Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  Nobody argued. Moira felt her stomach tighten and realized it was only partly fear; there was an element of excitement in it -an atavistic tingling of the nerves. This is no holiday, this is the tribe and the tribe must survive – we must learn the ways

  More cautiously, they all went back to work – except for Angie, shadowed and watchful in her caravan. After a while they began talking again, in low voices.

  'Listen!' Greg snapped suddenly.

  They all heard the footsteps for a second or two before the young man stepped out of the forest edge. He had a double-barrelled twelve-bore, broken open, in the crook of his arm and he carried the body of a grey squirrel in his other hand.

  'Hullo!' he called cheerfully, and came towards them.

  Nobody spoke for a moment as he approached. He looked from one to the other, smiled a little shyly, and laid the twelve-bore on the trestle table they had set up in the middle of the laager. The gesture was so deliberately peaceful that it broke the spell.

  'Hullo,' Dan said. 'Sorry if we seemed nervous. Are you Forestry?'

  'That's right. My name's Peter O'Malley. Don't apologize – a lot of people are feeling a bit nervous at the moment.'

  'We've just got a kettle boiling,' Moira said. 'Would you like some tea or coffee? We're making both… Or there's a can of beer.'

  'Coffee'd be fine, if there's some going.'

  He looked in his middle twenties, lean and black-bearded, about a metre seventy-five tall; his jeans, tee-shirt, bush-jacket and soft boots suited his unself-conscious Celtic good looks. More of a young poet than a forestry worker, Moira thought, and then wondered why she had thought of it as a contradiction.

  'Why did you shoot that squirrel?' Eileen asked unexpectedly and there was an edge to her voice that made Moira wonder.

  'My job, I'm afraid, or part of it,' Peter O'Malley told her. 'I'm not responsible for the timber, directly, though I keep my eyes open for anything wrong, of course, just like the others… No, I work for the Forestry Commission but my job's ecology. Animal population census, protecting rare species, watching for disease and so on. Culling, where necessary. Like this little chap. There's been a bit of a population explosion of grey squirrels in Dyfnant Forest this year and they're destructive buggers.'

  'Like man,' Eileen said.

  'Yes, like man. But you can try to teach man, or even put him in jail or fine him if he won't learn. You can't with grey squirrels, can you?' He flashed his shy attractive smile at her.

  Eileen looked a little ashamed of herself and said: 'Sorry, I was rude. I hate killing things, that's all.'

  ‘Do you think I don't? But if protecting the other species means I've got to cut my grey squirrel population by thirty per cent, then I do it – and if it makes you feel any better, I never wound 'em, I shoot 'em dead, first time.'

  'Actually, we're just cooking up lunch,' Moira interrupted to save both of them further embarrassment. 'Why don't you join us? After all, it's your forest.'

  Peter grinned his thanks. 'You know, I think I'll take you up on that. I get tired of cooking for myself.'

  'And of your own company? It must be lonely up here sometimes.'

  'Oh, I don't mind that. But yes, it's nice to see people now and again. Often I don't for a couple of weeks or more at a time.'

  'Not even your own colleagues?' Dan asked.

  'Not around here much, this summer. There's no planting or felling going on in this section right now. Nearest is two, three kilometres away – and even that's finished for the year. They're felling still below New Dyfnant.'

  'Is that out of your territory?'

  'Oh, no – I cover the whole forest. But I base myself in one section each year, study that intensively and just keep an eye on the rest. I've got my trailer about a kilometre away, back there off the logging road you came up. I'm your nearest neighbour.' Again the smile. 'In fact, your only neighbour, till the village.'

  Dan asked 'Is it all right if we camp here?' He asked it naturally, but Moira knew his question was less casual than he made it sound.

  'Sure, as far as I'm concerned. People do sometimes, though you're the only ones this summer. Just don't light a fire within about fifty metres of the trees or at all if there's much of a wind. And never leave it unattended.'

  'We'll be disciplined, I promise you.'

  Peter hesitated, and then asked: 'How long are you here for?'

  'Oh… we hadn't decided. A while, anyway.'

  The young ecologist looked from face to face, shrewdly. 'Even up here, I listen to the news. I've been kind of expecting someone like you.'

  'Like us?'

  'Shall we say – people who can guess which way things are going?… Oh, don't worry. I…" He seemed shy again. 'Well, ecologists don't like mass hysteria. And I'm constitutionally inclined to mind my own business…

  Look, if anyone does come up here – and once in a blue moon they do – tell ' em Peter O'Malley said you could camp here. I'm in well with my boss so you'll be all right.'

  'You're a pal,' Dan told him, and Moira, on an impulse, leaned over and gave him a quick hug.

  Peter cleared his throat awkwardly but looked pleased. 'Got to earn my lunch, haven't I?'

  They all laughed and got on with preparing it.

  Later, when he was briefly alone with Dan, Peter said: ‘I may be talking out of turn and I'm not asking questions – but if things do break down… That meadow there and the stream… Well, the stream's full of trout – and the meadow's lovely soil. Should grow vegetables well.'

  Dan was silent for a moment. 'We do happen to be well-stocked up with seeds – just in case, you know. And we've got rods and tackle…… The seeds can wait for a bit, while we see how the cat jumps. But we might as well get the rods out. I'm very fond of trout.'

  'Are your guns licensed?'

  'What guns?'

  Peter just grinned. 'Forget I asked. But there's plenty of rabbit… Only one thing – there's a pair of peregrine falcon nesting over the cliff up there. It's their second season and there haven't been peregrine in Dyfnant Forest since 1987. Disturb them, and I'll be after your scalp, in person.'

  It was Dan's turn to grin. 'Show me exactly where and we'll put their patch out of bounds. If any of our lot go near them, I'll have their scalps – never mind you.'

  'Loner I may be,' Peter said. 'But people like you I can do with as neighbours. Look after those seeds, won't you?'

  They all slept for two or three hours during the afternoon, except for Angie and Eileen, who had spent the night before in their own bunks and did not need extra rest.

  When they got up again, they found Angie and Eileen had been collecting firewood, of which there was plenty lying around without any necessity of cutting. The weather was very warm for August but they lit a fire in the evening, well clear of the trees. Greg took a spade and stripped a couple of square metres of topsoil off the rock to make a hearth-pit, edging it with stones. There they cooked their evening meal. They had, between them, a good stock of gas cylinders for their camp cookers and planned to buy more. However it would obviously be wise to hoard these as much as possible for quick boiling of water and bad-weather cooking, so they agreed that camp-fire cooking would be the general rule. Tonight's meal was, deliciously, grilled trout. Dan and Rosemary were both good fly-fishers and two of their assortment of rods were suitable, so at about five o'clock they had taken them to the stream and quickly proved Peter right about it; by half past six they had the necessary eight fish – 'though I doubt if we'll be so lucky when they get wise to us,' Dan said. 'They must have been undisturbed since God knows when.' Rosemary had caught five of the eight and was understandably cocky.

  Diana had sulked a little because she had been shooed back to camp after five minutes of running up and down the banks screaming with delight, making success unlikely and casting hazardous, but had forgotten about it when Sally recruited her to help build the fire.

  The meal over, they sat around the fire as the light faded, sha
ring a litre of red wine Angie had bought the day before ('Sorry it isn't hock') and slipping into a half-serious debate on what they should agree to call their meals, to avoid confusion.

  'English is a daft language that way,' Sally complained. 'Lunch at midday and dinner in the evening is middle-class; dinner at midday is working-class, and in the evening it may be tea or supper according to where you live. French is much more sensible – everyone knows what you mean by "dejeuner" and "diner". And German says what they are "Mittagessen" and "Abendessen".'

  'Oh, but English is more complicated than that,' Dan said. 'It's not just a class thing. A London working man'll talk of "dinner" and "tea" at work and at home, but if he takes his wife to a restaurant he'll call it "lunch" and "dinner".'

  'Period differences, too,' Angic pointed out. 'Dinner has shifted about, over the centuries… But it's always tended to be the main meal. So since it looks as though our main meal's going to be in the evening, when work's over and we've all settled down – I suggest we call that dinner and the midday one lunch. Sorry if it sounds middle-class but at least we'll understand each other.'

  'I don't mind being thought bourgeois,' Greg conceded, 'as long as I get a solid working-class breakfast.'

  'Who are you kidding?' Eileen asked. 'My father was a railway porter, so I reckon that makes me working-class. And my breakfast's a cup of coffee and a biscuit.'

  'It wasn't this morning.'

  'That was a special occasion.'

  'Couple of months of this sort of life,' Dan said, 'and we'll all be wanting a real breakfast.'

  With mock solemnity he put it to the vote, and Angie's suggested nomenclature was duly adopted. Moira found herself strangely pleased by the apparently trivial exchange, if only because everybody had so easily entered into the fun of it; the ability to share such nonsense cemented the tribe… Come on now, she told herself, don't get so analytical! But the feeling remained.

  The time came to put Diana to bed, in her little inner 'room' of the tent. She put up a show of reluctance but in fact could hardly keep her eyes open, and Dan, who had a way with bedtime stories, managed to settle her down and she was fast asleep with the story half told. Dan and Moira rejoined the others round the fire; a contented silence had fallen on them all and a bright first-quarter moon was transforming mountain, forest and meadow.

  After a while, Rosemary said quietly: 'What a night for a Circle.'

  'We're not all witches, now,' Moira said. 'We'll have to hold our Circles when we're not putting Angie and Eileen out.'

  'You do your own thing as and when you want to, my dears,' Angie told them. 'You want to dance round the fire, or something, you do it. I’ll go and baby-mind Diana -and Eileen can read a book or knit a sock or whatever.'

  They protested politely but Angie firmly withdrew, taking Eileen with her. Eileen disappeared into the caravan and Angie settled down in a camp-chair by Moira and Dan's tent where she could hear if Diana woke. Ginger Lad (who had spent the day exploring and approving the camp site) climbed into her lap and purred.

  She watched, with half-sleepy interest, while the two young couples and the old woman set up their Circle with the fire as its centre, some fifty paces from where she sat. Tightly packed as their vehicles had been, they obviously regarded their ritual equipment as essential baggage, for Dan fetched a hamper from the car and took from it various objects including a cloth which he used to transform the hamper into an altar, placing it to the north, which lay towards the tents and the forest of spruce. They stood three candle-lanterns around the Circle at the east, south, and west points and three more on the altar with other things which Angie could not distinguish at that distance, except for a chalice and an incense-burner and a couple of bowls. A light sword flashed firelight as Moira laid it at the foot of the altar. When everything was ready, the four younger ones took off all their clothes. Angie wondered if old Sally would too, and was amused to hear snatches of an exchange between her and Moira in which Sally wanted to strip – which, Angie inferred, she always did indoors -but Moira forbade it. Sally.appeared to grumble, briefly, but remained clothed. Youngster or not, Moira's authority as High Priestess was obviously accepted.

  Moira picked up the sword and began to walk clockwise round the Circle.

  'O thou Circle; be thou a meeting-place of love and joy and truth, a shield against all wickedness and evil……'

  Moira's voice came clearly to her in the still air but after a while Angie stopped listening to the words themselves, finding herself caught up in the magical atmosphere of the scene and the dignified intimacy of the ritual. It was almost as though the mountains and the forest had moved imperceptibly inwards, watching and uniting with the focal fire and the young and old bodies that moved around it. The coven had linked hands now – not in a full ring, because the five of them could not quite reach each other round the fire, but in a circling chain with Moira at its head, chanting in quiet chorus:

  'Eko, Eko, Azarak,

  Eko, Eko, Zamilak,

  Eko, Eko, Cermirmos,

  Eko, Eko, Aradia…'

  Then Angie saw two things, simultaneously; Eileen walking naked from the caravan towards the Circle, and Peter O'Malley watching, motionless, from the edge of the forest. Moira saw Eileen coming and smiled, breaking away from the circling group to pick up the sword and sweep it anticlockwise over a part of the perimeter as though opening an invisible door. Eileen ran through it, Moira closed the 'door' with a clockwise sweep, and Eileen was circling with the rest.

  Angie looked across at Peter, wondering what he would do.

  'By all the power of land and sea,

  By all the might of moon and sun…'

  Unhurriedly, Peter took off his clothes and laid them by the forest edge. Then he, too, walked across to the Circle like a young bearded Pan, and waited outside it. Moira was still smiling, and picked up her sword again to admit him as she had Eileen.

  Seven of them were enough to encircle the fire and the ring closed.

  Angie was spellbound; the circling bodies, moon- and fire-lit, seemed like nature-spirits, as much creatures of earth, air, fire and water as the wild landscape within which they moved. She wondered how long it would be before she, too, was irresistibly drawn in. The thought scared her a little and she drew back from it, but the magic still held her. The chanting became wordless, one with the distant rushing of the waterfall, the crackling of the fire and the secretive forest-sounds.

  It was almost a shock when Moira spoke, her words unmistakably human again. She had halted before the altar with her arms raised, a tall fire-bronzed nymph about to call on the powers that created her, while the others ranged themselves behind her, suddenly still after their ring-dance.

  Moira's voice was not loud but it seemed to flow through Angie and past her into the depths and heights of the forest and into nameless regions beyond.

  'O Great Mother, thou who are called in this land Cerridwen of the rich earth and Arianrhod of the infinite sky, hear us I Let us be at peace in this place, at one with thy creatures and at one with thy mysteries. Nourish us at thy cauldron of abundance and immortality, O Cerridwen; teach us thy heavenly wisdom, O Arianrhod of the Silver Wheel. We invoke thee to aid us and we invoke thy consort, the Horned God of the Forest, to protect us and strengthen us; for we are all your creatures, we of the Craft and our friends also; and into your hands, our Mother and our Father, we place ourselves. Hear us, and grant that we may hear you. So mote it be!'

  'So mote it be!'

  Wide-eyed, Angie saw, but could not believe, that the High Priestess and her followers stood within a sphere of pale, shimmering violet that domed above them and completed itself (she knew but could not see) in the dark rock beneath them. And from forest and mountain came a deep sigh of acceptance, a wind that was not a wind, limitless yet living; it embraced the sphere and all within it, sweeping over Angie too, leaving her breathless and blind. She lost herself in that living wind for a time that had no measure.

  Th
en, slowly, the moonlit landscape took on form around-her once more. How long she had been entranced she could not tell, but Moira and the others stood around her now, clothed and smiling and human.

  Moira asked without anxiety: 'Are you all right, Angle?'

  'Yes… yes, I'm all right. What did you do then?'

  ‘I didn't do it. It's there all the time. We just spoke to it – or to Her and Him, rather.'

  Angie had no words.

  Peter stood on the edge of the group and said: 'Thank you, all of you. I'll be off home now. Good night.'

  They chorused 'Good night, Peter,' and he waved and left.

  ‘I think it's time for bed,' Moira said.

  12

  As August moved towards September, the little group settled in and established a routine. In one sense they were in a difficult position; if what they all spoke of as 'the breakdown' (without being sure quite what it meant, but sharing the premonition) had already happened, they would have done many things such as starting to cultivate the meadow, even cutting timber to build winter shelters; but until then, they had at least to appear to be camping holiday-makers. Peter's permission would suffice if one of his Forestry Commission superiors came their way but if they had obviously made any move towards permanent settlement, they would land Peter himself in trouble for having allowed it.

  They could, however, stockpile supplies, and Peter, now thoroughly in their confidence, helped in two ways. He showed them a logging road which bypassed New Dyfnant, so that they could come and go without drawing attention to their continuing presence; it was a good five kilometres longer but worth it. And he showed them a cave in the spruce forest, a few minutes from the camp but invisible to anyone who did not know the plantation intimately, where stores could be hidden. It was too irregularly shaped to be considered as living quarters, but for dry storage it was ideal, and from every shopping sortie they brought back more things to put in it: gas cylinders, potatoes by the sack, polythene sheeting, extra bedding, clothing, canned food, petrol whenever they could buy jerrycans, though these were becoming very scarce… They had second thoughts about storing petrol in the cave and began burying the jerrycans instead.