Skin

by Ilka Tampke

  ‘You are right,’ whispered Fraid, her shoulders slumping.

  I watched her thin wrists below her heavy cloak. She looked like an old woman now and I had never thought her so. ‘You are frightened,’ I said. I meant no insult to her Tribequeen’s courage; it was our kinship to these ancient tribelands that suddenly seemed as fragile as a first green shoot.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am frightened.’ She glanced at Llwyd. ‘About the problem, we are both in agreement. It is the solution that divides us.’

  Llwyd sat unspeaking for some time, then turned and looked to me. ‘It is the Kendra’s knowledge that must decide whether we fight or submit.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fraid. ‘You are right.’

  It took a moment for me to understand what they were asking. ‘But I am not the Kendra…’ I faltered.

  ‘But you are chosen by the Mothers,’ he answered. ‘If you did not possess knowledge, you would not have been chosen.’

  ‘It is true I have learned with them…’ I grew more panicked. ‘But I have not asked them such questions.’

  He met my gaze. ‘It does not need to be asked. It is within you because you have walked with them. You must claim this knowledge, Ailia, and tell us your counsel.’

  My thoughts began to fragment. The clarity, the knowledge, I held only moments before was entirely lost. I thought of the Mothers who had taught me. Of Tara. Of Steise. What would they tell me now? Nothing came. ‘What said Ruther?’ I spluttered. ‘Does he still advise we form bondage with Rome?’

  Llwyd sighed and looked away.

  ‘Ask not of Ruther,’ said Fraid. ‘He has not been often among us and when he is, he speaks highly of the Roman commanders. I meet with him because he holds knowledge of the invasion but—’ her eyes darted from Llwyd to me, ‘—do not trust him, Ailia. He has great allure but he is not clear in his alliances.’

  I braced my palms on the boarskin beneath me, my fingers finding the hard, wrinkled tip of the snout. My heart started to race.

  ‘Ailia?’ said Llwyd, imploring. ‘Do not give us another’s answer. It must be your knowledge. The Roman forces prepare to attack and we must decide which is worth more: our freedom or our lives. What does the Kendra’s knowledge say?’

  I looked to his face and then the Tribequeen’s and I was sickened to realise that this was no longer a test, but a true question. That Fraid looked to me, that Llwyd himself required my guidance, set me reeling. I was not ready. It was beyond my learning. My need for Taliesin was blinding now. ‘I…I do not know.’

  I pushed myself to standing on unsteady legs, gasping for air. ‘I must be gone,’ I stammered. ‘This is a mistake. I am without skin. I cannot yet give what you seek. Perhaps I cannot ever give it.’

  ‘No, Ailia—’ Llwyd stood. ‘Wait!’

  But I stumbled backward, bowing quickly before I rushed out of the room into the dim winter moonlight.

  The icy air rushed into my lungs as I ran through the township. Soon my chest ached but I pushed myself faster down the hill and into the fields. I wanted my heart to feel nothing else. This was my truth: moving in secret, untethered, unknowing. I should not have sought to know my skin. I was born not to know it. The unknowing shaped me. Knowing now would have broken me apart.

  I ran the river path toward Taliesin. If I could not bring him here then I would go to his place. If I could not help him then I would be lost with him. What Llwyd was asking I could not give.

  A heavy snow began to fall, iceflakes prickling my face as I ran. Ahead was the Oldforest, black under the swirling sky.

  ‘Ailia!’ A figure loomed before me, tall and strong-shouldered, his face shadowed in the grey light. I gasped. It was Llwyd. He was young and beautiful, his long hair dark. He could not have pursued me here by flesh. He had travelled by spirit drawn from the time of his young man’s strength.

  I stood in the tumbling snow, awed in the face of the skill he had used to shape this change. But I would not be swayed. ‘I am going to the Mothers!’

  ‘You cannot,’ he commanded, his voice resonant. ‘You are still without skin.’

  How could I tell him that the Mothers cared nothing for skin? For it would desecrate his knowledge, and he would never believe me. ‘You ask too much of me!’ I cried. ‘I am mourning my milkmother. I have lost all that binds me to Cad. Now you ask me to give wisdom that determines the life or death of the tribe. Wisdom that I do not have. Do not keep me here.’ I went to push past him, but he blocked my way.

  ‘Then think of others,’ he said. ‘Think of the tribespeople. If you force through now, you will tear open the skin that holds us all.’

  I stopped, wondering fleetingly if he spoke the truth. But then my thoughts filled with Taliesin. It was he alone who drew me on, nothing else. What harm could arise from our union? ‘Do not burden me with what I cannot carry, Llwyd. I do not have the power you think I have.’

  He stood firm in my path, snow mounding on his cloak. ‘Do you not think that I, too, have felt unworthy of knowledge?’ he said. ‘There is no one born who does not doubt themselves before it. I, too, struggled to hold what was handed to me…’ He paused.

  I stared at him as glinting iceflakes caught in his beard. For Llwyd not to have learned would have been a terrible loss. But I was not like him. The knowledge had been poorly matched to me. ‘I will never be Kendra!’ I shouted. ‘I will never have skin.’

  ‘You will be Kendra,’ he said. ‘You will hear the Singing and you will return to us with its truth.’

  ‘No!’ Tears fell from my cheeks.

  Gradually his glamour was subsiding and he contracted to his old man’s shape. ‘You must—’ His voice was aged and rasping again. ‘Or else we are all lost in a world that only you have the power to understand.’

  I could not hear any more. He was wrong. I pushed past him.

  ‘Ailia!’

  I did not look back. I had my own knowledge of the Mothers. I had walked with them and knew they did not ask of my skin. And had I not cut through the realms once before with my sword? I was outside the laws of skin. I would set my own path.

  Llwyd’s shouts grew fainter behind me.

  I ran straight through the Oldforest until I reached the hazel pool. Its black water churned. ‘Taliesin!’ I screamed. ‘Taliesin, come!’

  My words condensed in the cold air.

  There was a strangeness to the water when I crouched to quench my thirst. It was as thick as syrup in my cupped palms and no sooner had I sipped it than I spat it back. It was foul with the taste of rot. Was this the Mothers repelling me? But I thought only of Taliesin and how it would feel when he held me. I cared not for the warning of the river, nor for the doings of the Romans, nor for the harm of which Llwyd spoke. I did not want to be Kendra. I wanted only to join with Taliesin and stay with him in his place. I was fit for no other.

  I tore off my cloak, dress and sandals, shrinking against the furious cold, and refastened my sword belt over my under-robe. At the river’s edge, with the shallows shooting ice currents up my legs, I was caught by a moment of fear. I had journeyed through this pool only once before and that was by the guidance and seduction of my fish. Alone,
I had no recollection of how far or how deep I needed to swim. I could only jump and trust that Taliesin would take me through.

  I braced to jump, my feet numb in the water. I would not survive long submerged in this coldness. This passage would be death or a return to Taliesin and I would take either.

  I closed my eyes and launched into the deep centre of the pool, then turned and swam down, face-first into the drop.

  Soon the breath drained from my chest and I was dizzied with cold and pain. Pressure squeezed my ribs as I kicked downward, my lungs screaming for air. Finally, I opened my mouth and sucked in a mouthful of cold, silty water. It filled my chest to breaking then, somehow, I found the air in it. The pressure lessened and the pain subsided. The water flowed in and out of my lungs. I was breathing it.

  I could see nothing in the blackness, but as I swam my fingers brushed against walls of stone beside and above me. I was underground. I swam effortlessly, water coursing through my body like blood. There was bliss in it, sustenance, and I was not afraid.

  Soon there was a glow ahead. I eddied forward, drawn to the light, then I was free of the underwater chambers and rising toward a bright moon. My face broke the surface and I gasped air, a human breath.

  I was within a wide lake, a shoreline not far in the distance. It was still dark but the air was warm; the seasons were askew again. I had journeyed. Joyously, I took another breath and began to swim. Yet as I drew closer to shore, I recognised a shape rising out of the water, lit by the three-quarter moon. It was Glass Isle’s mighty Tor. I remained in the hardworld. Yet had I not travelled by trance to come here? By journey?

  Night mist clung to the shore of the Isle. I crawled onto the pebbly bank and collapsed on my side. It was the same bank that met the canoe when I first arrived with Sulis. I was sure of it.

  I stood up, wringing the lake from my under-robe. I could not find the shape of what had happened. If I had not journeyed to the Mothers—if I was still in the hardworld—then how had the season been turned? How did I swim such a distance?

  I checked the strapping that held my sword to my waist. I would rest in my temple bed this night and leave at first light. If I walked the same forest path that led me to Taliesin, the same mist-filled gully, I would surely be able to cut through once more to the place of the Mothers who held him.

  I walked the treeline in the darkness, searching for the opening that led to the temple. But when the shore began to curve to the north and I had been walking almost half an hour, I knew I must have passed it.

  I walked back, scouring the forest edge as I went, but still the path was not revealed. At last there was a small gap in the trees, marked with a clump of buckthorn heavy with berries. Had the path been so narrow and unformed? I did not recall it so. I took a few steps but the spongey ground and overhung branches soon turned me back onto the shore, my skin prickling with fear. I walked back and forth with a quickening pace, but the line of trees was as dense as a wall. This was maddening. There was nothing for it but to return to the buckthorn path. It had to be the path to the temple. There was no other.

  I would be through in moments, I told myself as I stood poised at the mouth of the track. I had walked the Oldforest by night before, so why did this path set my heart thumping?

  The moon scarcely penetrated the forest canopy. There was a bank of sheared earth to my right and I trailed my fingertips tentatively along it. Soon all light was banished. Whether my eyes were closed or open made no difference. I pawed forward over the uneven ground, my arms outstretched, groping into the space before me.

  I tried to calm myself, to argue with my pounding heart, but my muscles were strung taut, alert to every sound that echoed in the blackness. Was that the rustle of a wolf? An animal smell rose through the odour of wet leaves, but I was so addled by loss of sight that my mind was surely bending my senses. I had to be nearing the temple clearing. Or was I wandering deeper into the Isle’s forests? I stopped. I had lost all sense of direction. Moments as long as hours passed while I stood, unmoving.

  The darkness began to attack, full of spirits, circling and readying. I spun toward the sound of footsteps behind me, then others in front. There was a wailing cry and I did not know if it was my voice or another’s.

  With a jolt, I realised what was happening. This was my long night. My trial. And I was failing it. The making of fire or finding of food was beyond me now. The test of the long night was to banish fear. But with every shaking breath, I summoned what waited in the darkness. The rot beneath my feet was not leaves, but bodies, infected, predatory, clamouring for me.

  Even in my terror, I recognised this darkness. There was something monstrous in me that called it forth. What I had feared my whole life was upon me. I was utterly alone. It was my punishment. Deserved. For placing my lover before my milkmother, for shunning the wisdom of my Elders, for thinking I could live outside skin. If fear could be withstood during the long night it would not return again. But fear had slaughtered me.

  I sank to the ground and curled into a ball, my body aching with the need for sleep. But there would be no escape from the full passage of this terror.

  I lay for many hours, rigid.

  I learned the true shape of my fear.

  I learned what it was to be only myself.

  Dawn came like a kiss, its flesh light filling the forest. Never had I been happier to see the day. The scene of last night’s torment was now so tranquil, the path clear when I turned to find it. I had survived.

  I moved slowly, fractured by the night that had torn through me. But when I finally stepped free of the trees, there were no temple huts. No initiates. There was nothing here at all. ‘Sulis?’ I called feebly. ‘Taliesin?’

  Had I wrought this change by my tearing of skin? Was I to remain alone here as punishment? Last night’s horror began to stir and I knew I could not endure it again. I wondered if I should leave the Isle while I had light. But there was no boat to travel back to Caer Cad over the water and I would never find the passageway that brought me here under the vast lake. Still I was not even sure if I stood in the hardworld or on Mothers’ ground.

  Perhaps I had died this night. Perhaps I had come to Caer Sidi. Part of me wished it so. But my hunger, my exhaustion, my grazed skin, my loneliness all felt very much of the living.

  It was only the thought of Taliesin that bade me walk on. But there was no forest track, nothing I recognised here except the Tor, looming before me. Was that a thread of smoke winding from its summit? A fire?

  I blundered forward, ignoring the teachings that forbade me from ascending the mountain. It was steeper than it appeared from below. Panting, I clambered up a winding path through dense wildflowers and mountain shrubs. Near the summit the path became stony, banks of low cloud drifting past. I kept my eyes on the ground, the smell of the smoke urging me on.

  When at last I reached the peak I was in a clearing ringed with rough-cut branches, buckthorn and stones. A woodfire burned in the centre but no one tended it. No one was here. I collapsed on a log, my legs shaking, and closed my eyes. I had been truly cast from all I knew.

  Then on the howl of the wind, I heard a human breath. When I looked up there was an old woman sitting cross-legged behind the fire. Had she been so still that I did n
ot see her? With a cry of relief, I ran forward and crouched to greet her.

  She was older than Cookmother, older than Llwyd. But beneath the droop of her brow, her eyes were the colour of the greenest water. She stared at me then spread her arms. Without pause, without thought, I climbed into her embrace. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my forehead with the love of a mother. I burrowed into the warmth of her lap, sinking deeper as she yielded to my weight.

  For a teetering moment, I could have pulled myself back from her embrace and returned to the solid ground of the mountain. Even as I fell into it, I knew there was risk in this pleasure that I may not return. But her hold was so blissfully tender after my night alone that I no longer cared for anything else.

  I closed my eyes and let her skin and muscles grow around me until I was entirely buried, submerged in the current of her blood. Soon there was no more flesh and I was falling, surrendered, into emptiness. My journey was over.

  To know the earth, we must learn to hear it in a way that reveals its language.

  PAIN SEARED THROUGH my centre.

  Something had caught my fall.

  When I clutched my belly I felt a cord, warm and sinewy, coursing with blood. This was what held me. In agony, I grasped it and hauled myself up to lessen the strain.

  I did not want to be caught.

  Bearing my weight with one hand, I reached for my sword with the other. This was its promise: to do my will. It would slice through the cord that halted my fall. Even a flash of Taliesin’s face, vivid as flame, could not bid me stay.

  My fingers tightened around the cord as I readied to cut. Then, through the membrane of skin, I felt a vibration. A hum. Faint, as though from a great distance. I raised the sword. But the humming strengthened. It was a voice, a song. An illusion, I told myself, a trick of the mind. One last barrier to pass before I could enter the freedom of the fall. Again I lifted my sword. A wave of song poured into me like breath, pure and spinning with light.