The Swan Kingdom (3 page)

“Where are we going?” I asked as soon as we were out of earshot of the Hall.

Mother lifted her face to the newly emerged stars, drawing in a deep breath before she answered. “You’ll see.”

There was a new tone in her voice, something I had never heard before. In the shadows of the night her whole aspect seemed changed, as if she were suddenly more than she had been while hemmed in by the walls of my father’s Hall. Here she was not my father’s lady, whom he liked to sit meekly at his side, but a queen in her own right – a ruler of kingdoms I had never seen. Her eyes glinted as they met mine and she smiled a secret smile. Together we walked down the hillside into the forest that began behind the Hall. I knew these woods well but they too seemed changed tonight, hushed and still.

At first the frosty light of the moon and stars filtered through the leaves and aided our passage, but as we went deeper into those ancient woods the trees grew older and taller, their canopies spreading immense mantles of shadow until only the vaguest glimmer of light could penetrate. Their trunks were thicker than the reach of my arms and grew so closely together that sometimes I had to turn sideways to slide between them. Mother ignored the deer tracks and paths worn by travellers and instead sought a different way that she seemed to know by instinct alone, for surely there was no landmark to guide her. If I had not been gifted with a cat’s vision I should have come to a dozen accidents in the moist darkness. As it was, I tripped and stumbled along in her graceful wake, cursing in my mind at my own clumsiness. It was a warm spring that year, but here, where sunlight might never fall on the brightest day of summer, the darkness was chill, and before long I found myself shivering in the thin cloak Mama had given me. My increasing nervousness did not help. I had explored these woods a hundred, hundred times, sometimes alone, sometimes with my brothers – and yet I had never seen this place before. I had no idea where we were.

Eventually we broke from the towering darkness of the old trees into a clearing. It too, was strange to me, despite all my explorations; but suddenly I knew how Mother had found her way. This place was powerful. Its presence sent out ripples into the enaid around it, which my nerves had stopped me sensingbefore. Now I was this close, it was like standing next to a waterfall.

At the centre of the circle of trees was an earthmound, perhaps as high as my shoulder. It was split by a slender opening that was supported on either side by two vertical slabs of rock, reaching up to a massive oval lintel stone embedded into the top of the mound, glittering with mica. All around it the wilderness ran riot, but not a leaf, stray vine or bird mess marred the shining surface.

I frowned as I stepped reluctantly closer. I could hear voices. The words were indecipherable; only the undulating rhythm could be discerned. The sound came from the mound, I realized – from the rocks. They were whispering.

“You must change your clothes,” Mother said softly. “Open your pack.”

I pressed my lips closed on the questions that wanted to escape, and instead took the pack from my shoulders. I pulled out a long white shift, belted with a twisted cord of gold. It was new, and must have been specially made for me; not many people needed a shift so long.

The night air shivered over my skin as I took off my cloak and gown and dropped the cool shift over my head. My mother took the cloak and reversed it so that the red lining was on the outside, glowing vividly in the half-light as she clasped it at my throat. She pressed a kiss to both my cheeks and I heard the quiet huff of her breath, slightly quicker than usual; then, with a last touch to my shoulder, Mama left me and walked forward to lay a hand on the lintel stone.

The rock whispering grew louder. More voices joined the first ones, their strange words mingling into a soft babble of sound. Around us, the forest seemed to fall still.

“You must pass through the gateway.” Mama gestured to the waiting shadows within the opening.

“I…” My stomach fluttered. “Alone?”

“Yes,” she answered. Her tone was even but her fingers curled into a fist on the stone.

I hesitated. Mama’s face softened. “This must be done, my love,” she said, so quietly that I could hardly hear the words. “But if I did not think you were ready, I would never send you through alone.”

Send me through? Where was I going? I looked at Mama’s face again. There was no trace of expression now. I knew she would not force me to do anything. She was waiting for me to make my decision.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. Bending, I ducked my head and squeezed into the narrow opening under the horizontal slab. The dark enveloped me as if a hood had been thrown over my head; there was nothing except blackness. The sound of my breathing echoed as if in a much larger space, overlapping the whisper of the rocks. Then there was a hollow percussion, as if hands had clapped over my ears. My body seemed to jolt; my ears rang; and I blinked furiously as light shone suddenly into my face.

Eyes watering, I emerged from the darkness.

When I stood, it was not in a clearing in the forest but on a circular plateau at the crest of a hill. At regular intervals around the edge of the plateau were seven standing stones, each taller than a man; they thrust up into the belly of a turbulent sky that roiled with silver-purple storm clouds and irregular pulses of lightning. The stone chamber through which I had just crawled was at the centre of the circle.

The voices of seven women, echoing and overlapping, rose from the standing stones.

This is the Circle of Ancestors, and you are welcome here.

I gasped, stepped back involuntarily and bumped into the earth mound. Small workings I knew, and my mother’s familiar gift; but the scale of the power in this place dwarfed and frightened me. It was all I could do to quaver out, “What – what must I do here?”

You must pass the test.

“Test? What test?”

There was no answer. The wind whistled across the hilltop, catching my hair and blowing the shift against my body. I drew the cloak more closely around me and waited for the stones to speak again.

They stayed silent.

Gradually, as nothing more frightening confronted me, my tension eased. I began to look about with a little more interest. After a few more moments, I ventured from the safety of the earth mound to the edge of the plateau. The land spread below me like a tapestry, so clear I felt I could reach down and stroke the uneven bumpy smudges of forest and velvety patchwork of farmland. My eyes wandered to the jagged far-off peaks of the mountains and, still more distant, a thin grey rim on the horizon I was sure must be the sea.

The land at the foot of the hill was strange, distorted by a series of curved banks and ditches that made the earth seem to undulate gently beneath its green skin. Puzzled, I walked a little further along the plateau and looked down again. The same curved lines continued all the way around the base in a series of concentric circles, as if the hill had been dropped carelessly into the countryside and its landing had caused ripples in the earth. Such formations could not be natural, but why and how would men do such a thing?

I squinted at the ground, allowing my senses, which had narrowed defensively in my earlier fear, to sweep downwards. I felt for the enaid that should have been washing at random over the earth, and was stunned to discover that it was flowing through the spirals of land as tamely as a channelled river, funnelling into the base of the hill. I turned back to look at the plateau. Enaid welled up through the earth mound at the centre and wended in and out of the circle of stones.

“Who built all this?” I whispered.

The stones replied,
We did.

I jumped again. After a moment’s hesitation, I asked, “Who are you?”

We are the wise women who once ruled this land from the desert to the sea.

“Why did you create this place?”

So that a part of us might always live on here, and we might know our descendants.

I looked back down at the rippling earth in wonder. A gust of wind buffeted me and I reached out to steady myself on the nearest standing stone.

The instant my fingers made contact a sigh rose from the circle of stones. A shimmer like a heat haze rose with the sound, and suddenly I saw not smooth green ripples in the earth but the earth itself, laid open in its rich strata of black and brown. Hundreds of men and women scurried over the great earthworks, digging and carrying soil, working to complete the gargantuan pattern. Beneath my hand the cold stone warmed and softened, then flexed; I touched not rock but skin and cloth. I tried to snatch my fingers back, but they were caught and held in a firm grasp.

I looked up into calm green eyes set deep under auburn brows – my own eyes, but older, happier and serene. The woman gripped me with a wiry strength I recognized from my mother, her eyes gleaming with amusement.

“Hello. I am Angharad, your great-great-great-great-grandmother. Goodness, child! There’s no need to look so worried. I know that where you have come from I am long dead, but that is all the more reason to rejoice in this opportunity to meet me. Here, such things are irrelevant.”

I was looking at my own Ancestor. I didn’t know if I should fall to my knees before her or simply beg her forgiveness for my intrusion. What was I doing here? This was no place for the youngest child of the king – the useless daughter. This was a place for real wise women and for Great workings. But no, no. I tried to collect myself, even as my scattered wits seemed to flutter about in the wind. Mother had sent me here. She must have had a reason.

“What must I do?” I managed.

“Do? You must listen, dear one. You are good at that … perhaps too good. Look down again at the earth. You see the followers of the Old Ways, labouring to make this sacred place even more powerful. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them in this time. Look out over the forests and mountains, and at the sea.”

Angharad turned me back to face the centre of the plateau. It was the same hilltop, but no standing stones had yet been placed here. The earth mound was still – or already – there. She drew me to it and sat down with a sigh of relief, bumping her heels idly against the sloping side. I perched beside her, noticing distantly that her hands and mine were the same; except that mine were perhaps a little smaller and less weathered. The blood of our line must run strongly indeed. The thought brought a sense of pride, even in my dazed state, and I sat up straight.

Angharad smiled as she observed this, and continued. “For a long time, wise women have been leaders of men. But just as the seasons must change, the nature of men cannot remain the same. Already the change has begun. Ambition has crept into the hearts of men. Soon, this land will no longer be united. Boundaries will be imposed, and people will come to believe that the land belongs to
them
. that it is their right to take as much as they can and call themselves its owner. You live in such times, do you not?”

My father’s words, overheard long ago, echoed in my mind:
I rule this land. I am its master.

“Yes. My father…” I stopped, not wanting to be disloyal.

“Oh, yes. I see it clearly,” Angharad said, her gaze wistful. “I’m afraid it is inevitable. And your father, though lacking any sight beyond that of his eyes, is not a bad man. In his own way he loves his Kingdom.” She stood, sweeping out her arms dramatically so that her cloak and gown swirled around her. “But we will make here a place where wise women will always be safe and welcome; a place where the enaid will always be strong, guarded by all the magical defenses at our disposal. And when we have finished the earthworks we will bring here seven massive stones, taller than men. Each of the wise women will chose one stone and put something of herself into it – her strength, knowledge, the sorrows and joys that make her who she is – so that even after our mortal bodies have passed back into the earth, a part of us will remain.”

I felt sadness sweep through me. Everything she had spoken of had come to pass. When I returned to my own time, all that would be left of her would be the stone on the hilltop.

I closed my eyes for a minute, reminding myself that there was a test to be passed. I took a deep breath and asked, “What is the test?”

Angharad smiled. “You have already passed it, dear one,” she said. “Only a wise woman can awaken the Circle of Ancestors and pass back in time to speak with us.”

I felt the blood drain from my face, leaving my cheeks cold. “What?” I gasped. “Me? But I’m not a real wise woman.”

Her expression hardened. “You are your mother’s daughter, Alexandra. It is in your name: ‘helper of mankind’. You are a guardian of the land and a keeper of wisdom, and while that might seem a great burden, you cannot escape it. Your mother must have taught you this – you know what you are.”

“She hasn’t taught me anything of the sort!” I cried. “I’m only a cunning woman! I can’t do Great workings, and I’d never even heard of the Circle of Ancestors until today. This is a mistake!”

Now it was Angharad’s turn to be taken aback. “What?” she whispered. She reached out with one of her hardened hands and caught my fingers in hers. “But, my child … something is very wrong here. Do you mean to tell me you know nothing of the heart of the land?”

I shook my head emphatically.

“And your mother told you nothing of what you have come here to experience? Nothing at all? You don’t feel anything yourself? Have the slightest inkling?”

She was listening to me at last. Relieved, I shook my head once more.

“Oh dear.” Angharad suddenly looked old and tired. “Oh dear. Your mother… Poor Branwen. She was the only one who ever failed…”

I blinked at her. What were we talking about now? She seemed to be lost in a kind of private reverie, muttering to herself. “I think I begin to see. Your father… I know he is not a kind man. And your mother wanted to protect you from more hurt – her own hurt … foolish, foolish, yes, but understandable … and so she just sent you along. But you’ve never seen… Oh dear.” She turned back to me. “You have no idea who you are. What you are. But I can show you.”