Skin (6 page)

‘Yes,' I whispered, bowing my head.

‘Oh, Ailia,' she sighed as she sat on her stool. ‘This is not as I expect of you.
Come.' Her voice softened. ‘You are unsettled as we all are by the news from the
east. Now, we shall forget this and you will help me dress.'

I nodded in gratitude and brought the robes from her cloak stand.

She raised her arms so I could slip the silk under-robe over her bare torso, followed
by a dress of clan tartan threaded with silver. She wrapped her chain belt twice
around her waist and let the heavy bronze charm rest against her belly. I helped
her slide her narrow feet into leather sandals ornamented with twisting metal and
coloured stones. Then she sat very still while I blackened her fine eyebrows with
berry juice and rubbed roan into her cheeks.

Admiring her own beauty in the bronze mirror, she caught my eye in the reflection.
‘You run the fires also tonight, do you not?' she said.

‘Yes.'

‘Would you like me to colour your lips?'

I nodded and crouched beside her.

Her fingertips were cool as she patted powdery roan across my mouth and cheeks. Then
she feathered a small juice-soaked brush over
my eyebrows and dabbed rose oil at
my temple and throat.

‘There,' she said, handing me the mirror. ‘Does it please you?'

My eyes widened in the mirror. The colours made them sparkle and had turned my lips
to petals. My tinted cheeks tempered my jaw, drawing my face into perfect alignment.
I was beautiful.

Fraid, too, seemed astonished. She looked at me as though seeing me for the first
time. ‘I may have chosen the First Maiden this morning, but it seems the Mothers
have chosen you.' She laughed.

She asked for rose oil to be rubbed into her arms and shoulders so they would gleam
in the firelight. As I stroked her skin, I marvelled at how it was just like my own:
warm, alive, pale from the winter sun. It held her as mine held me, and wept blood
when cut, as mine did also. Our skin was the same. Yet hers had a name and mine had
none.

After admiring my face, Bebin brushed my unruly hair and wove the crimson ribbon
down its full length as I kneeled on the floorskins before her. I could hear the
distant shouts of the men dragging the last of the branches up to the bonfires on
Sister Hill. Ianna and Cah were already dressed and readied, waiting outside, watching
the Beltane moon rise.

Cookmother groaned, struggling to feed the buck by the fire. She grew more and more
impatient, guiding its whiskery mouth to her nipple. ‘By Mothers, there's scarcely
a drop left in these useless sacks,' she muttered, kneading her breast. ‘I'm too
old for this. Bebin, you need to start breeding so I can be free of this cursed nursing.'
She would feed the buck until it was strong enough to be given back to the forest.
When the hunt took a feeding mother, this was what we had to do.

Cah's face burst through the doorskins. ‘Come!' she called. ‘It
will be over before
we leave.'

Bebin squeezed my shoulders. ‘Let's away.'

‘I'll catch up,' I said, rising. ‘I want to settle the buck first.'

‘Butter heart!' She shook her head. ‘Be quick at least.'

Milk bubbled from the buck's nostrils when he had drunk his fill and Cookmother put
him down on the floor with a thud. ‘It'll stink of deer shit in the morning,' she
muttered, getting up.

I fashioned the tiny deer a nest of straw in my own bedskins and cradled him into
it. He quivered at my touch. ‘Hush, youngling,' I cooed. ‘You're safe here.'

I stared at his dewy face, the whisper of spots across his back, and wondered at
the wash of love that rose in my chest. Was this skin love? Was this my kin? I had
grown on deer country. Surely my kin could not be far from here. But no one had claimed
me. It was said that those without skin were still seeking their souls. I took a
deep breath as I stroked the creature's knobby spine. If I was without a soul, what
was it that heaved and thrashed within me?

Neha approached, sniffed the buck, and flopped down beside it.

‘That's it, girl. You watch him for me.' I stood to leave.

Cookmother was poking inside the rosewood chest where her most precious oils and
powders were kept. She pulled out a tiny leather pouch and brought it to me, pressing
it into my hand. ‘I meant this for your next birthday,' she said. ‘But every maiden
needs a threshold gift on her first Beltane, so take it now.'

Inside the pouch was a gold pin in the shape of a fish. I shook it out into my palm,
then fastened it to the front of my new yellow dress.

She crushed me with her embrace and I breathed in the warm, sour smell that had swathed
me all my childhood. ‘Let me take the red ribbon out and thread a blue so you can
sleep in peace another summer,' she whispered. ‘Men's hunger is like a dog's—always
sharp.'

‘Leave it so. I am ready.'

Through sacred love the fields are made fertile.

Through sacred love we are freed from famine.

Through sacred love the world is renewed.

I
WALKED
THE
torch-lined path to Sister Hill with Bebin, Ianna and Cah. The moon
hung fat and low in the eastern sky, teasing a honey fragrance from the elder blossoms
that brushed our shoulders as we passed. We all wore dresses of yellow and orange,
and our hair ribbons whipped in the wind. Laughter trailed down the hillside and
the air felt ripe with magic.

Cah pulled a flask from her belt pocket and took a long swig.

‘Ay, Cah, do you not want steady wits for the rite?' said Bebin.

‘Surely it is a night to abandon steady wits?' She offered it around but we refused.
‘Mind you are not chosen by Fec, Ailia. He is as ugly as a boar and carries contagion,
I am told.'

‘Cah!' chided Ianna.

‘Well, it's true. I see you smile.'

‘You'll not have Fec,' whispered Bebin into my ear. ‘It will be a noble match for
you this night.'

As we neared the crest, the unlit woodpiles reared like two beasts silhouetted against
the western sky. Circled around them were the journeymen and -women, chanting purifications
for the flames to come. Tribespeople milled around the poles set for the dance. Men
had worked for three days to dig holes deep enough to hold the trunks upright. Eleven
had already been positioned. The raising of the twelfth would commence the rite.

At the pole-bearer's cry, we all surged back, making space for the men to bring the
trunk. It was a grown oak, freshly felled, its skin smoothed to a silk sheen and
wound tight with twelve ribbons along its length. It took ten men to manoeuvre it
over the final hole, shuffling forwards then back until they were in place.

‘Down!' came the call and the pole rose skyward. Tribeswomen packed the base with
dirt so it stood as firm and straight as the others. I craned my neck to see them
all: stretching from earth to sky, the ribbons like water, swirling about them.

A drum strike began. It was time to dance. The crowd fanned open to form a circle.

Instinctively, I moved to the back. Already the music was coiling around me and I
was swaying and treading with its pulse. There was little my bones loved more than
to dance.

‘Come!' Bebin tugged my hand. ‘It's your threshold year—you must dance at the poles.'

‘No,' I said, horrified. ‘I am not permitted.'

She grabbed both my shoulders, thrusting her face close to mine. ‘Ailia, you are
true and whole and you love the Mothers more than any I know. Come and dance. No
one will protest it this night. The Mothers know your heart—'

‘Wait—' But she was pulling me into the centre.

There were twelve maidens to a pole. We each caught a dangling ribbon and began to
walk. The weight of so many eyes upon me was crippling, but I listened to the drumbeat
and forced myself forward.

A second, faster rhythm began, counter to the first, and this was our call to start
the steps: a fast-moving pattern of footwork, twisting one leg behind the other.
I watched Bebin ahead of me, her hips and shoulders rolling smoothly. The ritual
was deep in her body and she wove its spell effortlessly.

The tribespeople began to sing and the drums gathered pace. My feet kicked up dirt
as I danced. Panting, I kept my eyes fixed on Bebin, her hair sailing behind her.
Faces blurred as they flew by. The drums become faster, the chant yet louder. Soon
I was sweating, heat pouring through me. My chest cried to stop but I danced faster
and harder.

Now I felt the magic we pounded in the dirt. Now I felt the power of the dance to
wake the Mothers from their winter sleep. Now it was no longer a dance, no longer
twelve maidens. It was a wheel wrought of our bodies and as it turned I was flooded
with an intense joy. I ran and ran until I was no longer there. There was earth and
sky and the poles that bridged them but I, Ailia, had melted away and there was only
the dance. Only the wheel.

A voice was raised in a mighty call and the drumbeat ceased.

We stopped, breath ragged. The fires were to be lit. I hurried back into the crowd,
my heart still hammering.

Llwyd stood between the two woodpiles, arms raised. We fell silent to hear him speak.
‘Our earthly world—our hardworld—is a place of wildness,' he began. ‘The forces of
chaos run through its veins. They are our breath and our devastation.'

The crowd gave a rumbling cheer.

‘By our knowledge—by skin—we are aligned to these forces. Yet we know in our souls
they can never be harnessed. The wildness is stronger than us and we are always subject
to its mystery and power.'

Voices began to swell.

‘This night, beloved people of Summer, we kindle the fires that will cleanse our
cattle, seed the belly of our earth, and bless our souls. Then—' he paused for a
moment, ‘—let the forces of chaos run free!'

The crowd erupted into cheers. Two lesser journeymen approached, bearing burning
sticks. Over stamping and shouting, they called the final incantations to the Mothers
and the towering woodpiles were ignited.

Fire surged upward into the indigo sky. I watched, motionless, staring at the flames,
my cheeks smarting with heat. I had been separated from Bebin and forced back to
the edge of the gathering. But as I looked out over the grainfields, pastures and
forests that stretched beneath the hill and the magnificent rise of Cad beside it,
my heart brimmed again with the gladness I felt in the dance. All my people were
here around me, rejoicing in the land that held us. All we could ever want was given
to us. For this moment, the ache for skin was gone, healed in the love and warmth
of the fire.

There were shouts and we scrabbled to make way as two white bulls were driven toward
the flames. They stalled at the mouth of the firepath, bellowing in fear, eyes rolling
and muscles twitching.

Llwyd called their blessing, and they were forced, galloping, through, burning sticks
at their rumps. The crowd roared.

Now the farmers were herding all of Cad's cattle up the hillside. The air was filled
with their screams and the smell of their terror as they, too, were run through the
flames and onto the safety of their summer pastures.

When the animals had been purified, Fraid called forth the First Maiden. I pushed
my way forward to see her. A deerskin cloaked her naked, painted body, and beneath
her antler crown, the mask of the doe covered her face. None could see who had been
chosen. She was the earth now, a Mother.

The drums began again and the young men of Summer formed a line before her as she
walked the length of them. They stood tall and bare-chested, baring their teeth and
making animal cries to attract her attention.

We all swayed and stamped as we waited for the Mother to make her match. From the
corner of my eye I noticed Ruther, standing well back from the line, and I wondered
why he, of all the young men, would not contest this honour. Finally the Maiden held
her hand out to Juc, the newest of the warrior initiates. He dropped to his knees
to accept her and then together they ran through the fires to the crowd's screams
of excitement.