The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel (43 page)

‘I don’t intend to die.’

He shrugged. ‘There are
different deaths. This is our moment. We must take it.’ He stood up. ‘Think, if
you must, to remember who you are, then join me.’ He left the room.

Whether I decided to go along
with this or not, one thing was certain. He’d already claimed the remaining
free bed. The worst aspect was that I couldn’t drink alcohol to deal with this.
My mind had to be absolutely clear tomorrow and no matter how good the harish
body is at clearing up after its owner’s worst lapses, traces remain.
I’ll
have a drink of water to fortify myself
doesn’t work that well. Down at
Ludda’s farm, a single hound yelped, as if in pain.

When I stood up, a rush of
images raced across my mind: Jassenah, Gesaril, all those who’d come before
them. A series of impulses that hadn’t been left undone and which I regretted
bitterly. Yet what else was I to do? Any other har would have been upstairs
already, seeking solace, comfort, strength. This was what we were
supposed
to
do. Yet all I could see was a potential mess because I couldn’t trust the
feeling of really liking somehar. I was afraid I’d go back to that dark, fevered
place where my love for Gesaril had sent me. Nytethorne was right; there were
different deaths. Rinawne hadn’t done as much to bring me back as he’d thought.

Just do it,
I told
myself,
just focus on the physical and do it.

It was an insane notion I’d considered
myself healed.

 So I went upstairs like a har
condemned and there was this new nemesis spread out over my bed in a tangle of
hair and lean lithe limbs. ‘Come here, but take off the noose and leave it by
the door,’ this vision said.

I wished I could be like him.
He’d thought about us and had come to a decision and was now utterly sure about
it. ‘There are things you should know,’ I said.

‘Don’t care,’ he replied. ‘Better
leave your brain by the door too.’

I went to him and lay down, put
my head on his breast. He held me close and stroked my hair. We didn’t say
anything. I surrendered myself; simply that. Let what must happen happen.

There came the moment before,
after which everything must change, and it was a lifetime and yet a nanosecond.
He moved in me slowly, so that trails of stars ignited throughout my body,
until it seemed each cell must explode, and the tower would be punched open
above us, and a new tower of light would reach towards the skies, which would
be all that was left of us, straining to join the stars. But I didn’t
spontaneously combust and neither did he. The pulse of the arunic tide began to
ebb and my body settled. I wasn’t changed forever, only left with a burning
thirst.

Nytethorne fetched us berry
cordial from the kitchen. ‘Wanted to give you something you’d not quickly
forget,’ he said.

I drank the juice. That was a
game that more than one could play. I’d show him... soon.

He watched me as I finished my
drink. ‘You let nohar in. Has it always been like that? I heard aruna was your
speciality, some kind of magic.’

‘
Who
did you hear that
from?’

He shrugged. ‘Mossamber has
friends. He asked.’

‘Friends in Kyme? Where?’

 ‘Not sure,’ Nytethorne said,
‘he has friends everywhere.’

I think I knew then: Malakess.
Mossamber had contacted him about me.

 ‘Well, whatever he think he
knows, whatever he’s heard I am or was, you don’t have to be emotionally
enlightened to tweak the nerves of the body. It’s mechanical, and not hard to
master.’

Nytethorne shook his head,
smiled to himself. ‘Somehar has much to answer for.’

‘I
have
let hara in,’ I
said. ‘All it ever brought was trouble. Some are made for it, but not me. I
just ruin things. Somehar once said to me I wasn’t supposed to have a cosy life
with chesnari and harlings — and he was right.’

I didn’t want to speak like
this, hard and cold, but was unable to change it. I wanted to tell Nytethorne
he was amazing, and I would like more than anything for it be different with
us, for it to work. But no.  I had to change the subject. ‘Never mind that.
Who’s your father, Nytethorne?’

He studied me for a moment. ‘You
really want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right. Know you like
stories.’ He lay back down beside me and drew me into his arms. Our bodies
seemed to fit together like a timber joint.  ‘Mossamber and Peredur could have
no sons, but they wanted them. Mossamber wanted nohar but Peri, didn’t want to
go to a blessed place with some other har, so they called upon the Gwerin Crwydrwyr,
the roamer folk.’

‘And who are they?’

He told me that in the early days
of Wraeththu in this land, the Gwerin Crwydrwyr were hara unthrist, without
tribe, drawn to the most shamanic of paths. They scorned physical conflict and
all they deemed human in hara. Everyhar used them for various purposes –
healing, teaching, and the creation of harlings. I’d not known this, but roamers
were among the first to enable this function among the Sulh. For a price, they
would give hara a son. Nytethorne thought they probably still would, although
they weren’t seen around so much nowadays, just occasionally at some of the
fayres.

‘Mossamber never knew his name,’
Nytethorne said. ‘Was with him only an hour. In that time, he grew older in
mind and heart, and came away from it with me in him.’

Three years later, Mossamber
again called upon the services of the Gwerin Crwydrwyr and the result of that
was Emberflax, Nytethorne’s brother who I’d not yet met.

‘We call him Flax,’ Nytethorne
told me.

‘Your son is named for him?’

Nytethorne shook his head.
‘Partly.
His
full name is Emberstrife.’

‘And Ember’s father?’

Nytethorne was silent for a
moment, stroking my back. Then he said, ‘A roamer. After Porter – way I wanted
it.’

‘You are a fecund tribe, it
seems! Why two sons?’

‘We know the secret, that’s all.
Our custom is to have two sons. We are many at the Domain: hara who were
Mossamber’s human hura...’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Had names for it, can’t
remember.’

‘Nephews, uncles, I think you
mean.’

He nodded. ‘Mossamber’s father
took them in during the Devastation. Whitemanes survived better than the Wyverns.’

‘Medoc isn’t doing too badly.’

‘He’s sensible. He fled. No
longer part of this.’ With these words, Nytethorne silenced anything further I
might say with a kiss. ‘Enough of stories,’ he said. ‘Let me in, Ysobi. Think
you can heal the world? Well, I can heal you.’

I put my hands on his beautiful
face. ‘You can’t give Peredur new eyes. You can’t give me a new heart.’

‘If Peri only had
broken
eyes, they might be mended. You can’t say you have no heart. Be brave enough to
trust. Not yourself. Me. Won’t fall. I’ll catch you.’ He kissed me again.
‘Begin with the breath.’

I had never realised before how
little I let go during aruna. Not even with those I thought I’d loved had I
ever truly opened the doors to my inner self and allowed them to walk around
looking at the things that were me, my history. I think some had seen me as a
challenge because I was so closed and distant. Everyhar believes he can break
down the doors of the ice tower, find the living warmth hidden within. I’d
never let them, because I’d never faced how incomplete I was. Something old and
dank lurked within me. Eyes across a fire, all I ever remembered. And yet, now,
as I lay in Nytethorne’s arms I realised this inability to truly connect was my
greatest weakness, and if the
ysbryd drwg
was to find a chink in my
armour, this was it. The missing piece. I opened myself to Nytethorne
Whitemane.

I didn’t find it easy. Even
opening the breath was difficult, because so much can be revealed in that – the
first sign of trust between two hara coming together. His breath was a storm,
blowing through me, breaking barriers. My instinct was to resist, shutter all
doors, batten down, but behind one of those doors, like those of an immense old
barn, horror lurked. We could both feel it there, hear it yelping, biting its
own limbs. Nytethorne pulled away from me. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but bear in mind
tomorrow you might have no hienama to aid you.’

‘Will take that risk.’

Having opened the portals of my
mind and body through breath, all other sensations beyond that were symbolic,
often bizarre. I could see Nytethorne as a warrior riding a chariot drawn by
maddened horses with forked tongues.  The chariot thundered through me, into my
history, into battle.

There...

I couldn’t pull his name from my
memory, even though I could see his face so clearly.  Laughing. In firelight. A
camp of hara spread out all around us. We were young and new and full of blood
and temper. We fought like cubs, ending up inside each other, licking each
other’s faces, making wounds with nails and teeth. That love, though feral, had
been pure, beyond thought or analysis, mere instinct. First love, you’d call
it. We’d kill side by side, full of joy, not caring who we killed or even why.
We took aruna amid the carnage, blood on our skins. Animals. No,
less
than animals, for animals do not kill like that. But perhaps they love in that
way. We weren’t unique. Many of us had these fierce, intense relationships. We
were new to ourselves, aghast at what we could do, the pleasure we could bring
to one another, the damage we could wreak. We thought we were immortal. Him I
loved. I let him
be
me. Gave everything.

When he died I was right next to
him. One moment he was beside me, the next a mist of red as the detonation of a
buried human explosive device took him. I was painted with him. Nothing was
left, nothing to bury or kiss. I’d been so close, yet was untouched.

I went mad, as many of us did
when we suffered these losses, which were common. Some managed better than
others. Our leader beat me until I stopped shrieking, until I nearly stopped
breathing. Then he took me, made me experience the terrible pleasure of aruna,
terrible because it over-rides everything else, and I didn’t want to do it. I
fought him and he hurt me, but all the time that grim goddess of carnal delight
took her due. ‘This is all that matters,’ my leader said. ‘No weeping. Find
another. It’s done.’

But it never had been
done
.
While senseless with grief, I’d been raped and beaten. Beaten, beaten, beaten. By
my own body. By his. Until I didn’t care. Until I learned.

As I’d lain there, breathing in
the gulping way that is swallowed tears and grief, lying upon the hard ground,
I’d vowed I would beat that goddess, bend her to my will, make her mine. She’d
never possess me like that again. And I did tame aruna, made it feed from my
hand, do tricks that made hara gasp in amazement, while they were all but dead
in mind and body because of what I could do to them. The greatest revenge. Love
me. See what happens.

This voice is who I used to be.

I came back into the present
moment, sobbing like a harling, Nytethorne motionless upon me. He allowed me
some moments, then murmured, ‘Take what I give you. Like the waters that gave
Peredur life.’

Pleasure seemed an abomination
in the face of what I’d remembered, because of the associations, but I clung to
him, wreckage in the storm, with the cold waves lashing over me, and then there
was a warm wave that was the essence of compassion, and I could breathe it in and
make it into light, a tower of light reaching to the stars. It was orgasm, but
experienced as a universe-filling sheet of glass or crystal, mazed with cracks
that sang like shattering ice, like a world-spanning frozen lake that is
breaking. I exploded into a million pieces, each one shining like diamond,
flying out. Unlocked.

When I opened my eyes, with
Nytethorne panting upon me, as if half drowned himself, I saw motes of golden
light in the room, floating around, not even sinking. I watched them for some
minutes until they faded away, but then the room was still haunted by soft
light, and I could hear voices singing. Nytethorne seemed to have fallen
asleep, still joined to me. ‘Get up. Get up!’ I hissed.

He rolled off me, clawing hair
from his face. ‘What?’

I rose from the bed and
instinctively hunched low to cross the room, fetching up between two of the
windows. I looked out.  Nytethorne had come up behind me. We saw a serpent of
light around the tower, snaking round the winding path that led from the bottom
of the hill to its summit. At first I thought it was hara with burning torches,
but the light was too yellow. As I peered through the glass, I could make out
nebulous forms within the light, vague outlines. Nytethorne breathed into my
ear, ‘
Ysbryddon garedig
,’ he said. ‘The good ghosts.’

The light of this procession
pooled around the base of Dŵr Alarch, perhaps drawn or conjured by what
Nytethorne and I had experienced, or perhaps there simply because of what must
happen the following day. I knew instinctively they had come to add their
strength to ours for the coming fight.

We watched them and listened to
their song for maybe three minutes, although it seemed longer. Then Dŵr
Alarch absorbed their light and they were gone. Even in a landscape of sorrow,
not all ghosts are bitter.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Despite what I know now, I still wonder exactly how
Wyva felt that morning, what he did. He would of course have sat with his
family to eat his breakfast, no doubt discussed in some small measure the
Reaptide festival for the following day. Did he notice something in Rinawne and
Myv? Did he sense their secrets? Or was he so immersed in and consumed by his
own thoughts he didn’t notice? We thought he didn’t notice much at all, or
that, if he did, he deliberately became blind to these things. On that, we were
all wrong.

As for me, I woke that day from what I thought was
a strange and wonderful dream, but I was in fact held in Nytethorne’s warm arms.
I had faced my most deeply buried demon and hauled it shrieking to the surface
of my mind. I wasn’t sure if this was enough to vanquish it, but now I knew its
face, its story, and what it had made of me.

Nytethorne stirred as I woke, as
if attuned to my state of being. He kissed my shoulder and said, ‘You all
right?’

I turned onto my back, reached
to touch his face. ‘I think I
am
.’ This said in a tone of wonderment.

He laid his head on me. ‘You
see, it was meant. How could you go to the fight with that lot squashed into
you?’

I frowned. ‘But how could I not
remember? Surely...’ I closed my eyes, tried to think back, but even now all I
remembered was the aruna vision and that it was true. I couldn’t recall
standing by him I loved; I could only see the moment after I’d been drenched in
his blood. I couldn’t remember the intricacies of taking aruna with him, but
the details of what that other har, who we called our leader, did to me were
there in sharp relief.

‘Don’t question,’ Nytethorne
said. ‘We did what we had to.’

‘Was that all it was?’ I smiled
somewhat sadly. ‘My therapy?’

Nytethorne sighed and rolled his
eyes. ‘You want me to answer that? We don’t need that crap.’

 All those domineering words:
Do
you love me? I love you. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
The minute
something is loved it brings as its dark gift the fear it might be lost. Betrayal,
abandonment, death. That is the true terror of allowing love to happen. This is
what our wise hara were trying to tell us all along. Slaughter the need,
embrace the love.

Reaptide is the second of the harvest festivals,
when hara give thanks for all they have so far gathered and what they have yet
to harvest. It is, as I have said, a strange in-between celebration, but one of
its symbols is the burning of the fields. Therefore, its theme is that of new
beginnings, making the landscape fit for next year’s growth. The fires burn
away dead plants, disease and weeds. Perfect imagery for our purposes. The
field burning would start tomorrow in reality, but ours would start tonight.

Nytethorne and I dressed and
went down to breakfast. The preliminary rituals we’d decided upon were due to
begin at mid-day. We would work slowly. Rinawne and Myv hadn’t yet arrived, but
Arianne was already up, as usual taking charge of her kitchen. I liked being in
charge of it too, but allowed her this because after tonight she would not come
back to it. And anyway, this tower had been hers long before it was mine.

When Peredur entered the kitchen,
some ten minutes later, he came to me at once and embraced me. ‘I heard you
last night,’ he whispered to me.

‘I apologise,’ I murmured back.

He laughed softly. ‘Not that...
I heard what you
saw
.’

‘We both have our stories,’ I
said. ‘I doubt there are many who don’t from those times.’

‘I won’t think any less of you
if you let some of that joy my suri gave you peer out beyond the surface of
your skin,’ he said and kissed the top of my head.

Myv and Rinawne arrived at eleven. As planned, we
spent half an hour or so in meditation, preparing ourselves for what was to
come. I took great care not to betray any intimacy with Nytethorne for
Rinawne’s sake. First, I didn’t want to hurt him and second, that kind of
emotional fallout could jeopardise our work. I’d told Nytethorne about Rinawne,
and he’d surprised me by saying I didn’t have to end that relationship for his
sake. ‘Have no contract for you,’ he’d said. ‘Live and love as you please.’
This was how different Nytethorne was to anyhar I’d been close to before. I
noticed Rinawne didn’t look at me directly, perhaps not wanting to see evidence
within me that Nytethorne and I had become closer. I wasn’t sure he’d react as
calmly as Nytethorne had done when eventually I told him the truth. Still, that
was for another day, which I hoped we’d live to see.

Our journey would begin in the
baked mountains, where insects sizzled in the heat. We would take water with
us, but not food. Other than a light breakfast, we must abstain from that. As
we sat in my nayati, I extended my senses into the landscape. I could feel the
ysbryd
drwg
prowling, gathering strength. Simultaneously, the form of Verdiferel took
shape. This was the trickster dehar, who at midsummer had murdered his creator
and lover to become the creator for the coming season. Already new life grew
within him, but for now he was set free from his obligations, the magician on
the path. But despite his less clement aspects, Verdiferel was still a dehar,
the stuff of gods shaped into a harish form by harish hearts and minds. Into
him we must lure the egregore of Gwyllion, then we must lead and ultimately
trap him. After that... it was difficult to make precise plans. I had to trust
we would know what to do. Mossamber had shown me some of what we faced. I was
not so proud as to think our task would be easy, but I had to believe we could
succeed, otherwise there was no point in trying.

At mid-day we left the tower,
travelling on foot, carrying satchels containing the small amount of equipment
we’d need and our water supply. We headed south down the valley, crossing the
river at the mossy bridge Mossamber had shown me, but we did not go towards the
haunted forest. Instead we turned our steps to the primordial sweep of the
ancient mountains that were mostly covered in lichen, short grasses and
heather. Peredur had told us of a granite boulder called Craig Drygioni, which
had associations with a trickster spirit. He thought this a good place to
invoke Verdiferel. To reach this site we must climb for over two miles. From
the valley floor, the slope appeared gentle, yet was anything but that once we
began to ascend it. A pair of red-billed choughs soared above us, uttering
piercing cries, occasionally diving through the air with folded wings. They
seemed to be keeping pace with us, perhaps curious. But other than these black
birds, the landscape appeared weirdly empty, desolate. The air hummed with the
heat.

Craig Drygioni looked out of
place, as if it had fallen from the sky and been dumped in the wrong place,
alone on a high mountainside. The height of a har, it was attended by broom bushes,
still jewelled with a few yellow blooms, and ground-hugging white stonecrop;
altar flowers for this sacred space. As we climbed, I could visualise
Verdiferel sitting on top of the stone, observing our approach. His feet were
bare, the toes long, gripping the lichened rock. He was chewing on a broom
stem, his hair in coiling brown tendrils around him, his ragged clothes made of
leaves and leather.

We sat against the rock and
drank some water. Myv opened his satchel and withdrew that pale swatch of
fabric, which glistened in the sunlight. ‘This is the moonshawl,’ he told Nytethorne,
offering it for him to inspect. Myv’s ritual robe.

‘It’s Gwerin Crwydrwyr work,’
Nytethorne said, in a tone of wonderment.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

Nytethorne shrugged. ‘Seen similar,
only once. Rare they give hara such things.’

‘Who are Gwerin Crwydrwyr?’
Arianne asked.

‘Roamer folk,’ Nytethorne said.

‘Do you know of them, Myv?’ I
asked.

He shook his head. ‘No. Are they
sorcerers?’

‘Yes,’ Nytethorne answered.

Myv smiled.

We composed ourselves in a
circle, me with my back to the Craig. Myv draped the moonshawl around his
shoulders before joining hands with the rest of us.  On my right side was
Arianne, Myv on my left. Rinawne sat between Myv and Peredur, Nytethorne
between Peredur and Arianne. I bid them close their eyes, regulate their
breathing and then aloud I said, ‘Astale, Verdiferel, you are welcome among
us.’

I could see him again on the
rock above us, now standing. This was no benign, gentle dehar. No flowers fell
from his skin. His eyes were the green of the forest canopy, shining like light
on water. When he smiled, his teeth were long and white, the canines, while not
abnormally large, clearly more pointed than those found in a har. Above him, in
the pulsing blue of the hot sky, a white owl flew by day. The choughs, who had
remained with us, fled shrieking, for the owl preys upon them. Verdiferel
crouched now on the rock, one hand slung across his knees, the other braced
against the stone. He watched me intently, as wary as a dehar of his nature
could be, but it was our will and intention that called this being into reality
and shaped him, therefore it was up to us to banish any hint of suspicion
within him.

Myv had draped the moonshawl
around his shoulders. I told him to cast its net over the rock; not in reality,
but in the inner world, that ‘other summer’ we inhabited. I saw the glistening
white folds, light as feathers, settle around Verdiferel. ‘Call the spirits of
the land to you, both
drwg
and
da
,’ I told the dehar. ‘We will
sing you to the sacred places.’

The moonshawl did not burn or
constrict him – it was after all patterned with white owls, his own creature.
Now was the time for us to open our eyes, but also to remain half in the inner
summer, seeing both reality and the world of imagination at the same time. This
would be easier for Peredur than for us.

I composed a song spontaneously
that had no words, but even so the sounds meant
follow us, come with us,
there are wonders at the journey’s end.
I know that the entity we’d
summoned and fashioned heeded these instructions. In his sly feral way he saw
only the flight of owls by day. Around us, I could sense confused spirits
walking through the sunlight, not knowing how or why they’d come to be there.
If a har dies at Reaptide, his phyle takes extra precautions so he doesn’t fall
into Verdiferel’s long cruel hands.

We went down the mountainside
and the shadows grew longer over the land. I wouldn’t take Verdiferel to the
forest of the dead so he might conspire with the tumour of grief that lurked
there. We led him along the river, through its shallows. The water was cool and
quick. We led the dehar to Pwll Siôl Lleuad and here we laid out offerings of
bread and wine for him on the rock next to the water, where I’d seen Nytethorne
sit to dry himself what seemed like years ago. We composed ourselves to wait
for nightfall, each taking a drink from the pool.

Slowly, the sun dipped redly
down the sky, but it became twilight at Pwll Siôl Lleuad sooner than anywhere
else nearby. Foliage rustled as if creeping paws stepped through it. The leaf
canopy above us sighed and swayed. Slowly, all things that crept through
darkness were drawn to us. I could feel this.

Verdiferel was almost dozing
above the pool, the moonshawl shining around him like a caul. Midges gathered
in balls above the water, dancing lightly on the air. I heard the clack of wing
feathers; the white owl, heard but not yet seen.

‘Call the spirits to you,
Verdiferel,’ I said. ‘Bring all of them, throughout the ages, to this sacred
spot.’

‘Ysobi,’ Myv said softly next to
me. ‘We must help him. We must put our blood into the water.’

I felt Arianne flinch. Briefly, her
hand gripped mine harder.

‘Yes,’ Peredur said. I looked at
him and his eye stones were black obsidian. Hadn’t they been moonstones
earlier?

Rinawne said nothing, but
brought from his own satchel a small, sharp knife, which he handed to me. I let
go of the hands holding mine and went to the water’s edge, made a small, swift
cut in my palm. ‘For Verdiferel and the burning of the fields,’ I said, then
put my bleeding hand into the water, kept it there, until one by one all of my
companions had done the same. Our pale and dark hands and the ribbons of red.
This was our first sacrifice.    

I told the group how I’d seen Verdiferel among us,
then asked them how he appeared to them.

‘A har in a red cloak,’ said
Myv. ‘The hood covers his face except for his mouth, but I can see his eyes
gleaming gold.’

Arianne frowned as she spoke
with closed eyes. ‘He is in a mist, so I can barely see him. Yes... in a cloak,
as Myv saw, but it is brown or black.’

‘I see him,’ said Rinawne, ‘as
small, almost like a harling with a sharp, cruel little face. His fingers are
like twigs and his eyebrows are made of leaves.’

‘His smile is too wide,’
Nytethorne said, ‘teeth are sharp, but eyes dark and kind. He wears a garment
of knotted cloths, twined with flowers and grasses, and a crown of owl
feathers.’

There was a silence, then
Peredur said: ‘He is me.’

‘He is all of these things,’ I
said. ‘As you visualise him, try to incorporate all these details you’ve heard.
Make him
our
egregore. He works for us.’

‘I’ll speak to the spirit of the
pwll
,’ Peredur said, ‘wake it up for us.’

Shadows extended their groping
fingers into the glade as the night came down about us. The owl called, once,
twice. And then I heard the bell, distantly. In the Domain, the Whitemanes
would be gathering to send us their strength. Beyond the glade, I sensed the
pale shimmer of the good ghosts, the
ysbryddon garedig
, distant yet
close. And the
ysbryd drwg
smelled Myv’s blood in the pool and was
intoxicated by its scent.