MY father and Nimuë did not linger at Caer Noddfa long. She did not smile the entire three days they remained in my home. Carradoc mostly ignored her. Da remained almost silent after confronting his brother. Restlessness overtook him and he left within a few days. But before he left, he gave me the precious gift of knowledge of my mother, her life and her death.
My pregnancy sapped my strength and my wits. When I carried Yvain, I had had more than enough energy to be both lord and lady of the caer, village, and extended lands. With this child, all I could do was sit by the fire and listen to the gossip that flowed in with each new messenger and refugee. I knew what happened in every corner of Britain. But I did not know what transpired in the hearts of my family.
My daughter was born on a cold and blustery night just after Imbolc. Ice pellets pounded the shutters and the roof. The wind slashed through stout walls to grab hold of unwary hearts and exposed fingers and noses.
Pain ripped through me like a cold knife. My blood rushed to warm the icy slashes, spilled over, and chilled me more.
The caer compound was full of ewes bleating their distress, needing help birthing their numerous fat lambs. I screamed with my own labor pains, needing more help than the stupid sheep. Only the wind and the rain heard me. Only inexperienced Marnia left the sheep long enough to help me into the birthing chair and deliver my daughter. Arthur’s daughter.
Carradoc was so pleased with Arthur’s favor and the abundance of healthy lambs that he barely noticed my daughter was born three weeks early. She came precisely on time if you counted the days from last Beltane when I lay with Curyll beside a magical pool while faeries danced about us, sharing our passion.
She came into the world reluctantly and protesting. She screamed louder than I did as she wrenched and twisted inside me, tearing the delicate fabric of my womb.
I barely had the strength to return to the bed.
“Ye’ll not bear another child after this,” Marnia said as she tried in vain to stop my bleeding. White panic showed in her face and her voice. She had only recently discovered that she carried Kalahart’s child. She’d miscarried one child already. I saw fear in her eyes. Fear that she, too, would die a bloody and painful death while giving birth.
For her I had to fight back the chill and my need to drift into Annwn, home of the faeries. An immortal home where no one grew old, pain did not exist, children could not be born, so they didn’t rip their mothers apart in birthing.
“In the stillroom,” I gasped. “The tisane and the poultice I prepared yesterday.” I hadn’t the strength to say more. Yesterday I had known I would need help stopping the blood.
Yvain had come into the world so easily. Yvain, the son of a man I didn’t love. Why did this daughter make so much trouble when I loved her father so dearly?
Marnia dashed out of the overly warm chamber for the required remedies. I knew her pronouncement accurate. I had felt the rupture with the last huge push of a large infant through the birth canal. No more children would fill my damaged womb, even if I took Carradoc back into my bed.
I must have dozed. Voices and the weight of my daughter atop my swollen belly brought me back from a world of cold winds circling until they found a soul that could be pried loose from its body to join them.
“We must send for her father, Papa,” Marnia sobbed. “I don’t see how she can live. She’s lost so much blood.”
The weight on my stomach eased. I pried one eye open to see Carradoc lifting the squalling infant.
“No,” I protested weakly. “I must nurse her. ’Twill help the bleeding.”
Carradoc and Marnia exchanged worried glances. Silently they shrugged their shoulders.
“Give her what comfort you can,” Carradoc said. “I’ll send Lancelot to Campboglanna for The Merlin.”
“No,” I protested weakly. No, he must not send Lancelot to face Guinevere at Campboglanna. Or no, he must not send for my father?
I didn’t know which. He ignored me anyway.
“Heat the poultice until it is just a bit warmer than I am. The tisane, too,” I whispered. Chill shook my body. I’d lost a lot of blood. The wind wanted to carry me away. It promised warmth at the end of its cold journey.
I had to stay here, regain my strength before I confronted my father.
The baby, seemed overly heavy as I settled her to my breast. She squalled and fretted until she found the nipple and began sucking.
Relief washed over me like a warm wave.
Marnia applied the poultice. She filled me with the distilled herbs, crying the while.
I drifted out of this reality.
o0o
Step by step I traced the labyrinth up the tor of Avalon. My body seemed heavy and reluctant. But I knew I must climb the tor, climb to end the pain and weariness of my ordeal. No time to stop at the two springs, red and white, to drink of the sacred waters. To refresh myself in their healing properties.
I needed more than the waters of the Goddess.
I counted the twists and turns that led me up that lonely hill.
Above me, lightning creased the lowering sky. Bright light against fearsome black clouds. Rain poured down, too heavy for the clouds to hold any longer. Winds followed me up the tor, pushing me closer and closer to my destiny. They tore at my thin garment, my hair, and my identity until I did not know if I was the wind or the wind had become me.
Power rose within me with each step up the tor. My fingertips glowed with an eldritch light. I pulled more lightning down from the sky, draping its glow around me. I became a beacon in the bleak landscape. Did I warn of danger or draw strength to me?
With each step, the blackness of the sky grew thicker, lower. With each step I glowed brighter.
The slope slackened. A round plateau opened before me. Standing stones marked a barrow at the top of the tor. Ancient dead had been placed beneath the stones, guarding the entrance to Annwn, the Otherworld.
The last time I had been here there had only been a tumble of ordinary boulders atop the tor.
I faced the shadowed portal of the barrow with curiosity and fear. I regretted leaving this plane. I longed to join Cedar and his companions in theirs....
Gwynn ap Nudd, king of the faeries stood framed by the standing stones. He held out his arms, welcoming me to his kingdom. Cedar and the other faeries hovered behind him; a brilliant array of colored beings, taller than I, achingly beautiful, incredibly graceful, ready to lift into flight on iridescent wings. The hall of Gwynn ap Nudd stretched deep inside the barrow. Golden walls, marble floors, and delicate furniture borrowed light from the sky to give themselves substance. The lintel of the barrow glowed in the flickering lightning, becoming a glittering crown too bright to look at directly.
Sitting on a throne, crowned in light and love, a shadowy, feminine figure beckoned to me. Without knowing her face, I sensed my mother in the Goddess image. Deirdre, my mother who had died in childbed, as I was dying.
She held the gräal of life on her lap. Idly, she played with one strand in particular. She tested its flexibility as if preparing to break it off short.
As I hesitated, my mother faded into an insubstantial wraith. The glitter of the Great Hall of Annwn shimmered with unreality.
Only the gräal remained.
Such were the tricks of the faeries. Cedar had taught me how the Otherfolk misdirected gazes and flashed illusions around us mortals. I fought the need to look at the lesser light that streaked the black sky, lest the faeries change the hall into something more compelling than the mother I had never known.
In that moment I knew that death awaited me. It hovered, like the lightning, waiting for me to cross the threshold. I had to take but one step forward. The Otherfolk, the faeries, would shelter me from death, give me immortality. I need not give them the half-caste child they longed for. They had Guinevere....
With that knowledge came true vision. Gwynn ap Nudd shifted, changed, lost brilliance. Horns replaced his crown. The barrow became the roots of the Worldtree, anchored in the Underworld, soaring upward into reality. The gräal rested in a fork of the trunk of the Tree. The strands of life entwined with the leaves and branches. Cernunnos perched beside the gräal awaiting me.
I peered beyond the horned god, deep into the barrow. A single candle guttered in the impenetrable darkness. Around the candle stood Dana, the Earth Mother, Belenos, the Sun Father, and Lleu, patron of bards and music. Frozen between them stood my father, a younger Myrddin Emrys than the man I knew, with a full head of dark hair, clean-shaven, proud, and self-assured. He waited while the gods decided his fate. And mine.
They seemed frozen in time. Waiting. Waiting for me.
Da’s formal white robe hung limply on his thin frame. Dana’s thick rope of golden hair, the color of wheat, rested upon her shoulder as if caught in the middle of a broad swish when she turned her head.
The gods had imposed an impossible geas upon a vibrant man who was supposed to be their representative, not their toy. Da had succumbed to the most basic of human needs, one the gods blessed, but forbade to him. If he hadn’t honored the Goddess on Beltane, as all of us were commanded to do, as I had with Curyll, I would not have been born.
Da had been returned to the world, on probation. He must fulfill his destiny, he must prepare Arthur to become Ardh Rhi, and he must raise me to maintain a balance between reverence of life and the politics of chaos and change, No one could halt change, only learn to mold it for the better. I had been selected to pass on my knowledge to succeeding generations and become their anchor of continuity. My mother had died before she could assume that role. My grandmother refused to acknowledge her place in the intricate pattern of life. If I chose to enter the Underworld, realm of Cernunnos, I forsook my destiny.
The choice was mine and mine alone.
I turned my back on the tableau spread out before me. That was the past. The future called me. My daughter called me. She needed my nurturing, my training as a priestess. Only she could perpetuate the magic I had inherited from a long line of the faithful.
One long step away from the barrow the vision ended in a shower of sparks. The strand of life within the gräal the Goddess had toyed with remained whole.