Awakening, Page 2

  However, the hard fact was that as twilight fell on the last day of April, Stort had realized that he wasn’t going to make it to the West Gate of Brum until the early hours. So when he reached Beacon Hill, the penultimate rise on the pilgrim road, he stopped to ponder his situation.

  From that vantage point he could see Waseley Hill to his left and Brum ahead and to his right, stretching away into the growing night, a vast and beautiful twinkling carpet of light.

  Sensible travellers would have known at once that the best thing to do was to make camp immediately, preferably one that was well camouflaged. Then they could crawl into their bivvy bags, cover their eyes, block their ears and remain immobile until May Day was truly begun. That was the hydden way to survive a season’s turn if stuck alone outside.

  Failing that, the next best thing would have been for Stort to hide his heavy portersac in thick undergrowth for later recovery, and bypass the Hill to make a dash for Brum, trusting that the guardians of its gates would open up when they heard his urgent hammering.

  Not ideal but far better than what Bedwyn Stort actually did, which was the most foolhardy thing a hydden could have done: he set off towards the shadows and darkness of Waseley Hill.

  His reasons for taking this startling course of action were not simple and they had a history.

  The first thing most pilgrims visiting Waseley Hill do is to seek out the source of the River Rea and imbibe its pure, cool waters. That ritual over, they dwell a little on the memory of Beornamund, founder of Brum, maker of artefacts of power and beauty and probably the greatest CraftLord who ever lived.

  Few doubt that somewhere on the banks of the Rea, perhaps quite near its source, he had his forge. The roaring of his furnace and bright ringing of his hammer as he worked precious metals for the Mercian kings and lords, and their ladies, must have been often heard.

  It was on the banks of the Rea that Beornamund met Imbolc, which in the old language means Spring, and fell in love with her. But when she died in a freak flood upon the hill – a strange, perverse happening indeed – the CraftLord blamed the gods.

  Every hydden knows what happened next. Beornamund made a sphere of crystal and precious metals of such perfection that when he hurled it into the sky over Waseley Hill in angry defiance of the gods it attracted to itself the fires of the Universe and all the colours of the seasons.

  The gods thought that if they let the sphere fall back to Earth and be destroyed all would be well. They had forgotten that the Universe is as one and that to break or sully even a small part of its perfection was to endanger all.

  Fortunately, four fragments of the sphere remained: small stones or gems, each of which held the fires of life and the essence of one of the seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

  Great Beornamund guessed their importance at once and understood the trouble and danger he had caused. He found all the fragments but for Spring, search though he might. Eventually he made a pendant with four settings, leaving one empty against the day when Spring was found. It is said that at his death the White Horse carried Imbolc to Beornamund in spirit form. He was granted immortality for his services as a CraftLord, but for Imbolc to earn her place at his side for all time she must first wander the Earth as the Peace-Weaver, or bringer of harmony, until such time as she had lived out the centuries of her spirit life.

  Learning this, Beornamund wrought the pendant anew, such that the gems would fall from it down the centuries and be scattered across the Earth, marking off each season’s passing and giving his love strength to continue her journey. When Winter was gone she would know her journey was over. Only then, and after a mortal had found the lost gem of Spring, would Imbolc be allowed to take her rightful place at Beornamund’s side.

  But that would presage a darker and more dangerous time for the Earth. In place of the Peace-Weaver, her sister the Shield Maiden would be born: angry, frightening, a seeming curse on all who knew her.

  If she was to be pacified the finder of the gem of Spring must give it to her, and afterwards find the gems of Summer, Autumn and Winter, wherever they might be, and give those to her too. Then, with the gems reunited and the fires of the Universe as one, the Shield Maiden and her mortal helpers would be able to regenerate the broken sphere and peace and honour between gods and mortal kind would be satisfied, harmony return, and the balance of the Universe restored . . .

  But what had such a story to do with Mister Bedwyn Stort of Brum, a traveller incapable of getting from A to B without mishap, let alone one capable of traversing the Universe in search of lost gems?

  This . . .

  The many stories and prophecies surrounding the gem of Spring told that it would be found by an extraordinary hydden, and brought to the Shield Maiden with the help of a giant-born, a hydden who must learn to live in both worlds before he can live safely in either.

  The path of the White Horse and its Rider, Imbolc the Peace-Weaver, had already crossed that of Bedwyn Stort twice. On both occasions Imbolc had seen in Stort a hydden of great power.

  His own path had crossed that of Jack, a giant-born, and Katherine, a human girl of considerable resource and courage.

  Stort was too modest and self-effacing to imagine that he was the ‘extraordinary hydden’ of legend who would find the gem. But what did seem quite certain to him was that the baby Katherine was pregnant with was the Shield Maiden and most likely to be born that night. Which meant in turn that the gem of Spring must be found that night too, as the myths made clear. These were the thoughts that made Stort take the risk and set off for Waseley Hill as night fell.

  He did so with a memory that gave him comfort and strength. A few weeks before, Katherine had shyly taken his hand and placed it on her swollen belly that he might feel the child move. From that moment Stort had felt a loyalty and a love such as he never had before. It filled his heart, it brought joy to his lone spirit and it made his pulse race with hope and excitement.

  If she was indeed to be born that night, and if she was the Shield Maiden, then perhaps there was no better pilgrim than Bedwyn Stort to be upon the old Road and hurrying on to Waseley Hill in the dark. Innocent and wise, fearful and courageous, faithful but questioning – perhaps these had always been the qualities the gem-finder would need.

  But what he would do on the Hill, Stort as yet had no idea.

  What dangers he might face he could not know.

  What courage and purpose he might find he could not possibly imagine.

  But there he was, the wind now a hurricane filled with rain, trees bending, creaking and cracking all about, and the very ground beginning to shake with an earth tremor.

  Up ahead, the Hill itself.

  To his left, and flowing down from it, the River Rea.

  Right behind . . .

  Behind?

  He heard a roaring sound like a great wave churning on a steep shingle beach, readying itself to drive forward and destroy all in its path.

  But surely, he told himself, water cannot flow up a hill!

  Stort decided to stand his ground.

  Let this flood of water come, if that’s what it is! he cried aloud into the rain and wind, to give himself courage.

  To no avail.

  The roaring from lower down the hill grew louder still and put into him a fear like no other he had ever felt.

  Not for the first time in life Stort had a sense of his own imminent destruction. He trembled, his knees shook and he felt himself unable to breathe.

  But suddenly the rain stopped and the river ceased to flow, its waters uncertain, shaking, trembling, as if in the grip of a force far beyond an earthly one. Though everything was silent and most dangerous, a sense of peace came over Bedwyn Stort.

  His fears slipped away, his courage returned, and with it a new certainty and a sense of wonder.

  What he heard, what he felt, what he knew as he stood alone on Waseley Hill, was that great change was in the air that went far beyond the season’s turn.

  ‘No
w is the hour and the moment!’ he told himself, adding aloud, as if it were an invocation, ‘Now will the gem of Spring, the first and the lost gem, finally be found! If that be true then assuredly I shall know that the Shield Maiden has been born!’

  This was the way in which the wyrd of Bedwyn Stort was entwined that night with that of Katherine and Jack and of their child.

  3

  OFFERING

  Jack’s eyes snapped open, his mind and body instantly alert.

  He did not move, not sure if it was danger that threatened or simply some change in the environment he sensed.

  It was still dark but dawn was not far away. Katherine and Judith were asleep, his arms were still around them.

  No movement, nothing near but . . . he relaxed.

  It was the rank odour of a fox that had woken him.

  Jack’s eyes went from right to left, slowly. The wind was slight, coming from a little to his right, so not quite straight through the two great conifers that marked the entrance to the henge.

  His eyes made the return journey and that time he saw it, in the undergrowth to the left of the conifers, its eyes silver orbs that caught the moon above and the beginning of dawn.

  The fox was hunting and it was hunting them, its head moving cautiously out from the shadows, its front paw hesitating. For the briefest of moments Jack felt the fight response in a way he never had. Total protection of his young and her mother, zero tolerance of anything that threatened his family. But a fox . . . ? Even a fox.

  Jack knew it had found them by scent, as he had first found it. Its purpose plain: it wanted something whose scent had an appeal that transcended the fear foxes felt when they ran into humans and hydden.

  But this one wasn’t interested in them, or the baby. It had scented the blood and the placenta. Jack stayed still, waiting with interest to see what the fox did while he enjoyed the new raft of feelings into which parenthood had thrust him: pride, wonder, responsibility, purpose, maleness, being the protector. He had felt that before in all the long weeks and months past, getting Katherine safely home. Now the feeling was multiplied. Katherine was an adult and could protect herself. His child was not, and could not.

  Not yet anyway. Later, in the years to come, when she had grown a bit and was on her way to being a Shield Maiden, things would be different. But for now she needed them.

  Everything had changed for him. The world had reorientated itself. The fox stood poised, head slightly to one side, listening, then moved forward again, still scenting the air.

  Jack reached a hand to touch the beautiful curve of Judith’s back, and Katherine’s cheek. He did it gently, with infinite tenderness, but even so Katherine stirred and murmured.

  The fox retreated at once but its eyes remained watching from the shadows.

  Then he himself stirred because suddenly there was something he had to do. Where the impulse came from he did not know, but it felt deep and visceral and came from some ancient, ancestral part of him, from the very beginning of his kind.

  They had been given a gift, and it was time to give one back and thank the White Horse for getting them home.

  He often had such feelings and knew they were of a different nature and came from a different place than the instinct that Katherine sometimes had.

  ‘It’s because you’re giant-born,’ she would say. ‘One day you’ll take pride in that!’

  It was a hydden expression to describe a genetic freak whose blood carried something of both human and hydden genes. Born a hydden but condemned to grow to human size and become giant, an outcast in the world to which he truly belonged.

  That was why, when he was six, someone – he could not remember who – had sent him to be raised as a human for his own protection. In Germany, the land of his birth, he would have been a monster deserving only to be killed before maturity. In tolerant and enlightened Brum his presence was the fulfilment of a prophecy that turned on the finding and bringing together of Beornamund’s four gems of the seasons.

  Only when he learnt by accident that henges could be used as portals between the two worlds had he realized he might exist in both because he changed in the transfer to normal hydden size.

  He knew none of this until he travelled into the Hyddenworld with Katherine. Only then did the feelings for hydden ways and unseen danger, the fast reactions, the profound reverence he felt for the Earth and Universe, his ability to hydden or hide himself and even his flair for hydden music, make sense.

  So he knew now that the fox had come deliberately, sent by some hydden god or spirit, that he might make an offering of thanks to the White Horse. The fox was friend not foe, though he was hunter still.

  ‘I’m going to clean you up,’ he said quietly to Katherine, ‘and then there’s something I must do. Stay as you are, Judith’s asleep. She’ll need these hours close to you, skin to skin, more than a normal child . . .’

  He knew it was so but not how or why he knew.

  Katherine stirred with worry at the word ‘normal’.

  ‘Ssshh,’ he whispered, ‘she’s fine, she’s fine . . .’

  He sat up straight and turned round slowly to check the fox was watching. It was and he was glad. Jack needed it to be.

  He took the leather water bottle from his ’sac and washed his hands. Katherine had been very particular about them having water and clean cloths.

  ‘Just in case it happens outside and there’s only us . . . you’ll have to . . .’

  He knew what to do. Only when he was satisfied that she was clean and dry did he do what instinct told him to do afterwards. He reached his hands to the placenta he had put nearby. It was cold now and because of the water on his hands it was slippery again.

  He knelt by her, got it in his palms, stood up carefully so as not to drop it and went to the very centre of the henge, the moon now almost on the edge of the circle of its trees, the last stars and planets shining in the sky.

  ‘It’s May Day,’ he whispered, ‘the start of Summer. More importantly the Shield Maiden has been born and the lost gem will soon be found.’

  He held the placenta up towards the stars, turned a deasil circle three times, whispered words of Earth and Universe, and finally placed it on the ground in the circle of grass he had trampled.

  Then he went back to Katherine and whispered, ‘I need to take her for a moment, I need to give thanks and ask the White Horse to help her on the journey she’s now started . . . it’s all right . . . sshhh . . . I’ll be just over there. It’s something I have to do . . .’

  He took the baby in his arms, sleeping still.

  Seeing her beauty his eyes filled with tears that caught the dawning light.

  ‘Come on, Judith,’ he said, ‘time for you to say hello.’

  He went to where the placenta lay on the ground and stood astride it. Then, looking up at the circle of sky above him, at the last of the moon and the first of the dawn, his eyes on the few remaining stars, and finally looking between the trees to the dark wall of the escarpment that was White Horse Hill, the Horse invisible in the dark, he raised Judith up and made a plea that from that moment on, to the end of time, they would watch over her benignly. As he did so he knew without needing to be told that he was doing as parents had done, both human and hydden, through all the millennia of mortal life, where they were left to their own devices.

  ‘Accept her,’ he said, ‘give her help when we no longer can, guide her as you guided us, bring her love as you brought it to us.’

  As he spoke, his body stilled, so did Judith’s and so too did Katherine’s.

  But the fox moved and came out into the open, its coat silvery in the dawning light.

  It took another step forward, scenting the air towards where Jack stood with Judith raised to the skies. Then another step and another . . .

  Until, all fear gone, it came to him, scenting the placenta, sensing utter safety, despite the humans being so near.

  It barked, it licked, it took up what was there and ran wit
h it back to the edge of the henge, but stayed out in the light.

  Jack cradled Judith back into his arms and turned to watch it take the offering and eat it.

  Jack murmured to his child.

  The fox ate as if on the Earth’s behalf.

  When it had finished it looked back at Jack, turned tail and was suddenly gone.

  ‘Jack . . .’

  She needed help.

  He went back to her, put their baby back between her breasts and covered her to keep her warm. Then the rays of the rising sun came among the trees and lit them all. Judith finally woke.

  ‘I’m going to remove this towel and my jacket and cle . . . clean . . .’

  Her cries were sudden and sharp, louder than a baby’s only a few hours old ought to be.

  Katherine tried to put her to the breast but she refused, her tiny crying mouth sliding over the nipple and ignoring it.

  Jack did the best he could, liberal with water and the clean cloths Katherine had ready in plastic bags.

  ‘I’m getting cold.’

  The crying persisted.

  ‘Jack . . .’

  ‘She must be hungry.’

  But the cry was pitiful and born of pain, it seemed, not hunger. Continuing to refuse the breast she cried still more; and even more when Jack took her in his arms again, wrapped tight in a towel and his jacket, and walked a few steps with her.

  Katherine was exhausted and her clothes still a mess; so was he. Judith too, with dried blood and mucus on her arms and head.

  ‘What do we do?’ he asked Katherine, because he had no idea.

  ‘You’d better go up to the house,’ she said. ‘I think we need help.’

  And they did.

  Katherine was getting cold and their baby was crying again. But now her hands had turned to fists and her eyes were screwed up and shut tight . . . as she gave herself up to cries of such pain that they knew something was terribly wrong.