Hallucinating (14 page)
And so they find Autumn Lament, their second tune.
...when the full moon is high...
Ma Dder takes Nulight down into the aeolian valley at midnight. She is a calm one, this red woman, with much to teach; and with generosity. Nulight has been told to bring his trumpet.
They stand amidst the aeolian harps, which are resonating under the nocturnal breeze, thrumming, deep and shimmery;
shivering
the air. Ma Dder points to the trumpet and says, "So that's your natural instrument?"
Nulight nods. "I played Tibetan horns before coming to the West. Also thigh bones. Then I took up the trumpet for a few years, before getting into computer trance and that whole scene. Man, do I regret having so many years off. Shoulda kept it up."
"I will leave you here," Ma Dder says. "I sensed something of your loneliness up there, when we made the equinox ritual, so I thought of bringing you here." She glances around at the moonlit place in which they stand. "The acoustic is good here, isn't it?"
Then she departs, and a horde of wolves appear from nowhere, following her up to the top of the valley.
For a few moments Nulight stands alone and silent, wondering what to do, before he places the trumpet to his lips and contemplates loneliness. He wasn't
lonely.
What did she mean?
Well... hmmm, well there
is
a certain envy inside him when the others act as a group, when they come together on an emotional plane to create something new; and although all this was his idea, this absurd quest, he sees now that he has both a central and a peripheral position. He feels peripheral right now. It was that unthinking gesture of Sperm, reaching out for his bouzouki... knowing what was going on before he, Nulight, knew.
He sighs. No point being envious in a group.
Now he raises his trumpet again and blows a single note. It echoes around the defile, supported by the drone, which is in A, mixing with the other notes. And then in a matter of seconds he is playing a mournful line of notes, a trumpet solo, that merges with the notes of the aeolian harps, that echoes around the defile, adding to the sound, running away, floating over it. He decides to play Hassell-style, with grace and no hard edges, fluid and dense as underwater sound, stringing together... what?
Stringing together how he feels at the moment, and so learning and feeling once again the power of music for self-expression. He is telling himself through the vehicle of emotional music, through this gorgeous trumpet solo, that he feels lonely and peripheral.
Buddah, he's got to stop thinking! Got to immerse himself in the music.
He shuts his eyes to focus better on the actual notes, on the feel of playing—the very physical feel—and his thoughts ride out into the environment of the defile, as the magical trumpet solo dives and soars amongst the notes of the aeolian chorus, reverberating, reverberating on and on as it bounces off bare rock faces. And then it fades, as inspiration is lost. He has told himself everything he needs to know.
He has authenticated his humanity. He has expressed himself.
It is done.
...not that priest again...
They depart Ma Dder on the day after the autumn equinox, and it is a sad time, because thanks to her they have found their second song and so proved to themselves that good ol' John Barleycorn was not a one-off. And this second song they title Autumn Lament, which is a name of that special yesterday.
Late that afternoon they enjoy a break by a stream, where they take out their instruments, Sperm and Kappa their guitars, Nulight his hand drum, Djo her harmonium; and with intrigue and passion they play just those two songs, as if confirming to themselves that here they are creating a song cycle, intimate of the land, of the earth, of Gaia, rooted in beauteous pagan Britain, discovered, somehow, by them as they undertake their quest. At the end of Autumn Lament they are in tears, for the joy of their discovery and for the joy of knowing that this is progressing
right.
They move on. Grey clouds and a bit of drizzle can't dampen their enthusiasm.
Next day they turn a corner to find a man sitting on a lichen-covered bench, where he is eating lunch. A few pigeons peck at the crumbs by his feet. It is Deputy Smark. Nulight is surprised, though he half expected this smarmy dude to reappear. He says nothing. Kappa got the tone right last time, so he lets her go forward to speak.
Kappa begins, "Are you following us?"
"Not in your exact path, no," comes the reply.
"But you're here."
Deputy Smark throws a few crumbs of cheese to the pigeons and replies, "After your rude and arrogant behaviour last time, I decided that the pagan word might need to be balanced by the word of Jesus Christ."
"Did you."
"You can't object. This is a free country... if you know what I mean. There may not be a Europe, but it is clear to me that we are all civilised and educated people here. We all believe in free speech, I hope."
Kappa is nonplussed.
"So," says Deputy Smark. "How did you fare with the hedge-witch?"
"You know her?"
"I know of her."
Kappa shrugs. "We liked her. She helped us."
"With her pagan wisdom, eh?"
"Yes. And we're going to stick to that. Your time is gone—Christianity is destined to become an even smaller cult than it was ten years ago... thank Buddah your lot were disestablished in 2040."
"I am here to show otherwise. Christianity will prevail."
Nulight shouts, "Not while we're alive!"
Kappa nods. "You're beginning to annoy me, priest, and I'm pretty cool with different viewpoints." She gestures at the land around them and adds, "This isn't a country where you get chance encounters. You're following us."
"Maybe God is leading me, yes."
And Nulight shouts, "Stop fucking mentioning
God.
"
Kappa raises one hand and tells Nulight, "This man is deliberately goading us, I can feel it in his words." Addressing Deputy Smark directly she says, "You better take care. There's bandits about."
"Are you threatening me?"
"What of it?"
Deputy Smark stands up. "I am going to find some nice people to talk to. But we will meet again. I hope your manners have returned by then."
The interloper walks down the track. Nulight watches, until the bastard priest has disappeared behind a grove of silver birch; then he turns to the others and says, "That man is up to something. How dare he follow us just because we're pagans? That's... bloody
stupid.
"
"There's more to this than meets the eye," Kappa tells him. "Let me work on him."
Nulight spits. "He's just a felonious monk."
In dejected mood the foursome carry on up the track. This meeting has been quite a blow. Nulight is wondering now if Incense and Peppermint might be trained to bark at, even bite Deputy Smark—what they would need is a fragment of clothing... But then, as the sun sets crimson into ragged, roiling cloud, they strike up a refrain of John Barleycorn, and pleasure returns to each of the walkers.
Music lifts their mood.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
...at the Marches...
It is the end of October and they are beginning to worry about food and the weather. Although Rubycon and Ricochet still carry a large amount of preserved food, there is little now that can be harvested from the land. They could last at most three weeks on their pony-transported rations, so they will need to rely on payment for gigs, on generosity, and on the bartering that so far they have not had to undertake. Nulight checks through their bag of small, useful and valuable items: nothing useless like gold or jewelry, no, these are items that can be
used,
like penknives, pencils, cotton and silk thread, washers, nuts and screws, needles, coffee beans, and various spare parts for computers—power supplies, CD trays, hard drives and the like. Ultimately, if they were desperate, they could trade in the ponies themselves for food, or even slaughter them. But Nulight hopes it won't come to that. Springtime in a quarter of a year.
As for the weather, the rains have come. They all have waterproofs and really tough DMs, but there is the desolation effect, the debilitating power of bad weather that they had forgotten about, and which saps their enthusiasm. The land is spooky grey, cool and dank, damp and haunted. Traditionally this is the time of witches; and they know from meeting Ma Dder that Wicca lives on.
It is at the tiny village of Little Ness in Marches country that bandits first appear. The quartet are climbing a hill to its top, following an old tarmacked lane, when from bushes at the corner up ahead jump a group of rough looking dudes, who immediately ID themselves by shouting, "Stop! You don' get past us wi'out a toll."
"Stand by your knives," Nulight mutters to the others.
They pause half way up the hill and let the five bandits approach. Nulight feels for his knife, but doesn't draw it in case the move sparks a fight. These are grubby, untidy half-starved blokes, and three of them carry clubs.
The foursome hear mutterings.
"Foreigners."
"Strangers."
"Get 'em."
Nulight raises his hands and tries to think of something to say. "Peace, man." It sounds crap. The blokes have clubs, for Buddah's sake. There's gonna be blood on the earth.
"Shit," he mutters; then hears the others echo his feeling, using different words.
But then something odd. The leader bandit—tall, bearded, flashing blue eyes—spots Sperm at the rear and says, "Oy—ain't you Roger de Waverley?"
Sperm jerks his head up and flashes the bandit a glance. "Maybe," he says.
"You
are.
I read Permaculture and Information Ethics with you at the Faculty of Avalon... five years ago?"
Sperm frowns. "Josh Spink?"
"Yeah!"
Nulight glances between the two men. "You know each other?"
"Sure," says Josh the bandit. He glances at his mates and says, "Clubs away, boys. This is coolstuff."
Kappa steps forward and liberates her scarlet dreads from the tea-cosy hat that she has been wearing. "You might remember me, Josh," she remarks.
Josh gapes. "Dean! Shit! What are you lot doing here?"
"We could ask you that," Nulight replies.
Josh is unimpressed with this remark, and he flashes Nulight an unpleasant look, of scorn, contempt, of threats veiled by the thinnest social veneer. "I live here, Indian boy," he says.
Nulight makes no reply.
But Kappa nods and says, "Josh, we're cool with you living here."
And Josh shrugs and says, "Where you headed, anyway?"
"We're on a quest," Nulight says, making it sound
really
important.
Josh's eyes narrow. "So your intention is to leave this area soon?"
"Of course."
"Enough with the quest spiel," Kappa says, gesturing for silence. "I want to hear Josh's story first."
"Ain't hardly anything to tell," Josh says. "I came back here after my degree and worked in bio-IT, and then suddenly there were aliens everywhere and nothing worked. This village has been struggling ever since. I came here with my gang to help my parents, they've always lived here, and they were getting on a bit—and, you know, it's been a rough year. You hear tales... "
"Man, we've heard 'em," Nulight concurs.
"Do you want tea or anything?" Josh asks Kappa. "You, Roger?"
"Okay."
Much to their surprise they are led to a large house in which lives a community of twenty—basically Josh's parents and extended family. The community has survived the year on farming and hunting, but judging by their thin frames and haunted faces it has not been easy.
"Just tea," Nulight comments. "You needn't feed us."
"We must give you something," Josh says. "It'd be
rude
of us not to."
Nulight is uneasy. This family needs food. "Well... "
"Just a crab-apple or something," says Kappa in a smiley kind of a voice.
Everybody relaxes now that the introductory embarrassments have passed. They hear more stories, listen to farming problems, dispense a bit of wisdom of their own, and then play their two songs, both of which go down really well.
"Of course," says Josh, "it's Samhain the day after tomorrow, New Year's Day and all, so you ought to be at the coven in Ruyton-XI-Towns."
"Where's that?"
"Mile and a half down the lane. It's the biggest... that's not the right word, it's the most sophisticated..."
"The most successful," somebody offers.
"... settlement around here. They're all witches, though."
"We're cool with Wiccans," Nulight says, nonchalantly.
"You means Ruyton-XI-Towns is run as a coven?" Djo asks.
"Yep."
"Wow." Djo looks excited. "Sounds like my kind of nightlife."
"Okay," Nulight says, finishing his mug of tea and standing up. "We'll head on down there, yeah?"
"Wait," Josh says. He hunts around in a cupboard at the back of the room and produces a handful of Voiceoftibet CDs that Nulight, Djo and Sperm have to sign. Then, shyly almost, he offers Nulight a sliver of wood, describing it as a good luck charm, and Nulight notices that it has a cowrie symbol carved upon it. Then it is back to the mutts and the ponies, and they are on their way again, along a narrow and winding lane, past a lone house called Greystones that is guarded by hounds, past a deserted farm, past a burnt out house that is all charred stone and broken slates.
Ruyton-XI-Towns is a village set amidst sheer red sandstone cliffs: a single road and way too many big houses for comfort. Like,
rich
people. The place is quiet, though, as the sun sets raggedy into looming rainclouds. The foursome are a tad damp, and they are all looking forward to seeing what this community has to offer. Food, hopefully, amongst other things.
Although there are a good number of big houses, there are also fifty or more Anglo-Saxon style dwellings, circular walls and massive cone-shaped roofs made of tough thatch. These houses are set in small groups around great fireplaces, many of which are smouldering, and the majority of them stand beside a slow moving river. It is at these dwellings, Nulight suspects, that they will find the ruling coven. Approaching, they see men and women and children, and it is a pair of young girls who first notice them, and cry out, "Peoples!"
Soon the quartet and their animals are surrounded by many people, villagers all, in varied clothes. They look healthy, this lot, and Nulight notes that some of them wear ostentatious jewelry. There are full bellies here: no bones showing. Rounded women and tall men, and well-fed children, altogether different to the situation in Little Ness.
Nulight steps forward and says, "Hi, man. Is it okay for us to visit? We're new round here."
A blonde woman steps forward. She is exceptionally beautiful, strong and almost as tall as him, with a body, a stance and a charisma—he'd use the word
energy,
if that wasn't so bland and meaningless—that makes everyone look at her. It is obvious from her strength and her unflinching gaze that she is a leader here. It could be no other way.
"I am Inamorata," she says. "You?"
Nulight introduces himself and the others, but is disappointed to find that they are unknowns here. Pity. He then launches into a brief description of the quest, and many of the villagers are intrigued by this, judging by their expressions, and then the awkwardness is banished and a whole load of people are sitting around the main fire, the foursome included.
Nulight finds himself sitting next to a dark woman of about twenty, and she keeps sniffing and looking at him, a smile on her mouth and in her eyes—rather too flirty for Nulight's liking. Welcoming food is brought as soon as the people realise that the newcomers can play music in return, and it becomes quite a jolly scene. Inamorata is one of a number of leaders of the coven, but they do not live in the large roadside houses, which have been converted into storehouses for food, guarded, Inamorata jokes, by trained hounds. Still, this is a pretty groovy set-up, and Nulight thinks he can relax for a couple of days. Samhain is the day after tomorrow, and he ain't going nowhere until after New Year's Day.
...later that night...
It's dark. Sleepy, inside his sleeping bag, Nulight wakes up to find a person—just a grey shadow—creeping around the empty Anglo-Saxon-style house that the foursome share. He sits up. "Who's there?"
A hand reaches out and a woman's giggle reaches his ears. He's waking, now.
"Who's that?"
Gently the woman leads him out into the soft, just-been-drizzling night. It's the dark-haired one from the campfire.
"You all right?" he asks her. "Trouble?"
She sniffs him. In the light of the half-hidden moon he can see her ecstatic face. "So," she says; and her voice is husky. "So you're the one from Little Ness."
"Me? Uh?"
"Ooh, you smell good," the woman says. Without warning she hugs him, then kisses him. Nulight tries to struggle free.
"Hey, hey," he says. "I'm a taken man."
"I'll sure take you," the woman chuckles.
"Wait... hang on a minute..."
Nulight is getting a teensy bit scared here. Surely this woman isn't... Buddah! She is!
"Do you want a blow job first?" she asks.
Nulight leaps back, and this time he moves fast and violent to be free of her. "What the fuck is this? I'm with Kappa. What, you woke me just to—"
"Nulight!" Another voice.
Nulight spins around to see Inamorata nearby.
"Nulight, you aren't
rejecting
Celeste?" says Inamorata.
Nulight splutters, "Man, now listen... what you mean, reject? What the fuck—"
"You are the one from Little Ness. Celeste and I both smelled you—"
"What is all this about
smelling?
"
For the first time Inamorata looks uncertain. "You are the one who Celeste will handfast to tomorrow."
"Handfast? Tomorrow?"
"Samhain. Handfast for a year and a day."
"Listen, listen good, yeah, this is all new to me. I ain't gotta clue—"
"
No!
"
It is Celeste who has wailed, and she is weeping now, fallen into the mud and cold puddles. Alot of noise. Nulight looks about, certain that he is in a bad situation. "Hey," he says, "that wasn't me did that..."
Inamorata nods. "Your face looks honest, though your words are a lie."
"They're not!"
Inamorata walks up to him, grasps his upper arms, then smells his face, hair and chest. He's too scared to move. "You are the one. I can smell you."
Then Nulight recalls the scent technology of Master Sengel. "Hey, what am I like?" he asks. "Minty?"
"Don't mock us. You are the one to bind Little Ness with Ruyton-XI-Towns. A handfasting to cement our two communities together, yet leave them separate and free."
"What, like a marriage?"
Inamorata nods. "But pagan."
"Hey, I don't live in Little Ness... wait a moment! I just remembered something." Nulight is thinking of the sliver of wood that Josh Spink gave him, engraved with that so-obvious symbol of femininity, the cowrie. Could that have been something other than a gift? He pulls the sliver out of his pocket and hands it over. "If the smell is fixed on this then, hey, it wasn't me that was supposed to handfast to..." He looks down at Celeste, who weeps on. She's distraught.
Inamorata can see now what has happened, but her expression does not change. "Celeste has been imprinted now with you and your scent. If you do not handfast to her, if you reject her body—freely given, Nulight—then I dare not think what will happen to her mind. She will go mad."
"Look, it's just out of the question, it's all been a mistake. I'm... handfasted, if you like, to Kappa. My gal. With the dreads?"
"I saw her. So you two have been through the handfasting ritual?"
"No."
"Then you are a free man by our law, and by our law you will be judged, for you have eaten here and accepted our hospitality."
A new voice. "Don't you think that's rather arrogant?"
It's Kappa. She doesn't look pissed off, which Nulight is pleased about. "Sweets," he begins. No, better accentuate that. "
Sweets,
" he says, "there's been a mistake, I didn't do anything—"
"He speaks the truth," Inamorata interrupts. "There is no embarrassment now, no shame. My problem is the state of mind of Celeste. She has been programmed by the scent to lust for and love Nulight." She glances at Nulight. "And lusted after and loved you should have been, for that is how we programmed it."
Kappa says, "I think Nulight and I might be immune. I won't say why."
Master Sengel, of course. Nulight remarks, "We're shafted."
"But why did you need to make a marriage?" Kappa asks Inamorata.
"We limit ourselves to communities of about a hundred. Above that, hierarchical structures need to be in place to manage all the people, and hierarchy brings injustice. Little Ness is in a bad state and they've been asking for months to merge with us. We rejected them because of the number limit, but in the end we offered the idea of marrying one of their men to one of our women—a bond leaving us independent, yet together. Unfortunately, it seems that Celeste's man has not been chosen properly."