Their passionate Sun licked the sky with tongues that stretched across the heavens. The anticipation of this night reached far beyond that horizon laying in stillness at the edge of the sea. Pig bones cluttered the pathways, and the smell of roast pork wandered through a cloud of smoke that had settled in the valley. The Seer sat alone in his hut, away from the crowd and their brash festivities. The one he called 'Dog' would not go away.
A shadow pooled in through the door. Wren moved silently, head bowed toward her husband. Behind her, fiery tokens were lifted from a bonfire and bobbed away into the mist. Distant drums beat slow and even.
“They are ready,” she said. She knelt before him with an earthen vessel filled with the required herbs. He had taught her the preparations long ago, after she had grown into the only feminine role allowed in the ritual. Slight among the proselytes, and attendant to them in ceremony, her healing arts were honored by the tribe. Although he'd long insisted on grinding the mash himself, her service had allowed him to ready his soul in the peace of her company and the comfort of her skill. When she was with him, Dog would not come near.
Seer sat rocking on the floor, eyes closed. A jangle of fluted bones and polished shards of bluestone and mica hung suspended and silent above him. Wren crushed the herbs together with berries in a finger bowl and held it out to her husband.
While he hovered at the edge of the spirit world, Wren would not utter a word for fear of cutting his essence loose from the tether that tied him to his body. In Seer's cup, tilted sideways on his mat, the henbane seeds that Wren had crushed into his fermented broth rendered the liquid a color like that of dried blood. He lifted it to his lips and drained the last of it before reaching out blindly to accept the herbal mash.
Only Seer understood the deeper meanings hidden in the language of the ancestors, and he muttered those words now with a thin voice that hummed as much from his nose as his throat. The vibrations of his vocal instrument filled his chest and resonated throughout his soft tissues.
A light breeze followed in the wake of Sun's departure from the hut; the bones whistled and chimed together with the stone shards. Seer licked the paste from the bowl with his fingers. The gentle dimming of the feast with Sun ended his monotone journey and marked the beginning of the ritual.
* *
Seer's dirt path curved along the river, a baby snake slithering beside its mother. His right leg ached where Dog had inflicted him with the memory of his True Path as shaman to the people. His footsteps fell softly in the powdery dirt, a sound he'd grown accustomed to since the days of his training. Lonely under a sky scrubbed purple, he could see that the star fathers had begun to awaken. He nodded, and turned to see Wren in the distance as she joined the people at the base of the mound.
Dog rustled through the bushes somewhere behind him. The essence of the prankster interlaced with his own, fog into fog, bubble against bubble. On this night, when the perfectly round face of Moon would rise through her door on the south horizon, Dog would certainly have something to say.
A descendant of Loki, Norse helper and spirit guide, Dog threatened to summon the spirits of the underworld, who would rise from the shadows and steal the Great Essence from this southern tribe.
Seer approached the dotted ring of light at the outer berm of the mound, while Dog fell to the shadows. Wren met him at the heelstone of the entrance walk. The heartbeat of drums filled the henge, while the procession regarded the marker over the cache of bones buried beneath it — bones cleaned of their persons, as though they were pigs, devoured by the spirits that had invaded the celebrations on that bloody summer solstice so many years ago.
As they approached the top of the mound, he could see that the proselytes had already taken their places around the Altar Stone. Several torch bearers stood in a ring beside the drummers, just inside the walls of the temple place. Their music beat soft and steady. Seer placed a hand on a cool Sarsen stone, one of many that encircled the temple, erected as earthen fingers to hold this sacred place in Earth's palm. Dew had not yet touched them, and the reverberations of the drumbeats hummed into his hand.
He walked through a ring of bluestones, then took his place at the altar. Gliding his hand along the micaceous surface of the Altar Stone, the heightened sound waves at the center of the giant stone drum numbed his sensitive fingers. The altar's green veins flowed like waves, in harmony with the curled tendrils of herbs all around it. He stopped and looked up into the sky.
Through Earth's oculus to the heavens, all faces turned to see the star fathers as they gathered on the blackening velvet to join them.
Seer climbed onto the stone and the drummers slowed their beat. Wren walked to the end of the altar. She lifted an urn that had been placed there within a small ring of herbs. She filled a cup with fermented broth tinged with henbane and brought it to each of the priests.
Seer raised his arms. “The time has come to join again with the star fathers! Sun has shone splendor to the fruits and leaves that sustain us. The fields filled our bellies today and Sun was here to smile upon us. While he sleeps, we will celebrate Moon and the star fathers, for they cradle us in their arms. They massage the sea and the rivers inside us. They give lodging to the ancestors. Together with them, our song will be the Great Essence.”
The drums grew louder. Their reverberations hummed into Seer's feet on the Altar Stone. Outside the outer ring of megaliths, Dog peered in at them. His wild dark hair squirmed in serpentine silhouette that was only visible to Seer. The throbbing in Seer's leg flared up in usual manner when the imp was near. Dog's hair looked nothing like the river slugs that could clean infections. If the fat snakes that writhed about his head now did anything, they only transformed Seer’s dull pain into a shouting stab that reached to his bones.
He jumped from the slab, and when he looked again, Dog had vanished.
The proselytes began to hum the ancient tune of the ancestors. The robed men had only recently taken on that garb, for the wind was brisk in the oak grove where they strolled for their daily meditations to recite the mnemonics and cleansing verses. Tonight was the first night they wore their field clothes to ritual. Their deep monotone voices blended together as one, a single syllable meant to hush all noise, both external and that which rattled inside their souls.
The scuttling creatures of night stilled themselves as bats, too, abandoned their nightly hunt to hang in the surrounding trees. In the distance, the river rushed past with its endlessly calm music shushing its fishes to gaze in awe from the depths of their place in Creation.
The star fathers stepped into the music, one at a time, as their carpet to Earth grew ever more black. All around, the rhythm of the drums bounced against the stones, the torchlights bouncing in time with the vibrations. Over and over, the song of the Great Essence reverberated through their flesh, their ears, their eyes. Every beat, every flash of light brought the followers closer to the ecstasy of their grand union with Universe and the cornucopia of life around them.
Seer danced around the Altar Stone, weaving through the circle of proselytes, his voice in tune with theirs. All fell into the rhythm of the drums and the mesmerizing flashes of light that shepherded their minds and bodies out of physical awareness and into the peace of oneness.
Wren followed behind him with a smoldering wrap of dried sage and herbs that sweetened the air within the temple. The harmony of human spirit lifted higher as the star fathers grew ever closer, ever brighter.
The rhythms lulled.
Seer turned to Wren, signaling her departure from the temple.
In the softening din of drumbeats, his eyes welled with the first view of Moon in her doorway. Called to the grand union of souls, her light flooded the entrance built only for her, on this, the one night selected by Time when her presence should be honored and glorified.
Seer climbed onto the thundering altar, his arms lifted to greet her. In the distance, he could hear the roiling waters as tides began to crash the banks of the river. The bats shoved off from their haunts, throwing the trees into an uproarious quiver of rattling branches and leaves. Flocks of them flew toward Moon, blotting out her light for a time that left them cold in longing. But as the flying creatures rushed to the horizon, Moon climbed inside her doorway, her light growing ever brighter, ever more powerful until finally she flooded over the top, her arms stretching wide over the rings of stone.
The drumbeats rose with her, and Seer felt the lifting of souls as silver light spread through the temple, bathing them in her splendor.
Voices grew under the luminescing portal, and Seer's infliction began to throb. From the edge of the altar, his eyes searched through the erected flats of stone, the robed men, the drummers and torchbearers. The drumbeats crashed at his chest there on the Altar Stone at the center of that giant drum, and the flashing torchlights sent confusion racing through his mind. His voice caught in his throat as he jumped to the ground. He rushed through the ring of students, all of them intoning the sounds of entrancement.
Moon's light was suddenly blinding.
Dog! Without Wren at his side, he was left to the tricks of the tormentor. If Dog could steal his essence, the strongest of their pride, the imp would portal to the underworld and summon bloody darkness.
He saw the squirming head wending through the mesmerized congregation. No longer content with his place outside the temple, Dog sallied now through the men at the outer ring, then bent through the robes of the priests unaware.
Nearly blinded, Seer could not locate him. He felt a pull at his tunic, then reached for the heat of a torch. It rasped his hand as his fingertips slid down its rough grip. Something sliced into his afflicted leg and he felt the warmth of his blood trickle down his calf. He spun around with the fire to shield him.
Through clouded eyes, Dog’s evil grin stretched before him. Large stony teeth taunting him from thick mocking lips. Left-to-right it extended far beyond the circle of a human face, or even the face of an imp. Snakes squirmed all around, reaching, and he felt their slick grasp encircle his ankles. Tighten.
Seer lunged forward, thrusting his fire out before him. Only Dog's mouth was visible to him now, squealing demonic laughter, slowly draining him of his essence. The imp appeared on Seer's left, then to the right, as Seer swung, lashing out with his torch.
The proselytes continued to chant, unaware of the conflict ensuing in the midst of them, the threat of their very lives hanging in the battle in their blindness. The rhythm of the hand drums thrummed through the henge. The flames of the torches spit toward the center of the giant drum with every vibration sent from the stones.
Blinded by the wash of the Moon and the tricks of Dog, the bloody lips of the imp spun Seer to dizziness. His torch met with emptiness and his essence spilled from the gash in his leg.
He closed his eyes. The vibrations of the temple shook in his humors, lifting a bob of fire from deep inside him.
All around, he could sense the essence of the students reaching upward like silver threads to the star fathers. He sensed his own thinning strand as a weakness in the chord. He could feel the devoted hearts of the drummers. Outside the temple place, a whisper reached for him. Wren.
His mind joined with spirit, creating new eyes. Now, even in the blindness of Moon and trickery, he could see Dog.
He spun around and lunged forward with his torch. Eyes open, he thrust the fire into the prankster's cavernous mouth.
In an explosion of screaming embers, Dog's face stretched wide into featureless folds. The serpents bent back upon themselves in agonized contortions, curses shrieking from their mouths. One by one, life spilled from them and they fell dead about Dog's sinuous neck.
Demonic wails rushed past his head, and somewhere behind him, he felt the rush of Dog's spirit as the evil prankster flew from the temple.
A fountain of embers fell around him like exhausted insects losing their battle with flight. The clouds fell from his eyes, and before him, at the edge of the bluestone ring, Wren entered again with a procession of people behind her.
The students hummed, unperturbed in ritual. Unaware.
Seer stepped beside the Altar Stone as the first of the infirm was laid upon it to receive the healing powers of the grand union.
The drums pounded fiercely as though their vibrations alone could lift the heft of Moon to her apex in the sky. Torch fire reached out toward the altar, carried by the waves of sound that bounced off the bluestones. Seer felt the spirits of all earthly creatures joining together, reaching toward the heavens as the star fathers embraced Moon and reached down to them.
In the light of Universe and the grand union of souls, the Great Essence extended as a pillar of oneness that connected all things, a tether that held the spirit of the heavens to the body of Earth.
And in that light, Wren administered the medicines to the infirm as Seer's voice rejoiced in the chorus of the faithful, fresh warm blood dripping down his leg.
Linda Manning holds a B.S. in Biology, having also studied Chemistry, Math, Physics, Religious Philosophies and Psychology.
She writes poetry and prose in the worlds of Fantasy, Romance,
Suspense, Horror and Literary. While frequenting art galleries, music
halls and farmers' markets in the American Midwest, she dreams of one
day befriending a benevolent faery or at least a more compassionate
muse. You can learn more about this writer by visiting Notes from
Linda.
