Alas, thought I, it was nothing so exciting as a journey to Faerie. The folk of Avalon, both priestesses and priests, did not spend all their time in ritual. Wool and flax must be spun, the gardens tended, buildings repaired. But at least some of the work involved the heart as well as the hands. Now, when the fruit was setting, was the time for working with the spirits of the trees.
“Sit still, then, and rest upon the earth—” As the priestess spoke, the girls settled obediently into the position for meditation, legs crossed like the Horned One when he blesses the animals.
I closed my eyes, my breathing slipping automatically into the slow, regular, rhythm of trance.
“See with your mind this orchard—the rough and smooth of the bark on the apple trees, the glitter of leaves as the wind moves them. And now, begin to see with other senses. Reach out and touch the spirit of the tree before you. Sense power radiating around it in a golden glow.”
As the gentle voice continued, I found myself shifting into that passive state in which images formed almost as soon as I heard the words. Whether I was feeling or imagining I could not tell, but I knew I was touching the spirit of the tree.
“Let your own power flow outwards—thank the tree for the fruit it has given, and offer some of your energy to help it make more…’
I let out my breath with a sigh, feeling myself sinking deeper and deeper, even as the tree became a brighter glow. And soon I realized that what I was seeing was not a bright tree-shape, but the shining form of a woman, who held out her arms and smiled. For a moment I seemed to see another country beyond me, shimmering with a beauty beyond even that of Avalon. A responding joy pulsed through me in a wave that carried all awareness away.
When I came to myself, I was lying on my back in the grass. Suona was bending over me. Beyond the priestess I could see Aelia, watching with a pale face and worried eyes.
“You were to use some of your energy—” said Suona tartly, straightening. Beads of perspiration glistened on her brow, and I wondered just how hard it had been to bring my spirit back again. “A priestess must learn not only to give, but to control, her power!”
“I am sorry,” I whispered. I felt not so much weak as transparent, or perhaps it was the substance of the world that had grown thinner, for I could still see a glow through the trunk of the apple tree.
Spring turned to summer, but Sian, the Lady’s daughter, continued to ail. Often, during those long days, the care of her two daughters fell to me. I had become quite a story-teller in my quest to amuse them. Sometimes, one of the boys the Druids were training, like little Haggaia, would join us.
“In the old and olden days, before the Romans came, there was a king in the westlands whose people complained because his queen had given him no son,” said I.
“Did she have a daughter?” asked Dierna, her bright head flaming in the afternoon light that slanted through the trees around the holy well. It was cool here at the end of summer, listening to the endless sweet song of the cold waters that welled from the sacred spring.
Her little sister Becca was asleep on a pile of blankets nearby with Eldri curled up beside her. The little dog had grown too big for me to carry in the front of my gown, but she was still no larger than a cat. Except for her black nose, she looked like a bundle of white fleece, sleeping there. Haggaia lay on his belly, half-supported on his elbows, his brown hair glinting in the sun.
“Not that I ever heard,” I replied.
“That is why they complained, then,” said Dierna decidedly. “It would have been all right if she had had a girl.”
This afternoon, Sian was resting. She had never really recovered her strength after Becca’s birth last winter, and none of Cigfolla’s herbal remedies seemed to help her. I knew that the elder priestesses were worried, though they did not speak of it, from the gratitude with which they accepted my offers to take care of the two girls. But in truth I did not mind, for Becca was as bright and bouncy as a puppy, and Dierna like the little sister that I had always longed for.