward her. ‘Forgive my disturbance
but I can find no other. There is a
man I seek—his name is Taliesin. Is he here?'

She frowned and her eyes drifted shut.

Had I roused her from a spirit journey? ‘Please,' I urged. ‘Have you seen the knave?
Are you a sister of the temple?'

Her eyes sprang open. ‘I am not,' she said in a high, clipped voice. ‘I am sister
of no temple.'

My belly stirred with a rising unease. ‘Then who are you?'

‘Do you not know to whom you have come, Ailia?'

At the sound of my name I sickened. Had it happened again, as it had when I fell
through the waters? Had I slipped, once again, to the place of the Mothers?

My thoughts were churning. I could not stay. I had to leave straightaway and tell
Sulis the entire truth. Of Taliesin. Of Heka. ‘Lady?' I said, unsure how to address
her. ‘There has been some mishap in this. I have not been sent here under the blessing
of my teachers. I have stumbled through in pursuit of my own desire and now I must
be restored to the proper place.'

‘Do not worry,' she said. ‘This is the proper place.' She had the voice of a child
but the command of a tribequeen.

‘Please, I am a temple initiate of less than one lustre. Tell me how I can get back
to the temple.'

‘You cannot leave until it is done.'

My innards clenched. ‘Until what is done?'

‘Until you secure our wisdom. This is why you have been called.'

‘But I beg that you hear me—I received no call!'

‘Something led you here. Otherwise you would not have come.'

Now I was certain that I had transgressed the sacred boundary and entered the Mothers'
realm. Already I felt the numbing wash of stasis, of acceptance, begin to descend
and disperse my doubts, just as it did when I walked with the Mothers of fire. I
had to convince this
woman, while my mind was still hard. ‘Steise,' I said, for already
I knew her name, ‘
I do not have skin
.'

She stared at me. ‘Skin is not needed here.'

I frowned. Did she mistake my words? I mean that I have no totem kin…' I stammered.
‘I am half-born…I cannot be in this place.'

Steise looked at me as if I spoke in a foreign tongue. ‘You are here because we wish
it,' she said. ‘It is not your totem
,
that determines it.'

My blood halted in my veins. There was no sense in this. She did not observe the
demands of skin. Yet the Mothers were the very origins of skin. Was this a demeanour
of the Mothers I had not yet learned of?

I floated, dazed, toward the stream and sank to a flat stone at its bank. I sought
learning so desperately, yet I became more and more trapped in my own ignorance.
Sulis had been right to doubt me. I should not have come to the Isle without skin.
I was too unformed. I looked out over the darkening valley to the forest. Might I
not simply walk back the way I had come? But I knew already that the Mothers would
hold the mist firm.

The grey sky began to spit. I looked back at the hutgroup, unearthly in its stillness.
There was still one hope. It was Taliesin who had led me and I was certain he was
here.

I cupped my palms in the rushing stream and quenched my sudden thirst before walking
back to Steise. ‘What am I to learn?' I asked. ‘What is the knowledge that you keep?'

She nodded at the question. ‘We keep the wisdom of change. And of death.'

‘Whose?' I gasped. ‘Taliesin's? My own?'

‘Neither of these,' she said. ‘But you will touch death here, Ailia.' She looked
to me. ‘And it will alter your form.'

My thoughts raced. I had heard of such learning. Forbidden in the hardworld to those
without skin. ‘And the knave?' I asked. ‘Is he here?'

‘Yes.'

I could not stifle a joyous laugh that became a sob.

The sky deepened. The day was waning. I tightened my cloak around my shoulders. Death
was present here. I felt it in the cold ground, I saw it in the dark stones that
studded the hillside, and in the clutch of bare yew trees that circled the hutgroup.
But I did not fear it. I was calm. Like the Mothers of fire, this woman, this place,
was unbound by skin. I could make no sense of it. And yet if the Mothers themselves
did not demand my skin, then who was I to question it?

‘As you wish,' I said. ‘I am ready to proceed.'

When I had been bathed and tended by Steise's own hand, she led me to the Great Hut,
where the Mothers were gathered to mark my arrival. Noisy chatter and aromas of meat
seeped from the doorway as we approached.

The room within was warm and crowded. The women were captivating to look upon: each
small in stature, like Steise, yet each possessing, in varying hue, the most disarming
gaze.

As I searched for a place, my breath stilled. Pressed close between two of the Mothers,
and laughing as he sipped his ale, was Taliesin. I startled afresh at his beauty,
the blade of his jaw, the song of his eyes.

Steise gripped my arm as I surged forward. ‘No,' she hissed. ‘You will sit here.'
She motioned to the furthermost place from where Taliesin sat. ‘When you have learned,
you will speak with him.'

I silenced my cry of disbelief. There was only one path with the Mothers and that
was by their ways, their wishes.

Taliesin's gaze flickered toward me. A twitching smile betrayed his joy. But he had
clearly been given the same instruction, for he did not approach.

Steise went to the strong place, spoke my welcome, and dedicated the meal. Although
I was hungry, I could not eat. Taliesin was
too vivid before me. I spoke to no one,
nervous of these strange and powerful women with eyes like spears. My bowl untouched
in my lap, I leaned against the wall and watched. I was a stranger here but Taliesin
was not. This was his place. Never before had I witnessed him in the presence of
others.

He sat sprawled on the bench, devouring his stew, his face animated in the firelight.
The women grouped around him, smiling, attentive to his every word.

For the first time, I saw that his magic did not exist for me alone. He drew all
who met him. Who was I to deserve such a prize? I shrank further against the wall.

Then he looked up, our eyes met, and there was nobody else. I swore to myself that
I would learn hard and swiftly. I would learn the lesson of change from this group
of Mothers. I would cross this last barrier between us.

Finally I ate and the women around me began to speak, asking me of my township, my
learning, my strengths and skills. But never of my skin. It was sweet relief to be
free of the question, but I was disturbed by its absence. I had learned too well
that skin should be asked of.

I grew tired and asked Steise's permission to sleep. She took me back to her hut
and stoked the low fire. I undressed and lay down, my thoughts still drumming as
I listened to the muffled sounds of the feast and Taliesin's laughter.

The next morning my work began.

What I learned that day and for the months that followed was everything that Sulis
had denied me at temple. The trancework of breath and voice cycles that plummeted
me deep into the journey-state; the changework that allowed me to glimpse outside
the circles
of place and time; the learning that was so dangerous without skin. I
was taught to seek and cook the plants that would tear open the layers of sight.
I was taught to bend my senses to see the shapes that lay beneath the first form.
I was taught the long, knotted poems that mapped the journey paths and ensured I
would find my way back.

On the first morning of winter, I was taught to vision in the seeing hut, in a basin
of water drawn from the spring. The earthen bowl was painted with dogs and birds—the
seeing animals—and I had drunk distillations of watercress and thyme to sharpen my
eye.

Steise sat beside me, leading the chant. For half the day we sat and nothing appeared.
‘Take a little more,' she urged, passing the vial of juice.

I drank. I breathed. And then it came. Hard as a blow to my back. The water was full
of sight and I lurched above it, nauseous with the strain of making it clear. I saw
Heka, yet stronger, and Fraid, looking drawn. In the days that followed I saw tribes
of an earlier time, walking among stones, then other tribespeople in Roman dress.

Each time I visioned I was exhausted beyond speech and had to sleep for several hours.
Each time, when I had finished, I suffered a deep sense of loss, of grief. Is this
the death, I wondered, of which Steise spoke?

That I was without skin was never questioned again by me, nor by the women. It troubled
me as would a distant scream, faintly heard, signalling a danger from which I was
too far to prevent.

Winter fell. Snows blanketed the hills and only the hardiest, most determined herbs
survived beneath it. I harvested daily, curiously peaceful in this bleak country,
missing only Taliesin and Neha, who loved the snow.

Through all this time I did not meet with Taliesin. Some evenings, as I walked through
the hutgroup, bringing water or an armful of stems, I saw the edge of a dark figure
as it turned into shadows. I did not see his face. I did not hear his voice. But
I felt him waiting.

I was fully with the Mothers now. They would not release me until I had changed my
form.

The Mothers were gathered in the Great Hut, drinking a broth of river eel at day's
end. We were in the darkest moon, one turn before the deepfall of winter.

The cook ladled out bowlfuls, but Steise lifted her hand when it came to my turn.
‘Take no food, Ailia,' she said without gravity. ‘It is time.'

‘Surely it is too soon?' asked Ebrill, a quiet, watchful woman, who had been quicker
than most to offer a second strip of meat at breakfast, an extra sheepskin by night.

‘No, she is ready.' Steise sipped her broth. What say you, Ailia? Will you enter
the cave of heat?'

Ebrill was frowning.

‘She has been quick to see difference in form around her,' Steise said to her. ‘Now
we must know if she can alter herself.'

Her light tone belied her words. Though I had never seen one, for they were deeply
forest-hidden in Summer, I had heard whispered stories of the heat caves from Bebin
and Cah. They were the crown of changework, the sweltering cauldron wherein human
bones took animal form. Those journeypeople trained in change could inhabit many
animal shapes. Not the skin totems—they were too close—but other shapes, other forms,
that opened the eye of the soul.

It would be the greatest freedom I had ever known, yet I knew, from Sulis's teaching,
that it was utterly forbidden to those without the protection of skin.

‘Ailia?' said Steise. There was grit within her babe-like voice.

The Mothers ignored my skinlessness, but could I? Lodged within
me, disguised by
my learning, hid the kernel of fear that this was not right. I buried it deeper.
I had given myself to this learning so I would find Taliesin. And I had to proceed
if I was to see him. But it was more than that now. I, too, wanted to know if I could
change. I wanted to know if I could open the eye of my soul. I wanted to know how
far I could go without skin.