Magdalen Rising (34 page)

Perhaps Dwynwyn sensed my lack of fear. She paused in front of me.

“This one, ” she pronounced, “has the fire, all right, but she doesn't know what it's for. Fire in a few other places, too. Will she burn to a cinder or set the world on fire? That's always the question, isn't it?” she said to herself or whatever invisible audience she addressed. She certainly wasn't asking the girl-druids.

Then, all at once, she raised both her arms. “The rest of you, shoo! Go home! Come again another day with turnips and truffles, barley corn and cloud berries, goose liver and the balls of wild boars!”

Suddenly the air was alive with the frantic beating of wings. A small flock of birds rose into the light and disappeared over the dunes. Only Branwen and Viviane remained, one on either side of me.

“Ah,” said Dwynwyn, “I see. The true friend and the true enemy. All right. Stay with her for awhile. You do her and yourselves honor. But soon you must fly away, too. There are things she must see and know and suffer alone.”

There was little doubt that “she” meant me.

“Will they turn back into themselves?” I demanded. I wanted Dwynwyn to know that I was not overawed by her powers.

“Before they're halfway home,” she said sadly. “Birds on the wing are such a pretty sight, don't you think? Much more uplifting than the spectacle of girls making fools of themselves.”

“Why do you assume that we are going to be stupid?” Viviane was insulted.

Dwynwyn fixed Viviane with her eye. “You ask that?”

Viviane remained silent.

“Some people mend their hearts with pine pitch. There's more than one way to be stupid. Too smart for your own good is one of them. But never mind, girl-druid with the scarred, tarred heart. You have the makings of a fine
brehon.
You will set precedents. Your judgments will shape judgments to come long after your bones have bleached and your fame has been forgotten. A word to the wise: Don't think the boy-druids know it all. Any knowledge they have worth knowing they sucked from the tit of the great sow. Be true to mother-right and you won't go wrong.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Viviane said with more respect and humility than I'd ever heard in her voice.

“And you, my dear.” She turned to Branwen. “Your heart was broken a long time ago. And the wound, ah look!” she cried, as if she could literally see Branwen's heart. “The wound is open. It is becoming a gateway between the worlds, the mark of the poet and seer. Keep it open, brave heart. You will be sorely tempted to stuff the wound or seal it over. Yes, I know it hurts. Each beat a labor pain. But the words you birth will be passed from bard to bard to bard, a lodestar, a motherstone.”

The great poet was speechess. I loved Branwen, and I have to admit that I felt jealous of her in that moment. I was not as dedicated a student as she was, but I wanted to be accounted a great poet—or, anyway, a great something. No doubt, you think my claim that I'm the cosmic twin of Jesus Christ is grandiose enough. But that's an identity, not an ambition.

Then it was my turn to have my fortune told.

“You,” said Dwynwyn, putting her hands on my shoulders and breathing into my face. Her breath smelled like salt fish and roses all at once. “You, you, you precious, silly girl.”

There was a mix of sorrow and exasperation in her voice. Both made me nervous. I wished she'd get to the point.

“You're going to have to live your story before you tell it. It will be a long, long, long time before anyone will believe your story even if you
try to tell it. You're going to be too busy being in the thick of things to worry about that yet. You don't know the half of it. You don't know what's hit you. Should I tell her?” she asked herself.

As a soothsayer, I was finding Dwynwyn extremely unsatisfactory. Ambiguity is one thing—it's a stock in trade—but she was being downright vague.

“You told Viviane she was going to be a great
brehon,
and you told Branwen she was going to be a great poet.” I'm afraid I sounded petulant. “What about me? Aren't I going to be a great anything?”

Dwynwyn cackled. She did. There is no other word for it.

“Didn't I tell you, you have the fire?”

“Yes, but I don't know what that means.”

“Of course, you don't know. No more than the stars know as they burn holes in the great cloak of night. No more than the fiery eye we call the sun. No more than wood there bursting into spark and ash. Of course you don't know. But the world around you will feel the heat. Some will love you and even want to worship you. (I'd nip that in the bud, if I were you. It's going to be a great temptation to you to allow it.) But some people are going to want to douse those flames. They'll fancy they've succeeded, but you'll keep coming back, rising like the firebird that you are. And the people who tried to quench you will be extremely angry.”

“Do I have a talent for anything but fire and trouble?”

“You will be a great lover.”

I thought at once of Esus. I could see him so clearly, I am sure his image showed in my eyes.

“That does not mean what you and your companions suppose,” Dwynwyn cautioned. “There is not much the eels could tell you about it. It's not a matter of true or false, win or lose. It's a task, and it won't be easy. If I told you more now, you wouldn't understand.”

“Try me!” I challenged.

Dwynwyn began to laugh. And laugh. None of us got the joke.

“By Anu!” She wiped her clear eye. “How well I remember. Old women always said things like that when I was a young girl. And I swore I wouldn't when my time came. Well, now I am. That's one thing you surely can't know. What a surprise it is to find yourself old and horribly wise. Well now, all right. There may be some things you do need to know, Maeve Rhuad. Yes, of course I know your name. I can read bird wings. But it's time for the other two to go.”

Swiftly and gently, like a breeze turning in its sleep, she lifted her hands and two birds, bright with the last light, flew into the gloaming.

“You've chosen your friend and your enemy well,” she commented. “That's a good sign.”

“Viviane hardly seems like an enemy any more.”

“But you both do well to honor the antagonism between you. False friendship is dangerous, a coating of honey to conceal the poison. But now, down to business. Have those old Crows told you nothing?”

“What would they tell me?”

She sighed long and deep. I could hear the surf rush in and out of the cave.

“Sweet thing, you're going to have a baby.”

P
ERHAPS THIS WAS MY cue to say, “How can that be, seeing as I know no man?” But Dwynwyn was no archangel, and this was the announcement, not the annunciation. Yet all conceptions, including the ones attended by calendars and thermometers, are miraculous. What is the vagina if not the way between the worlds? I'm sure I'm not the first woman to fall short of Mary's eloquence. Many before me and since have responded to the announcement with a single syllable.

“Huh?”

“A baby. You're going to have a baby. Near
Beltaine,
by the look of you.”

I stared at her, still unable to connect this concept with myself.

“Maeve Rhuad, do you know how babies are made?”

“A god comes to a woman in the night,” I said automatically.

Then I frowned, remembering that it could happen in other ways, as it had to Viviane and Ciaran. But how had it happened to me?

“If that's your story, then stick to it,” said Dwynwyn. “You're going to need one soon, though with your build you may be able to hide it for another few changes of the moon. That is, if the Crows persist in looking the other way. Which god was it?”

“God?”

“Or rather which god do you want to name? Never mind who it was.”

This is one problem monotheists and monogamists don't have.

“But I don't even know how it happened!” I protested. “If you're so sure I'm going to have a baby, why don't you tell me? You've been talking like you know everything that's going to happen till our bones bleach.”

“I only know the general gist,” she shrugged. “You have enough of the sight yourself to know that it's like the weather. Sometimes you can see a long way. Sometimes the fog rolls in, and the visibility is very poor. I can tell you're pregnant without the sight. And so could those silly Crow ladies if they weren't so busy misinterpreting the signs and looking for something more than meets the eye. That's another trouble
with people who have the sight. They're so keen on peering into the past and future or spying on the doings of the Other Folk, they miss what's in front of their nose.

“As to how you got into your present condition, when I try to look back I run into some very dense cloud cover, which no doubt reflects your confusion. But I can give you a hint. You conceived around the time of
Lughnasad.
Does that ring any bells?”

My chest tightened and felt too small for my heart which hammered as if it was desperate to escape.

“Do you remember now?”

I didn't want to open my mouth for fear that I would scream.

“I think I am beginning to understand,” said Dwynwyn grimly. “Listen, Little Bright One.” When she spoke my childhood name—how did she know it?—tears that I hadn't known were there spilled down my cheek. “It is not too late to send the unborn one back to the Otherworld. She will be all right there, rocking over the waves of the dark sea to the Shining Isles. She will play with moon-bright pebbles on the beach and feast on silver apples till time begins again. I know the way back. I can take your baby back. The child may have been conceived by force but no one can force you to bear it. To choose when to bear a child and when not to is Mother-right”

I had closed my eyes as Dwynwyn spoke, picturing a child rocking in her coracle, then crouching among the pebbles on the shore. For the first time, the idea that I carried life inside me became real to me. The changes in my body took on momentous meaning. I still could not quite fathom “baby.” I pictured the child as a small flame burning inside the darkness of my body. I had made only the most tenuous connection between Foxface's attack and the baby Dwynwyn said was inside me. Visitation by a night god or an archangel seemed a lot more probable. The truth is, I didn't really care what had begotten this spark of life. Now it was mine. No one could take it from me.

“You said I was going to have a baby, and so I am.”

Dwynwyn sighed, “That also is your mother-right. If that's what you choose, you've got some thinking to do. ”

“About what?”

I'm not dumb, but I was pregnant. I was at hormonal high-tide. Everything seemed elementary, elemental. Waves rolled in and out; the sun rose and set, and the moon went through its changes. People died
and babies were born. Life didn't care what we thought about it. It just rip-roared through us.

“Think what it will mean if you bear this child. You may not be allowed to continue your studies.”

I shrugged. “Branwen is going to be the great poet, and Viviane the great
brehon.”

“You have gifts, too,” she said sharply. “And you need training, never mind if the Crows and the Cranes are the ones to do it. Of course, they may send the child out to foster and let you continue your studies.”

“Send her away!” I was aghast.

“It's a common enough custom,” Dwynwyn remarked.

“Not on Tir na mBan,” I said.

I watched to see how those syllables acted oh Dywnwyn. She just nodded thoughtfully.

“So you belong to the warrior witches of Tir na mBan. I should have guessed as much. Who do they say is your father?”

I didn't notice the carefulness of her phrasing.

“Manannan Mac Lir.”

“I see. Impregnation by gods runs in the family. Well, why not? So which did you have in mind for yourself? Or will you name the man who forced you? You have the right, you know, the mother-right to accuse him.”

I tried to imagine telling people—who?—that Lovernios, the V.I.D. had—what exactly? It was still unclear to me. I couldn't put together that sudden fear and pain with the lush, romantic tales my mothers had told of my own conception. It didn't make sense.

“Why do I need to name a father at all? What's the big deal about fathers? I've never even seen mine.”

“The Cranes are going to want to know.”

“What business is it of theirs?” I demanded.

“Get used to it. If you have a baby, it's going to be everyone's business. Surely, you know by now that the Cranes keep track of everyone's lineage.”

“I wish it was Esus.”

I spoke more to myself than Dwynwyn. Then I thought, maybe it is. The way he had touched me, with fire streaming through his hands, couldn't he have caused life to spring in my womb, the way spring sun calls forth the new grass from the earth and makes the buds burst into leaves?

“Esus,” mused Dwynwyn. “Not the god I would have chosen for myself, but there's no accounting for tastes.”

“Not Esus the god,” I explained. “The one everyone calls the Stranger. Do you know who I mean?”

Dwynwyn didn't answer, just peered at me intently, her blind milky eye reflecting the late light like a small moon. For a moment I felt as though someone else stood next to me, visible only to her.

“I see,” she said, without saying what she saw. “I wish he was the father, too. It would make things simpler, since no doubt people will assume he is, no matter what you say. But simple is not what your life is about.”

“Are you sure he isn't?” I clung to my unlikely hope. “I thought maybe—”

“Come,” Dwynwyn cut me off. “We must look in the well before the light is gone. Something about this whole business is still murky. Maybe it will come clear if we look into the bottomlessness. Between day and night, today of all days, is the best time for seeing.”

For some reason I felt resistant, balky as a spooked mule.

“Come.” She took my hand and pulled me along. “The water will know best what to show us. You won't need the crumbs for those little gluttons. We're way past worrying about simple love luck here.”

She led me to a deep pool among the rocks. The water glowed, faintly red, reflecting the western sky—or maybe Dwynwyn's tunic. But when I stared into the depths, I saw the black bottomlessness I had seen in the well of wisdom between Bride's Breast. We waited, feathering the water's surface with our breaths. An image began to float up from the depths.

“What have we here?” muttered Dwynwyn,

A bird-mask, fox eyes. I closed my eyes. I didn't need to see this again, but I saw anyway: the mask being ripped away, my own face, grotesque, distorted, full of hatred, enough hatred to unmake the world.

“Shit!” said Dwynwyn. “A fucking druid. I might have known it. Worra, worra. And not just any druid but
that druid.
Oh, here's a pretty pot of eels. Yet the way it happened, it would not be untrue to say it was a god. Not a very nice god, but then they often aren't. Maeve,” she said. “Open your eyes. It's too late not to see. And I have a feeling there's more coming. Show some spine, girl. Be worthy of the one who named you.”

For the sake of Queen Maeve the Brave, who, as I recalled, could not stomach the second sight, I opened my eyes. In the well, so clearly that I soon forgot it was only an image, I saw a hive-shaped hut. Flame-light licked the walls. A group of people knelt, their heads bent together over something. I could not see their faces, but suddenly I could hear their voices.

“I think he's too old to be trained.”

“He's already been trained as something else. Just look at this torque. And he bears no weapons.”

“You can tell that by his hands. He's no warrior.”

The voices were familiar. Literally.

“Look, he's got a serpent's egg under his tunic.”

“Shit. A fucking druid. Just our luck.”

“We should let him go. Toss him back into the sea. There's other fish.”

“How can we, after we wrecked his boat?”

“By the way, about that storm, who started it?”

“I don't recall that we ever reached consensus on the storm idea.”

“Not to mention, nobody bothered to consult an oracle.”

“Oh, come on! When was the last time we even saw a ship? When was the last time any of us had any? Myth or no myth, all of our biological clocks are ticking.”

“Some a lot louder than others.”

“Look, he was on
our
horizon, okay? Obviously the gods sent him to us.”

“But they didn't tell us to half-drown the poor guy. That storm was a little heavy-handed, don't you think? We didn't need kindling so badly that we had to splinter the damn boat on the rocks. Honestly, Boann, what do you think we have a beach for?”

“So my aim was a little off, maybe. Like I said, it's been a long time. Why are you all being so fussy? He's here, isn't he? He's alive. And he may not be a hero, but he's got the right stuff for begetting heroes. Just take a look under his tunic.”

Oohs, ahs, giggles, sharply indrawn breaths.

“Check it out, ladies. Check it out.”

“Just think how happy he'll be when he wakes up,” someone gushed. “Why, it'll be just like a dream come true for him!”

“Or a nightmare.”

I caught a glimpse of the Cailleach staring into the pool between Bride's Breasts.

The image dissolved. Then I saw a slender man pacing a narrow beach at dawn. He was shouting into the wind. From time to time, he raised his fists, as if he were trying to pull down the whole sky. Then the sky changed color from grey dawn to bloody afterglow. The shore changed, too, lengthening out. The man's frame thickened. His hands were beseeching now. He was not shouting now but wailing.

“Holy mother!” said Dwynwyn, grabbing my arm. “This is happening now.
Now!”

At that word, the pool went black, but the man's lamentation went on.

“Quick!”

Dwynwyn grabbed my hand and, old as she was, raced with me toward the sand neck that was now almost completely submerged. There she stopped and pointed. From the shore to the west of her island, the man waded into the sea.

“There is something you must face here. You must go alone, but I will be behind you. I won't let any harm come to you. Still, be ready to fly when I say the word. Come to me again at will or need. Now, Maeve Rhuad, go to him. Go!”

Not looking at the man, I crossed the neck, thinking only how slippery the stones were, how sharp the barnacles. Cold waves licked at my bare toes. I tried to ignore the man's voice, but I couldn't. He was incanting something, roaring outraged poetry to the waves. But the sense was lost to me. The wind always moans, and the sea pounds out its grievance against the innocent shore. That was the sound of his lament.

I don't know how I knew when to stop and turn so that we were all aligned: the red rim of the vanishing sun, the man hip-deep in the sea, and me on the shore. Does destiny make invisible chalk marks on the stage? There I was, and here is what I saw:

A head on fire, a huge-chested man, with a magical crane bag flung over his shoulder, about to sink beneath the wave, to go back to Tir fo Thuinn before I'd ever seen his face or sat on his knee or heard him call me his child.

“Manannán! Manannan Mac Lir,” I cried to him. “Father, my father! O my father!”

He stopped. The sun waited. I held my breath. The waves froze. Then he turned to face me, and I knew him.

This is my father.

The thought was curiously light, a leaf tossed on the wind, a splinter of wood tossed on a wave, swirling, eddying, going where some larger force willed.

This is my father.

For a moment that was all that mattered. I could forgive him any harm he'd done me, if only he'd call me daughter.

“Father!”

He stared at me, then he began to walk towards me, slowly, out of the sea. I did not feel afraid. I waited for him. He stopped some ten paces away, still ankle-deep in water. He was naked. It did not occur to me to look away.