Dreaming the Eagle (19 page)

‘Now help me to stand.’

‘No, you mustn’t, really, you mustn’t. We have to get you to Airmid. She’ll know what to do. Please let me bind it …’ Breaca was weeping hot tears of panic. Her hands were shaking. She lifted the strip of tunic and pressed it tight to the wound. ‘Please, you can’t heal it alone. You must believe me.’

The old woman was a pale grey, the colour of wet chalk. Her breathing came in short and ragged gasps. Every bit of her energy went into her voice and the effort of it was heartbreaking to watch. Struggling to sit, she said, ‘I am not going to heal it alone. Nor is Airmid within reach. You must get me to the mound, the one we came through. In there I can dream.’

‘But dreaming won’t’

‘Breaca …’

‘Yes, grandmother. I’ll take you. It’s not far.’

It was not far and they did not have to crawl through the gorse hedge. In the hollow, the last of the warriors died, their deaths solitary and private. The eagles were feeding or soaring in lazy circles. They showed no interest in the old woman and the girl making slow steps to safety. The elder grandmother walked as far as she could, bearing her weight on her staff. When she stumbled for the second time, she consented to be lifted and carried, as she said, like a wailing babe.

‘Into the mound. It is not far.’ The grandmother’s voice was the rustling of mouse grass; a shape in the air with no heart behind it. ‘In the centre is the dreaming place …’

‘There was nowhere, grandmother. It’s a tunnel. We walked through it. The walls were smooth. Please let me bind the wounds and carry you home. I can do it. You weigh nothing. I mean…’

‘You mean you are a strong young woman and you can run for half a morning carrying my weight for all you have neither eaten nor drunk for three days. I believe you. But I must dream. Here now … no, to the left, through the grasses. We need only go a little way in.’

The mound sat, brooding. There was no stone at this entrance, but only a rounded opening half hidden behind the spreading foliage of the mound. Breaca would have missed it had not the grandmother directed her to it. She ducked down and eased in sideways, protecting her charge from the dew-damp grass. Inside, it was darker than it had seemed in moonlight, or perhaps the contrast was greater under the sun. It smelled of earth and ancient dust. She felt the floor crumble under her feet. When she leaned on a wall to steady herself, it too, fell to dust. She jerked upright. ‘Grandmother … ?’

‘Trust me. We are nearly there. I will not lead you into danger.’ She sounded faintly amused. ‘Last night, you were still in your dreaming. Today, you are a woman. It is time for you to see the world as it truly is. Go forward nine paces and stop … Good. Now turn left, to the heart side. There should be a space.’

She was right. There was a space where before, under the moon, there had been unbroken stone. Low down, cut into the earth of the wall was a chamber. If Breaca crouched, almost to sitting, she could ease inside it. The grandmother tapped her arm. ‘Thank you. Let me down now; this is far enough. I would lie on my left, with my head to the west … have you my staff ?’

‘Yes, it’s here. Grandmother, please, let me’

‘No. Thank you. I have enjoyed your company, but we must part. I must stay here and you must return to Macha and Airmid and those waiting. It is well past dawn. If you don’t run now, they will set out with the hounds to find you.’

‘Then I’ll bring them here. Swear to me you will still be here.’

‘I will swear if you will swear not to turn back until you have seen Macha.’

Breaca sat back on her heels. It was completely dark. She touched the old woman’s face. It was smooth now, the oak-bark skin bound tight to her skull. Breaca had seen enough of death to know when it was close. Tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. She scrubbed them away with the back of her wrist. ‘I swear I will not return until I have seen Macha. Please live till I get back. Please? I don’t want to lose you.’

‘You won’t lose me. I swear that, too.’ Her smile was a bright thing in the black space around them. ‘You must remember to redraw the serpent-spear on your shield. If you forget, ask Ban how it was in his vision. Hang the shield where you can see it and remember what it tells you.’

‘To look to the past as well as the future?’

‘Yes. Both. The dreams of a people carry its heart. Without the dreams, you are nothing but the walking dead. But if you have only the dreams and no children to carry them, then you are nothing but dust. Remember that. Go now. It is time for me to dream and for you to run.’

She sounded, at the last, composed and reasonable; the elder grandmother one most loved and most feared. Breaca eased back out of the chamber. Standing, she hit her head on the roof. It had not seemed so low when they walked through it before.

‘Grandmother … ?’

‘Run. Go all the way through to the entrance stone. Don’t turn back. Be strong. I will not leave you.’

She ran. The darkness closed in around her. The faint and laboured breathing passed to nothing before she reached the light.

The sky changed as she ran. Bruised clouds rolled in from the east, full of rain. The sun leached out through the cracks between, making shadows where before there had been none. She crossed the river at the stepping stones and did not pause to give thanks to Nemain or the water or to the stones for keeping her dry. The path down the side of the trees was cluttered with knotted roots and rocks and pitfalls that she had not seen walking up. She ran over them, bounding, as a deer runs when hunted, and only remembered them later. The blood pulsed in her chest and her head and clouded her eyes until all she could see was the serpent-spear and the hare; the one undulating in the air before her, the other running along at her side. She ran half the morning, without stopping for water or to sense the way. It was a path she knew well by now and only at the very last did she remember that the eastern gate was closed to her and she must go in at the west, through the women’s gate that was only used in this and one other ceremony. She veered sharply upwards and ran along the sides of the paddocks. The grey filly saw her and came forward at a run, only to prop and wheel and snort and race away again as she passed.

The gates were closed before her, but then it was always so for a girl-woman returning from her longnights. One of the others waited inside, ready to put the traditional questions. They had told her many times that the returning woman was like a child newly born and that her first entry back into the world of her people must be handled with care, that the traditions must be followed else she would risk losing all she had found. She had believed them and had practised until she could speak the phrases in her sleep. But she was not sleeping now and she could not think of the words, could think of nothing but how to run and how to breathe and the need to fulfil her vow to find Macha before she could return to the grandmother. The gates were planed elm, carved with the symbols of Nemain. She fell against them, hammering with the heel of her hand. Wood built to withstand fire and the attack of massed spears rattled faintly at her touch.

‘Who comes from the realms of night?’ It was a voice she knew, distantly, but could not give a name.

‘It’s Breaca. I must find Macha. Bring her, quickly-‘

The gate opened, suddenly, so that she fell inside. Airmid caught her before she hit the ground. ‘Breaca! What’s the matter?’

She could barely breathe. Her lungs were on fire. Her spit tasted of blood. Speaking took more effort than she had ever imagined. She folded into the arms that held her. ‘The elder grandmother … You must come quickly. She’s bleeding. And Macha. I swore to find Macha’

‘I am here.’

Machahad never seemed so forbidding. She stood in the door to the women’s place, a tall shape framed against the fire beyond. Her eyes pierced, like an eagle’s. Her eyebrows arched. ‘To whom did you swear, and what did you promise?’

‘The grandmother … the elder grandmother. The eagle killed her … tried to. I can take you to her …’

Macha stood back, sweeping the door-skin aside. ‘Breaca, come in. We must talk.’

‘But’

‘Inside. Now. Quickly.’ It was not a voice with which she could argue.

She could walk, with help. They sat her by the fireside. Airmid held her from behind, her hands linked at her diaphragm, easing the pain of breathing, her legs stretching forward so Breaca was contained on all sides, like a child. Macha brought water and made her drink. Someone else brought malted barley, roasted and drizzled with honey; it was the greatest of all foods and it tasted of sawdust and sand. She ate it because they would not leave her until she had done so. When she tried to speak, she was stopped and made to eat more. They would not listen until she had finished it. She thought she would die, or break apart with the pressure inside, until Macha said, ‘It is enough. Let her see now.’ Then the women left to sit in their circle round the fire and Airmid helped her to stand and took her to the place at the back, furthest from the fire, where a curtain of black-tanned horsehide kept a sleeping place apart. The women sat in silence. Macha and Airmid alone moved forward to the curtain.

She was shaking now, all over; her hands and feet were quite numb. She spoke in a whisper, denying the truth before it was shown her. ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘I saw her. I talked to her. She gave me her staff to make the spear …’

‘It was the third night of your dreaming. She had been waiting a long time for this.’

Airmid was weeping, silently. Macha, it seemed, had been and would be again but needed, now, to be able to speak clearly. ‘In a moment you will tell us what she said to you and how you left her. But before that you must see her and know the truth.’

They lifted the curtain aside. The elder grandmother lay on her left side, with her head to the west. Her hair was thin, almost gone, but her skin was tight and smooth as a young girl’s and the smile on her lips promised the advent of all things one least expected. She held her staff in both hands, as a warrior might hold a spear in the final moments of battle. Bending, Breaca touched the end of it and found it dry, with no debris of blood and shattered bone. It was her fault; she had not followed the ceremony for returning and all that had been predicted was happening. She was going mad and the only one who could help her lay beyond reach on the floor. Reason slipped away from her, flapping wildly, leaving her empty and sick and unable to think. When she spoke, her voice came from other parts of the room and . bounced back at her. ‘I left her in the mound,’ she said. ‘She promised she wouldn’t leave me, she promised-‘

‘She won’t leave you. She came to you at your dreaming. She will be with you in that, always.’

Airmid had changed, as if something inside her had broken and she needed comfort, more than she had done in the past. They sat together, joined, and wept for what they had lost that none who had not served the elder grandmother could understand. Presently, Macha bade them move and take their places by the fire and pick up the lost threads of the ceremony of one returning. Had Breaca followed the tradition, she would have met with the elder grandmother and the other dreamers and told them her story so that they might understand it and bring out the truth it held. But there was no elder grandmother and it was not right to keep the old woman’s last words from the others who had loved her, so Breaca sat at the head of the fire and told them all the tale of her longnights, from the empty desolation of the cold and the mist to the journey across the river and the meeting with the water rat and all that had happened on the other side of the mound.

She ended in silence. One of the older women spoke - Eburovic’s mother’s sister, who was the oldest amongst them, next to the elder grandmother, which made her, when one thought about it, the new elder grandmother. She was a maker, not a dreamer; she wrought her magic with leather and wood, and took things that Eburovic made and gave them a meaning and presence that silver and gold alone did not. In the last year, arthritis had set into her hips and she was losing the power in her legs. Breaca listened to the rhythms of her voice, not the words she was saying, and wondered if it was a requirement of the elder grandmother that she need the eyes and limbs of another to help her and, if so, who it would be. For the first time, she was glad that she had crossed out of childhood and become a woman so it could not be asked of her.

‘Breaca?’ Macha had said her name twice and she had not heard. She lifted her head. The world swam, slowly, and her thoughts took too long to catch up. She made herself watch the shape of Macha’s mouth and, that way, made out the words. ‘Breaca, you must paint your shield, now, before you sleep. We will find the dye and help you, but you must draw the serpent-spear as you saw it. Can you do that?’

Breaca closed her eyes and saw the warriors of the ancestors with the serpent-spear painted on their bodies. In her mind, they stepped closer so she could see all the detail. She opened her eyes again. ‘I think so, yes.’

‘What colour do you need?’ That was what the elder grandmother - the new elder grandmother - had been asking. She knew the dyes better than anyone; she would have whatever colour was required, did Breaca only know the answer. But she did not. ‘The men drew it on themselves with woad - the blue woad mixed with egg white, not the silver mixed with bear grease.’

‘So then did the - were you told that you should draw it in blue?’

Airmid was at her side again, no longer weeping but speaking slowly, with care, because she had been this way most recently and knew what it was like and also, perhaps, because she cared most that it be done right.

Breaca shook her head. ‘She didn’t say. Only that I should ask Ban how he saw it in his vision. But we can’t do that now. He’s a boy and we can’t bring him in to ask him…’

Her words fell in silence. All eyes turned to Macha, who moved her shoulders, flexing them as if testing a new weight. She was the oldest of the dreamers now, and the position carried responsibilities all its own. She stared into the dark at the back of the room, frowning. In time, she said, ‘He was born at the autumn equinox. That has not passed and so he is still only eight years old and is permitted to enter the women’s place. It will not be the first time this year. Airmid, would you find him and say I asked him to come? He will be helping Eburovic and Sinochos to make the death platform for the elder grandmother. They are in the barn just outside the gate.’