Beltane

by Thea Hartsong

  Chapter 13.Fjorgyn’s maer

  In the time since I’d last seen her Shanty’s fashion sense certainly hadn’t gotten any better. She was wearing cowboy boots over a pair of crushed red velvet leggings embroidered with golden Chinese lions. A long cotton shirt partially covered with a lacy black shawl, and a knitted Rasta hat completed the ensemble.

  I’d just about recovered from the shock of thinking I’d discovered a burglar, and we were both sitting at the kitchen table. I was wearing the necklace again, just to humor her, and Shanty was blowing on a hot cup of peppermint tea. The books she’d been carrying from my room were spread across the table.

  The first thing I wanted to know was what had happened to Ozymandias and Grimalkin while she’d been away – apparently they’d been to stay on a Cider farm near Glastonbury run by a friend of hers – then I got down to the nitty-gritty and asked her where she’d been all this time, and what she’d been doing.

  Trying to explain seemed to require a lot of thought because she hummed and hawed for ages, and then completely changed the subject.

  “What do you know about your mother?” she asked me.

  I was flummoxed. After vanishing for the best part of five months why should she suddenly show up now, asking about my mother?

  “Apart from the fact that she died giving birth to me?” I asked bluntly; indicating this wasn’t a subject I wanted to talk about. I’ve always felt awkward about any discussion of my mom. Dad always said the whole thing was too painful to talk about so I never pushed him. I guess it felt wrong to go there. After all in a manner of speaking I’d killed her. Though it’s not really a nice thing to say, in some ways I’d been happy to let her fade away into the past.

  We visited her grave once a year and laid flowers, the same grave my father was in now too, that was enough surely? What right did Shanty have to come here and ask me questions about her ?

  Tapping nervously on the kitchen table with a long brightly varnished purple nail she looked extremely uneasy; as well she might. It didn’t stop her from ploughing on though.

  “I don’t suppose your father told you he met her here?

  “In the New Forest?” I asked. Shanty nodded. “That’s not possible,” I said bluntly, “dad met mom in New York, where I was born.”

  Shanty shifted in her chair, and looked at her hands. “Your birth was registered in New York,” she said quietly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.

  Shanty let out a long breath before she answered. “I’m sorry Thea. I know all this will probably come as a shock to you. It’s been a surprise to me, and I’ve suspected it for the last five months. You were born right here in Baring. The woman you have always thought of as your mother is not…”

  “Look!” I interjected before she could finish the sentence. “I don’t know what you think you know, or why you should even care where I was born, since as far as I know my family history has nothing to do with you. I’ve seen my birth certificate. I was born in New York. My mother’s city. I grew up in the same neighborhood that she did, Brooklyn. The same place she’s buried. The same place my dad is buried - period.”

  “I know this must be difficult for you. There’s no easy way to say it. Just hear me out. Please?”

  “No. I don’t think I will as a matter of fact.” I replied, standing up at the same time. “You vanished without a word five months ago, and now you burst in here, and expect me to sit quietly, and listen to some stupid story about my mother. Here!” I pulled the necklace from my throat, and threw it onto the table harder than I’d intended to. “You can take this back.”

  The amulet shattered, leaving small pieces of glass strewn across the surface of the table. Shanty sat watching me without reacting.

  “You don’t have any pictures of her do you?”

  The question caught me off guard. “Of my mother? How did you know

  that?“

  I didn’t. It was just a guess. But now that you’ve told me it’s true will you let me tell you why?”

  “You don’t need to,” I said, “I know why. Dad was so cut up when she died he couldn’t bear to look at her picture so he got rid of them all.”

  Shanty gave a sad looking smile that infuriated me and shook her head.

  “That would be as good an explanation as any I imagine. She had no living family did she? You don’t have a grandmother, or a grandfather from her side do you?”

  I’d listened to more than enough of this. I pointed to the door.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, and I’d like you to leave. Right now please, and don’t come back.”

  Shanty didn’t move. “You may not want to hear this Thea, but you have to. It’s for your own safety.”

  I crossed the kitchen, opened the door and stood there next to it waiting for her to leave.

  “Ever since I arrived in Baring I’ve heard nothing but warnings. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Look out for this, look out for that. I’m sick of it. It’s messing with my head, so just go, will you?”

  Shanty let out a sigh, then nodded agreement. “Alright,” she replied, “I’ll leave you be for now. But sooner or later you have to hear what I’ve got to tell you.”

  “If it’s a lot of rubbish about me being a Tu'athain or whatever the word is, then you’re too late,” I said triumphantly, “Circe told me I could end up being hassled by black witches. Looks like she was right.

  Shanty was on her feet now, “Circe Masterson? You’ve met her? Spoken to her?”

  “Yes, I have,” I said, pulling up my sleeve to reveal my birthmark, “she told me all about this; and all about the Sisterhood of Cybele as well.”

  “She can’t have!” the words came out sharp as a knife, Shanty was frowning.

  “She’s been straight with me,” I said, “which is a lot more than I can say for you. You knew the minute you saw my arm what some people would think, and you didn’t say a word.”

  “I can’t disagree with you,” Shanty was looking at the remains of the

  amulet sadly, I was beginning to regret breaking it.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been completely honest with you. I didn’t want to say anything at all, not until I was one hundred percent certain. You remember I read your cards the evening we first met?”

  I did. I’d been surprised that she hadn’t tried to tell me all about my life at the time. I’d thought she was after my money.

  “The Wheel of Fortune, the Tower, and the High Priestess. All three cards told me that the mark wasn’t just a coincidence; that I needed to learn more about you.”

  “So you gave me a job so you could spy on me? Thanks a lot. Could you leave now please? My stepmother will be home from work soon, and I need to do some cooking.”

  This seemed to stir a response and she moved away from the table towards the door.

  “Before I leave,” she said, stopping next to me, “just tell me this.”

  She looked at me intently. “Has anything happened to you recently? Have you seen anything? Felt anything? In the forest? Or the glade perhaps? by the pool? Or in the pool?”

  I wanted to say no and push her out of the door so that I wouldn’t have to listen to another word, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking her what she meant. She was really close to me now, almost whispering, “something difficult to explain. Because that’s what this whole thing is. I’ve spent the last five months trying to fathom it out, and even I can hardly believe it. Though I still don’t know the full story”

  The anger came back with a rush. “You’ve spent five months snooping on me and my family?

  “In a manner of speaking. I’ve been talking to friends, and colleagues of your father.”

  I gawped at her struggling to come to terms with it. Shanty had spent the last five months digging into my father’s life...why? I left my post at the door and flopped into a chair by the Aga.

  “It’s been quite a trip
. Iceland, Norway, then Germany, across to New York and finally back here right on my own doorstep.”

  “That can’t have been cheap, what did you do, magic yourself some cash?” I said snippily.

  “I’ve spent almost every penny I have,” she answered with a wry smile.

  “Don’t expect any sympathy from me,” I retorted.

  She shrugged as if the money was unimportant. “Your father has some very loyal friends; Professor Lindmann in Oslo practically set his dogs on me. It’s a good thing I was born in the year of the Ox. Stubbornness can have its uses. I managed to follow his trail well enough.”

  She crossed back to the table and held up a book. It was my copy of Old Norse Tales by Sarah Powers Bradish.

  “Be careful with that,” I told her, “it’s fragile.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s been read over and over again I imagine. Your father gave it to you?”

  “He gave me most of my books.”

  “Of mythology and fairy tales?” she asked, picking up the complete edition of the Brothers Grimm from the table.

  “Of course,” I answered, “it was his job. Mythology and literature”

  Shanty put the books down again.

  “Can you tell me who Fjorgyn’s Maer is?”

  “That’s easy,” I said, puzzled by the question, “Frijja”. It’s from the Lokasenna, one of the poetic Edda; stories from the Norse Sagas. It means Fjorgyn’s maiden, her daughter. Frijja’s her Norse name. Some people think she is the same as the Saxon Freya. There’s even a day named after her – Friday. Freya’s day.

  “And who exactly is Fjorgyn?” Shanty prompted.

  “Fjorgyn?” I paused for a moment before continuing, I could see now where this might be going. “She’s the goddess of the Earth…”

  “Whose celestial partner Fjorgynn rules alongside her.” Shanty completed the sentence for me.

  “So what?” I demanded, “so it sounds like the Wiccan stuff you told me about, so what? It’s a story.” I indicated the books on the table with a sweeping gesture. “They’re all stories.”

  Shanty left the table and squatted next to me.“That’s not what your father thought though is it?”

  “He was an academic, not an idiot,” I said, rudely.

  “Then he never told you what happened to him when he was a toddler?”

  I knew exactly what she was talking about but I wasn’t falling for it. “He didn’t really believe it. It was just a story too. Something he imagined happened when he was little.”

  “Tell it to me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’d like to hear you tell it.”

  I clenched my fists tightly. “Will you leave if I do?” I asked her.

  “Yes. If you still want me to.”

  I sighed. I had no idea why I was letting her make me go through all this.

  “Dad told me that his parents brought him to Europe when he was a small child. He had this memory of a day out in a forest somewhere, his parents got distracted, he wandered off on his own, and somehow managed to fall into a pool of water, or a lake, or something….”

  I stopped dead. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? He’d told me it almost every night when I was a little girl yet somehow I’d blanked it out of my mind completely when the same thing had happened to me.

  Shanty was watching me intently. I managed to get control of myself.

  “And?” she prompted.

  “And this beautiful woman lifted him into her arms, kissed him, and put him out on the shore again. He was soaking, but otherwise he was fine. He ran back to his parents and they hadn’t even noticed he was missing. They couldn’t understand how his clothes had gotten wet.”

  I didn’t like the way I was feeling. I needed my headzappers. I had some spares in my bag. I pulled them out, popped the foil covers and went to the tap to get a glass of water.

  “Don’t do that!” The tone of Shanty’s voice made me pause. “You don’t need those, you never have. What you need is a guide to help you channel your powers properly.”

  I looked round at her, put the pills on my tongue deliberately, and swallowed them down with a gulp of water.

  “You have no idea what I need. I’ll tell you what I don’t need. I don’t need someone like you to come here and try to persuade me that a pile of stupid stories have any basis in reality.”

  Shanty moved to join me at the sink, but I backed away to the other side of the table.

  “You don’t really think these stories are stupid any more than your father did. He firmly believed that some myths are rooted in facts. He followed one particular myth, across Europe for the early part of his professional career, and then mysteriously seemed to lose interest in it in later life. Perhaps you can tell me which one?

  The answer came out as if she was trying to extract my teeth. I spat it at her. “The Huldra.”

  “The Huldra.” She repeated the name back to me as if I’d performed a particularly clever trick in remembering it. “Magical creatures. Known to some as nymphs. Some stories say that they live in the sacred pools through which the souls of newborns enter the world… almost all agree they protect young children and infants from harm.

  “I’m hardly an infant” I muttered.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing,” I snapped, I wasn’t even close to being ready to mention my own experience in the pool at the glade, not by a long shot.

  “Though of course the Huldra could also appear as a seductive and alluring young woman to any handsome youth straying into her forest hideaway. Your father tracked every single hint, rumor, or whisper of a sighting for years all the way from the volcanic wastes of Iceland to the Black Forest in Germany. What he kept from most people, and what I’ve spent all this time confirming, was that he developed a theory about the Huldra. He believed that all of the legends, though they were spread far and wide, referred to a single creature, a woman; an eternal being who took refuge in the most remote forest pools in the deepest woodland.

  He sought after her in the quiet places, the places where nature remains wild and untainted or where the ancient traditions of honoring her sacred site through gifts and worship have survived to the present. He visited every sacred grove in Europe, going anywhere he thought he might find a trace of evidence, a glimpse of what he was seeking. I think he finally found her. Right here in the New Forest.

  “What makes you think that?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, though a large part of me was intrigued. I remembered dad’s bedtime stories so well, about the beautiful and secretive Huldra, the Lady of the Forest, Guardian of the Pool of Souls, and the Mistress of the Wild Hunt… the image of a golden haired woman riding a magnificent stag through the forest glade burst into my mind with such force I could barely stop myself from crying out.

  Shanty noticed immediately that something was wrong, and tried to get me to tell her what it was. I shook my head and gestured to her to continue.

  “You make me think that Thea.” I looked at her questioningly, feeling a mixture of dread and fascination in equal measure. “I told you your birth was registered in New York, though you weren’t born there. There’s no real record of your mother’s life at all, nothing that stands up to close scrutiny.

  “But….”

  Shanty held up her hand, and then brushed away a frizzy dreadlock which had flopped over one eye. “Please let me finish. I think she’s a smokescreen; an invention to hide the truth about your birth.”

  “Are you trying to tell me my father lied to me about my own mother my whole life? Because if you are….”

  Shanty interrupted impatiently, “I’ve no real proof of what I’m about to say, and I know it’ll seem far-fetched at the very least. But please Thea; look inside yourself. Don’t let logic get in the way, let your intuition guide you.”

  I let her have the most scathingly sarcastic tone I could muster. “I hope you’re not going to try to c
onvince me I’m half fairy are you? Because if you are you can stop right there.”

  Shanty shook her head, her dreads rocked from side to side. “No, I’m not.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  Shanty gathered the books on the table into a pile. “I believe the reason he gave you these, and told you the stories he did was directly connected to woman he found in the glade here in Baring.”

  “And who was that then?”

  “Your mother Thea. Fjorgyn’s Maer. Frijja.”

  “The Earth’s daughter Frijja?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Goddess Frijja?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared at her in amazement, she looked deadly serious. “You’re telling me that my mother was a Goddess?”

  Before Shanty could reply another voice cut in. “I think she’s heard quite enough from you!” Rebekah was standing by the door, her face a mask of barely suppressed anger.

  “How you can have the audacity to feed a sensitive and vulnerable girl who’s been through more than enough suffering over the past year, with such a pile of dangerous, delusional nonsense is beyond me. I’m not going to waste my time asking you to leave. I want you out of this house immediately. If you ever show your face here again then so help me I’ll contact the police, the social services, the general medical council; anybody I can think of and you’ll find yourself in so much trouble you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  She stood with her hands on both hips facing Shanty down like a mother bear that’d caught someone messing with her cub. She was magnificent, completely transformed from her normal, slightly ditsy, self. I could see how she’d managed to hold down such a super responsible job now. Shanty opened her mouth to say something, and found herself hauled by the arm to the door and shoved out through it unceremoniously.

  When Rebekah turned back to me the anger on her face had changed to concern. I suddenly felt unaccountably guilty about letting Shanty stay as long as she did, and told her how I’d tried to force her to leave.

  “Don’t worry TT,” she said, “I know it’s not your fault. You know what the real truth is about your parents. Nothing can change that.”

  As I nodded slowly in agreement, I felt tears begin to run down my face in hot wet streaks. Rebekah reached her arms around me and pulled me close. The problem was that I wasn’t sure anymore. Did I know the real truth about them or not?