by Ilka Tampke
‘Surely it is too soon?’ asked Ebrill, a quiet, watchful woman, who had been quicker than most to offer a second strip of meat at breakfast, an extra sheepskin by night.
‘No, she is ready.’ Steise sipped her broth. What say you, Ailia? Will you enter the cave of heat?’
Ebrill was frowning.
‘She has been quick to see difference in form around her,’ Steise said to her. ‘Now we must know if she can alter herself.’
Her light tone belied her words. Though I had never seen one, for they were deeply forest-hidden in Summer, I had heard whispered stories of the heat caves from Bebin and Cah. They were the crown of changework, the sweltering cauldron wherein human bones took animal form. Those journeypeople trained in change could inhabit many animal shapes. Not the skin totems—they were too close—but other shapes, other forms, that opened the eye of the soul.
It would be the greatest freedom I had ever known, yet I knew, from Sulis’s teaching, that it was utterly forbidden to those without the protection of skin.
‘Ailia?’ said Steise. There was grit within her babe-like voice.
The Mothers ignored my skinlessness, but could I? Lodged within me, disguised by my learning, hid the kernel of fear that this was not right. I buried it deeper. I had given myself to this learning so I would find Taliesin. And I had to proceed if I was to see him. But it was more than that now. I, too, wanted to know if I could change. I wanted to know if I could open the eye of my soul. I wanted to know how far I could go without skin.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will go.’
Throughout the following day I was given nothing to eat or drink, and was told to speak to no one as I went about the harvesting and extracting of the plants that would carry me that night.
Before sunfall, Steise called me to the Great Hut. She tipped a fine brown powder into a cup of broth and handed it to me. Immediately I recognised the pungent smell of fly agaric, a fungal herb forbidden in Caer Cad for the violent displays of strength it would incite among the warriors. I retched against its bitterness. ‘What is it for?’ I gasped when it was swallowed.
‘To change form takes courage,’ Steise said. ‘The powder dispels the fear.’
It did not stop my heart thundering as we walked to the cave, a small stone dome at the edge of the hutgroup. Ebrill and the other Mothers waited near its entrance, tending the fire that was heating the stones. Steise commanded one of the lesser Mothers to take the stones into the cave and pile peat over the smoke hole to trap the magic.
At Steise’s word, I stripped to nakedness and handed her my dress and cloak with trembling hands. The women began a low chant, whipping branches of birch against my bare arms and back.
I had learned of the risks in this journey. The body could be torn apart as the bones transformed, or the animal form that claimed the soul may refuse to release it. Sometimes the magnitude of the deformation could cost a life. I picked up the basket of bottles and powders I had prepared.
Steise held open the doorskins.
I crawled into the dark cavern, feeling my way over the thick straw that covered the floor, struggling to breathe in the steam. Only by heat did I know where the scorching stones lay. ‘Steise!’ I called. ‘Are you still there?’
I could hear the women wedging rolled skins around the doorway to make a seal. ‘We will wait you through the night.’ Steise’s voice was muffled through the leather door.
I closed my eyes and tried to lessen my heartpound. If I was steady with my breath, there was just enough air to allow my chest its rise and fall. Wet herbs hissed and steamed in the stone pit, and in moments my skin was soaked in sweat. A slow, sweet calmness washed through me. The fly agaric was working. In the blackness, I traced my fingers over the bottles beside me, and drank three drops of artemesia, followed by six of selago. Softly, I began chanting the first poem.
For many hours I sat, sipping, chanting, calling the change. Every so often the door was undone and Ebrill brought fresh-heated stones into the pit, briefly breaking the darkness with their soft red glow. The cave became hotter, the fragrant steam thicker. But still I was woman. Still I was here.
It had not been done correctly. I had not learned enough of the herbs, the quantities, the poems. I chewed some mugwort but it only muddied my memory for the poem. What would bring the change?
I leaned forward to tip water from a jug over the stones, my skin searing in the rush of steam. I began a chant I did not know well. A raven chant. The words would not come. But then they did and I cycled them over until the poem became fluid. Shaping.
There was someone in the cave with me. It was not Ebrill, it was Heka. And she was not angry, nor ugly. She was beautiful. She knelt before me and handed me two vials from my basket. Wolfsbane and mistletoe. A dangerous blend. But I trusted her. I drank them both and she was gone.
Now the spirit could dislodge from the bones. The heat bore down as the plants pushed from within. Rivers of sweat poured down my back, but my mind began to lift beyond the cave, beyond my curdling body. I felt an intense prickling beneath my skin. My eyes sprang open but there was only blackness. I tried to steady myself, but could not lift my arms. They spasmed mercilessly as their shape was shifted and bent. There was an agony of bursting as a thousand tiny arrows broke through my skin. My head dropped forward and I vomited with the pain. I was being wrung by the laws that make one thing this and another that.
Some say they are the same.
What you truly know, you will also love.
BRIGHT LIGHT. A wide sky above me. I had never known such sharpness of vision, every pebble, every crawling beast, clear under my gaze.
I staggered on clawed feet, lifting my arms to steady myself, but they extended endlessly to each side, black and glistening, their weight almost toppling me. Others of my kind reeled through the sky.
I was near a deep pit. Something within smelled good. I tried to lift myself in flight, but my command of my wings was weak and I fell to the ground, plummeting back into the darkness and heat of the cave, before I stood as raven again.
Once more, I attempted flight, but could only hop awkwardly on the stony ground. I lurched to the pit’s edge and peered in. There was a carcass, a human form. I was hungry. I launched down onto its leg and jabbed and pulled. The meat was tough but sweet. It was newly dead and did not tear as easily as an older kill. The eyes would yield more readily for a quicker meal. I hopped to the shoulder, then the forehead, cocking my head.
The sight of the face, rictal in death, hurled me back to the cave, naked and human, wailing at the doorskins. ‘Let me out!’ I screamed. ‘Let me out! She is dead!’
The door released and I threw myself out onto the icy ground where Steise gripped my shoulders. ‘Tell me what you saw, girl? How did you travel?’
‘I took raven form,’ I sobbed. ‘I saw Cookmother, my suckling mother, in the burial pit.’
The Mothers dressed me and comforted me, murmuring about the raven, the most powerful messenger of death.
‘Come,’ Steise, said, frowning. ‘Let us go to the seeing hut. We will observe what has befallen her.’
Steise filled the basin with water, tipping in a small jug of hare’s blood that poured in thick clo
ts. Swirling the water, she began to chant.
I waited beside her, stricken with fear.
‘Breathe,’ she commanded. ‘Open your spirit eye that you may also see.’ We chanted in a shared rhythm until she gasped at a sight. ‘There is pattern in the water,’ she said, moving aside. ‘You make the final clarity. The image in the bowl resides in our knowledge. The water is only its mirror.’
I leaned forward. Despite the dawn’s cold stealing in through the doorcrack, I began to sweat again with the exertion of summoning vision. Another blink and it was there. ‘Cookmother!’ She was alive. The raven had taken me to what had not yet occurred. Could I prevent it? She lay on a healing table with Cah and Ianna beside her. When did she become so weak?
I reached out to touch her through the veil of water.
Steise grabbed my hand. ‘You will disturb the sight,’ she hissed. ‘Just look.’
I saw Ianna wiping Cookmother’s face and Heka mixing a tonic at the table. I could not see the herbs but I knew she did not have the plantcraft to heal Cookmother or aid her passage into Caer Sidi. ‘I have to go back,’ I murmured.
The image began to disperse. Frantically, I splashed my hand through the water to make it return, but it did not. ‘I have to treat her,’ I said. ‘This is why the raven took me to her—to call me back.’ I was fastening my cloak, ready to run back to the gully or forest or wherever I could pass.
‘You cannot go back now,’ said Steise. ‘The bend of the flesh into animal shape can cause infection. If illness comes, you must be within our protection.’
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘She has only a short time.’ I was filled with a panic so blinding, I scarcely noticed Steise’s form, suddenly tall before me. I had never seen her draw, or take on a glamour.
‘You must hear this truth.’ Her eyes were white flames. ‘Or you will never find the path. If we do not bless your passage, there is no way back.’
‘It is different for me,’ I cried, refusing to shy from her. ‘I have journeyed before, unblessed, unprotected.’ I pushed past her. Only the love of Cookmother gave me the courage to do it.
Outside, the winter sun had risen and the valley was pale with a milk light. I fetched my sandals from the sleep hut and bound my sword-sheath to my belt, my heart thudding in my defiance of Steise. Then I ran from the huts, into the gully that trapped the mist, and up onto the hill beyond.
But it was as Steise had said. There was no mist. No border to cut. The trees and stones around me looked suddenly familiar. I was back at the huts of the Mothers of change. Steise waited in the doorway of the seeing hut. Unspeaking.
I tried again from a different direction. This time I ran straight toward the forest. I ran until the trees became thick, until I broke into a clearing, breathless and panting, right back near the huts from where I had come. I fell exhausted to the ground. I was trapped. I could not escape here without the blessing of the Mothers. My bones were aching and my skin was damp, despite the cold.
Ebrill helped me to my feet and led me back to the sleep hut where I fell into a feverish sleep.
I slept for several days and nights, drifting in and out of dreams. Whenever I roused, Steise was beside me. Each time I asked her when it would end.
‘Soon,’ she promised, though her pale eyes were full of uncertainty.
Finally my fever lifted. Dull evening light crept under the doorskins and a fierce wind wailed outside. Steise sat, waiting, by the fire.
‘Is she dead?’ I asked.
‘Not yet.’ She handed me water and a bowl of porridge, my first food since I had fallen ill. ‘You have taken raven form and survived it,’ she said. ‘You may leave. If that is still your desire.’
‘Yes!’ I sat up, the room spinning. ‘I will leave as soon as I have eaten.’
‘Is there not one you would like to see before you leave?’
I looked up. Her half-smile confirmed it. I had earned the right to see Taliesin just as I was determined to leave. I did not want to leave Cookmother in her illness for a moment longer. And yet, she had survived the past few days. Surely the shortest delay would cause no harm. ‘Does he know I am still here?’
‘Yes,’ Steise said. ‘Shall I tell him that you will come?’
I looked down at my sweat-soaked under-robe and arms still streaked with soot. ‘Might I wash first?’
I wiped my body with sage water and re-knotted my braids. It was almost sunfall. I would speak with him for the fewest of moments, and then I would leave for Caer Cad.
With wind whipping our skirts, Steise led me to a solitary dwelling hidden among a clump of trees just north of the hutgroup. I had noticed it as I gathered plants, but never had I seen smoke from its roof peak. Steise stopped a few paces from the door. ‘He is there,’ she called over the roar of the wind, and turned back.
My heart jumped furiously in my chest. Since we had last spoken, I had been marked as my country’s Kendra. I had journeyed and known animal form. Would I appear the same to him? Would he to me?
I rang the bronze bell and blotted my palms on my skirt.
The skins were pulled aside and he filled the doorway, his tunic falling open around the hollow of his throat. For a moment I was frozen, unsure, and then a frown flickered over his face, and I saw how deeply he had yearned for me. Without breaking his gaze, I reached for his hand.
He pulled me to his mouth. We had kissed before but never with such fierce intent. Never with such freedom. ‘I knew you would come,’ he murmured.
‘I have only moments to speak with you—’ I said, as he pulled me inside.
The doorskins flapped behind us in a burst of wind. As Taliesin retied them, I waited by the fire. The hut was sparse and well kept. I picked up a woven basket from the floor, its pattern and style oddly familiar.
‘My mother made it,’ he said, standing beside me.
I put the basket down and we both sat on the floorskins, close to the fire. ‘Tell me the truth of you,’ I said. ‘Is this your home?’
He took a deep breath. He was more assured here but somehow even sadder. ‘Often I am in the forest,’ he said, ‘hunting and fishing for the Mothers. I sleep there sometimes. Otherwise this is my home.’
‘But this is a women’s place. And a place of death. Why have you come?’
‘I didn’t come.’ He stared at the ground. ‘I was always here. I was born here.’ I heard his breath hasten with agitation.
‘Please,’ I urged. ‘There is so little time. Tell me how.’
‘All right!’ he said. ‘But do not forget, when you have heard it, that you desired to know it.’
I nodded. ‘There is nothing that could turn me from you.’
He faced the fire and did not meet my eye. ‘My mother was born of the hardworld. A gifted journeywoman. She was carrying me when she walked with these Mothers and I was brought to flesh here, where I should not be.’
‘Why did she not take you back?’
‘She could not. The boundary yielded for her alone but with me she could not pass. Because I was born here, the Mothers had claim of me. Knowledge has its own will.’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I k
now it.’
‘She stayed for my first four summers, although the Mothers had finished with her. She promised that she would never leave without me. But one morning she went harvesting and did not come back.’ He paused. ‘In the end, she broke her promise.’
‘She must bear a heavy loss for that choice,’ I whispered.
‘If she does, I do not know of it.’
‘So you have lived all your life in this place?’ I said, struggling to imagine it.
‘Yes,’ he said, without emotion.
I reached for his hand, warm and fine-boned, like a small creature, in mine. ‘With no one to teach you the ways of men?’
He frowned. ‘I have been raised by teachers. It is not knowledge I have lacked.’
I was quiet in the thinking of it. He was trapped, with no kin, in country that was not his own.
‘Do not pity me,’ he said, reading my silence. ‘My kin ties were torn, but I have walked and slept all my summers on Mothers’ land. I have made kin of sacred places, sacred waters. My mother left me with skin-law, and I have kept it strong.’
Indeed I had not met one whose skin was stronger. ‘Yet the Mothers themselves do not honour skin?’
‘No, they do not. I have been alone in it.’
There was too little time to ask of the Mothers, when there was so much else I needed to learn of. ‘How then did I met you in Summer?’ I asked.
‘It was as I swam in the river last spring. There was a red hazel berry of such brightness floating at the water’s surface. I was compelled to bite it and, the moment I did, I was pierced through the mouth with a hook and dragged deep beneath the water. My arms were as fins and I could not loose myself from the hook—’
