Moon Song (22 page)

She drew a circle on the paper, divided it into four and shaded each quarter differently, one black for the dark of the moon, its opposite quarter she left un-shaded to show the full moon. The other two quarters she shaded with diagonal lines, right to left for the waxing quarter, left to right for the waning one. ‘Four again …’ she told herself out loud. Embar chirruped encouragement.

Isoldé took a pencil then grabbed a rubber just in case. She began to write in the elements by the quarters. Earth she put against the dark of the moon, it felt right, like a womb-space under the earth where things could begin their growth, their shifting from a single cell into a complex being. And …it was the Earth that caused, enabled, the Dark Moon? Without the eclipse there could be no womb?

Opposite, at the full of the moon, seemed to be the place of flowering, where everything pushed and burgeoned with beauty, like the month of June in a garden when everything flowered and seemed so perfect. That gave her another idea. Beside the dark she wrote “midwinter” and beside the full moon
she wrote “midsummer”. Yes, that made sense – then the waxing and waning quarters were like the equinoxes? Was that right? Embar butted her hand encouragingly.

‘If that’s so,’ she told him, ‘then the waxing quarter is about the first growing of the plant, the leaves coming up out of the soil. And the waning quarter is about the fruiting, the culmination of the plant where it does it’s phoenix stuff of dying and giving birth at the same time.’

Embar purred loudly, stood up and shoved his nose in her face, licked her. She laughed. ‘That good, eh? You think I’m getting it?’ The cat sat down again, satisfied.

‘Oh Embar, there’s so much.’ She sat back, pushing her hands through her hair, releasing the tension from her shoulders.

She certainly felt she had a handle on it now. The moon related to the plant kingdom very efficiently, keeping the rhythm of its cycles through the constellations as well as through her own monthly rhythm of birth and death, from the dark of the moon round to full and back to the dark again. And that monthly rhythm linked to the sun’s annual one of solstices and equinoxes. And both worked with the growing seasons of the plants.

She picked up the pencil and doodled again around her circle of the moon’s monthly cycle. Then she drew a stylised plant, giving it roots, leaves, flower and fruit all at once. Beside the roots she drew a dark moon; by the leaves she drew the waxing moon; at the flower she drew the full moon and by the fruit she drew the waning quarter. It made sense. Yes, she’d already done it one way round, from the moon’s perspective. This was from the plant’s perspective.

‘And it works for animals too?’ she asked Embar.

He gave a chirrup.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ Isoldé got up. ‘I need some coffee and a break. My head’s awash.’ She headed for the kitchen, Embar following.

Over coffee and a piece of Mrs P’s ginger cake, Isoldé began to
get a feel for why Tristan had copped out. It was huge, this whole thing about the moon and how she worked. How did you go about making that simple?

‘Needs a bloody symphony, not a song!’ Isoldé muttered as she rinsed her plate and cup, left them to dry on the draining board. ‘And I need a walk. Coming?’ she asked the cat.

He leaped down and followed her. They headed up the path to the cottage. Gideon had been trying to get her back up there for a while. OK, she thought, I’m coming.

It was different at the cottage. During the times Isoldé had been there, as well as sorting Tristan’s manuscripts, she had put her own stamp on the place, even she could feel it. The kitchen was now clean and tidy and there was more cat food in the cupboard along with tins of biscuits, coffee and a filter jug for herself. She’d dusted, even in the sacred bedroom, but she’d not put the shirt away nor altered any of his clothes. Opening the windows had given the place a fresher feel but had not taken his scent away from the rooms.

Entering now, Isoldé had ambivalent feelings towards Tristan. He was still a figure of awe to her, holding great attraction, her loins stirred every time she caught his scent, but she loved Mark. Her hormones gave her gyp when she was with Gideon too, he really brought out the lust in her but she’d never done anything about it nor wanted to. With Tristan she wasn’t so certain. If she met him in the flesh it might well become a thing of the flesh.

The piles of paper were all still neatly stacked on the ash table, the seven songs, the manuscripts and the words, and a pile of fragments. She’d brought solicitor’s tape with her and spent time tying each of the bundles neatly and labelling them. When that was done she brewed coffee, took a mug to the nursing chair along with a saucer of milk for Embar.

The cat finished his milk then stood staring over her shoulder back into the living room. He was so intent it was unnerving. Isoldé turned to see he was looking at a fine corner-cupboard hanging out of his reach by the door.

‘What?’ Isoldé asked him sharply.

Embar chirped softly.

‘There’s something there? You want me to go look?’

‘Prrowww!’

Isoldé got up and went over to the cupboard. She stood staring at it then opened the door. There wasn’t a lot in there but
right on top of the pile on the lower shelf was a CD. There was no label but she was suddenly certain she knew what it was …he
had
recorded the songs after all. She took it. Her fingers tingled as she touched it. On the upper shelf was an ancient radio-cum-CD player, battery powered. She took that too.

‘The batteries will be all dead and rusted,’ she told the cat.

He butted her leg, purring.

She dusted off the ancient relic, it didn’t look so bad once it was clean, and took it with her back to her coffee and the chair. Then she pushed the button to open the CD player, it worked. She put the CD in and pressed play.

The room was suddenly full of Tristan, his pure voice lilting through the space. She found herself sat still, sipping the coffee but at least half in Otherworld, listening.

The cycle began in the darkness of Lowerworld, womblike, full of memories and all the things people had ever done. How Tristan conveyed this sense with the simple words he used Isoldé had no idea but it got to her, straight through any surface levels of expectation or superciliousness.

The second song took her from the nadir to the zenith, to Upperworld, bright, sparking with life and colour and light, too bright to see clearly. It gave her the feeling of being prickled with light, and with ideas. The rhythm pounded out like a blacksmith’s forge.

The third song pulled her into the world she knew, into the woods. Tristan must have written this one in the kieve, magical, fairy but also intensely alive and real. It had a full-on feel of all the elements, the rocks, the water, the wind in the trees and the strange bright-soft light that always filled those woods.

The music changed. It was as if the first three songs were a set apart. Isoldé stopped the CD, grabbed paper and a pen, drew a vertical line and marked it with a circle at each end and one in the middle. She wrote Lowerworld, Upperworld and Middleworld beside each corresponding circle and rapidly jotted
her feelings for each of the songs. They had to be about the vertical axis of the six-armed cross, the world-tree, but now, here in the cottage, listening to Tristan sing, she knew it in her bones.

Another thought struck her. She drew three circles and wrote the name Brighid above them. Then she added the name Ffraid beside Brighid. Brighid came from her own Gaelic Irish culture but down here, Mark had told her, in the Brythonic Cornish tradition, she was Ffraid. Isoldé put the word Brighid in brackets, honouring the goddess’s name in the country where she was.

‘Frayde, Brighid, is the goddess of the three faces,’ Isoldé said aloud. ‘Maiden, mother and crone. That’s what Tristan is singing too.’

She was remembering some of the words of each song now and quickly drew herself a table with three columns …maiden, mother, crone; Upperworld, Middleworld, Lowerworld …and so on.

After a couple of minutes she had several sets of three words in her list. Frayde’s jobs were smith, healer and poet; those words were in the songs. She put the first song on again, listened carefully. It spoke of wisdom, the cauldron of wisdom, of the poet who told that wisdom as stories so that none should forget it, and of the crone, the old wyzard, who had seen all things and held them in her heart, in her cauldron, so that all should remember. It told how she would give a drink from her cauldron to those who came and asked.

‘Remember …Remember …’ The words spun out, holding her in their long, subtle, minor notes. ‘Re-member …’

Isoldé heard it in a different way this time.

‘It’s about putting things back together,’ she muttered as the song faded. ‘About putting the members, the limbs of a body, back together. About re-making the body, making whole.’

The second song began again, taking her attention. It told of a maiden dancing, a tower spinning, about climbing the branches
of the tree to find yourself amongst the stars. The rhythm was like that of a blacksmith hammering iron in his forge …daa-dada, daa-da-da …the blow of the hammer followed by the double judder as it bounced after each stroke. The song sang of newness, ideas unformed being forged, new stars birthing in the universe.

The third song sang of the mother who walked through the forest, sat amongst the ancient rocks, drank from the stream, listened to the wisdom of the birds and the beasts and the trees. The children followed at her heels, playing, growing, learning to know themselves and the world around them. The mother found a plant that sickened and gave healing energy to it, the same with a beast. The mother healed and nourished.

Yes, the first three songs were about the vertical axis, the three worlds. She let the CD continue into the fourth song.

Tristan sang first of the stones, the rocks in Rocky Valley, the bones of the Earth, of crystals and the sand on the beach in Bossinny Cove. Then he sang of the gnomish earth-folk tinkering with the soil, drawing together the threads of life, the fungi and the soil beasts to make a perfect ground to nourish the seeds and roots so the plants could grow and flower and fruit again. It was a mischievous song, full of laughter, with a strong rhythm that made your feet want to dance.

Isoldé was smiling, her fingers and feet tapping, by the end. ‘Next time I see the gnomes I must dance with them,’ she told Embar. He didn’t move his nose from under his tail but his eyes smiled.

Tristan began the fifth song with a twisting, flowing melody on the harp. It seemed to be pushing its way up through darkness. Just as Isoldé was certain the twisting was going to make it his voice joined the harp in a soft cry. ‘Water of Life,’ he sang, ‘Water of Life …’ spinning out the wide vowel-sound in the last word. Isoldé found herself almost holding her breath. The song called to the ondines, the water-folk, told how they spun the clear water with the sunlight to make the leaves that feed the
plant. She realised he was singing about photosynthesis and yet it was beautiful, not dry and scientific but like the fairy story of spinning gold out of straw. The song was a wild twisting melody, it reminded her of the way the water twisted down the fall outside in the Kieve, like the fall of a woman’s long hair.

The sixth song blossomed immediately. Tristan sang of the scent of May blossom. The words hinted at its powers of life and death, of courtship and of the burgeoning summer being born. He sang of the sylphs, the air-folk, who guard and nourish the flowers, how they work with the bees to turn the pollen into the sweetness of honey. He sang how the sylphs shift into butterflies and Isoldé thought how Arthur Rackham had seen that too when he painted his faer folk. The song told how sylphs ask the help of the bees and butterflies to take the pollen from flower to flower, mixing the sexes, enabling the plants to birth fruit and seed.

The last song was fire. Isoldé didn’t know how he did it but from the very first note she was on fire. The rhythm pulsed through her like her blood when she was dancing. It twined and spiralled through her body, up her spine, to explode in her head with a soundless flash of light. Tristan sang of the fire-folk, how they wove the strands of male and female energy together and bound them in the seed, a little bomb waiting to explode when the soil and rain and sunlight called. The song began fast as the seed was built, forged out of the life of the plant. Then it sank into darkness, only a soft pulse reminding that life was still there waiting for the call. It ended with an irresistible rhythm that got Isoldé on her feet and whirling round the room, singing along with Tristan, to end on a final high note that the singer held for an impossibly long time and then suddenly cut off.

As it finished Isoldé collapsed in a heap on the floor next to the cat. Embar sat up and stared down at her as if she’d gone nuts. She began to laugh as the word “nuts” and the idea of fruiting caught her.

‘Oh Embar! I did go nuts, my darling cat,’ she told him as he
butted her nose with his. ‘And nuts is what’s meant to happen, you know, at the end of the cycle, when it all comes together in the seed, in the fruit that is the next generation.’

Embar stared at her. She knew he knew. She also knew he considered humans to be impossibly thick at times, like her realisation now of what the songs were about, but tolerated their slowness.

‘We
will
do better, we truly will,’ she said. ‘But I see how Tristan’s songs will help. Subtle stuff, subliminal almost, but that gets through to us humans you know, better than preaching, better than logic and science and all that “reality” stuff. We like stories and pictures and being fired up through the imagination. The songs do that.’

Embar gave a purry growl and coiled himself back into the old cardigan.

‘But we still don’t have the Moon’s song …’ Isoldé said to the room in general.

Isoldé stood in a place full of light and darkness. She was asleep, she knew it was a dream, but it was a very lucid one.

‘I’m journeying,’ she realised. ‘This is what lucid dreams are about. I’m in Otherworld.’