Setting the Compass

Setting the Compass

  Copyright 2011 K. Overman-Edmiston. All rights reserved.

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  Setting the Compass is from the short story collection Night Flight from Marabar.

  Paperback print edition (ISBN 9780646369693) published by Crumplestone Press,

  PO Box 6546, East Perth, Western Australia 6892

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  Setting the Compass

  It was Druidism that bound the diverse range of Celtic peoples into a distinctive group. Caesar said the central Druidic belief stipulated that after death, the soul passes on to another person. This, he believed, underpinned the Celts' astonishing bravery in battle.

  The Druids taught their secrets to novices through an oral tradition. They chanted lessons to their acolytes who, in turn, chanted them back to their teachers until they were known by heart. The Druids were exempt from military service and war taxes. Caesar believed these privileges attracted many novices willing to undergo the rigorous training that could take up to twenty years to complete.

  Druid teaching included the recitation of ancestral relationships, and belief in the interweaving of spiritual and physical worlds – to the degree that both were seen as two parts of the same entity. Druids were proficient in astronomy and astrology. They taught that the soul was eternal and the world itself was indestructible.

  Their interests lay with divine worship, the proper performance of public and private sacrifices, the interpretation of questions ritualistic, the settlement of disputes, and the punishment of those who failed to accept their rulings.

  The Druids considered the natural and the supernatural worlds to be one. In essence, they viewed themselves as caretakers of the universe.

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  In the time of the Druids, a very young man, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sits alone in the shadow thrown by the Poulnabrone Dolmen, County Clare.

  I had not realized how bony Eire could be. It had always seemed so well covered, an image planted in the softer parts of my mind when I was very small, where summer days were spent dandled in the lap of the central lowlands. That is where I was born, in a small settlement south of Cashel. I wish I were there now, home with my brother and sister. Instead I'm sitting in the ribcage of Eire, bones all bones, the Burren.

  The sun will soon set, but it won't achieve complete darkness tonight; it's the shortest night of the year. Darkness doesn't frighten me though. I don't believe anything frightens me. I'm like that. I just don't get frightened easily.

  I can see the faint holes appearing in the blue fabric, and the light from the outside is beginning to pour through. You see, when the sun drops below the horizon it makes the material warp and stretch and tiny rents appear in its weft and the outside light shines through. Stars. I suppose I like light even though it's insubstantial. Bright light makes it harder to see that beat, that movement in the rocks. The worst light is moonlight, it brings the movement to the surface and it's unbearable. Anyway, enough of this. I'll not unnerve myself.

  It was clever of them, the Druids, to leave me by the dolmen. I suppose they think it will be a real test, a real initiation. I'm already tired of their rituals and I'm not even a man yet. I hope I die before I become a man. Perhaps I can will myself to death. I've seen some of them will themselves to death, and will others of their number to death. It must be weakness, allowing someone else to force you to death through their own will. I mean, it's not substantial, is it? It's nonsense. I suppose they think I'll die of fear tonight. I suppose they think I'll be fearful of spirits, the Phooka, the Banshee, and the Bo. Well I won't. Spirits are nothing, they have no substance, they cannot contract into a splinter of matter and pierce me, nor can they fall upon me like the headstone of that cromlech and crush the life from me.

  I wish I'd kept my cloak with me, the evening winds have started to blow. It's the breath of the sun, you know, exhaling as it dips beneath the horizon. I wish I was with my sister and brother. Why couldn't they have chosen Donal or Aine to take away? They have more beauty than I, they have more real power. Aine is more poetic than I am, she is dexterous with words, she can give names to matterless things. I can't. I am prosaic, I have heavy, dull prose running through my veins, it keeps me near the earth. I have a head of stone, two legs of stone. I am like this dolmen, a construct of weight bearing downwards, gloriously earthbound. I wish it didn't keep pointing, I wish it would keep still. I wish too much. Perhaps I should try to sleep.

  The winds haven't died down. It'll be cold tonight, despite being the middle of summer.