Red Solstice (Alfheim Book 1)

by Unknown

  “It is not a common thing, and I believe largely used for those that have murdered others”, Hilda continues., “it is a sport mostly confined to the Nobles, thankfully, although my husband did have to play his part in them, but he never worried me with the details of such events.”

  Well now I know far more than I wanted to .

  We are talking about the transition points and she thinks it might be a good idea to note these on the spiral in the colours that belong to the chakras being used. Easy peasy why did I not think of that. I laugh at myself and she gives me a look that says what is going on in your mad head now. “I was just thinking that I think too much,” I say rocking the chair back so it almost tips up on me.

  Anyway we did the colours thing so now I have a red starting point which seems ominous to say the least followed by orange and finally the yellow.

  Walking the spiral

  I decided to try out the spiral that evening and taking direction from the books at Hilda's I prepared for it by not having an evening meal first, but drinking water and showering before I put on clean clothes. I decided to walk the spiral bare foot, as well, so that I had contact to ground myself with, as this also seemed to be important. I did not think it would take a great deal of time but I was prepared to spend up to an hour at the centre of the spiral just building the vision if necessary. The majority of the preparation apart from that would be prior to and during the actual walk but this would not be time consuming in itself. I just had to make sure I had the notes firmly committed to memory and that I could produce them in the sequence I needed without hesitation . I can remember thinking that Hilda would need ear plugs at the end of this, or maybe I would. So when they sat down to eat I slipped out into the garden with my water and sang to the chickens. By the time Aylsa joined me the chickens looked pained. I will just have to hope they don't stop laying.

  It was around 7pm when I finally stepped into the circle. Hilda sat outside it in an armchair. I cleared my mind and entered other sight and stepped into the Root zone sounding the C and holding this until I reached the Sacral zone where I changed the note to a D and finally the Solar Plexus where I sang an E. With each note I felt the power rising along the chakra pathway and vibrate finally the totality of it vibrating in my solar plexus I sat and built a mental image of the glade that he had drawn me to and then I called to him to be there. I had my eyes closed during this and I could feel energy flowing through me and out rather like the swirls in my spiral and then suddenly the scene took on a self sustaining reality of its own.

  He is sitting on the mossy bank languidly chewing a piece of long grass and as I enter the centre he shades his eyes to look up at me. “ You look so much better in silk”, he says.

  I tilt my head to one side and then shake it, “And you, my friend, look far better naked”. He acknowledges a hit if only a tiny one. I continue, “Is this a special space for you or is it somewhere real?” He considers this question before replying. “Its a fragment of Alfheim that exists in some small measure on your reality, but that is rather a simplistic way of putting it”. Ah so I am not considered intelligent enough to grasp the niceties of his existence. “You are probably the most arrogant creature that I have ever met but this is only a small town so perhaps there are those that can better you elsewhere.” Again he seems to consider this before replying, “You do not think to call me a man even though you have seen me naked?” “Touché,” I laugh ”It is a good impersonation on your part but no, you do not seem to be a man, as this world knows them.” “I shall take that as a complement,” he replies, his eyes dancing with humour.

  “What is your name”, I ask.

  “Names are a dangerous thing, Lilly Millefleur, they give you power over people”, he replies, smiling.

  “Then may I ask why I am your target?”

  “That is no problem. Your grandmother was visited by a soothsayer who foretold that her grandchild would produce the next heir to her land within the year. Therefore I am here to take you back to her”

  “But, that does not necessarily mean me,” I protested “I do have two brothers”.

  He shrugged “It would seem that your grandmother is not over keen on boys”, he said. “After all they are so unpredictable.

  “Then she is a fool”

  He looks at me as if I have metamorphosised into something truly strange. “In your case I am inclined to agree” he says looking thoughtfully at me. I find him hard to read. He seems to think along different lines to the people I know. Maybe that is why he fascinates me, apart from his fondness for geas or whatever they are plural.

  “What will happen to me if I go with you?”

  “She will chose you a rich husband, one who will supply a decent political alliance so ensuring the longevity of her reign.”

  It is all so matter of fact. No space there for feelings. I can see why my mother ran away.

  “On the plus side”, he continues, “You can chose as many lovers as you wish once an heir is in place”.

  “She has my undying gratitude then” I reply and he laughs out loud.

  “I thought that might please you”, he says.

  “Please me? What right have you to decide what will please me. You took advantage of my vulnerability with your unfair use of spells. Did my grandmother tell you to seduce me: What sort of moral society does that to potential virgins?”

  “But you were not a virgin”.

  “No, but I might have been one and even then what right do you have to sit there judging me, you rapist”

  “I have been called many things” he started but I was not in the mood to listen.

  “you are sending me into slavery with some old man I have never even met just to satisfy a grandmother who must have been a real monster for my own mother to run away from her and you expect me to be pleased that I can fornicate afterwards and bring up a child to be just like you and your precious people, loose moraled, thoughtless, arrogant, self centred, pompous You do not know me or what I want or need. So, will I have to be drugged to go on my honeymoon just because you got slap happy with one of your spells”.

  He is looking genuinely puzzled and then he takes off his jacket and starts to examine it intently. I am incoherent now with tears, partly of anger and part blessed relief that I have vocalised some of the strangeness running through my head.

  He takes a deep breathe and stares back at me. I manage an unfeminine sniff and find myself presented with a pieces of linen shaped like a handkerchief.

  “It should not have affected you to this extent”, he finally said, “It is designed to create a little pliability and the desire to seek me out, so that you would leave with me without any trouble. I have used it before without things spiralling out of control. I would not, could not take another without their willing it so. I thought that,” he pursed his lips and looked down at the ground, “ the way that you looked at me was,” he shook his head and then raised it to look me in the eyes, “ I was certain you felt something more, that you saw beyond this trifling thing and saw me as an object of desire.” His eyes sparkle like aquamarines and his lips are, I bite my finger to shut the thoughts out of my head, I do not feel very good, faint almost. This has been all to much and I need to make my escape before I do something even more irrational. “I have to go” I force the words out and resolutely will myself back. Nothing seems to have moved. I am not even certain if time has passed since this started or if it is even real. I stand with some difficulty and walk back around the spiral. My head is throbbing and once again I burst into tears. Hilda grabs me before I fall and rocks me in a hug as if I'm a baby once again. When I finally calm down enough to sit in a chair I raise my hand to wipe my now running nose and discover I still hold the handkerchief.

  Tuesday 20th

  What had seems to be just a few brief moments turned out to have taken up nearly two hours which together with the lack of food explained my headache to some extent. Hilda had saved some dinner for me and insisted that I sat and a
te before I spoke of what I had seen. To be honest I was surprised that I had managed the sending, although part of me was still questioning whether it had been real or just my fraught imagination but then I had the handkerchief. I have begun to feel as if I am on some alternative rite of passage with out the time to absorb or question what is or has been.

  Once I have eaten and had a cup of coffee I feel better able to tell Hilda what had happened or rather part of what had happened.

  “Well you were right about him wanting to take me back with him and it is my grandmother that has sent him to do this. It seems she had her fortune told and they said one of her grandchildren would produce an heir to her land within the year. It would also seem she is a bit of a control freak and thinks I should be married off to the highest bidder and perform this function.”

  “So this is why you were crying so hard,” she says looking at her coffee cup.

  “Yes and No”, I reply laughing, “Everything has been so strange and such a rush, if you know what I mean, and I have, well I just have not had enough time to chill out and take it all in properly, so I shouted at him and said what I thought which was ,well not kind in a way as he is only doing what he was told to and he seems quite a nice person underneath it all”. Which seemed like a sensible place to stop.

  She is looking at me long and hard and I know I am transparent up to a point, and I do not want to face anything to do with feelings, and I hope she does not say anything to make me tell her what is really happening to me because I am not one hundred percent certain about feelings either, and it all seems wrong and just a bit like biting into an apple and finding it is rotten on the inside. I really don't want to keep things back from her and I think she realises that as she does not question me further but diverts the conversation to how well the spiral had worked out.

  “To be honest I was not convinced that it would,” I said, but it was exciting that it did and I do feel quite proud of myself even if it has not created a way out of this mess.”

  “I don't know about that entirely,” she replies, “It is another step upon a path that many seek to find and few manage. You do have a right to feel some pride in achieving what you have and who knows it may prove to be of necessity in the future.”

  Aylsa has been out for the evening and now I hear her key in the lock. She seems full of the joys of spring as she fairly bounces into the kitchen. I guess I do not need to ask who she was with. Hilda and I exchange looks and both of us burst out laughing.

  Aylsa poises at the coffee jug and turns to enquire why we are so merry but neither of us can answer this and I take my leave of them and chuckle my way off to bed.

  Yesterday had been hectic and exhausting. I slept late and found that I had little appetite, although I was very thirsty and drank almost a litre of water once I was up and about. The others had things to do, so I spent most of the day alone, and divided it between thinking about what I must do and focusing on what I had learned. Some of the time was spent in the out building going through the paper trail we had made, some bits of it being discarded as having no relevance and others pinned in a neater line. I jotted down a lot of notes for future reference and hoped that there would be a future that I would reference. Hilda arriving home discovered I had barely eaten and was concerned but I brushed this off saying I actually had not missed food and no I did not feel ill. However, I did get enough enthusiasm together for their evening meal and I even helped finish that final bottle of wine. It was almost a celebration.

  I have discovered that Hilda moved here around the same time as my parents and unlike me she has a taste for the historic. I had always wondered why our town was so far of the radar in its approach to modern living, and why we did not have regular television and other benefits. It seems that the town was originally settled by a religious group that liked to live as their ancestors had done. This meant that they did not want the modern world to intrude on them and so many things were banned that people outside saw as life's basics, such as good communication systems and fast travel. Things did improve or we would not have had the town hall library and the weekly markets but it was not until the brewery set up at the lip of the valley that a car or lorry was ever seen and in this end of the valley it is still a rarity.

  Some of the more hippy style craftspeople and musicians were drawn to the simplicity of the life here and gradually the old and new merged. It was around this time, Hilda told me, that my father and mother moved here. Originally there was a steady trade in vegetables and craft goods but when the economic collapse came the market for our crafts died out which is why the dock end of the town is such a devastated place. At one point we even had a small fishing fleet working down there and there was talk of using the water to transport beer but that also had only a small market and so the larger transport ships gradually passed us by.

  Eventually we got electricity and decent sewage but at that time telecommunications were not generally run underground and so the telephone systems would not work for us with the high steep valley walls blocking signals and making the building of pylons almost impossible. This also proved a problem for radio signals as well and only the college has the equipment to allow broadcasts or capture their reception. We rely heavily on our education system including the library and the traders for our knowledge of the outside world.

  The original settlers kept to their more Christian celebrations but the influx of hippies and crafts people brought with them some more pagan sects and although these in theory could have clashed with the Christians' ways, they in fact kept an open mind in the matter and many people therefore came to celebrate everything that seemed a good idea at the time. The Solstice was part of this and originally it was a druid festival except there were no actual druids in the town but there were a few that deemed themselves Wiccans and they saw the Solstice points as being as much theirs as the druids did. Also the Wiccans had a festival close to Christmas which just made the entire celebration just a bit bigger and longer. It was probably one of the best ideas for religious integration ever thought up as everyone seemed to gain from it. The church was full at significant times no matter if the people in it were there for Harvest festival or Autumn Equinox, Halloween or All Saints day.

  The Summer Solstice was at a point in the year where not much else was happening and when there is not much happening then usually people want to make something happen and for the people of the town that meant turning it into a big party with lots of beer and fireworks followed by a day off work to recover. Originally it marked the turning of the Spring into Summer and when the druids were in charge they usually gathered at some place like Stonehenge to march around and light bonfires. Then everyone would wait for the first rays of the sun to rise above the horizon to symbolise some form of rebirth. I suppose we were not being terribly accurate in making it a night time event but then we really did appreciate fireworks and they always show up better in the dark.

  There was even talk one year of adopting an Eastern festival like Diwali so that we could have a week of fireworks leading up to bonfire night. I think the vegans and farmers, in the population, became a united front and were the ones that blew this thought out of the water because of the distress it would cause to animals and livestock. Anyway the Summer Solstice was an excuse to hold a party and had no bearing what so ever on any real religious practice for the majority of us. That it might have for Red and his people was another matter as it did seem that the solstices and equinoxes were governing their behaviour to an extent where it came to gaining entry to the Earth reality.

  Thinking back it was at the solstice celebration two years ago that I had finally lost my virginity to an enthusiastic, if not terribly good at it, pagan young man. He lasted the summer before I grew totally bored at his lack of desire to enhance his said abilities in line with my thoughts on the subject. I like to think he still worships me from afar but more likely I scared the hell out of him. He ended up settling down with a rather dull girl who had been in his year at c
ollege and they both now worked at the brewery. Sometimes he was allowed into our sessions at the Docks but never unaccompanied, so I guess he had confessed all to his inamorata.

  The boys in the band had been looking forward to this years party which would start for us at the Docks and then wend its way out to the town square for the big finale and even more booze. It would, of course, mean playing a gig that night minus the talent show section but obviously I would not be able to do this with the group. Hilda did not plan to go to any of the celebrations but Aylsa and Truthy were full of it. I felt so envious but I did understand that for me it would be the most dangerous time to be loose in a crowd. After all it is easy to take a step in one direction and not see your friends again for hours with everyone excited and milling about.

  I had a word with Truthy as I was not one hundred percent certain I would make it back through the night of the solstice, and she had been my friend for so long, it seemed sensible to say some sort of good bye, but I also did not want her to worry too much, or even start telling the others what I intended on doing. I made it sound more like I might have an assignation with Red where I would tell him to clear off and leave me alone. She might be interested in magic, and hopeful of making some, but she did not as yet realise how real it was, or how dangerous. I could not place her in any danger either, so it had to be apparent to her that I would do this alone, which in her mind only added to the romance of the entire thing. In the end it seemed, my reading of her reactions was spot on as she had long suspected I might have a thing for Red and now she felt secure that she had been right which made the weirdness seem okay to her. What can I say but look out world if she ever becomes an author you are in for some strange, strange books.