The Swan Kingdom Read online

  It was not quite the same for me. My father had no hope of marrying me off to advantage, for I was still lanky and plain, with a figure like a runner bean; and what was more, I was still wild and unheeding, still listened to my mother’s words and ignored my father’s, and talked to animals instead of eating them. I also had such a wealth of wisdom by that time that many a lord would have married me anyway, putting up with my homely face for the sake of my skills. But Father’s indictment of my mother’s lessons meant he had only the vaguest idea of my knowledge, and because he never troubled himself with what he called “women’s gossip” he didn’t know my name was held in high regard as a cunning woman. He had given up hope that I would ever bloom into a daughter he could be proud of.

  Regardless of that, there was to be a banquet in my honour. It was tradition, after all; and my father was not, in general, a cruel man. So the evening of my fifteenth birthday a great fire was lit outside the Hall, fuelled with offerings of scented wood that would burn all night in thanks to the Ancestors. Lords and ladies from all the surrounding areas gathered in the long room to stuff themselves in my name. Because it was my feast, I was allowed to request all my favourite songs of the harpist and singer come to entertain us that night. I was even asked to dance a few times, by my brothers, of course, but also by some of the shy boys spurned by prettier girls.

  When midnight came, I asked for one last song – my favourite. It was an ancient ballad called “The Tears of Mairid Westfield”, which told the story of the doomed love of a peasant healer and a king. The king’s jealous brother cast a spell over the healer and turned her into a grey fox, and the king, not knowing who the creature was when he found it in his rooms, drove his love away into the forest. The chorus had a haunting melody, and everyone always sang along with it:

  “The tears of Mairid Westfield

  Were her sorrowful goodbye;

  The tears of Mairid Westfield

  Could have drowned the starry sky.

  For though she gave the warning,

  Her love returned too late;

  And the tears of Mairid Westfield

  Could not change her woeful fate.”

  As I looked up from singing the last chorus, I realised that Father had gone. His chair at the head of our table was empty. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him in the long room. My gaze turned to my mother, who tilted her head and gave me an apologetic look. I sighed.

  I woke early the next morning and lay in my sunken bed, the carved wooden pillars rising above me. I stared, in that fixed, almost-awake way, at the intricate braiding of the thatched roof above me as I slowly became aware of the ache in my lower abdomen. I shifted uncomfortably, then frowned and lifted the quilted cover to stare down at the sticky brown stain on the inside of my thighs. With an odd mixture of apprehension and excitement I realized that I really was a woman now. My bleeding had begun.

  I used the soft cloths my mother had given me the year before to bind myself, and then reached down into the earth, feeling for the ripples of enaid that told me where I would find her. I followed the movement of the tide, unsurprised to locate her in the gardens.

  She was sitting on the grass, as she often did, in the shade of the dog rose that rambled over the southern wall of the Hall. Climbing plants were deadly to wood-frame buildings like the Hall – its wattle and daub walls and thatching could be pulled down by nothing more than ivy, if left unchecked. Mother was vigilant in making sure that no parasitic plants attached themselves to the building, but roses were her favourite and so she allowed this one limited freedom.

  As soon as I saw her face, I knew there was no need to speak; she must have felt the resonance of my tangled emotions before I even stepped into the gardens. She patted the ground beside her, inviting me to sit.

  “So, my darling,” she said, her smile excited and girlish as she reached out to embrace me, “now you really are a woman. This is an important day for you. For us all.”

  She released me and absently began to prune the roses, and as she turned I thought I saw a different emotion flicker across her face. It might have been sadness; it might have been fear. I tried to understand the expression, but it was gone almost before I had seen it, and then I wondered if I had seen anything at all.

  Her hardened fingers pinched the whippy stems deftly and the fibrous plant parted under her touch as easily as if she had applied shears. It was one of the first skills she had taught me, and since by now the gardens wore as almost as much mine as hers, I joined her. Our hands, working side by side, looked identical.

  “In my great-grandmother’s day, we would have had a celebration. A real celebration, nothing like that … civilized thing last night. All the women of child-bearing age would have danced and sung to wild music in the Circle of Ancestors.” She sighed and turned to me, a blowsy rose drooping in one hand. She swiftly stripped off the thorns, then leaned forward and tucked it carefully behind my ear in the thick mass of dark red hair.

  “Circle of Ancestors?” I asked. I’d never heard her mention the name before.

  “Ah. Never mind. In any case, I’m afraid we cannot do that today. Can you imagine the look on your father’s face? But you and I must still mark the change in your life, Alexandra.”

  “How? What will we do?” I asked curiously.

  “That’s a surprise. I will come for you tonight, after everyone else has gone to bed, and then you will see.”

  She smiled mischievously, but I still thought she looked a little sad, so I nodded and did not press her. She reached out to touch my cheek with one rough finger as the smile died from her face. “You’re strong,” she whispered, more to herself than me. “Stronger than I am. You’ll be all right.”

  The stillness of the moment was shattered by a harsh croak from above us. We both jumped and looked up to see a hooded crow peering at us from the thatching. It croaked again, rather smugly, I thought, and then took flight, casting a shadow over us as it went. It landed on the highest branch of the old oak and settled to watch us once more.

  I pressed my hand against my thudding heart, feeling ridiculous for having jolted like a frightened rabbit. “Stupid creature,” I muttered.

  Mother laughed at my aggrieved tone, throwing back her head so that the sun seemed to spill through her hair like molten copper. “Perhaps he’s a clever bird, and bored of our conversation,” she said. “Let’s give him something more exciting to watch. Dance, Alexandra!”

  She jumped up, pulling me to my feet, and swirled me around as she had when I was a baby, her slender arms easily lifting me off the ground, though I was taller than she. Then she tripped over a spade, almost sending us both sprawling, and started laughing again at her own clumsiness. No one could listen to my mother laugh without joining in, so I laughed too, and the pair of us danced around the gardens, giggling madly for no reason, until we finally collapsed on the springy flock moss, gasping for breath.

  The sun was only an hour set when I lay down among the knitted blankets and furs of my bed, stiff with nervous excitement. Outside, I could hear the gardens settling. An owl – Tawny by the sound of it – hooted gently from the tree by my window. The pinkish light faded with excruciating slowness, but there was no danger I might fall asleep. I was too excited, too apprehensive.

  I felt the subdued echo of Mama’s presence moments before she leaned through my open window, a finger at her lips. I got up, pulled on a fresh gown and went to her.

  “Put this on,” she whispered, passing me a bundle of fabric. I unfolded it to reveal a long cloak with a deep hood. It was a dull dark green colour, but the soft lining was holly-berry red. I clasped it at my throat, and then clambered over the sill to stand beside her in the darkness under the thatching, crushing the fragrant lavender under my feet. I accepted a small pack from her and slung it over my shoulder, then followed her out of the gardens and into the waving grasses of the meadow beyond.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as soon as we were out of ea
rshot 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 mad
e 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.