Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  He nodded. “That’s the ley line. Some call it a songline, them what can hear the music of it. Others call it a spirit line. I’m told some feel different to others.”

  “Fidelma kept talking about them failing. But if I can feel it, it can’t be that damaged?”

  “This is the spring equinox. The stones here”—he pointed out some at each end of the circle—“are aligned to tune it to the ley, the community tends the line year-round now, but once it only needed tending at the solstice and the equinox.”

  “Solstice is the longest or shortest day of the year.” That one I knew. “What is an equinox?”

  “The spring equinox is one of two points at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator. The ecliptic is the sun’s annual pathway. In spring the sun crosses the pathway going northward, then at the autumn equinox it crosses it going southward,” Callum explained

  I had no idea what any of that meant. I recognised the word ‘equinox’ – it was Latin in origin and meant balance. But after that, the words he had just put together failed to make sense to me.

  Callum sighed as he took in my expression. Taking an apple out of his pocket he placed it on his palm and lifted it in front of my nose. “If your face is the sun and the earth was this apple, then the stem is the north pole. Right now, at the spring equinox, it is sitting exactly upright, so one half of the apple is in light and the other half dark for exactly the same amount of time,” he said. “The rest of the year it is tilted and unbalanced, producing days of either shorter or longer duration, but today the light and the darkness are in balance with light on the rise.”

  “Okay, so the equinox is the most important day of the year for the ley lines.”

  Callum’s bushy brows pulled up. “Well no. It is important, but it is the solstice really that is critical.” He tilted the apple to its side. “The summer solstice is the day on which we have the most daylight, but it’s also where the change happens, and we start to move back towards winter. At the turning of the tide, the leys are at their most vulnerable as good energies and corrupt ones ebb and flow into each other. If they are not directed carefully, the corrupt tide doesn’t wash out but merges and comes back on the new tide.”

  “Right, I think I understand.” At least, bits of it.

  “It will all become much clearer once you get stuck in. There is a lot of theory and astronomic science to the leys which you may not need. Just think of them as underground rivers that circle the earth. At certain points of the year, the flow turns around, and at other times of year the river is at its fullest or lowest and this is when we can help clean them the most.”

  That I could follow. “And what is it now?”

  “The river that runs beneath us here is at its lowest after the winter. The tides turn at the solstices.”

  “And those ceremonies take place here?”

  “They are rites, and yes, they all take place here, but when Fidelma comes we will take you to the stone circle near Keswick. Its alignment is set up for the summer and winter solstices and it’s one of the largest stone circles in the land, allowing you to focus your abilities better.”

  The rite took place in the late afternoon, and from the safe distance Callum insisted on, seemed largely uneventful. Druids came out, walked up and down, poured water at various points, which Callum informed me was largely ceremonial, and then three druids sat in the circle for a very long time while they tended the line.

  The energy was a soft hum which floated around me. At Callum’s direction I did my best not to engage with it, but it had the qualities of a trickling babbling brook and the temptation to let my fingers fall into it and watch the dance of water flow around them was almost unbearable. I could practically feel the sensation it would have. But I did as directed; there would be time for this after the baby came.

  She came just before midsummer. The castle had already spent weeks preparing for the festival, boughs of greenery and flowers bedecking the walls and surfaces. The midwives clucked around worriedly, but it was a fast labour, as if she too was in a hurry to celebrate the longest day of the year.

  My little flower – I felt like those first days were just us floating in a floral cocoon, the bright blooms that filled our room bringing the summer to her, the blue skies outside shining through the open balcony.

  I still felt a little far away from everything, but one of the midwives assured me that that was only natural, especially in light of my loss. I looked down into our daughter’s dark eyes, tracing her features with my fingertips over and over. She was so beautiful.

  “Cat,” a low rumble came from the door. Gideon stood there, taking up most of the frame. He looked freshly shaven and his dark hair was tethered back. He wore a soft white shirt and he was awkwardly wielding a bunch of meadow flowers. I hadn’t seen him since our arrival here – he had done as I asked and stayed entirely out of sight. I had begun to wonder if maybe he had left Carlisle.

  “I’d like to… meet her,” he started tentatively, cautious in his choice of words. “If that’s okay with you.”

  I looked down at the precious lace-clad bundle in my arms and felt such a flash of love that I couldn’t find it in me to deny him access. She was a gift. How could I say no?

  Gideon walked across the room, coming to a stop too far away from the end of the bed to see any more than he had been able to from the door.

  I reached a hand out to him and beckoned him closer, my lips tugging up at the sight of the ordinarily cavalier Gideon so tightly wound. His face was carefully blank, his posture stiff. He expected rejection, was braced for it. This was my fault, I knew. I pushed at the fog from the last time I had seen him. What had I said to him? I didn’t care to recall.

  But he was responsible for having kept this bundle alive, in those terrible moments after… He had kept her alive against all the odds. He had saved her. His eyes flicked to the tattoo I had done on my left arm, the curve of the Tamesis, spinning out at the end into a triquetra design. He took my hand as I continued to hold it out to him, and I tugged him down to meet her.

  “This is Féile.”

  He perched on the edge of the bed and his frame curled in closer to see her. His free hand lifted to touch her, but he halted, his eyes slanting to mine to check for permission. I nodded – at that moment I felt dizzily in love with this new person who had entered our lives.

  His large hand traced her face gently, moving down to marvel at her tiny perfect little toes, with their clear miniature toenails, her rosy heels, and little rounded legs.

  “Would you like to hold her?”

  His gaze snapped up, his eyes wide with surprise, and a boyish smile spread across his face. It felt important that he have this moment with her. He took the bundle awkwardly as I showed him how to support her neck with his large hands. He soon had her cradled to his chest as if he had been born to it. He traced her ebony curls, no words needed to communicate his acknowledgement of her father, his entire body stilling as she stirred and grabbed his finger in her tiny starfish hands. I could see the joy in him as she opened her dark eyes and gazed up at him. The midwives assured me that she was too young to see anything much yet but from the sheer lovestruck expression of the large man locked in that stare with her, it would have been churlish to say so. And I wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t know exactly who she was seeing as we sat there admiring her.

  Gideon eventually handed her back to me without another word and left the room, but he was back the next day and the one after that. I couldn’t feel his emotions the way I had with Devyn, but there was a glow when he was in her presence that was unmistakably love.

  I let her spend more time with him and as I recovered, Callum began to take me outside the castle, beyond the town with all its people, out into the hills and vast forests where I finally started to feel connected to earth, air, and water again. The longer I was in the woods drawing on its energy, the more I could really feel it again. Callum encouraged me to draw and release the energy – a
pparently this was the first step to wielding it. I had to be able to call it at will. It needed to become instinctive.

  As the town prepared for the Lammas Fair in late summer, Fidelma came with Marina to train me in readiness for the autumn equinox in September. Oban was delighted to be reunited with his sister, even accompanying us out beyond the relative comfort of the city as we travelled across the fells and lakes to the circle near Keswick. It took only a few hours to ride there and we went the day before the fair.

  All was green and blue, the sky an endless warmth illuminating the magnificent mountains that surrounded us as we joined the community of druids tending the lines at Keswick. In the middle of the Lakelands stood a circle of standing stones, fewer than at Penrith – more like thirty or forty – but the circle was wide and sat on a great plateau surrounded by mountains.

  This time I was allowed to fully enter the stone circle and was drawn to one that stood just a little taller than me.

  “Can you feel it?” Fidelma asked.

  I placed my hand on the warm stone, which was speckled with lichen and thrumming with energy; I could feel it, and it was a revelation. The babble of energy became a hum, a current of melody, but there was a slight dissonance, something not quite right. The flow should have been pure but it was tainted, slightly off key.

  The pale-faced druids who lived there showed me how they tended and cared for the energies using the stones as they corresponded with certain lunar positions.

  Today, the day before Lammas, Fidelma, Callum, and I sat in the middle of the circle and Fidelma talked me through what was required. Callum did not have the ability to sing to the line so Elsa, the high druid from the community who lived there, joined us to act as an anchor while Fidelma and I drifted down into the songline. It was glorious, the pulse of energy that flowed south. I was mesmerised by the beauty of it, crystalline and clear, and it welcomed me as it streamed by, clean and bright, its notes wondrous. Off notes and jarring pulses that felt wrong occasionally passed, but through Fidelma’s instruction I found a melody, a cadence inside that I projected outward to harmonise and heal.

  Eventually we surfaced, and the next day at the festival itself Fidelma had me join the circle as its anchor point, enabling me to experience the druids tending the line. I sensed them pluck and correct the flowing essence using lilting chords and mellifluous notes to calm the flow. Fidelma jerked and grabbed Druid Elsa when a strong undercurrent caught her, then brought about a calming resonance again.

  When we surfaced, I felt drained, almost limp, as Elsa helped me stand and waited a moment while my legs steadied under me.

  “What was that?”

  “The corruption that flows from the decaying May line,” Fidelma said, her lips pursed.

  The May line was the ley that ran under a wide section of the borderlands. Though Callum had described the energy lines as rivers, some of the most important were more like channels, flowing in straight lines. The May line was one of the oldest and deepest, in the direction of the sunrise on May 8th. It was a spirit line that ran across the continent, through the borderlands to Glastonbury Tor, which Fidelma tended. The line that was tended here in the Lakelands was the Belinus line, which ran from the tip of Alba through to Vectis Island which Callum called the Isle of Wight.

  “The Belinus line north of us is healthy, but now the pollution flows up from where it intersects the May line in the borderlands, and we must work hard to keep it well.” Elsa’s face testified to the immense strain that tending the line had been. “To have the Lady of the Lake back amongst us is a gift from the gods. I tended these lines with your mother – you have her gift and more. Even as a novice, you have helped more than the rest of us have done in years. You must be ready for Mabon. If you could participate in the autumn equinox, perhaps we can make a real difference.”

  After Fidelma and Marina departed to return to Glastonbury, I stayed some more days with Elsa learning techniques – both ones that she used herself and others she was unable to use but which she had seen my mother use; what she called singing to the line. When I departed, she gave me a gift of soap scented with summer flowers for my daughter.

  As the summer ebbed, I visited again to learn more, in order to be ready for the equinox. I went regularly to Keswick, which was only a short ride from Carlisle. Time became irrelevant out there, the standing circle acting as a conduit that grounded the energies that pulsed laggardly through the land. Tending the lines filled me with a sense of belonging that was addictive in its pleasure and I showed a natural mastery. It felt as though I were a harpist from Llewelyn’s halls, plucking notes, making it sing back to me. But on the more practical side, Callum despaired of my lack of progress in his lessons.

  Callum and I still practised the skills of command over the elements, but it was tiresome. In contrast to singing to the leys, I did not enjoy the grinding frustration of my training, which never progressed no matter how hard I tried to control the magic my blood absorbed.

  The leys, however, called to me. I could feel the land pulse with renewed health after our efforts, the glorious burst of colour that flared across the forests our reward.

  For Mabon, the autumn equinox, we returned to Penrith. The currents were powerful, the taint deeper than I had ever experienced. The corruption in the line flowing up from the south was sluggish and murky and difficult to work with. I needed to go deeper, to sing harder to deal with it, and when we surfaced I felt a touch of the vertigo that had plagued me when I was younger.

  My efforts at the equinox left me exhausted for weeks. A strange sensation similar to the disconnection I had felt in the months after Devyn’s death started to grip me and refused to let go. I increasingly felt as if the world was leached of emotion, drained of colour. Callum asked me more often if I was well, encouraging me to take a break, teaching me to meditate, encouraging me to spend time with Féile. But staying away from the stone circles made it harder when I returned, and made the burden even heavier on the druids.

  At night when I rested the same dream came to me again and again. I was sitting in a boat that was tethered to a pier in a lake. Reaching over the side, I could touch the water, but the water felt better, purer, away from the dock. The more corruption that flowed through the Belinus line, the more I allowed the boat to drift away, deeper into the songline. I knew there was a reason that the boat was tied to the pier, but the rope that held me frayed as I spent more and more time in the open elements floating free. I embraced the energy that the earth offered me, allowing the sun and sky to soak into me, fraying that tether more and more until one day I wondered if it just wouldn’t be there anymore, and I would float deeper into the ley line, finding myself far from the lakeshore.

  Occasionally I would look to the shore and check that it was still there. I could see the man caring for the baby, keeping her safe so I could do what I needed to do.

  The wheel turned slowly to a harvest season that I was told was the best in many years. People who typically gave me wide berth now crossed intentionally into my path to bob and smile and thank me. Once the harvest was in, the townsfolk began to prepare for the Samhain festival. The oranges and golds of the countryside were reflected indoors as the decorations went up, and the halls of the castle were decked in a blaze of colour.

  Bonfires were built across the countryside and candles were placed in windows to keep at bay the dangers brought by the night as the veil between this world and the next thinned. I could sense this weakening growing, and I reflected on how different I was from the girl who had arrived in Oxford only twelve months earlier.

  Samhain also brought visitors: Bronwyn arrived, bringing her uncle with her. Bronwyn had written to me to give me advance warning that she would bring Rhodri at the time when Britons remembered their dead, not wanting him to be alone. She had asked for my support and to say nothing to Rion. I barely saw him, so this was achieved with no great difficulty.

  They were met by Rion at the gateway to the castle, which I was a
lerted to by a breathless Oban. When I arrived in the courtyard, Bronwyn and Rion were in a standoff while Rhodri remained in the carriage, permission to lay foot on Mercian soil having been denied.

  “Cass,” Bronwyn greeted me with some relief. “Please inform your brother that we are welcome in your home, if not his.”

  I raised a brow. “Rion, you will not welcome Rhodri into your house?”

  “He was banished for life. He is not welcome here,” he replied stiffly.

  Of course, Rhodri was the Griffin who had saved his son over our mother, the mother he had been gods-bound to protect. That was why Bronwyn had asked me to say nothing.

  “He is my uncle,” Bronwyn flashed back angrily.

  “I’m aware,” Rion replied in the calm, composed manner he had when his own emotions were heightened.

  “He has a right to—”

  “He has no rights,” Rion said coolly.

  He had come all this way though. I was already growing tired from the fuss Rion was making and was struggling to summon up the argument Bronwyn clearly expected of me.

  Aid came from an unexpected corner, as Gideon strode into the courtyard, still armoured from training, his muscled arms glistening with sweat despite the slight chill of encroaching evening.

  On his hip he carried a well-wrapped bundle and without so much as glancing Rion’s way for anything approaching permission, he opened the carriage door. He spoke to the man within before handing the baby into the waiting arms.

  Turning on his heel, he strode from the courtyard.

  Chapter Five

  Bronwyn’s expression communicated carefully subdued triumph as she turned back to face Rion once more.

  “You leave after the festival,” he said, then he too left, taking a different direction to Gideon.

  Greeting Rhodri as he carefully exited the carriage with his granddaughter I found him to be a good deal more robust than the last time I had seen him – though it looked like he would never regain the full health he would have had before the illness.