Marei - book one. Part three: Shadow. Chapter 17

Malina stayed on at the House on the Hill for a few weeks, recovering from birthing and enjoying the peace and solitude of the House during the warming spring season. She named her baby Dywennydd after the happiness he gave her with his birth. Malina did not have a husband; she was druid trained and had not chosen to settle and marry. However, she, like Grandmother and Gurek, had become pregnant during one of the rituals from the previous autumns. But unlike Grandmother, she did not know the true identity of the child’s father; both had been masked and playing their roles as the living embodiment of the God and Goddess during the ritual. For Malina, this was a child of the God and she treated him as such.

Dywennydd was a happy child, alert and watchful. Often Malina would let me hold him while Grandmother read in the evenings. My heart would sing to have his tiny fist wrapped around my finger or a curl of my hair. When he was awake, his blue eyes would pierce into me to my very soul and I could not look away, only gaze into the seemingly bottomless depths of crystalline color.

When Malina finally packed her few belongings and set out with Dywennydd strapped into a cozy fur front pack, I was lost and lonely for days. The sweet sound of Dywennydd’s cooing and his tiny and quickly met cries for food or attention had become such an integral part of my day that I found the House too quiet and wanted to pace restlessly or run outside to relieve the tension. But I could not go outside, or move about the House unless Grandmother was also moving. The sudden solitude without that tiny face to gaze into stretched my nerves as tight as a newly strung bow, pushed my feet to movement so strongly that even when forced to sit still my knee would bounce and jiggle, trying to escape my skin.

Grandmother awoke early the next morning before the sun had crested the trees and shook my shoulder to wake me. Together we set out across the newly green lawn in the gray of the retreating night, coating our booted feet with the thick, chilly dew of dawn. Grandmother followed the path down the hill, not towards the well, but the path that Ursa and John took back and forth from the House to their home.

The wide path wound slowly back and forth like an old river, over tree roots and under tall trees just beginning to show young leaves. We walked in silence through the hushed and still sleeping forest. Not even the first birds of morning had stirred yet to call the sun to its work. When the hush of the forest had deepened like the calm before the storm, we emerged from the shady shelter of the canopy into a wild field of growing grasses and burgeoning flowers. A light mist hung like a veil across the tops of the grasses as they gently stretched in the breeze.

Grandmother crouched down until her eyes were level with the silken mist and I followed her lead, focusing my eyes as best I could on the ever shifting effervescence. Only heartbeats later, the first rays of the morning sun stretched over the trees on the other side of the field. What had only moments before been pastel hints of color now became a riotous cacophony to the senses as golden streams of light ignited the day and scattered into prisms of reflected light through the mist. As I stared into the glistening rainbows, the mist seemed to coalesce and form patterns that looked like hands, or faces.

Blinking hard to clear my eyes I looked into the prismatic droplets again and saw not only hands and faces but bodies and wings. Silhouetted against the multifaceted morning were faeries. I gasped and turned to look at Grandmother. She was smiling at me, watching my surprise and mirth. Wordlessly she nodded towards the field and gestured for me to watch them again.

The miniature forms darted and dashed in the splash of sunlight, dancing and twirling in eddies of wind and mist. All shapes, from male to female, rounded to muscled were shown. Though I could not see great detail I saw that each had their own face and form of clothing and mannerisms that were particular to the individual. Some faeries darted here and there quickly like hummingbirds. Others floated softly like the downy seeds of a dandelion. Some were alone; some in groups; some in pairs.

Grandmother took a small oiled paper package from a bag at her shoulder and carefully unwrapped it to show several biscuit sized honey cakes. Careful not to drop any, she placed the wrapper and cakes on a wide tree stump a few feet in front of her and whistled once, a lingering note that started low as the wind in the trees and rose to the sound of a morning dove.

The faeries spun towards her, circling the paper and chirping a pleasant noise that seemed like a cross between night crickets and cooing doves. Two of the faeries separated from the circular group and darted down to break off half of a honey cake and then split that half between them. Munching contentedly on the sweet breakfast, they hovered close to Grandmother, tittering in melodious birdlike voices as the rest of the honey cakes were distributed to the faeries that remained in the circle behind them.

Grandmother inclined her head in what looked like a bow and brought a length of berry red ribbon from the bag at her shoulder. She presented it to the female of the pair who clasped it delightedly and spun away in a flurry of joy, swirling the ribbon in a spiral around her plump body. When she had completely wrapped herself in the ribbon, she settled again next to the male of the pair who had been watching delightedly.

Grandmother reached into her bag again and brought out a small ocean polished stone that she had found in the garden when we were weeding last harvest’s remains. With the stone in her palm she reached her hand towards the male faerie. With grave deliberation he inspected the stone on her still palm, walking back and forth around her hand to view the stone from a variety of different angles. Finally satisfied, he reached out both miniature hands and hefted the stone, tucking it securely into the crook of one elbow.

He cocked his head as if he was listening to something Grandmother was saying. She gestured to me where I crouched, mouth open in amazement. I had the insight to realize I was being presented to what accounted for faerie royalty and managed to close my mouth and bow my head towards them. As I bowed, a sharp pain in the top of my head caused me to look up suddenly. Grandmother had pulled a small bundle of hairs from the top of my head. With a crooked smile at me, she presented the bundle of hairs to the diminutive pair. Together they reached out and took the long curls out of Grandmothers pinched fingers.

Sniffing and tasting my hairs, they chirruped in the distinctive faerie language, calling the rest of the field faeries to them. Each of the faeries who approached received one of the bundle until all who were in the field held a piece of my hair to smell and taste. The two faeries who had met with Grandmother buzzed on delicate, almost invisible wings around me, inspecting me from all angles. Apparently satisfied, they twittered and allowed the rest of the group to inspect me.

From every angle faeries flew at me, still with their distinctive styles; some slow, some quick, some methodical, some seeming to become easily distracted. They lifted my unplaited hair and looked under it at my neck. They pulled on my clothing and stepped on my boots. One particularly mischievous male faerie with almost no bodily covering darted quickly down the gap in the front of my shirt and got a good look at my breasts before flying out of the bottom of my shirt. Both embarrassed and uncomfortable from the poking and prodding, I lowered my head and stopped looking at them. There at my feet was a paper thin wing, almost the same shape and size as the swirling seeds that fall from the maple trees. Carefully so it didn’t rip, I picked up the wing and laid it in my palm.

Grandmother glanced over at me from where she was inspecting a scrap of marked fabric. Seeing what was in my open hand she smiled reassuringly and nodded, then turned back to her inspections. After I found the wing, the faeries were not as interested in my as they had been, with the exception of the one roguish male who had flown down my shirt. He continued circling me, spinning tricks and stunts in the air for my pleasure and looking back each time he expertly executed what must have been a feat of daring to ensure that he had my undivided attention. He was trying so hard to impress me that I had to smile; I was imagining the strangeness of an evening like Grandmother and Gurek spent, only with someone of such a vastly different size as me. The thought made me smile broadly and though I was not smiling for his tricks, he had just completed a particularly difficult looking triple looped figure and chose to interpret my smile as applause for his skills. He landed lightly on the ground in front of me and bowed low, with a theatrical flourish the likes of which would make troubadours envious. Darting up to my face, he pressed a quick kiss on my cheek and darted off into the morning.

Still grinning, I turned to see Grandmother fold up the cloth she had been using and bow again to the small couple. They bowed to her and floated lazily off into the field as the last of the morning mists burned off in the warmth of the morning. Grandmother caught my eye and winked as she stood and stretched the cricks from her back. The stress of crouching still for so long had made her stiff and I watched her carefully as she twisted around her pregnant belly, trying to relieve the almost cramp in her thighs and lower back. I too stood and stretched, grateful to be my full height and not a tiny person, whether or not I had wings to fly.

In the full morning light I again inspected the wing I had found at my feet. It was almost see through, with veins of spring leaf green and lilac crossing from end to tip. Grandmother came up beside me and looked into my hand. “That is a great gift they have given you. The wing of one of their dead kin will ensure you safe passage through many places that would ensnare the unprepared person. Keep that with you always, wherever you travel and any faeries you encounter will know you are a friend.”

She turned and began the trek up the hill to the House. “Come on, I’m sure Gurek has breakfast waiting for us by now!” At the thought of food my stomach rumbled loudly and Grandmother laughed as she walked.

When we arrived at the House, Gurek did indeed have breakfast ready and waiting for us. With the keen edge to our hunger that only early morning exertion can bring, we dove into the eggs and oatmeal, refilling mugs with fresh cold well water many times until both hunger and thirst were satisfied. When we had finally finished eating and had cleared the table, Grandmother unfolded the cloth she had brought to the field.

“The Feykin are valuable allies and friends to the Sacred Wanderer. They can provide either shelter and protection, or endless torment. They can choose to allow safe passage, or they can abduct the unwary traveler. The Feykin are the gatekeepers to the other worlds where the Gods and Goddesses walk about as we do. One who has befriended the Feykin has more of a chance of returning from hidden but sacred groves where they ensnare humans for ceaseless entertainment.

“We visit our particular friends in the morning because they are most easily visible against the prismatic backdrop of the morning mists. Without that misty ‘tween to create a safe passage between the two worlds, they would have to either fully materialize in our world, or pull us across the veil into theirs. That is a place I do not wish to go; a timeless place where the days of this world pass by in hundreds unheeded. And though you would not age, you do not grow or learn or change and you soon become stagnant. A Sacred Wanderer or druid trained priest or priestess who grows stagnant might as well be dead. To stop growing, learning, changing is tantamount to death in our way of thought.

“This morning I brought them gifts, as you must always do when you seek their advice. The queen loves ribbons and lace and decorative bits of finery and jewelry. The king is a collector of ocean stones and shells. He dares not get close enough to the ocean to harvest them for himself because if his wings become damp he will not be able to fly and will drown in the incoming tide. And all Feykin have a weakness for sweet foods, especially honey cakes and warm milk.

“The Feykin know and see much; they have a far spanning reach on wings and through dimensional doorways; often they have knowledge of the happenings in the rest of the land, as well as occasionally from lands far away across the sea. For a price, they will tell you if they have any news that might be of interest to someone who is trained in stories and magick.” She laughed merrily, “though what they consider to be a great story is sometimes far different than what we consider a great story.

“The bundle of your hair was to identify you as a student of mine, to grant you safe passage and the right to ask your own questions when your time of silence is over.

“The cloth is like an augury cloth, with sections laid out to designate specific types of information. The Feykin will place markers on the cloth to indicate to which section we should look and how. For commonality we use the thirteen trees that I showed you during Samhain’s augury, with the same meanings, as well as a few additional symbols that the fey themselves have added when ours were not adequate. The meanings have been passed from generation to generation among the druid trained and, I assume, among the fey folk as the king and queen have not always been the same pair we saw today. I can only assume that at one time we were able to communicate with more than symbols and gifts, but if that was truth, it is a truth that has long been lost to us all.”

She laid out an assortment of leaves, twigs, berries, shells, feathers and bones on the cloth at specific points and explained the augury to me. “The berry and twig on top of the feather in the upper left corner indicate that a man is coming close from far away, perhaps across the ocean as a shell was carefully placed just outside the reach of the circle. The bent leaf indicates that he is perhaps injured or hobbled, or in some way broken. The Feykin consider physical and emotional hurt to be of the same significance and make no differentiation between them, so he may not be physically hobbled, but heartbroken.

“The red string around the leg bone is an indication that the queen thinks he is an attractive human. Again the Feykin make no differentiation between physical attraction and spiritual attraction so we cannot tell if he is a good person or beautiful to look at, or perhaps even both. And this dew drenched willow with the rip in the center is how they tell us it will rain hard tonight, even though the sky this morning was blue and clear. We’d best chase the chickens into the pen or we might lose some in the storm.”

Grandmother spent the morning explaining the different meanings inherent in the communication the Feykin used, as well as how to interpret the positions of the items on the augury cloth. The method was intricate and subtle and took me many tries to master when Grandmother would ask me to arrange the cloth to indicate a specific meaning.

After mid day, we chased the chickens into the pen as the fluffy clouds from the morning sky deepened and darkened and brought up extra water and wood for the fire to wait out both the impending storm and the arrival of the stranger.