The Rising, page 1
For Catrin and Bear Fellow.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Prayer of the Wildwood
Join the Grove
About the Author
1
I am Ravenna, and Morghan comes to me, stepping her spirit from her body to travel through the mists of time back to the stone circle when age was only beginning to pit the stones with wear.
I greet her from the tree line, from the sidelines, for what is playing out is a story neither of us were there for in the flesh of our current incarnations.
A woman screams, high and anguished in the rushing breath of the day and I want to cover my face with my hands so that I do not have to see. I will not, however, for we are here to look and to watch.
None of us can turn our faces away anymore. We must see the truth, be able to trace the scars.
And so the past replays itself in front of us.
More screams, shrill in the thinness of dawn. A bright, blank, and innocent dawn, the sky bluing above us even as blood spills upon the ground. The young women of the Grove run, some with dresses already torn, their faces pale with fear, eyes wide like the doe startled in the forest.
Men chase after them, scooping them up with a thick arm around the waist, to carry them off, or to lean over them, the better to pierce their flesh with the cold iron of their knives.
Morghan’s hands whiten around her staff, as, I imagine, do my own. These are our kin, our sisters, and although the life we lived at this time was played out elsewhere, we knew these women then, and we recognise them now.
The scent of smoke reaches us where we stand in our spirit bodies, unseen but not unfeeling. There is a hot breeze upon my face, and I know that flame leaps and roars down the hillside as the Grove’s dwellings are set alight.
By the tallest of the stones, a young woman, the spirals of our Grove etched blue in woad upon her cheeks, is thrust to the ground, and a soldier fumbles with himself above her. I allow myself a prayer for her, a wish to take this suffering from her.
Morghan reaches for me and her fingers are cool against my own. We pray together, to the Goddess, in sorrow at what has come to pass.
Men – soldiers in their short tunics and bright armour – have overrun our Grove, and now Grandmother Oak suffers a blade as sharp as those that bite into our Grove mates’ flesh. I hear her scream as her sap spills, as she is toppled, our beloved mother whose songs have woven in and out of our own for a hundred or more years.
And then the fire is come closer, the trees of our Grove turned to tinder, and Morghan and I must turn to look through the smoke to see the rest.
The maiden, raped upon the sacred ground of our circle is dragged away. She is our only survivor, the only one of our own to live through the destruction.
There is a boat, and a strange land far away where our Grove maiden is taken. A land where she does not speak the language, where she is kept prisoner, unable to steer her own fate, unable to walk outside and away.
Her belly grows round, and a daughter is born nine months into her new exile. The baby is small, and luminous as a pearl. I hear her mother whisper the old prayers and songs as she nurses the child at her breast. She does not forget. She will not forget. Her heart and life belong still to the Grove.
Her child is almost grown to a young woman when they leave their imprisonment, heads down under the light of a wan and distant moon as they run.
They know where they are going. They have been long in planning this.
The land of the Grove still bears the scars when our Grove mate returns. But she remembers. The songs live on in her heart, on her daughter’s lips. Their magic burns inside them, and another oak is planted beside the stones, and blessings breathed over her.
So that what was begun might continue.
So that what was harmed might be healed.
So that the truth might be carried down the years, generation to generation.
She sang the wheel in its turning, as I did in my time, so that Morghan may still in hers.
So that you may in yours.
The wheel turns.
The ancient path leads us onward.
2
Charlie had her eyes open, watching the dim figure walk along the path towards them. Except, whoever it was, she thought, was not walking – they were slinking. There was something shifty in the woman’s movements, something furtive, that reminded Charlie of the dark rustlings of an animal restless and on the prowl.
It was a woman though; she was sure of that.
Charlie glanced over at Morghan, but Morghan was still…wherever Morghan had gone. Eyes closed, hands loose and relaxed around her staff. Every part of her looked relaxed, but she still wasn’t there.
Someone else was, though, and Charlie narrowed her eyes, watching the woman creep her way up the path to spy on them. Was it Minnie, she wondered? Then decided not. Minnie didn’t skulk around following them anymore, or not usually.
The woman on the path stepped momentarily out of the shadows, saw Charlie staring at her, gasped, then turned and hurried back down the hill.
Charlie barked out a cough in disbelief, leaning forward on her own staff to peer between the leaves to watch the black figure scuttling down the hill.
‘Don’t break a leg,’ she whispered, watching the woman hurtle down the path that was thick with ropey tree roots easily able to trip you up.
‘Who’s going to break a leg?’ Morghan asked, blinking, coming back to her body.
‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Charlie told her, shaking her head.
Morghan breathed in the crisp air. Imbolc had just been and gone, spent quietly for the Grove, each on their own rather than in ritual, due to the lockdown. They’d had much to contemplate, sinking into the season’s first stirring, the new pregnancy of the world, giving thought to what they wanted to birth with the turning of the wheel, both individually, as a Grove, and as part of their village community.
She lowered her gaze to the path between the trees that would lead down to the village if followed for long enough. Almost she sniffed the air, but she wasn’t looking to catch a scent of tree or bud. Morghan closed her eyes and looked for the energy of the fleeing person.
‘Huh,’ she said, then sighed. ‘Has she been making a habit of this? Following us?’
Charlie glanced at Morghan. ‘You can see her?’
‘Sense her. As you can too, I’m sure.’
Charlie looked back down the path. Mariah Reefton was out of sight now. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘This is the first time I’ve spotted her.’ Charlie closed her eyes and reached out with her senses, relaxing into them, sending her spirit wider, searching.
And she found Mariah. The cloud left behind by her, already shredding and dissipating in the early spring air.
Charlie wrinkled her nose. ‘She’s like a cloud of rancid smoke.’
‘She’s an unhappy soul,’ Morghan said. ‘She nurses her resentments even though they twist her and make her miserable. They have become what she’s comfortable with, because of their familiarity.’ Morghan rolled her head on her neck, stretching the muscles there. Was it a coincidence that Mariah should show up while she was travelling, seeing the vision that had been shown her? Morghan decided not. Things were moving, she thought.
An image of a millstone grew in her mind and she frowned at it, seeing the two giant stones turning against each other, heavy, ponderous, relentless. Grinding what was between them to dust.
‘What do you know of mills?’ she asked abruptly.
Charlie was taken by surprise. ‘Mills?’ she asked. ‘What sort of mills?’
Morghan lifted her shoulders in a shrug. ‘Flour mills, I suppose.’
‘Old or new ones?’
‘The ones that used stones to grind the flour.’
‘Ah,’ Charlie said. ‘Old ones, then.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Almost nothing,’ she said. ‘Only that the wheat was ground to flour between two heavy and round stones.’ She blinked. ‘That’s it. That’s as much as I know.’
Morghan nodded.
‘Okay,’ Charlie said after another minute. ‘Why are you asking about that?’
Morghan turned in the stone circle where they stood and walked slowly over to Grandmother Oak, feeling the old tree’s sturdy vitality, the dreaming self that was r
‘Grandmother,’ Morghan said, her voice low. ‘Grandmother, I’m sorry.’
She lifted her eyes and looked over at Charlie.
‘Once upon a time,’ she explained, ‘Grandmother Oak felt the bite of an axe and was felled and burnt while the women of this Grove and all the others were chased down, captured, raped, slaughtered.’ Morghan looked up at the sky, smelling smoke from a fire that was centuries old.
Charlie looked at her.
‘Only one woman from this Grove survived, and they took her across the ocean, kept her captive until she escaped, came back here to this isle, and picked up her work where she’d left off.’
Morghan looked back at the old oak tree. ‘She replanted Grandmother here, and along with her, tended and grew the Grove back to life.’
‘This is true?’ Charlie asked. ‘This is what you just saw?’
Morghan looked around the stone circle, at the trees that crowded forward, their roots toeing the clearing. The grass between the stones was kept short by the dancing steps of the Grove members, and in the shadowed light between the trees, yellow celandine flowers swayed silently as though hearing the echoes of Maxen’s faerie flute.
But she could also see the Grove razed to the ground. The forest blackened and laid low from fire, the dirt scorched, a wide swath of destruction.
There was no outward trace of the damage now, on this sunny early spring morning, almost two thousand years later. The scar of it was carried deep in the soul of the land.
And in the souls of those who had been there.
‘This is what I was shown,’ Morghan said.
Charlie gazed around, imagining the trees being torn down, the Grove burnt around them. She shivered despite the sunlight on her. Suddenly its warmth and light seemed wan, barely there at all. She cleared her throat.
‘When was this?’
Morghan closed her eyes again. She had thought she was done with that terrible time. And yet, here it was once more, coming back to haunt her. When she answered, her mouth was dry.
‘Around 60 AD.’
Charlie turned and looked at her. ‘That is remarkably specific,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ Morghan walked over to the nearest standing stone and touched a hand to its pitted surface.
‘Wait,’ Charlie said, shaking her head. ‘That’s when the Romans invaded Anglesey.’
‘And massacred the Druids, yes.’
Charlie looked around, as though she could catch a glimpse of the past looming over them.
‘They also took out any of the women’s woodland Groves they happened to stumble across,’ Morghan added, seeing the stone under her hand with blood spilt across it.
‘It is a wonder this Grove or any has survived,’ Charlie said on a long breath. Then she looked over at Morghan. ‘But why were you shown this?’ she asked. ‘It is ancient history, surely.’
‘Not so long ago, really,’ Morghan said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if there really is anything such as ancient history. The land remembers everything.’ She touched her heart. ‘We remember everything. We carry our ancestors’ wounds.’
Charlie nibbled a moment at her lip. ‘Were we there, then, do you think?’ she asked. It was possible, after all. Sometimes Charlie felt as though she’d always lived here on this land, tended it, and loved it year upon year, lifetime upon lifetime. She’d told Martin flat out when he asked her to marry him that she would never be leaving Wellsford. She’d have kids and the rest of it, but she wouldn’t leave her home. And they hadn’t.
Morghan’s gaze was far off. ‘I wasn’t,’ she said flatly. ‘I was nearby, dealing with…other things.’
Making the mistake of lifetimes.
She sighed. That mistake had been rectified, healed, forgiven.
Charlie watched her, watched the flicker of some deep emotion pass over Morghan’s usually serene features. She’d known Morghan, at least from a distance, since she was in her teens. But it had been only the last few years that they had grown closer, that their work in the Grove had brought them together, and since Teresa’s passing they were now the two oldest women in the Grove – and wasn’t that the oddest thing to think on?
‘Okay,’ she said, pulling herself together and speaking with a briskness she hoped would wipe the sudden shadows from Morghan’s eyes. ‘So, you were shown a terrible part of our history here – the slaughter of the Grove, so long ago.’ She paused for a moment, the hairs on her arms standing up at the thought of the young women who had been hounded to their deaths.
Charlie found her voice again. ‘Why were you shown that, though?’ she asked. ‘And why now?’
The image of the millstone rose in Morghan’s mind again and she listened to it turn, to its creaking, grinding turning.
Her eyes found Charlie’s. ‘There are stirrings in the village,’ she said. ‘We’ve felt them, both of us, I’m sure. We contribute to them, with our plans for the village, the things we’ve been doing to make the community healthier, stronger. Not everyone is so pleased with us taking such an active role.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Mariah Reefton,’ she said bluntly. ‘That woman is against everything we try to do, even those things that will directly benefit her.’ She looked down at her hands, nails short and skin rough from farm work. ‘Maybe even especially those, if we are behind it.’
Morghan inclined her head in agreement. She thought of the young woman she’d once been, hanged in this very county in the 1600’s for witchcraft. Remembered Mariah’s link to that lifetime, her familial link to the one who had instigated the hanging. And she sighed. Things always came back around until they were dealt with.
‘Before Erin arrived in Wellsford,’ Morghan said, choosing her words carefully, ‘I was reaching out to a past lifetime that was bothering me.’ Her grey eyes flicked towards the sky, then back at the ground. Earth, sky, sea, she thought, anchoring herself in the landscape around her.
‘Blythe Wilde, as she was.’ Morghan’s lips lifted in a slight smile, then flattened. ‘Hanged for witchcraft – brought to the gallows by the testimony of the woman who is now our own Mariah Reefton.’
‘This is recorded history?’ Charlie burst out, appalled.
‘Oh yes,’ Morghan replied. ‘Although not, of course, my knowledge of Mariah being set against the Grove then as she is now.’
Charlie nodded her head slowly. ‘I think I’ve heard the stories, now that you mention it. About the hanging.’ She walked a few steps to one of the stones and leaned a hip against it, grateful for its solidity, the serenity that she could feel inside the stone. ‘But that was Mariah?’ Charlie shook her head, touching her fingers to the rock. Without waiting for a reply, she answered her own question. ‘Of course it was – it explains just about everything about her – her almost pathological hatred for you, and the rest of us. But you in particular.’
‘History is a convoluted thing,’ Morghan said, gazing down at her golden hand, seeing the way it gleamed and wondering still, months after she had been given it, why the Queen of the Fae had done so. She’d had no answers then, and she had none now.
‘Love endures,’ she said, moving to the centre of the circle and lifting her arms to the sky. She stretched her fingers toward the sun, digging her roots down deep into the coolness of the earth. By sky and root, she reminded herself. By sky and root we dedicated our lives.
She lowered her arms and turned to look at Charlie.
‘Love endures,’ Morghan repeated.
