“I suppose she is an old cow now, with many calves of her own.”
“It sounds like a healthy and happy life…. I hopedit would prove so, when I let Neithen take you away.” As the pain passed, she straightened, and they began to walk again, but more slowly.
“Will you foster out this child?” asked Viviane.
“I should…even if she is clearly priestess-born,” Ana said in a rush. “But in these days I wonder if there is anywhere she could grow up in safety.”
“Why should she not stay? Everyone kept telling me I was old to begin my training here.”
“I think…” said Ana, “I had better lie down.” A little blood was trickling down her leg. Julia came over and examined her, remarking that the womb was four fingers open, which they seemed to think was making good progress, though it all still seemed rather unlikely to Viviane.
“It is best…if a child has some experience of the world outside. Anara was raised here. I think in some ways it made her weaker.” Her gaze went inward and the muscles of her jaw tightened as she clenched her teeth against a new pain.
“What happened to her?” whispered Viviane, leaning close. “Why did my sister die?”
For a moment she thought her mother was not going to answer. Then she saw sliding from beneath the closed eyelids a tear.
“She was so beautiful, my Anara…not like us,” whispered Ana. “Her hair was as bright as a wheatfield in the sun. And she tried so hard to please….”
Not like us, indeed! thought Viviane with grim humor, but she kept silent.
“She said she was ready for her testing, and I wanted to believe her…. I wanted it to be so. And so I lether go. I pray, Viviane”—she gripped her arm—“that you never hold the dead body of your own daughter in your arms!”
“Is that why you have put off my initiation?” Viviane asked in amazement. “Because you were afraid?”
“For the others I can judge, but not for you….” She whimpered softly as the next pang came, then eased back again. “I thought I knew when Anara was ready…. I thought I knew.”’
“Lady, you must relax!” Julia bent over her, glaring at Viviane. “Let the girl go now, and I will stay with you awhile.”
“No…” whispered Ana. “Viviane must stay too.”
Julia frowned, but said no more as she began lightly massaging Ana’s taut belly. In the silence that followed, Viviane heard a ripple of music, and it came to her that she had in fact been hearing it for quite a long time. No man was allowed in the birthing chamber, but Taliesin must be sitting just outside it.
I wish he could be here! Viviane thought angrily. I wish every man could see what a woman goes through to give him a child.
Now the contractions were beginning to come quickly. It seemed that Ana had scarcely time to gasp for breath before her body contorted again. Elen had one of her hands, and Viviane took the other, while Julia probed once more between her thighs.
“Will it be long?” whispered the girl as the laboring woman moaned.
Julia shrugged. “Not as such things go. This is the time when the body finishes opening the womb and gets ready to push out the child. Be easy, my Lady,” she said to Ana, massaging her belly with fluttering fingers once more.
“Oh, Goddess…” whispered Ana. “Goddess, please!”
This, thought Viviane, was intolerable. She leaned forward, murmuring she knew not what words of encouragement and praise. Her mother’s eyes, dilated with pain, fixed on hers, and then suddenly they seemed to change. For a moment she looked young; her long, sweat-dampened hair shortened to a mass of tangled curls.
“Isarma!” Ana whispered. “Help me, and the child!”
And like an echo came words: “May the fruit of our lives be bound and sealed to thee, O Mother, O Woman Eternal, who holdest the inmost life of each of Thy daughters between the hands upon her heart….” Andas Viviane gazed at the white face before her, she knew that the other woman heard them too. And in that moment they were not mother and daughter but women together, sister souls bound to each other and to the Great Mother from life to life since before the wise ones came over the sea.
And with that memory came other knowledge, learned in another life, in a temple whose birthing lore was deeper than anything the women of Avalon had ever known. With her free hand, Viviane drew the sigil of the Goddess upon the laboring womb.
Ana lay back with a long sigh, and Viviane, dropping back into her self with dizzying suddenness, had a moment of stark fear. Then her mother’s eyes opened again, blazing with new purpose.
“Get…me…upright!” she hissed. “It’s time!”
Julia began to snap out directions. They helped Ana swing her legs over the edge of the bed so that she was squatting while Elen and Viviane knelt in the straw to support her. Julia hastily spread another clean cloth below and waited as Ana grunted and bore down. Again and again she pushed; to hold her was like trying to grasp some great force of nature. But Julia was urging her on, saying that she could see the baby’s head now—another push, a good one, would bring it through.
Viviane, feeling the tremors that pulsed through her mother’s frame, found herself calling upon the Goddess as well in a prayer as fervent as any she had ever made. She sucked in breath, and felt heat explode within as if she had breathed in fire. Light flared through every limb, a force far too great to be contained in any human frame; but for that moment she was the Great Mother, giving birth to the world.
When she exhaled, the power rushed out of her with the force of lightning and through the body of the woman she held, who convulsed, bearing down with all her might. Julia cried out that the head was coming, and Ana pushed again with a yell they must have heard all the way to Inis Witrin, and something wet and red and wriggling slid forth into the midwife’s waiting hands.
Agirl…In the sudden, echoing silence, they all gazed at the new life that had just entered the world. Then the baby turned her head and the stillness was broken by a faint, mewling cry.
“Ah, there’s a fine lass,” murmured Julia, wiping the tiny face with a soft cloth and holding her up to let the blood drain from the cord. “Elen, support the Lady while Viviane helps me here.”
Viviane had been told what she would need to do, but her hands trembled as she tied off the cord with two thongs and then, when the section between grew slack, took the knife and sliced it through.
“Good. Now you may hold her while I deliver the afterbirth. The cloth to wrap her is on the table there.”
Viviane scarcely dared to breathe as the midwife set the infant in her arms. Beneath the streaking of birth blood the baby’s skin was rosy, and the wisps of drying hair promised to be fair. No fairy child this, but one of the golden people of the race of kings.
Elen was asking what the baby should be named.
“Igraine…” Ana murmured. “Her name is Igraine….”
As if in answer, the baby opened her eyes, and Viviane’s heart was lost. But as she looked into that vague blue gaze, the Sight came upon her suddenly. She saw a fair young woman she knew to be this child grown, with a baby of her own. But this was a lusty boy, and in the next moment she was seeing him grown up as well, riding into battle with the hero-light in his eyes and the Sword of Avalon at his side.
“Her name is Igraine”—her own voice seemed to come from very far away—“and the Defender of Britannia shall come from her womb….”
Taliesin sat by the hearth in the great meeting hall, playing his harp. He had played often this springtide. The priests and the priestesses smiled when they heard him and said that their bard was giving a voice to their rejoicing to match that of the migrating waterfowl that the warming weather had brought to the marshes around Avalon. Taliesin would smile and nod and continue making music, and hope they would not notice that the smile did not reach his eyes.
He should have been happy. Although he could not claim her, he was the father of a fine daughter, and Ana was recovering well.
But she was
recovering slowly. Although she had not screamed during the delivery, as some women do, he had been sitting close enough to her door to hear the sounds she did make as the labor went on and on. He had played then as much to keep himself from hearing as to cheer those within. How did they do it, these men who fathered a child every year? How did a man bear the knowledge that a much-loved woman was risking death to bring forth from her womb the babe that he had planted there?
Perhaps they did not love their wives as he loved the Lady of Avalon. Or perhaps it was only that they were not cursed with the Druid-trained senses that had allowed Taliesin to share her agony. The harper’s fingertips had been bloody from the intensity of his playing as he tried to make from music a barrier against that pain.
And now he had a new grief. His memories of Viviane’s birth were dim—he had been busy with his usual tasks, and the birth had gone easier, and he had not known the child was his own. But, whoever had begotten her, Viviane was his daughter now. And Ana had given permission for her initiation at last. He understood now why the High Priestess had delayed so long. He too would live in fear until the girl made her own way safely back through the mists once more.
And so he played, the great harp lamenting all those things that pass away, which, though they may return, are not the same. And in the music, his pain and his fear were transmuted into harmony.
Viviane walked upon the shores of the lake and gazed across the water at the pointed shape of the Tor, gathering her courage for the test that would make her a priestess of Avalon. If anything had been needed to convince her that she was no longer in the world in which she had spent the last five years, it would be this, for instead of the familiar crown of ringstones, she saw on the summit a half-built tower. It was dedicated to a god called Mikael, she had been told, though they called him angelos. He was a Lord of Light, whom the Christians had called upon to combat the dragon-power of the earth goddess who had once dwelt in the hill.
And still does, she thought, frowning, in Avalon. But, whatever the builders’ intentions, that phallic tower seemed less a threat to earth than a challenge to heaven, a beacon to mark the flow of power. These Christians had inherited so much from the older faiths, and understood so little of its true significance. She supposed she should be glad if, even in this distorted form, some of the Mysteries were preserved in the world.
And this was the only Mystery she would ever see, if she could not make her way back to Avalon. The test and the initiation were the same, for it was in the act of transforming the reality of Inis Witrin, which lay in the human world, to that of Avalon, that a priestess came into her power.
Viviane turned to gaze at the land behind her, where the flood-plain of the Brue stretched away in a tangle of marsh and meadow toward the estuary of the Sabrina. If she breathed deeply, she fancied she could catch a hint of the salt tang of the distant sea.
She continued to turn, seeing the white trace of the road winding back and forth in three great curves to the grey ridges of the Mendip Hills and, on the other side, the friendlier heights of the Poldens. Somewhere beyond them lay Lindinis and the Roman road. It occurred to her that if she chose she could set out in any direction and find a new life there. That much she could have done before. But now she could also choose to return. She had nothing but the shift on her back and the little sickle knife at her belt, but her mother had at last set her free.
Viviane sat down upon a weathered log and watched a kingfisher dart and soar like the spirit of the sky. Sunlight sparkled on the water, and glowed in the worn wood of the little flatboat they had left for her, a punt such as the marsh folk used. The air still retained the warmth of noon, but a light breeze was stirring in the west, bearing with it the cool breath of the sea. She smiled, letting the sun relax muscles that had gone tight with tension. Even to have a choice in whether to go out into the world or return to Avalon was a victory; but she already knew what her decision would be.
For too many nights she had dreamed of this testing, envisioned each moment, plotted out what she should do. It would be a shame to waste all that planning. But that was not what had compelled her decision. She no longer cared whether she or little Igraine became High Priestess someday, but she did need to prove to her mother that in her the old blood ran true. The euphoric aftermath of the birthing had faded enough for Viviane to know that she and Ana would continue to quarrel—they were too much alike. But they understood each other better now.
Although Viviane’s purpose had not changed, since her sister’s birth the motives behind it had altered. To maintain this new understanding, she had to prove herself a priestess. And she wanted to go back, to bicker with her mother, and watch Igraine grow, and listen to Taliesin sing.
Which was all very well, she thought, getting up again and walking along the shore. But she still had to do it.
Magic, she had been taught, is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go. The sky was clear now, but as the sea-wind strengthened, the mist would come, rolling in from the Sabrina in a moist wave, as inexorable as the tide.
It was not the mists she must transform, but herself.
“Lady of Life, help me, for without You, I cannot cross to Avalon. Show me the way…. Make me understand,” she whispered, and then, realizing it was not an exchange but a simple statement of fact, “I am your offering….”
Viviane settled herself more comfortably on the log, resting her open hands upon her knees. The first step was to find her center. She breathed in, held the breath, and let it slowly out again, and with it, all the thronging thoughts that would distract her from her purpose here. In and out, she repeated the pattern, counting, as consciousness drew inward and she rested in timeless peace.
When her mind was empty of all thoughts but one, Viviane drew in a deep breath and sent her awareness downward, deep into the soil. Here on the marshes it was like reaching into water, not the solid foundation into which one locked on the Tor, but an elusive, fluid matrix upon which one must float. But though these depths might be unstable, they were a well of power. Viviane sucked it in through the roots her spirit had extended and drew it upward in a tingling rush that fountained from the top of her head to seek the skies.
In that first exaltation she thought her soul would leave her body; but responses which had become instinctive pulled the energy back downward, sending it all the way back along her spine and into the earth again. Once more it welled upward, and this time Viviane stood up, arms lifting as the power pulsed through her. Gradually, the current became a vibration, a column of energy from earth to heaven, and she herself the conduit between.
Her arms drew down, stretching outward, and with them her spirit expanded to encompass everything within the horizontal plane. She sensed everything about her, lake and marsh and meadow, all the way to the hills and the sea, as shadows of light within her vision. The mist was a moving veil across her perceptions, cool to the skin but tingling with power. Eyes still closed, she slowly turned to face it, and focused all her need into a silent call.
And the mist rolled in as a great grey wave, blotting out meadow and marsh and the lake itself, until Viviane seemed the only living thing left in the world. When she opened her eyes it made little difference. The ground was a darker shadow at her feet, the water a hint of movement ahead. She felt her way forward until the long shape of the punt appeared—faint, as if the mist had leached away its substance, as well as its color.
But it felt solid enough, even to her altered senses, and when she stepped into it and pushed off she felt the familiar lurch as it floated free. In moments, the shadowed masses of the shore had disappeared. Now she had not even the solid earth for an anchor, and no destination was visible to her mortal eyes. Her choices were two—she could sit here until dawn, when the land-wind blew the mists away, or she could find the way through the mists to Avalon.
From the depths of her memory sh
e began to summon up the spell. It was, she had been taught, slightly different for each one who used it—sometimes each time it was used it seemed to change. The words themselves were not what mattered, but the realities to which they were the key. And it was not enough simply to say the spell—the words were only a trigger, a mnemonic to catalyze a transformation in the spirit.
Viviane thought of a mountain she had seen which became the figure of a sleeping goddess when looked at in a certain light. She thought of the Grail, itself only a simple cup until you viewed it with the eyes of the spirit. What was mist when it was not mist? What, in truth, was the barrier between the worlds?
There is no barrier…. The thought precipitated into her awareness.
“What is the mist?”
There is no mist…. There is only illusion.
Viviane thought about it. If the mist was an illusion, then what about the land it hid? Was Avalon a mirage, or was it the Christian isle that was not real? Perhaps neither existed outside her mind, but in that case, what was the self that imagined them? Thought pursued illusion down an endless spiral of unreason, at each turn losing coherence as more of the boundaries by which humans defined existence disappeared.
There is no Self….
The thought which had been Viviane trembled at the touch of disintegration. A flicker of insight told her that this was the darkness in which Anara had drowned. Was that the answer, that nothing existed at all?
Nothing…and Everything…
“Who are You?” Viviane’s spirit cried.
Your Self…
Her self was nothing, a flickering point on the verge of extinction; and then—in the same moment, or before, or after, for there was no Time here—it became the One, a radiance that filled all realities. For an eternal moment, she participated in that ecstasy.