Magdalen Rising (7 page)

After that night my mothers were not so single-minded about my military training. It's hard to say if they slackened the pace because they'd lost their certainty of my vocation or because it was harvest time. Even warrior witches have to eat, and unlike warriors elsewhere, my mothers had no peasant class to labor for them. What I liked best at this time of year was to gather berries and nuts—a traditional child's occupation involving a race against time. After
Samhain
all the unplucked fruits of the earth belonged by rights to the
Fomorii,
a fierce misshapen tribe of beings, only partially subdued, who dwelt under the wave. Since I
supposed my father had them in hand, tales of the ferocious
Fomorii
merely lent a pleasurable
frisson
to the season.

When all the grain was harvested, Fand enjoyed a free hand with fogs and mists. My memory of that time is full of beaded spider webs and bramble thorns. Now and then, Grainne slipped in a few days of perfect calm, warm at the center and crisp at the edges, like something good to eat. Then I'd see snakes on the move to holes leading deep underground; or sometimes a snake would just sun on a rock, storing the warmth in its body as if it were food. On the last of those days I remember sitting with Grainne overlooking the sea. The surf was hardly a whisper and everything—the sea, the sky, Grainne, me—seemed to hold its breath.

Then one morning we woke to billowing black clouds, and a powerful wind, gusting from the North. (Boann couldn't help grinning.) Oak leaves from the grove miles inland soared out to sea. No one said much, but everyone knew: it was the morning of
Samhain.
After we ate our stirabout, my mothers ganged up on me, ignoring my protests, and bundled me into many more layers than I wanted to wear. Outside, we corralled a couple of goats to pull a cart laden with gifts of food and cloth for the Cailleach. Then wordlessly—for our words would only have blown away with the leaves—we bent to the wind and made our way to the Valley between Bride's Breasts.

“D
RINK,” THE CAILLEACH COMMANDED me.

We were standing by the Well of Wisdom at what you might call the witching hour. My mothers had left hours ago, driving herds from the far pastures to winter in the byres. I would not be there when they lit the bonfires. I would not stay up all night roasting hazelnuts and apples and listening to my mothers' stories. I was here in the valley that was anything but golden now. The wind had blown itself away or perhaps never entered the valley at all. The air was still and cold like something dead. The waning moon rose over the east breast. Now it was high enough for the pool to catch its reflection. The white curve in the water reminded me of the skull I had found hidden beneath the pool's surface.

“You must drink.”

“There was a skull in that water.” I attempted to keep my tone light and conversational. The truth is, though I was thirsty, I didn't want to drink. I was hungry, too; we'd eaten none of the feast my mothers had laid on the rocks nearby.

“Drink,” she said.

“I want to know how the skull got there first.”

“This pool is one of the gateways,” the Cailleach said. “Whoever clothed that bone with flesh has long since passed through. Birth. Death. They're the same door. There's only going in and out. In and out. That's the rhythm of everything.”

I was so surprised to receive any answer, I was silent for a moment.

“Drink now.”

“Just one more thing,” I stalled. “Do you go through the gateway when you're ready or does someone give you a shove?”

“It all depends,” she said. “Drink.”

Finally I gave up, figuring I wasn't going to find out what happened next until I got this part out of the way. So I knelt down and cupped my hands, the reflection scattering into bright fragments as I broke the water. Once I got started, I drank for a long time. The water was burning cold, sweet and fiery at the same time.

“Now,” she said when I stood again. “Since you raised the question: are
you
ready?”

I stared at her, the gleam of her face within the hood like the gleam of moon in the night. Then I stared at the pool where the moon's reflection had cohered again. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. My stomach tried to bail out of my body. I wanted my mothers.

“No, Maeve Rhuad,” she said. “This is not the way for you.”

In my relief, I barely registered that she had added to my name.

“But it is time for you to go inside. Into the dark. Come. I'll show you.”

Abruptly she turned and led me from the pool towards the great darkness of Bride's eastern breast. She moved so swiftly that more than once I almost lost sight of her. At times I had the impression that I was following, not an old woman, but a grey wolf or a black bear. We hadn't climbed very far when she stopped, and I came alongside her human self.

“Here,” she said.

First I didn't see anything but a cluster of rocks. Who knows? If I'd gone there another day or another time of day, maybe that's all I ever would have seen. That's how it is with the ways between the worlds. Then, as I gazed, I began to discern in the midst of the boulders a narrow sliver of pitch darkness. Slowly it dawned (or should I say darkened) on me what she had in mind.

“Are you ready, Maeve Rhuad?”

“Why do you call me that?” I demanded. “Maeve Rhuad.”

“Because you are the Red Maeve.”

“Queen Maeve of Connacht has red hair, too,” I pointed out.

“Nevertheless, you are the Rhuad. Are you ready?”

“How can I know if I'm ready when I don't know what's going to happen?”

“Readiness isn't a matter of knowing what's going to happen. It's a matter of daring to find out.”

The Cailleach had hit upon my secret weakness—or strength. It's a good thing I wasn't raised with other children. My life would have been driven by dares and double dares. Now here was this old witch daring me to go through a narrow chasm into the ground—on the night you'd call Hallowe'en. If you're wondering where all those fairytales of murderous, child imprisoning/roasting/eating old women come from, consider: they might have had some basis in fact. And here I wasn't even
being offered a last meal, though, in fact, since I'd drunk from the well, hunger and thirst had disappeared.

“All right,” I heard myself saying. “Show me the dark.”

She took my hand and led me closer to the opening. It narrowed at the top and the bottom, just wide enough at the middle for a pair of shoulders to squeeze through. Its shape reminded me of something, but at the time I couldn't think of what. I peered in and saw only more and deeper darkness.

“This is your gate,” she said pleasantly, as if she were some sort of stewardess. “Are you afraid?”

“Yes,” I said, well past denial.

“Good. Always know when you're afraid, even if you choose not to show it to your enemies. Never deceive yourself. I'm not going to tell you not to be afraid, but I will tell you this: if you walk straight into your fear, you will find everything you need. I will call you back when it's time, but I won't tell you when that will be. There is no time where you're going, and if you try to cling to it, you will waste your strength.”

None of what she said was even remotely reassuring and hardly more comprehensible.

“So, Maeve Rhuad, are you ready?”

Are you crazy? I wanted to say. Ready to go through a dark hole that, for all I knew, might close over me? Is that where you'd want to spend your first night away from your mothers?

“Ready,” was all I said.

“Take off your clothes. To pass through this gate, you need to leave everything behind.”

I unknotted the bramble that fastened my outer coat and let the garment fall from my shoulders. The Cailleach picked it up. Then I began peeling the layers my mothers had piled on, handing each item to the Cailleach. At last I stood naked to the night. The cold air touched my skin with its thousand invisible hands. I was close to tears. Then the Cailleach laid all my clothes, neatly folded, on the ground.

“O my daughter. O my daughter of daughters.”

She wrapped me in her arms, enfolding me in her grey cloak. Over her shoulder I saw the moon. But there was nothing cold or distant about the Cailleach's embrace. I closed my eyes, and the darkness turned golden as the light when I'd first seen the Valley. I breathed the scent of apples that clung to the folds of her cloak, as if she carried the magic orchard
with her. When she released me, I felt as warm as if I'd been lying in full sun for hours.

“Now,” she said.

And I turned to the darkness.

That night I went through the gateway all alone. Now I can take you with me. You're feeling claustrophobic? Don't worry, we all have a touch of claustrophobia. It's our body's memory of what we can't remember. Camel or not, we've all passed through the needle's eye. In and out, in and out, the silver needle flashes, the bright red thread of life blood turning to stitches on the black cloth: spirals, flowers, bursts of stars. We've all passed through the narrow gate, thrust our huge heads through our mothers' cruel and suffering bones.

Lead with your head again, squeeze your shoulders through. There's just enough room to stand with a slight stoop. It's easier than that other passage. But it doesn't do to be too literal with metaphors. They fall apart easily, like petals of a blown rose. Besides, this time you're going in, not out. Just keep moving. Feel the snake-belly curve of the earth under your feet. The walls are only just wide enough to allow you to pass. The rocks' sweat mingles with your own. You keep moving, around and down, around and down. For a while you wonder how long you can go on. But with each turn, time uncoils. You stop thinking of ending, because you no longer remember beginning. You no longer know your motion from the passage that shapes it. In the heart of gravity, in the gravid earth, you lose all sense of your separate weight. You are floating, sinking, whirling back to the place of no distinctions, no-thing, no you.

So when you come to the place of stillness, where your feet stop, it is not so different. The earth is still spinning and circling, and you can feel it, because you are not separate anymore. Curl into her. Her warm blood is all around you, welling up in a hot spring. It's not so different from before. Remember? Hear the muffled sounds of her inner workings. Listen, that's her heart beat. Or maybe it's yours. There's no difference anymore. You are made of earth. You are earth. There's no difference now. No difference between opening your eyes and closing them, between waking and dreaming. You are in the shape-shifting mother dark. You are blind. You will see.

(It's not all pretty. The earth knows terrible things. She receives all deaths, gentle and brutal. She bears the pain of every birth. She turns all things back into herself; she worries the bones to dust. She is changing,
always changing. Layers shift. Her own bones crash and break. Tides heave. Rock erupts into fire. It's not all pretty. Beauty never is.)

Here is some of what I saw:

The roots of a great tree, burning like stars, reaching deep into the earth. Into me. I can feel the roots eating me, drinking me, being nourished by me. Then my eyes, or vision, travel up the roots to the world above. How strange. Such vast roots support only a stripped trunk with two branches, all the twigs lopped off. It hardly seems like a tree at all, so stark, so small against the huge, empty sky smooth and curved like the shell of an egg, if you could see an egg from the inside. Then the sky cracks, a giant fissure. No, it's not the sky but a pair of cracked bleeding lips. I feel myself straining, still bound to the root, wanting to bring water to those lips, leaves to that tree.

At once I see a huge oak, groaning in a damp, night wind. For an instant the clouds part, and an almost full moon reveals a figure leaning against the tree, tied to the tree. I can't see the face, but I hear the sound of weeping. Before I can see any more, torrents of rain fall from my eyes, and everything is dark again.

That was the first wave of vision. Wave upon wave followed. I soon learned to relax in the dark troughs as a laboring woman rests between contractions. Some of the visions were lovely, many troubling, most incomprehensible, even when I recognized something or someone. Once I saw Grainne with her face contorted, head thrown back, nostrils flaring and eyes rolling like a frightened mare's. In another seeing, I glimpsed a red-haired warrior woman I first mistook for Queen Maeve. She looked so familiar. The woman drove a chariot between two hills, leading a torrent of warriors like a spring flood into the narrow pass. The fury of her battle cry coursed in my blood long after the vision faded.

The sweetest wave was not sight, but sound and sensation. A warm hand, with a light touch almost indistinguishable from sunlight, stroking my breast. A voice to match the touch spoke rhythmically in a language I did not know, a beautiful language, tender as the speech of doves. I wanted this vision to go on forever, but it rolled away, and the next one, most terrible of all, hit me with double force.

It began with a woman, old as the Cailleach, with long, white hair and a blood-red tunic. One of her eyes was clear, the other one cloudy. She pointed the way to a pool among the rocks. Two eels surfaced, swished, and dived again. As I gazed, the image of my face began to change, subtly
at first, a hardening, a squaring. Then lines, deep and grim, slashed the smoothness of my skin. The green went out of my eyes, leaving them red-brown like a fox's. Finally, coarse, red hair bristled around my mouth and chin. But far more horrible than the strange harshness or the (to me) unnatural hair was the look in the eyes. I didn't even have a word for it then, but I registered its meaning, and it felt like a swift, hard blow hitting dead center: hatred.