The Dark Chronicles Ch. 01

Part One - The Stone Circles.

For five years Nymue lived in the Isle of Glas and was taught by the sisterhood there. They taught her mysteries of the Goddess and her long lines of song down through the ages, the lines and curves of her country, the sacred places, her holy wells. Nymue, who was blooded in water risen wrong and foul, grasped immediately the cleansing power of tumbling waters and fast streams, high mountains and clean rain. Her favourite art was learned from the fish and the bird, the creatures with scales slipped in silver and wings that soared.

She especially loved the little egret with its wings of purity and white, for it was the first rising of those birds that warned her of the terrible sea. When the trance was upon her from smoke and mushroom and song, Nymue soared high with the birds, and they were her totem, feathers and white.

The shock of the five waves and the bringing of her blood had drained the colour from Nymue's hair, and ever after it was white, the longest whitest white. "She is marked," said her mother, "forever marked." Her whiteness marked her, and Nymue was different now.

The women from Glas also taught Nymue the new Christ and the Holy Mother, that she might know shifts in allegiance led by priests from Rome, ascetics and monks who grew afraid of women and their magick. Some were hermits and holy, not so lost to the older ways, who still knew the cry of the fox and the creak of the tree and the old stone rings.

Other men were less wise, wrapping themselves in purple cloth and red wine, calling it blood, building crosses and chapels from new stone. Nymue, who knew blood, quickly learned this falseness. She watched the way the holy men looked at her, and she turned from them, full knowing where her power lay. She walked away, dragging their eyes behind her, holding her head high; and her hips swayed.

Nyneve, Vivyane's elder sister and Nymue's aunt, watched the girl as she grew from a child into a young woman, and saw her solitude and inner strength. "She will be a powerful one, the spirit moves within her and she has seen the Goddess," Nyneve counselled, and the two older women wondered how best to guide the girl. "She is young, only nineteen years, but nearly ready, I think, for the ceremony of the midsummer sun."

Vivyane looked closely at her sister. "Do you think so, truly? So soon?"

"Nymue is different, she knows songs from our Mother and also from the ancient fathers. She walks in circles and straight lines. She is fire and water both; tree and stone. I've not seen it before." Nyneve paused, deep in thought. "Her moon curse was unusual, blooded by water under a burning sky, and her hair is bled white. And remember what she said in her trance: the dragen comes? The girl is different, Sister, she will go beyond us."

Vivyane was torn. She was priestess and mother both, and remembered the tiny babe at her breast, all those years ago. "She's my little girl." Vivyane gazed into the fire in front of them. "She's still my little girl."

Nyneve was silent for a moment. "Maybe we wait. Maybe we do that. Another year."

"Another year, yes." Vivyane was thankful for her older sister. "She can wait."

Nymue did not want to wait. "Mother, I am marked white. I am near twenty years old, nineteen turns of the midsummer sun and the midwinter solstice. I know the world turns, seasons wake and die. This doesn't change, I count the turns. I stand in the stones and see the longer cycles turning there." She was impatient. "I know the rounds, Mother, my mind sees them and I understand them. The ancient ones who left the stones, they knew them too."

Nymue looked at her mother fiercely, challenging Vivyane with her stronger knowledge. Nymue respected the song memories and the long poems of her mother and Nyneve, but she understood deeper truths, permanence recorded in stone and ditch, post and hole.

"Mother, let me do this." Nymue thought her plan sound and set her mind to convince Vivyane. "Let me do this. For a year, let me wander to the ends of this isle, south where the land joins the Atlant ocean; and north to the mountains and cold hills. I will follow the curves of our Goddess and the hidden ways. Let me find more circles of stone and understand their counting, sun and moon and the evening star and the blood red star. My mind remembers it all, Mother, and I can learn it."

She reached the core of her argument. "Only then, when I truly understand the ancient wisdom, only then will I submit to the ceremony of the sun." Her argument was cunning: "the Goddess rides with the moon, Mother, I need to know how the moon turns before I know the sun."

Vivyane gazed upon the girl and was silent. She looked into the heart of the fire and watched the heating embers crackle and spit. Slowly, she reached to a bag on the hearth and pulled a handful of seeds from it. Vivyane turned the seeds over in her hand, looking down at the different shapes and sizes there, like tiny stones; then threw them into the fire. With a sizzle the seeds burst in the heat and a spicy aroma spread through the room. The three women breathed deeply, and their sight sharpened.

Suddenly, a heated seed shot from the fire and landed on Nymue's leg. She flicked away the hot shell and soothed the hot place with a tongue wetted fingertip.

Nyneve nodded once. "The fire talks, and marks the girl. She will do this, for twelve moons, as she says."

"Thank you, wise mother, my aunt. I will do it right." Nymue smiled to herself. Her stubbornness had prevailed.

* * * *

The stones were in a high place. Leading up to the height of the hill, straight parallel lines of stones crossed the country, ending paths and starting paths. Sight lines led the eye to notches on the horizon, or tall trees; and there were messages here, left from long ago.

Nymue dropped her travelling bag from her shoulders, stretching her spine to give herself relief from the weight of it. She was a small figure in the landscape, almost hidden within her cloak of deerskin leather, worked soft and light and carefully stitched. Her white token feathers were sewn around the collar, setting a crown behind her hair, all white. Nymue was travelling, walking miles each day, and coiled her hair high to keep it hidden. It would fall later around her body and pale skin, when she danced.

She sat cross legged and unravelled the woven string laces from her boots, hard leather and waxed with animal fat to protect against water. Nymue carefully checked the seams and the condition of the soles, noting she would need to thicken them before she moved north for the winter. Good enough for now. She unwrapped bread from a parcel of leaves and ate for a full belly. This night would be long.

To the west, the sun lowered its last light, casting long shadows from the line of stones up the hill. Behind Nymue the moon was already high, its blood finally fading after five long years. The moon was full and the Goddess would strengthen her this night. Around the girl, shadows from the sun ran long and black, and shadows from the moon grew shorter.

Nymue waited.

It was time.

Nymue had studied the geometry of the hill as she walked towards it that afternoon. She understood most of it, but the final mystery lay ahead, higher on the hill where she could not see. She did not know the final shape of it, its centre, but had discovered over time that not knowing was best. The alertness that came with discovery tuned her intuition, she found a deep place in the base of her belly that was instinctive, animal, ancient. It was that knowledge Nymue sought, and the primal energy with it. This was her magick now.

She ate three small seeds and a dried husk to sharpen her vision, to hear like a cat, to smell like a fox and to taste like the adder, the snake. The moon spread silver on the grass. Nymue's tongue flickered and her senses grew hot. She stood, and dropped her cloak to the ground, spreading it wide. She would need it later, to hide within.

Nymue undid the buttons on her jerkin, bone and loop, and cast it from her body, together with her woven woollen vest. Her pale breasts were tight and hard already, a low ache behind her throbbed nipples. She released her hair from its tie, and it fell around her, an unnatural cloak of snow uncut to her waist. She unlaced the tied straps from her leggings and pulled them down.

Nymue placed her garments in neat piles around the edge of her cloak, carefully spaced and a hex. She traced them together with her finger on the ground and it was a hidden mark. Spirits might wake and follow her, but her belongings were material things and would be left alone now. High in a tree an owl waited, keeping watch over her camp. Birds followed Nymue, always and constant.

Nymue stood, her naked body glowing pale in the moonlight, a small white triangle at the base of her belly. Her eyes were black and wide, and she began to turn. Slowly at first, her bare feet sliding over the short grass, making slow weaves in and around the lines of stones, tracing spirals as she moved up the hill. Nymue looked to the ground and saw the lines and leys, then quickly looked to the sky to mark the planets and stars. Her mind instantly mapped the patterns of this place, and she saw it lined to the dog and the crab and the goat. This was a place of the moon, an ancient place.

Knowing this, Nymue changed the pattern of her dance in tiny, subtle ways, shifting the patterns she made so that older spirits could see her, hear her feet, and wake. She moved higher up the hill and spun faster, heating her body and igniting the first small flames of ecstasy. Her nipples thickened and her breasts ached, and deep in the depths of her belly her cunt stirred and slipped, thickening with blood pumping hot. Nymue' s breath quickened and now she ran, turning faster until she fell, falling dizzy on the grass, her lithe frame writhing. Her back arched, and she cupped her cunt in the palm of her hand, gripping it closed with her thighs. Nymue was pale and small under the bright light of the moon, and the spell was upon her, spiralling high from the potions she had taken and her frantic dance.

Crying out to the moon, Nymue dipped her fingers into her sliding cunt, pressing her palm hard on her clitoris and circling there, driving hot pleasure into her body. Panting, she crawled to the long stone in the centre of this array, and writhed upon it like a snake. The stone was worn smooth with cups and hollows, and her body slid into a place that was made a thousand years ago and visited by a thousand spirits since. Nymue's vision was upon her now, and her fingers sank into the fabric of the stone and she felt the primal rock. She called out, and in her own voice she answered, and she was in her body and outside herself.

Her eyes blinked, and she spiralled and turned and looked down onto herself. Nymue saw the girl with fingers sliding in her cunt and knew it was herself. She flew, propelled upwards by the force of her rising, circling energy, sex magick thickening between her legs. Below her, Nymue's body came, and in the sky she felt a jolt in her gut, and the silver thread pulsed. Energy flowed into her from the ancient rock and Nymue felt its power, its sacral heart, and she soared higher.

Below her, the Mother Goddess lay upon the land and she awoke, her turns and curves smooth and remembering, her limbs spreading valleys and pinions of rock. Springs burst as the earth turned, new waters flowing to quench the coming dragen.

Below her, the body of Nymue was small upon the stone. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she could not see, but still she ran her fingers over her clitoris, shuddering her body with little shocks and her pulse stayed high. After some time her mind twisted and Nymue felt a tug in her belly. She rolled again and felt a hot heat envelope her. Her hands pressed against the stone and it was hard now, growing cold beneath her, and her body lay on the rock. Nymue dipped her fingers between the lips of her sex a last time and felt her hot heat. She anointed her brow with her silvery wet, and locked the spell of this place into her mind.

Slowly, tired now with the spell cooling in her bones and blood, Nymue made her way back down between the paths of stone and rock. She slid her feet over the cool grass and it was soothing after her earlier spinning dance. Finding her cloak on the ground, Nymue dragged it to a sheltering dip beside a row of low bushes. She bundled all of her belongings around her, and curled herself small like an animal. Nymue pulled the cloak completely about herself and was hidden from the world.

She fell into a dreamless sleep, curled tiny and warm like a beast. Deep in her mind, Nymue added this array of stones, more complex than most, to a growing catalogue of places she had danced within. She remembered the conjurings deep in her muscles, and her magickal weave grew stronger.

Above her, the owl flew off and hunted. Five minutes later it returned, hovering with a weightless drop of its wings over the bundle on the ground. The owl dropped a small dead body of a mouse, that the girl might feed in the morning.

* * * *

So Nymue travelled the length and breadth of Albion over the course of that year and found a hundred circles of ancient stone. She studied their rounds and spirals, saw how they aligned to the moon or the sun or the stars. Nymue tapped into their ancient and pure sex magick, sucking the energy of the land deep into her womb. She discovered an extraordinary surge of energy when one night she drew blood from her sickle moon cunt and anointed the stone with it. Her fuck on the stone was made more powerful as her own blood surge aligned with the spin of the circle, and so Nymue learned that special conjuring must wait for her own bleed, each month.

Nymue stored her growing knowledge deep in the depths of her mind. Her dreams worked on the patterns and shapes she could not consciously see, and her dream weaves combined with the mazes and meanders she walked upon, and slowly her natural power grew and became unnatural.

The witch Nymue became so receptive of places in the country of the Goddess, spiralling in towards pivots and curving around copses, that she would walk upon a path and feel a tingle in her nipples and a throb in her clitoris and she would know. A conjure would fall upon her and a spell, and over time she learned to do without seed and trance and smoke. Nymue learned to channel the pure voice of her crying cunt and her weeping blood and she grew strong.

Songs began, and the men of Christ heard of white Nymue and were afraid, wringing their hands in their purple sleeves and trying to find faith in their filthy water. They began to chant of her. This woman, they said, was seduced by the snake and was evil and wrong.

Nymue laughed, for the villagers looked for a crone, white haired and bent; whereas she walked the land young and pale, her mane of hair beautiful and pure. So she hid in plain sight, and became an angel. Young priests were seduced by the stories of Nymue carried on whispers and rumours. In years to come they blurred the idea of her with that of the Holy Mother, and became confused. But not yet.

Conjuring was ahead of her now, spells to be woven across the land and remembered. In the south, men grew restless and tribal armies massed. The land began to shake.

* * * *Nymue turned her head towards home and the Isle of Glas, to her mother. She was ready now, for the ceremony of the sun. She returned home.

"Mother, I am returned."

Vivyane looked upon her daughter and saw her new, quiet confidence and her silent strength. "Nymue, my daughter, let me look upon you."

The girl's mother knew her daughter's stubbornness from when she was small, but what might once have been petulance was now pride, and deserved; and what was once ignorance, by the Goddess, was now wisdom. How could a girl so young, just twenty now, be so wise? What deep learning had she found, this woman?

"Nymue, I look at you and I see someone I don't know, not any more." Vivyane sensed the young woman before her, standing quietly by her hearth, was no longer of this home. She looked again, and wasn't sure.

"Oh Mother, I am always your daughter; the babe you suckled, the child who grew. I'm just a little older now, Mama, that's all. But I still have the little scar on my knee from when I fell on the sharp shell, down on the beach, when I was ten." Nymue remembered everything. "And the long scars on my side, from when the wave tumbled me and dragged me along." That was an elemental thing and Nymue remembered. "You carried me home in your arms, Mama, when I was naked and broken."

Nymue went to her mother and held her arms around her. "I'm the same daughter, Mother. I've learned new songs, but I don't forget the old ones."

Vivyane welcomed the girl's love, but even so, she felt like the child now. Nymue had a new spirit in her, and Vivyane was uncertain, afraid.

"Do not fear, sister," Nyneve saw the uncertainty in her sister's eyes. "Nymue is still with the Goddess, and does not desert us." Nyneve knew something of stones and blood, but sensed the girl knew more. She would speak with Nymue later, to glean something of her stronger magick.

"But Nymue, we have not told you. He returns. The Maerlyn walks the land of Albion once more. You need to be ready."

* * * *

I was there.

When the witch Nymue met the Sun King, and took in his heat, I was there. The Goddess help me, for I am old and she is young, yet I am still bewitched.

I arrived back in Albion after a long pass of years from when I left the land of the Eastern Emperor. He of course named himself Emperor of the Central Kingdom, for he knew no other. In my mind he was Emperor of an eastern kingdom, one of several like Japon or Kor. The centre of the world was a different place altogether, more desert now than kingdom, but caliphates nevertheless. And camels. Snorting, lecherous beasts, hundreds of 'em.

As I travelled towards the setting sun, always the setting sun, each day I heard tell of a monstrous noise heard from afar, from the east and south. I counted the days and the miles each day, so I knew that the noise they heard was the monstrous explosion of Krachoa that day when I saw the mountain disappear and the monstrous sea rise five times. I was astonished at the distance the noise went. A Hindi man in Delhee heard it, an Arab in the depths of Pirsia of the two rivers heard it, but duller. No wonder then, that on the ship we were all deaf for days and my ears still ring. A thousand miles, more, even a Roman could not measure it. Surely the most monstrous noise the world has ever heard!

And by the ocean's edge, all around Indee and up into Araby where the dhows sail with their triangle sails, I could see with mine own eyes the blasted coast and destructed places. Five huge waves it was, every man counted five, and the waves taller than fifty men or more, roaring from the sea, sweeping all before. I made a map and plotted on it what I knew, all of my geography, and marked the days the waves swept up hell from the oceans. And so I understood the speed of it and the distance. I talked with wise men and holy men and men who fought with gods, and the wisest of us all knew this: surely the world was unhinged on its rounds of the sun by the cataclysm, and was made all wrong.

The blood red skies lasted for years and more years, and every farmer told the crops grew bad, and the winters grew longer, and tiny babies all died, their mothers could not feed them. And so the world groaned and suffered, and the dragen was awakened. Men began to fight, for they were afraid, and fight is what scared men do. And through it all I travelled west, ever west, Albi calling to my bones, to my blood, summoning me back home.