There...
I couldn’t pull his name from my memory, even though I could see his face so clearly. Laughing. In firelight. A camp of hara spread out all around us. We were young and new and full of blood and temper. We fought like cubs, ending up inside each other, licking each other’s faces, making wounds with nails and teeth. That love, though feral, had been pure, beyond thought or analysis, mere instinct. First love, you’d call it. We’d kill side by side, full of joy, not caring who we killed or even why. We took aruna amid the carnage, blood on our skins. Animals. No, less than animals, for animals do not kill like that. But perhaps they love in that way. We weren’t unique. Many of us had these fierce, intense relationships. We were new to ourselves, aghast at what we could do, the pleasure we could bring to one another, the damage we could wreak. We thought we were immortal. Him I loved. I let him be me. Gave everything.
When he died I was right next to him. One moment he was beside me, the next a mist of red as the detonation of a buried human explosive device took him. I was painted with him. Nothing was left, nothing to bury or kiss. I’d been so close, yet was untouched.
I went mad, as many of us did when we suffered these losses, which were common. Some managed better than others. Our leader beat me until I stopped shrieking, until I nearly stopped breathing. Then he took me, made me experience the terrible pleasure of aruna, terrible because it over-rides everything else, and I didn’t want to do it. I fought him and he hurt me, but all the time that grim goddess of carnal delight took her due. ‘This is all that matters,’ my leader said. ‘No weeping. Find another. It’s done.’
But it never had been done. While senseless with grief, I’d been raped and beaten. Beaten, beaten, beaten. By my own body. By his. Until I didn’t care. Until I learned.
As I’d lain there, breathing in the gulping way that is swallowed tears and grief, lying upon the hard ground, I’d vowed I would beat that goddess, bend her to my will, make her mine. She’d never possess me like that again. And I did tame aruna, made it feed from my hand, do tricks that made hara gasp in amazement, while they were all but dead in mind and body because of what I could do to them. The greatest revenge. Love me. See what happens.
This voice is who I used to be.
I came back into the present moment, sobbing like a harling, Nytethorne motionless upon me. He allowed me some moments, then murmured, ‘Take what I give you. Like the waters that gave Peredur life.’
Pleasure seemed an abomination in the face of what I’d remembered, because of the associations, but I clung to him, wreckage in the storm, with the cold waves lashing over me, and then there was a warm wave that was the essence of compassion, and I could breathe it in and make it into light, a tower of light reaching to the stars. It was orgasm, but experienced as a universe-filling sheet of glass or crystal, mazed with cracks that sang like shattering ice, like a world-spanning frozen lake that is breaking. I exploded into a million pieces, each one shining like diamond, flying out. Unlocked.
When I opened my eyes, with Nytethorne panting upon me, as if half drowned himself, I saw motes of golden light in the room, floating around, not even sinking. I watched them for some minutes until they faded away, but then the room was still haunted by soft light, and I could hear voices singing. Nytethorne seemed to have fallen asleep, still joined to me. ‘Get up. Get up!’ I hissed.
He rolled off me, clawing hair from his face. ‘What?’
I rose from the bed and instinctively hunched low to cross the room, fetching up between two of the windows. I looked out. Nytethorne had come up behind me. We saw a serpent of light around the tower, snaking round the winding path that led from the bottom of the hill to its summit. At first I thought it was hara with burning torches, but the light was too yellow. As I peered through the glass, I could make out nebulous forms within the light, vague outlines. Nytethorne breathed into my ear, ‘Ysbryddon garedig,’ he said. ‘The good ghosts.’
The light of this procession pooled around the base of Dŵr Alarch, perhaps drawn or conjured by what Nytethorne and I had experienced, or perhaps there simply because of what must happen the following day. I knew instinctively they had come to add their strength to ours for the coming fight.
We watched them and listened to their song for maybe three minutes, although it seemed longer. Then Dŵr Alarch absorbed their light and they were gone. Even in a landscape of sorrow, not all ghosts are bitter.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Despite what I know now, I still wonder exactly how Wyva felt that morning, what he did. He would of course have sat with his family to eat his breakfast, no doubt discussed in some small measure the Reaptide festival for the following day. Did he notice something in Rinawne and Myv? Did he sense their secrets? Or was he so immersed in and consumed by his own thoughts he didn’t notice? We thought he didn’t notice much at all, or that, if he did, he deliberately became blind to these things. On that, we were all wrong.
As for me, I woke that day from what I thought was a strange and wonderful dream, but I was in fact held in Nytethorne’s warm arms. I had faced my most deeply buried demon and hauled it shrieking to the surface of my mind. I wasn’t sure if this was enough to vanquish it, but now I knew its face, its story, and what it had made of me.
Nytethorne stirred as I woke, as if attuned to my state of being. He kissed my shoulder and said, ‘You all right?’
I turned onto my back, reached to touch his face. ‘I think I am.’ This said in a tone of wonderment.
He laid his head on me. ‘You see, it was meant. How could you go to the fight with that lot squashed into you?’
I frowned. ‘But how could I not remember? Surely...’ I closed my eyes, tried to think back, but even now all I remembered was the aruna vision and that it was true. I couldn’t recall standing by him I loved; I could only see the moment after I’d been drenched in his blood. I couldn’t remember the intricacies of taking aruna with him, but the details of what that other har, who we called our leader, did to me were there in sharp relief.
‘Don’t question,’ Nytethorne said. ‘We did what we had to.’
‘Was that all it was?’ I smiled somewhat sadly. ‘My therapy?’
Nytethorne sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘You want me to answer that? We don’t need that crap.’
All those domineering words: Do you love me? I love you. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. The minute something is loved it brings as its dark gift the fear it might be lost. Betrayal, abandonment, death. That is the true terror of allowing love to happen. This is what our wise hara were trying to tell us all along. Slaughter the need, embrace the love.
Reaptide is the second of the harvest festivals, when hara give thanks for all they have so far gathered and what they have yet to harvest. It is, as I have said, a strange in-between celebration, but one of its symbols is the burning of the fields. Therefore, its theme is that of new beginnings, making the landscape fit for next year’s growth. The fires burn away dead plants, disease and weeds. Perfect imagery for our purposes. The field burning would start tomorrow in reality, but ours would start tonight.
Nytethorne and I dressed and went down to breakfast. The preliminary rituals we’d decided upon were due to begin at mid-day. We would work slowly. Rinawne and Myv hadn’t yet arrived, but Arianne was already up, as usual taking charge of her kitchen. I liked being in charge of it too, but allowed her this because after tonight she would not come back to it. And anyway, this tower had been hers long before it was mine.
When Peredur entered the kitchen, some ten minutes later, he came to me at once and embraced me. ‘I heard you last night,’ he whispered to me.
‘I apologise,’ I murmured back.
He laughed softly. ‘Not that... I heard what you saw.’
‘We both have our stories,’ I said. ‘I doubt there are many who don’t from those times.’
‘I won’t think any less of you if you let some of that joy my suri gave you peer out beyond the surface of your s
kin,’ he said and kissed the top of my head.
Myv and Rinawne arrived at eleven. As planned, we spent half an hour or so in meditation, preparing ourselves for what was to come. I took great care not to betray any intimacy with Nytethorne for Rinawne’s sake. First, I didn’t want to hurt him and second, that kind of emotional fallout could jeopardise our work. I’d told Nytethorne about Rinawne, and he’d surprised me by saying I didn’t have to end that relationship for his sake. ‘Have no contract for you,’ he’d said. ‘Live and love as you please.’ This was how different Nytethorne was to anyhar I’d been close to before. I noticed Rinawne didn’t look at me directly, perhaps not wanting to see evidence within me that Nytethorne and I had become closer. I wasn’t sure he’d react as calmly as Nytethorne had done when eventually I told him the truth. Still, that was for another day, which I hoped we’d live to see.
Our journey would begin in the baked mountains, where insects sizzled in the heat. We would take water with us, but not food. Other than a light breakfast, we must abstain from that. As we sat in my nayati, I extended my senses into the landscape. I could feel the ysbryd drwg prowling, gathering strength. Simultaneously, the form of Verdiferel took shape. This was the trickster dehar, who at midsummer had murdered his creator and lover to become the creator for the coming season. Already new life grew within him, but for now he was set free from his obligations, the magician on the path. But despite his less clement aspects, Verdiferel was still a dehar, the stuff of gods shaped into a harish form by harish hearts and minds. Into him we must lure the egregore of Gwyllion, then we must lead and ultimately trap him. After that... it was difficult to make precise plans. I had to trust we would know what to do. Mossamber had shown me some of what we faced. I was not so proud as to think our task would be easy, but I had to believe we could succeed, otherwise there was no point in trying.
At mid-day we left the tower, travelling on foot, carrying satchels containing the small amount of equipment we’d need and our water supply. We headed south down the valley, crossing the river at the mossy bridge Mossamber had shown me, but we did not go towards the haunted forest. Instead we turned our steps to the primordial sweep of the ancient mountains that were mostly covered in lichen, short grasses and heather. Peredur had told us of a granite boulder called Craig Drygioni, which had associations with a trickster spirit. He thought this a good place to invoke Verdiferel. To reach this site we must climb for over two miles. From the valley floor, the slope appeared gentle, yet was anything but that once we began to ascend it. A pair of red-billed choughs soared above us, uttering piercing cries, occasionally diving through the air with folded wings. They seemed to be keeping pace with us, perhaps curious. But other than these black birds, the landscape appeared weirdly empty, desolate. The air hummed with the heat.
Craig Drygioni looked out of place, as if it had fallen from the sky and been dumped in the wrong place, alone on a high mountainside. The height of a har, it was attended by broom bushes, still jewelled with a few yellow blooms, and ground-hugging white stonecrop; altar flowers for this sacred space. As we climbed, I could visualise Verdiferel sitting on top of the stone, observing our approach. His feet were bare, the toes long, gripping the lichened rock. He was chewing on a broom stem, his hair in coiling brown tendrils around him, his ragged clothes made of leaves and leather.
We sat against the rock and drank some water. Myv opened his satchel and withdrew that pale swatch of fabric, which glistened in the sunlight. ‘This is the moonshawl,’ he told Nytethorne, offering it for him to inspect. Myv’s ritual robe.
‘It’s Gwerin Crwydrwyr work,’ Nytethorne said, in a tone of wonderment.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
Nytethorne shrugged. ‘Seen similar, only once. Rare they give hara such things.’
‘Who are Gwerin Crwydrwyr?’ Arianne asked.
‘Roamer folk,’ Nytethorne said.
‘Do you know of them, Myv?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. Are they sorcerers?’
‘Yes,’ Nytethorne answered.
Myv smiled.
We composed ourselves in a circle, me with my back to the Craig. Myv draped the moonshawl around his shoulders before joining hands with the rest of us. On my right side was Arianne, Myv on my left. Rinawne sat between Myv and Peredur, Nytethorne between Peredur and Arianne. I bid them close their eyes, regulate their breathing and then aloud I said, ‘Astale, Verdiferel, you are welcome among us.’
I could see him again on the rock above us, now standing. This was no benign, gentle dehar. No flowers fell from his skin. His eyes were the green of the forest canopy, shining like light on water. When he smiled, his teeth were long and white, the canines, while not abnormally large, clearly more pointed than those found in a har. Above him, in the pulsing blue of the hot sky, a white owl flew by day. The choughs, who had remained with us, fled shrieking, for the owl preys upon them. Verdiferel crouched now on the rock, one hand slung across his knees, the other braced against the stone. He watched me intently, as wary as a dehar of his nature could be, but it was our will and intention that called this being into reality and shaped him, therefore it was up to us to banish any hint of suspicion within him.
Myv had draped the moonshawl around his shoulders. I told him to cast its net over the rock; not in reality, but in the inner world, that ‘other summer’ we inhabited. I saw the glistening white folds, light as feathers, settle around Verdiferel. ‘Call the spirits of the land to you, both drwg and da,’ I told the dehar. ‘We will sing you to the sacred places.’
The moonshawl did not burn or constrict him – it was after all patterned with white owls, his own creature. Now was the time for us to open our eyes, but also to remain half in the inner summer, seeing both reality and the world of imagination at the same time. This would be easier for Peredur than for us.
I composed a song spontaneously that had no words, but even so the sounds meant follow us, come with us, there are wonders at the journey’s end. I know that the entity we’d summoned and fashioned heeded these instructions. In his sly feral way he saw only the flight of owls by day. Around us, I could sense confused spirits walking through the sunlight, not knowing how or why they’d come to be there. If a har dies at Reaptide, his phyle takes extra precautions so he doesn’t fall into Verdiferel’s long cruel hands.
We went down the mountainside and the shadows grew longer over the land. I wouldn’t take Verdiferel to the forest of the dead so he might conspire with the tumour of grief that lurked there. We led him along the river, through its shallows. The water was cool and quick. We led the dehar to Pwll Siôl Lleuad and here we laid out offerings of bread and wine for him on the rock next to the water, where I’d seen Nytethorne sit to dry himself what seemed like years ago. We composed ourselves to wait for nightfall, each taking a drink from the pool.
Slowly, the sun dipped redly down the sky, but it became twilight at Pwll Siôl Lleuad sooner than anywhere else nearby. Foliage rustled as if creeping paws stepped through it. The leaf canopy above us sighed and swayed. Slowly, all things that crept through darkness were drawn to us. I could feel this.
Verdiferel was almost dozing above the pool, the moonshawl shining around him like a caul. Midges gathered in balls above the water, dancing lightly on the air. I heard the clack of wing feathers; the white owl, heard but not yet seen.
‘Call the spirits to you, Verdiferel,’ I said. ‘Bring all of them, throughout the ages, to this sacred spot.’
‘Ysobi,’ Myv said softly next to me. ‘We must help him. We must put our blood into the water.’
I felt Arianne flinch. Briefly, her hand gripped mine harder.
‘Yes,’ Peredur said. I looked at him and his eye stones were black obsidian. Hadn’t they been moonstones earlier?
Rinawne said nothing, but brought from his own satchel a small, sharp knife, which he handed to me. I let go of the hands holding mine and went to the water’s edge, made a small, swift cut in my palm. ‘For Verd
iferel and the burning of the fields,’ I said, then put my bleeding hand into the water, kept it there, until one by one all of my companions had done the same. Our pale and dark hands and the ribbons of red. This was our first sacrifice.
I told the group how I’d seen Verdiferel among us, then asked them how he appeared to them.
‘A har in a red cloak,’ said Myv. ‘The hood covers his face except for his mouth, but I can see his eyes gleaming gold.’
Arianne frowned as she spoke with closed eyes. ‘He is in a mist, so I can barely see him. Yes... in a cloak, as Myv saw, but it is brown or black.’
‘I see him,’ said Rinawne, ‘as small, almost like a harling with a sharp, cruel little face. His fingers are like twigs and his eyebrows are made of leaves.’
‘His smile is too wide,’ Nytethorne said, ‘teeth are sharp, but eyes dark and kind. He wears a garment of knotted cloths, twined with flowers and grasses, and a crown of owl feathers.’
There was a silence, then Peredur said: ‘He is me.’
‘He is all of these things,’ I said. ‘As you visualise him, try to incorporate all these details you’ve heard. Make him our egregore. He works for us.’
‘I’ll speak to the spirit of the pwll,’ Peredur said, ‘wake it up for us.’
Shadows extended their groping fingers into the glade as the night came down about us. The owl called, once, twice. And then I heard the bell, distantly. In the Domain, the Whitemanes would be gathering to send us their strength. Beyond the glade, I sensed the pale shimmer of the good ghosts, the ysbryddon garedig, distant yet close. And the ysbryd drwg smelled Myv’s blood in the pool and was intoxicated by its scent.
I could see this clearly in my mind’s eye and described it to my companions. The entity was sometimes like a serpent of smoke, close to the ground, at other times walking upright like a har, or on all fours like a dog. It filled the landscape with its presence, holding within its fabric the hurts of centuries. I could sense Peredur inside it, the part of him forever nailed and chained to a stake in the stableyard of Meadow Mynd. I could sense Vivi, a cold female presence, full of vengeance and righteousness, who saw herself as the righter of wrongs. But these were only two parts of an immense company, not simply those who had died terrible deaths during the Devastation, but humans from earlier times, killed by parents, lovers, siblings, strangers on the road, criminals, senseless justice, warfare and disease. All these despairing souls had been supped upon by the ysbryd drwg, for it believed they belonged with it.