A clump of thistles and brambles sat defiantly in the field, whilst a small dappled cow pulled and chewed attentively at the grass around it. Apart from the thistle clumps, of which there were many, the cow - and Thersander - stood in a field of meadow-grass, tufted into small brushes which, for some reason, the heifer also avoided. Thersander wore a woollen overgarment, despite the glow of the sun which threatened to punch a way through the low white cloud. The wind had lost the warmth that it had had only a few days before. Three other young heifers, and a bull calf, grazed beyond a bramble spread, and from the direction of four large oak trees, standing massively in a line amidst a low hedge of brambles, came a sound of birdsong. Continuous birdsong, from a thousand beaks.
Thersander walked towards the chorus of untidy birds, and they began to peel away into the sky. Starlings. The trees were acorn laden and contributed to a barrier that consisted almost entirely of brambles. Amongst the grass and pink clover, brown parched thistles cast their fluffy seed heads into the breeze. Beneath the oak trees, small lichen-covered branches lay on the dry ground with a few fallen leaves.
The sun began to shine more strongly through the milky haze of cloud, and then suddenly peeped out. It was probably the last day of summer.
Out in the drove-road, as he squeezed between the two posts beside a wicker hurdle, Thersander saw something move in the low grass. It was a blackbird, and it scuttled away into the undergrowth of a ditch as he approached. The field beyond was screened by a hedge of young hazel trees, and on the opposite side of the grassy thoroughfare were thorn bushes and more impenetrable brambles. Blackberries hung everywhere; from the hedgerow and from large entanglements within the drove-road itself. Beyond the patchwork of small fields, that lay like a maze all around, was the dark green shadow of the forest.
A cow urinated, unseen behind a hedge. The breeze picked up and rustled noisily through the hazel leaves. In the distance, a faint clanking of bronze upon bronze could be heard - chink - chink- donk. It stopped.
Thersander walked the length of the drove-road and paused to pick a blackberry from the profusion of black and red clusters that hung in a jungle of prickles. Each blackberry tasted differently to him; the small ones he found to be sour and the large juicy ones often tasted of nothing. He chose a middle-sized berry and put it into his mouth.
The hospitality which continued to be shown to him was generous, but the excitement of new customs and surroundings had failed to alleviate the boredom of inactivity. He was a metalsmith and used to occupying his time constructively.
In the centre of a small field near the far end of the drove-road, stood a lone tree. Small tufts of spiky reeds studded the moister parts of the pasture surrounding it, their tips clinging to thistledown they had managed to pull from the air. The grass was low and recently cropped, and wet sheep-dung lay here and there, glistening upon the ground and amongst the thistles.
A seagull cried, from beyond the tree in the direction of a brackish lake, and in reply a bull bellowed, unseen and far away.
At a great stone circle on the mainland, Thersander had seen among the axes of hard rock that had lain upon the altar, two others of soft chalk. Chalk axes! Thersander looked at the massive trunk of the oak tree before him. The tree was not tall, but its trunk was broad and old, and oddly straight, culminating in two massive branches which stuck out almost at right angles. Above this the trunk was missing, and the thick foliage formed two lobes on either side, like the blades of a double axe. The light from the sun brightened as Thersander approached, and cast the leaves into a profusion of shadow and brilliance. Down the length of the trunk was a large, long gaping slit, healed and rounded. The tree had obviously been struck by lightening and was now venerated in some way, since it had been left standing right in the middle of the field, when all around had been cut down and cleared.
Thersander strolled up to the misshapen tree, which was protected at its base by a dense ring of brambles; yet more brambles. In curiosity, he picked up a branch that lay on the ground and reached up with it to poke at a soft growth of fungus in the trunk. It was firmly attached to the tree and his probing enquiry succeeded only in destroying it. Some pieces fell into the brambles. He picked one out from a cradle of leaves, smelt it and took a small bite. It tasted quite pleasant.
Recently, he had carried a block of white stone from the edge of a field, high up on the long line of hills behind him, and had chipped and polished a chalk axe from it, an axe like those he had seen on the altar at the giant stone ring. The axe had been crude, but he had enjoyed turning his hand to a new craft and it had passed another day. The local elders had watched him finishing it by the lakeside that evening and called a gathering. After a ritual that had entailed much drinking of ale, they had all trooped over to a causeway that had been recently constructed across some salt flats, connecting the village to some new fields that had recently been cleared on drier ground beyond. After blessing the axe with water from the lake whilst uttering things in a language Thersander could not begin to understand, they had all watched as the axe head was dropped reverently into the lake water on the sheltered side of the new causeway.
Walking along the edge of the field, avoiding the sheep droppings, Thersander found the path he was looking for. It was dry and led towards the lake, which was really a convoluted inlet of the sea. All around, the woodland, in which he recognised oak and grey alder in profusion, had a damp feel. The trunks were heavily entwined with ivy, painted in the greys and greens of lichen and stood in a static sea of ivy and moss.
Thersander had rescued his chalk axe and it had accompanied him alone into the forest where it had smashed to pieces against the trunk of a very modest tree, after the first couple of chops. The people had been quite distraught when they had learned about this.
Thersander came upon a rough bank of branches, which bordered for a short distance the left hand side of the path. Concealed behind this was a clearing, which was squarely cut, about thirty paces in both directions and contained many large clumps of a crop that Thersander could not recognise; and three trees. The branches and twigs from the cut forest had been cleared and stacked up on a low bank which appeared to surround the entire field. In front of the branches was a shallow ditch, moss-covered and holding a sprinkling of summer-dried leaves. He could see no way through.
Thersander knew that today was the day that contact would be made, but he did not know when, nor with whom.
A sudden noise made him glance sharply to his right, where a piece of vegetation, newly fallen, brown and tightly curled, rested perfectly still and precariously, where it had fallen, upon a flatly hanging beech leaf.
A little further on, the path opened out along the edge of a salt marsh, an expanse of tall waving grasses. Two swans turned their heads in his direction from the creek where they were feeding, and began to drift away, effortlessly. A gull swooped low overhead and landed upon the distant water of the lake, disturbing another into flight.
The path continued along the edge of the woodland, sometimes with an unimpeded view of the waving grasses, sometimes not, and after another short while, Thersander came to a circle of large wooden posts.
They sprouted from the ground like the trunks of trees, cut off at about eye level, and formed a circle twenty paces in diameter. At the foot of each, a step or two in towards the centre, was a small area where the ground was of white chalk rubble. The circle intruded into the woodland and a little over half protruded out towards the pale grasses of the salt marsh. Nearby, and standing alone at the edge of the saltmarsh, stood two young trees. One, the taller of the two, was an oak and very close to it was a smaller crab apple tree. The gap between their trunks was just wide enough for someone to squeeze through, but no more; and as a consequence of this, their branches were entwined, although beautifully manicured. Small apples hung in profusion amongst the acorns.
At the edge of the circle, on the salt marsh side, a narrow creek came to an abrupt termination near two posts, which were no taller than the others but gave the appearance of a gateway. Thersander walked to the edge of the creek and could see that the tide was out; mud glistened around the stones and a green slime lay in patches, giving a fresh seaweed odour to the morning air. He sat down with his back propped against one of the gateway posts, and watched the lake. He had the sort of hangover that gave no pain, but had wrapped him in a soft layer of wool.
Sea birds alighted and bobbed on the water.
In the distance he could make out a part of the wide but sheltered channel that separated this broad island from the mainland of Albion. Watching the edge of the rising water in the creek as it crept up the bed of the muddy gully with the incoming tide, he noticed a thing he had never noticed before - the water breathed. It crept forward for a space of sixty heartbeats, stopped and slid back for another forty, lay still and began its incoming journey all over again.
Backwards and forwards, it crept its way up.
The morning air was very restful.
·
When the water had flooded the whole channel to above knee depth, Thersander became aware of a boat approaching. It was a small leather coracle, big enough for only one person and the figure who balanced in it was dressed in a dangling regalia. Bone pins of all sizes hung from his coat, and strands of brightly coloured fabric danced with his energetic and purposeful movements as he attempted to paddle the skiff into a position from which he could safely disembark. Thersander recognised him as one of the district elders, a shaman.
The man looked inquiringly at Thersander, as the coracle bumped erratically against the bank. Thersander had already risen and inwardly cursed as he waited for an opportunity to apologise for leaning against the sacred architecture. But the shaman was fully occupied with his manoeuvres and as the sun broke out again from its hazy veil, he offered Thersander his wobblingly outstretched hand while he adjusted his balance.
'Very pleased to find you here at last,' he said. 'Could you give me your hand!' Thersander helped to pull the shaman out of his tiny boat and onto the dry bank of the creek.
'I was ..' began Thersander, trying to recall the Albion word for 'admiring', and the sunshine became even brighter, but the shaman, who was still gripping his hand and shaking it, interrupted him -
'What a lovely day...' he observed, and holding Thersander's hand began to pull him forwards, towards the edge of the creek. Then, tugging sharply with a deft sidestep before Thersander could gather his wits sufficiently, the shaman pushed him violently into the shallow water beside the coracle, followed him in with another splash, pulled Thersander backwards by the hair and plunged his head beneath the surface.
'...for a ritual cleansing, like the one you must obviously have given yourself by our causeway.'
·
The bulls were herded into a narrower corral and frightened into anger. In front of the shrine of Potnia, around which the Ladies of the Goddess sat in their enclosures, a fire was kindled and lit, incense heaped upon the roaring flames and the afternoon air was suddenly filled with a new aroma. Dancing began again on the flat ground between the enclosures and the alder grove, but now of a different kind, wilder, more intense. Some bulls bellowed above the music, and others gave an intermittent snorting accompaniment of anxiety and bad temper.
Iasius had accumulated thirteen paces of favour, a formidable base on which to build; an advantage at the start of the race of this distance towards the finishing line. This was not enough for him, though. He wanted a greater distance than that, against the lighter Melicertes and against the unknown captive, Theseus.
But the wrestling had favoured the heavier men. The next phase of the competition, the bull-grappling, gave more consideration to a combination of strength and agility, of speed of action and speed of thought.
Iasius was the first to draw lots and the first to encounter his beast. It was released along a channel of timber railings from the corral into a well-fenced arena. The Ladies of the Goddess in their enclosures looked on with interest and concern, and the crowds on the unguarded slopes looked on in anticipation and anxiety and tested the sturdiness of the timber with their eyes. As a great bull encountered the open space before it, it stopped, pausing for recognition at its new surroundings and finding none, clawed nervously at the ground. Iasius approached it with a casual air, but there was nothing casual about the concentration in his eyes. He seemed neither to respond to nor actually anticipate the bull's movements, but rather to mirror them, as in a magical symbiosis. The bull stamped suddenly, sprung and galloped forwards for a few bounds and stopped again. The lonely figure in the centre of the arena had the animal almost under his control, almost hypnotised, but not quite.
Iasius circled around the confused and twitching beast until level with its flank, side on, the bull stamped and turned, moved forward suddenly with its head down, and slightly sideways, and lunged at Iasius, who side-stepped and let the beast run past and as it did so, leaped with a somersault and landed with his hands on the bull's back, his legs falling an instant later upon the top of its head. The burst of life engendered in the bull by this feat of acrobatic skill was not enough to dislodge Iasius and the beast galloped forwards again, bucking and kicking sideways, its head tossing, then stopped suddenly and attempted to shake off the weight by thrashing its head at the ground. From his position on the bull's back, Iasius was able to spread his legs against the base of the thrashing horns and pull himself forward with them, and after a quick movement his whole weight was above its neck. The bull fought against the agony in its twisted head and dropped to its knees.
·
The district shaman produced from beneath his coat a jug of clear water (how it had survived unspilt, Thersander could not guess) and a bronze dagger. Its blade was shaped like a leaf and Thersander recalled similar devices scratched like graffiti on the huge stones of the giant ring, as though in opposition to the axes that were also inscribed there. Stabbing the knife into the trunk of the apple tree the shaman walked over to a standing post on the far, wooded side of the circle and holding the jug casually in his hand at waist height, poured the water slowly over the white area in front of it whilst muttering a few words. Then he walked back to the apple tree, removed the dagger and strolled back into the circle. He was a giant of a man and looked at the dripping figure of Thersander intently, as if trying to see the cause of his irritation behind his eyes. Thersander was not used to raising his voice to a man of the Goddess. A shiver ran across his shoulders.
'The gifts which you have brought from the islands in the 'Midst of the Sea' are valued by the Goddess very highly. I hope you have not broken any more of these?'
He waited for Thersander to speak, but Thersander thought it wise not to.
'Tonight at the Harvest Festival, you will receive the answer you have been waiting for. I do not know what that answer will be, but you have brought things to us that are deemed powerful by many and the promise of greater wonders still, if you speak the truth. And your ritual cleansing – your immersion in the sacred waters of our lake – will allow you to speak with one who has also travelled a long way to be here and is very impressed with the tokens of good faith you have brought from the islands in the 'Midst of the Sea'. I hope they are all still intact?
'I intended only to test the strength of the chalk.'
The shaman produced a chalk axe head that seemed identical to the one that Thersander had made. Thersander found himself scrutinizing it nervously, seeking reassurance.
'I needed to see for myself.'
'Then I am like you in many ways,' replied the shaman. 'I, too, need to see things for myself.You are convinced that this axe cannot cut trees. But how does the strength of your conviction compare with the fragility of this forest? The Golden Fleece will be a prize indeed, if it can be obtained, and will make many rich. But is this what you want? Is it worth all this destruction?' He clasped the knife by the blade, handle upwards in the fist of one hand as he said this.
Thersander felt the conversation slipping from him and a rise in the breeze reminded him of the drenched state he was in.
'I like to travel roads that lead forward into the future,' continued the shaman, approaching Thersander, 'and backwards into that which has already been. I have seen many things, and not all of then I have liked. The dagger and the axe,' he said, offering the contents of each hand. 'The hunter and the farmer. The one nurtures the forest, the other enslaves his prey. I minister to both, and know how each thinks. One is losing respect. Go on! Stab the tree with this knife!'
Thersander took the dagger from an outstretched hand and weighed it in his own.
'Go on, stab with it!'
Thersander felt himself suddenly in a mood to do so. He drove the bronze point into the tree and noticed for the first time the many other wounds on the bark that had obviously been made in a similar way.
'The damage will heal,' said the shaman. 'But I would like to show you some damage that will not.'
The shaman bent down to pull something out of his coat. It was a small stick. As he stood again, a gull took off in unexplained panic from a wooden post out in the lake and almost at once the trees around the circle began to loose their leaves. Not in an autumnal way, but in a furtive, withdrawing way, until the sun shone upon a leafless forest. But not a forest of brown trunks and branches but a forest of grey, clanking masts. They stood against a blue sky and a new extension of the lake, and extended in a broad arc towards the sea, in lines marked by large pink spheres in the water. The air was filled with the sound of rope chinking and clanking against metal. A wave of fear passed down Thersander's spine.
Feeling nauseous in a suddenly humid and airless heat, he turned to the shaman in disbelief, but in his place a cormorant perched attentively upon the top of one of the posts, but it was the only post and the circle had gone. The fear in Thersander's heart exploded into panic.
Then just as suddenly, the only sound to be heard was the gentle rustling of the breeze in the tree tops and a lone gull crying. The shaman was beside him again.
'Just a prophecy,' the large man explained. 'But things do not have to be that way. You look for yourself.' Thersander found himself watching the trees melting again, but this time they disappeared completely and he was standing in a flat, open, treeless landscape beneath a white sky. There was no lake at all, the ground was encrusted in ice and the wind that blew across it was impeded by nothing. Thersander ran across a bare expanse of hard, stony ground but there was nowhere to run to. There was no sign of the shaman and Thersander's view in all directions was clear and unobstructed. Far to his left lay the line of chalk hills, but otherwise he stood stranded in an ocean of bare soil, in a chilling wind.
'Where are you!' he shouted and his words blew back across the icy ground and froze him. He set off again, in the direction of the settlement, but polygons of jutting rock tripped him and he nearly fell. Thersander could not see the village where he thought it should lie and slowed to try to get a better view. All he could see was that there was no settlement in any direction, for as far as the eye could see. Only a cold, grey, empty landscape.
Then suddenly, the forest in the distance began to return, slowly the trees began to approach, nearer trees started to obscure the line of chalk hills and to hint at a pattern of small fields, hedges of oak and bramble, hazel and thorn, a growing maze of pasture, studded with thistles and blackberry clumps. Soon he found himself enclosed in a small field, listening to the sound of a much warmer wind in the hazel leaves. A sheep bleated from somewhere and Thersander looked with joy towards the trees which concealed it, walked around a wicker hurdle, past a clump of thistles, and found himself enclosed once more by the living architecture of the drove-road and its surrounding fields.