Moth lay awake, listening. She was always listening. For
her, the night was alive with a thousand sounds. And tonight every one of her
senses was heightened by the ritual mushroom stew that had made her dream so
vividly and kept Shana twitching against her.
Winter held the land in its frozen grip, though inside the cave the
embers of the fire kept the worst of the chill at bay. Beneath the heavy
bearskin Moth and Shana lay curled together, sharing their body warmth. They had
done so for as long as Moth could remember. In all her nine summers she had
never known a day without her older sister’s presence.
Shana was the older by two summers. The swiftest, the merriest, the
best beloved. First to laugh at a butterfly’s flight, first to weep over a
fledgling tossed from its nest, first to sing, first to dance, first to exclaim
over father’s wounds if he came in from the hunt bleeding.
But Shana was not the first to find the herbs needed to stem
the bleeding. No, leave that to fumbling, stumbling Moth, the runt of the
litter.
Half blind since birth, seeing everything through mist, Moth
had never run with the rest, nor laughed and danced as they did. She stayed
behind with the old ones, scraping hides and weaving cloth, listening to
wise-woman Brekk ramble on about runes and rites, bones and herbs, with the
great bear skull sitting on its ledge listening. Moth too had listened, watched
everything that was done, heard all that was said. Too much, perhaps.
Now, she heard her father shifting beside the young woman he
had chosen as companion after mother died. In a deep corner old Brekk snored
through her toothless maw, while around her others of the clan breathed and
shuddered and dreamed in the drugged aftermath of last night’s feasting. She
heard the night wind breathing harsh and cold against the mouth of the cave, the
spring bubbling despite its coating of ice, trickling down over rough stones
towards the stream in the snow-caked valley.
A change in Shana’s breathing told Moth her sister was also
awake.
‘Moth!’ The whisper was a hot breath in the darkness as hard
fingers dug into Moth’s flesh. ‘I know you’re awake! Listen! Do you hear them?’
Moth said nothing. She lay still, breathing lightly, feigning
sleep. The night was deep and dark. All too soon she would have to stir and
begin this particular new day. It had to come. But not yet. Not yet.
Her wakened senses discovered a wolf howling far away. She felt the
moonlight bright on the snow-clad earth, and the great silent weight of the
glacier to the north. It was creeping closer again, less than four days’ journey
away now. If it was not stopped, disaster would follow. In the heart of winter,
fear stalked the earth.
Despite the warmth of the bearskin around her, Moth shivered.
The coming day was Solstice. The shortest, darkest day of the year, when the sun
was at it farthest point. When it might slip over the rim of the world and never
return. She was aware of the earth, the Great Goddess, waiting -- not sleeping
as humans did when darkness came, but watchful and listening. As Moth herself
was listening. Waiting for the first grey light of dawn, for the first skein of
geese to gaggle overhead, for the first ray of sunlight to halo the crest of
Midwinter Hill.
The sun was all. If it should go away then all would be lost.
Come winter, come summer, the rites must be played out correctly, the steps
trod, the songs sung, the spells cast, the blood given. This winter in
particular, with the great ice sheets threatening once more to engulf the land,
the people must conjure their deepest magic.
Today, when the time came, Moth knew which life would be
forfeit to the gods.
‘Listen!’ Shana sat up beside her. Moth heard the excited
quickening of her sister’s breath, sensed the pounding of a small, sturdy heart,
the rush of blood through young veins. ‘Moth, wake up! Listen! Don’t you hear
them too? It’s the stones! The stones are singing!’
Moth heard them. She had heard them all her life.
‘They do,’ she said, very low.
Maybe Shana didn’t hear her. Maybe she didn’t want to hear. She was often
impatient with her useless little sister. ‘You sit too much with the old women!’
she would scold. ‘You’re becoming one of them.’ Now she leapt to her feet,
hissing, ‘I’m going out to see.’
‘It’s too soon!’ Moth protested.
‘I’m going! You needn’t come. Not if you’re afraid.’
And with that challenge she was gone, making off toward the cave opening.
To Moth’s dim eyes the cave’s mouth was no more than a
paler smudge in the darkness. But the stones were calling to her, too. They sang
an alluring song, much as old Brekk did when she hummed softly and drew the
little deer to venture within reach of her sharp spear. Or when she went out
among the thorn scrub at night and sat crooning with the owls and the wildcats,
a song so soft you heard it with your scalp and the soles of your feet rather
than with your ears.
Those same sharp senses – a gift from the gods who had formed her body so
clumsily -- allowed Moth to weave her way past the sleeping bodies in the cave,
past the embers whose wispy smoke smelled sweetly of pine, dulling the sour,
nose-wrinkling tang emanating from Gart’s body as he slumped over his spear. He
was supposed to be keeping watch but after the festivities of the previous night
he had succumbed to the drowsiness induced by mushroom stew and fermented
berries. He drank too much berry juice and he loved wild garlic; it gave him a
peculiar body odour that Moth could tell among a score of others – just as she
could tell her sister, or her father, or any of the others of her tribe -- even
in the darkness of a moonless night.
Alerted by a tingling across her scalp, she glanced back to where in the
depths of the cave the darkness revealed nothing but the dancing lights behind
her own eyes. Even so, she knew Brekk was watching her. ‘Go...’ came the old
woman’s thought across the night. ‘Go to your destiny, child...’
Moth didn’t shiver. The chill was too deep for that.
Colder than ice. Her very soul felt the heaviness of what lay before her. Today
was the day. The sacrifice had to be made.
Reaching into the pouch at her waist, Moth took out her piece of dried
mushroom and began to chew on it, feeling its magic work to widen her senses.
Despite the misting shadows that clouded her sight, she
felt the starshine. Their soft light prickled, caressing her skin. She knew that
the old moon lay on her back low down in a cloudless sky ablaze with silver
speckles, with the seven stars of the Great Bear watching, waiting. Starlight
lent a pale grey tint to the world, reflecting from the snow-bound land, from
the ice-field and the white mountains to the north. Out in the open air it was
seldom totally dark, especially when your senses were alive to every sound,
every scent, every nuance of meaning in the lilt of the earth-song and the
rippling, shimmering streams of power that linked every living thing. You didn’t
need sharp eyes to sense those things. They sang in your blood and along your
skin, a whisper across your cheek, a sigh stirring every tiny hair on your body.
Tonight it was more potent than ever. It was always at its most potent on
midwinter eve, when everything waited for the sun’s coming. Would it rise, or
had it gone forever?
The stones’ song was louder now. Moth heard it, away down the hill where the
stunted willows bent along the ice-lined path of the stream. That was where
Shana had gone, answering the call to the gathering place. Impulsive as ever,
unable to sleep with her nerves atwitch, she had gone alone to begin the dance.
When first the glaciers began to shift and retreat – when the people had
wandered northward seeking shelter, following the hares and the elk herds (so
the stories told) – this place of hills and caves had declared itself as a place
of power. The first great stone had been waiting, a huge slab of grey rock
carefully placed by some giant hand. Balanced on a pivot point, it would rock to
and fro at the slightest touch. It was a sacred emblem, a wonder, a gathering
place for prayer and sacrifice. Until the time when winter’s grip hardened again
and the glaciers began to creep back towards the place of caves.
That coldest of years, when the sun dwindled toward
midwinter the people had feared it might never return. Despite dancing, prayers
and bonfires the winter bit hard, turning all the land to rock and the waters to
ice. By night the skies were clear and cold, as clear and cold and hard as the
stare of the Great Bear. The people despaired.
Then at the solstice (so the stories told) a great
storm arose. The earth itself shook and the sky trembled with a thousand
thundering voices. Lightning struck the sacred rocking stone. Sent it tumbling
from its height. The people fled from the wrath of the gods. But when the stone
came to rest, tall and upright, its narrow end buried deep in the ground,
beneath it lay Ganhir, the chief’s only son, a fine strong warrior eighteen
summers old. His blood and bone had gone back to join Mother Earth.
Thus the gods made their choice. Thus they erected the
first stone. The He-stone.
The gods had been pleased. They had kept faith. Once
again the ice had begun to retreat. But every few years (so the stories told)
deeper winter gripped the land and then again the people feared. Over time, the
runes decreed that the He-stone must have companions. Over time, succeeding
wise-women divined there should be nine companions in all. Three times three,
most sacred of numbers. Nine maidens to dance around the He-stone. Nine smaller
stones to weave an eternal circle, to guard the land, to stop the ice, to bring
back the sun.
No one ever spoke of the deep magic that was needed to
raise the stones. Moth had never seen it done. Her father had been a boy when
the eighth Maiden-stone joined her seven sisters. Even so, Moth knew.
She hardly felt the cold. Her head was still buzzing
from the flesh and juices of the sacred mushrooms Brekk had prepared last night.
Everyone partook of that stew at feast time. Everyone. It was what made them
sleep so deep on solstice eve and kept the babies quiet. For Moth herself it
always summoned strange dreams and even stranger visions; more often it kept her
awake, every sense heightened and attuned to the clamouring rhythm of the
life-force that flowed throughout the natural world.
For Shana, by contrast, the mushroom broth made her
laugh and shout louder, increased her playfulness. And her wilfulness. That was
why she had got up so early and gone out to the place of stones. That was why
she had heard, possibly for the first time, the song that Moth had heard many
times before – the song of the standing stones.
Tonight the strange other-worldly harmonies of that
song were near to blending. The stones called for the closing of their circle.
They called Moth to follow in her sister’s wake. She knew all too clearly what
her destiny must be.
On the edge of the hollow, she paused and reached out
around her, opening all her senses. She was not alone. There was Shana, down in
the hollow dreamily stamping out the path of the ritual dance. And behind Moth
the others were beginning to gather. They had felt the call, too. Dawn was
coming. It was time.
The ninth stone – the last She-stone – the one that
would complete the circle and ensure the magic for ever -- stood only a few
paces from the hole prepared for it, where it would stand for eternity to secure
the blessing of the gods. All it required now was the pure young blood to secure
its foundation. The lifeblood of a ninth maiden.
Moth had long imagined how it would feel when the cool
knife bit deep and the hot blood sprang forth. She had lived through it on many
sleepless nights. Did the spirit truly rise with the rising sun (as the stories
told), dancing far above the dark damp earth where the crumpled body lay safe in
the bosom of the Great Mother. And then the stone would drop, crushing bone and
flesh, shutting out the light, the air...
She waited. Standing calm and straight on the edge of
the clearing, with low scrubby trees all around and the starlight waning as the
first grey light of dawn showed pale above Midwinter Hill. Behind her, old Brekk
clambered up to stand flat-footed on a slab of rock, swathed in her ritual
bearskin robe, her long staff in her hand as she faced the hilltop. Silent.
Waiting. Moth didn’t need to see her to know she was there.
All of the people were coming now, called from slumber
by soundless voices, emerging from caves honeycombed among the hills, until the
whole tribe gathered, half a hundred or more. Mushroom liquor had numbed their
minds and now more pieces of dried mushroom served as a heady breakfast to widen
senses and open the sacred ways. The people felt themselves as one, blending
with the earth and the sky. Feeling the sun’s approach.
As the light grew, Moth sensed the nameless power
rising like mist from the earth to gather all living beings into its web. It was
claiming her, too. Drawing her to accept. So it had been. So it was. So it must
ever be. That the sky may not fall, nor the seas flow over, nor the earth crack
and belch flame. All would be well so long as the people kept faith. For ever
and for ever. She sensed them all -- the men and the women, the youths and the
maidens, the little children, the beasts being drawn to join in, the birds, the
insects, the iced water from the spring, the snow on the grass, and the new
day’s dawning... All must play their part if the sun was to go on rising, the
ice retreating, the moon and stars gently circling...
Shana was dancing with the other maidens now. They
waved long branches of dark, aromatic pine, sweeping them now high, now low,
twining the warp with the weft. Some of the older women moved to join in,
swaying and stepping around and among the stones, weaving an intricate, mystical
pattern. Their dance captured the threads of power that enmeshed the whole
earth. Strand by strand, they wove a living web that Moth felt ever more
strongly. Invisible to mortal eyes the earth-force sparkled and shimmered,
weaving into its pattern the central He-stone and the eight smaller stones that
circled him, until the stones themselves seemed to be dancing.
Trembling with the force of the magic, feeling it well
up from somewhere inside her, Moth took a deep breath. The power brimmed over.
It emerged from her throat as a single pure note. Old Brekk added her own
energy, a discordant cry that jarred with awful precision. Someone else blew on
a strident reed flute. For a moment the separate sounds screeched across Moth’s
teeth and hurt her head, but then the others began to hum. Slowly, like a living
thing feeling its way from darkness into blinding light, the chord shaped itself
into a terrible harmony. The force of it glanced among the gathered people,
among the trees, among the stones. The air thrummed with it, touching all of the
dancers who stamped and whirled, bending and rising, in and out. The thread they
wove with their steps had widened. It was twined now around the ninth and final
stone, drawing it into the dance.
One or two of the babies began to wail. The chord of
power took the new sound and added it to the song. Wordless words added their
chant, weaving it with the rising web of power. And all the time the light was
growing. The shape of sunrise hill showed clear now, limned with light.
Moth found herself part of the dance. All of the people
were a part of it now, stamping and leaping to a rhythm that blended all the
world into one living entity. Moth saw it as a blur of sound, scent and shifting
ribbons of light. The standing stones were dancing too. Moth moved with them,
taking her place as she had known she must. The rhythm vibrated in blood and
heartbeat, in the tumult of a cold wind rising, the cry of geese overhead, in
tingling feet that trod the pulsating earth beneath a sky where blue was chasing
grey.
Moth knew the moment when the power grew to a pitch
that allowed the final stone, the last She-stone, to lift from its waiting place
as easily as if it were a pebble. Brekk walked by it, chanting, a strange
inhuman figure in her long fur cloak, wearing the great bear skull as a crown.
The power seemed to leap around her, bathing her in light. Several of the
strongest men had gathered round the stone, each man placing a hand against it
to guide it. Bringing it home to complete the sacred circle.
In front of Moth the hole in the earth gaped. Deeper
than a grave. Black and raw, it had been dug during yesterday’s festival, before
the feast and the drinking and the mushroom stew. She felt it waiting. A maw to
be filled. Her head rang with the tumult of sound and motion as the maidens
gathered round her. Shana was with them. Garlanded in pine. Laughing. Behind her
the last She-stone floated, moving closer. Shana’s eyes were wide, the blue
almost eclipsed by irises widened and blackened by the drug. She laughed as she
tore the prickly garland from her hair and crowned Moth with it, saying, ‘Yours,
I believe.’
In that moment the rim of the sun lifted above the
hill. Golden light blinded Moth. She sensed the cold sharp blade of the knife as
it lifted against that light. Her scream added the final note to the earth’s
song.
The blood was shed. The body laid in the pit. The stone
fell. The thud of its planting reverberated through the world as a final howling
ululation greeted the circle’s completing.
* * *
Listen!’
The single word caused all chatter to cease. All eyes
turned to the wise-woman. One word, pitched just so, could summon
the power a shaman commanded.
Every time Moth spoke that word it brought pain. It
made her smile, and it made her want to weep. It was a reminder. Of
the day the power came in full force. The day she knew she was
destined to inherit old Brekk’s cloak. The day the last of the Nine
Maidens joined the sacred circle. So long ago.
Gladly would Moth have changed places with her sister.
But the sacrifice had to be of the finest. The swiftest, the
merriest, the first to laugh, the first to dance... Not the runt,
the one who lived in a world of shadows, sitting beside the fire,
learning from the old and, now in her own old age, teaching the
young.
‘Listen!’ she said again, and as eager young faces
lifted to hers she did not regret her place in the pattern of
things. ‘Do you hear them? Do you hear the nine maidens singing? One
day, I promise, you shall see them dance.’
Imagine the magical building, eons ago, of one of the ancient rings of standing stones which are dotted around the world, particularly in Britain.
Such sites are believed to have been sacred places for the people who made them. Chris and I have, as you might expect, visited Stonehenge, the most famous of all, and Avebury, not to mention many smaller sites around Britain. We also went to the stone circle at Callanish, up in the wild and windswept Hebrides, on a dark October day. With a sky full of scudding black cloud and a howling gale slashing freezing rain, we could well imagine the echoes of dark deeds and ancient mysteries still lingering round that bleak place on the peaty moor.
So I wondered how, and why, such a circle might have been made, long ago, when people still remembered how to summon the harmonies of the Earth Mother.
Gaia... she has always intrigued me. This story is the result.
For more evidence of my obsession with ancient times, see the Poems section.