EIGHTY-SEVEN
On the morrow, the mood in our camp was markedly more sober. Since we were less than an hour’s journey from the hollow hill, Bao and I began our ritual fast. At sunset, we would venture through the stone doorway.
Bao turned pale on learning I must accompany him. “But why? Your Maghuin Dhonn has already acknowledged you.”
“That was before I gave away half my diadh-anam,” I murmured.
“You didn’t know!” he protested.
“I should have,” I said. “And in some deep part of me, I must have known. I told Master Lo I was willing to give anything to restore your life.”
For the rest of the journey, Bao was quiet. I daresay all of us were, not knowing what the day might hold.
When we reached the foot of the hollow hill, there was a man awaiting us. He gave me a shy, uncertain smile, and I recognized him as the young man Breidh who had been attendant on my first initiation.
“Old Nemed is waiting for you,” he announced. “With your permission, I’ll take your horses to her place and tend to them ere I return for the rite. She lives near.”
It surprised me. “She has a stable?”
Breidh shrugged. “No, but there is a lean-to that will shelter them at need. There is a meadow where they may graze, and a stream where they may drink. Is there aught you need from your packs?”
I glanced at Bao, who shook his head. “No.”
Once we had dismounted, Breidh blew softly into the nostrils of Bao’s horse, then took the reins and led it silently into the forest. My mount trailed obediently behind him, the pack-horses following, all with ears pricked gladly.
Bao watched them go. “Your folk have a way with animals, Moirin.”
“Aye.”
This time, I knew the way. At a quiet nod from my mother, I began ascending the slope of the mountain, making for an ancient, gnarled pine-tree that jutted forth from the tall hill at a sharp angle. I wondered how long it had stood there, marking and concealing the path. When I reached it, I laid a hand on its trunk, sensing its age. It had stood for a long time, although not so long as Elua’s Oak; but it was not the first to stand sentinel here. I brushed a green pinecone with one fingertip, wondering who would take its place.
Behind the pine-tree, a series of rough promontories led to a narrow crevice that led to an even narrower canal. I squeezed through it, my shoulders scraping, feeling the walls with my fingertips and edging my way through the darkness toward a faint, distant light.
“Gods!” Bao whispered. “It’s like being born!”
Oengus’ low chuckle sounded behind us. “Exactly right, lad.”
When the passage into the hollow hill opened, it opened all at once. I stumbled out of constriction into emptiness.
Ah, stone and sea! It was beautiful, more beautiful than I remembered, more beautiful than any man-made temple. Light came from an opening somewhere far, far overhead, illuminating everything. Tall, tapering columns rose from the cavern floor, descended from the vaulted ceiling. The stone was smooth and milky-pale, hints of blues and greens flowing through its veins, patches of pink and rust blossoming here and there.
“Moirin…” Bao’s voice was filled with awe. “Is this real?”
I smiled. “Aye, I think so.”
One by one, the others emerged behind us, taking a moment to revel in the beauty of the place.
At length, my uncle Mabon stirred. “Do you remember the way, child?”
I pointed to a waterfall of frozen stone. “I do.”
He nodded. “Lead on.”
There were false passages where one could lose oneself; that, I remembered. We passed them by, climbing the slick frozen fall, passing in and out of shafts of light, past sparkling crystalline structures. With careful steps, we crossed the narrow, rocky bridge over a gorge where dark water spilled over a lip of stone to gurgle and flow far beneath us.
At last, we came to the final shaft that led to the uppermost cavern, hand-and foot-holds worn smooth by many hands carved into its steep walls. This time, I wondered who had carved the holds, and how many of the Maghuin Dhonn had made this ascent over the centuries.
Everything was as I remembered, the shaft emerging onto a spacious cavern of ordinary, rugged granite, the far end open onto sunlight and a vast swath of blue sky, smoke from a cooking-fire trickling upward into a natural chimney duct.
But if Old Nemed had been old before, she was ancient now, a wizened figure huddled in blankets beside the fire, tended by a young woman. The years that sat lightly on my mother weighed heavily on Old Nemed.
“Fainche’s daughter!” Her voice was a thin wheeze in her chest. She freed one crabbed hand from the folds of her blanket and beckoned to me. “Come here.” I went to kneel before her. Nemed’s rheumy eyes had gone as milky as the walls of the hollow hill, filmed with cataracts. She lifted her gnarled fingers to touch my face. “So you’ve been out and about, eh? Overturning the order of the world, eh?”
“I’ve done my best to do Her will,” I said humbly.
She patted my cheek. “Oh, sometimes you have to overturn things to restore them to rights. I trust you’ve learned that much, child.” Craning her neck, she peered past me into whatever dim fog her vision afforded her. “Come, let’s have a look at this young man who thinks to importune the Maghuin Dhonn Herself.”
Brushing off dust from the walls of the shaft, Bao came forward to kneel beside me. “Greetings, old mother,” he said in a respectful tone.
Freeing her other hand, Nemed felt at his arms and shoulders and chest, loosing an unexpected cackle. “You picked a nice specimen, anyway! Lean and firm, just the way I like them.” Her laughter gave way to a rattling cough.
Leaning down, the young woman dabbed at her lips with a length of cloth, and I realized I recognized her from the previous time, too.
Old Nemed waved her away impatiently. “Wish I could get a better look at you, lad,” she said in a wistful voice. “Reminds me of my younger days. You understand what we’re about here today?”
“I think so,” Bao said, concentrating hard on comprehending her words.
Nemed turned her head. “What do you say, daughter of Eithne?”
My mother made her way across the floor, Oengus and Mabon following her. “He understands, Nemed. Both the children know what is at stake.”
“I am…” Bao hesitated. “Forgive me,” he said, picking his words with care. “But how is it that all of you know?” He glanced at me. “I’m sorry, but I do not remember you putting all this in a letter, Moirin.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t. Did my father tell you?” I asked my mother.
“Not this, no.” She said no more.
“There are more mysteries in the world than you know, child,” Nemed said. “The Maghuin Dhonn Herself grant it, you may learn them yet.” Her wrinkled eyelids flickered closed, then snapped open. “But we will speak of this later, if there is a later. Leave me in peace for now.”
For the rest of the day, Old Nemed dozed, attended by the young woman I had recognized—Camlan was her name. The young man Breidh returned, assuring us in a soft murmur that the horses were fine.
There were a dozen questions crowding my thoughts, but I understood without being told that now was not the time to voice them.
Later… if there was a later.
Bao sat cross-legged in the cavern opening, gazing out at the stone doorway looming in the glade below us. It was as I remembered, two standing stones twice a man’s height, a single slab laid across them. Its shadow moved across the glade, marking the hours like a vast sundial.
“It’s as I’ve seen in my dreams,” Bao said in a hushed voice. “And yet it seems such a simple thing.”
I nodded. “It is and it isn’t.”
When the shadow began stretching eastward toward the cavern, Old Nemed roused herself. Reaching for a cooking-pot on the fire, she dipped a finger into it and stuck it in her mouth, tasting it with a slurp. “It’s time,” she announced in a surprisingly strong voice. “Let us begin.”
All at once, it seemed all too soon.
I wanted… ah, gods! I wanted to slow the progress of the sun, I wanted another day with my mother—another week, a month.
I wanted to ask Oengus how exactly we were related, and what magic Mabon had imparted to my yew-wood bow, and how he would know I would need it one day. I wanted to know why Camlan and Breidh were attending the rite when tradition held it should be the last two to have passed through the stone doorway, and I wanted to know how many of the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn had done so since last I did seven years ago.
I wanted to tell Bao one last time that I was sorry for binding him to me without his knowledge or permission, sorry for forcing on him a fate in which his very existence was dependent on the acceptance of a foreign god.
But when I glanced at him, his face was calm with resolve. Bao had made his peace with this. He had told me he had no regrets. He had died once, and he did not fear the prospect.
And so I held my tongue and said nothing, and the rite began. Together, Camlan and Breidh dipped their fingers in a jar of salve, anointing first my eyelids, and then Bao’s.
“May you see Her true,” they chorused in unison.
Old Nemed ladled out two bowls of mushroom tea from the pot that had been simmering on the fire. We drank it down, both of us refraining from wincing at the bitter, acrid taste of it.
The slanting sunlight seemed to thicken like honey in the cavern as Camlan and Breidh helped us to the far opening where my mother and Mabon and Oengus stood waiting. Beyond them, the rocky slope fell away at a steep angle. Below was the verdant bowl of the glade, an immense cupped hand holding a sparkling lake, a scattering of pine-trees and the stone doorway, its shadow long and stark on the green grass.
“Do you remember what I said to you the first time, Moirin mine?” my mother murmured to me.
I nodded. “It gave me courage more times than I can count,” I whispered. “I have never, ever doubted your love.”
She gave me a hard, fierce embrace, then turned away, averting her face.
Oengus clapped a hand on Bao’s shoulder. “Come back to us as one of our own, eh, lad?” he said in a rough voice. “Like to get to know you better.”
Bao took a deep breath. “I pray it is so.”
My uncle Mabon said nothing, only raising his pipe to his lips, then lowering it in silence.
No one knew what would happen.
Without a further word spoken, Bao lowered himself from the ledge, dropping to the slope below. Turning back, he held out his hand to me, helping me down. Loose pebbles skidded under our bare feet. Bao unslung his staff, bracing himself on it and lending me his arm as we made the long, precarious descent, both of us dizzy from Nemed’s brew, gauging depths and distances with difficulty as we placed our feet with care.
At last we gained the bottom. As I had before, I turned back once to see six figures silhouetted in the opening.
As before, my mother raised her hand.
I raised mine in reply.
Soft blue twilight seemed to rise from the bowl of the glade, only a few streaks of gold lingering in the sky overhead. Bao and I walked toward the stone doorway, looking neither to the left nor the right. The doorway seemed to grow taller and taller as we neared it. We passed beneath its shadow and stood before it. Beyond it, the lake awaited us, shimmering in the dusk, lovely, but ordinary.
“So this is it,” Bao said without looking at me.
“Aye.”
He reached out his hand, and I took it. Together, we passed through the stone doorway, and the world changed.
Dusk turned to night, all at once pitch-black and brighter than day. Stars burst like pinwheels in the sky overhead. Every blade of grass was visible, every needle on every pine-tree, everything near and far at once. Everything was filled with splendid and terrible purpose, and ah, gods!
Knowing what to expect made no difference, no difference at all. It was so beautiful, so unspeakably beautiful.
“Oh, gods!” Bao whispered, tears in his voice. “Oh, Moirin!”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
Dazed and stumbling, hand in hand, we made our way to the shores of the lake, silvery and shining, stars reflected in its depths.
There, we waited.
We sat cross-legged opposite one another, Master Lo’s last pupils, and breathed. It seemed a fitting tribute in that place. We breathed the Breath of Earth’s Pulse, grounding ourselves and listening to the heartbeat of the world. We breathed the Breath of Trees Growing, sensing the deep network of roots lacing the soil around us. We breathed the Breath of Ocean’s Rolling Waves, aware of distant seas ringing the island, waves breaking on its shores. We breathed the Breath of Wind’s Sigh, sensing the infinite vault of sky rising above us, and the Breath of Embers Glowing, fiery stars whirling before our eyes, heat pulsing in our veins.
There was no telling how long we waited. Time moved differently on the far side of the stone doorway.
A long time.
Long enough for hunger pangs to come and go. Long enough for weariness to settle into our bones, long enough for our heads to begin to nod, so that we must wake ourselves with a jerk, time and time again.
Long enough for fear, and the first inklings of despair.
I rubbed the faint scar on my right hand—not the scar of sisterhood on my palm that Cusi’s knife had inflicted, but the one on the web of my thumb I didn’t remember acquiring. Seven years ago, I had asked Old Nemed to demonstrate her gift, and she had taken that memory from me.
If we failed, she would take this memory away. All of it. The hollow hill and the glade, the world of beauty beyond the stone doorway. My diadh-anam would gutter and die within me, and I would no longer be myself.
And Bao would no longer be.
It came to seem that was what would come to pass.
In the blazing darkness, unshed tears glittered in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Moirin.” His voice was hoarse from long disuse. “I didn’t want to leave you.”
“Don’t say it!” My voice shook. I clambered to my feet, my legs unsteady. “Please!” I cried into the darkness. “Oh, please! I did all that I thought You wished! I know I made mistakes, but I tried, I tried so hard! We both did! Over and over again, we tried our best!” Sorrow stabbed me like a knife, but in its wake came anger. A futile mix of fury and despair seared my veins. “I beg You, do not do this to us!” I shouted in a ringing voice. “Does love mean nothing to You?”
Bao drew a short, shocked breath.
For a moment, it seemed as though the entire world stood still. No breeze stirred the pine-needles. The surface of the lake went as smooth as a mirror. Even the stars overhead seemed to pause in their ordered dance.
A low rumble shook the glade, making the ground tremble beneath us, a rumble rising to a growl, rising and rising to a deep, deafening roar that rattled my teeth and bones within me, a roar that rattled the very heavens. I clapped my hands over my mouth as if to take back my words, then clapped them over my ears to block out the deafening sound.
A massive shape rounded the lake and blotted out the stars, coming toward us, a mountain on the move. Beside me, Bao leapt to his feet, his staff in his hands. He shot me a single wild glance filled with rueful affection.
She came.
The Maghuin Dhonn Herself came, unhurried and roaring. More than a mortal bear, aye; but a bear, nonetheless. Her muzzle was parted, dagger-sharp white teeth glinting in the starlight.
Helpless and awed, I lowered my hands.
Bao lowered his staff.
Pace by terrible pace, She came toward us, brown fur silvered by moonlight, dwindling from a scale that was unthinkable to one that was merely terrifying. And stone and sea, She was so beautiful, I knew I would gladly die at a single swipe of Her immense paw. Still roaring, the Maghuin Dhonn Herself loomed over us, rising up on Her hind legs, the bulk of Her filling the sky.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Forgive me.”
The roaring ceased.
My ears rang in the silence that followed. The Maghuin Dhonn Herself dropped to all fours with a thud that shook the earth. With a barking huff that sounded for all the world like amusement, She lowered Her majestic head toward us.
And I understood all at once that I was forgiven, that I had always been forgiven, that I was Her child, and loved.
“Ohhh…!” Bao whispered.
I felt Her breath warm on my face, saw Her dark, luminous eyes filled with wisdom and compassion, love and forgiveness, amusement and apology, and a thousand, thousand things. I saw in their depths Blessed Elua crowned with vines, and Blessed Elua with his hand extended, dripping blood onto the earth. I saw the bright lady Naamah lie down with kings and peasants alike, her face bright and holy. I saw the good steward Anael walking the fields, touching the crops and singing. One by one, I saw all of the Companions.
I saw Yeshua ben Yosef stooping to write a word in the dust, and that word was love. I saw Yeshua suffering and dying on the cross, and his eyes were the eyes of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself.
I saw Sakyamuni meditating beneath a tree, lifting his head, enlightenment illuminating his face.
I saw the dragon rising from White Jade Mountain in all his glory and splendor, summoning the rain and lightning as he coiled through the sky.
I saw the elephant-headed god Ganesha laughing, his trunk upraised in joy. I saw dark-skinned Kali dancing, terrible and beautiful, her tongue outthrust, a necklace of skulls adorning her neck.
I saw Xochiquetzal trailing a cloud of birds and butterflies in her wake, and I saw the flower-garlanded ancestors of the Quechua rising with dignity.
I saw a glimpse, a fleeting glimpse, of the beyond that lay beyond.
All one.
All part of a whole.
And then I blinked, and it was gone. Here on the far side of the stone doorway, there was only the starlit glade, me, Bao, and the Great Bear Herself. She gave another soft, whuffling cough, Her breath stirring our hair. I laid my hands on Her coarse, wiry fur, running my fingers through it, feeling Her warm, living presence.
I wanted to thank Her, but there were no words.
She knew anyway.
Turning away, She left us, Her slow tread shaking the earth as She dwindled into the distance and vanished.