Tales of Avalon Read online

  “Perhaps we are,” she answered. And her eyes once more drifted, briefly, to another place and another time. Cethin was alarmed.

  “Lady, are you unwell?”

  Fianna opened her eyes and smiled at him again. “I was remembering another matched pair I once knew, many years ago. The memory brings me peace, and helps me to heal. Do you know of the name Vivian?”

  Cethin sat beside the cot. “She was the great Lady in Affalon, before the Romans came.”

  “Yes,” said Fianna. “She was my Lady, when I served as a young priestess caring for the children on the Isle of Mist. I taught them all about sunwort, you know, and other herbs. You have done well with this dressing on my poor side.”

  “Thank you, Lady,” Cethin answered, blushing as if he were one of her young charges rather than the Chief’s own healer. “But you spoke of a pair?”

  Fianna gave a quiet sigh. “Perhaps you have also heard of someone we called Yashi?” She could see by the puzzle in his eyes that he had not. “His real name was Eosaidh, a trader in lead and tin. His family had long owned mines in Cornualle and among the Mendydd hills. He came to us on changing currents at the turning of times, just before the Romans, and those who called themselves servants of the Christ.”

  Sensing the beginning of a tale, Cethin poured her more tea, and some for him, and settled on the low stool beside Fianna’s cot.

  “We knew not then that he and Vivian had met years before. Nor that they would become the ‘matched pair,' of which I spoke. They had grown old, but years are different for a Lady of Affalon. As cycles of the moon passed during those strange days they seemed to regain the spirit of an earlier time, the youth of a past meeting. They left us at the turning of the moon on a cold night so many winters ago. It is a strange and wonderful tale.”

  Cethin was lost in the eyes of the older priestess. “Tell me this tale,” he said quietly.

  “The tale of Vivian and Yashi is lost in the mists,” Fianna whispered. But her eyes brightened and her voice filled once again with life. “Yet there are tales that survive, tales it is said they told one another in the days of their first meeting, the Marsh Tales of Affalon, and other wonders.”

  Fianna reached out and took Cethin’s hand. “Come,” she said. “Trust in the gifts you have, Healer, and come with me, for I have something to show you.” Her eyes closed and her face, her face, softened. That was the word Cethin would have used. Her features had not been hard, but now they seemed softer still, as if surrounded by a fine mist, which began to swirl, and grow, and deepen. Without willing it so he closed his own eyes, yet still the priestess and the mist were visible before him. Something strange was happening, a shift in his balance, a dizziness that slowly resolved itself as if he had stumbled and regained his footing. As the mists cleared he found himself no longer in the house of healing at Llan y gelli, but in another thatched roundhouse, smaller, strewn with hides upon which he found himself sitting. A small fire burned in the center, its drifting smoke disappearing into the thatched roof above. Over the fire hung a small kettle, and there was the scent of chamomile and blessed thistle, and other herbs he could not recognize. Fianna was still with him, her back turned as she faced another woman whose face was like the strength of the earth, and the darkness of ancient marshes.

  Hush, Cethin. It was Fianna’s voice speaking in his mind. Hush and fear not, for this is Vivian of the Lakes, Lady of Affalon.

  Eosaidh has come upon a current, my Lady, Fianna was saying. Why do you fear his presence here?

  It is not fear, the older woman answered. Her voice was like deep and slow moving waters. He has been here before; he and I are tied together. It is a strange thing to feel old ties reborn at this turning of the ages.

  The women sat facing each other across the fire. Fianna glanced toward Cethin and looked questioningly at Vivian.

  Do not worry, the Lady said, It is well for this young Dubh-bunadh to be here. If you have chosen him to bear the tales into his time, then I trust your instinct. Let him listen, and watch with us.

  Once again ancient mists swirled around Cethin. When they parted, he saw Fianna and Vivian walking along a marshy shoreline. A grove of oaks grew along the marsh, a long, low branch of one old tree hanging out over the dark waters. Vivian was speaking in low whispers, seeing something under the oaks that was dark to his eyes.

  Did we talk that day? Vivian asked, as if to herself. Lying in the grass in the sunshine, with the hum of honey bees and dragonflies, we did speak, of marsh tales and nature’s beauty, of how high the sky truly is and other magical wonders. Suddenly Cethin realized he could feel the warmth of sun on his face, hear the drone of bees and other insects. Vivian and Fianna were gone from his sight, and in their place were a young woman and a man, seated together in the grass beneath the ancient oak, their heads together, their faces animated in conversation. The young woman leapt up, laughing. Don’t move, she said to the lad, Wait here! There were apples growing beyond a hedge of thorn. She ran to them, gathered an armful, and ran back to the young man, laughing and singing like a mischievous child. Suddenly she was silent, and the wind blew through her dark hair. She took a large bite, her eyes never leaving his, and then gave it to him, and he ate as well, the juice of the ripe fruit running down into his beard. Suddenly she pushed him over on his back, rolled with him in the grass and came up sitting on his chest. She laughed out loud again, and dribbled the juice of the apple from her lips onto his, and they kissed . . . and the vision was gone.

  ~

  Cethin found himself again in Vivian’s roundhouse with Fianna. Tell him, Fianna, Vivian was saying. Tell your healer the tales as I have told them to you! And they were no longer in the roundhouse, but in a small clearing in the moonlight. Off in the distance, near the edge of the forest, stood a man, strong yet filled with age, his face a rich copper color, his dark hair and beard mixed with gray. Vivian looked to him for a moment, then back to Fianna. We must go now, Fi,” she said quietly, Eosaidh waits for me. She turned and reached her hand out to him, and the two vanished into the trees. Cethin and Fianna stood together in the soft moonlight, the breeze dancing around them, as the mists rose once more.

  ~

  When his mind cleared Cethin was sitting on his low stool, Fianna had let go of his hands and was resting against the wall on her cot. The world as he knew it had returned.

  “But, but I thought . . . ” he began, as if to himself, “I thought Vivian and Eosaidh had died.”

  “Nothing dies, Healer,” said Fianna, “and no one is ever completely lost from us.” She opened her eyes and took a sip of her tea, grown cool during their traveling. “Vivian showed you more than I would have imagined. She bids you know not only the tales themselves, but the meanings they held in her heart, and the truths they bear for all who will hear them anew. And there are other wonders besides.”

  Cethin’s instincts as a healer took over. “Rest now, Lady,” he said, “and we will save tales for another day.” He bent low over his patient to get a close view of the long, ugly wound in her side. Just to the left of her stomach. Had it been an inch further to the right she would have been found dead on the path. As it was, he marveled at how well she was mending. Left open to avoid festering, it had begun healing well from the inside out. Soon he would be able to bind the outer edges more tightly together, and the final stages of recovery would begin.

  “That is the closest look any man has ever had of my belly, Healer,” Fianna ventured with a wry smile. “I hope you appreciate it. I’m afraid it looked much better many summers ago!”

  Cethin finished covering the wound with a light compress soaked in a tea of chamomile and sunwort. “I imagine it looked much better just before it met that Roman sword,” he answered. “I have seen many bellies, Lady,” Though he kindly stopped short of adding, “and one is pretty much like another.” He pulled a light blanket over her and she sat up carefully, leaning back against a pile of furs on her cot.

  “Stay, Cethin,” she sa
id, “and I will tell you a tale of bellies, if you will make some tea for the inside of my stomach as well as the outside.”

  Cethin smiled at her remark, for she well knew he had kept chamomile tea hot on the fire for her always since her arrival. He served them both, and sat on his old stool to hear the first tale.

  “It is the oldest of tales,” she began, “as old as the marshes . . .”

  Chapter Four I. Morla’s Belly

  A small rounded hillock still rises out of the mists to the west of Bryn Fyrtwyddon on Ynys y Niwl. In all but high summer it is separated from the isle of the priestesses by a narrow but deep channel. Bol Forla, it is called; Morla’s Belly. Its story is the oldest of tales, as old as the marshes themselves.

  ~

  Ages ago, yet not so many that the marshes were not already ancient, there lived a girl who was young and very beautiful. Her name was Morla, which some say means bitter, and some, woman of the marsh. Either would be true. Morla had been given in marriage to a tribal chieftain. He was old and leathery, kept his thoughts to himself, and was given to snapping at people when he wanted something or when he was feeling out of sorts. And so he was called Crwban, which in the common tongue means Turtle. The marriage had not been Morla’s idea, for she had been a youth of only eleven summers and dreamed of love and adventure. There was no adventure in Crwban’s roundhouse. He was too old for war, and, it was said, too old to please a young woman. Morla warmed his meals, and his bed at night, without feeling warmth herself. During the long days when Crwban drank with his fellows and bragged of ancient conquests, Morla would wander alone in the cool darkness of the Bitter Marshes. Her companions were marsh hens, and eels, and she learned the cycles of marsh marigolds, and the secrets of the ancient currents. Crwban did not care that she was gone all day, as long as she had his dinner ready each evening, and offered him the spreading of her thighs should he chance to be capable, though this was not often. So cycles of the sun went by, and Morla began the flow of her moontide, and became a woman.

  It was early in the warming of the year, and Morla was wandering the bog paths west of Bryniau’r Pennard, near Llynwen and the Bitter Marshes. Most considered the old bog impassable, but Morla had befriended the lands and waters; they shared the same solitude. The myrtles that surrounded the marsh were more numerous then, and they were just coming into bloom. The sun was low in the sky, its light gilding the waters of the shallow lake. Humming bits of old marsh tunes, Morla sat on a fallen log, pulling and plaiting reeds into a small basket.

  The sudden flushing of several marsh hens alerted her that she was not alone. Ceasing her own tune, she heard it faintly echoing back to her from out beyond the reeds in words of an old marsh tongue. Her own clan had not spoken that language for generations, but she knew most of the words from the folk she had met in her wanderings.

  Dark waters, deep, slow,

  secret paths among the reeds;

  dark paths where none may go

  who know not where the waters lead . . .

  Then I laughed, danced and sang, when I dwelt with tribe and clan; now dark waters are my home, because I went where currents ran . . .

  Through a gap in the reeds, out on Llynwen, Morla saw a small flatboat. A young man was standing in it, poling it through the shallow waters, and singing. Morla had never seen anything like him. Her people were short and dark. She had never seen any other. Compared to those of her clan, the young man in the boat hardly looked human. To begin with, he was tall. It was hard to tell from a distance, but Morla thought, were she standing next to him, she might barely reach his breastbone. It was curious that the thought of standing next to him warmed her blood. She peered closer, and listened as he sang.

  Because I went where currents ran . . .

  His skin was fair. In the setting sun it looked almost pure white. His hair was wild. It seemed to stand out from his head in spikes. And it was red. He seemed almost otherworldly as his boat glided silently on the lake and the words of his song faded into a soft hum. Then he was gone. At the same moment the sun set. Dusk began to envelope her as if it emerged out of the reeds, and she turned for home and the roundhouse of Crwban, her mind still wandering in the reeds of Llynwen.

  ~

  Often thereafter she returned near day’s end to the same spot. Mostly she saw only marsh creatures, but sometimes she saw him, out on the lake or poling through a channel. She invented stories about him, and began to imagine what it would be like to share his bed rather than Crwban’s.

  In the waning of the year, as the waters rose and flooded the bogs and geese flew overhead, Morla tucked her long tunic around her waist and waded out to the small rise from which she was used to watching for her young stranger. Her eyes were downcast, taking care for the perilous footing. As she stepped onto the rise she looked up. Her heart paused in its beating and she uttered a cry of surprise, for there he sat, on the overturned bottom of his little boat, looking up at her with eyes as blue as the harvest skies. He blinked once or twice. A dragonfly flew between them, hovered for a moment, and then sped off. She could hear the soft hush of the currents at her feet and, when it began again, the beat of her own heart.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Morla stared. He was tall and angular. As he sat there on the boat bottom his feet were flat on the ground and his knees came nearly up to his shoulders. His skin wasn’t actually white, but pale. She could see thin blue veins pulsing at his temples. His eyes were a pale, clear blue, and they stared curiously back at her. She saw up close in the shadows that his hair was coppery, rather than red, but it really did stand up from his head in several spikes, greased, perhaps, with animal fat. His nose and ears were pointed, almost sharp. He had freckles high on his cheekbones. She stared for many moments, and then started as he spoke again:

  “Hello. I am called Crika. Who are you?”

  Morla surpressed a laugh. Crika was a strange name.

  Not really a word, but sort of a sound that represented the phrase, a sharp poker made of red marsh reeds. “It fits,” she thought in amusement. And yet she knew instantly there was more to him than a frivolous nickname that made fun of his appearance.

  “I don’t remember my real name,” he said, sensing her need for an explanation.

  “I am Morla.” That was indeed her real name, but she had never realized how well it actually described her. Bitter as the Bitter Marshes.

  “Sit with me, Morla?” he said, more like a question. And added, “Please.”

  No one had ever asked her “please” before. Indeed, no one had ever asked her to do anything. She had always been told. Morla sat at the end of the boat, keeping her distance, not taking her eyes off him, and together they shared silence as the sun lowered toward the marsh.

  “I’ve seen you watching me from the reeds,” Crika said, after a time.

  Morla expected.

  “No,” he said. A broad smile revealed sharp teeth stained with the greens and browns of a marshweed diet. “No,” he repeated, “do not be sorry. It has made me feel less lonely, as if I had a friend.”

  Crika told her the tale of his banishment from the dwellings of the lake people. At first they had found him to be merely a strange child of a wandering stranger. But as he grew, his appearance became less and less that of his lake village mother, more and more that of the stranger from the north with whom she had lain. Still this would not have been impossible, but the changing shape of his ears and nose was troublesome. Put all together, the signs were seen to be ominous.

  quickly offered the apology she knew was

  “They said I was possessed by a water-spirit,” Crika said, “a child of the tylwyth teg. When I reached my twelfth summer they gave me a boat with provisions for a cycle of the moon, and sent me away. I have not seen my people since.” He had wandered the marshes, living on marshweed and eels, and little else. Once or twice he paddled close to the village, hoping to peer through the reeds for signs of his family. But he never saw them. “And so I have lea
rned to be alone,” he concluded.

  “I, too, have no friends,” said Morla, thinking of Crwban’s hearth, of lost memories of childhood. She lowered her eyes, struggling with choices. The sun had set, and darkness was spreading quickly in the reeds. “I must go,” she said, and stood, turning toward the shore.

  “Wait! Please.” He took her hand in his, then stood beside her and she saw she had been correct about his height. Nearly half again as tall as her, but almost as slight. “Wait, Morla. Stay with me. It will be dark soon and you will lose your way through the bog.”

  Morla knew she could not lose her way, even in the deepest night. The bog and surrounding marsh were more home to her than the tribal camp. But Crika wanted her to stay. Perhaps that was reason enough. “Where, Crika?” she asked. “We cannot spend the night on a tussock of marsh reeds!”

  “Come, I know a place,” he answered, tipping his boat upright. The first quarter moon was already high in the sky. Its light cast a glow upon the marsh mists as they swirled slowly in the breeze. Briefly, across the marshes and to their left, the high tor of a fog shrouded island appeared in the moonlight. Crika gestured. “Around the other side of that island,” he said.

  “Ynys y Niwl? But no one goes there! Crwban says it is an enchanted place.”

  Crika slipped the flat bottomed boat into the water. “Just another island in the marsh,” he said. “No one lives there except thrushes and hares. How can it be dangerous? Besides, we’re not going there. Just to a little island around the other side, where I stay sometimes. Ynysig, I call it.” The look in his eyes told her it was more dangerous than he said, but he was hoping against hope she would go with him.

  Morla stood in the moonlight and mist, between Crika’s boat and Crwban’s bed. And she decided.

  ~

  The soft rushing of the water and quiet hiss of reeds along the side of the boat seemed like music. Crika hummed as he poled the boat around the east end of Ynys y Niwl through marsh that was for the most of the year wet bogland, heading for the Bryw channel. Crwban would never come looking for her, Morla knew, but he would be furious when she returned.