Skin

by Ilka Tampke

  ‘But what of the fish?’ I hiccupped into her skirts.

  ‘Stay clear of the place where you saw it.’

  And what of Taliesin? cried my heart, but as when I spoke with Bebin, I could not find the voice to name him to Cookmother. Her comfort was all I had. I could not risk it.

  There were footsteps outside, the girls returning.

  ‘Speak not of the forest to anyone,’ Cookmother hissed. ‘Anyone!’ Then she pushed me off her lap and rose to her feet.

  Cah burst in, flushed with excitement. Ianna trailed behind.

  ‘There is news in the township,’ said Cah, her eyes alight. ‘Verica, the Tribeking of the Artrebates has fled to Rome. He protests Caradog’s theft of his kingdom and asks for Rome’s help to retrieve it. The Emperor Claudius has agreed. War is coming.’

  Truth is life-giving, the sustaining power of creation.

  The realm of the Mothers is a place of truth.

  By truth the hardworld endures.

  FROM THIS MOMENT, there was little else but Rome on the lips of the town.

  Messengers arrived every few days telling of Roman forces amassing on the shores of Boulogne. Some said they were ready to sail, hungry to reinstate Verica and the other exiled British kings who would rule by Roman law. Others reported that these soldiers were scared, that the General Plautius could not rally them, that they feared the thick mists of this island and called it a place of dark magic, of hurricanes and creatures half-human, half-beast.

  We heard that the brothers Caradog and Togodumnus held an army poised at Cantia to fight back the legions. Then we heard that they had gone home to their wives and children, assured that the Romans were still months from sailing.

  The moon fattened and thinned twice. Cookmother permitted me to take no medicine outside the township walls. I could not even fetch the bread alone. Only to serve Fraid did she release me from her sight.

  Nightly Fraid argued with Llwyd as to the best way to proceed. Send forces straightaway? Wait to see whether Rome would move into the west after they landed? And always the Kendra. The Kendra who bore the power of the Mothers. Who would weave the spells that would confound and frighten the invaders. Who would guard the precious heart of Britain—its knowledge, its skin.

  I knew that Llwyd sat in silence for hours of each day calling for the Kendra to come. Over and over, he opened the bellies of wild hares and studied the entrails that fell steaming onto the crisp dawn ground. He watched the sky: by day reading birdflight, and by night, the stars, looking for omens that would lead him to her. He grew thin and wasted, fasting as offering for her revelation, drinking only the bark teas that I brought him for his vision as he sat in the temple.

  The arguments between Fraid and Llwyd were echoed among the townspeople. Some spat on Verica’s name, calling him a Roman-loving dog. Others claimed Caradog was too hostile, too greedy in broadening his rule, and needed Rome’s firm rebuke. It was the division in the town that most disturbed Fraid as I brushed and shined her hair each night with oil. How could we fight them when we were fighting ourselves?

  She ordered the works on the hill’s defences to be hastened. The ramparts were fortified and lined with a dazzling new layer of chalk. All was built in precise alignment with the sun’s path, ensuring a strength far beyond what a craftsman’s hand alone could bestow. When our structures echoed the order of the skies, they harnessed the power of the Mothers themselves.

  All this pleased Llwyd but it was not enough. Only the Kendra, he said—often with tears in his eyes as days without food made him weak—would bring us to unity and truth.

  And I lived with my own war between the ache to see Taliesin and the forces that held me from him. I was bound every waking hour to Cookmother’s tasks, shackled by a gaze that gripped me tighter than a prisoner’s neckring. Only by night was I free to be with him in my thoughts, where I relived every memory of his touch, and imagined those that might come. Like Llwyd, I did not eat; my belly battled food and I grew thinner. Like Llwyd, I was yearning for the one who would deliver me from this hunger.

  ‘Get up, Ailia.’ Manacca shook me awake.

  It was midsummer eve, the night of the southern solstice. I had drifted to sleep on the floor of the Great House, though we were all supposed to keep vigil through this, the shortest night. Now dawn approached and we had to walk to Sister Hill to watch the break of the year’s longest day. Despite Rome’s encroachment, or perhaps because of it, we clung even more tightly to our rituals.

  Bebin and Cah tugged on their cloaks as I helped Manacca tie hers, blinking tiredness from my eyes. ‘Do you come, Cookmother?’ I asked, prodding the mound snoring beside me.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ she murmured, breaking wind as she rolled over.

  I smiled at Bebin as we headed through the door and out of the compound to join the river of torches streaming through Cad’s southern gateway. I took a deep breath of the warm air and tightened my hold of Manacca’s hand. This was the first time I would walk beyond the town walls in more than two moons.

  The solstice fire was beginning to die down as we reached the top of Sister Hill. Young knaves took up hoops of branch and reed, doused them in grain spirit, then held them to the embers to ignite. We all chanted for the wheels to be sent forth, cheering and laughing as each flaming circle reeled down the slope, tumbling into the Cam below.

  ‘They’re like shooting stars,’ I whispered to Bebin.

  Manacca squealed as another was launched.

  The fire had been lit at dusk and had burned through the night, with Llwyd and the lesser journeymen keeping vigil. Now, as the hour of light drew closer, they allowed it to die down so that the solstice sun would know no contest as it banished the darkness.

  Fraid stood flanked by her high warriors at the western point of the fire, wearing her diadem and a thick gold torque. She would be first to hear the visiting seer’s predictions, first to be touched by the year’s strongest light.

  With their shoulders wreathed in summer oak leaves, the journeymen chanted by the dwindling fire. Their low, rumbling drone invoked the fire spirits to yield their truths to the seer who sat in trance beside them. When they had sung, the seer would scry the firebed and read the embers.

  The ground under my sandals was sticky from a wild mare’s slaughter. Her bones, flesh and white pelt had bubbled through the night in a cauldron on the solstice fire. Llwyd ladled the broth into a bowl and passed it to the Tribequeen. She drank to renew her place as first consort to these tribelands, then passed the bowl to her warriors, and finally to the seer.

  When all had drunk, Llwyd brought us to silence with his raised staff. Despite his frailty, he was still majestic in Ceremony. ‘The solstice fire has burned tirelessly through this night,’ he called. ‘This promises an early ripening and a plentiful harvest!’

  We cheered. Good news was greatly needed now.

  ‘It is time for the fire to speak,’ Llwyd continued. ‘But first look to the west.’

  Sinking into the horizon was a moon that was one day from fullness.

  ‘Today our mighty solstice sun will set against the full moon’s rise,’ Llwyd said.

  A murmur rippled through the gathering. There had been unease in t
he township about the sky patterns as we approached midsummer, but only the journeypeople could speak directly of such things.

  ‘Such a constellation occurs only once in many lifeturns,’ said Llwyd. ‘The two great sky spirits are each at their most powerful. As they oppose one another in the east and west, the skin of our tribelands will be stretched between them. We may be held in perfect balance,’ he paused, ‘or we may tear.’

  A rumble of panic rose in the crowd.

  ‘Be still,’ said Llwyd. ‘Keep to your houses at sunfall this day, that you will not be caught by the force of the pull. That you will not tear the skin. But now—’ he looked to the seer, ‘—it is the hour for augury. The coming sun, so challenged by the moon, will speak only its truest messages through the fire. Come forth if you would hear the fire speak.’

  The tribespeople surged forward, eager to learn what was foretold for them in fortune or marriage. They would need to be swift; there was less than an hour before sunrise. Among the milling bodies, I noticed a familiar hunched form, standing with her back to me. Almost as if she could feel my stare, Heka turned, meeting my eye. Her skin was still pocked with the scars of the blisters.

  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 w
hat?’ 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 hide. 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.