by Peter Harris
12
The Wrath of Ainenia
Rosa cried out as one stricken to the heart, and pulled at the thorny gate and shook it until her hands bled, to no avail. Through the gaps in the cruel woven thorns of the gate, she saw the guards lead Calibur away to the other side of the enclosure, where the branches and suckering tendrils waved hungrily to receive their prey. And in a loud voice the superintendent proclaimed the sentence of death by enthornment, cursing him with the words Raka ralakké, which means ‘One who is Anathema, the evil incarnation of the will-to-life, which causes endless rebirth and suffering.’
Rosa knew that once the thorns had fastened themselves into his flesh and injected the drugged sap, there would be no saving him; he would sink into a coma as the living vine slowly digested his flesh. And if a would-be rescuer were to somehow avoid being entangled by the threshing tendrils and cut the branches which held him fast, the sap still coursing through his veins, containing the same drug as the Apples of Forgetfulness, only far stronger, would torment him as it ran out; and eventually he would shrivel and die as a branch that is cut off from the vine.
So Rosa wept and prayed that someone might intervene, even as they prepared to throw Calibur into the vine, and its waving branches prepared to embrace him. Suddenly a shrill growling broke the silence. The little anklebiter, having chased the Phagzagira all the way back to her hut, had followed after Calibur, and now it nipped ferociously at the ankles of the guards as they held him fast. But another Aghmaath came from behind, and taking Chiseller by the scruff of the neck, hurled him into the thorns, which reached out their tendrils and held him fast, yelping pitifully until the poisoned sap overcame him, and he slept the sleep of death.
Now Calibur was pushed backwards into the waiting thorns, and his yells subsided as the tendrils injected their sap into his neck and arms and legs, until he too hung limp and lifeless in the thorns.
And Rosa saw it all, but could do nothing. Now she turned and flung herself into the ditch before the gates and begged for death to come to her. And it was still morning, and the birds were singing merrily in the trees, and a skylark hovered in the blue sky above. But dark thoughts came into her mind, woven by the guards above, as they probed and tormented her mind to turn it back to the Void.
Still Rosa’s tears did not cease, and she held onto the icon Calibur had made her, and rocked back and forward in her grief for the child she would now never bear him. And her bitter tears flowed into the water at the bottom of the ditch, and mingled with the water. And the water trickled down the ditch into the pond, and thence into the enchanted stream which led down to Lake Avalon where Ainenia, the Lady of Aeden, bathed with her maidens.
Ainenia cried out in pain when she tasted the tears of Rosa in the clear waters of Lake Avalon, and she sank under the waters. There she saw a vision of Rosa sitting in the ditch outside the convent, and her beloved dying in the thorns within, and her heart was pierced with the grief that Rosa felt.
So she hurried by hidden paths and came to Rosa before the heat of the afternoon sun began to abate. ‘Woman, why do you weep?’ she asked.
‘Because they have taken my beloved and cast him into the thorns from which there is no return,’ said Rosa, marvelling at the Lady, who had appeared by the ditch as if out of thin air.
‘What is it that you hold in your hands?’ asked Ainenia.
‘It is the icon of one called Ainenia, supposed to be the Lady of this whole land, and its protector. But as you see, she could not save me and my love.’
‘I am Ainenia! And your tears have brought me here. Weep no more! For there is hope. If two lovers who know the truth of the marriage of Opposites unite in absolute love, even the thorns may yield to them.’
‘But how will I go to him, since they have banished me and shut the gates against me, and shaken the very dust from their sandals against me?’
Ainenia’s eyes blazed. ‘We will see about that!’ she cried. ‘Hold up the icon!’ and Rosa held it high, and the guards cried out in pain as the light of it entered their darkened minds, and they covered their faces. ‘Open the gates!’ said Ainenia, and they obeyed her, groping blindly for the draw-bolts, and the gates swung wide. Then Rosa walked with Ainenia to the other side where Calibur was enthorned, and none dared lay a hand on them. They reached the thorn hedge. Rosa gave Ainenia the icon with a smile then, unheeding, entered the thorns and walked into Calibur’s arms as he hung there, bound fast by the creeping branches. Now the tendrils curled and wrapped about her as well, and Calibur and Rosa were locked together in a deadly bower of thorns. Rosa cried out to Ainenia in her agony as the tendrils injected her with the drugged sap, ‘Lady, help us!’
Ainenia put down the icon - for she was the Lady and needed no image - and stretching out her hands she blessed the two lovers unto death as the tears streamed down her face. But she knew that there was a deeper magic at work, and she waited beneath the thorns.
Beyond the veil which separates the waking world from Faerie, and Faerie from the Hereafter, the soul of Rosa at last truly met with the soul of Calibur, and they faced each other at last in their true selves. Then they knew that they loved each other with absolute love, and that they were one forever. And Calibur saw that her heart and soul and her whole being glowed, being full of love for him and, in him, for Life. And the light that engulfed them spread into the thorns, and they returned to the waking world and the agony of the thorns to see a strange sight: a wave was passing through all the branches, and as it passed the tendrils grew rosebuds, and the sharp points shrank, and the tendrils that held the lovers uncoiled, and Rosa and Calibur embraced before the whole company that were now gathered about them, while all the roses began to bloom. Then Chiseller, who had also been released from the grip of the thorns, came waddling up and sat at their feet.
And many of the Sisters of Renunciation knelt before them and wept, and their first love of Life and the Goddess was rekindled, and they renounced the Void. Some said afterwards, and it entered the legends of Aeden, that they looked up and saw that the heart of the woman was like a rose glowing with living fire, and the man was holding aloft a fiery sword like Arcratine, the guardian sword of the sacred grove where the shining Heartstone crowned the Tree of Life.
But looking about to thank Ainenia, Rosa saw that she was gone, and that Calibur was bleeding and about to faint. As one waking from a glorious dream, she steadied him, speaking words of love and comfort to him. Then she picked up the icon and led him unhindered through the compound and out of the gates. And Chiseller followed, growling at any who tried to approach. They did not stop until they reached the pond where Calibur had camped.
Rosa took off her pale robe, and bathed and washed away the dust and ashes from her face, then bathed Calibur’s wounds, and he winced with mingled pain and joy. Chiseller swam in circles around them as they embraced in the healing waters. Then Rosa looked into his eyes, and saw there no longer the abstracted, other-worldly gleam, but the love of the Goddess from whom come all worlds, whose cloak is the heavens, and whose womb is the Void. And in his eyes she saw also her own image as the manifestation of the Goddess. And looking into her eyes, Calibur saw the image of the One.
So it was that Calibur at last succeeded in his quest to win back his wife. And Rosa at last received her husband back, for whom she had waited, and despairing of whom she had despaired - for a while - of life itself.
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