Skin (40 page)

It was the dawn of the fourth day. My legs ached from standing, my vision was blurred
from tiredness but still I sang.

The old woman summoned Tara and two others of the Fire Mothers to my side.

Tara drew her knife.

I knew what they were about to do. I trembled as the two Mothers braced my arms and
Tara released the fastening of my robe. She placed a wad of tightly rolled linen
into my mouth and raised her blade. The old woman summoned volume in the song. Every
Mother was singing me into being. The sound was deafening.

I buckled, biting hard on the linen as Tara cut a spiralling shape into my chest
with her knife. The hot pain brought a deep release as blood dripped in the dirt
at my feet. This was the wound that would hold the song. The scar that would mark
me in the hardworld.

Tara left my cut untended and returned with her women to their circle.

I tried to resume my song but, in my exhaustion, my voice began to fail, and with
it, my vision. The temple house emerged before me, its stones not solid but sheer
as a veil, the circles of Mothers still visible behind it.

I squeezed my eyes closed, but when they opened, the temple was yet clearer and I
saw Sulis push through the door and walk toward me, a jug in her hand. ‘Sulis!' I
cried. I stood directly before her but she neither saw nor heard me. She did not
witness that I stood with the Mothers as they sang.

The Mothers' song shifted, strengthened, and Sulis faded from sight.

I stared hard at the circles of Mothers, watching and listening, before once again
the temple huts and gardens took shape before me.
My sister initiates were tending
the temple grounds, chattering as they filled buckets from the pools. They were not
firm-fleshed, but wrought of some mist that thickened then waned with the rise and
fall of the song.

This was no trick of the eye. This was my return to the hardworld.

For most of the day I was cast backward and forward between these two visions. The
Mothers' song poured forth unbroken while the temple initiates carried out their
tasks in the same place, the same moment. I saw both truths at once. One a little
clearer, then the other.

As the sky deepened, the temple at last grew solid and the circles of women ebbed
away. As I watched them fade I felt a wash of grief, then I recalled Tara's words
and they hit me like a slingshot: I would not be called to the Mothers again.

‘Taliesin! Tara!' I shouted, calling them back, swaying with the effort and the pain
of my wound.

The shape of the Mothers strengthened once more. I ran among them, searching and
calling.

Shrouded by trees, beyond the edge of the circle, he stood alone. At the sound of
my voice he turned. I had never seen him look so fragile or so beautiful. He wore
a summer tunic, dyed with bark, as dark as the shadows that ringed his eyes. The
bones of his shoulders hunched forward as though caging his heart.

‘My light,' he whispered into my hair when I reached him. ‘Can you free me? Have
you learned of your skin?'

I shook my head against his chest. ‘The woman who knows it will not yield.' His heart
quickened beneath my cheek and I tightened my hold. ‘There will be a way.'

He pulled back to stare at me. ‘There is no other way.'

Through the translucence of his throat and arms, I saw the faint forms of the temple
huts. ‘No,' I cried. I could not let him fade from me. By the force of my intent
I hardened the realm and he was once
again solid. But there was little strength in
me to hold him much longer.

Think, I commanded myself, over the crash of my heartpound. I searched my memory
for the ways I had journeyed forth and back from the Mothers: by the drop in the
pool, by the Mothers' song, by cutting the mist in the gully. The mist! I gripped
Taliesin's forearms. Why had I not seen it before? ‘My love,' I gasped, ‘when you
come to the hardworld, is it always through water?'

‘Yes. As fish. I have told you—'

‘There has been no threshold, other than this?'

The bones of his wrist started to soften as I grasped them. He was slipping. ‘There
is another threshold.' He frowned. ‘But one I cannot breach.'

‘Describe it,' I urged.

‘It is a thickness, a barrier that rises near the river when you call to me. I have
tried to push through it as man. Sometimes I see you beyond it. Once you even heard
me call through it. But only as fish, beneath the water, can I pass.'

I was shaking in my excitement. ‘Is it a mist? A watery barrier?'

He nodded. ‘It is that.'

Then I was laughing and sobbing. ‘Mothers be praised, Taliesin. If you can stand
at that veil, then I have means to cut it. I can bring you through as man.'

‘How?' he asked, unbelieving.

‘This!' I cry, lifting the weapon still bound to my waist. ‘My sword has cut such
a mist before. My sword will cut your passage.'

‘No.' His face knotted with doubt. ‘No sword can cut the realms.'

‘But it has! It has cut through when skin could not.'

His smile was unsure.

My hold of him was weakening. In moments he would be gone. ‘You must go to that place,'
I told him. ‘You must stand at that mist.'

‘When?' he breathed. ‘Now?' His flesh grew yet sheerer.

‘Not now,' I cried, desperate. ‘If I cut from here, I do not know where we will emerge.
I must cut from Summer and bring you there.' I looked to his face. ‘Beloved Taliesin,
can you wait a little longer to come home?'

He answered me with a kiss that turned my flesh to water.

‘Wait for my call,' I instructed when he pulled away. ‘I will go to the forest and
call for you. I beg that you hear it. But do not sink beneath the water. Do not come
as fish. Find the mist and stand before it as man. That is my only chance to make
you free.'

He stared at me, his dark eyes ebbing. ‘Are you true?'

I staggered. His wounds were deep to question a heart as sure as mine. He was dissolving
quickly now.

‘Listen for my call!' I commanded as he faded.

He nodded, and met my gaze for one last moment. For the first time, I saw an echo
of Cookmother's eyes in his. It was too late to tell him now. I would tell him when
he was free.

He turned as he disappeared.

It must be true,
I assured myself. My sword would cut what lay between us. The Mothers
had promised me this: if it took no life, it would do my will. And this, above all
else, was my will. At last my legs, which had stood for four days, could carry me
no longer and I sank to the ground.

‘Ailia?' The sharp voice was familiar.

I opened my eyes to see darkness had fallen.

‘Rise, girl.' Sulis crouched beside me and aided me to sit.

The temple garden was quiet now. The Mothers were gone.

‘Am I returned?' I murmured, dizzy from change.

‘Yes,' she said, scowling, ‘and I do not need to ask whether you have been with the
Mothers. I see how you are drunk with journey.' She offered me her water pouch and
I drank thirstily. ‘How did you reach them?' she asked. ‘By medicine? By chant?'

By my love of Taliesin, I wanted to answer, recalling the pool, the swim. ‘By their
ways,' I said.

‘By skin?' she persisted.

My face fell. ‘No.'

Her eyes closed then opened, her brow furrowed. ‘You will not disturb the initiates
with any account of this. You will sleep this night in my hut and resume training
at sunrise.'

I stared at her, terrified that she would not release me. ‘But—I cannot go back to
my training,' I stammered. ‘I must return to Cad—'

‘You have been almost three summers gone from temple. There is much you have missed.'

Breath caught in my throat. Yet another year passed in a matter of days. I wanted,
with all my being, to free Taliesin, but even more than this, I wanted to give my
people their Kendra. Was it too late? ‘There is counsel I must give Fraid and Llwyd—'

Sulis shook her head. Her voice could not contain her displeasure. ‘You have journeyed
again to the Mothers without skin, without sanction. You are in breach of our most
sacred laws.' Her hands trembled as she interlocked them. ‘You will stay and resume
your learning. And try to make right what you have wronged by these journeys.'

‘I have been given knowledge, Journeywoman! I must bring it to Cad—'

She crouched unmoving. ‘What knowledge have you received?'

I paused, suddenly frightened to utter it. But there could be only truth now. ‘The
song,' I answered. ‘I have heard the song.'

Her eyes widened. ‘Whose song?'

‘The Mothers' song. The creation song.'

‘And you, girl…did
you
sing?'

‘Yes,' I said, my heart soaring at the memory. ‘I sang.'

‘You lie,' she hissed.

We both looked up as an initiate passed, holding a blazing torch. Suddenly there
was light enough for Sulis to see the dark stains that soaked my tunic. ‘Mothers
of earth, what is this wound?' she cried.

Before I could tell her she tore open my robe and bade the light be held nearer to
my bleeding cuts.

The initiate gasped.

‘As the moon is my witness.' Sulis was trembling. ‘It is the cut of the Kendra.'

‘Yes,' I murmured.

Sulis stiffened. ‘Was it you?' she whispered. ‘Have you wrought these cuts to claim
the Kendra's title?'

‘No. They are true.' My voice was a whimper.

Slowly Sulis placed her fingers to the edge of my wound and her eyes closed.

I watched her. These cuts were my only evidence. Why did she touch them?

A frown twitched across her brow as if she battled another expression. Her eyes
sprang open. ‘I hear it.' Her voice was unsteady. ‘I hear the song.'

I slumped, weakened, as though her touch had drained me of blood. But even in my
frailty, my whole being was lit by the revelation: this was how the Mothers claimed
me as their own. Their song was in my wound. This was what I would carry back. And
no one could deny me.

Knowledge is shared only between the initiated.

Only the initiated have the power
to prevent death, recapture souls, and understand the depth of the human mind.

AD
46

W
E
REACHED
CAER
CAD
in the bright light of the next afternoon. Sulis had brought
me by boat across the lake and we had walked the day's journey back to my hillfort
home at a tireless pace. Save for the brief words of wayfinding and the sharing of
dried fish, our travel had passed wordlessly. I was unsure of how I stood in her
eyes. She had recognised my mark, she had heard its song, but she had not yet called
me Kendra.

Spring blossoms dotted the hedges along the laneways. Three seasons. By hard time,
I was seventeen summers. How close would Rome be now?

‘Speak nothing of your marks until I meet with Fraid and Llwyd,' said Sulis, as we
reached Cad Hill. ‘We must determine what shall be done.'

‘But they must learn that I have been made Kendra straightaway,' I said. ‘There may
be little time to wait.'

‘Hush,' she spat, panting with the ascent. ‘I know not what skewed spell-craft you
have used to purchase the marks at your chest, but you will stay silent now.'

I pushed down my protest. Sulis did not recognise me. Would anyone? The Mothers had
made me Kendra, because they were not beholden to skin. If the tribes were to accept
me as Kendra, I would have to convince them of this new truth. But would they hear
it?

The gates were unattended as we entered Cad. My heart swelled at the sight of the
familiar houses and roadways, yet something was altered here. The township was too
quiet. I glanced to the daylight moon. It was no wane day. Where were the craftsmen
and the sellers? ‘Perhaps there has been a death?' I wondered aloud. ‘Are they all
at burial?'