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seek out the nunnery, for my mother seemed as alive to me as ever.
I lived and grew. The she-wolf brought me hares and piglets and young deer to
eat, until she herself grew old and died. I gathered mushrooms from the forest
floor, and the white hart showed me where an old orchard still stood, so that
I filled up stores of plums and apples to help last me through each winter.
I foraged and fed myself. As I did, I began to roam the woods and explore. I
would leave the old cottage for days at a time, letting my mother stay alone
in her torment. On such occasions, she wandered too, searching for her little
lost girl.
I found her once, there at the edge of the village, staring at Andelin's
house. The miller had grown older, and had married some girl who was not my
mother's equal. Their child cried within, and my mother dared not disturb
them.
Yet, like me, she stood there at the edge of the forest, craving another
person's touch.
I often kept myself invisible on my journeys, and at times I confess that I
enjoyed sneaking up on the poachers and outlaws that hid in the wood, merely
to watch them, to see what common people looked like, how they acted when they
thought themselves alone.
But in my fourteenth summer, I once made the mistake of stepping on a twig as
I watched a handsome young man stalking the white hart through tall ferns. The
boy spun and released his bow so fast that I did not have time to dodge his
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shot.
The cold iron tip of his arrow only nicked my arm. Though the wound was
slight, still the iron dispelled my charms, and I suddenly found myself
standing before him naked (for I had no need of clothes). My heart pounded in
terror and desire.
I suddenly imagined what the boy would do, having seen me. I imagined his
lips against mine, and his hands pressing firmly into my buttocks, and that he
would ravish me. After all, night after night my mother had warned me what men
would do if they saw me.
So I anticipated his advances. In fact, in that moment I imagined that I
might actually be in love, and so determined that I would endure his passion
if not enjoy it.
But to my dismay, when he saw me suddenly standing there naked, he merely
fainted. Though I tried to revive him for nearly an hour, each time I did so,
he gazed at me in awe and then passed out again.
When night came, I wrapped myself in a cloak of invisibility and let him
regain his wits. Then I followed him to his home at the edge of a village. He
kept listening for me, and he begged me not to follow, thinking me a succubus
or some other demon.
He made the sign of the cross against me, and I begged him to tarry. But he
shot arrows at me and seemed so frightened that I dared not follow him
farther, for his sake as well as mine.
Soon thereafter I met Wiglan, the wise woman of the barrow. She was a lumpy
old thing, almost like a tree trunk with arms. She had been dead for four
hundred years, and still her spirit had not flickered out and faded, as so
many do, but instead had ripened into something warped and strange and eerie.
Moreover, she did not grow forgetful during the days as my mother's shade did,
and so she offered me a more even level of companionship.
One night under the bright eternal stars, I told Wiglan of my problem, of how
my mother longed for me to look mortal, and how I now longed for it too. I
could no longer take comfort in the company of cold shades or in conversations
with animals. I craved the touch of real flesh against mine, the kiss of warm
lips, the touch of hands, and the thrust of hips.
"Perhaps," Wiglan said, "you should seek out the healing pools up north. If
the goddess can heal you at all, there is where you will find her blessing."
"What pools?" I asked, heart pounding with a hope that I had never felt so
keenly before.
'There are ancient pools in Wales," she said, "called the Maiden's Fount.
While I yet lived, the Romans built a city there, called Caerleon. I heard
that they en-
closed the fount and built a temple to their goddess Minerva. The fount has
great powers, and the Romans honored the goddess in their way, but even then
it was a sin, for in honoring the goddess, they sought to hedge her in."
"That was hundreds of years ago," I said. "Are you sure that the fount still
springs forth?"
"It is a sacred place to the Lady and all of her kin," Wiglan said. "It will
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still be there. Go by the light of the horned moon and ask of her what you
will. Make an offering of water lilies and lavender. Perhaps your petition
will be granted."
Bursting with hope, I made off at once. I set my course by the River or
Stars, and journeyed for many days over fields and hills, through dank forest
and over the fetid bogs. At night I would sometimes seek directions from the
dead, who were plentiful in those days of unrest, until at last after many
weeks I reached the derelict temple.
The Saxons had been to Caerleon and burned the city a few years before. A
castle stood not far from the ancient temple, but the villages around Caerleon
had been burned and looted, its citizens murdered. Little remained of it, and
for the moment the castle was staffed by a handful of soldiers who huddled on
its walls in fear.
The temple on the hills above the fortress was in worse condition than was
the castle. Some of the temple's pillars had been knocked down, and the moon
disk above its facade lay broken and in ruins. Perhaps the Saxons had sensed
die Lady's power here and sought to put an end to it, or at least sully it.
The pools were overgrown and reedy, while owls hooted and flew on silent
wings among the few standing pillars.
There I took my offerings and went to bathe under the crescent moon.
I knelt in the damp mud above the warm pool, cast out a handful of lavender
into the brackish water, and stood with a white water lily cupped in my left
palm. I whispered my prayers to the goddess, thanking her for the gifts that
the earth gave me, for her breasts that were hills, for the fruit of the
fields and of the forest. I pleaded with her and named my desire before making
my final offering of the lily.
As I prayed, a man's voice spoke up behind me. "She's not mat strong anymore.
The new god is gaining power over this land, and the Great Mother hides. You
seek a powerful magic, one that will change the very essence of what you
are and that is beyond her power. Perhaps you should seek a smaller blessing,
ask her to do something easy, like change the future?
"Still, pray to her as you will. It hurts nothing, and I'm glad that some
still talk to her."
I turned and looked into the ice-pale eyes of a Welshman, recognized at once
my features in his face.He was my father. I did not feel surprised to meet him
here. After all, my mother had taught me well that demons always seek out and
torment their own children.
He stared right at me, his eyes caressing my naked flesh, even though I had
been walking invisible.
"Sir Jordans?" I asked. "Or do you have a truer name?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]