Moon Song (29 page)

‘Who are you?’ she asked the voice. ‘I know you, hear you, trust you but I don’t know who you are. Who are you?’

‘I am the Lady,’ replied the voice. ‘I wondered if you’d ever ask.’

Isoldé blushed at that. Uncle Brian had always told her to ask. So had everything else she’d been in contact with since she’d been with Mark.

‘Asking is the best form of protection,’ Brian had told her right at the beginning. ‘If you ask, if you talk to whoever you meet, then you’ll know who it is you’re working with and can choose whether to do so or not.’

‘But what if they lie to me?’ Isoldé had asked back.

‘So, you asks three times, girl. Tis what the spell’s for and it works. They can lie to you twice but on the third telling it must be true. Tis one of the laws of nature, like gravity. None of us knows why it works, no more’n we do with gravity, but we knows it does. You use it girl.’

‘Does it work with people too?’ she’d asked.

‘Ah …no, it usually doesn’t.’ Uncle Brian had shaken his head. ‘People have removed themselves from the laws of nature and work mostly with the laws out of their own heads. That’s why there’s so much trouble in the world. They don’t work with everything around them, they work to control everything around them. That’s the problem, girl, and one that you can share all too easily. I’ve been watching you. You’re afraid if you’re not in control, aren’t you?’

Remembering that conversation from twenty-five years and more in the past made her blush again. All that time ago he’d seen her clear, and here she was now still doing it, still grasping at control all the time. And with the same problems the grasping brought …no control and continual fear, living in her brain and
not seeing what was around her, there to help her. She took a couple of deep breaths, and noticed she was gripping the knife very hard. She relaxed her hand, then some inspiration came and she crouched down to sink the knife up to its hilt into the soil at the centre of the circle. It wasn’t something she’d ever done, or heard of before but it felt right.

There was a sigh inside her head. ‘Is that what you need, Lady?’ Isoldé asked.

‘Yes …’ the voice sounded breathy. ‘Yeeees …’

‘What now …?’ Isoldé asked.

Pictures began to form inside her head now. It was rather like watching a computer screen or a TV. She saw the circle but now there was something like a fountain at its centre, spiralling up from the ground around where she’d inserted the knife-blade into the earth.

‘You opened a pathway,’ the Lady told her. ‘Watch …’

The fountain – it was silvery-white, rather like smoke – twisted its way vertically upwards to about the height of the surrounding trees at the edge of the grove. It seemed to be made of two threads spiralling in opposite directions, reminding her of the double helix of DNA. As the spiral column reached the height of the stunted Scots pine trees around the edge of the grove it curled over and divided itself into four, each of the four pathways going outwards to the edge of the grove in the four directions until it reached the trees themselves. At that point the four branches turned to spin around the grove, two going deosil, the other two going widdershins. It was like a gyroscope of silver smoke, spinning and dancing around the grove, making a dome over the area, quite different from any circle Isoldé had ever thought of before.

‘Yes,’ said the Lady. ‘This is our circle. Only it isn’t a circle.’

‘It’s more of a sphere, made from a spiral,’ Isoldé said. ‘A three-dimensional spiral.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is this what we should be doing? Not the usual circle druids and witches do?’

‘It would be better,’ the Lady replied. ‘But we cope with the circle. We always work with whatever is there but if humans can come further into the world, with us, then it makes the working far more effective.’

‘This is like the six-armed cross …’ Isoldé whispered, suddenly noticing how the smoke spun slowly round the grove in both directions. ‘The vertical column, and it goes in two directions. Then the arms spread out to do the horizontal, and that’s in two directions as well.’

‘Well done!’ There was a chuckle inside her head. ‘You noticed.’

‘I did so,’ Isoldé chuckled back. ‘I’m getting there. Although Gideon calls me a quick study I can be as thick as two short planks, the same as everyone else, at times.’

‘You’ll do,’ the Lady told her.

‘Is the circle made now?’

‘What do you think?’ was the Lady’s response.

Isoldé was about to reply tartly when she stopped and thought, then stopped thinking and looked, looked around her. What were they here for? What did they need? They’d come here, brought Tristan here, to retrieve a part of his soul that was lost when he crossed untimely to the Isles of the Dead. So what did they need to bring that soul part back?

In the grove were the trees, the soil, plants, water from the spring, the air they breathed. There were little pine-cones in the grass, seeds from last year’s harvest. The four elements and powers represented. She went round the grove, finding cones, asking each time before she picked one up if she might do so and if this was the right cone to take. Sometimes she got a yes, sometimes a no, on one of the no’s she looked closely and saw that ants were using it, she must not disturb the homes of other creatures. She smiled. When her hands were full of cones she
brought them back to the head-stone, put them in a pile.

There was a cup in the carpet bag, she’d seen it before, now she hunted it out of the bottom of the bag, took it over to the spring and asked if she might fill it with water. Getting a yes, she did so and brought that back to the head-stone too.

A roughly flattened piece of clay from the carpet bag came out next, a hand-made dish. Tristan had made it from clay found in the stream by the house and roughly fired it in a sawdust kiln, the pictures of him doing so wound forward in her head like a video-clip. She stood holding it, wondering where to find some soil to go in the dish, which was what it was for, earth to earth …the words rang through her head from the funeral service. A chill ran over her flesh, was this a funeral they were doing too? She pulled herself back from those thoughts and pushed her focus back to the task in hand.

‘One thing at a time,’ she muttered. ‘One thing at a time …Now, where do I go for soil, please?’

There was an immediate pull on her from the right. She followed the pull over to a place where one of the pines curled over and down making a small cave-like hideaway under its boughs. Crouching down, Isoldé could see a molehill inside, fresh and sweet-smelling, the lovely scent of damp earth. ‘May I?’ she asked softly.

She nearly fell over backwards as a black nose followed by a pair of long-clawed paws came out from under the soil-pile and two tiny black eyes stared at her out of the velvety fur. Something happened then. It wasn’t like when Embar spoke to her but there was communication there. The thought was terse, abrupt, but the answer was yes. Isoldé remembered from her recent explorations into natural history that moles were solitaries, she chuckled inwardly, this one felt like a gruff old man disturbed at his favourite hobby. She sent a thank-you back from her own mind, saw the black whiskers twitch, then the little creature disappeared underground again. She reached in and took a handful of
the soil he’d dug and put it in Tristan’s dish.

Fire, water, earth …how was she to do air? Her immediate thought was incense and she was about to ferret in the carpet bag to find some when she stopped. It didn’t feel right. What is air, she wondered, apart from a collection of invisible gases and the major means of staying alive. She stayed still, trying not to think, not to reason her way out of the problem – she’d grasped that much from what the Lady had said. Reasoning was great for some things but useless for others, like trying to turn a screw with a hammer, she chuckled at the thought but it was a good analogy. Nothing wrong with either the hammer or the screw, it was just that they didn’t work together, wrong tool for the job. What was the right tool for the job she had to do?

‘You’re definitely getting the hang of this,’ the Lady whispered.

‘Thanks,’ Isoldé replied, ‘but not a lot is coming through about how to do air.’

‘That’s because you’re thinking again,’ the Lady replied. ‘Thinking clogs up the pathways, means we can’t get through to you. Too much clutter, like a Victorian mantelpiece.’

‘Damn it! I am too,’ Isoldé realised, chuckling at the pertinent analogy. She took a breath and sent out the question. ‘What do I do for air please?’ A rustle in the pine branches and the soft caress of a delicate breeze on her face was the immediate answer. ‘How do I hold that for the ceremony?’ she asked.

‘How do you catch the wind?’ came the immediate reply.

How do you catch the wind …in a sail if you’re in a boat or a windmill. Something niggled in her brain, pushing and shoving at other thoughts, trying to get itself to the surface. It was when she’d been down to the witchcraft museum on the quay at Caer Bottreaux. Her brow furrowed as she strained for the memory, then she let go the struggle and asked for pictures of the scene. Yes, there it was in one of the cabinets. The label told of how the local witches had been tried and killed, one of their crimes had
been catching the wind for sailors and fishermen for a fee and, sometimes, cursing, calling up a storm to drown someone who had upset them. They had sold ropes with knots in them that held the wind.

‘How do I catch the wind?’ Isoldé asked.

There was rope in the carpet bag, she delved in and came out with it. This was silken rope, beautiful, fine, hand-spun silk. It was a creamy-silver colour, like the spiral fountain that made the sphere when she had put the knife into the earth.

Isoldé took the rope in her hands wondering what to do. The breeze blew about her hands, stroking them, winding round them. Almost unconsciously, Isoldé’s hands followed the motions suggested by the wind’s caress. She began making a knot and found she was humming, a simple little tune of four notes, going round and round as her hands twisted the rope. The breeze stopped. Looking at the rope, she saw the knot was made, a figure of eight. She laid the rope down beside the fir cones, cup of water and dish of earth.

‘Now I have the four elements I need something for the three worlds, don’t I?’ she said to the grove in general.

Sunlight warmed her, she noticed it especially now although the morning had been full of light since the dawn. The Sun above, the Earth beneath her feet and Middle Earth all around her. How? Yes, they were there but they too must have representatives on the altar she was building.

Sunlight, light …Isoldé dived back into the carpet bag and came out with a crystal prism, held it up to the light. Shading it slightly with one hand she saw the colours of the rainbow reflected onto her skin. Light! Sunlight! Newton’s magic glass! She couldn’t help but grin. The three colours that the prism split the white sunlight into – red, blue and green – were there too. Were these telling about the three worlds as well? Yes they were, but was it enough?

‘Sunlight, light, the three primary colours of white light do tell
of the three worlds,’ said the lady inside her head, ‘but we would like more. The prism is good for the sun, the light. It catches the light as you caught the wind in the rope knot, but we need the others. Keep working.’

It struck Isoldé that most of the witches and Wiccans she’d met through Darshan had a pretty easy time of it. They read books and copied other people’s rituals, there was a set of stuff one used, a set of ways of using it, nice and easy, a manual to follow, “traditional” ways of doing things. Just my luck, she thought, not to be able to do it that way. It’s much harder when you have to work it all out and ask the powers what they want.

There was a chuckle in her head at that. ‘We’re working to PhD level here at least!’ Isoldé heard the voice say. ‘If not research. No rote learning for you!’

That made her laugh again. OK, if that was how it was to be …So, she’d got the light now, with the prism; that was acceptable to the Lady, the powers, wasn’t it? There was a mental nod in response. So now I have to find a way of representing the Earth and not just a bit of soil for the ground but a whole darn planet, is that right? Another nod in her head was all the response she got. Ha! Big help.

Isoldé sat down by the pile of stuff that was the altar. Trying to clear her mind, she put her hands on the grass. A whole planet, how would that like to be represented?

Pictures again, like the pictures of the Earth from the old moon shots, the blue globe swirled in white cloud, hanging against a black velvet background. OK …yes …like the pictures of the Earth from the Moon, but she hadn’t got any such pictures with her. The globe swam out of focus, refocused, became much smaller and a paler blue. The white swirls were still there but had changed shape. What? Again Isoldé frowned, what was it? What was she being shown? She pulled the bag towards her and rummaged in it again, pulling out a beautiful silk scarf with a hand-painted owl on it, Tristan’s rattle-staff decorated with hag
stones, sheep vertebrae, a raven’s foot and small skull. There was a little painted box too, containing some lumps of fossilised dinosaur shit, three owl pellets and several glass marbles. Then her hand touched another stone ball, she pulled it out. This was an agate, a blue agate with white swirls flowing round its surface and a pure white colouring at the top and bottom, like ice. There were golden colourings, shapes, under the white swirls, she stared at them closely, they really did look like the continents. Little gold dots were clustered about in both the large blue areas, like islands in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It was the Earth in miniature, a little lighter blue than the moon pictures had been.

‘Wow!’ she breathed aloud. ‘That really is cool. I wonder where you found this.

She looked at Tristan but he was still inside the glass coffin aura, he didn’t see her and she felt strongly she wasn’t supposed to speak with him, not yet.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the grove, the Earth. ‘Was that always in the bag or did you just put it there, shift it there?’