by Manda Scott
He was a singer, trained for half a lifetime in the rhythms and metres of the great-house. He knew how to cast his voice to hold an audience be they in front of the winter fires of a family or the great blazing trenches of the council house on Mona. He knew how to mould words to his purpose, and he did so bending every part of his skill to it.
He had faced the elder and all of the dancers as he spoke. Now, at the last, he, who knew Breaca as well as any man alive, turned and spoke only to her.
“This is not a final, pointless gesture of self-reproach because I failed to protect Cunomar and then Graine after him. At each time, I did the best I could, I know that and know that you know it. This is greater than any petty recrimination or guilt; it is my destiny, the pinnacle to which all of my life has pointed. Airmid would understand. She has held me in the lands of the living since the first time I tried to leave. She would not hold me back now. It is the only gift I have ever asked of you — and I do ask it, from the core of my soul. She would not let you keep it from me.”
Breaca was weeping, which was ridiculous, if a testament to his skill. Graine, dry-faced, had slipped a hand into hers and was squeezing as she had done in the days when they first moved east out of Mona. Stone nudged her leg and whined.
Cygfa said, “You do yourselves and us great honour.” Her voice was thick with care and admiration. Still, she did not love him.
Ardacos said, “Can it be done? You did not dance in the centre of the circle as Hawk did. You were not marked for the god.”
“It can be done, and Mona would support it. But not here and not now and not as it was planned.” Efnís answered before the deer-elder could speak. Turning, he pointed east and they all looked to where the first round edge of the sickle moon had carved its way through the white stone of the crag and was already lighting the clearing.
Speaking to the greater crowd, he said, “It’s too late to begin what the men of the Horned One would have done, but there may be a way that would join the gods of the night with the gods of the day, join the oldest of the gods, older than the Horned One, with the gods of our time. Dubornos, if he is truly willing, could carry the wish of our hearts to the gods in a way that transcends all prayer and dreaming. Such a thing has been done in living memory on Mona, but not often. It would be a very great thing if it could be done here and now at the time of greatest need in our confrontation with Rome.”
To those closer, he said, “It would be a faster death than was planned for Hawk, and would need to be carried out at full dawn, when the sun shares the sky with the horned moon. There’s time between now and then to make ready. If Dubornos truly wishes this.”
“I do.”
To the painted man in front of her, Breaca said, “Will you allow this?”
Sûr mac Donnachaidh, elder of the horned god and friend to the Boudica, closed his eyes and consulted with the god within. Opening them, he spoke in his own tongue to the silent, painted men who had gathered closest.
At length, he said, “It’s possible. We can say no more than that. If the fox-man would give himself willingly, then the god will not refuse him. But it should not be done here, at the dancing place, on land given only to the god. We will take you to the heathland, beyond the river, where the sun and the moon may be seen together without trees in the way. There is time for that if we move swiftly.”
They built no fire on the heath. The late sickle moon hung sharp and bright and clear above them and gave more light than anything made by human hand. Beneath its light, seeding thistles drifted down onto the breeze and buttercups shone pale as milk.
Dubornos led them to the heath and across it. He was a man transformed; faced with death and so release, he had come into himself as a man does who lives his own destiny after years of its denial.
The deer-dancers followed him in a broad procession. They brought their skull drums and their pipes and their god, in so far as they were able. Hawk did not take back the antlered stag’s pride, nor was it offered to Dubornos in his stead; the night had already moved beyond that.
Graine walked with Bellos between Cygfa and Hawk, who had gone from almost-dead to almost-brother with a speed that left her uncertain of where she stood. He bore her grandfather’s blade in a harness across his back and that changed everything, only that she did not yet know how.
She wanted to ask if he could hear the bladesong, but no-one spoke in the long, dark trek from the dancing place through the woods and past the river where the horses were left tethered and out onto the heath where the horned moon hung so bright above.
She forgot her question after a while and lost herself in the rhythms of the deer-drums that kept her feet moving long after she would have otherwise tried to sleep, and the husky whistle of the horn pipes that drifted back on the thistledown and tugged at her blood so that she had energy enough to run and dance another cycle of life and another after it if such were needed.
The sky was lightening to the east. Graine felt it in the increasing urgency of the drums. She began to walk faster, and then to run except it was not running, but a kind of dancing. Lame Gunovar was at the front with Dubornos. She set up a chant in her deep, hoarse voice that was older in its language and rhythms than the deer-chant, more deeply rooted, more unsettling in its challenges.
They ran to that new rhythm, hitting the earth with their feet so they sounded like horses crossing the dry earth. After a while, Efnís began a counterpoint and others joined him, weaving in and through with the essences of other gods.
They ran faster then, and faster, until their blood boiled in their hearts and mist covered their eyes that was not only the morning mist. In it, indistinctly at first and then more surely, Graine saw the gods run beside them. Nemain led them, in her guise as a hare and then as Airmid, or someone close to her; Briga followed, who was death and life and birth and war and the lure of the singer’s tale of the thrashing salmon under the ninefold hazel; Herne ran with them both, father and brother, lover and son: the horned god who was the deer and the wolf, the hare and the hound, the dove and the hawk, for ever part of the cycle of hunter and prey.
These three Graine knew and expected. Behind them, around them, came the ones she did not and could not fully name: Lugh of the sun-spear, and Camul, perhaps, who had been the war god of the Trinovantes who had named Camulodunum in his honour; Belin, who was the sun under a different name for a different people, and Macha, the mare-mother, who brought life to the Dumnonii with her milk and her hides and her yearly birthing of foals.
Behind them and around them were the gods of the ancestors, older, wilder gods whose names she had never heard except in the smoke of the great-house fires with their images running on the rafters; the ancestor-dreamer was there, and Ardacos’ she-bear, and deer with antlers that reached to entangle the stars and hounds who bore snakes about them as they ran and a man-woman figure made of starlight and deathlight and laced with the rising dawn who was the horizon lifted upright and was older than all of the rest combined.
She should have been afraid. She was afraid, but the chant held her and would not let her go and Bellos’ face was full of wonder so that it was hard to imagine him afraid and Hawk was there and he, too, could see what she could see and his hand brushed her wrist so that she could feel the life in him and hear, very faintly, the song of her grandfather’s blade which was more frightening than all the rest, and exhilarating and intoxicating so that she could run and not be afraid.
They stopped. Everything stopped: the dance, the chant, the drums, the pipes, the heart-crash of the run and the mist that came with it. The gods were there, but less substantial so that only by looking sideways out of the corner of her eye could Graine still see them, and then only fleetingly.
They stood at the edge of a moss, where sphagnum lay innocently green and bog cotton fluffed like dandelion heads and myrtle scented the air with slated mint and the very flatness of the land screamed danger.
Breathlessly, Bellos said, “They will do it here. He wi
ll die to the earth and the water. Graine, can you see a stone? Something about as big as your two fists. There will be one close. It would be good if you could find it, not anyone else.”
She did find it: a smooth, egg-shaped rock cut through with a vein of pale crystal. Bellos took it in his hands and lifted it to his ear and said, “Perfect. Keep it for later. You will know when. Now, we should be closer.” Hawk led them all forward through the crowd.
Cygfa followed because these were her brother and sister and the night was a time to keep together, not because she wanted to be close to Dubornos and his death. Even so, it came to the same thing; when Hawk stopped, they were with Breaca who was with Efnís, who was standing with Dubornos on one side and Gunovar on the other, and the chants were still in them and weaving them together so that they were set apart from the rest as the gods are from their people.
The moon was sharp as a blade. It cut the sky on the edge of its curve; west of it was the absolute black of night; east was subtly paler, blue instead of black, lightening by degrees to the eastern horizon.
Efnís said, “We are in time; the night is not yet lost.” He stepped back, so that Dubornos and Gunovar were together, still breathing fast and hard from the run, still sheened with sweat. He said, “The seed has been set over and over in the chant and the dancing. It should be set in living blood and bone now, so that life comes of death.”
If Cygfa had not been there, they might have done it, standing, lost in the godspace and the earthen urgency of the chant and the need that was clear in them both, but she was, and Dubornos’ gaze settled on her even as Efnís spoke.
He loved her, he had always loved her, and he was going to die. Graine was near to him. She read the longing in him first, and then the others.
In the space where no-one spoke, Cygfa said, “Let it be me.”
The gods and the world held their breath. Graine heard a keening such as Dubornos had made earlier and could not find its source, only heard the endless, unstoppable ache and wept for it.
Dubornos did not weep. He looked up at the moon and out to the sun and around to where the shadows of the gods lay on the land. “No. Thank you, but no.”
Cygfa said, “It is willingly offered.” There were tears wet on her lashes. Graine had never seen that.
Dubornos shook his head. “I know. Thank you.” His eyes were ancient. The pain had become so vast it had turned to compassion. “But ‘willing’ is different from a yearning that grows from the heart’s roots and I would not have it otherwise. In any case…” He grinned, and they could see the lightness of who he might have been if his life had taken different turns, ‘there is not time for what I would want and anything less would be … too little.” He stepped forward and embraced her, and pressed dry lips to her cheek and stepped apart again. She stood shocked and white in his absence.
With a courage that could be tasted, Gunovar said, “We are back, then, to what Efnís said. You and I can do this.”
The moment had gone; even Graine could feel that. Dubornos shook his head. “Can I not go as I am? Do the gods need that I leave a seed when what I take is our asking for their help?”
It was Sûr mac Donnachaidh, the deer-elder, who said, “The time of seed-setting is past. What we make here is something new. What the fox-man wants, he should have. The gods will not honour the gift of his life otherwise.” More than human minds knew him correct.
Dawn was growing, the night becoming less. They were measurable heartbeats away from the time when the sun would begin to outshine the moon, the day to engulf the night.
Efnís said, “We should begin. Dubornos, how would you have us—”
Graine heard Bellos draw a breath through his teeth and felt gooseflesh rise on her arms.
Dubornos said, “The threefold death. It must be.”
It was older than the death the deer-elders had planned for Hawk, and honoured more gods. Bellos let out his breath again in a long, soft hiss. “Well done. Very well done.” He said it quietly; Graine did not think she was meant to hear.
Efnís nodded and ran his tongue across his teeth and said, “Who should do it?”
Graine had not thought he might be given that choice. The stone she had found weighed suddenly heavy in her hand so that she wanted to drop it, or throw it away, but could not. His gaze swung to his right, where she stood among the others, and her heart stopped in her chest, then began again, crashingly, as he smiled for her and his eyes said goodbye and his gaze moved on and rested on Cygfa, who turned white as the moon and seemed not to breathe for the long moment it took for him to speak his wordless farewells there, too, and then passed on to linger more briefly on Hawk and to exchange the odd shared look with Bellos’ blind gaze and then the elders and Gunovar and so it was obvious, because he came to her last, whom he would choose.
He did not kneel, although the thought was there, only stepped forward to face the woman who stood a little apart from the rest, and had done so from the beginning, the one who had run just behind him all the way from the dancing ground, who stood there now, with her back to the rising sun, gathering all the light of day and night so that she stood balanced exactly on the borderline of both, and held them both, and was them both, shiningly.
With all that he asked and offered free to be read on his face, Dubornos gave the warrior’s salute of the Eceni and said, “Breaca, would you do this for me?”
She heard him speak her name through the soar of the dawn in her head.
She saw the radiance of his face and could not understand why she had never thought him beautiful before. More than a man in love, more than a winner of battles, he encompassed peace and the astounding grace of a life lived to its utmost. She matched his salute and knew that if the deer-elders had seen him thus, they would never have chosen Hawk to carry their plea to the god.
More gods than only the Horned One of forest and night stood around them, so that the air was pregnant with their waiting. The pressure of that and the rising crescendo of the dawn, as of a storm that comes to breaking, filled her head and made it hard to think.
“Don’t think.” Dubornos was with her, close as a shield-mate in battle, a partner in the ultimate dance. “Only act, Breaca. It is not for us to think now.”
Efnís was there, and Gunovar, and the beautiful gold-haired blind youth from Mona so that she was caught in an arc of dreamers. Then Graine stepped amongst them, her face smooth in its seriousness. She carried a stone the shape and size of an eagle’s egg between her two hands and offered it up.
Breaca could not move.
Dubornos took it. “Thank you. That’s perfect.” He was moon-blind, his eyes wide and black. He found Breaca’s hands by feel and pressed the cold stone into it. “That is the first gift of your daughter. You need a cord or a thong for the second.”
She had one round her neck, bearing the Sun Hound’s ring. She waited for someone amongst the hundreds to come forward with something better, but they were all naked and had nothing to offer.
The ring fitted her. She had not expected that. She untied the two ends of the thong and wrapped the whole round her left hand. Graine’s rock lay cool and heavy in her right.
The dawn roared, as a storm near breaking. The horned moon sang a single lofting note. Somewhere in the balance between these two was a gap, a gateway when the light of each was even on the earth, when night was perfectly matched by day. Through such a gateway, a man might step who had the need and the desire, who was clearly focused in his intent to greet the gods and they open in their welcome, forewarned of his coming.
In the language of the ancestors, old as the stone, Dubornos said, “Breaca, it must be now, or we have lost the time.”
Others sang it, who were not human. The noises converged and made a space of silence in which, blessedly, it was possible to think, and so, finally, to act.
They stood on the edge of the bog. Breaca held Graine’s stone in one hand. Dubornos placed the thong round his own neck. The moon held them: all-n
ight, all-power of the dark and the unseen and the unspoken. Then the dawn moved on and the rush of its beginning, of all beginnings, of new day and new life and new hope carried them to the place where day and night, beginning and ending, life and death were exactly even, and they were needed, one stepping into life, one into death, to keep that balance.
“Hold me,” he said, and she held him.
He was naked, but for the tab of vixen’s fur round his upper arm. She felt the brush of it between her breasts, damp with his sweat and hers. She breathed in the smell of his hair, his skin, his breath. She felt the drumming of his heart, far steadier than her own; his pulse, leaping as the deer leaps, as the salmon, from one heartbeat to the next, the urgency of it, the joy. She felt the surety of his intent, the sudden, certain settling into focus, and heard him.
“Breaca, now. Please.”
With the stone, she broke his head. The egg fitted the curve of her palm. Its weight cracked open his skull. His spirit broke free of his body. He was heavier in her arms.
With the cord at his neck, she cut off his air, that his breathing might stop, as it had once started when the cord was cut from his mother.
Last, she lowered him with all care face down into the bog that he might return to the water whence he came, and the embrace of the earth beneath it. To her left, the dawn, so long delayed, soared into being.
Thank you.
His soul spoke from beyond earth and water. He shone. His eyes were the moon and the sun. Peace hung about him like a cloak, and the certainty of where he must go. Already, he was moving, backing away from her on the shining path the new sun made for him. He said, I know what we need. With all my soul, I will ask for it.
She could not speak. Her throat closed over the words and the air as if a second cord had been hers. He said, Don’t grieve. It was the best of deaths. The gods approved it.
