Daughter of Albion (15 page)

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.

At highsun we ate, then I spent afternoons learning the art of the fight. I was taught to stand firm and draw spirit through my bare feet into my task. I learned how the fury that possessed me when I came upon the slaughtered fawn could be harnessed to my will.

My skills blossomed. I parried with many tribeswomen, each bringing a different pattern to the battle's dance, and I learned to match and better them all. Three full moons passed in this learning. My mind became sharp and precise like the blade I swung, more alive than it had ever been. And Taliesin's presence was bright, as though my learning brought him close.

Yet when I thought of anything beyond him, beyond this gathering of women, my thoughts became veiled, as though I was recalling a dream. I asked the women many times, as we sat by the fire at day's end, where I was and why I had come, but they only chuckled at my confusion and wondered that I had not been better prepared.

What I dared not ask them of was skin. Like outcasts, they did not greet with it, they did not speak of it. I could only imagine that they assumed I was skinned, and I said nothing to correct them. For the first time—by some twist of grace—I was learning, and I would not endanger it for anything.

Eventually I asked nothing at all, because deep in my bones I knew where I was and why I had come. As my learning grew, I let myself think what I had not dared think, and hope what I have never dared hope: that these were neither outcasts, nor even journeywomen. These were the Mothers and I was walking among them. Not fleetingly, not by spirit, but by flesh. I was in the Mothers' realm. I had journeyed without skin.

I should have been frightened. But I was not.

The boundaries between realms are potent, bound by many taboos.
Realms must align for souls to pass.

S
UMMER WANED, REPLACED
by a crisp autumn.

I sat polishing the sword beneath flame-leafed trees at the edge of the hutgroup, waiting to begin the morning's training.

Meb approached and I rose to meet her. ‘There will be no training today,' she said.

‘Why not?'

She paused. ‘Today you will fight.'

I nodded and collected my polishing leathers. I had been told this would come. I knew I was to be matched with one of similar strength, perhaps a little stronger, as it should be a good fight, one to test my knowledge of swordcraft, my communion with the metal and, of course, my courage.

Meb was quiet as she prepared me in the sleep hut.

As she readied my washwater, she yielded no word of my foe. Surely they would not have me fight Mandua, who was like a she-wolf in battle, or Sirit, who could summon glamour almost as powerfully as Tara.

Meb bathed me and painted my skin with ground red stone. She was coiling the last of my braids when the horn call sounded.

Outside, the women had formed a circle. They parted so that I could enter, and waiting within—naked, with owl feathers in her hair and swirling patterns on her chest and face—was Tara herself.

I looked back at Meb, who nodded with encouragement.

They were testing me well in this match. So greatly did I honour Tara that I was already weakened. But I had been taught to fight, so I would fight.

I walked in, unsheathing my sword. Already the bone handle I had so lovingly polished felt like part of my body as I grasped it. We stood before each other, swords raised, as the women chanted the invocation to fight.

Mandua sounded a shrieking cry and the spark of combat ignited.

I took an instant to form strategy and Tara exploited it, her weapon whistling as it tore through the air. I lurched back, lifting my sword in a powerful block. The tone had been set: she would not win unchallenged.

She drove me back with three lateral swipes.

I struggled to parry them, sensing their position by the movement of wind as they descended. Then, in the split second she took to shape her next stroke, I lodged an attack: two sharp lunges that forced her retreat. Our audience took breath.

‘Ha! The learner is bold,' she hissed.

I knew that at any moment she could enchant me and my terror would be too great. So I whipped the sword furiously before me, the clang of metal ringing in the air.

We locked eyes and I saw hers darken. I swiped into the space between us. In the next instant she loomed, her skin alight, so dazzling that I could not see her edge. Her strikes came one each side in a steady rhythm.

Blinded, I swung my sword wildly back and forth to protect myself, but I was beginning to stumble. ‘Mothers, help me,' I called from my heart. The weapon grew warm in my hands. Time slowed. I paused, at great risk, to draw spirit through my feet. First of the earth, then yet deeper, fire.

Tara was upon me. I felt her sword's breath before its cut, painless at first, a clean slice, then a fierce sting as blood pulsed from the wound. It was long and bone-deep in my swordless arm. But I had drawn. Spirit was within me.

When Tara halted at the sight of my blood, I attacked with four driving swipes. She staggered back. All around us, the women shrieked, inciting us to fight without mercy. Tara's face was a grimace of rage as she swore and spat at my strikes.

But I was not angry. I was at peace.

My handle grew slippery with blood, but I drove forward with unwavering force until, with my fiercest blow, Tara lost her footing and was down on the ground. I straddled her with my sword at her chest. Though she was trapped beneath me, I feared her still. ‘What am I to do?' I whispered. In training, fights finished with laughter and a shared piece of sheep cheese.

‘Kill me,' she whispered. ‘That is your task.'

I looked frantically to Meb, then to the women around me but no one disputed her command.

I turned back to Tara's fine face, her chest pounding under the point of my blade. Then I stepped away, casting my sword to the ground. ‘If that is my task, then I have failed it. I will not kill without purpose.'

Tara rolled over then jumped to her feet with throaty laughter. ‘Oh, you are good! We've not seen one such as you for some time.' She picked up the sword and handed it to me. ‘This is yours. You have earned it. Now go to the healing tent and tend your wound. Then we will eat and drink for the last time. Tonight you leave us.'

Evening drew and the women led me to the mouth of the forest track that would carry me away from this place. Excitement danced in my belly as I glanced at the rising moon, as full and golden as the one that had carried me here.

I wore a woollen shawl and leather cloak over my own summer dress. Though my wound ached beneath its flax dressing, my muscles were hard from training and from the animal flesh I had eaten in such abundance. I was ready to face whatever my return to Cad would bring.

I embraced Meb and the other women in turn, until I came to Tara.

She kissed my cheeks, then held my sword out before her on flattened palms. ‘This sword is our body. It is your body reborn. Carry with it the knowledge of fire.'

‘Thank you,' I said, as I grasped it. It was weighty and warm like a living creature.

Tara met my eye. ‘The sword will bend the world to your will, Ailia. But once it takes life, it will have no greater power than that. Do you understand?'

‘Yes,' I nodded, although I could not fathom how it would serve me.

‘Keep it well hidden until it is needed.'

I nodded again and strapped the sword, sheathed in leather, beneath my skirts. It was short and light enough that I could bind it to my thigh—a little awkward as I walked, but nothing compared with my pride in possessing it.

Tara handed me a torch and stepped away.

Suddenly I was frightened. ‘How will I find my way back?'

‘By our song.'

I went to query her but she silenced me.

Softly, the Mothers of fire began to sing. It was low at first, in unison, on deep, rolling breaths. Then it built, until song poured like water, filling the dusk. It spoke to me of all their wisdom, the gift of fire, and the birth of my learning. I began to walk. They were singing me out of their place and back into mine.

For several hours I walked, guided by their voices. As they grew fainter, the night air grew hotter. Eventually I stripped off my shawl and cloak, wedging them under my arm. When they became too cumbersome to carry, I left them behind on the path.

Finally I heard the voices no longer. My torchlight spluttered. I was at the forest's edge.

A dog barked. With a surge of joy, I burst free of the trees and there, to my disbelief, was Neha. I buried my face in the folds of her neck, drawing deep breaths of the crushed-grass scent of her fur. ‘Were you waiting for me?' I marvelled. Surely she had not kept vigil since I entered the forest? I stroked her flank, but she was no thinner, and bore no sign of having lived wild. It was as though no time has passed.

The creamy moon lit our path back to Cad. By its height, the hour was not long past midnight. As I walked on, I imagined the words that I would tell Llwyd: that the Mothers had called me, that I was worthy of learning despite my skinlessness, and he must teach me at last.

After a short way I was sweating. It was yet warmer here beyond the forest. What strange autumn was this? The air was as hot and noisy with insect hum as it was when I left, a whole season hence. I stared around me. The crops were still thick in the fields and there were berries on the bushes that lined my path. There was something tilted here. I had been gone for several moon turns. At least the turn of the season. But I was returned to the scents and fruits of midsummer.

Had I slept in the forest and dreamed my passage? No, there was a wet bandage around my arm and the dull throb of the cut. And bound, chafing, to my thigh, was the sword I had been gifted. It had been no dream.

The sight of my hilltop town brought a wave of relief. For the first time since I had left, I yearned to see Cookmother and my worksisters. But with each step closer, my excitement gave way to dread. The lulling haze that had wrapped me as I trained with the Mothers was now truly lifted. I had no idea of what furies Cookmother would deliver, what Llwyd would say of my learning without skin. My boldness, my new strength, were ebbing away.

I stole through the gates and into the Tribequeen's compound. In the odorous heat, Cookmother, Bebin, Ianna and Cah were sleeping soundly. Cookmother was alone. It was odd that she had not called one of the others into her bed when I had been gone so long.

Then I noticed what was strangest of all. Spread across the floor was the same upturned basket and spilled barley that I had kicked as I left.

I stood paralysed, my mind reeling. I had returned to the same night that I left. Had they all been captured in some stillness of time? There had been some deep magic here and for the first time, far away from the light of the Mothers' fire, I felt sickened with fear for what I had done. It could not be right to have passed time in one place without time being spent in another.

I pulled off my sandals and lay beside Bebin, who stirred and murmured without waking. Despite my exhaustion, sleep would not come. What had happened was wrong. I had journeyed—this much I knew—but it should not have happened in this way. I had the journeywoman's gift but not the learning to support it.

How could I explain my months with the Mothers when there had been only a passage of one night? I would not be believed. Or I would be punished for walking where I was not permitted.

I could not ask Bebin, who had warned me, nor Cookmother, who had forbidden me. I was alone.

There are years of good harvest and years of bad.
We must not cling to our joy nor despair of our suffering.

I
OPENED MY
eyes to Bebin's face watching me as I slept.

‘Tidings,' she whispered.

The morning was full of birdsong, yet the kitchen was still. ‘Why have none risen?' I murmured.

‘Do we not always lie late after festival?'

‘Festival?' I asked, too drowsy to think.

Bebin frowned. ‘Solstice, you goose. Are you still dreaming?'

‘Of course,' I nodded, masking the jolt as it all returned to me. Though they had long since cooled in my memory, the solstice embers would still be warm on Sister Hill.

I rose to tend the fire. It was bewildering to be reunited with my worksisters when I had not seen them for many months, and yet to know that, by their reckoning, there had been no absence at all.

Cookmother did not protest it when I brought her goat's milk to sip in her bed, but nor did she thank me, and I knew I was not forgiven.

I joined Bebin at the fire as she prepared the breakfast. ‘Tell me of the feast.' I urged. ‘I'm sorry I did not help—'

She waved my apology away. ‘It was lively,' she said, tipping meal into the cookpot. ‘Fibor drank half a barrel and was asleep by highsun. And—' she glanced at me. ‘There was news from Gaul.'

‘Well or bad?'

‘Mixed.' She stirred the porridge. ‘The best of it is that there has been mutiny among the Roman forces.'

‘The mighty Romans?'

‘Yes!' she laughed. ‘Plautius commanded the legions to board the ships but they refused, too frightened.'

‘Of what?' I scoffed.

Bebin shrugged. ‘Of us. Of Albion.' She scooped some water from a bucket beside the fire and poured it into the pot. ‘They think this place is the edge of the world.'

I smiled. ‘An army of field mice.'

We giggled together over the bubbling porridge. It felt good to laugh.

‘What was the worst of the news?' I said, quieting.

‘The numbers.' Her face grew still. ‘The rider said that forty thousand soldiers, and as many horses, are gathered on the shores of Bononia. Two thousand ships wait in the tides, laden with grain and weapons.' She looked up from the pot.

Such numbers were beyond my imagining.

‘If they do find their courage,' she said, ‘then how will we defeat them?'

When I walked to the well after breakfast, Cah stood there, laughing with the strangemaid, Heka. The sight of them stopped me in my path. I had rarely ever seen Cah so at ease, so lost in her laughter. At the sound of my footsteps, they turned, and their smiles dropped away.

By late morning the sword had rubbed my thigh skin to an angry rawness. Desperate to ease it, I released the leather binding while the kitchen was empty for a moment, and buried the sword deep in my bedskins, where Neha proceeded to snuffle for it beneath the blankets.

‘This will not do,' I murmured, pulling Neha off to fish it back out again. Glancing over my shoulder, I pushed aside Cookmother's rosewood chest, which covered the opening to the storepit below. Little was held there now and it was rare that Cookmother bade us enter it.

I dropped down on the wobbling stepladder into the chill of the dark chamber. It was barely tall enough for me to stand. In the light that seeped through the opening above, I could just make out a few grain pots, some old metal tools, and a mound of straw that would once have been bed to winter's smoked carcasses. I wrapped the sword in my leine and stashed it beneath the straw.

Cah entered the kitchen just as I was pushing the chest back over the opening. ‘What are you doing?' She watched me from the doorway, clutching an armful of wood.

‘Looking for a pot lid Cookmother has lost,' I murmured.

‘Find it?' Her mind was sharp as flint. She walked to the woodpile. ‘You are holding secrets—do not think I will protect them. You are favoured enough as it is.'

I crouched beside her as she stacked the logs. ‘Why do you offer your friendship to Heka?'

Cah shrugged. ‘She helps me with my tasks for nothing more than a cup of ale. And I like her. She has no one—no suck-mother to protect her—and yet she survives. She does not look down on me.'

I nodded, ignoring the jibe. ‘Do you know what has brought her here?'

‘No,' she said. ‘She doesn't speak of it. She is a spirit that wanders. She follows pleasure and takes it heartily.' Cah stacked the last log and got to her feet. ‘She did ask of you often when first she came. Though thankfully her interest seems to have waned.'

‘She has cruelty in her nature, Cah,' I said, as she walked toward the doorway.

She turned briefly. ‘Perhaps that is her strength.'

I sighed. ‘Perhaps.'

I had greater concerns at this moment than Heka.

I was grinding wheat with Bebin after highsun when the doorbell sounded. We jumped to our feet as Llwyd entered.

‘Be at peace,' he said, waving away our reverence. ‘I come to speak to Ailia.'

Cookmother hurried my worksisters out of the roundhouse then busied herself at the cookpot.

‘Might I be alone with her, Cookwoman?' Llwyd sat at the fire.

Cookmother eyed him, then ladled a large bowlful of porridge and set it with a clatter on the bench beside him. ‘Of course.'

‘Thank you, Cookwoman. Your graces are, as ever, enchanting,' he said with a faint smile as she trundled toward the door. He turned to me as I sat beside him. ‘How do you fare, Ailia?'

‘I…am well,' I faltered. Did he see change in me?

‘I would speak of the warning in yesterday's fire.'

The memory, softened by the Mothers, was now knife-sharp here. ‘Yes,' I said.

‘It would seem that the Mothers have marked you,' he said slowly, ‘to be woven, somehow, into the fate of this tribe. But I cannot understand the omen because you are without skin. You will never journey or even train.' He shrugged. ‘I can make no sense of their intentions.'

He had opened a crack I could not let close. Before I could stop myself, I had reached for his hand and grasped it firm.

It was cold and bony and returned my hold.

My voice trembled. ‘Journeyman Llwyd, honoured Elder, will you teach me?'

His grip tightened.

‘I think there is knowledge in me.'

He nodded. ‘I see it. And the fire saw it too. But without skin, you cannot be taught. You must learn within the fabric of your skin. This is what the Mothers require.'

They themselves have already taught me
, I wanted to wail. But I was afraid to confess the warped shape my journey had made. If I wanted to go back to them I had to find a sanctioned way.

‘And even more so because of the seer's prediction that blood will run,' he continued, ‘we must show the most loving observance of the skin laws.' He frowned. ‘Or they will not protect us.'

‘From what?' I breathed, daring to ask what I had never been taught. ‘What is the danger?'

He winced, as if struggling to resolve what should be spoken. ‘It is not just our souls that are wrapped in skin,' he began. ‘The hardworld itself is held in its layers. It is spirit skin that separates the realms and holds us intact. And if it is ruptured or torn, then the wound can infect and spread. Knowledge is the blood that sustains this skin, Ailia. Only knowledge holds the hardworld in place. If knowledge is breached, it will bring chaos and damage upon us all.'

My stomach lurched. I had made such a breach with my untrained journey. I knew I must never repeat it, and yet I could not go back to the darkness of life before I began to learn. I had to convince Llwyd to teach me. ‘I am without skin, that is so, but Llwyd, there are other truths that mark me for learning.'

He frowned. ‘Go on.'

You asked me once if I saw an animal,' I said, my thoughts racing. ‘I did—a fish. A salmon attended me.'

He raised his chin. ‘What else?'

‘A geas,' I spilled, ‘that I set and healed. It carried the weight of death.'

His breath caught. ‘Is there anything else?'

The sword lay in the chamber beneath us. With a word I could tell him that I had walked with the Mothers and my learning was greater than he knew. But my unlawful journey had already wrinkled the seasons, and I was terrified to confess it. I shook my head.

‘Upon these truths alone, you cannot be trained,' he said, ‘but if there was more evidence of your knowledge,' he urged, ‘then perhaps, Mothers willing, the Isle would take you.'

‘The Glass Isle?' I whispered. ‘Could it be so?'

‘I have never known a skinless woman to be trained, but if the knowledge gift was strong enough, then teachers of the Isle may want to shape it…' He gripped my fingers until they ached. ‘Show me more, Ailia, and I will call Sulis.'

I nodded, blood pounding in my head. Llwyd saw knowledge in me. There would be more. I would find a way to show him.

‘But please—' his voice wavered, ‘—you must not go near the sacred places, especially the Oldforest, when you are untrained. You could bring great injury to the tribes.'

I stared at the bone talismans that hung from his belt and hoped he could not see my chest thumping beneath my dress.

He looked at me, reading me. ‘
Have
you, Ailia?
Have
you breached the forest's edge?'

‘Most certainly not,' cried Cookmother, bustling back. She must have heard every word. ‘I've not let her slip from my view since—'

‘Since what?' said Llwyd.

She stood at the hearth, her arms folded across her chest. I knew she was thinking of my first sighting of the Mothers.

‘Since…the early harvest,' she stammered. ‘There's nothing in it, Llwyd. She's a kitchen girl, nothing more. She's of no more consequence to the fate of this tribe than the mice in the kitchen.' She picked up her ladle and churned the porridge, flicking scalding droplets onto my forearm.

‘Which can be of great consequence, as you know, if they get into the grain pits,' said Llwyd. ‘It is not my way to command your honesty, but it is your conscience upon which it will rest if you are wrong.'

‘Do you say that I lie, wiseman?' Cookmother snapped.

‘No. But we both know that you have cause to.'

A burning silence flared between them and for a moment I was forgotten.

Cookmother stirred the pot as though it was a hide needing beating and Llwyd stared, unmoving, at the fire.

My eyes darted from one to the other, unable to fathom this tension between them.

Finally, Llwyd turned back to me. ‘The Oldforest?' he repeated.

I looked up at Cookmother. Her rigid jaw revealed a fear I had never seen before. My thoughts raced. Cookmother knew that I had walked the forest and yet she was determined it should not be revealed. It was difficult to lie to Llwyd, but it was Cookmother in whom I trusted. I shook my head.

Llwyd sighed and the lines scored in his cheeks seemed to deepen. ‘I hope it is so,' he said.

I shifted on the bench, my thigh still smarting from where the sword had been bound.

Llwyd stood to leave. ‘Do not breach the forest's edge, Ailia. Do not weaken what protects us.'

I nodded, vowing in my heart that I would not defy him. I would not risk harm to the souls of the tribespeople. I prayed that it was not too late.

When Llwyd had left, Cookmother stood before me, her cheeks flushed with anger. ‘I repeat what I have told you,' she said. ‘If you step once more into the forest you will not sleep in this kitchen again. You will not be my work daughter.'

I nodded, stunned by her threat.

Then with a sob, she lurched forward and took me in her arms. I rested my head on the fat-stained breast of her cooking tunic and, for the first time since I was much smaller, she rocked me and sang my childhood song: