“Perhaps—” Suona said unwillingly. “I suppose that the laws of the Spirit World are like the laws of the world of Nature, and do not operate much differently in other lands than they do here. But it is in Avalon that the old ways are practised and the truth remembered. To most men, this place is a dream and a rumour of magic. You are very fortunate to be dwelling here!”
The giggles subsided and the girls, recognizing that their teacher’s patience was thinning, arranged their skirts decorously around them and sat up straight once more.
“I remember how it felt to go through the mists the first time,” said I, “for I came here only three years ago. It was as if my mind was being turned inside out, and then the world changed.”
Only three years—and yet now it was the world outside that seemed a dream. Even my grief for my father, who had been slain fighting the Saxon raiders, had eased. My hostile great-aunt was now my closest relation, but the other priestesses were kind to me, and among the maidens, Aelia was my fast friend.
Suona smiled a little. “I suppose that is as good a description as any. But that is not the only way to move from world to world. To travel from the life of the tribes to Londinium is to the spirit as great a journey, and some of those who make it fell ill and pine like trees transplanted to unfriendly soil because their minds cannot bear the change.”
I nodded. I had been to Londinium several times during my childhood, and though Prince Julius Coelius might have been Roman in name and taught his children to speak Latin as well as their mother tongue, I could still remember the shock as we passed through the gate of the city and the noise of the capital rose around us, like jumping into the sea.
“But do our bodies go to Faerie?” said Wren, who could stick to a topic like a terrier when her interest was aroused.
Seeing Suona’s frown, I stepped in once more. “We know that our solid bodies are sitting here in the orchard below the Tor, but except that the weather is sometimes a little different, Avalon is not so unlike the outside world.”
“There are other differences,” said the priestess, “which you will learn about when you are more advanced in your training. Certain kinds of magic work more easily here, because we are at a crossing of the lines of power, and because of the structure of the “For… But for the most part what you say is true.”
“But Faerie is not the same,” put in Tuli. “Time there runs slower, and its folk are magic.”
“That is so, and yet even there, a mortal who is willing to pay the price may dwell.”
“What is the price?” asked I.
“To lose the gradual sweet changes of the seasons, and all the gathered wisdom of mortality.”
“Is that so bad a thing?” asked Roud, her red hair glinting as her braid swung forwards. “If you go when you are young?”
“Would you like to have stayed forever nine years old?” Suona asked.
“When I was nine, I was a baby!” Roud said from the eminence of her fourteen years.
“Each age has its own delights and contentments,” the priestess went on, “that you will miss if you go where time has no meaning, beyond the circles of the world.”
“Of course I want to grow up,” muttered Roud. “But who would want to be old?”
Everyone, thought I, if Suona was to be believed. It was hard, though, to credit it, when young eyes could gaze through the trees to the dazzle of sun on water, and young ears listen to the song of the lark as she lifted skyward, and a young body twitched with impatience to run with Eldri through the long grass, to dance, to be free.
“And that is why, for the most part, we make our journeys in the spirit only,” Suona added. “And at the moment, yours are bouncing about like lambs in a meadow. If you will be so kind as to focus your minds for a few moments, we have work to do.”