For a while Martin sat within the hard and shining gaze of the old woodsman; then Merlin whispered, ‘Listen …’
The path that passes through Broceliande is circular, stretching from this western coast a vast distance to mountains in the east, in the very depths of the land. It winds its way through valleys to the south of here, through caves, then east along the sun-baked coast of an inland sea. North of the far mountains it cuts through dense forests, lakes and rivers. Much of it is now drowned below the ocean. But when the path was first walked, the land in those places was above the sea. Time and the pull and tug of the moon simply changed things. The path is still there below the ocean, but it takes a special concentration to walk it.
It was neither I, nor the woman of magic vision that you call Vivien, who first walked the path, although I have an inkling as to the nature of that long forgotten traveller. I came later, much later, although I am earlier than the legends with which you associate me.
My first encounter with Vivien was where the path passes among the lakes and blue forests of the north, in a place of grey and white swans, red wolves and reindeer. The insects in those forests were a trial to any voyager. The lakes were so cold that in each and every one of them a hundred human bodies floated, half-way down, dead yet still alive, suspended from the process of living by the ice. The magic men of the region, the shamans, swam among them naked, feeding on the faint echoes of memory in the drowned, learning past truths to aid their own journeys to the underworld. They surfaced for air at regular intervals, screaming with the cold, then plunged again, almost dancing with the slowly turning bodies in the deep.
On the surface of the lakes, the swans glided, and Vivien swam among them. She had a light fledge of black feathers on her arms and the red and blue shapes of an owl and a salmon on her breasts and belly. She was a child at the edge of womanhood and otherwise quite pale.
As this sprightly juvenile swam and dived among the feeding swans, playing with their shapes – adopting their shapes – amusing herself with the inner and outer forms of the peaceful birds, I knew at once that the girl was an enchantress.
She was so young, though, that her power was unfocused. She was like a baby, clutching at new things, half inclined to destroy, only gradually discovering the need to be gentle. The mosquitoes which swarmed about me, drawn by the scent of the reindeer on my body and the aroma of the hawk on my head, were a tribulation to me. Yet she, with the swiftest of movements of her left hand and clutching a small talisman of nothing more than birch twigs shaped as a circle and a cross, banished the voracious creatures from her pale skin, crouching in the reeds, preening her feathered arms with a long, white comb.
She knew I was watching, of course. No doubt she had been aware of my stink from the moment I left the birch forest to walk along the rushy shore, looking for a place to fish.
Like a cat, her head kept turning up to sniff the air. She watched me by sound not sight, but I am familiar enough with the glance of light on the keen eye that tells that sight has been briefly employed. Oh yes, she was aware of me, and I was wearing the skins of the beast, bird and fish, so she knew I was kin with the Vision of Magic. But as the grizzled men of the villages floundered in the ice waters, listening for the tunes that would guide them to the past, so in me she had detected a different breed of conjuror.
Her interest was as pointed as the breasts on which she gently splashed cold water, as bright as the light on her long black hair. I moved slowly through the tall rushes and like a trout swimming in shallow water I was alert, fully aware of the taste of the fly, but half aware of the bait, of the trap, of the hook.
As if to tease and entice me further, this pristine, nubile creature flew suddenly above the reeds, the action of the flight like that of a dragonfly. It was a brief flight, high above the lake, a short dance in the air with outstretched wings. Whatever charm she had used, however, wore off quickly and with a slight cry, the sound of irritation, she plunged from the height into the mud, where she floundered and spluttered, her wings now filthy.
But it had been a moment of exceptional magic, and charm in every sense, a waif-like body, pale and slender, perfect and unbroken, hovering, then swooping above the blue lake, slim legs kicking in the action, a moment of control – the wile in the woman – then the moment of chaos – the impetuosity of the girl.
She was proud and angry as I hauled her from the mud. She didn’t resist, despite the indignity of the moment, which told me instantly that this had in part been designed for me.
Almost at once she was laughing. Her hands were over me, parting the folds and creases of my furs and skins, looking for the skin within the skin, finding first the rank, torn wool of my vest, then the marks, scars and tattoos of my trade. But made curious by these patterns her fingers tried to read them, like a blind man reading the marks and gnarls in hardened clay of the Babylonians.
‘They mean nothing to me!’ she cried aghast, then covered the slip. ‘They’re fascinating,’ she added, with transparent caution.
‘Fascinating?’
‘What do they mean? What do they do? Where do they help you travel?’
‘Marks of my birth, signs of my tribe, nothing more,’ I said, but she tugged the thin hair of my beard.
‘Liar!’
‘Prove it.’
‘I will.’
It was a tease, and there was a smile on her face. And anyway, I was young then. You may not be aware of it, but there is a bone in every human body which, when broken, begins the passage of time. For most of you, this bone is broken in the womb and soon dissolved. Rarely, it remains unbroken for centuries without end. My bone in those years was unbroken, although I was certainly cautious of too much vigour, too much of the hunt. My beard was black, my hair strong, the muscles in my body like whales below the grey sea, firm and powerful. They had to be – it was just as well – since I was travelling great distances, and existing on precious little, save for fish.
It is always the fish that betrays us.
The trout, splendid in so many ways, can never learn to tell when there is a hook inside the juicy fly. And the trout is the great weakness of all hunters. It is itself a hunter of superb prowess, but it is incapable of swimming anywhere other than into the flow of the river. It feasts blindly and voraciously through that flow, only to die, surprised, on a sharpened bone.
At some time in our lives we all will be caught. And young though she was, when I first met her, I am certain that Vivien was aware of this simple, ageless truth.
I was about to say more to her when one of the shamans ran naked and screaming from the lake. Wild, frenzied, and blue as if starved of air, he shivered past us, his hands encasing the grey, winter buds of his sex. He danced and cried, a man older than his years, patterned on his arms for flight, I noticed, but not yet on his face for travel through the earth, nor on his legs for the great running, the hound running.
He saw me, and saw my furs, and came bounding over to me, huddling inside the reindeer skin, so physically strong that I couldn’t detach his icy hands from my flesh, where they sought my heat, and so the two of us fell struggling and yelling into the mud, the one in search of warmth, the other in a desperate escape from cold fingers.
Now it was Vivien’s turn to laugh, and she hauled us up. The shaman, bereft at this moment of any power worth his drum, began to flog the warmth into his body with a handful of rushes, running back to the village and the long lodge, where the fires burned continually.
This, it turned out, was also Vivien’s village. The raven-feathered girl dressed herself in a simple woollen skirt, a bright blue shirt and wolfskin overcoat, then led me to her home.
It was here, choking on the smoke from the fires on which fish and small game were being cooked, that Vivien demonstrated her second piece of magic, an entrancing act again, and one which was a sinister portent for the future, although I was not aware of this at the time. It was simply an interesting piece of magic. But I should certainly have un
derstood the significance of the performance, and that I failed to do so, I am still convinced, is because she had put her first hidden charm on me.
The longhouse was crowded, mothers and fathers grouped around the fires, each watched over by a loki, a heavy tree whose animal faces grinned across the room. There was the constant sound of laughter and raised voices, and of song, accompanied by reed pipes and small drums.
The shaman who had so frigidly and irritatingly fled the lake waters, and the memories of drowned men, paid particular attention to me for a while. He brought me soup, then the raw cheeks of salmon, and flat cakes of bread in which the resinous and delicious taste of birch was abundant.
He talked nonsensically of his experiences in the lake, and showed me drums and stretched skins that reflected his visits through what he called the ‘swan’s neck’, visits to the places where the shape-changers lived. Everything in this land of lakes and forests was defined by animals, and each journey described as a voyage: to higher worlds through the gullet or crop of a bird, to hidden forest worlds through the heart or gut of the reindeer; to worlds below the water by passage through the gills of a pike. It occurred to me in a moment of humour to ask if the longer the bowel the more difficult the journey, but to the Pohola it made no difference. In any event, the food tasted wonderful, despite the fact that recently each limb or cheek or sausage had been the channel to another realm.
Vivien had been conspicuous by her absence for some time. There was an air of apprehension and humour in the longhouse, and I was aware that an entertainment was being prepared for me. These people, the Pohola, were of a generous nature, if inclined to melancholy (their songs and stories were remorselessly depressing, a fact I attribute to the harshness of the land and the extent of darkness that subdues their spirits).
Vivien entered suddenly, causing the smoke to swirl. She was wearing a dress of white wool, which flowed about her as she turned, her feathered arms extended. Her face was painted black, but like a bird. Behind her, six small girls from the village entered quickly, all equally simply dressed, and each with the severed wings of swans tied to their arms, which they flapped awkwardly. Their hair, waist length and amber, flowed as they twirled and laughed. They were not normally permitted in this lodge, and were both nervous and thrilled to be within the fish-smoke.
My friend, the shaman, laughed noisily, pointing and making comments that I couldn’t interpret. The mothers clapped, the fathers smoked, watching the small dance, watching me for my reaction.
By their reaction to what followed I can only assume that they had seen no such event before. It happened like this:
The seven dancers formed into a circle, wings outstretched and touching, dancing slowly round the fire. People moved back where they sat, towards the walls, throwing cushions and rugs between them in a wonderful display of relaxation. I was pushed back too, and only just rescued my bowl of salmon cheeks. These were a rare treat for me and I intended to eat until I could eat no more.
Then Vivien moved into the ring, her steps and movements timed to the steady chant of her companions, who still danced as they giggled, firelight making them glow.
To my astonishment, Vivien lifted her skirts and crouched down suddenly on the fire, throwing back her head and screaming. Smoke billowed from below her dress and somewhere someone cried, ‘She’s burning. Stop her!’
But at the same moment she flung herself aside with a high-pitched laugh. Instantly the air was filled with a ghostly shape, a huge translucent apparition that towered to the rafters, filled the centre of the lodge, a swirl of white, a touch of amber, that at once hardened and became a swan of vast proportion, a bird whose wings, when stretched, filled the longhouse from end to end.
And now it beat those wings and screeched. The movement threw the people hard against the turf walls of the lodge. The swan’s neck, thick and powerful, thrashed a boat’s length this way and that, its huge head sweeping over us, the beak opened to emit its pain, a mouth that could have swallowed a child.
Wings struck against the rafters, and the rafters broke, the thatch fell, the turf crumbled. Fires went out, wooden pillars cracked as the beak struck; the whole place was mayhem. Everyone was screaming as the beast struggled to escape the confines of the house.
It was tied by a tether to its leg. It fought against the tie, and I felt tugged myself, as if responding in sympathy. As the beast struggled and flexed, so did I. I caught a glimpse of the girl. She was watching me from behind the biggest of the wooden loki, the huge totem that guarded the centre of the lodge. She was grinning, she was out of control. She had terrified the people. I knew then that she, like me, was a stranger here.
The swan suddenly broke through the roof. It beat its wings frantically, shedding feathers, breaking feathers, straining its massive neck towards the sky. As it started to rise, the wind catching its wings, so the tether tightened, and the unseen loop around my foot tightened too.
The wretched girl! She had conjured not just this apparition of the swan, but a link between the swan and me, tied by our feet, tethered by magic!
The swan flew and I was dragged across the floor, as if carried by those spirits of the hearth called fyjulga. I had an instant only to reach for my bone knife and ‘cut’ the cord, falling back upon the cold embers of the fire that Vivien herself had extinguished earlier, when she had used its flame for the magic to make this apparition. The girl laughed, then fled. Starlight shone, and the swan died, somewhere out among the blue lakes. It was a creature fabricated by a young, fierce mind; it died a quick and cold, wet death, but that is appropriate.
There was a cut on my ankle, no less deep than if real wolf-gut had gouged into me. The blood flowed and I bound the wound carefully.
Angry though I was, all I could think of was the girl’s laugh of surprise that her trick had worked, the glint in her eyes and the sudden apprehension that followed as she knew that she would be punished for causing the longhouse rafters to be broken.
And if indeed she were punished, then no doubt the sting of the wet birch branch sharpened and heightened her power. I don’t know. I could think of nothing from then until the moment, early in the first spring dawn, when I slipped away along the path at dawn, nothing but the girl and the way she had tested me, and teased me.
Yes. I wanted her fingers on my body again.
Yes, I wanted her to read me, though she would have understood nothing.
And yes, I was determined that it would never happen. I knew that if she touched me, now, I would be dead before too long.
She may have conjured a giant swan, and dazzled guileless eyes. I was more aware that she had squatted down and smothered a blazing fire without harm, using the searing heat for magic!
As if exhausted by this recollection of an event so long in his past, Merlin sank down inside the cowl and fell silent. Martin stoked the fire and sparks swirled among the spreading oaks, to dim and die below the black but star-bright void of the night sky.
Abruptly, the grim figure sat up and drew a wheezing breath, which Martin thought might have been a chuckle. Merlin whispered, ‘It all comes back to me. I can see that time again as clearly as a fish can see the fly—’
When I left those tribal lands in the far north, Vivien followed me. I had known she would. Since she was young she was trapped in the place by her own inexperience, but at length she learned of the existence of the path, and she used her skills to enter the long walk, the movement around the path that is endless, that is its own world. By the time she took her first faltering step – no doubt aided by the wings of birds, her favourite manifestation – lifetimes had passed, and I was in the land of the Pretini, which you probably know as Albion, or Logres – the place has many names. My bone had still not broken, but the fire that she had extinguished during that simple illusion among the Pohola burned within me, forming a link across the ages.
I constantly dreamed of fire. She burned into me from the years lost.
She ran like a wolf acr
oss the land. She swam across the ocean. She slept in caves and moved through the sap in the trees. She came close to me, then found her form again, a powerful woman, now, still seeking to understand the marks upon my body.
The truth is that there is a great attraction in the moment of touching. The moment she touched my painted, patterned flesh, the moment that she felt the carved bones below that flesh, she was not just intrigued, she was seduced. The shaman with his cold hands suffered a similar seduction, but was easy to deny. Vivien was wilier by far, and had the talent of time, the ability to play her strategy across more than a single lifetime’s span.
She knew that she had touched power, touched secrets that could be of great use to her. She intuited that having touched my power she could either have it, or live in its shadow, but that we could not share it. How could we?
If Vivien were to have my skills, she would have to wear my skin. She would have to age by wearing my own age; all beauty would have to be sacrificed to wear the scarred skin of an older man.
Her exuberance, her youth, prevented her from pursuing this until the bone in her body broke. She was clever enough to hold the break, so that though the years passed for her, she aged slowly. As I remained a wolf, seasoned, skilled and always lean, she aged steadily; but she had her charms, and her wings, and there is nothing so youthful as the first flight of a bird at the breaking of dawn.
Old, then, yet still young, Vivien pursued me for the secrets in my flesh.
To confuse her, I created a shadow of myself and sent it back along the path, back to the northlands, travelling towards the sunrise.
It was my intention to meet the shadow again as our paths crossed, and take it back, but I never found it. It still wanders somewhere; perhaps it was seduced from the path, perhaps it faded. It’s hard to know these things, although I have heard of a land bridge in the far east, where the ice makes a thick bridge between this and another world, so perhaps it strayed further than I realised. It was a small shadow, possessing small magic. More charm than substance, you understand, and though its life should have been long, it would have been at the whim of all creatures.
Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) Page 14