The Dark Chronicles

An Erotic Telling of the Arthurian Myth

A.A.Cain

Copyright © 2019 by A.A.Cain

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A. A. Cain asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This book contains adult content and explicit descriptions of sexual activity. It is not intended for minors.

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The Dragen Awakens

I was there.

The day the earth roared louder than thunder, and ash and floating rock fell into the sea all around the ship, and the sea rose and dropped five huge times, I was there.

The voyage had been long, south down the long coast of Shi, aboard a tall ship made by the Emperor, three galleys high and two sails wide, his gift for my voyage. I made the Emperor a map when I returned from the mountain gone from the sea, and that was my gift in return and my thanks.

“I did not know other kings’ lands lay beyond the frozen mountains and long deserts; these are not my people,” he said, as he marvelled upon the map. “How many years did you say, travelling here?”

Two hundred men rowed when the air was still and the ship made head to the south. I had heard tell of the smoking island; captains and commanders sailing up from the south, from Banteen and Baatuwara, landed and told stories in the ports, and they were always the same, these stories.

“High from the sea,” they told. “The mountain grows high from the sea, the height of two tall men each year.”

The stories made me curious and I thought upon brother Plinius and his boat, and the cloud rolling down the high mountain that he saw, swift as water and dreadful, both cities gone and the earth all alive.

This was a bigger dragen coiled in rock and fire, molten rock in its blood and smoken ash in its breath. I was curious and made my way south.

“We will stay on the water,” the captain said, “and not make landfall there. The craft will be safe, but the shore is not safe.”

The commander I found to discover the place was the sixth seaman in a long line and his greatest scare was to sail close to the land.

“I’ll not do it,” he said. “I’ll sail off the shore the distance where the mountains are small and far away.” He was certain. “My grandfather taught me this, and his grandfather before him.” I trusted him, and the ship turned once around the mountain, so I could see with mine own eyes that the stories were true.

The mountain was tall, perfectly shaped like the high Fuuj near the castle of Prince Shotogku in Japon, but the top was rock and rubble, not snow, and I could see with my eyes that no bush or grass or tree grew there. Smoke rose, a straight long column climbed high into the sky until the wind and the clouds tore it apart.

“You see it, sire, and I wish it behind us.”

The captain’s nervousness crept upon me, and I am used to rooks and ravens and tall stones and do not get nerves. But even I could feel the low breath upon the air, beneath our hearing all a giant throb upon the water, strange ripples shimmering in circles on the surface of the sea.

“See it, sire, and we shall make our way off. There are no birds here and the fish are gone too. Let us not stay long.”

The captain was nervous, and I shared it, so we made our way off, until the top of the mountain only could be seen, the horizon a long darkness against the westering sun, and the cap smoking there, its long thread climbing highest to the sky, and lingering up high, threading smoke through the finest clouds like sand in a stream.

That night, a storming rain surrounded the ship and the clouds dropped low. The captain kept small sails aloft so the ship could still make head, but its movement in the water was slow, just enough to steer. The captain kept towards morning, and the sea shuddered and pulsed beneath the hull, and far off from the land we could hear low groans and echoes. Nobody knew the meaning of the sound, it was uncertain and irregular.

“Look toward the west, sire, I think the dragen awakens and we might see it roar.”

In the galley and on the poop, the men were hushed and low songs began. These men had no words on their fingers, no pens, but with their songs and stories the remembering began, and the tells would pass down from father to son. Just like in my home land, but the longest trails there sing from mother to daughter. It is different here; I am not so familiar with it.

“Look, sire, the sky is strange.”

It was low dawn and the cloud was lifted. To the east, the sun was just shimmering on the horizon, and in the opposite place the coiling high smoking column threaded red and twisting black, so we knew that it moved and spun from the ground, reaching higher for the air than before, thrust upwards in a massive force. The column was thicker, too, pulsed red with coiling veins standing thick and twisting.

The captain looked at me, a wry smile on his face. “Where is the dragen’s woman, sire, that he stands so hard?”

I laughed, and looked to the sky, but there was no Goddess there, not that night.

“He is waking on his own, then, this dragen. The earth is no different from us mortal men, it seems, standing hard in the morn.”

Our light comedy betrayed a fear that was in us both, and the words were repeated by the men to ease their waiting dread. There was laughter from the fore deck and jealous jesting, as one of the young sailors stood high on the rigging and jetted a long golden arc to the sea, his prick thick and hard in his hand, making proof of our observation.

“That boy will please his maiden, when we next make port,” I smiled, my own morning glory a softer thing now, for I am old already.

“Or a man, to be fucked by that,” mused the captain. “Indeed, a man too would enjoy that length.”

“No different than a mortal woman, then,” I replied.

“Or your Goddess,” said the captain, for I had shared with him some of the hidden beliefs of my distant isle, slumbering since the centurions came and their long walls built.

I thought to return there soon, but my curiosity always kept me wandering. Always under the same stars though, always under the same stars and the light of the moon. This night, the moon was full and glowed high in the brightening morning sky.

Our low words between us were but waiting. The captain and I both knew, and all the men too, that we would go from this day with a tale of a thousand tellings. Witness the distant land and the thick water beneath our ship, keeping us safe above the rock and ground. Some last instinctive nervousness moved upon the captain, and he called for twenty oars to turn the head of the ship to face the mountain and its breath, coiling thicker now and pluming up like a giant mushroom top widening the sky. The world panted, a low grumbling through the air and it was like distant thunder but constant, a moan, a groan.

“Your ears men, keep your hands over your ears as best you can,” the captain called, and his leftenants repeated his warning to all the men. And now the sound was louder still and we could not hear our voices.

“Sire,” I could see the captain’s lips move. And he pointed.

Of a sudden, I saw the base of the horizon where the sky touched the sea and the land and where the smoke was a single column; I saw the blackness and grumbling smoke suddenly grow wide and huge, twice as wide, four times, ten. An enormous fist of smoke and glowering rock and flame bloomed like some huge sun, red, thick red, like some monstrous dome that grew and grew and touched the sky, so high our necks bent back. The jet of black and red, thick coiling and roiling, twisted upwards like some monstrous gush and it was everything in front of us, and the black punch exploded higher.

A strange shimmer took the air, and we watched terrified as across the water ran a massive fierce circle of light, steaming water and smoke as if it rushed before a furious breath, like every forge of hell opening at once and Lucif’s terrible angels running from the bowels of the earth, flaring banners on the air behind them. Then the strange fast thing in the air was upon us, and blasted past us, rocking the ship in one huge surge, and sucked the air from our mouths. My ears thickened and were painful, and I swallowed and swallowed until my ears eased and then…

…the sound, oh the noise and fire and thunder of the sound. A monstrous massive noise so huge, so loud, my guts shook and my head was pummelled and crushed. I looked to the captain and his mouth was a grimace, his hands pressing hard against his ears pressing to stop the explosion, the thunderous loudest thing. I fell to the deck and he did too, writhing in agony and pain and my ears hurting, hurting, I’m screaming. The thunder was right inside my head and then it was gone, a strange ringing, then silence, a silence so black and vast and huge. My mouth was wide and screaming but there was no sound but a giant loud ringing like a million bells in the towers on high. My ears filled with that sound and there was a terrible pulsing thing throbbing within the sound, and it was fast and terrified and I knew my blood was screaming and my heart, all I could hear was my heart. Thumping, thumping, thumping.

I felt a grip on my arm. The captain clenched my wrist with one hand and pointed with the other. His ears were bleeding and the corners of his eyes too, but the horror in his eyes made me look where he pointed. The captain let me go, and he wrapt his arms around a post from the deck and gripped his hands on his forearms, locking himself there. From the place of the explosion I saw, and it came across the sea faster than a fleeing horse, faster than the speeding cheetah as it coursed upon its prey in long away Ethiop, a mounding rise of water, foam flying from its top. It was smooth and unbroken, but huge and swelling grey and black and it sped upon the ship.

The prow of the ship dipped once as the water rose, then the ship angled upwards as the huge unbreaking surge of the sea lifted us up and up, the sea swelling like a massive thing and the ship rose so high that I could see the distant land and a long surging white band where the wave hit the land and covered it, racing over the trees and swirling there. Then the ship fell and fell and we pressed down between the walls of sea. Behind us the height of the water raced away from us, curious eddies and trails and whirlpools following behind. In front of the ship, another wall of water reared above us and again the ship ran up highest and again I saw the thundering white gash upon the land. This time trees were torn and tumbled as the water surged into the land and plashed upon the mountains high.

Three times more the ship rocked up onto the black and churning sea, then the water stopped its movement up and down and the ship was thrown and tossed into a swift current that pulled us towards the centre of this maelstrom. Giant whirlpools and running rivers in the sea channelled us onwards and inwards towards the belching place.

The captain gestured to men to mass their strength onto the steering oar, all movements commanded in dumb show because we were all in deafness to the world, and he commanded every oar to the stroke to slow the hellish slide towards the swirling watery centre. Slowly the strength of the men beat the run of the sea, or the sea slowed, I do not know which, but soon we were able to stand off the same distance everywhere, and to circle the hellish spinning hole, water tumbling into the pit, steaming and churning like a thousand thunderous falls, gone into hell.

For I could see that’s what it was. Where once was a mountain high and from its top the belching column of smoke, now the land was utterly gone. The smoke and exploding gush was still happening, a steady flow still a thick plume into the air two miles wide I thought, judging as best I could for we stood miles off, reaching to the top of the sky.

Like the world’s highest thunder anvil, grey clouds riven by lightning, the smoke rose into the sky. I could see cracks of lightning flickering within the cloud and it was a new storm up in there. But the gush was from under the water and steam was in the smoke, swirling and mixing white and black and grey, and all through the middle of it was orange and flowing up pushing red, like a forge made by a thousand smiths. I could feel the heat of it, all upon my face and arms.

Another hell began. Ash and black rain began to spot the deck and soon every man above the decks had his mouth wrapped in cloth to breathe. The captain ordered the ship to turn, to head from that place. Two hundred oars pushed against the sea, and we were all a silence still, not a man hearing his brother, no drums for they were pointless. Those of us who did not row brought clean water to those who did row, and where a man fell exhausted on his oar, another man dragged him away and took his stroke. For every man one of us knew this was a dreadful place, and our curiosity was done now.

Slowly we made a safer place in the ocean. We were gone from sight of the land, but not from the sight of the earth’s spew as it still rose. The captain kept us on for a whole day, and the next time the sun rose it was red, blood red. And the moon too, that night and the next and the next, as she waned, she was red, blood red.

Half through the next day our ears came back and our voices and sounds were dull and muffled. A constant ringing began in mine own ears. Some of the men were deaf completely and gestured and moved their hands in dumb show, and they could not hear. The captain moved among them with his leftenants, and knew the men to be fearful but still brave. This shudder of the world would mark them, and they would remember the mad man that was in my head, for bringing them here.

But man is a curious beast and still some wanted to know more. The captain set the ship’s boat to the sea and he took the ten strongest men to the oars, just in case, but the wind ran high and we sailed fast towards the mountain gone, and still erupting up to the sky. Black dust fell about us everywhere, and soon all of us could have grinned like a black man from Ethiop where the cheetahs are, our eyes peering mad upon the sea.

And the boat stopped, prevented on its way.

“These rocks, they float on the water and are as light as fluff,” marvelled the captain, and so it was.

I remembered Plinius, and he too wrote of floating stones, and so the guts of the earth were the same, even in distant places. I took small pieces of those miracle rocks and placed them in my travelling box.

“Have you seen enough now, sire, can we make our way to the ship and north from this place?”

“Yes. Even my curiosity, which is much, is held happy to be gone from this place, well gone at that.” I looked one last time at the monstrous thrust of gas and rock and smoke and steam, thoughtful as to what it meant. “The dragen, then, is riding from this place and is awoken. He rides upon the air.”

The captain laughed and remembered our nervous conversation. “Perhaps the dragen awakes in the morning every thousand years and fucks the world with his glorious seed, and jets upon the sky.” He looked at me. “Can your Goddess take that fuck, do you ponder? Spreading her legs wide?”

“Ah, that I don’t know,” I replied. “Perhaps she sleeps. But this noise and roar, I think, will have been heard a thousand miles from this confounding centre and will awaken most anything.”

I looked towards the sea and pondered something of the geography of this place.

“Those high waves, how fast do you think they ran, those five high waves running from this explosion? How fast? Surely they must reach every place where there is a beach and a tide. The waves, so much taller than a tide, surely they will find every dry stone and make it wet, on a beach and by the shore?”

“Aye, sire, I think you right. My grandpere taught me of strange tides between tides, when the water rose when it shouldn’t. He always taught me that it was a dragen stomping somewhere, making its way on the world, a drinkin’ and a dancin’.” He looked at me, man to man, and grinned. “Just like us mortal men, then, a looking for his mate.”

We sailed away from that place and passed through the straits of Malac as we made our way north, and could see the dreadful path of the waves on the land as we passed. Ten men high or twenty, we could not imagine the destruction as those waves thundered, but we could see the torn and tangled trees, the whole floating shore a mess of bodies and floating things, the trail that was left by the waves and the furious sea. Later, in port, and months after, before I left that eastern land, I heard stories of cities and places ripped asunder, all men and women and children lost, countless they were, and beyond number.

After six months, I left that country, thanking the Emperor for indulging my curiosity and sharing with him the dreaming smoke, pipes each night and a favourite wench, slit eyes and sleepy; and made my way west over the land and by boat, following the red clouds. Every day and every night, the skies were red and people were afraid. Long winters were beginning, those with the longest memories and the best songs said, for they could remember their stories of the earth down through long ages from the times of the thick ice and the melting, singing their songs and remembering.

My name is Maerlyn, and when the mountain of Krachoa exploded that morning, I was there.

It is a long way home, and I am called by the dragen. There is work to be done. I hope I am not too old.

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Five Waves

“Mother, why is the moon red?”

Nymue was always curious and knew the cycles of the moon like the counting of her heart, constant, regular and well understood. She knew the moon’s phases, from full to sickle, then nothing at all but always returning. This moon was a count of ten days after the full, a crescent high against the sharp, brilliant stars. Nymue had never seen the moon blood red before, not this deep red straight from hell, nor the rising and setting sun scarlet as it rose and fell. Like blood, the sky shimmered with colour, even the high clouds in the middle of the day glowed brilliant pink, shifting on the wind.

“Why is the sky bleeding? Mother, tell me!”

The girl was insistent and Vivyane knew this was good, because it spoke of a spirit in her daughter that was strong, but sometimes the questions, the endless questions, they were too much; and the girl not ready to be taught, not yet.

“Child, I do not know it, but I fear it is a sign. Something is coming, I can feel it my bones, coming huge.”

Vivyane shivered and held her arms to her own body for strength and comfort. I must gather in my Sisters, she thought to herself, I will need them around me. And the child too, but she is not ready, not yet.

“Child, go, don’t bother me. I don’t know why.”

“Mother, your bones! Why do you read the guts of birds if your bones already know?”

“Hush child, away with you. Go to the sea while the tide is low, and bring back some cockles.”

Vivyane gave the girl a leather bag with a thick strap for her slim shoulders.

“Don’t forget to watch the sand. As soon as the tide turns, walk ahead of it quickly. Don’t get caught.”

She knew Nymue would watch the water closely. Every child around the estuary learned the huge extremes of the tide from when they were very small, and all learned to swim instinctively. Their lives depended on it, down by the water. The tides were huge, as high as seven men standing on another man’s shoulders, and rushed into the estuary. Where the sea narrowed, further north and east, the water made a breaking wave, every day. Boats could only cross when the high tide turned and the water flattened.

Nymue set off, the satchel bumping against her side. She was small for her age, not yet fourteen, but her limbs were strong and quick. She would climb trees and fearlessly find the highest nests. At first she stole the eggs, but then her mother showed her how to cradle fallen birds in the cup of her hands and to feel the tiny spirits there, and Nymue learned the strength of every life, and how it was vital to keep it.

Nymue kept to the south side of the river, for she knew the sands were widest there, where the river met the sea; she would see the flood of the tide as it broke over the bar and wouldn’t need to run. As she reached the shore, Nymue looked high to the sun and judged the length of the shadows, knowing she must wait a short time for the tide to reach its lowest ebb.

The girl had an instinctive, immediate grasp of numbers and angles, and remembered the shadows of the sun, from solstice to solstice. It pleased her, this endless round, and she took confidence from its constancy and predictability. Her mother might use the guts of birds for her auguries, but the daughter already knew deeper, longer rhythms.

Satisfied that she had the most use of her time with the tide at its lowest ebb, Nymue set off over the hard sand, her footsteps a straight trail behind her to the dunes. After a count of a hundred breaths she stopped and turned, and her track went straight back and blurred into a single line, and she was surrounded by damp sand. Behind her and to the south Nymue could see the far curve of land. To the west where the sun set she could see the distant shimmer of water, not yet breaking the bar. She had plenty of time before the tide turned, and she began to dig.

Slowly Nymue filled her satchel with the small cockle shells, dreamily looking forward to their salty taste and the soft flesh boiled open in an iron kettle on the fire, picked up with a precious fork found in an abandoned villa.

Nymue often day-dreamed, her mind in a hundred places, none of them where she actually was; and the open expanse of sand echoed the spaces in her mind, vast and wide, looking always outwards. She wriggled her toes in the sand, feeling the water just below the surface, warm in the sun. Nymue felt luxurious, stretching her young body under the high, hot sun.

Something caught her eye and she was aware of a strange silence. Off towards the sea, she saw a flock of wading birds rising from the sand, then another and another, a myriad of shapes rising against the sky. What has startled them? thought Nymue, why are the birds rising? Usually, the birds stayed down on the wide sands, probing with their long beaks for worms and slithering things that lived in the mud.

On edge now, Nymue turned to face the distant estuary, straining her eyes to see what had alarmed the birds. With a thump of her heart, she saw, far off but nothing should be there, she saw a shimmering edge of white, moving fast upon the sands. She looked around her, instinctively checking where the land was. Something was not right, what was that shimmer, that running line?

With a surge of horror, Nymue saw it was water, a band of water moving fast across the sand. But the tide is down, she whispered to herself, not believing this impossible thing. She heard a distant rush and it was the sound of waves in a storm pushed high upon the beach and breaking. Nymue knew this was not right. The wave was an unnatural thing, and she began to run. As she ran she tied the satchel with its strap and held it close to her breast to keep it there. She ran, her breath heaving, but the sound of the rushing water was faster behind her. Nymue knew she could not turn around, that would stop her flight, so she did not see the rising wave pushing up, following her faster than a horse runs, following her faster than she could run.

The front of the wave caught Nymue and knocked her feet from under her, and she was tumbling, tumbling, thrown forward by the force and speed of the wave, which smashed into her back and rushed past her. She made herself as small as she could, folding herself into the smallest ball of a girl, a tiny thing like a rock or a pebble, to fall down to the sand and let the water rush over her. The tumult of the wave sped on towards the land, and she rose to the surface, gasping for air, but in a still water behind the roaring spume and the breaking peak.

Quickly, Nymue oriented herself to the land, oh but it’s so far away. The water rushed and swirled around her, and she knew this was no tide, for as sudden as the wave had broken up around her, then with a mighty huge suck, the water shot back towards the sea, a fast moving sheet of rippling, awful water, brown with mud and sand, until the sand was bare.

Nymue sobbed for breath and pulled her shift around her. Her hands still grabbed the satchel, clutching it so tight her fingers were white. Shakily she got to her feet and tried to make sense of what had happened. She squeezed water from her long hair, heavy to her waist with water and sand. She did not understand what this was. How could the tide rise and fall so fast? Never before had she seen a breaking wave cover these sands. Twice, when she was younger, she had gone farther out than was wise; but those times, why, she could steadily walk before the water and it would follow her like a puppy, catching her ankles but only inches deep. A skip and a jump would leave the tide behind.

But this, this was wrong, so wrong. A wave couldn’t come and go like that, mother earth didn’t move that way. The tide came in and the tide went out, and it was predictable and a perfect thing. This was very wrong. Nymue looked to the sky. It was wrong, too, the baleful red of the high sun. Where was the perfect white light of the daily sun? Wrongness surged around the girl, and she was scared.

And her guts; Mother, what was this sudden sharp pain in the depths of her belly? What hand gripped her right inside? Nymue bent double with cramps, and remembered her sisters when the curse first came upon them. She fell to the sand, winded by the sudden pain, and rocked there, holding herself tight. The girl fought tears brought by the pain, but she cried out without knowing, her cry soaring up like a frightened bird. Lying on the wet sand, shivering with cold, Nymue clutched herself until slowly the pain eased. Shaking, she crawled for a short while, then pushed herself to her feet.

Nymue limped towards the distant shore, the satchel heavy about her neck. The dunes were so far away, she hurt from the cramps, and she hurt from the pounding she had received from the malignant wave. Then horror, once again horror, she heard again the rushing of water rising behind her. She turned to face the wave and stood terrified as she saw it rush towards her, a wall of water higher than her head. This time, though, she was better prepared. Just before the water took her, Nymue took in the biggest, deepest breath she could, and threw herself in the same direction as the rushing, roaring wave, letting it carry her towards the shore.

The girl remembered how quickly the previous wave had turned and sucked back to sea, and knew she must grip the sand like a limpet to stop herself being dragged back out. So Nymue used the malevolence of the wrongness against itself, and let herself be swept and tumbled towards the shore, terror still in her limbs, but carried by this force, not fighting it. Gulping for air, she was swept along, and the wave took her in. Some sense in the girl told her the moment of the back surge, and she dived down and plunged her hands into the grip of the sand and held herself there as the water rushed back out. As she did so, Nymue felt the satchel rip from her body and it was lost to the sea.

But she survived. For a second time, Nymue struggled to her feet as the hateful waters withdrew. She wasted no time making for the dunes, but they were still so far away. So far. Without the bag, she just had to move herself, and she did, with shuffling steps. Her body was bruised and bashed, and again she felt the awful cramp deep in her belly. Sobbing with pain, she lurched forward, and slowly the dunes came into view. She struggled on, weak with exhaustion, not knowing if the nightmare world was over or if it was just beginning.

With a third horrible rush, another wave smashed into her, but even in her dread Nymue sensed a regularity to them. Again she was spun and tumbled and thrust towards the shore. She was weaker now, and when the wave sucked back it pulled her feet from under her and dragged her back the same distance she had tumbled, and she was no closer to the shore. This time too, the furious sea ripped and tore the girl’s garments from her body, and she was naked and small, a tired hurt animal, but with an animal’s instinct for survival. She pulled herself to her feet and limped towards the dunes, counting this time, counting, counting, and was warned.

When the fourth wave struck, Nymue stood firm, neither going with the wave nor surrendering to it, but stood still and anchored, pushing her feet into the sand. Mother earth gave her strength, and so Nymue stood against the fourth wave, and it was smaller than the other waves, and she let it pass.

Knowing now the horrible, inevitable intervals between the dreadful surges, this time she made herself run, driving her thin naked limbs as fast as she had ever run. Ignoring the sharp stabbing pains in her belly she kept on, and struggled in the softer sand and up the slope. Nymue realised she had left the long breadth of the sand and was in the foot of the dunes. She stopped and looked down, and saw that the wrongness that was the water between the tides, even now the waves had reached this high.

Nymue struggled on, and saw that she had finally reached the line of the highest tide and must now be safe. Turning towards the sea, the dreadful sea, she held her arms around her smallness and waited. She did not wait long, but the fifth wave was small and weak, as if it too had tired in its rush upon the sand. By the time it reached her, its force was spent and the water didn’t reach her knees. The muddy flow slopped and shifted around Nymue, but it was sluggish and slow.

As she stood there, small and naked and alone, Nymue felt a curious pulse in the base of her belly and a long, loose feeling there, not as fierce as the cramps before, but new to her and heavy. She felt a wetness on her legs, and as the foul wave retreated, Nymue watched it take swirls of red blood away from her, pulling and threading thin trails of rich red blood. And she bled, her first course given up to the horrible surge of the fifth wave, and she didn’t know what it meant. She looked up at the sky, and the harsh red clouds flowed there, echoing her young womanhood as the foul water washed her first blood away.

Nymue shook, her body exhausted and shocked, weakened with the terror of the water, weakened by her blood. Somehow she knew that the fifth wave was the last, that the proper tide would walk across the sand like it always did, and the world would turn as it always turned.

Her animal instinct was still strong, and she made herself climb to the height of the dune, some final safe place where the sand was dry. She found a small hollow and crept near to a thicket of small trees, and collapsed, small and huddled, turning within herself. With a long shudder, her exhausted body slumped into unconsciousness, and she felt nothing, no pain, no fear, just nothing.

Then, in her nothingness, Nymue felt herself rising, light and buoyant, her spirit rising. She felt herself turn, rolling once, and her eyes opened. She looked down and saw a small huddled thing curled small on itself, curled on the ground, and it grew smaller. The child lay sleeping, and at first Nymue wondered who she was, this bleeding and scratched girl; then realised the girl was herself. Then her body didn’t matter, as she felt herself rise and rise, high to the sky. She felt a small tug in her belly, and looked at herself and saw a streaming silver chord, no thicker than a hair, but shimmering white light and silver brightness, streaming down to the small pale thing on the ground.

Eyes wide with wonder now, Nymue was high above the earth, and saw off to the east, where the morning sun rises, far off in the shimmering distance, the conical rise of the sacred hill surrounded by water. She knew she would go there soon, to the Isle of Glas. Her spirit rushed on and higher, and far below her, Nymue saw the estuary as it narrowed between the rising hills on either side, like a woman’s thighs parting and the rolling hills beyond. Nymue saw the Goddess below her sleeping, her lush curves sinuous and fertile, waiting.

And look, down there in the sea, Nymue saw five curving lines beating and running against the shore and some mysterious male force was in them, some huge force pushed them on, surging up into the Goddess and stirring her with some new awakening.

Then, with a snap and a jolt, Nymue’s vision ended and her world went black. She felt a rush and a surge and the clutching of cold flesh, and blackness descended over her. She felt nothing more.

“Child, my poor child, what has happened here?”

Vivyane was frantic, her mother’s senses fully alert, searching as soon as she realised the girl should have returned. Vivyane knew the water well. She had not seen the five waves, but she could tell from the twisting and spiralling drags of water on the far sands, and the rivulets and rushing paths made high in the dunes, that something strange and fierce had passed through here.

Vivyane wrapped the girl in a coarse woollen cloth to cover her nakedness and to make her warm. She stood, and cradling her small daughter close to her body, Vivyane made her way back to their home. In the courtyard, serving girls rushed to find soft bindings and fresh water and to fan the fire in the hearth. Vivyane cleansed her daughter, and she was covered in bruises and scratches.

“I’m bleeding, Mother, my blood is upon me.” Nymue’s voice was small, barely a whisper. “I flew, mother, and saw the Goddess, our holy mother.”

Vivyane didn’t doubt, but there were more than two mysteries here. “Why are you naked, child? Where are your clothes?”

“I lost the cockles, the sea took everything from me. I couldn’t run, I tried, Mama, but I couldn’t run fast enough. I flew, Mama, so high. I’m so tired, let me sleep.” Nymue opened her eyes. “Five waves, Mother, but the last one was small. I was scared, Mama, so scared. I flew up into the sky. The waves tumbled me around and round. I lost the cockles, Mother.”

Her eyes flickered and closed, and Vivyane sat by her little daughter all through the night.

“Little sparrow,” she sang, “little sparrow…”

Nymue slept, and Vivyane wondered why the Goddess had called upon the girl. Her auguries had not foretold this; they were silent and told her nothing.

Above them, the sickle moon was a baleful red; and in the morning the sun rose in its own blood and the world turned and turned. The sun rose and the sun fell, and the moon turned too, always red.

In her long delirium, Nymue whispered, “There’s a dragen coming, Mother, he’s coming soon with his hot breath and sharp claws. There’s a dragen coming soon.”

━━━━༻❁༺━━━━

Long Paths and Stone Circles

For five years Nymue lived in the Isle of Glas and was taught by the sisterhood there. They taught her mysteries of the Goddess and the long lines of song down through the ages, the lines and curves of her country, the sacred places, her holy wells.

Nymue, who was blooded in water risen wrong and foul, grasped immediately the cleansing power of tumbling waters and fast streams, high mountains and clean rain. Her favourite art was learned from the fish and the bird, the creatures with scales slipped in silver and wings that soared.

She especially loved the little egret with its wings of purity and white, for it was the first rising of those birds that warned her of the terrible sea. When the trance was upon her from smoke and mushroom and song, Nymue soared high with the birds, and they were her totem, feathers and white.

The shock of the five waves and the bringing of her blood had drained the colour from Nymue’s hair, and ever after it was white, the longest whitest white.

“She is marked,” said her mother, “forever marked.” Her whiteness marked her, and Nymue was different now.

The women from Glas also taught Nymue the new Christ and the Holy Mother, that she might know shifts in allegiance led by priests from Rome, ascetics and monks who grew afraid of women and their magick. Some were hermits and holy, not so lost to the older ways, who still knew the cry of the fox and the creak of the tree and the old stone rings.

Other men were less wise, wrapping themselves in purple cloth and red wine, calling it blood, building crosses and chapels from new stone. Nymue, who knew blood, quickly learned this falseness. She watched the way the holy men looked at her, and she turned from them, full knowing where her power lay. She walked away, dragging their eyes behind her, holding her head high; and her hips swayed.

Nyneve, Vivyane’s elder sister and Nymue’s aunt, watched the girl as she grew from a child into a young woman, and saw her solitude and inner strength.

“She will be a powerful one, the spirit moves within her and she has seen the Goddess,” Nyneve counselled, and the two older women wondered how best to guide the girl. “She is young, only nineteen years, but nearly ready, I think, for the ceremony of the midsummer sun.”

Vivyane looked closely at her sister. “Do you think so, truly? So soon?”

“Nymue is different, she knows songs from our Mother and also from the ancient fathers. She walks in circles and straight lines. She is fire and water both; tree and stone. I’ve not seen it before.” Nyneve paused, deep in thought. “Her moon curse was unusual, blooded by water under a burning sky, and her hair is bled white. And remember what she said in her trance: the dragen comes? The girl is different, Sister, she will go beyond us.”

Vivyane was torn. She was priestess and mother both, and remembered the tiny babe at her breast, all those years ago. “She’s my little girl.” Vivyane gazed into the fire in front of them. “She’s still my little girl.”

Nyneve was silent for a moment. “Maybe we wait. Maybe we do that. Another year.”

“Another year, yes.” Vivyane was thankful for her older sister. “She can wait.”

Nymue did not want to wait. “Mother, I am marked white. I am near twenty years old, nineteen turns of the midsummer sun and the midwinter solstice. I know the world turns, seasons wake and die. This doesn’t change, I count the turns. I stand in the stones and see the longer cycles turning there.” She was impatient. “I know the rounds, Mother, my mind sees them and I understand them. The ancient ones who left the stones, they knew them too.”

Nymue looked at her mother fiercely, challenging Vivyane with her stronger knowledge. Nymue respected the song memories and the long poems of her mother and Nyneve, but she understood deeper truths, permanence recorded in stone and ditch, post and hole.

“Mother, let me do this.”

Nymue thought her plan sound and set her mind to convince Vivyane. “Let me do this. For a year, let me wander to the ends of this isle, south where the land joins the Atlant ocean; and north to the mountains and cold hills. I will follow the curves of our Goddess and the hidden ways. Let me find more circles of stone and understand their counting, sun and moon and the evening star and the blood red star. My mind remembers it all, Mother, and I can learn it.”

She reached the core of her argument. “Only then, when I truly understand the ancient wisdom, only then will I submit to the ceremony of the sun.” Her argument was cunning: “The Goddess rides with the moon, Mother, I need to know how the moon turns before I know the sun.”

Vivyane gazed upon the girl and was silent. She looked into the heart of the fire and watched the heating embers crackle and spit. Slowly, she reached to a bag on the hearth and pulled a handful of seeds from it. Vivyane turned the seeds over in her hand, looking down at the different shapes and sizes there, like tiny stones; then threw them into the fire. With a sizzle the seeds burst in the heat and a spicy aroma spread through the room. The three women breathed deeply, and their sight sharpened.

Suddenly, a heated seed shot from the fire and landed on Nymue’s leg. She flicked away the hot shell and soothed the hot place with a tongue wetted fingertip.

Nyneve nodded once. “The fire talks, and marks the girl. She will do this, for twelve moons, as she says.”

“Thank you, wise mother, my aunt. I will do it right.”

Nymue smiled to herself. Her stubbornness had prevailed.

The stones were in a high place. Leading up to the height of the hill, parallel lines of stones crossed the country, ending paths and starting paths. Sight lines led the eye to notches on the horizon, or tall trees; and there were messages here, left from long ago.

Nymue dropped her travelling bag from her shoulders, stretching her spine to give herself relief from the weight of it. She was a small figure in the landscape, almost hidden within her cloak of deerskin leather, worked soft and light and carefully stitched. Her white token feathers were sewn around the collar, setting a crown behind her hair, all white. Nymue was travelling, walking miles each day, and coiled her hair high to keep it hidden. It would fall later around her body and pale skin, when she danced.

She sat cross legged and unravelled the woven string laces from her boots, hard leather and waxed with animal fat to protect against cold water. Nymue carefully checked the seams and the condition of the soles, noting she would need to thicken them before she moved north for the winter. Good enough for now. She unwrapped bread from a parcel of leaves and ate for a full belly. This night would be long.

To the west, the sun lowered its last light, casting long shadows from the line of stones up the hill. Behind Nymue the moon was already high, its blood finally fading after five long years. The moon was full and the Goddess would strengthen her this night. Around the girl, shadows from the sun ran long and black, and shadows from the moon grew shorter.

Nymue waited until it was time.

Nymue had studied the geometry of the hill as she walked towards it that afternoon. She understood most of it, but the final mystery lay ahead, higher on the hill where she could not see. She did not know the final shape of it, its centre, but had discovered over time that not knowing was best. The alertness that came with discovery tuned her intuition, she found a deep place in the base of her belly that was instinctive, animal, ancient. It was that knowledge Nymue sought, and the primal energy with it. This was her magick now.

She ate three small seeds and a dried husk to sharpen her vision, to hear like a cat, to smell like a fox and to taste like the adder, the snake. The moon spread silver on the grass. Nymue’s tongue flickered and her senses grew hot. She stood, and dropped her cloak to the ground, spreading it wide. She would need it later, to hide within.

Nymue undid the buttons on her jerkin, bone and loop, and cast it from her body, together with her woven woollen vest. Her pale breasts were tight and hard already, a low ache behind her throbbed nipples. She released her hair from its tie, and it fell around her, an unnatural cloak of snow uncut to her waist. She unlaced the tied straps from her leggings and pulled them down.

Nymue placed her garments in neat piles around the edge of her cloak, carefully spaced and a hex. She traced them together with her finger on the ground and it was a hiding mark. Spirits might wake and follow her, but her belongings were material things and would be left alone now. High in a tree an owl waited, keeping watch over her camp. Birds followed Nymue, always and constant.

Nymue stood, her naked body glowing pale in the moonlight, a small white triangle at the base of her belly. Her eyes were black and wide, and she began to turn. Slowly at first, her bare feet sliding over the short grass, making slow weaves in and around the lines of stones, tracing spirals as she moved up the hill. Nymue looked to the ground and saw the lines and leys, then quickly looked to the sky to mark the planets and stars. Her mind instantly mapped the patterns of this place, and she saw it lined to the dog and the crab and the goat. This was a place of the moon, an ancient place.

Knowing this, Nymue changed the pattern of her dance in tiny, subtle ways, shifting the patterns she made so that older spirits could see her, hear her feet, and wake. She moved higher up the hill and spun faster, heating her body and igniting the first small flames of ecstasy. Her nipples thickened and her breasts ached, and deep in the depths of her belly her sex stirred and slipped, thickening with blood pumping hot. Nymue’s breath quickened and now she ran, turning faster until she fell, falling dizzy on the grass, her lithe frame writhing. Her back arched, and she cupped her cunt in the palm of her hand, gripping it closed with her thighs. She was pale and small under the bright light of the moon, and the spell was upon her, spiralling high from the potions she had taken and her frantic dance.

Crying out to the moon, Nymue dipped her fingers into her sliding cunt, pressing her palm hard on her clitoris and circling there, driving hot pleasure into her body. Panting, she crawled to the long stone in the centre of the array and writhed upon it like a snake. The stone was worn smooth with cups and hollows, and her body slid into a place that was made a thousand years ago and visited by a thousand spirits since. Nymue’s vision was upon her now, and her fingers sank into the fabric of the stone and she felt the primal rock. She called out, and in her own voice she answered, and she was in her body and outside it too.

Her eyes blinked, and she spiralled and turned and looked down. Nymue saw the girl with fingers sliding in her cunt and knew it was herself. She flew, propelled upwards by the force of her rising, circling energy, sex magick thickening between her legs. Below her, Nymue’s body orgasmed, and in the sky she felt a jolt in her gut, and the silver thread pulsed. Energy flowed into her from the ancient rock and Nymue felt its power, its sacral heart, and she soared higher.

Below her, the Mother Goddess lay upon the land and she awoke, her turns and curves smooth and remembering, her limbs spreading valleys and pinions of rock. Springs burst as the earth turned, new waters flowing to quench the coming dragen.

Below her, the body of Nymue was small upon the stone. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she could not see, but still she ran her fingers over her clitoris, shuddering her body with little shocks and her pulse stayed fast. After some time her mind twisted and Nymue felt a tug in her belly. She rolled again and felt a hot heat envelope her. Her hands pressed against the stone and it was hard now, growing cold beneath her, and her body lay on the rock. Nymue dipped her fingers between the lips of her sex a last time and felt her hot heat. She anointed her brow with her silvery wet, and locked the spell of this place into her mind.

Slowly, tired now with the spell cooling in her bones and blood, Nymue made her way back down between the paths of stone and rock. She slid her feet over the cool grass and it was soothing after her earlier spinning dance. Finding her cloak on the ground, Nymue dragged it to a sheltering dip beside a row of low bushes. She bundled all of her belongings around her, and curled herself small like an animal. Nymue pulled the cloak completely about herself and was hidden from the world.

She fell into a dreamless sleep, curled tiny and warm like a beast. Deep in her mind, Nymue added this array of stones, more complex than most, to a growing catalogue of places she had danced within. She remembered the conjurings deep in her muscles, and her magickal weave grew stronger.

Above her, the owl flew off and hunted. Five minutes later it returned, hovering with a weightless drop of its wings over the bundle on the ground. The owl dropped a small dead body of a mouse, that the girl might feed in the morning.

So Nymue travelled the length and breadth of Albion over the course of that year and found a hundred circles of ancient stone. She studied their rounds and spirals, saw how they aligned to the moon or the sun or the stars. Nymue tapped into their ancient and pure sex magick, sucking the energy of the land deep into her womb. She discovered an extraordinary surge of energy when one night she drew blood from her sickle moon cunt and anointed the stone with it. Her fuck on the stone was made more powerful as her own blood surge aligned with the spin of the circle, and so Nymue learned that special conjuring must wait for her own bleed each month.

Nymue stored her growing knowledge deep in the depths of her mind. Her dreams worked on the patterns and shapes she could not consciously see, and her dream weaves combined with the mazes and meanders she walked upon, and slowly her natural power grew and became unnatural.

The witch Nymue became so receptive of places in the country of the Goddess, spiralling in towards pivots and curving around copses, that she would walk upon a path and feel a tingle in her nipples and a throb in her clitoris and she would know. A conjure would fall upon her and a spell, and over time she learned to do without seed and trance and smoke. Nymue learned to channel the pure voice of her crying cunt and her weeping blood and she grew strong.

Songs began, and the men of Christ heard of white Nymue and were afraid, wringing their hands in their purple sleeves and trying to find faith in their filthy water. They began to chant of her. This woman, they said, was seduced by the snake and was evil and wrong.

Nymue laughed, for the villagers looked for a crone, white haired and bent; whereas she walked the land young and pale, her mane of hair beautiful and pure. So she hid in plain sight, and became an angel. Young priests were seduced by the stories of Nymue carried on whispers and rumours. In years to come they blurred the idea of her with that of the Holy Mother, and became confused. But not yet.

Conjuring was ahead of her now, spells to be woven across the land and remembered. In the south, men grew restless and tribal armies massed. The land began to shake.

Nymue turned her head towards home and the Isle of Glas, to her mother. She was ready now, for the ceremony of the sun. She returned home.

“Mother, I am returned.”

Vivyane looked upon her daughter and saw her new, quiet confidence and her silent strength. “Nymue, my daughter, let me look upon you.”

The girl’s mother knew her daughter’s stubbornness from when she was small, but what might once have been petulance was now pride, and deserved; and what was once ignorance, by the Goddess, was now wisdom. How could a girl so young, just twenty now, be so wise? What deep learning had she found, this woman?

“Nymue, I look at you and I see someone I don’t know, not anymore.”

Vivyane sensed the young woman before her, standing quietly by her hearth, was no longer of this home. She looked again, and wasn’t sure.

“Oh Mother, I am always your daughter; the babe you suckled, the child who grew. I’m just a little older now, Mama, that’s all. But I still have the little scar on my knee from when I fell on the sharp shell, down on the beach, when I was ten.” Nymue remembered everything. “And the long scars on my side, from when the wave tumbled me and dragged me along.” That was an elemental thing and Nymue remembered. “You carried me home in your arms, Mama, when I was naked and broken.”

Nymue went to her mother and held her arms around her. “I’m the same daughter, Mother. I’ve learned new songs, but I don’t forget the old ones.”

Vivyane welcomed the girl’s love, but even so, she felt like the child now. Nymue had a new spirit in her, and Vivyane was uncertain, afraid.

“Do not fear, sister,” Nyneve saw the uncertainty in her sister’s eyes. “Nymue is still with the Goddess, and does not desert us.”

Nyneve knew something of stones and blood, but sensed the girl knew more. She would speak with Nymue later, to glean something of her stronger magick.

“But Nymue, we have not told you. He returns. The Maerlyn walks the land of Albion once more. You need to be ready.”

━━━━༻❁༺━━━━

The Ceremony of the Sun

I was there.

When the witch Nymue met the Sun King, and took in his heat, I was there. The Goddess help me, for I am old and she is young, yet I am still bewitched.

I arrived back in Albion after a long pass of years from when I left the land of the Eastern Emperor. He of course named himself Emperor of the Central Kingdom, for he knew no other. In my mind he was Emperor of an eastern kingdom, one of several like Japon or Kor. The centre of the world was a different place altogether, more desert now than kingdom, but caliphates nevertheless. And camels. Snorting, lecherous beasts, hundreds of ‘em.

As I travelled towards the setting sun, always the setting sun, each day I heard tell of a monstrous noise heard from afar, from the east and south. I counted the days and the miles each day, so I knew that the noise they heard was the monstrous explosion of Krachoa that day when I saw the mountain disappear and the monstrous sea rise five times. I was astonished at the distance the noise went. A Hindi man in Delhee heard it, an Arab in the depths of Pirsia of the two rivers heard it, but duller. No wonder then, that on the ship we were all deaf for days and my ears still ring. A thousand miles, more, even a Roman could not measure it. Surely the most monstrous noise the world has ever heard!

And by the ocean’s edge, all around Indee and up into Araby where the dhows sail with their triangle sails, I could see with mine own eyes the blasted coast and destructed places. Five huge waves it was, every man counted five, and the waves taller than fifty men or more, roaring from the sea, sweeping all before. I made a map and plotted on it what I knew, all of my geography, and marked the days the waves swept up hell from the oceans. And so I understood the speed of it and the distance. I talked with wise men and holy men and men who fought with gods, and the wisest of us all knew this: surely the world was unhinged on its rounds of the sun by the cataclysm, and was made all wrong.

The blood red skies lasted for years and more years, and every farmer told the crops grew bad, and the winters grew longer, and tiny babies all died, their mothers could not feed them. And so the world groaned and suffered, and the dragen was awakened. Men began to fight, for they were afraid, and fight is what scared men do. And through it all I travelled west, ever west, Albi calling to my bones, to my blood, summoning me back home.

So I came, eventually, to Gaul where once the Romans were, and summonsed a small ship to sail at my command to the Isle of Albion my Mother, my Goddess. When I landed under the high white cliffs, I made send a fast message ahead of me to the Sisters, that they might welcome me and hear my long songs, for I sing of many things. The minstrel Maerlyn!

I jest, my voice is weak and I cannot sing. But my tell, by the Goddess, you cannot quieten an old fool, my tell goes on forever.

Yet I heard back soonest, before I departed. Nyneve wrote me and I read her scroll, ink on linen, on a rolled scroll.

‘We are come upon you half way,’ she wrote, ‘do not come to Glas, for we will meet you. My sister Vivyane and her blood kin, we come half way. Remember the babe, Nymue of Vivyane born? She is grown, and surpasses us, a mighty witch and Daughter of the Goddess now. She is upon us, truly, the girl Nymue is born of bird and sea, and five cruel waves brought on her moon and blood. Meet us half way, Maer Maerlyn, for it is soon half summer.’

Little Nymue, who I dandled on my knee when she was just small! Little Nymue grown? By the Goddess, have I been away that long? Ah me, that child! Grown? I could not credit it, yet the Sisters said half way and half summer, and the little one there.

And five waves, how could that be, at the end of the long Atlant? I did not know the oceans joined, but five waves? I knew I must discover when, and make another mark on my map, and guess upon the joining up of waters. I knew the days and distance in the one big ocean all around Indee, and it was a constant speed the waves moved there, and fast. Once I knew what days passed in the ocean Atlant, I would guess what distances there were between. Was the world so small? And the dragen so quick?

But Nymue grown? Her palest blue eyes, like ice on cold water, and her rich red hair! Ah me, I’m grown too old. That little pale girl, all grown!

So I made my way to the great plain where the trees stand far off and are distant, far over the horizon. On the day before half summer I camped down where the old wooden circle lay, made of great trunks of trees but all fallen and gone now, beside the river Avyn where it makes a great loop. A gathering was there, tents and fires made in rows where dogs ran and children too, until they were hushed by their mothers and made to turn away in respect. But the smallest children were cheeky and quick, and their bright eyes peered at me from behind their mothers’ legs. I winked at some of them as I passed by, and heard their laughing chatter as I walked on. “The Maerlyn is here, look, there, dressed in white.”

More a dirty grey, I think, for the dust collects and my cloak drags upon the path. Perhaps I should be more ceremonial, with a high head piece or some such to suit the part, but the priests of Rome do that. I don’t wish to be stained like their souls, the stupid fools. The Christ of an only god and his mother with a cunt for an ear? Where’s the sense in that? But the rolling back of the rock from the grave, that was good theatre, a clever touch. I wonder if I shall remember that, when it’s time for me to go? We’ll see. But hush, here we are.

Before me laid out was a large tent, with four high poles at the entrance, smoke curling from its thatched roof. I was made welcome by a sloe eyed girl, dark and small, with hair twisted around all black and thick, and she was the second daughter of some distant lord upon a pilgrimage. Her father tried to impress, but he was a thickun from the north by the wall, and kept on about four black horses. I could not make out what he meant, but he was good natured and had a barrel of honey mead wine, so a good fellow too.

I did not tarry long with him, because I had to be at the henge before dawn and wanted sleep before the breaking of day. The girl was sent to warm my back, and she curled behind me snug and sweet. I was tired from the day, and did not touch her even though she offered, with her small hands and high breasts. She was warm against me, and her breath sighed in her throat like a tiny wind as she fell into sleep.

“Tell your father I thank him, he’s a generous man,” I smiled at her and whispered on. “Just make it all up in the morning, you’re a good daughter, tell him what you will.”

My old staff still stiffens in my hand and in a tight girl’s place, yet it’s a slower thing now. Sometimes it’s enough just to feel the hot young heat of life by my side, and know that it goes on forever. She warmed my back as I slept, and was peaceful like a sleeping cat by the hearth. A sweet young maid.

“Maer, it is time. The moon is high and full and lightens our way. It is mid of the night and we need our procession.”

Ah good, I had around me a small group of acolytes who knew the ancient ways, and would do justice as we moved along the old paths. I envied those who first made the ceremonial way, a thousand years gone but still sung in the song. They would have seen the wide way cut white, the chalk piled high against green grass, straight and white, glowing under the moon. Now, time and rain have softened these ancient places and their marks are fading lost. But we know, and walk the ways.

The land sloped up away from the river. We the small group of us made our way up the long slope, mayhap half a mile as a man walks, then turned our eyes to the west and saw in the long distance the stones made high and in a ring, capped and round. Under the high white moon the henge stood grey and silver, and we proceeded towards it, a silence upon us, for this was a sacred place. It is best to hear a sacred place in silence, the better to hear it talk. We made our way, and I led.

Our ceremonial way was a steady pace, and behind us to the morning came that first wash of a cooler breeze, as the sun far off began to warm the land, to caress the sleeping Goddess in his hands. This day was the single day, the half summer, when the day was longest, aye, but would grow shorter still. The great wheel turned and with it our fortune, always on. Sometimes I ponder it, a thousand years more, a thousand thousand, but even my imagination fails that.

This day I was to be outside the circle, watching in. The sun expected new magick, an initiation, a christening. This old fool was long ago dunked in the water of the stream, and my tokens had long forgotten who they served. Mine own skin was left, and it my strength, and my bones. And my memories. They leak from my eyes, sometimes, and trace my skin. But no matter, it’s not my day today.

I stood by the leaning stone that shadowed the first sun’s glimpse and pointed into the greater place, cunningly aligned and grey in the high moonlight. This was a foretell, the moon full on the half summer’s rise. A portent then, and a pivot in time and place. I greeted the stone, old friend, and touched my fingertips to its skin. Comfortable cold, my hand was warm. The young maid’s heat lingered, and my old belly throbbed warm. Ahh, so it’s that magick? I had forgotten that, my first ceremony, so long ago. Yeay in truth mine old cock didn’t forget; a singular mind, tight focussed for a tight, hot place.

Looking on, the sky lightened a fraction, with a glimmer pink like the first bud of a nipple. The soft mistral dropped and the grass was still, a faint shimmer of morning dew spread light upon the tops. A mist of tiny spider webs was gossamer fine all around and the land lay veiled with the finest sheen, all a ready to vanish and disappear with the light.

“Maer, look, they come.” My young leftenant pointed back, and my eyes sharpened, an old trick, and I saw.

“Go to your place,” I said, and he did.

I watched the new ceremony begin, and it was slow walking. My Sisters knew their times, better ever than I did. So I waited, knowing that they knew their perfect pace. Ah Goddess, is that third one there the little Nymue, grown? Oh, the sweet thing. Even then, far off, I was struck blind and could not rightly see, but could not strip my eyes from her. But her hair, where is her rich red hair? She shines pure white, she dazzles me.

The line of women followed the same path down the centre of the cursus that we men had walked. At the front of the line I could see the tall figure of Nyn Nyneve, honoured by her age, the eldest of the Sisters. Viv Vivyane followed her, and her honour was the motherhood of the sorceress, the new witch. Both the older women were garbed in the green and brown of the field and earth, in symbol of that which grew and that which buried.

In the third place, sheathed in long white and a virtuous gown, walked the young woman, Nym Nymue of the five waves, as I knew her now to be. Her feet were bare that she could feel the skin of the Goddess beneath her, and she walked and was white against the slowly rising dawn. The collar of her gown was threaded with the long feathers and the short feathers of all her tokens and animates. I saw that she had flown with birds of white and grey and black and brown, small and large. The feathers circled the back of her long white hair like a high crowned crest, and she was initiate and commander, the same both at once, the white Nymue as I knew her now to be.

Nymue was no longer the young girl I knew before my long departure. Now she was strong and a woman, but still young with it. She walked confidently down into the high stones of the first carved circle, that was circled around with high curved lintels. Some were fallen and broken, for the henge was an ancient place, mysterious in how it was made, but ancient stones still standing.

It counted clever. Some holes were for the moon and all its rises and retrogrades, its backward moves; and the stones knew where the sun rose and fell. This day the sun would rise behind me, and the long shadow of the leaning stone point straight towards the gap between the highest stones, massive high. The half summer sun would rise straight and true, fair between the high rocks.

The procession paused, and a low chant began and a ringing of small bells. The chimes echoed around the stones and answered the first notes with their second sound. Cleverly the chanting voices and other ringing bells weaved sound around the place and a slow rhythm started, liken to a dream but in the waking time. Nymue began a small dancing movement, and she began to turn and weave around the Prescel ring of stones all blue and grey, brought from a far mountain. I knew the distant quarry place, and the spirits in the stone walked them here, I am sure. There could be no other way.

Nymue danced on, and I saw a spirit in her, a trancement and a spell. As I watched I slowly understand the hex she made, to trap the bright Sun Lord to her will. I wondered how one yet twenty turns could know this spell. Where had she learned this maze? I thought I knew the land’s paths and ways, but I could see from her clever patterns that Nymue knew them too. I had learned fifty years or more for my know, yet here she was, Nymue of the thousand ways, and barely grown. I wondered if I had anything to teach her, or if she knew it better already, and might teach me.

As I gazed upon Nymue, the sky shifted from a silver grey to a brightening light, and between me and the standing stones, the leaning stone cast the first shadow, and the bright Lord Sun was coming. Between the narrowest, tallest stones, the mightiest ones, Nymue’s dance halted still, and she stood with her arms stretched wide that she felt both rocks. She paused just for a moment, and I saw her heaving breasts as she fast breathed from her dance. I came down closer, but am a man, so could not enter the ring, not this day. The high Lord Sun would come this half summer day and want a woman, not some old man, so I stayed beyond the circling stones.

Nymue stepped back three paces from between the stones, and two small maids, carefully instructed, dragged in from the other side a wide fur, huge it was, from a stag. They made it straight, and had small pillows too, and made an open bed. They ran away and were gone.

Vivyane her mother went to the daughter and they kissed, full hard on their lips, and small blood was bit on Nymue’s lip by her mother there and it was an anointment. Nymue stood, yet her mother was taller, so I knew the girl might stand by me and look at my chest. I am tall and thin. Her wide, high fan of tokens and long feathers disguised her height. Nymue was not so tall, but stood it so, and her spirit made her tallest of all. Next to her, I would always crawl on my knees.

Vivyane reached for Nymue’s throat and undid a clasp there. The white gown slid like snow from a mountain and pooled to Nymue’s feet and the girl stood naked. She faced away from me, so I saw the smallness of her waist and the spread of her curved hips, and her back. Nymue’s beautiful hair was tied in three places, long white snow down her body. She stood there, and the shape of her was a pleasure for this old man. Pah, I am too old, she needs a much younger man.

But this day, she was to bed the Sun Lord, spread her thighs wide for his fuck of the morning light, right up between her legs and into her sweet cunt that I could only imagine in my dreaming ways. But fuck, that imagining was enough, I felt a throb in my loins. My old prick began to thicken and stretch, and the Sun Lord’s not even here yet with his strength.

I waited. The shadow from the stone moved along the grass, the Sun soon to shine above the portal stone and knock there, for entrance.

Nymue lay on the skin, and from the outside of the circle I watched as she caressed herself with her own hands, pressing her hands down hard onto her nipples, and they stood tight. Her hands were slow, but I could see they knew the shape of her body and I saw a dip of her fingers between her legs and a first slide there, her hair a thick white fur against her pale flesh. There was a trance upon her, and she lay between the stones. Nymue cried out, and her voice was like a bird, a wailing cry.

The sound of her voice lurched into me, and my prick grew harder. Around me, I sensed my leftenants too were wanting to fuck, and in the circle, the women a fucked upon their fingers, urging Nymue on with their own magick entanglement. The stones watched, and the Sun rose above the portal stone. The land shimmered, waiting for the moment when the Sun King rose up from the distance of the far horizon. I looked back upon the east and there he was, rising red and round; the thick long rod of the portal rock become his shaft, all illumined veined and red, rising high up from the earth and the Sun rose hard.

His huge roundness was perfectly aligned, and the shaft of his half summer glory was long and straight and true and glowed all upon the place. He the Sun Lord moved and shone between the tall stones that were made to receive him and this bright morning fuck of powerful light.

From between the stones I heard the crooning cry of a woman, “Ahh Lord, mine own cunt widens for your heat, fuck into me,” and it was Nymue on her back, her cunt arched up between her legs thrust high, her legs wide to welcome in the light. Her body shuddered golden in the morning beams of the rising Sun, and his golden shining rod thrust down into her with all the heat and shafting fuck of the Sun Lord morning risen.

Nymue was blazed gold and crying out in his hands hot in her flesh and skin, and her fingers spread apart the folds of her cunt so the Lord Sun could fuck into her this half summer’s day. With a keen that echoed into the stones, Nymue collapsed weak on the ground and twitched and writhed there, a glowing in the light, and her body grew still.

“Do not touch her, she soars!” Nyneve’s shout warned the truth, and Nymue lay there, her eyes agone from her face and rolled back white. I could not see her fly, but knew that she did, her sex magick undaunted by the strength of this place. By the Goddess, Nymue now the strongest witch of all the Sisters and some of them very strong indeed; that she dared to take the Lord on his day and live, where others had bellies cut red and a sacrifice and died, in earlier years, when not a one was ready.

I leaned against the rock, my cheek against the old stone there, and spread my fingers wide to embrace the warming heat. Around me, the air shimmered and a strange crackling sound came upon the world and an odd scent like air around a waterfall, a crispness. I stood away from the stone and took some paces back. Looking away from the henge, but near it and wide, I saw down upon the grass a strange veil, some strangeness along the ground, a hazing light. Within the light I could see whole bands of taller grass bend and snap, shaping a strange pattern all amongst the grass.

I knew of circles and hexes made on these wide plains, seeing them with their spirals and mazes, and wondered on them, but did not know how they were made. But the grass would bend, corn especially, and patterns made that only a bird could see. Ah, a bird, Nymue on high, soaring. Of course, she will know and might tell, when the trancement stops.

The morning sun rose away and up from the shafted rock, and his prick was gone, Nym Nymue well fucked and a high priestess now, for the Goddess and the Sun Lord both. The sun arose and it was the longest day, all to shorten and shrink and grow cold and midwinter. I wondered then if white Nymue would return to this place when covered in snow, or was this day high magick enough, and she so strong?

Inside the circle, Nymue was fallen still between the tallest stones, her body not moving, completely still. Nyneve bade the small maids to take skins and cover the priestess and quickly come away, so not to disturb her flight.

I stole away to the place where the grass shimmered and hazed, and was astonished to see great curves in the grass made there, great circles and small, huge spirals made in the grass. The stalks were all bent, laid in patterns interwoven, laid this way and that. I looked to the sky, but it was cloudless blue. Up highest high, where my sharpest eyes could just see, I saw a soaring white bird and knew that Nymue still flew, her trancement thick and the Sun’s golden seed still in her, high above all the Goddess to see. I would speak with her later, when Nymue was all recovered.

Meanwhile, my curiosity was first in my mind, and I bade to me good leftenants and made them to measure and map, to draw this strange geography that I might know it like a bird does. All above and looking down, spinning around this sacred place. I pondered on it and wondered if the ancient makers, dragging stone and standing rock all ringed around, had they made their stones to remember twisted patterns in the grass? This whole place is circles and circles, marked in stone and dug upon the ground. Did another Maer like me, long ago, make a geometry when the high ice melted back and this land lay smooth and new like a baby? I imagined soft smooth skin, and thought that he might have, when the Goddess first woke from the cold.

Later, back away in the tents and camps along the river Avyn, I went to the Sister’s tent and was greeted there by Nyneve and Vivyane. They looked upon the girl with the white hair who still lay curled and sleeping, out of her trance now but tired.

“Maer, she is mighty now and powerful, an elemental thing. Do you know it, and why?”

“Nyn,” I replied, respectful of her wisdom, and I wondering too, “I do not know it, but see it like you do. Know this, there is some work upon the land, and methinks we might all be called upon.” I sat and wondered, and look upon the small shape of the white priestess sleeping there. “Nymue, I think, might have much magick to make, and mysteries too. She is powerful.” I looked upon the girl, and there must have been something in my eyes when I looked.

“Care upon you, Maer Maerlyn, take care upon yourself. Do not become seduced by her.”

Nyneve looked upon me, and was solemn, and her words were wise. Vivyane looked up and nodded, and they both were warning me, for they both knew the girl and I did not. But I feared it was too late.

I was there.

When the white witch Nymue met the Sun King and took in his heat, I Maer Maerlyn was there. The Goddess help me, for I am old and she is young, yet I fear I am bewitched.

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Dangerous Ground