Chapter 20: Ossiam’s Dream

For months after what Herrwn continued to call “the misunderstanding,” Olyrrwd stayed away from any ceremony that Ossiam was to officiate unless his attendance was obligatory, and, instead of exchanging snide witticisms at the communal meals, each of the two cousins acted as though the other didn’t exist—Ossiam announcing to no one in particular that he’d like to have the salt pot and Olyrrwd picking it up and passing it without so much as shifting his eyes in the direction it was going.

Sitting in between them, Herrwn found he preferred his cousins’ bickering to their chilly standoff and was almost relieved when the open antagonism between the two flared up again at the midsummer meeting of the shrine’s High Council.

Held four times a year, the High Council met in the highest room at the top of their highest tower and was restricted to the highest members of their order—the chief midwife, the chief herbalist, and the keeper of the sacred calendar on the women’s side, and the chief bard, the chief physician, and the chief oracle on the men’s. The highest priestess might or might not attend. Caelendra always had, while Feywn, whose leadership seemed almost entirely defined by its differences from Caelendra’s, appeared only on occasions when she had some edict of her own to announce.

The other high priests and priestesses were all expected to attend, however, and so Olyrrwd was there—ostentatiously fortifying himself with drink from the council’s chalice of communal wine—as Ossiam rose to give the opening incantation.

Rhonnon was seated across from Olyrrwd. Wearing an immaculate white robe, the chief midwife was, as always, a model of decorum. Her eyes were focused on Ossiam, her hands folded in her lap. The shrine’s chief herbalist, Aolfe, sat next to Rhonnon. Either placid by nature or from a life spent among aromatic herbs, Aolfe coped with council meetings the way she did with any forced separation from her garden—by weaving pine needles and stalks of dry grass into intricate baskets as she smiled pleasantly, ready to nod at whatever was being said. On the far side of Aolfe, the keeper of the sacred calendar sat with her elbows braced on the table and her chin propped in her cupped hands. Barely awake after a night spent tracking the movement of the stars, Lunedd’s eyelids drooped, flickered up, then drooped again.

As he had at every council meeting since Arianna’s birth, Ossiam included a new portent of the infant’s future greatness in his invocation along with the (by now expected) prediction that hers would be an unusual and exceptional childhood. Instead of ending there, however, he went on to describe a dream in which he had seen their shrine transformed into a colossal boat in the center of a vast lake.

“The boat had decks that rose seven layers high,” he murmured, “and in the top of the highest deck with the sun behind her back so that its light radiated out around her was a woman with glowing red hair. She sang a strange song in words I could not understand while flocks of ravens and larks circled in the sky above her and schools of silver fish leaped out of the lake’s sparkling waters, swimming along with six long boats, each one laden with gifts and tribute, that were rowing toward the Goddess’s floating shrine.”

As Ossiam was given to showy dreams and visions, none of this was so surprising. What caught them off guard was his concluding pronouncement that since most of the affairs of that outer world were now conducted in the language of the Saxons, this was a message that Arianna must be sent out of the valley to be fostered among English-speaking Celts so as to be ready to rule when the time came for their resurgence.

Olyrrwd, who’d just taken another swallow from the ceremonial chalice, snorted, sending a spray of sacred wine across the table that splattered purple droplets across the front of Rhonnon’s white robes.

Herrwn was equally startled. As Ossiam sat down, he stood up. He did not often use the power of his position to assert his views, but in this case he did, speaking in his most authoritative voice and beginning his rebuttal with an admonition against settling too quickly on any one interpretation of a dream’s meaning.

“Although this dream was dreamed by an oracle—and so might understandably be assumed to be a revelation of the future—it could equally well be a vision from the past, when the spirit of the Great Mother Goddess first came to reside within the body of our first chief priestess, and our earliest ancestors built Her first shrine on Cwddwaellwn, the largest of the seven sacred islands of the sacred lake of Cwddwaffwn within the sacred valley of Cwddwandwn.”

From there he went on to bolster his argument by noting the striking similarities between the scene that Ossiam had seen in his vision and the ancient descriptions of the islands of Cwddwandwn.

“Of course,” he concluded with a solemn nod in Ossiam’s direction, “I do not suggest that we disregard our esteemed oracle’s urging to instruct Arianna in the language which so many of our people now speak, but it is my counsel that we do this prudently, by finding a servant who is able to give this instruction within her nursery and under the watchful eye of our chief midwife, whose duties have always included the oversight of the training of priestesses-to-be.”

His words were greeted with vocal approval and applause from everyone except Ossiam, who rose up and walked out of the chamber—leaving them shaking their heads and looking at each other in bewilderment.

There were still several items of importance to be considered that morning, but as soon as they adjourned, Herrwn went to Ossiam’s tower to soothe his cousin’s hurt feelings and coax him back to reason.

The chamber was empty.

A sudden sense of foreboding came over him. What if Ossiam had gone to Feywn and actually made his mad proposal to her?

Lifting the hem of his robes, he ran down the stairs and through the hallways toward the priestess’s chambers, filled with dread that Feywn, in a fury at the suggestion that she send her infant away, might expel Ossiam from their order.

He arrived at the entrance to the women’s quarters just as Ossiam was coming out, his hood up and his face hidden in its shadow.

“Should I speak with her as well?” Herrwn spoke from his heart, ready to face Feywn’s anger himself to ensure that she understood Ossiam meant well and, however mistakenly, sincerely believed that what he’d suggested was in the best interest of their people.

“There is no need.” Ossiam’s voice was calm, even peaceful.

Relieved that Ossiam had accepted his defeat gracefully, Herrwn fell into step with his cousin, and they walked back to the priests’ quarters together in what seemed to Herrwn at the time to be a companionable silence.