by Ilka Tampke
A large-shouldered tribesman stepped in front of me, obscuring my view, and I pushed her from my thoughts. The seer had begun. He stood at the lip of the firebed, calling the Mothers to speak. He was a slight man; his beard seemed too dark and his brow too firm to have attained the degree of seer, but he had been trained at the Isle of Mona in the northwest, and the words of such a man were highly valued. Using an iron stick to prod wisdom from the long-burnt wood, he spoke to one tribesperson after another, turning the embers, sometimes casting in an acorn to watch how it burned. Fraid and Llwyd stood beside him, whispering as they heard the portents.
Finally it was Bebin before him. The crowd was thinner now, as many had heard their fire words and had dispersed to the hillside for the rise. I stood beside her. The embers were turned for a fresh message.
‘A high marriage is shown,’ said the seer.
I squeezed Bebin’s arm.
‘There is the sign of metal and the symmetry of a skin.’
‘These are traders’ wears,’ I whispered, ‘they tell of Uaine.’
‘Hush.’ She smiled.
‘It is indeed a man of trade and a favoured match,’ said the seer. ‘Accept the marriage and its consequences.’ He set down his stick. ‘That is all. The sun threatens to dawn.’
Bebin pushed me forward. ‘Please—scry for my worksister,’ she said, as I shook my head. ‘Just one more.’
‘Not Ailia,’ commanded Fraid. ‘The fire will not speak to one without skin.’
‘With your permission, Tribequeen,’ said Llwyd, dipping his head. ‘I would like to test it.’
Fraid frowned. ‘As you wish, Journeyman. But quickly—’ she glanced at the sky, ‘—the fire must soon be doused.’
The seer looked at me and took up his stick. ‘Of what do you wish to learn?’
My heart was racing. I had never heard my own fire portents before. ‘Skin,’ I said slowly. ‘I ask of my skin.’
The seer turned to the fire and I stared at him as the light flickered on his deepening frown. ‘There is nothing,’ he said, finally. ‘There is no story in the wood.’
‘Because there is no story in her!’ called a man from the crowd. ‘The Mothers do not see her.’
‘I said it would be so,’ said Fraid, turning away.
‘Let me help,’ said a low voice beside me. I turned to see Heka, poised, readying to throw a handful of acorns.
‘Thank you, no help is required—’ I stammered, prickling at her nearness.
‘But it is,’ she said. ‘After all, did you not help me as I stood at the gates of the Otherworld?’ She glanced at me and I saw that her spite had not lessened in the weeks since I had tended her. ‘Perhaps I can help wake the Mothers.’ She cast the acorns into the embers. Too many. Their explosions broke open the thickest log, releasing a red trickle of sap. Heka turned to the seer. ‘Now what does the fire say?’
The crowd watched. We all knew the method was flawed, but the seer was transfixed by what it had conjured.
‘The sap,’ he said, ‘It foretells the running of blood.’
‘Whose blood?’ I gasped.
‘Yours. Another’s. There are many rivulets—perhaps the blood of many.’ He looked at me. ‘You will find skin—’
My breath caught.
‘—but its cost will be blood.’
‘What is this rot and nonsense?’ Cookmother’s voice thundered into the silence, pushing Heka aside as she shouldered to the front. ‘Even I know that sap in the fire can mean many things. The coming of rains for one, which is well needed here. Or the waters of babebirth. Don’t set to terrifying the stupid girl with these horrors,’ she said to the seer as she clutched my arm.
Llwyd leaned forward, looking into the fire. ‘No, Cookwoman, I, too, see the message that has been spoken.’
‘I think there is little cause for concern,’ said Fraid. ‘She’s my kitchen servant. Unskinned and without influence.’
‘The fire says otherwise,’ said the seer.
‘Yes.’ Llwyd turned to Fraid. ‘She must be watched.’
My shock was lost in the babble of townspeople hurrying to take their place on the hillside before the rise. I stood between Bebin and Cookmother, the closest I knew to kin. We all fell silent as the sun neared the horizon, painting the sky a brilliant turquoise. A lone drummer struck a steady pulse.
We watched, motionless, as it dawned: the most beautiful and powerful sun of the year. When the crimson orb was fully birthed, Llwyd began the incantations. Many tribespeople took up the chant and some began to dance, but I had no heart for singing or dancing.
I looked out to the far edges of Summer, squinting against the rising sun. Perhaps Cookmother was right and there would be no spilling of blood. Perhaps I could trust in the light.
Heka’s grey-shawled figure sat alone on the hillside at the edge of my vision.
‘Do you see, girl?’ said Cookmother, shuffling beside me through the town’s winding paths. Bebin had stayed at the hill, but I had left early with Cookmother to prepare the solstice feast. ‘Do you see what comes when you play fool with the forest?’
‘But you said it would not be as the seer foretold!’
‘I said it,’ she spluttered, ‘but I cannot be sure of it. Heed the seer, if you will not heed me. Settle yourself, as I have done, to your days in Cad.’
‘I am told I will find skin!’ I wailed.
Cookmother tripped on a loose cobblestone and I grasped her arm to steady her. She stood, catching her breath. ‘Have I not given you the comforts of kin?’
My heart folded. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But—’
‘Then stay within the safety of Cad. Don’t stir up what is at rest.’
Then I voiced a question I had not even asked myself. ‘What if I am called to more?’
‘You are not!’ she cried. ‘How could you be called? You’re not even—’ She looked away.
‘Not what?’ I demanded. ‘Not even a tribeswoman? I know that. But you have always said otherwise. You have always told me I am whole to you.’
Her lips pressed firm. ‘This is a tiresome business, Ailia. You are needling more than a mouse in a grainsack and I wish you to stop it.’
‘And what of my wishes?’ I said. ‘What of my hopes and questions? Do you not think I hunger to know why the forest has spoken to me?’
Cookmother was seldom rich in good temper, but never had I seen her so vexed. Her eyes darkened. ‘You are no tribeswoman.’ Her voice was low and hard. ‘You are not wholly born and you shall not go in again. Do you hear?’
But I would hear no more. Instead, I ran. I ran back through the township, ducking and stumbling through the narrow paths. Ianna greeted me as she returned from the hillside, but I was too wild to answer. All I saw was where I did not belong and where I would never find Taliesin. I flew through the town’s entrance and down the hillside, turning west when I reached the Cam.
Eventually I came to an outlying farm where a winter cattle house stood empty while the beasts grazed the summer pastures. Exhausted, I pushed open the heavy door and crept into one of the pens, where I burrowed beneath the straw.
Cookmother’s faith had always given me a place. Without it, I had nothing. I cursed the woman who birthed me then condemned me to this tribelessness. The only one I wanted was equally lost and utterly forbidden to me. I curled into a ball and let myself weep.
A rustle behind me made me look up. Neha had found my hiding place. She dropped beside me, whipping the straw with her tail, summoning a spill of fresh tears that she licked from my cheeks.
We lay in the barn for many hours, although there was a feast to serve and the girls would have had to work harder without my help.
It was near day’s end when I emerged from my refuge. I took a moment to farewell the solstice sun as it grazed the horizon, then I turned back toward Cad. There, rising between the eastern hills, was a moon as round and red as a bowl of blood. This was the moment of which Llwyd had warned. It was too late to h
ide. I tried to move but I was caught between them, my fluids suspended by the pull of each orb. For an instant I felt myself stretched taut to breaking across the sky, then the moon wrenched free of the horizon, and I fell to the ground intact, released from their struggle.
Had it held? I worried as I scrabbled to standing. Or had the skin of our tribelands been torn?
Cookmother said nothing when I returned to the kitchen, though the clatter of pots spoke loudly enough. She served stew and oat bread to each of the girls, but it seemed I was to fetch my own. At the sleeping hour, she told me I could not lie in her bed. This she had never done.
My heart thudded with outrage as I lay next to Bebin.
‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘she will soften by the morning.’
‘Be silent,’ hissed Cookmother.
The kitchen slept but I could not settle. Outside the insects droned. The night yawned on, noisy with snores and tossing bodies. I got up. My foot caught on a basket as I passed, spilling barley kernels across the floor, but I could not stop to tidy them now.
Outside the air was warm, the moon still dazzling. Dogs howled through the township and I muzzled Neha with my palm. My senses were wakeful, my mind too alert. I would never sleep this night. I clicked Neha to my side and began to walk.
The rush of the Cam was louder by night, frogs beating at its banks. The moon lit my path. I quickened my pace. I was headed for the forest and I did not question it. Looming like a beast in the darkness, its breath drew me in. But even stronger than this, I knew Taliesin was close. He was what pulled me.
If Cookmother would not recognise me, then I was not bound by her command. If skin would not claim me, then I was outside the laws of skin. I realised now that there was freedom in being cast out: that I was beholden to nothing but my own will, my own desire.
I shivered in readiness for Taliesin’s touch. This was the night that earth and sun would join in us. I could not give him my song. But he would have everything else. I crouched down to kiss Neha—who still would not follow—and went in.
The canopy stole much of the moonlight. I crept forward by my ears and fingertips. The forest pulsed with danger but I was not scared.
Soon the trees thinned and there was enough light to see the sparkle of the river and the trunks that lined the path. There was no hutgroup, no fire, no women.
I came to the place where the hazel boughs reached over the pool, the blush of their berries still red, even in moonlight.
He came from the mist.
I greeted him but he did not return it, his bare shoulders rigid under my embrace. He was still angry, I thought as I released him. And yet he had come. Or was he here only to cut himself free of me?
He walked to the edge of the pool and stared into the water. ‘Shall we swim, Ailia? I know you have grown fond of it.’
‘No,’ I said, relieved, at least, to hear him speak. ‘Not at night.’
‘I have always loved to swim in the dark.’ His voice was distant. ‘My mother used to call me her night salmon.’
I walked to him. Perhaps, if I was gentle, I could lure him back. ‘Tell me something of her,’ I ventured. ‘Your mother.’
‘Short of temper. She had little patience for motherhood.’
‘But she must have loved you,’ I said.
‘Not enough to return for me.’ He looked straight ahead.
‘Taliesin—’ I touched his back, ‘—I can be no comfort to you unless you speak to me. I don’t understand—’
‘No.’ He turned to me, his expression bitter. ‘You do not understand. You will never be a comfort to me. You see only the light.’
‘It is not so,’ I said, recoiling. ‘I have known darkness, but I do not let it rob me of hope.’
‘Then you are a fool awaiting the next blow to your back.’
I stared at him. ‘Do you know so little of joy?’
‘I know pleasures,’ he spat. ‘A strong ale, a woman’s thighs.’
I winced. ‘There is more than that.’
‘The blind may believe it,’ he said. ‘I know of the world’s truth.’
‘But there is truth in the light! Your own riddle said it so—’
He snorted with disdain. ‘A riddle to comfort the stupid.’ His eyes glittered in the darkness. He was made ugly by this cruelty. I had never thought him so.
‘A life in darkness is no life at all,’ I said. ‘You might as well bid goodbye to this world and go searching in the next.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Useful advice.’
‘No!’ I cried, gripping his arm. ‘Don’t speak it—’ My chest ached with the sting of this soured meeting, the fear of his threat. ‘Why do you seek to wound me so?’
‘Why did you not return my song?’
I stood poised at the edge of a cliff. I took a breath. ‘Because I have no song to return,’ I said softly. ‘I am a foundling. Half-born. Unskinned. There. Now you have the truth of it.’
There was a pause. ‘But you are skin to the deer—’
‘No,’ I said, faint with shame. ‘It was a lie.’
‘A lie,’ he whispered. ‘Why?’
‘Because I did not want you to know the truth of me.’
‘Unskinned?’ He stared at me with an expression I could not fathom. ‘You will never journey—’
‘Of course not.’ I felt my heart beginning to harden like his. ‘I am no journeywoman. I am nothing, as you yourself have said so plainly.’
We sat in silence, the truth like a wound between us.
I awaited his goodbye. I prepared mine. But there was something more to be told. ‘I have confessed myself to you,’ I said. ‘Will you now tell me who you are?’
He stared out into the night, his face unmoving. Eventually he spoke. ‘I am not of the tribes.’ He paused. ‘I come from a different place.’
‘What place?’ I asked.
He turned to me. In the dim light his eyes were shadows. ‘It does not matter what place. Without skin, you will never reach it.’
‘Are you one of the outcasts I have seen in the forest?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I am sorry I cannot bring you more truth.’
I laughed in my sadness. ‘You are the only thing that is true to me.’
Beneath our feet was a soft, damp blanket of leaves. He sat, pulling me down beside him. ‘How are you permitted to be here so late?’ he asked.
‘I follow my own command now in these matters.’
He laughed heartily until I also was chuckling at my own boldness. The grey light smoothed his skin to a velvet softness. He was the dissolving of me. We both looked to the water as another red nut fell.
‘I am so sorry,’ I whispered.
He turned to me. ‘I love you no less unskinned, Ailia.’
My breath stopped. ‘How is it so?’
‘How could I not? I love what sits here before me. You are free and alive and brave beyond words. But without skin you will never come to my place and I cannot stay in yours. We can meet only like this, fleetingly and bound to this place. It is no offering for one as beautiful as you—’
‘I will have you however I can,’ I said.
He leaned forward and kissed my mouth. Never had I known such tenderness.
My senses were needle-sharp. All else beyond him paled. But beyond this moment, there was no ground between us, nothing to stand on. He was the cliff, the danger. I jumped.
We fell back, legs tangling. This time it was he who was hungry, tearing open my dress to savour the rise and taste of my breasts.
I drank the briny scent of his shoulders and neck: sharp and sweet as bitten apple. This was not the frantic clutching I had known with Ruther. This was the earth’s renewal brought to flesh.
In seconds we were ready, aching to join, but when I reached down to lift my skirts, he pulled away as if the wanting was too strong.
‘Why do you stop?’ I leaned up to kiss him, to bring him back, but he pushed me away.
‘I cann
ot—’ His face filled with anguish.
I could barely speak for my confusion.
He sat with his back to me, his breath heavy.
Throbbing, swollen with need, I hardly dared ask the question that came to my lips. I did not want to open the chasm between us. But I had to know. ‘You asked if I could journey. Is that what would bring me to your place?’
A ragged cloud darkened the moon.
‘Yes,’ he said.
My blood quickened. ‘But that means…you are of the Mothers’ world.’
Silence.
‘Are you of the Mothers, Taliesin? Are you of their place?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, and then he was gone.
I did not look up. To watch him go now would have broken me apart. My skin burned. I had to cool myself or I would crack.
I loosened my dress and under-robe, letting them slide to the ground as I stood. Naked, I stepped into the pool. The water was cool silk against my skin. I shut my eyes and sank to my neck.
But my eyes sprang open. I was not the only life in this pool. Something quickened at my shoulder and I knew it was there: my fish. This time I knew it was male. Only a male creature could bear the fierce heat of me now.
Through the black water I could not see it, but I felt its sinewy current as it circled me in tightening rings until its rough scales grazed my chest. It turned, darting and nibbling at the points of my breasts, bringing a pleasure so exquisite I cried out aloud.
For a moment it was gone, and then was there again, brushing my thighs as it swam past my legs, then between them. It was such sweet relief to be finally touched, that I could not help but make space for it, as it nosed at the creases and folds of me.
And when it burrowed, snaking into my body’s darkness, the force of my yearning for Taliesin broke open and I was lost in a shudder of pleasure so great that my legs buckled and I dropped fully beneath the water, where the fish kept on with his ways until I was thrown into such jolts of release that I felt I would never need air again.
