Marei - book one. Part one: The Call. chapter 3

Three days later, the hills my mother spoke of rose out of the earth and I stopped and sheltered for the night before beginning what was certain to be an arduous climb up the steep slope. Squinting in the twilight, I thought I could see a house at the crest of the rise. In the light of the fresh morning after I awoke, I was certain that it was a house I had seen the night before.

Invigorated by the sight of my destination I began the climb and was soon glad that I had spent the night resting before attempting the ascent. Panting, sweating, calves and shins burning in protest I finally reached the building that I had not taken my eyes from since early morning. The walls were like woodpiles; various sized pieces of wood stacked on top of each other with the rounded ends pointing out at the onlooker, instead of meeting at the corners of the house as many other log homes I had seen would do. The roof was covered in a dark slick rock with pale green moss growing in the cracks between the shingles. Holes at face level dotted every wall and I could see waxed or oiled paper had been pressed into place to keep the weather from entering through the windows. The front door was thick wood, in a stone frame, and carved with the images of plants, people, spirits and symbols that I did not recognize. What looked like blood was smeared on the gray stone door frame.

Rows of carefully tended herbs, some that I recognized and some I didn’t, surrounded the house in a two foot border around the entire property. An expansive vegetable garden had run wild several yards from the house. It looked as if it had once been carefully tended, but had seen no care or harvest for a few weeks time. Ripe beans and peas had come and gone, splitting open to spill their seeds on the ground below. Pumpkins, squash and tomatoes had ripened on the vine and some had also begun to rot where they had grown. Grassy weeds had grown in amongst the vegetables and had not been pulled for what looked like weeks. From the looks of the plants themselves, there had yet to be a frost in this region, but I knew that as the moon faded to blackness in the next few weeks, the cold blanket of ice would soon follow.

A feeling of dread settled into my soul as I looked at the yard. Who would so carefully plant a garden and then not tend it? Turning at once to the front door, I pounded on the thick wood and when I heard no answer called out “Grandmother? It’s me – Marei. I have come as you called me to. Grandmother?” I pounded on the door and shouted again then listened carefully, heart hammering in my chest. There was no answer.

I pulled open the door and rushed into the house. Perhaps she was injured, fallen. I did not know how old Grandmother was, but she might have become ill, or broken. I knew that as people aged they sometimes became brittle of bone.

Inside the house smelled musty and of disuse, though not of rot or decay. I was surprised to see that the house had more than two rooms; three doors led from the central room into other rooms, each covered by a tapestry to separate it from the main room. I scanned the common room and found no signs that anyone had been there, and nothing that looked to be either a body or large enough a place to hide a body, had it fallen.

Pushing aside the tapestries that led into the other rooms, I quickly checked the remainder of the house, calling for my Grandmother in each room, searching through piles of blankets and under furniture to see if she had collapsed and found no signs that anyone had been there for at least a fortnight. There were no signs of sudden departure; no plates left on the tables, or food on the counters. Everything was set to rights and was tidy, though dusty.

Taking off my blanket cloak and my belt, I sat dejectedly on one of the matching wooden chairs that surrounded the circular kitchen table and brushed the thin layer of dust off the section where I sat. I had come all this way and Grandmother was not home, and appeared to have been gone for several weeks. I sighed deeply, tears prickling my eyes. What should I do now? Standing, I stepped outside and stood looking out across the ocean.

I could go nowhere tonight, so regardless of what I chose to do in the morning, I decided to help myself to the shelter of the house for the evening. Having made up my mind, I began to take stock of the yard in the slanted light of the Autumn afternoon. A pile of split wood was beside the house, so with several trips, I filled the box beside the fireplace in the house and carefully lit a fire with the flint and steel in the tinder box that hung beside the chimney. Soon I had a toasty fire blazing in the hearth and I returned outside with a woven reed basket to pick my dinner from the overlooked garden.

An hour later, I had a basket full of ripe peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, and had made a dent in the long neglected weeding so that I could harvest again in the morning. Pulling the weeds had not been my plan, but as I plucked the rotted vegetables from the vines to clear away the past and make room for future growth, the shin high grasses filled me with a horrible lonely feeling. Ripping away the weeds, I tore into the garden, tossing the grasses and roots into a pile that had already been started by someone else’s hands at the left of the garden. I was sweating and dirty when I finished tearing away the weeds and rotted vegetables but I felt a defiant satisfaction at making at least this small part of my objective look inhabited and cared for.

Munching a carrot, I knew I had to find water that was drinkable in order to continue here for the night. A large ceramic cistern outside the door had slaked my thirst earlier with fresh cold rain water, but I could not count on the rain to continue to supply my water while I was here. Chuckling to myself I realized that I was still assuming that I would be staying here, even with the cottage empty. I scanned the surrounding yard, knowing that even with the growth from the time the yard had spent unused I should still be able to see a path to a well or spring where my Grandmother would gather water. Behind the garden, a well worn path curved down the hill into the woods. Gathering my belt and blanket cloak from the house, I set out to see where it led.

The path was softly covered with reddened needles from the ancient pine trees that covered the incline and as I wove my way down the curved trail I felt the hush of the forest descend over me.
Under the canopy of evergreens, birds called out and small animals scurried off the path as I approached. After a short distance, I could see a round stone structure covered by a wooden lid, circular like the table in Grandmother’s kitchen, with the tell tale rope pulleys hung over the circlet. I had reached the well.

Cursing softly to myself, I realized that I had brought nothing in which to carry the water back to the house and turned back up the hill to fetch a pitcher or bucket. Cresting the hill onto the small clearing I saw a small flock of black birds take wing from the roof of the house. Though it wasn’t unusual to see, the vision of the dark birds against the now rose colored twilight sky struck a tone deep within me. This must be a sign, but with no one here to instruct me, I figured I would never know what it foretold. I found two large buckets on a worn wooden yoke just inside the front door and returned through the woods to the well.

It took three of the well’s buckets to fill each of the two buckets I had carried and when they were almost brimming with liquid, I pulled the rope for a seventh time and drank my fill of the cold clear water. Crouching down, I adjusted the yoke over my shoulders and moved the woven yoke blanket until it became a cushion between the tool and my muscles. I stood and hefted the two large buckets with a groan. Putting my hands up to steady the edges of the yoke where the ropes were tied, I walked carefully, with one foot in front of the other to avoid slopping the water all over me and my one set of clothes. If I soaked myself now, I would have to strip down and sit without clothes in a strangers’ empty house. With a small grin, I realized exactly how appealing that idea truly sounded. It had been more than a fortnight since I had bathed in anything but a small cold stream.

When I arrived back at the house I set the buckets on the floor and unhooked the handles of the buckets from the ropes where they had been attached to the yoke. I rummaged through the kitchen and filled both a tea pot and a small stew pot from one of the buckets of water and set them on the hearthstone to boil. To the side of the fireplace was a large pot that had three chains hanging from the edges, gathered together at their ends with a large metal circlet. I looked over the fireplace and saw a matching hook placed so the pot would heat from the fire. Grinning I hung the pot on its hook and filled it with the remains of the first bucket and all of the second bucket. The pot was only half filled by this amount, so I put on the yoke again and went back to the well as the sun began to set across the ocean.

As I approached the house this time, it was barely light out at all. Again, I poured the water from one bucket into the now steaming pan, but left the second bucket full for drinking water for the evening and more tea in the morning.

Rifling through the kitchen area, I found dried herbs that I recognized and rose hips for tea and tossed them in the boiling water in the tea pot. Sharp knives were sticking out of a wooden block and I used one to cut the vegetables I had gathered from the garden. Dusk had come in full force now and except for the fire in the hearth, the house was dark. Candles and lanterns had been placed at regular intervals along the walls. I lit the end of a piece of kindling wood on fire and lit every wick until the whole house was awash with warm, cheerful, flickering light.

I scooped up the cubed vegetables and the last piece of jerky from Finn and Browwen that I had been carefully saving in case of dire need and tossed them all in the pot for stew. I knew that as the vegetables were softened by the lightly boiling water, so would the jerky be both softened and flavor the water with the juices. Then I set about to inventory the kitchen.

The walls of the kitchen were lined with shelves that had been covered with skillfully woven mats. One of the sets of shelves contained all dishware; cups, mugs, bowls and plates of varying sizes. Another contained what appeared to be baking supplies in earthen ware lidded jars; flour, corn meal, oat meal, sugar, salt, a variety of spices, some of which I knew by smell and some that were a mystery. I tossed a handful of flour and some salt into the stew water and turned to examine the third and largest set of shelves.

The third set of shelves was devoted to herbs. A variety of leaves, flowers, roots and stems filled a myriad of lidded glass jars. I stood agape at the collection, not because of the variety of herbs that lined the shelves, but because I had never before seen so much glass in one place. Grandmother must be a very important or wealthy woman to have such a collection of that precious commodity.

Bundles of herbs hung drying from the rafters, to be placed inside the glass jars as they emptied. Antlers hung from the walls, with an assortment of interesting objects hanging from them – beads, feathers, ribbons and even small bones and skulls strung on multi colored strings swung from the antlers, swaying slightly in the breeze from the window holes.

I pushed aside one of the door tapestries and with candle in hand, began inspecting the rest of the house with considerably less haste than I had used before. The first room I entered was from a door that was next to the kitchen shelves. This room also had candle sconces along the walls so I lit them with the small candle I held and looked around. This room did not look as if it was regularly inhabited. Empty shelves lined half the farthest wall from the door and a mattress rested unmade on top of a wooden bed frame. I walked over to the mattress and pushed on it to see how it was stuffed. This was no ordinary mattress – it was not filled with straw, like mine at home had been. Neither was it filled with rags or pieces of fur that had not been large enough to sew with. No, this mattress was, from the amazingly soft feel of it, filled with down.

Unable to resist the temptation, I lay down on the mattress and stretched out on my back. Ahh! This was heaven after six weeks on the hard ground or, at best, on a pile of hay in a barn. I luxuriated for a few minutes until I noticed a metal banded wooden trunk at the foot of the bed. Opening it up, I found several blankets, a down pillow, three soft, linen under-dresses and the softest fur coverlet I had ever touched. Feeling suddenly guilty to have made myself free with things that did not belong to me, I quickly shut the trunk, blew out the wall candles and left the room.

Even with the feeling that I was prying into a life that was not mine, I was still curious to see more than just the glimpse of the other rooms that I had already had when I was searching for Grandmother. After a few minutes of internal debate, I pushed past the second set of curtains, directly opposite the fire place that was in the center of the house.

This room was larger than the first, though the layout of the room was similar, and did not look uninhabited. The shelves that lined half the wall opposite the door held an assortment of interesting looking boxes, stacks of fabric, and even some books. Crossing the room I pulled one from the shelf to get a better look at it. I could not read, but I opened the book and imagined what it would be like to know what the marks on the delicate paper said. I held the book up to my face and inhaled deeply – it smelled wonderful, like rice and ink and something more that I could not identify. Reverently I closed the book and put it back in its place.

Here too there was a trunk at the foot of the bed. Again I could not resist the temptation to see what was inside and I was not disappointed to find a dress, several bottles and a bundle that though I was desperately curious about, I could not bring myself to open. I closed the trunk and turned to the bed. This bed was larger than the first, but when I reached down to test the mattress I discovered that this too was a down mat. What a surprise to find that Grandmother was so well taken care of – first the glass bottles and now not one but two feather filled mattresses! I shook my head in bemusement and continued my inspection.

Another set of antlers was on the wall opposite the bed and it too was being used to hang objects. This time, however, I was able to identify all of the objects – dresses. Eight dresses, all different colors and exquisite fabrics, hung from the points of the antlers just high enough so that the hems of the dresses did not touch the floor. Carefully I touched each one, feeling the textures in the fabrics, inspecting the beautifully careful stitching on the seams. Oh to own such finery! I looked down at my own shabby clothes, even more filthy and in need of repair now than they had been when I left home and sighed. A pang of desire shot through me and I wanted to wear those dresses, I wanted to know how it felt to wear more than the simple colorless dresses I had always worn at home. With regret, I stepped away from the dresses and extinguished the candles in this room – there was still one room left to go.

The last door was to the right of the front door, towards the middle of the wall and was almost twice as wide as the other doors in the house. The tapestry that covered the larger than normal door was carefully woven and embroidered with an intricate knot work design that spiraled around and around and no matter how far I followed the lines, I could not find where it began or ended. I had the sudden strange feeling that though I had been in the room briefly before to search for Grandmother, this time if I pushed the curtain aside, there would be someone on the other side waiting for me. I shivered at the thought as the room behind me abruptly felt colder and seemed darker.

Don’t be ridiculous. I chastised myself for my child-like foolishness and pushed aside the curtain. This room had no window holes and it was pitch black inside until I put my tiny candle through the door. I leaned to the left with my back against the wall and felt along it until my hand encountered the wall sconce that I had been hoping was in this room too. I turned to light the sconce, keeping my shoulder still against the wall to ward off the chill that I continued to imagine from the room. When the second candle was lit, I circled the room until all the candles I could find were lit and the room was visible at every corner.

This room was even larger than the common room and must have taken up half of the entire structure. The wide planked wooden floor had been white washed and a wide circle, almost as large as the room, had been painted in black with a five pointed star touching the sides of the circle equilaterally. In the center of the circle where the pentacle’s meeting lines made a pentagram was a long low stone, gray in color but with flecks of something that shimmered in the candle light. It was bare but sooty scorch marks belied where something very hot had been rested on the stone.

Carefully, to avoid stepping within what looked even to my untrained eye as a sacred space, I circled the room to get a much closer look at the fascinating array of items that covered the walls.

Each of the four walls seemed to have a theme. The wall to my left was lined with brooms of different lengths and materials. Some were tiny, miniatures made the size of a young girl’s dolls. Others were the size and shape of a standard kitchen broom and appeared to be made from the same types of straw. Others were larger with the broom stick stretching out as tall as I was and the broom straws as long as my arm, if not longer. One in particular that caught my eye appeared to have been made from dried heather with a birch branch for the handle. It was gathered and tied with a long, thin purple ribbon and had been laced with bells. I jiggled it ever so slightly on the wall to hear the cheerful silvery jingle.

Beyond the broom wall to the left an assortment of goblets was on display, all hung on thongs from thin pieces of metal that stuck out from the wall. Some were clay, some ceramic, some wood. Again there was a range of sizes from miniature to one that appeared large enough to hold an entire bucket of water. All were painted or carved with the same type of never ending knot work that decorated the tapestry on the door. The central pair of goblets were an almost matched set, mirrored in their features. Both were ornate, finely crafted from silver and gold but where one was gold with silver accents, the other was silver accented with gold. The silver goblet had green stones along the stem, and to match but mirror, the golden goblet’s stem was encrusted with red stones. These I did not touch, so to avoid tarnishing the precious metal.

On the next wall across from the door was an arsenal. Blades of every shape and size were hung hilt up and gleaming in the candle light. Wooden handles, bone handles, leather wrapped handles, daggers, dirks, broadswords, short swords, two handed swords, swords that curved like the crescent moon, swords with blades that curved repeatedly like a slithering snake, swords that were shaped like sickles. Every blade was obviously well cared for; each of them looked well sharpened and well oiled. I thought of my own small hunting knife and wondered how it would look, hung here on the wall next to such a collection.

The last wall, to the right of the door, was the one that held my attention for the longest time, even with the assortment of beautiful and ornate items I had already inspected. This wall held the largest collection of instruments I had ever seen. There were rattles made from gourds still filled with their own seeds, from sea shells or nut shells strung close together and one that looked like a collection of small bones strung close together. Traditional bodran with their short wooden mallets and tambourines with their jingling silver disks ranged in size from as small as my palm to one almost as large as the table in the kitchen. And flutes – oh what an array! Bone, reed, wood, horn, silver, curved, straight, short, long, and with as few as three holes and on one especially lengthy reed, as many as 16 holes. Puzzled, I stared at that one for a few minutes, counting and recounting. How could any normal person play that instrument? Wouldn’t they be a few fingers short?

As I was tapping the drums to hear the different tones they made my stomach rumbled hungrily and I remembered the stew I had set to boil on the hearth. Tonging the biggest of the bodran one last time I walked back through the room, still careful not to set foot within the circle, and put out the candles. Stepping from what I was now calling the magick room into the common room I could smell the stew as it bubbled merrily in front of the fire. Peering over the rim of the giant hanging pot, I could see that the water was again beginning to steam but was still far from boiling. A pan that large could take several hours to boil.

The stew, on the other hand, was boiling away, vegetables and jerky being stirred by the constant motion of the water. I spied a thick fold of cloth hanging on the side of the chimney and I used that as a pot holder to keep my hands safe as I lugged the pot from the hearth to the kitchen table. I took down one of the middle sized bowls and a mug and poured myself a cup of hot tea from the tea pot. I could not find a ladle or spoons, so I dipped the bowl into the pot to fill it and waited impatiently until the stew was cool enough for me to pick the chunks of meat and vegetables out of it with my fingers and drink the broth as if the bowl was a giant mug. It wasn’t the best stew I had tasted, but I hadn’t seen any hospitality from strangers in almost two weeks so it was certainly better than the travel food I had been eating. I filled my bowl twice more before I felt full.

Finally I turned my attention to the large pot that I had hung on the hook over the fire. In one corner of the common room, almost hidden by a folding wall made of wood and painted fabric, was a giant porcelain basin, big enough for me to sit in. I was going to take a bath and after six weeks of hard walking in all weather and sleeping on the ground or in hay piles, I wanted a bath almost as much as I had wanted food when I was hungry.

Using a large pot with a handle as a giant ladle I spooned out the steaming water from the suspended pot into the tub until I had emptied the pot enough so I could use the pot holders and drag it across the floor to dump the remainder of the hot water in. I put cold rain water from the cistern in with the hot water until the temperature was cool enough for me to put my hand all the way to the bottom of the tub.

I peeled off my filthy, ragged clothes and stepped into the tub. Ahh! Sinking down to sit, I used the long handled pot again to ladle the blissfully warm water over my head. There was a cake of soap on a small table next to the tub and I gratefully lathered up my hair and skin, scrubbing away layers of dirt and grime. I scrubbed until the water I was sitting in was a filmy gray color and my skin was gleaming pink. I took my hair out of the braid it had been tied in since I left my parents house and winced as I combed through the snarls with my fingers and worked it twice into a soapy lather. Finally satisfied, I stood and brushed what water I could from my body and squeezed the water from my hair. A linen towel was folded up underneath the table where I had found the soap and I finished drying off with that.

I looked at my filthy clothes, lying in a heap and though I knew I had no other clothes to wear, I could not bring myself to put them back on, now that I was clean again. I thought of the linen chemises I had seen in the trunk of the first room and, wrapped in the towel, went to get one. It was like heaven, soft and clean, and the trunk had been filled with some mixture of herbs and flowers that made everything within it smell like a summer field.

I promised myself that I would be sure to wash what I had used and put the house back the way I had found it in the morning. But now, belly full, body and hair clean, I began to be sleepy. I knew that the second room with the dresses must belong to my Grandmother, but I could see no evidence that this little room had been claimed by anyone so I took out the blankets and fur coverlet that had also been in the trunk and made the bed.

I left the stew pot where it was in the kitchen, rinsed my stew bowl with water from the cistern, banked the fire so it would burn warmly but safely through the night, and blew out the candles in the wall sconces. Barely awake now, and feeling more at peace than I had ever felt in my entire short existence, I climbed into the soft feather bed, wrapped up in the fragrant blankets and slept.



Amazingly, I awoke just after dawn the next morning feeling peacefully secure and well rested. I climbed out of bed and scuffed outside through the still dew dampened grass to the out house and then back into the house. The fire I had banked before I went to sleep was still a nice hot bed of coals, so I added several logs to the fire place until it sparked and blazed again, throwing heat into the room. I stretched and turned around in the golden morning light.
I could not escape the feeling that there was something I was supposed to be doing but as I scanned the room I began to realize that there was nothing needing to be done. There were no chickens or goats to feed or milk, no eggs to collect. I could not harvest any more vegetables or tend the garden until the dew had been sun dried. No younger brothers or sisters were crying for attention or food or a clean diaper. And today – blessed Goddess – today I did not have to walk.

I laughed out loud at the sheer joy of it – not walking! Regardless of whether or not my Grandmother was here, I had made it after all. I hugged myself in delight as pride surged in my heart. I had been strong enough to heed the call. I had been smart enough to keep myself alive. I had been imaginative enough to remember stories I had learned from the minstrels and had kept my audience interested in the tales when I told them. And now I was here.

My stomach grumbled slightly so I reached into the stew pot and picked out chunks of vegetables and chewed them thoroughly. I dipped the mug I had been using into the bucket of water I’d left by the door and had a long drink. Then, hunger and thirst abated, I tucked myself back into bed and slept straight through both day and night, into the next morning.