Ailsa
The blanket of green moss and clover in the forest just south of the mountains was an easy peace for the busy mind. You could talk out loud to the trees, and no one could hear you over the susurrus of the river, which rolled into a babbling brook in the oak grove, bouncing off of lichened rocks and fallen logs. The trees had their own hushing quality, their soft whisper escalating to a crackling thunder as summer turned to fall and the leaves made a satisfying crunch under bare feet. The trees in the forest are as alive to me as people. Their network of underground roots connects them all, and they respond to one another, like a community. If one is suffering, they all are. I’ve seen a tree change to protect itself, I’ve heard one cry, and I’ve sensed the slow-pulsing signals they communicate through their bark and branches. The trees know when change is afoot. This is why we pray here as Druids. We borrow their knowing and let it inform ours.
There were a variety of trees in the forest. Some saplings were middle-aged, while others had trunks as wide as a person was tall and had been that large for as long as anyone had known. Ashes and alders, maples and birches lined the rivers, and sunlight filtered through their pale, skeletal branches. Evergreens stood above the rest of them, sheltering the other trees like guardians. Caledonian pines with their bushy tops and elegant conifers smelling of sappy pine created a dense and dark entrance to the forest from both the northern and eastern sides. The oak grove was in the heart center, and this, along with the strength and age of the beautiful trees, is surely why this became the sacred place of the village Druids. As Druids, we were expected to start our day with prayer in the oak grove, and on the special days, those festivals throughout the wheel of the year that marked the seasons and length of the days, we would make our way from the oaks to the stone circle by the sea. Legend told that some more eccentric Druids slept and lived in the oak grove rather than living among the other villagers.
I could see why. The equanimity one must attain as a Druid is more easily achieved in a place like this. Whatever came my way in life, I felt centered and calm among the oaks. I found as a child that the grove had a similar effect on even the quickest tempers, namely Ros’s. Yes, the oak trees themselves were special—in between the size of the river trees and the evergreens that guarded the wood and then climbed up the mountains in the north, these oaks were giants, sure—but with dexterity and determination, one could climb to the top in a matter of an hour. Many of the children started on the bottom limbs, gaining speed, and then stopped three-quarters of the way up as they reached the dense, delicate branches that became more fragile and cumbersome.
One must approach such physical feats without fear or the self-consciousness that becomes trapped in the body as it ages, when we go through puberty, become conscious of the opposite sex, and place our worth in the externals. The judgments creep into our psyche, creating insecurities and crippling our physical bodies. How can we move freely when we feel so trapped? So laden with the burdens of living?
Thus, I began my tree climbing very early, not long after walking. I fell many times. Once I fell from such a height that I broke my arm, and grandmother mended it with a poultice and a birch arm brace. Once I hit my head on a branch on the way down and saw stars and black intermittently for several days, and Grandmother awakened me at night to keep me from falling into a deep sleep. There was one tree in particular that I could not stay away from. The top branches stretched above any others and I loved how they swayed in the wind. Grandmother begged me to start praying at the base of the tree instead of the top, but there was something that felt closer to the gods at the top of the tree. And ever since I could remember, I had chased that feeling of closeness to the sky.
The last time I remember falling was the Beltane before I turned thirteen. At Beltane, the young ladies who would become the dancers or singers of the village performed their first ritual, and the boys who had come of age would be sent off from the Beltane fires on a ceremonial hunt by the most beautiful song and dance of the year, initiating both genders into adulthood around the age of thirteen. I was already set to be a Druid, not a dancer, so I escaped the song and dance lessons with the older women who taught them. The other girls wore white, flowing dresses with spring flowers in their hair, and plaits around their flower crowns. They were the picture of beauty and femininity, ethereal dancing ghosts that mesmerized everyone at the ceremonies. While I admired them, I was glad to have some time to myself to steal off to the Druid’s oak grove and be alone while they practiced.
As I was stealing that time alone, climbing my favorite oak tree, I was thinking about many things and found myself distracted reaching for the final limb I needed to access for my view. Ros had been at the bottom watching, unbeknownst to me, and broke my fall. Perhaps he did it purposefully, or perhaps it was just another example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the way in which I landed on him broke his leg. Badly. The face grandmother made when I dragged him in that evening was not one I had seen in a long time. She was quiet for several breaths before she slightly narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. Grandmother could be an expressive woman, but she rarely betrayed her emotion on her face. I can still feel the shiver that ran down my spine in that moment, wondering what would become of my best friend, whom I had quite literally smooshed like a berry.
Ros was a greenish-gray color, which did not improve as grandmother set his leg. My punishment for climbing so carelessly was seeing his face contorted in pain while holding a bowl for him to vomit into while she rubbed herbs and wrapped a poultice around the inflamed limb. But when Grandmother put the brace on, it was the worst. Ros’s father had to lie across him to prevent him from sitting up or twisting his body in any dramatic fashion so Grandmother could make sure the bones would align and knit back together.
He lay in that brace and hopped around minimally through the rest of the spring and summer. Other boys were running and playing, growing taller and stronger while he wasted away. His other male friends were out on the extended hunting trip that Ros had planned to join for the first time that year. My birthday and the solstice passed, then came Lughnasadh, his birthday, and finally, as the first leaves began to fall from the trees and the Hunting Moon approached, he was walking with a stick. I led him around like an obedient dog, stopping with him to rest, letting him lean on my tall, narrow shoulders when he needed extra support, and looking at him with a straight face, never laughter, when he attempted to walk without the stick and fell repeatedly. Then I would just extend a long, friendly arm and a sweet, tiny smile and pull him back up with a nod to keep going. We kept at this through the fall months, using the free time we had away from our daily chores at the barley fields and fishing to practice walking.
Grandmother had said that some boys mightn’t have recovered from such a fall. She had known of a boy who had taken such a fall when she was a lass, and he had used a walking stick until he was an old man, hunched and crooked from never standing up quite straight again. But Ros did stand up quite straight. And when he did, at the winter solstice celebration, he was finally taller than me. I remember it was the first time he leaned down instead of reaching up to kiss me under the mistletoe of the longhouse during the solstice feast.
As Ostara arrived and the birds began to nest their eggs and tiny buds came out on the trees, he was running and jumping with the other boys again, faster and stronger than ever. I had taken away nigh a year of his boyhood with my fall. I was certain I felt guilt for it, but there was another new feeling mingled with the guilt. It was an uncomfortable feeling, like an itch or a foreboding pit in the stomach, and it was there whenever Ros was around.
It was nearly Beltane, a week before Ros was set to leave on the hunting trip that he was supposed to go on the year before. It was only a few days before the fire festival that would send the boys away, and all of the young people were practicing for their roles in the Beltane ceremony at the stone circle just like they had been the day of the accident. I had gone to talk with Ray, the head Druid, about the ceremony, and as we walked along the coast near the circle, I only half listened to Ray’s excessive description of the symbolism behind each of the rites and rituals because I was riveted by Ros’s behavior. He had a new confidence as he talked with the boys who would be leaving on the hunt with him. Perhaps it was because he was the oldest, having had to wait a year beyond his time to go. Perhaps his height or having been through the hardship of the last year had made him proud or courageous. He looked like a new person, laughing and joking with them, telling them animated stories with a hand on one of their shoulders like he was already a man.
But it was not his interactions with the boys that concerned me. There was also a new way he behaved with the girls: smiling at them and waving from across the stone circle, making excuses to touch a hand or an arm as he spoke to one or showed her something. His chest seemed puffed out, like he was taking them under wing. How peculiar, I had thought. And then, as if my thoughts had summoned him, there he was, standing in front of us, his face pink and blotchy, cold from the whipping wind of the coast; the freckles just coming out on his nose from the abundance of sun we had had the past week of preparation for Beltane; and his seafoam eyes thickly lined with blond lashes. “Ailsa, I need to tell you something,” he said matter-of-factly.
I looked at Ray for dismissal. “Ros, Alisa needs to go to the oak grove to pray. It’s almost sunset, and I want her centered for the ceremony.”
“Then I’ll tell her on the way to the oak grove,” he said.
We began the walk there; it was not much of a distance, due east. Ros was babbling on about this and that related to hunting and fishing and his impending trip. I knew the anticipation must be killing him. Most boys didn’t have to wait a whole extra year. As we approached the oak grove, the conversation became a bit more stilted, and Ros’s tone took on a rare gravitas. And then the wholly unexpected happened.
“I want you to understand that things will be completely different when I return.” He said it and immediately went silent, expecting a response. He stared at me for a few moments before I could think of anything to say.
“Look, Ros, I’m very sorry about everything that happened last year with your leg. I had hoped I had made amends by helping you through every day and cheering you on as you remastered walking, and—”
He cut me off. “No, Ailsa, I mean because I will be a man when I return, our relationship will be different. We can’t share a bed in Grandmother’s house or sleep out under the stars or go swimming alone together, you know…”
“Naked?” I asked.
“Exactly,” he responded.
We walked in silence for a few minutes, past the tall Caledonian pines, through the rows of evergreens, into the density of the forest. Our silence became filled with the hushed noises of the familiar woods, and it was a comfort, at least to me. Ros still looked uncomfortable.
“What does it really matter?” I asked. “I mean, I’m a Druid. You seem interested in the other girls anyway. Can’t we just go on being friends without people talking?”
“It’s too late, Ailsa. I can tell when you look at me, when you watch me with other girls. Everything has already changed.”
“Do you really think that highly of yourself?” I asked without thinking. “I won’t marry, so you have nothing to worry about. No one will expect us to be together or fall in love or whatever you’re so concerned about people seeing or thinking.”
We had reached my special oak tree. The one I had fallen from. It had been struck by lightning and had a huge charred hole about halfway up that made footing easy. Several mossy knots toward the bottom made good makeshift seats. Not that anyone would dare sit under a tree ever again whilst I was climbing it. I leaned against one of the knots for support and noticed I was feeling a little dizzy.
Ros had a habit of acting like he knew my mind better than I did, and it really aggravated me when he told me how I had been feeling without so much as a confirmation from me first. I turned away from him and put my hands on the tree. “Well, perhaps if you don’t marry and neither do I, then we can just go on as friends the way we always have,” Ros suggested.
“And how will you do that?” I exclaimed. “You follow around every girl like a dog in heat!”
“Well, kissing is one thing, Ailsa; marrying is another.” He laughed at himself. At least he hadn’t become too proud to do that. “I know you haven’t kissed anyone, but hasn’t Grandmother told you the difference yet?” he teased.
I glared at him, unimpressed. Unrattled. He started to turn a darker pink color in his cheeks, and I rolled my eyes and took my leave. “I’m going to pray, Ros,” I said. “Better move out of the way so you don’t get smooshed again.” I started up my tree and did not look back during my ascent. By the time I made it down, he had already turned to leave and was nearly past the edge of the woods. I could just make out his shadowy figure. I started to run after him, but something stopped me. My breath caught in my chest, and I watched him make his slow, purposeful way though the fields back to the stone circle for the Beltane ceremony. What if harm befell him on this hunt because of his injury? What if he died while he was gone, and I had left things this way between us?
That night at the fire, after the ceremony and before the send-off, I was able to track him down to embrace him and say goodbye. I hugged him, flames of fire and embarrassment hot on my cheeks, tears streaming down.
“Don’t hate me, Ros,” I croaked. But he just hugged me tighter. “I’ll think of you every day that you’re gone. Just come back safely,” I managed to get out.
“I’ll come back, don’t worry.” He patted the back of my intricately braided hair and kissed my forehead. “Ailsa, the way you see me with the other girls, like a dog in heat…” He laughed and trailed off. “It’s different with you. I would die for you, Ailsa. It’s so much more than just kissing.” Then he backed away slowly, smiling his intoxicating smile, glowing in the firelight, young, alive, and determined to preserve our friendship—and I was thankful. It was the most constant thing I had in my life.
When he returned for harvest at the end of the summer, everything was different. He no longer wanted to frolic on the beaches and explore the mountain paths with me. He didn’t bring his little sisters to Grandmother’s roundhouse when he was supposed to be minding them and then steal off with me to collect animal bones. He didn’t make me flower crowns or lay his head on my lap during gatherings. We didn’t swim naked in the sea at night, looking up at the stars and calling them by name. He didn’t sneak up behind me, snorting with laughter, to topple me over as I peed on a tree in the grove before heading home for supper. But he also didn’t fight for me. And he absolutely didn’t die for me like he had said.
He paid attention to the other girls now. He kissed them, carved them dolls, carved their names into tree trunks, and if I walked by when he was vying for the attention of another lass, he would act as if he didn’t notice me at all. It was painful, but in a new and different way from the pain I had experienced before. Losing my father was raw and earth-shattering. This was maddening, like a betrayal. Never knowing my mother was hollow and lonely, but this was bitter and cruel, like a knife cutting me.
I stood out from the other girls because I didn’t play their games or giggle enticingly. I embraced my complexity, my Druidness, in a way that made the other young people uncomfortable. I liked being a bit of an outsider to the group, though my best friend was now quintessentially on the inside of it. The truth was that I loved Ros, deeply, in the sort of way that doesn’t come around every lifetime. But equally, I could not be reduced to that alone, and I wouldn’t give up who I was meant to be to fit the image of a fourteen-year-old ready to be a wife like my cousin Morna. There was no choice but to stand firm in this decision and declare it.
One particularly irksome day, after I saw him fawning after a betrothed girl two years our senior, I had gone to Ray and asked him to use his preferential Druid rights to block any marriage contract for me. He just laughed and said, “We will see what the gods have to say about that.” Unsatisfied, I asked if he would take me on my Druid Quest a little early that summer. “How old are you, almost fifteen now?” I nodded. “I believe that will do.” He patted my head and smiled his frog-like grin, and destiny was done.
We left the next month for the great stone circle on Orkney, which is still the most incredible man-made structure I have ever seen. Even the four warriors who escorted the three of us—since my uncle Jord came along with us as well—were impressed and astounded by the standing stone complex. The circle was the largest one we had ever seen. It stretched across a broad emerald-green plain adjacent to the northernmost sea. The wind was stinging, but one hardly noticed, surrounded by twelve giant standing stones, some of which appeared to reach the clouds, the height of five men stacked on top of one another. What made the feature so incredible to behold was the juxtaposition of these giant stones with the flat peninsula on which they rested, and the calm of the surrounding sea. I had been around giant stones my whole life, but they were surrounded on one side by jagged cliffs, on another by wild forest which gave way to craggy mountains, and finally by a roiling sea that never rested. The temple complex was sophisticated beyond anything known to us. Orkney was a Druid hub, and we came here to learn ritual practices like purifications, cosmology, and stone-building techniques.
Ray’s renown preceded us in the local Druid community, and we were welcomed, provided food and shelter, and witnessed the calling of the sun on the summer solstice. I felt like I was on the very edge of the earth there, like I could see it bend. There was barely any night that time of year, and when night did fall, the green and purple lights danced in the sky instead of the blanket of black and stars that we had at home. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
The people there stayed up on those nights lit by the fires in the bright sky, telling stories, dancing, singing, and rejoicing in being alive. When it got too cold, we huddled inside their subterranean round stone houses, warmed by fire and spirits and song. I felt like a fox, cozy and safe in my burrow, me against the world, plotting my next move. I was invigorated by my travels, by these new people and experiences, but a part of me ached for my southern island. I missed Grandmother, her gentle hands braiding my hair or feeding me oysters. I missed Ros and his sisters and mother, people who understood me. But most of all, I missed the oak grove. Sure, there were some trees here, but the salt winds of the ocean were destructive and blew the leaves off the limbs before they could absorb any precious nutrients. They had trees, but not lush forests like we had. As beautiful as it was at the edge of the world, I needed my home. When we left at Mabon, the fall equinox, in time to return home before the snow, I had so many emotions. I was sad to leave my new friends, excited to return home, and terrified to see Ros.
At fifteen, with so much swirling inside of me, I decided I needed to bring a part of the peace of Orkney back home with me. I wanted to be the person I had been in Orkney, connected to its spirit, vibrantly alive and engaged in the community, feeling intuitive and capable of delivering important messages. I spent the morning at the great stone circle on the edge of the world by myself, vowing to fulfill my Druidic destiny and to put that above all else in my life. My Druid ceremony, in which I became a member of the order, would not be for nearly two years, but this moment was my own personal commitment. I looked down at my palm, at the scar from making blood oaths with Ros since we were nine. I took my knife from the pocket tied around my waist and opened the scar back up. It bled quite a lot. I put my palm on the stone, closed my eyes, and promised that I would find peace like this in my homeland by always putting my duties as a Druid first. Little did I know how much this vow would come to mean to me over the next few years and how hard it would become to keep in the year after I was married.