Skin (39 page)

Had I wrought this change by my tearing of skin? Was I to remain alone here as punishment?
Last night's horror began to stir and I knew I could not endure it again. I wondered
if I should leave the Isle while I had light. But there was no boat to travel back
to Caer Cad over the water and I would never find the passageway that brought me
here under the vast lake. Still I was not even sure if I stood in the hardworld or
on Mothers' ground.

Perhaps I had died this night. Perhaps I had come to Caer Sidi. Part of me wished
it so. But my hunger, my exhaustion, my grazed skin, my loneliness all felt very
much of the living.

It was only the thought of Taliesin that bade me walk on. But there was no forest
track, nothing I recognised here except the Tor, looming before me. Was that a thread
of smoke winding from its summit? A fire?

I blundered forward, ignoring the teachings that forbade me from ascending the mountain.
It was steeper than it appeared from below. Panting, I clambered up a winding path
through dense wildflowers and mountain shrubs. Near the summit the path became stony,
banks of low cloud drifting past. I kept my eyes on the ground, the smell of the
smoke urging me on.

When at last I reached the peak I was in a clearing ringed with rough-cut branches,
buckthorn and stones. A woodfire burned in the centre but no one tended it. No one
was here. I collapsed on a log, my legs shaking, and closed my eyes. I had been truly
cast from all I knew.

Then on the howl of the wind, I heard a human breath. When I looked up there was
an old woman sitting cross-legged behind the fire. Had she been so still that I did
not see her? With a cry of relief, I ran
forward and crouched to greet her.

She was older than Cookmother, older than Llwyd. But beneath the droop of her brow,
her eyes were the colour of the greenest water. She stared at me then spread her
arms. Without pause, without thought, I climbed into her embrace. She wrapped her
arms around me and kissed my forehead with the love of a mother. I burrowed into
the warmth of her lap, sinking deeper as she yielded to my weight.

For a teetering moment, I could have pulled myself back from her embrace and returned
to the solid ground of the mountain. Even as I fell into it, I knew there was risk
in this pleasure that I may not return. But her hold was so blissfully tender after
my night alone that I no longer cared for anything else.

I closed my eyes and let her skin and muscles grow around me until I was entirely
buried, submerged in the current of her blood. Soon there was no more flesh and I
was falling, surrendered, into emptiness. My journey was over.

To know the earth, we must learn to hear it in a way that reveals its language.

P
AIN
SEARED
THROUGH
my centre.

Something had caught my fall.

When I clutched my belly I felt a cord, warm and sinewy, coursing with blood. This
was what held me. In agony, I grasped it and hauled myself up to lessen the strain.

I did not want to be caught.

Bearing my weight with one hand, I reached for my sword with the other. This was
its promise: to do my will. It would slice through the cord that halted my fall.
Even a flash of Taliesin's face, vivid as flame, could not bid me stay.

My fingers tightened around the cord as I readied to cut. Then, through the membrane
of skin, I felt a vibration. A hum. Faint, as though from a great distance. I raised
the sword. But the humming
strengthened. It was a voice, a song. An illusion, I told
myself, a trick of the mind. One last barrier to pass before I could enter the freedom
of the fall. Again I lifted my sword. A wave of song poured into me like breath,
pure and spinning with light.

I hung, suspended by the cord, by the song. Beneath me was an infinite dark. Above
me was the light. And the song. I looked up and I pushed the sword back into its
sheath. I could not defy this sound.

Slowly I placed both hands around the cord and began to shunt myself up. It took
many hours to make the ascent. Soon my shoulders ached and I was dripping with sweat.
It was only the song, ever louder, that urged me on. Just as I could not heave myself
up one more length, the cord thickened, becoming fleshy, muscular. Then it was a
hand and an arm and I was being pulled back into the lap of the old woman.

But when I opened my eyes, it was not her, but the flat ground that cradled me, and
the fire that warmed me. I lifted my under-robe and rubbed the place where the cord
had attached. Now there was only smooth skin and some tenderness where it had pulled.

Still the air was full of song. I looked up to see a river of women in ceremonial
furs surging past me, down the mountain. Straightaway I recognised their bearing,
though I had not seen their faces before. I was indeed with the Mothers. It was their
singing that had called me back from the fall. With a gasp, I recalled what Sulis
had told me and I reeled with the question: had my long night been of the Mothers'
realm? Were they preparing me to be Kendra? It could not be so. I was not ready.

Hesitantly I rose to follow them, my hair whipping in the wind, then I paused and
turned back. I wanted to see the view from this height. At the summit's edge, I drew
breath in wonder. I had never seen so much of the world. Woodlands, meadows, mist-crowned
rises, iridescent rivers and, beyond these, the endless lake, all spread in a vast
living cloth. In the distance I saw the hill that marked the salmon's nose, the
river
of its spine and the jutting stones of its tail tips. The totems of dog, crow and
many others were clear also, marked in the earth as they were in the night sky. I
saw the land's stories of which Llwyd had spoken.

Through the howling wind, the Mothers' chant drifted up the hill. I walked to the
other side of the summit and peered down. Hundreds of women, all singing, were pouring
into the flatlands beneath the Tor. This was not just one group of Mothers, nor two,
nor three. All the Mothers were assembling.

I scrabbled down the path, behind the women who descended, their sound unceasing.
I alone did not sing.

At the base of the mountain I stood against a sheared stone bank and watched the
Mothers gather in their circles, in turn making one great circle around a central
fire. For what purpose did they gather? I shrank further back against the crumbling
earth.

The greater circle was nearly complete. As the last women trailed in from the forest
paths, my heart jumped.

‘Tara!' I rushed forward to greet her.

She did not break her song, but her eyes told me she was pleased to see me and I
took refuge beside her. ‘Is this all of the Mothers?' I whispered.

Tara nodded, still singing.

‘Tell me of them,' I said.

She halted her song and looked to the circle beside us. ‘They are the Mothers of
grain.' She turned to the next. ‘They keep the language, and they the children…'
One by one, she named each of the knowledges: nine I had not yet been called to learn,
and one that I had. Steise and the Mothers of change stood across the great circle.
I craned, searching for Taliesin, but he was not among them.

Tara nodded to the women who had sung me back from the fall. ‘They are the Mothers
who keep the renewal of laws. And she—' she pointed to an old woman who stood at
the heart of the circle,
raised high on a platform of interwoven branches, ‘—she
alone keeps the twelfth lesson.'

It was the woman who had cradled me as I fell.

‘She is the Mother who makes us all one.' Tara glanced at me. ‘Once you have met
with her, you will not return to the Mothers.'

I stared at Tara in shock. I had met with the old woman. But surely this could not
be my last time with the Mothers? For if it was, I could not yet bring back Taliesin.

Tara took up her tone again and motioned that I leave. Distressed, I walked back,
beyond the circles, to listen and watch.

The old woman stood with her arms raised, her gaze flickering around the circles.
Then slowly, when every eye was upon her, she lowered her arms and the Mothers were
silent.

She held one hand out to Tara's circle, the Mothers of fire, summoning their song.
When the sound was strong, she used her other hand to call for another group and
then a third. The exquisite blend of the three tones coiled through the air, soothing
my fears and winding around my spirit.

With this, the old woman began an intricate dance of gestures, silencing one circle,
summoning another, calling five, six, even ten at once. I listened spellbound as,
with threads of song, she wove the fabric of the world around me.

I looked up at the great Tor and the trees covering it. They were made of song as
much as of wood and earth and I could not tell if I was hearing or seeing them. The
ground hummed beneath my feet and I looked up to a sky full of sound.

This was the Singing, the birthing of our country.

Slowly, I understood why skin was not part of the Mothers' world. They were before
skin, beyond it. Skin was what held the hardworld in place. Skin was our name for
what they created.

Slowly, I understood that our world could not exist unless the
song was heard that
made it so. And I was the woman who heard it for my people.

There was an abrupt silence as the old woman quieted the Mothers and raised her left
hand high above her head. I watched her, without breathing, as she lowered her arm
toward the place where I stood, until finally it came to stillness pointing directly
at me.

I froze.

She wanted me to sing. She wanted me to answer. But what would I sing? I had no skin.
I had no song. I looked at the old woman and then around at the Mothers, all silent,
all staring. I met Tara's eye, then Steise's.

I opened my mouth and drew a lungful of air. My breath reached where it had never
been, into the deepest core of my being, where I sensed something dislodge and take
form. It rose from my core, then broke from my throat on trembling air. A note, as
sweet and thin as a shoot of grass. And as it was uttered, it took root, strengthening,
until it was as dense and textured as the ground beneath me.

I knew it. It was my song. My part of all creation.

I did not have skin, but I was the Kendra.

The hardworld and the Mothers' world are bridged by our Kendra. Only she can witness
the making of time.

T
HE
SUN
ROSE
and set three times as we sang. Sometimes the women lay down to sleep.
They left to drink water, to piss, or fuel the fire, but the song remained unbroken.

During these days I learned the songs that made the mountain, the wind, the trees
and the seasons. I heard the words that made the human and animal shapes, and I echoed
them until I knew I would never forget them. Each circle of Mothers had a song for
their part of the country. I remembered them all.

By the Singing, I knew that I would never see the hardworld in the same way now.
I would always hear the songs that gave it form. By the Singing, I knew the counsel
that I would offer Llwyd and Fraid when I returned: we would fight the Roman forces.
We would defend the songs with our lives. For without it, there would be no life.