CIRCLES OF STONE (THE MOTHER PEOPLE SERIES) (65 page)

Slowly, she rose
and approached the ledge where they kept the big figure of the Goddess. Conar
and Lilan had carved it of stone, so that neither time nor weather could
destroy it.

Zena spoke
directly to Her.  "Great Goddess, the men with knives have brought
such pain to so many people.  Unless they can be stopped, they will cause
untold suffering.  It is to me, Great Mother, that You entrusted the task
of preventing the violence that threatens to overwhelm us.  Show me now
how this can be done."

Zena bowed her
head, waiting.  The Mother's presence was all around her, warm and
encompassing.  The others felt Her, too, and they sat quietly.  For a
long  time, the cave was utterly silent, save for a baby's cry.  Its
mother put it to her breast and silence came again.

Light tickled
Zena's eyes.  She raised them and saw that the sun shone straight on the
face of the Goddess, making Her seem to come alive.  That was the
signal.  She knew it absolutely.  Once again, the Goddess waited for
her in the open space.

The others
watched, mesmerized, as she approached the pool and stepped into the dark
water.  It seemed to pull around her as she floated slowly to the other
side, then it released her onto the rocks.  She climbed higher and higher,
until she disappeared.  They sighed, a long, collective sigh of hope.

**************************

The space opened
out before Zena, vast and beautiful.  She clung for a moment to the
opening that led to the circle of stones, seeking its reassurance.  Then
she stepped forward and let her eyes rove over the vastness of the Mother's
earth.  She saw the cave where they lived, no bigger than a dark hole from
her precipitous perch, and the valley where the bison had carried her to
Conar.  They were back again now, their shaggy bodies transformed into
tiny moving dots that showed black against the lush green of the valley. 
Beyond were the mountains, their snow-covered peaks gleaming in the
sunlight.  Zena thought sometimes she could see all the way to the end of
the Mother's earth from her Kyrie, for in the far distance there was only
space, as if the land had given way to nothingness.

She was utterly
protected here.  One side of the crescent-shaped ledge on which she stood
was enclosed in the curve of the hill, but the other sides dropped away in
sheer, overhanging cliffs, impossible to climb.  Above her, too, were
impassable peaks that rose straight up as far as she could see.  The goats
could come, though.  Their hoofs seemed to stick even to the most
precipitous rocks.  Zena reached out a hand to the one that clattered
toward her.  It was white as snow, and had elegant curving horns. 
The goat tossed them gently, then nuzzled her hand.  Many times before, it
had come to greet her when she stood upon the ledge.  She welcomed its
presence, for it seemed to her that the goat held the Mother's wisdom in its
deep black eyes.  They were like the pool, opaque and fathomless. 
When she stared into them, the visions unfolded before her.

Even before she
was ready, before she had steadied her mind and body, the visions came hurtling
toward her.  There was no slow unfolding this time, but instead a barrage
of images, full of turbulence and confusion.  She saw an ant scurrying
along the forest floor.  She seemed to shrink, enter its body, so that she
was the ant.  A bird swooped down from the sky and grabbed the ant in its
sharp beak.  The movement was so fast she felt no fear.  There was an
instant of searing pain, gone almost before she registered its presence, then a
strange sense of peace.  She was part of the bird now, and as she perched
on a limb, a shadow passed above her.  Talons enclosed her flesh; again
there was the instant of pain and then the peace.

Faster and faster
the images came; she felt herself growing, stretching, galloping across the
plains, kicking up her heels at the joy of being there.  The lion came,
and she ran and ran, but soon she felt the claws, the tearing teeth and then
again the peace, and understanding flooded her body.  They were all one,
the ant and the birds, prey and predator.  They were the cycle, the
Mother's cycle of life.

The animals became
themselves again, each distinct and separate.  Zena saw them on a web now,
a huge, circular web with many strands.  It was colored like a rainbow, so
beautiful to gaze upon that tears came to her eyes.  Animals grazed and
ran within it, birds flew and insects crawled; there were trees and plants and
fish as well, and people wandering slowly through the meadows and
forests.  Sunlight shone down upon the web, then moonlight, so that the
brilliant strands turned pale.  But then clouds began to form; they grew
huge and black and forbidding.  A storm battered the web, and Zena thought
it must break in the fierce winds, the blinding rains, for the strands seemed
thin as gossamer.  But like spider's silk, the web was stronger than it
looked.  It stretched and swayed and stretched again, but it did not
break.

A hand reached
out, the hand of a man.  The hand formed a fist.  Zena gasped in
horror, for the fist was moving toward the center of the web.

The fist hit, and
a dull sound reverberated through the air.  The web pulled back in a great
arc, farther and farther, and then, slowly, it returned to its former
shape.  One strand had broken, Zena saw, but the others were intact, and
she breathed a sigh of relief.  But then she gasped again in horror, for
the fist was not satisfied, and it hit again and again and again, and soon
there were broken strands hanging from all sides of the brilliant web. 
They were covered with blood and fur and feathers and mutilated bodies. 
Zena shrank from the sight.

"That is the
difference," she heard the Goddess tell her, and Her voice came from
everywhere.  It was in the air, in the rocks, the trees below, in Zena's
body.  The voice rose and fell, rose and fell again.  Sometimes it
came to Zena's ears as harshly as winter winds shrieking around the protesting
cliffs; sometimes it was as soft as the whispering cadence of misty rain on
grasses and leaves.

"There is no
violence in taking food as it is needed," the Goddess began, "for
that is the Mother's way.  But to kill for no reason cannot be
forgiven.  Only that can pull the web to pieces, the beautiful, vital web
of My creation.  Over and over again, the earth, the waters and the skies
can cleanse themselves, renew themselves, but in the end, the web of their
intertwined lives will die, as everything dies, if its wounds are too
great.  Then, even I, Goddess and Mother, cannot make it well. 

"That is what
I have come to tell you.  You, and all those who live by the Mother's
ways, must become the guardians of My world.  Long ago, all people knew
the Mother, but many now have forgotten.  Their numbers are growing; soon,
they will spread across the earth, and with them will come violence, untold
violence.  Strength cannot stop them, nor even sharp knives, for their
violence will be directed not just at others but at the web of life
itself.  Just as they believe that they, not the Mother, create life
within the women, and own that life, so they will come to believe that they own
the land and all that lives upon it, that they may do as they like with the
Mother's creatures, with the earth itself."

The voice
faded.  Zena huddled against the earth, afraid and vulnerable.  She
did not want to hear more.  But the words came again, low and intense, and
Zena felt her body tremble against the impact of the thoughts they expressed.

"There will
come a time of imbalance, when the dark will blot out the light, when the
strong will brutalize the weak, when men will rule over women, force Akat upon
them and make them bear young they cannot feed.  In all that I have
created, there has been a balance between strength and weakness, between
predator and prey, between that which is female and male, between the coming of
new life and the resources to nurture that life, between the joy of birth and
the release of death.  But when the Mother's ways are lost, the balance
will die with them.  So terrible will be the imbalance that the earth will
no longer be able to renew itself but will strangle in its own decay.  All
of you to whom I have given life will be trapped in a chaos of your own making."

Zena was weeping
now, and the voice seemed to soften.  It soothed her like the murmur of a
stream, or the whir of a dragonfly's wings.  As she listened, some of the
agony left her body, for she saw that despite the violence, there was
hope. 

"All that I
have shown you will come to pass," the Goddess told her, "but there
is much you can do to prepare.  You cannot keep the violence from coming,
but you can still help to save the Mother's world.  Listen now as I tell
you how this can be done."

"Once before,
I asked you to try to teach the Mother's ways, the ways of love and compassion,
to one with violence in his heart.  Now your task is far greater: to keep
the Mother's ways alive as violence spreads across the earth.  The time
will come when you can no longer speak freely of the Mother, for the name of
the Goddess will be forbidden.  Then, the wisdom of the circles will be no
more than a distant memory, and no one will remember that I, the Goddess, gave
Akat to the women, that once My people lived in peace.  But you will
remember; even in death you will remember.  That is your sacred task, the
sacred task of all those who come after you who bear the name of Zena: to hold
My secrets, all that I have taught you, so close in your heart that even death
cannot dislodge them.          

"The task
will be long and harsh, and none will blame you and those who follow if you
falter.  Year after year, even when you are shunned and persecuted and
killed, you must pass the knowledge from mother to daughter, over and over
again.  Sometimes you will not even know that the one you worship is
called Mother.  You will know only that a deep and fervent love for
something you cannot name lies deep within you, that it is wrong to despoil the
land, the waters, to take from those who are weak and watch some starve while
others feast.  For your beliefs, your courageous acts, you will be
persecuted anew, but no matter how painful the torture, how great your agony to
be alone, cast out of human groups or condemned never to see the light of day again,
you will know you cannot be other than you are."

Zena bent low to
the ground, her body heavy with anguish.  But the Goddess gave her no
relief, and the words continued inexorably.

"There is
more.  To keep the Mother's ways alive has little meaning if Her earth
should be destroyed.  That is why I have made you healer as well as wise
one, for just as you heal a wound, so you can heal the land.  Each of the
ones called Zena will be a healer, for you will teach your daughter, she will
teach the one who comes after her, she will teach the next, and so the healing
will continue even as the earth is ravaged.  To draw the poisons from the
terrible wounds that lie open and sore, filled with putrid wastes, deep within
the earth and the waters, to pull the hurt from the aching gashes that scar the
valleys, the forests and hillsides, will take all the strength, the courage and
vitality you possess.  And after that, the poisons, the pain, must be
absorbed into your own bodies and sent reeling into the vastness of the
skies. 

"But even
then you will not be finished.  For just as a healer gives her strength to
the one she heals, so you must give the Mother's wisdom, the wisdom of the
circles, back to the earth.  You must fill the gaping wounds, the livid
scars that remain, with the caring in your hearts, with the ways of love, the
Mother's ways.  Though only a few will notice, the wisdom, the caring,
will grow and spread until one day they are strong enough to emerge. 
There will be people then who will remember that once we lived in harmony with
the earth and all its creatures, and they will speak.  Some will argue,
refuse to listen.  But others will hear the message, will know in their
hearts that those who seek to protect the earth speak truth.  Their
numbers will swell and slowly, very slowly, the web of life will be
restored."

Silence came, a
long, deep silence that seemed to wrap itself around Zena, soothing the turmoil
in her heart.  And when the Goddess spoke again, her voice was gentle and
caring.

"It is you,
Zena, who will begin the healing."  Zena felt the words like the
tender touch of an old woman's fingers on her brow.  The fingers seemed to
draw her upward, and she stood, opening her arms to the sky. 

Once more the
Goddess spoke, and now Her voice was as powerful as thunder, filled with
authority.  Zena pulled the words into her mind and heart so she would
never forget.

"Go, now, and
tell those who wait for you that I have spoken.  Do not lose
courage.  The Mother will be with you for many years to come.  And
when the time of violence is over, She will return to the minds of all the
people.  Because you and all those who bear your name have held Her safely
in your hearts, the world of the Goddess, the Mother of all life, will one day
be reborn."

CHAPTER TWENTY
SEVEN

Menace hung in the
air.  Zena could smell it, taste it, like a physical presence.  Four
years had passed since the Goddess had warned them, and each summer the
invaders came closer in their yearly raids.  This time, they must be very
close. 

Her eyes darted
around the clearing.  They were all here, except for Conar. 

He sprang suddenly
from the trees.  "Into the tunnels!  Quick!"  The
urgency in his voice was unmistakable. 

The others
responded immediately.  Their movements were fast and practiced, for they
had done this many times.  Each of the adults picked up a child, grabbed
another by the hand, and sprinted for the tunnels.  One at a time, they
slid through the narrow opening and made their way to the Mother's
chamber.  There, they would be safe, this time at least.