Red Solstice (Alfheim Book 1) (9 page)

Some of the more hippy style craftspeople and musicians were drawn to the simplicity of the life here and gradually the old and new merged.  It was around this time, Hilda told me, that my father and mother moved here.  Originally there was a steady  trade in vegetables and craft goods but when the economic collapse came the market for our crafts died out which is why the dock end of the town is such a devastated place.  At one point we even had a small fishing fleet working down there and there was talk of using the water to transport beer but that also had only a small market and so the larger transport ships gradually passed us by.

Eventually we got electricity and decent sewage but at that time telecommunications were not generally run underground and so the telephone systems would not work for us with the high steep valley walls blocking signals and making the building of pylons almost impossible.  This also proved a problem for radio signals as well and only the college has the equipment to allow broadcasts or capture their reception.  We rely heavily on our education system including the library and the traders for our knowledge of the outside world.

The original settlers kept to their more Christian celebrations but the influx of hippies and crafts people brought with them some more pagan sects and although these in theory could have clashed with the Christians' ways, they in fact kept an open mind in the matter and many people therefore came to celebrate everything that seemed a good idea at the time.  The Solstice was part of this and originally it was a druid festival except there were no actual druids in the town but there were a few that deemed themselves Wiccans and they saw the Solstice points as being as much theirs as the druids did.  Also the Wiccans had a festival close to Christmas which just made the entire celebration just a bit bigger and longer.  It was probably one of the best ideas for religious integration ever thought up as everyone seemed to gain from it.  The church was full at significant times no matter if the people in it were there for Harvest festival or Autumn Equinox, Halloween or All Saints day.

The Summer Solstice was at a point in the year where not much else was happening and when there is not much happening then usually people want to make something happen and for the people of the town that meant turning it into a big party with lots of beer and fireworks followed by a day off work to recover.  Originally it marked the turning of the Spring into Summer and when the druids were in charge they usually gathered at some place like Stonehenge to march around and light bonfires.  Then everyone would wait for the first rays of the sun to rise above the horizon to symbolise some form of rebirth.  I suppose we were not being terribly accurate in making it a night time event but then we really did appreciate fireworks and they always show up better in the dark.

There was even talk one year of adopting an Eastern festival like Diwali so that we could have a week of fireworks leading up to bonfire night.  I think the vegans and farmers, in the population, became a united front and were the ones that blew this thought out of the water because of the  distress it would cause to animals and livestock.  Anyway the Summer Solstice was an excuse to hold a party and had no bearing what so ever on any real religious practice for the majority of us.  That it might have for Red and his people was another matter as it did seem that the solstices and equinoxes were governing their behaviour to an extent where it came to gaining entry to the Earth reality.

Thinking back it was at the solstice celebration two years ago that  I had finally lost my virginity to an enthusiastic, if not terribly good at it, pagan young man.  He lasted the summer before I grew totally bored at his lack of desire to enhance his said abilities in line with my thoughts on the subject.  I like to think he still worships me from afar but  more likely I scared the hell out of him.  He ended up settling down with a rather dull girl who had been in his year at college and they both now worked at the brewery.  Sometimes he was allowed into our sessions at the Docks but never unaccompanied, so I guess he had confessed all to his inamorata. 

The boys in the band had been looking forward to this years  party which would start for us at the Docks and then wend its way out to the town square for the big finale and even more booze.  It would, of course, mean playing a gig that night minus the talent show section but obviously I would not be able to do this with the group.  Hilda did not plan to go to any of the celebrations but Aylsa and Truthy were full of it.  I felt so envious but I did understand that for me it would be the most dangerous time to be loose in a crowd.  After all it is easy to take a step in one direction and not see your friends again for hours with everyone excited and milling about. 

I had a word with Truthy as I was not one hundred percent certain I would make it back through the night of the solstice, and she had been my friend for so long, it seemed sensible to say some sort of good bye, but I also did not want her to worry too much, or even start telling the others what I intended on doing.  I made it sound more like I might have an assignation with Red where I would tell him to clear off and leave me alone.  She might be interested in magic, and hopeful of making some, but she did not as yet realise how real it was, or how dangerous.  I could not place her in any danger either, so it had to be apparent to her that I would do this alone, which in her mind only added to the romance of the entire thing.  In the end it seemed, my reading of her reactions was spot on as she had long suspected I might have a thing for Red and now she felt secure that she had been right which made the weirdness seem okay to her.  What can I say but look out world if she ever becomes an author you are in for some strange, strange books.

Solstice

It is the day of the Summer Solstice and I prepare myself for the night ahead by sleeping late yet again and then working on my martial arts moves before a shower and choosing the correct T shirt for the coming confrontation.  I have black jeans and I am going to wear these with my usual Doc Martins but the T shirt has to feel just right which takes me almost two hours of internal argument before I finally pick one with a rather splendid panther on it.  To complete the ensemble I have a short black leather jacket,  with a few casually placed studs on it.  I congratulate myself on the final look and as an after thought to my femininity spray myself with something expensive and quite raunchy.

I have told Hilda that I plan to meet with him and hopefully not get taken.  She does not think this a good idea but I cannot think of another way that I can get him back to this Alfheim place.  I have my martial art skills that he is not aware of and also some measure of magic ability which will have to suffice.  If I do not go he will come for me and that would place the others in danger.  John at the least would try and take charge of the matter and he is not a trained warrior despite his love of martial arts.  The group might well also step in and that would be disastrous.  I cannot risk any one of them.  So, I beg that she does not mention this to my brothers or even to Aylsa until after midnight.  I am fairly certain that his glade is somewhere in the small wood at the back of Meadow Lane, as there is a brook running through it down to the river before it reaches the estuary.  All I have to do is wait until I feel him attempt to pull me to him and when the time is critical make my way to the glade.

We wait indoors and it is not long after seven when I feel the first tug of his sending.  Now all I have to do is resist.  By ten thirty this is becoming more impossible than difficult and I decide I have time to make slow steps to meet him.  I walk from Hilda's house to the end of Meadow Lane the houses I pass are all so neat and tidy with manicured gardens and curtains that match.  It clashes so with all that I have been through and have to face.  On the one side the gracefulness of a suburban street and on the other alien beings and magic.  The whole scene is suddenly taking on a surreal twist.  As I climb over the style which gives access into the wood,  I can feel a storm brewing and before I have gone more than ten yards, it is suddenly upon me.  I dive for shelter under a large oak.  The wind has gone wild.  It beats the trees and assaults the bushes.  Following in its wake, the rain deals killer blows until the wood whimpers in its pain, and those small creatures left racing for their homes cower under logs and stones.  I sit hugging my knees and rocking in time to the winds howling. You only had to ask, my mad lover.  You only had to ask.  I was yours before ever I knew you, but it has to be on my terms, I thought, my head throbbing in pain and my body aching for his. 

Lightening has split the sky and now the thunder rolls defiant. Then as abruptly as it began the rain ceases, but the air still hangs heavy and threatening.  I think about the revellers that will gather soon in the town square and wish I could turn back time a whole week.  I pass hawthorn and ash close growing to hazel where soon nuts will be forming and I hear the sound of the stream as I approach but its lazy idleness has turned to a roaring torrent.  All somehow fitting for my mood, or is my mood shaping the things around me.  I am suddenly too tired to think straight any more.  In this manner I enter his glade.

Now I need some good delaying tactics.  He is surprisingly dry after that rain as he stand there waiting for me.  “You took your good time”, he says.

“Maybe I dance to no man's calling” , I answer him.

“Ah but you have already told me I am not a man as you would name one.”

He is so pleased with himself and that fuels my anger.

“How did you finally find me”, I ask, “Considering my mother took considerable lengths to hide us from you?”

“Music”, he replied,“We use song to seek out love but we also use it to lure our enemies to their deaths, Music is important to us not only for the pleasure of its sound but also its usefulness in spinning  a geas.  Whatever you have been told of us, you are of our blood and it shows in your mastery of song.  I have watched you play with the crowd on many a night and it was one of the things that led me to know you were the one I was seeking.  But even if it had not been so, I would have stayed to listen to your songs.  Finally, you sang that song about one of our kind who changed his shape to win the love of a girl,  and you looked directly at me.  It felt as if you sang it only for me and not the crowd.  You looked at me as if I was the only one there that mattered.  It felt, I thought it felt as if you were sending me an invitation, but you kept hiding from me and that too I read as being your desire for me to pursue you.  So I came to you in a vision occasioned by the rose and you showed no sign that my advances were refused, in fact you welcomed them.”

I had the grace to blush. “I thought I was having a dream.  There is a difference between what we think we want and what we should want, or something like that.  I thought it was not real so it did not matter .”

“It was real for me,” he said, his voice suddenly bitter.

Me too, I thought but I cannot trust you with that information.   Damn there is nothing worse than feeling guilty when you fancied yourself so self righteous.  “So”, I continued “which high living whore seduced you for relief from her aged husbands lack of interest?”

“Your grandmother”, he replied matter of factly.  “I was one of her favourite guardsmen”.

“You were her lover”,  I almost screamed it, “How do you people live with yourselves”

“It was considered a great honour,” he replied, “and besides that she is a very beautiful woman

“An honour”, my mind tried to work its way around that one, then a thought hit me, “Don't tell me you are my grandfather”.

“I have no issue,” he said his face now stern and unreadable.  “Now if you have quite finished wasting my time we have a portal to cross.”

“Look this is hardly all my fault, I have never even met this grandmother and my own mother has been missing all these long years,  I don't even know anybody in this Alfheim place, I just want to stay here and be normal and grow up and well I just don't see why it has to be me that goes and it is not fair ”

He raises a fist to strike the air as if totally exasperated, which is how I want him, just slightly off balance and feeling superior.

“Don't hit me,” I simpered. “I will go quietly”  Away from here, without you, my mind added on.  He smiled, his lips curled and his eyes narrowed.  Predatory, dangerous and too damn cocky by half.  He moved cat like towards me crossing the glade at a swift pace.  I lowered my eyes and shifted back slightly with my back against a tree trunk.  He reached for me and I did not fight it as he pulled me towards him and my knee connected hard with his groin.  Then I was flying through the air towards another tree trunk as he collapsed onto one knee fighting back what could have been a scream.  I executed a rather rickety break fall.  Yes it hurt, but he did not need to know that.

He took three deep breathes, his aura took on a glittery quality as he slowly stood.  He clapped his hands together once and I saw electricity spark between them.  Lightening played around him as he called to the gathering storm.

“Orbis”, I whispered, my sense of alarm suddenly off the scale.