Foxfire, Wolfskin

by Sharon Blackie

  Lleu didn’t know he was your son, you know; he still doesn’t know to this day. You’d never have told a story which might have cast you in a poor light, of course – but the truth was never your forte, either. And Arianrhod was just too ashamed. I’ve heard the stories you told about her; I’ve heard the lies you spread. Tell your lies, Gwydion, tell your lies. You can’t hide from the truth. I’m the truth, little man – and you’re going to find out that you can’t hide from me. Hard-hearted, you called her, and callous. Wicked, you said to her face. What did you expect of her, really, I wonder? Did you honestly think she’d follow your lead? Preserve a line with its origins in incest? Play the proud mother, act the doting grandmother, while you stood in the shadows, plotting and plundering down all the years to come? She wanted no issue from a child born of such sin. She wanted no issue from a son of yours. Your line will die with Lleu, Gwydion; that’s the one thing which gives her pleasure today. So why then wouldn’t she curse him? She did him no harm, but she wouldn’t have him named. She wouldn’t have him armed, and she wouldn’t have him married. No wife for Lleu, she declared; no chance of another child born from that disgrace. Stopped you in your tracks there, old man; your sister is no mean enchanter. So: Lleu. The accursed one. Never to marry a woman of flesh.

  But you weren’t a man to give up, were you? Oh no, never you. Couldn’t be outfoxed by a woman; always had to have the last laugh. And ah, but weren’t you the fine sorcerer, in your long campaign of deceit. You conned her into giving him a name, then you tricked her into giving him arms.

  And finally, in spite of her, you conjured him up a wife.

  Do you see them, Gwydion? – I do. Every time I close my eyes. Two men standing in a clearing in a wood, conjuring a woman from flowers.

  She shakes the pollen from her hair, and smiles.

  You think you created me, but I had life before you changed me. Did you ever think of that? Yours was never the power to create life – only the spells to reshape it. Do you know what I was before you tore me up? Before you forced me into this cold, hard world of men? I had roots, Gwydion, and they went deep. Deep and strong in the fecund warmth of the earth. Roots reaching down, roots reaching out, roots entwined with the roots of others. I rose each year with my leafy banquet, and I flowered gladly for butterflies and bees. I was made to open, and I opened myself willingly to your Lleu. Until he taught me to close.

  You ripped me out of my life and refashioned me for your own ends. Did it make you feel like a god, Gwydion? And do you feel like a god now?

  You grow old, little man – you grow old.

  You dared to judge me? – you made me. From meadowsweet, broom and oak. What did you think a flower was? – all soft petal and rich scent? Did you only think of the blossoming times, face turned to the sun and head bobbing prettily in the breeze? Blodeuwedd, you called me: Flower-Face. Doesn’t it sound pretty, now; doesn’t it sound nice?

  But I’ll tell you what a flower is, Gwydion; I’ll show you the truth at the heart of my power. A flower can poison a man or a beast; a flower can swallow a fly whole. I’ll tell you the secrets of the flowers you made me from; you tell me, in turn, if you’re surprised at what I became.

  My heart is made from oak, the sacred tree: the gateway to other worlds. Ancient, enduring, long-lived oak. It doesn’t know how to give up. It’s a hard old tree, the oak; so easy to resist the pests who try to bring it down. You made me from the tree of kings; from it, you fashioned the heart of a queen. Do you see now the strength of my heart, old man? Do you begin to understand your error?

  And then there was broom: tenacious, deep-rooted broom. Do you know what they say about broom, Gwydion? – it’s unlucky to bring it indoors. Unlucky for Lleu, for sure. Maybe he never heard the old sayings; maybe he never thought they applied to me.

  Sweep the house with blossomed broom in May

  Sweep the head of the household away.

  Do you honestly think you were wise now, to make me from blossoms of broom?

  Ah, but pretty meadowsweet, everyone’s favourite; how could there be a catch in that? The delicate lace of its petals, a scent that’s sweeter than honey – no headache, it’s said, can stand in the face of it. But the truth of meadowsweet runs deeper than that; did you never think to find out? Is the lore of flowers too low for a great enchanter like you? Flowers, I suppose, are mostly the province of women. You should have thought of that, before you usurped a woman’s power. You should have thought of that, when you chose to make me from flowers. Because it’s a perilous plant, meadowsweet: too much of it can lull a man to fatal sleep. And are you sleeping deeply still, now, Gwydion? In the arms of the richly scented night, where its pretty white petals are scattered through sky like stars?

  Oh, don’t moan in your sleep, little man – I’m not going to kill you. That would spoil all my fun.

  Oak, broom and meadowsweet: three fine, fit flowers. Whatever did you think you could make from such flowers? What on earth did you think I would be? At the end of it all, you told Math I’d turned wild. I guess you’d forgotten you made me from wild. I’m a force of nature, by design.

  So do you fear me yet, Gwydion?

  You will.

  His name means light, but his was a cold light, and hard. Lleu wasn’t a cruel man, but there was little warmth in him, all the same. A fair ruler, I’ll give him that – but it’s easy to be fair when passion’s the thing that you lack. It’s easy to be fair when you don’t really give a damn. And he might have been named for his ‘skilful hand’, but his fingers could never arouse me.

  Me, though, I was made to open; I was made to bloom. I was made to give, Gwydion – but what did any of you ever give to me? Instead of giving, you gave me away. You made me from flowers to give to a man as his slave. You gave me to a man who could not love me; you gave me to a man who would not even look me in the eye. I was never a real woman to Lleu; I was merely a doll, made for his pleasure.

  Well, that man had no pleasure from me.

  You dared to judge me? – I fell for a man whose smile was as warm as the sun. My body bent to him, my face turned up to him, and I opened like the flowers from which I was made. Oh, it was a lucky chance indeed that took Lleu away from home that day. The day that the lord of neighbouring Penllyn found himself and his hunters in need of shelter. And I loved that lord from the moment I saw him. Gronw didn’t care whether I was made of flowers or flesh; he didn’t disdain me, like Lleu. He came to my bed and set me aflame; he drank of my nectar like a bee.

  You judged me, but what choice did you give me? In my world, you make no sense. Nature has no truck with owning, but owning is the root of all your human law. It is a sin, you say, to kill a husband – but is it not then a sin to kill a wife? For I was wilting, Gwydion; I was dying. Then Gronw rained down in me and gave me life again. You left me no choice. In order that I might take back my life, Lleu Llaw Gyffes had to die.

  Do you think I hesitated for a moment? Did you ever hesitate for me?

  The sins of the fathers will surely be visited on the sons.

  He was a clever one, Gronw; he was crafty as a fox. Faithless at the end, but then what man is not? It was Gronw who decided how we’d do it – how the shape of our fate would be drawn. ‘There is only one thing to do,’ he told me, and I can tell you that he was right. The stories said Lleu was invincible – but in all the best stories, there’s always a way. In all the best heroes, there’s always a flaw. So he planned and he plotted; he gave me the task of discovering how my husband might die.

  Oh, look at him, Gwydion; look at Lleu there, as he struts on the stage I’ve made for your dreams. Have you ever seen a more ridiculous sight? What a way for a great hero to die! It makes me laugh to think of it still. See the wooden bathtub that we made for him by the river, at his own behest. Roofed with an arch made from straw. Look at him – Lleu, the distinguished lord – struggling to keep his balance. One foot planted on the edge of the tub, and the other on the back of a feisty billy goat, quiv
ering and ripe for the rut. A stinking goat indeed! See how Lleu grimaces even as he waves, cheerfully showing me the only way to achieve a deadly blow. That was Lleu: sharp as a knife, eh? He’d even washed himself in the bath we’d warmed for him. Pity to waste the water, you know. But wasn’t it kind of him, to show us exactly how the impossible deed of killing him could actually be achieved? You wouldn’t think he’d be quite so stupid, would you? You wouldn’t imagine him so naive. But the scent of meadowsweet is seductive; it can quite go to a man’s head.

  Well, you know how the rest of the story goes. Gronw, the great hunter, cast the spear at his motionless prey … and Gronw, the great hunter, missed. The spear didn’t kill Lleu as it should have; it lodged itself in his side. And off he flew, off and away. Off and away in the form of an eagle, off and away to the woods.

  There’s an irony in every story, isn’t there? Have you thought of the irony in this? That Lleu the eagle found his refuge … at the top of a giant oak! Oh, come now, Gwydion – not even the glimmer of a smile? – but then humour was never one of your virtues; silly of me to forget. Well, no matter; you found him there in the end. With the help of your old friend, the pig. There he was, poor deceived Lleu, rotting away in the tree-top. His maggot-ridden flesh dripping to the ground and fertilising the roots of the mighty oak. Tasty meat for a common pig, to feast on the flesh of a lord. And there you were again, right on schedule, ready again to save your son. He was the only one you ever rescued; the only one you never betrayed. Did you love your son then, Gwydion, after all? Did you love somebody, after all?

  You dared to judge me – but what made you think I should live by your perverted laws? Laws which preserve the honour of men at the expense of all other things?

  You judged me anyway, Gwydion; then you came for me, and I ran. Oh, I admit it freely: I ran. My newly restored husband had killed Gronw, so what refuge remained for me? I feared you then, and I had good reason. I fled with my maidens; you forced us down to the river, and you laughed as all my lovely ones drowned. There’s no pity for women in your world of men. No pity for them, or for me.

  I see it, Gwydion; I see it still. I see our showdown, still. Do you? I see you there, forbidding father – the father I disobeyed. You didn’t seem to like it then, when I named you father. ‘No child of mine,’ you snarled. But we were both your children, Lleu and I, each in our different way. One child you made from incest and the other you formed from flowers. You married them to each other, just the same.

  Yes, I see you, I hear you, I smell you there still, so very sure of your power. King on one side and God on the other – God on your side, for sure. Your God seems always to side with men; what hope for a maiden of flowers?

  You gave me no choice: you unmade me again. What choice, then, should I give you?

  An owl. And you thought you were cursing me! You turned me into an owl. Silent hunter, merciless murderer, powerful old woman of the night. Such a gift you gave me, Gwydion; your curse rather backfired, don’t you think? You gave this flower-maid wings, and more: you gave her the gift of the dark.

  ‘You’ll never dare show yourself in daylight,’ you said – but did you never grasp the power of night? ‘For fear of other birds who’ll despise you,’ you said – but no bird can strike fear in the heart of an owl. You imagined you were condemning me; instead, you freed me – a word I would never have otherwise known. No freedom, you see, for a slave. No mind of her own. Just an empty little head, filled with flowers.

  Do you see me, Gwydion; do you see me now, at the moment you utter your curse? Do you see the sparks catch fire in my eyes, the clenched fists that clutch so tight at life? ‘Disobey the men,’ I whisper to the trees as the spell takes me over and I start to turn. ‘Grow feathers,’ I say, as body convulses, as bone crunches and sinew stretches. ‘Spread wings. Screech. Flap. Fly.’

  Defy the fathers, fly from the fathers; fly fast and fierce and far.

  You’re awake now, Gwydion, and I’m watching you shiver; I’m watching you rub your eyes. I’m watching the birth of your sleeplessness; you’re going to become quite the night owl. Because you see me now, don’t you, at last? You see me properly for the first time. You see the imprint of my wings on your frost-covered windows, as my white face rises up out of the dark. Do you know me, old man? Do you know my long gaze? I’m the hunter, the haunter, the watcher in the dark. Look at you, there, my fine creator. Cowering in your bed against the terrors of the night. How does it feel now, to be a god?

  Don’t leave this window open when you take to your bed tomorrow, Gwydion. Shut your window tight against the night. I’m an owl, a silent predator; you won’t even see me coming.

  Sweet dreams, then, Daddy. Sweet dreams.

  NO COUNTRY

  FOR OLD WOMEN

  Even stones have a love, a love that seeks the ground.

  Meister Eckhart

  ‘WHEN I WAS a young lass,’ the old woman mutters to herself, as she closes the red-painted front door of the cottage behind her, ‘the ocean was a forest, full of trees.’ She has long white hair, is small and stooped, and mutters to herself quite a bit, these days. You can call her the Cailleach, though she’s had many other names over the centuries. Beira, Buí, Garravogue, Cally Berry, the Old Woman of Beare. And when she was a young lass, the ocean was a forest, full of trees.

  She’s out and about in this newly hatched month of May before the sun has risen, though the fullness of the moon offers her just enough light to see by. Even though her eyes are failing now. Failing, but the blue of them is as bright as ever. Blue as lapis lazuli; blue as a Connemara lake on a clear, crisp winter’s day. Some things don’t change, even when you’re old. Though mostly, things do. Yes, there’s just enough light to pick her way down to the lake before the sun begins to rise, and the dog who lives with the old shepherd on its northern shore sets up his usual barking. If the dog barks before she gets herself into the lake, it’ll all be over. And she’s running a little bit late, this morning. Her old joints aren’t what they were, and last night before she went to bed, she forgot to bank up the old Stanley range with turf. So the fire had gone out and she’d been slower than usual to dress herself, all a-shiver in the still-chilly spring air.

  It’s hard, being old – but it’s not as if that’s anything new to her. Being old is something she’s done often enough before. Every hundred years, to be precise. Down all the long aeons of her existence. She counts her age not by the turnings of the sun, but by the geological upheavals of this ever-changing planet. And every hundred years, just at the point where she feels so desperately decrepit that she can’t possibly go on, the time comes around once more. To grow young again – to renew herself, transform herself. The time to go down and bathe herself in the lake. On Bealtaine morn, before the sun rises and before the first dog barks. Otherwise, she’s dead.

  It’s hard enough being old, but dead? She’s been alive so long that she can’t imagine what that might be. Has no idea what it might entail, for a being such as her. She’s not entirely sure that she can die at all, if the truth be told. Though increasingly she’s been wondering. If it wouldn’t be a relief, after all. These are difficult days. She’s seen difficult days before, but somehow these feel different. They feel like the end days – though she’s seen those before, too. She remembers the Great Flood as if it were yesterday. Not that the Flood had presented any problem for her. In those times, she’d walked the land as a giantess, and the ocean’s flood-waters had simply come up to her waist – rather than, as usual, to her knees. But she’s diminished now, as well as old. She’s not sure she’d have the stamina to wait out another Flood. Her strength has faded, along with human belief. And belief in her has been dwindling for centuries; so few now even remember her name. Even fewer can pronounce it. So she wonders whether it isn’t time to abandon her long vigil – for, anyway, what could possibly be done now to hold back the tide of men? These days, if truth be told, she feels powerless. Powerless to prevent their growing atrocities
, to insist that they restrain themselves and hold to the balance, as once she could.

  She treads carefully down the rocky track to the valley below: if she were to fall now and fracture a leg, she’d be done for. She loves this valley; it’s a garden of great stones. Stones whose unfoldings and flowerings have taken place not in the space of a solar year, but over the long geological ages of the Earth. Rocks uprooted and rerooted by the passage of time, and the movement of great glaciers. And she is this Earth’s gardener. A rock gardener, a stone teller, a stone tender. She knows these rocks, every one of them; they’re her people, her children, her tribe. Each one has its own unique character; each one its own particular way of expressing the essence of stone. She has known them through all their long metamorphoses, seen them born from pressure, torn from fire. Yes, she has stood firm as the ground shifted around her through all the long ages. As plates swivelled and continents drifted; as volcanoes erupted and meteors fell from the sky. She’s seen glaciations and desertifications, seen forests wither and die, and peat form from their ancient bones. She’s strode along the glacier paths, sat on the highest summits and watched the burning deaths of a million stars.

  But she fears that the stones’ voices are fading these days, dissolving into ever-longer stretches of sleep. For who is there to keep them awake, now? To sit with them, and talk to them; to rest in their lichen-covered arms like a lover? Who will listen any more to their long, slow songs; who understands the language of stones? Not these people, for sure. They don’t even know that the stones are alive. And the stones’ sleep is uneasy now; their dreams are fractured and torn. It’s all she can do to wake them up, sometimes; it’s all too much for her to do alone. Yes, it’s powerlessness that squats in the heart of her now. She’s powerless to shore up the bedrock of the land, to strengthen it against the ever-increasing violations.