2008 BELTANE/SAMHUINN PROSE ENTRIES

[Earthwoman]

Notice: Please add your original essays, short stories and philosophical works for the current Eisteddfod here.

[Druidfluid]

This is 15% autobiography, 85% pure fiction. While I recognize that Beltane is about the more sensual dimension of our lives, in order to even breakthrough and experience the ecstasy of our physical bodies, many of us must first cut through any number of psychological, emotional, and spiritual barriers imposed on us by society, culture, and even our own upbringings. This is one young woman’s journey to celebration. The fact that part of her story is also part of my own is just details. (And no, I won’t be kind enough to reveal which parts correspond. Speculation is half the fun!) Death is a significant feature of this story, but that is appropriate. After all, Samhuinn, on the other side of the year, reflects Beltane and in many ways the themes of these two fire festivals overlap like the chiaroscuro of sunlight and shadow beneath the branches of the Grove.


What the Water Gave Me
by Druidfluid

"Ever notice that what the hell is always the right decision?"
Marilyn Monroe

Its midnight in New Mexico and all my fires are extinguished: the dome light, my flashlight, and the one that was blowing unheeded smoke signals alongside my reckless intentions. That one is nothing but embers now thanks to the beer I’m finishing. I can see the surface of the Hole ahead of me. In the moonlight the circle of water looks like nothing more than an oil slick. From my current vantage point there is no evidence that this is actually an artesian well, a flooded shaft 90 feet straight into the earth attached to a maddening labyrinth of unknown depth and direction.

I finish off the flat can of domestic I definitely should not have drunk before attempting a dive, any dive, let alone one at night and alone, adjust my BCD, check my air gauge one last time, and then step into the oil slick. Instantly, I’m in over my head in darkness. I’m afraid of the dark. My pulse surges, the rush of blood in my ears is deafening.

It has occurred to me on several occasions since meeting Tom (a liar and an alcoholic and not the type to trust as the sole adviser informing a lonely adventure into the nighttime desert), that tonight is a heathen night. My mother, before she went crazy, always told me the last day of April was a night for spirits, just like Halloween only in spring. Our pagan ancestors called it Beltane, but they’d all gone to hell, she reminded me. What she didn’t tell me, but what I knew to be implied in all her stories was that sometimes hell comes to us; it certainly came to her when she saw the minotaurs dancing on her ceiling and when her adopted mother, my grandmother, branded her little girl a witch and a whore’s spawn. Apparently, these sorts of brands are inherited because the minotaurs had never come to me, but in the eyes of my grandparents and church I bore their mark all the same.

Tonight my intention is to meet hell halfway. I thank Tom, the drunkard muse, for this wonderful compulsion.
This whole thing started when I left university this morning, a week before finals, on an impromptu road trip to an out-of-the-way and, more importantly, cheap, dive spot in the desert. Not many people know about Blue Hole, the artesian well in northern New Mexico, but its waters are a steady 60 degrees year round and always crystal clear even though the view they offer through a perfect azure lens is nothing more than a few meager schools of perch. But I needed a break. From school, I told myself.

The seven hour drive from Boulder to Santa Rosa was uneventful, but like usual, unease rippled across the surface of my consciousness as I left the protection of the foothills and entered the wide, southern plain of eastern New Mexico. The sky was bigger here. Large birds circled something on the southeastern horizon. Irrational, I know, but this part of the country always made me feel vulnerable, a sense that was not evident in the shadows of the Rockies. But there was no diving this good anywhere near the mountains, and so, as usual, I chalked the insecurity up to a leaving known territory for safe, but uncharted frontiers. Here be dragons . . .

Joe’s Cantina is the best place to eat in Santa Rosa and, more importantly, serves an exquisite specimen of the diving world’s holy grail: lurid green and satisfyingly large margaritas. My motel was, conveniently, only a block away (rooms are never completely booked in Santa Rosa). After checking in, the bar at Joe’s is the first stop for most divers and I am no exception. I wasn’t planning on diving until the next morning anyway. I threaded my way to the counter and took a seat next to one of the locals. He was doing a bad job of inconspicuously checking me out, but I wasn’t bothered. As far as I was concerned, this was all part of the fun of being young, ditching class, and in good shape. I pretended not to notice.

"You're alone?"

I smiled. This was not the most comfortable question he could have started with. I was reluctant to give him a direct answer, so I took my drink from the bartender instead.

“Aren’t you afraid to be alone? It’s not safe for girls.”

I sipped my drink. “Look, thanks for being concerned and all, but I don’t really know you and this line of questioning is sorta creepy coming from a stranger.” I quickly scanned the room looking for a spot where the ratio of drunks to college girls wasn’t so awkward.

"I'm sorry," he said, his speech slightly slurred. "You look nice. I was just worried. I had a sister, you see. My name’s Tom, by the way."

I sized him up carefully. He was shorter than me, and while lean and muscular it didn’t look like he had a weapon concealed in the pockets of his tight jeans. Although drunk, he also seemed sincere. He’d had a sister. Sounded tragic. I took the hand he offered and remained in my seat.

He was mostly quiet through the first round of drinks. That was reassuring. I talked about school, what I was majoring in, why I liked Santa Rosa. He nodded politely. By the end of the second round, however, he was deep into a tale about his time in Afghanistan in a special forces unit looking for bin Laden. It was all very hush hush, but he didn’t seem to have any reservations in elucidating the rather unbelievable details of his story. I thought the closest he might have ever come to being a paramilitary was probably as a mall security guard. But I didn’t say so. For this hour I’d let him be G.I. Joe if that’s who he wanted to be.

"Osama was in my crosshairs," he said, aiming an imaginary gun at a picture of Marilyn Monroe hanging over the bar. "And then the orders came to withdraw. We could have had him like that! It’s all a conspiracy, you know."

I looked at the bartender who was mixing me another drink; he looked at my companion, looked back at me, and shook his head mouthing the words "ranch hand". I nodded, but continued to listen, punctuating his story with "wow" and "that's incredible".

Needless to say, the amusement level was deteriorating quickly. I had just decided to ask for the tab when my cell phone chirped, barely audible over the din in the cantina. Tom stopped talking. I glanced at the number on it before turning it off and shoving it back into my bag. I must have grimaced because Tom asked, "Ex-boyfriend or something?"

"No, my sister."

"You angry with her?"

I laughed. "Close," I told him. "She’s angry with me."

"I can't believe that," he said , his eyes wide with disbelief. "You're such a nice girl. You steal her boy?"

I paused. This was wading close to terrain I wanted left behind in Colorado, in the foothills where the valleys protected one from the feeling of probing and exposure brought on by the vastness of the sky. But without any warning, I found myself relating things to Tom I hadn’t been comfortable confessing to myself on that long drive down to Santa Rosa.

"My mom is dying of cancer. She's in the hospital right now. My sister thinks I should be there even though we were both raised by social services for the last couple of years before going to college. So I'm here instead." That's right, I told myself. She was dying, she wasn't faking it or doing it for attention; the cancer wasn’t just one of her delusions. She was really dying. The thought was fleeting, but sharp: Were the minotaurs dying with her?

Tom stared at me. “That’s not very nice. She’s your mom.” His continual framing of me along the continuum of “nice” was irritating, and ostensibly, completely inappropriate. “Nice” is a rather soft concept I don’t have much patience for.

I shook my head. "She’s nuts. Sometimes I think she’s faking it, but it doesn’t matter. She’s," I looked at him pointedly, “not a nice mom.”

What I didn’t tell him, what he didn’t need to know, is that the spring before the state took us away from her, we’d had nothing but eggs in the fridge. For some reason, my mom had become obsessed with eggs. She wanted new children, better daughters, and they were going to come from the eggs. In practical terms, this meant my sister and I had nothing to eat but whatever variations we could concoct from a handful of eggs and the dry seasonings in the cupboards. For weeks we experimented with egg: omelets, over easy, sunshine, scrambled, baked, fried, poached, over a box of 2-year-old minute rice, with salt, without salt, eggs au poivre . . . And all the while we watched the cooking shows for ideas involving eggs, but mostly it turned into a tantalizing, saliva-inducing orgy of recipes reminding us that somewhere in the world people were eating meals, delectable feasts, that consisted of more than just eggs.

One evening my mom brought home something different: an egg dying kit. It must have been on sale because Easter was long past.

“Make pretty eggs,” she ordered. I had just turned 13 and refused on the grounds that my sister and I were too old for Easter and that the holiday had been weeks ago. My mother slapped me so hard I fell against the table. And she didn’t stop with a slap. The bruises on my face the next morning are what alerted social services. But Tom didn’t need to know that. In fact, I didn’t need to remember that. That was in the past. It didn’t exist anymore. Only the bruises did, somewhere.
I finished my drink. The bartender looked at me. He expected I’d want the tab, but suddenly I felt rooted to my seat. I gestured for another margarita instead.

Tom was silent. "I hate my mother and I’m letting her die without me" has a tendency to be the kind of statement that kills conversations in most settings, I imagine. Maybe I should have paid my bill after all. But I underestimated Tom. In the same tone of sincerity he had issued his apology earlier, he said, "Yeah, moms can be that way sometimes. It sucks pretty hard."

It was my turn to stare. “Your mom is crazy too?”

The answer he gave was completely unexpected.

“Have you heard of La Llorona?"
I was perplexed. La Llorona was a southwestern ghost story. A woman who in life drowned her children, spends eternity wandering the banks of waterways and the depths of wells, looking for more children to drown.

“What does a child murdering ghost woman have to do with your mother?”

Tom sat his beer on the counter. "She isn't looking for children to drown."

This was one lie I wouldn’t tolerate. It was too much like the ones my mother told during some delusional fit. "You are talking about her like she is real. But she is just some story devised to keep children away from rivers," I said.

Tom considered me from under his shaggy eyebrows. Even shaggier hair fell onto his face. He looked chagrined. I thought he was embarrassed for himself, caught out in a lie. I was wrong.

“I guess in college they teach you different things.” But before I could protest he continued. "I had a little sister once. Pretty, like you, only with black hair that fell all the way down her back. She liked to run. She'd run everywhere, to school, the store. Everywhere. She could outrun all of the boys at school."

"So, one day she stopped running. You know, and I was like, 'What's up with you, Jessica?' But she stopped talking to me. Wouldn't talk to no one. And she walked, no, shuffled everywhere. Never dared look anyone in the eye anymore. She was like that for a month or two before I found out why."

"I left school early one day. The teachers were pissing me off and I'd never been good at math anyway. My mom didn't work and neither did my dad, he was real mean and always getting fired from whatever job he could find, so I knew I was gonna have to sneak into my house if I wanted in. I went around back and the only window that was open was to Jessi's room. I pulled myself up over the ledge and began to push in the screen. That’s when I saw my dad. He was on top of Jessi-"

"Don't," I interrupted, but he continued.

"I ran to my mom. I was crying and getting sick all over the floor before I could talk to her. She was in the kitchen, and when I found her she was just sitting there with this look on her face. She knew! The bitch knew! And so before I realized what I was doing, I did what my dad did to her and I hit her real hard in the face. And then, I knew I had done wrong. I ran out of the house and never came back. Eventually, I found a rancher that would let me stay in a trailer on his property if I worked for him."

“So yeah, my mom was crazy, but that’s only because she lived with the Devil. Is that why your mom was crazy?”

“No,” I responded immediately. The word was almost meaningless. It was mostly just a reaction to his story. I thought it was over; again, I was wrong.

"A few months later my mom drowned her in the place everyone comes to dive in. I heard about it from my boss. Afterwards she killed herself. They gave me a note. She’d written in it that she just wanted to get clean. She just wanted Jessica to get clean too."

The cantina's crowds had thinned. A small group of divers sat in a corner at the other end of the room, but no one else was near. The bartender was drying pint glasses and doing his best imitation of a deaf person.
"But I still see her, if you know what I mean."

I shook my head. What was he wanting me to comprehend?

“My mom and Jessi live in the well now. I go there sometimes and see them in the water.”

"But that can’t be. They are -" I started.

“They are what?” He challenged. For the first time I saw the flash of fires in his eyes. Then the fires dimmed and he sighed.

“They are getting clean. That’s all they are doing. That’s what La Llorona is doing. She’s washing away all the sins.”

"Last call," The bartender said.

"You don’t have to believe me,” Tom said, "but it would be nice if you did. It’s on nights like this one that they come to me.”

I slid off of the bar stool and left a wad of cash, too much, on the counter. I didn’t want to bother with a bill. I stumbled out of the bar and back to my room. During the entire walk back through the hot desert air I couldn’t stop thinking that tonight was a heathen night. Tonight, I’d meet hell halfway.

***

I’m submerged under the surface of Blue Hole now, and sinking. My dive light is with me, but off. Only the anemic glow from my watch illuminates my gauges. At 35 feet I’ll be under an additional atmosphere of pressure. Being 35 feet deep is like being in a second world, an inner world. At 35 feet I’ll turn my dive light on. As much as I fear the darkness, the light seems unbearable right now.

The Celts, my ancestors, and the Amerindians held many beliefs in common although they did not know it. One of them was that the crevices of the world are haunted. For the indigenous tribes of America, drawing water near caves or wells alone or at night was dangerous. And they shunned the hollow, empty spaces of the earth for fear that the souls of the dead would haunt them ever after. Fifteen feet below the surface science and reason dissolve into the dark waters enveloping me, and suddenly I am in complete accordance with the ancients. What seems to be a harmless swimming hole by the light of the sun is transformed into an eerie maw at night. Darkness is never so dark as it is underwater.

Not yet, I reassure myself. Not yet.

I watch closely as the hand of the depth gauge turns slowly to the right.

Twenty.

The only sounds are from the bubbles issuing out and up from my regulator and the strange pulsing that is ever-present underwater. In previous dives I could never tell if this was the sound of the current or the drumming of my own heartbeat, but on this dive I am certain it is my heart I am hearing; it is the sound of my vitality I hear, an alien sound in the lifeless dark.

Twenty-five.

Something slithers against me and I scream; the regulator slips out of my mouth. Airless, I thrust my hand into the void and grope for it, desperate and coughing violently against the rush of water filling my lungs. My fingers, following along the tube attaching the air tank to my mouthpiece, find it and secure it once again between my teeth.

I look at my gauge. Thirty.
Thirty-one.
Thirty-two.

My thumb rubs lightly against the switch of the dive lamp. Pulse is louder now, but the sound of bubbles is diminished. It’s as if the water around me is stilling them, slowing their wild rush to the surface.

Thirty-three.

The Otherworld is here. My feet enter it first. It pulls me in. It has been waiting for me. I let myself slide into this realm and suddenly this is no longer an artesian well at midnight. It’s a hospital, sterile, dry, utilitarian. My sister is with me and our mother is between us. She’s wearing a breathing mask as well and she’s covered in more tubes than I am. Thin white sheets blanket her up to the neck. If the sheets were only a few inches higher, over her face, they’d be transformed into a shroud. It’s not right, those tubes, these sheets. I suddenly know with an awful certainty that my mom shouldn’t be here. I can’t think of where else she should be, but I know the answer to that as well: she would know where she needs to go if only she could get untangled from all these tubes. I begin to pull at them.

Thirty-four.

My sister holds my mother's hand. A nurse rushes into the room; she’s followed by a doctor. I’ve just disconnected the last tube from the machine and now I’m busy pulling them from my mother’s arms. I’m vaguely aware that the other people in the room, particularly the nurse, should not approve of what I’m doing. I can’t understand why they aren’t stopping me, but that doesn’t matter. My task is almost complete. “Let go,” my sister is whispering. "You have to let go." The last tube pulls free. I look at my mom’s face. The sheets still look 6 inches short of a shroud, but it’s better without the tubes, she looks more natural.

The monitors next to her bed shift. Now they look like dive gauges. One more time I hear my sister sob, “Let go.”
Let go. My thumb presses down against the switch.

Thirty-five.

The darkness recedes in an instant and the walls of the Hole are now visible. The shadows of minotaurs move against them and I can see that they are celebrating. How could this ever be considered hell? The bulls are leaping for joy. In the faint reflection on the back of my dive goggles, I can see another pair of eyes watching with me. They twinkle with delight, but they aren’t mine.

They are my mother’s.

[CelticWind]

The aircraft shot through the bright sunshine air like a speeding comet of revolution—Amelia Earheart, visionary and one of the very few female pilots on Earth was on a historic, life-changing journey; a solo flight across the vast recesses of the Atlantic Ocean.

It thrilled her, and filled her veins with the deepest sense of exhilaration... and, as she’d openly admit, a tinge of fear; a shadow of worry. But for now, those feelings of doubt were shoved to the back of her mind, like a distant and highly irrelevant echo of doubt. There were more important things at foot, all of which needed her most avid concentration.

She took a deep breath, in happiness and amazement—she could see the blue expanse of ocean miles and miles beneath her, like an ever-extending blue carpet, inviting her ever on and on. ‘This—this is life’, she mused.

What were the odds? Hers was not a society that treated women with dignity and respect, or even credited them with much capability to speak of; and yet here she was--flying across the Great Ocean Blue, showing the world that the tides are changing. She felt a spokesperson for her gender--a lone revolutionary in a maelstrom of prejudice. Perhaps, in time, there would be a peace at last.

Seeing the world from above was a perspective that changed everything. The thought that we were no longer bound to the ground, but free to explore the world that the human race was all but pre-destined to walk upon for over a million years in eons past was incredible beyond all rational thought to her. The skies are the limit, and she was flying within them.

Everything was cast in a bright fantastical illumination by the great searing orange orb in the sky. All was well.

Far in the horizon, Amelia saw but a single cloud, an opaque shape that seemed to her much like a dinner plate. To her disappointment, annoyance, and to an extent amusement this made her very much quite hungry—her stomach growling and churning at the thought of the vital energies needed for this nuisance of biological activity.

For a moment, she looked down to the seat beside her and pulled out a bag full of preserved meat saved for times like this. Its taste? Dry as all hell, little to write home about. But it did its duty functionally enough.

Looking back up, she marveled at how static this cloud was holding its shape—like a great floating iron fortress looking down upon the oceanic world below. It seemed entirely immobile, and she laughed, waiting for her.

Looking at the ever-extending blue blanket of space in front of her, her thoughts wandered back to a play she had the honor of attending many-a-month ago; put on by New York City’s finest actors; written by Shakespeare, literary genius and one of the most intensely creative minds of all time:

…And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
…There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio.

She yawned and stretched heartily.

…Something is…

(dirty, askew, wrong?)

ROTTEN in the State of Denmark…

(sigh)

The rest is silence.

Her aircraft shook, being tossed left and right like a small child’s favorite toy. Amelia Earheart screamed and shouted in shock. Whereas moments before the skies were empty and clear as the most relaxing summer days, she was now engulfed in total and absolute darkness. It was night, or something similar. She was traveling at supersonic speeds into oblivion; surrounded by a storm of chaos. All hands upon her watch spun and spun in a constant, rapid circle—her instrument gauges couldn’t seem to make up their minds; one moment her fuel tank was full, the next empty… speed was as rapid as imagination could lend itself, and as slow as the tortoise in Aesop’s fable.

Down, up, side to side; around and around she went as the merry-go-round goes.
Spinning, falling, (flying?), flailing, shouting, yelling, begging, pleading…

Please God, please God…

A bright flash, and an eerie and totalitarian silence.




***********





The room was impossibly vast, stretching for miles on end in every direction, lit as dimly as a drug lord’s carefully hidden basement. And within this room, this dark, ominous chamber stood thousands upon thousands of tanks: cylindrical, clear containers filled with a bubbling green liquid, assorted tubes… and life.

This one—an old man with no eyes, legs missing; hanging upside down, a metallic cord plugged into his neck. His face held an eternal expression of anguish, as though he were screaming—though not the slightest sound can be heard.

Further and further down the hall we go; deer legs, cattle tongues, reproductive tracts, children, adults (men and women); some naked, some clothed, some whole, some mutilated, some nothing but irradiated dust. A zoo?

No.

Something else.

Within another was a human brain, a pair of wires attached, sending great jolts of electricity through its myriad of neurological pathways as it danced in a circle.

Ancient tribesman, modern business owners, musicians, dog trainers, scientists, artists… lovers and cynics alike. The tubes contained all, they held no bias, no pity, and no remorse—all were one, and were none.

Take a turn, a chance; a direction—a gander, meander aimlessly for all time. Tubes and biology, wonder and astronomy.

Open mouths gape, blank eyes stare at the doldrums of eternity.

Green liquid, cylinders; Tao.

Look down, no wait—up! Upward to the sky before you, flying towards the limit, towards eternity.

Another tank; another day, another dollar—a face. A woman, face filled with shock and terror. In life, a name (Amelia… Amelia Earheart); in here, just another in the crowd.

Tanks for your time, there is much of it. Alien thought, human emotion; plausible?

Deniable.

Thoughts, an echo of hope.

Please God, please God…

[serenarian]

This is a piece of writing that I composed after someone challenged me on my beliefs. It is just my thoughts.

Pagan Heart

People have asked me several times to explain my beliefs, as though I need to justify being ‘alternative’ with a full and concise explanation. The answer I usually give is that I believe in an earth-based spirituality, based on dual reverence for a God and Goddess as equal partners. However, this simple sentence has the strange function of saying everything, while simultaneously saying nothing at all. It is deliciously vague, but yet encompasses the bare bones of my beliefs in those simple words. I could, of course, go on, and describe how I work with crystals, herbs and stones, read Tarot, and am a Reiki healer, but in the particular case of Paganism I find such explanations do not explain, merely causing more confusion. This of course makes sense. Paganism at this moment in time still upholds vows of secrecy in many of its traditions, and does not publicise its rituals or teachings - indeed, as there is no dogma, it is completely alien to those not in the Pagan community. But it makes me think - is Paganism really becoming mainstream? I would have to disagree. I don’t believe the belief system of Paganism is becoming mainstream at all, but I do think the consciousness of our society is changing. We are entering the Aquarian age, becoming more aware of climate change, and a new generation of Indigo children is being born. Should we worry about this and attempt to stop it happening? No, of course not. Change is automatic, we all make a thousand changes every day when we make decisions. Progress however is not. We need to embrace what is happening to us.
I am a Pagan. I perform no complicated rituals, wear no robes, and rarely cast spells. I walk barefoot in woodland, delight in the caress of mud on my skin, and watch the sun set in wonder. I channel the universal life energy in my Reiki practise. I know the God and Goddess exist because I feel their heartbeat in my veins; their songs in my spirit. Nobody needs to prove to me that they exist, and conversely if they try to prove otherwise, I will listen to their testimony with interest and a sense of tolerance, but what I am hearing is simply their truth. It is not my own. While I respect them for having faith, regardless of belief, it is my own experience that the beliefs we hold so dear can also hold us back. This is often more noticeable in organised religion, as the dogma and teachings can hold us back and constrain our individuality. I am free to wear what I want, eat what I want, believe what I want, and extend the hand of friendship to those whom I forge a rapport with. My heart beats with the rhythm of life, a rhythm to which I dance and chant the sacred names of my ancestors. The elements circle in my blood. As such, I feel no need to justify my existence to others as my own is as sacred and important as theirs.

Eala Serenarian

[eilis]

“Terrible Beauty”

In 1848, the Choctaw took up a collection and sent it to the Irish famine victims. What this story tells us about the world we could live in makes it timeless. The Choctaw had been the first of the tribes removed from their land in the Trail of Tears. Even though their society had been devastated by the avarice of the new immigrants, they saw the commonality of their struggles.

In the period between 1830 and 1850 the Native American and Irish societies were despoiled by man-made famines in a land-grab that consolidated the South into a slave-plantation economy and solidified the English aristocracy’s enclosures of Irish land. The Choctaw gift is a moment of powerful human spirit that brings to mind the words of WB Yeats, “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

The Choctaw were an agricultural people living in the Southeast Untied States, in what is today Mississippi and Alabama. They were the premier agriculturalists of the Southeast, every year producing a surplus, and supplying their neighbors. They lived in villages and farmed corn, beans, and squash in the rich Mississippi delta, and developed a democratic form of governance with elected leaders. The wealth and stability created by their industry led to a richly cultured life engaging in sports -the stick ball game akin to lacrosse – storytelling that included forest folk called 'the little people' and a complex spiritual life centered around the mounds that represented the origins of domesticated corn.

Because the Choctaw were the strong and established economic centerpiece of the Native American Southeast, the US government targeted them to be the first of the tribes removed to Oklahoma in what has become known as the 'Trail of Tears'. The Choctaw had fought at the side of Andrew Jackson at what has been touted as the most important battle fought on American soil, the Battle of New Orleans, where the British forces were decisively and finally repelled in 1814. Yet, Andrew Jackson authored and executed the plan to dispossess the Choctaw of their land creating a man-made famine that claimed the lives of a third of the Choctaw population.

Sixteen years later, the British overlords in Ireland seized upon the opportunity created by the potato blight - the phytophthora infestans fungus – which destroyed the crop sustaining the poor tenant farmers of Ireland to foreclose on properties and evict Irish from their own land. There was enough food in Ireland to feed everyone, yet the British shipped the grain crops and live stock grown on Irish soil overseas to be sold for profit, while they expanded their land holdings by evictions, and used starvation and migration to rid Ireland of “surplus” Irish.

The stories of the Choctaw and the Irish are dramas repeated throughout in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, genocide motivated by profit and precipitated by racism. To be able to see the commonality in these tragedies, instead of being consumed by the misery and loss, is the vision of a terrible beauty. The Choctaw gift, a few hundred dollars painstaking collected among the destitute and victimized, is a legacy - a statement against greed, against racism, against the terrible policies of displacement and extermination haunting our recent history. The Choctaw showed us the path – the simple act of seeing our common humanity and acting upon it in any way we can.

[Abhaill]

The Importance of Cultural Studies in the Education of Children*

Cultural Studies are not a set of disciplines to be learned in school. In the Montessori system of education there is a Cultural Curriculum, and each teacher, classroom, and school brings to that curriculum a unique passion. However, I do not see Cultural Studies as a set of disciplines or merely a curriculum. It is rather the way we study life, a pursuit which serves to occupy the minds and hearts of each person who has ever lived. I study the Universe because I am a molecule in its composition. I study the Earth because I am fed and nourished by its complexity. I study the Peoples of the World because I am a contributing member of that society. I study my own inner landscape so that I might find the peace that can only come from true self-awareness and acceptance. These are the core elements of Cultural Studies: studying the Universe, the Earth, the Peoples of the World, and Ourselves.

Studying the Universe

From a Montessori perspective the study of geography begins with the concept of the Universe and from there compartmentalizes that everything into smaller, more manageable pieces. We don't begin from our own points of view, our own kitchen tables as it were, looking out at the world as it specifically relates to us. We begin from the perspective that there is a Universe in which all life exists, and it is inhabited by some strange and wonderful things. Astronomy doesn't only teach us about galaxies, stars, planets and space, but also about the concepts of possibility, infinity and paradox. In light of the immensities we can barely comprehend, our significance as individuals on this one planet in this one galaxy paired with the knowledge we each possess of our own impact on the life around us becomes a paradox many struggle to come to terms with their entire lives. Studying the stars brings us into contact with how people through time have drawn pictures in the night sky to illustrate their own stories, making sense of the heavens, designing matrices of cause and effect, weaving fate and choice together, balancing birth dates, celestial and terrestrial influences.

Closer to home we examine our own Solar System, centered on our Sun, which we begin to see as our own universal back yard. The cyclical nature of life and death as shown to us by the seasonal changes we witness each solar year, the give and take of darkness and light ever present in our days and nights, how we track and mark these occurrences with calendars of all kinds, even our own shadows, teach us about the Sun and its paramount influence on our existence. The easiest planetary path to mark is that of the Moon, and although we see its appearance change each night the lunar cycle at times engenders more mystery than the solar. Studying the Moon's relationship to Earth connects us to the tides and the Moon's effect on the water in and around us, the ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning of the waters of life. Tracking the Sun and Moon explains our years and months, rather than the other way around, making the measurement of time seem far less arbitrary than it may otherwise. The longer we live the more opportunity there is to discover the patterns and puzzles of life and death, and to pace out the connections between them.

Physics and chemistry are not disciplines subjugated to schools of higher learning. We conduct experiments which facilitate discussions about gravity, magnetism, buoyancy, volume, weight, light, electricity, mass, density, alchemy, and the phases of matter. We practice good observational skills and precision in language. We are scientists in the making! The mathematical patterns evident in the Universe and the natural world within which we exist, like the five-pointed star inside an apple, the concentric circles in the cross-section of a tree, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the spiralling pattern of chambers within a nautilus, are each hidden in plain view. These are the mysteries that pervade the Universe and the laws by which it is governed, and we must open ourselves up to them in order to understand our place here.

Studying the Earth

Once we have a good sense of our place in the Universe we turn to our own planet among millions, Earth. We talk about the shape, size and composition of the planet, as well as positing its age, origin, purpose, and relative importance. It is quite wonderful to listen to children's thoughts on the idea of the birth of the Earth and the Universe. When we study the geography of the planet we first examine its topography, land and water formations, rather than focus on the geo-political lines drawn between countries. For all the people in the world who have grown up in a valley will share as much if not more in common with other valley dwellers across the globe than with the others living within their own country's boundary lines. We have seen in our lifetimes that these lines are not carved in stone, that a people is sometimes without a country at all, and we can predict the same experience for future generations. Being situated on an island, for example, connects the children here to other children who live on islands around the world in a deeply borne, sensory way. From this perspective we learn about ecosystems, landscapes and other climates.

Once this connection is forged then we begin to break the structure and inhabitants of the Earth into more manageable groups many have termed elements that serve to categorize all living and non-living things. Most commonly these are known as earth, air, fire and water, as well as spirit. Broadly earth, water and air, can be seen to represent three of the phases of matter; solid, liquid and gas. Fire encompasses electricity, flame, heat, the iron core of the planet, and the awe-inspiring volcano, among others. Spirit is the element most often left out of the equation because we all seem reluctant to step on one another's spiritual toes these days, but billions of people who have inhabited this planet have honoured the spirit before us and our children will find their own paths as we have done before them. I see no reason to believe that the invisible world need be any less complex and fantastic then the visible one, for the creatures born out of the imagination of a child have the potential to be just as real and meaningful to them as those they are introduced to in the world.

Within this framework the Earth begins to take shape: the molten core wrapped tightly within the land's embrace itself blanketed by the seas and all of it enveloped by a bubble of air. And through it all flow the breath, blood and bone of life. The study of that life and its classification becomes the root of our work in geology, botany and zoology. We ride the molten seas on giant plates of rock which continue to grow and change as they slowly collide, giving birth to mountains and stretching seas. Studying stone puts us into contact with the concepts of foundation, age, patience, force and beauty. We see the footprints left behind by the ancestors of life today, in fossils, chalk, jet, amber, and petrified wood. Studying botanical life teaches us about diversity, interdependence, transformation and interconnectedness. Located as we are in a natural environment, we have unique access to the species we study. Children have the opportunity to help in the gardens, planting seeds and bulbs, weeding and watering, tending young sprouts, witnessing the full year's cycle of life from emergence to decomposition. There is no substitution for the lessons they will learn with their hands in the soil and their senses engaged. Studying animal life helps to put our being human into context when we classify vertebrates and invertebrates, mammals to molluscs, families and offspring. This is a good place for an introduction to the differences between male and female behaviour, function and appearance in the animal kingdom. We learn the lessons of adaptability, symbiosis, birth, and metamorphosis, all of which illustrate the magic that is potential.

People through time have named this planet and given it a gender. They have worshiped and feared it, stood in awe of its unique majesty, been humbled and proud. If we are to raise a generation who will rise up and care for their inheritance we must encourage in them a set of values which grow from a deep and abiding respect for all that nourishes them. We must practice ecologically sound habits, modeling a willingness and aspiration to make changes in our daily lives for the health and betterment of the planet. This is a legacy to be left to the next generation; to admit our mistakes and take steps to rectify them as swiftly and passionately as possible. Sharing the lessons of preservation and protection, responsibility and coexistence, choice and sacrifice, together we commit to care about the planet that sustains us all.

Studying People

Once we have established the many things we share in common we can begin to explore what makes us different, unique and dynamic Peoples of the World. We can start with physiology because by and large we're all built according to the same blueprint. Eating lunch together opens the conversation about the body's various systems and functions, breathing and digestion, the brain and nervous system, bones and muscles, and all of our many varied internal pathways. The foods we eat nourish us in different ways, and we learn about fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals, in order to fuel our body's energy and to maintain and improve our strength and health. We introduce ethnic dishes to the children at lunch on occasion when celebrating a particular festival or exploring a culture, and at our Potluck suppers sprinkled throughout the year. Likewise, including recipes from various ethnicities in your family's meals will broaden your children's culinary experiences and educate their palettes.

People are special not only because of how we are put together but what we can accomplish with our hearts, bodies and minds. When we set out to study a people (in anthropology) or a civilization (in history) it can seem overwhelming, but we can take it a piece at a time. An easy place to begin is clothing or costume because children can quickly spot the differences between the way they dress and the way children from another place or time dress(ed). Fashion, style and colour are all aspects of the study of textiles, literally wearable art, and children are connected to it all via their own practice of skills such as embroidery, beading, block printing, painting cloth, dyeing, weaving, braiding, sewing on buttons and other needlework. Many times ethnic costume ties in with celebration and festival, bringing together the community as we demonstrate group participation, ceremony, and introduce the concepts of honour and that which is sacred or set apart. These ceremonies may be happy or sad, age- or accomplishment-related, or mark particular times of the year, and incorporate traditional elements, such as processions, games and dances.

This is an ideal time to learn new words in other languages. Children absorb the languages to which they are exposed when they are young and can easily make this vocabulary a part of their understanding. The eloquence and imagery in poetry, story and song train the child's mind to embellish and refine the language it uses and understands, transforming and deepening that child's expectations of expression not only from his/herself but from others as well. We read hundreds of stories over the course of a year at school, folktales from countries circling the globe, modelling the values, ideals, thoughts and dreams of peoples from all walks of life. Many cultures teach using stories where the story itself expresses the lessons to be learned, like a tapestry made of many threads creating a picture of the whole. Stories exemplify traditions and lead the listeners and readers on a journey or quest as they follow the path the story carves out. Some stories are expressed musically and music itself is so often the heart's blood of a people, their language a rhythmic composition of sound. Singing and dancing, playing instruments, listening to World music, learning the folksongs of their ancestry, all forge the links in the chains connecting children to their extended families.

The symbols with which families, countries, religions, schools and businesses associate themselves teach us something important about their chosen values. Flags, totems, logos, shields and emblems unite and divide us, expressing ourselves to our neighbours, identifying each group as set apart, even sacred to its members. The arts go hand in hand with feats of engineering, invention, construction, and the tools with which monuments are built and sculpture is fashioned. We not only depend upon the land for sustenance of the body, but our environment helps to shape our mind and spirit and how each manifests itself in the world. The materials available to one group will infuse all aspects of life and, coupled with the elements of necessity and desire, be formed, shaped and manipulated to suit any given people's dynamics. Artistic creation, media, style, dimension, and the skill which develops over time and is passed on to subsequent generations, represent a unique worldview to those who share them and an intriguing set of puzzles to those outside their tradition to whom they will always remain, at least in part, mysterious. In our program we touch and explore all these things and more, infusing each day with the colours, designs, creations, and passions of the many varied members of our global village.

Studying Ourselves

If we are to begin our Cultural Studies with everything then we must end with self. It is not enough to study the Peoples of the World, not even if they are our own. We must continue the journey to the core of our own existence which for each individual is unique, precious, and the centre of the universe. How do we see the world? We use all of our usual senses which although they do of course include gustatory, auditory, visual, tactile and olfactory perceptions must also be understood to include our thoughts, dreams, imaginations, emotions and spirits. We are multifaceted, multilayered beings with intuition, instinct, and inspiration. We are capable of great empathy to be profoundly encouraged in young children as they grow to comprehend their place in our global community, by giving to those in need, practicing self-sacrifice, generosity, hospitality, and offering comfort and sympathy to others. Involving our school's community, from children to parents to teachers, in fundraising, gift-giving, and other similar outpourings serves to knit us more closely together.

Children have the need, as we all do, to question not only what they can see but what they cannot. Some of the most fascinating conversations I've had with children have sprung up around these intangible gardens of the nature of immortality, choice, memory, will, evolution, growth, ideals, drive, purpose and many more. We discuss dreams of all kinds, including visions and journeys, even nightmares, as well as lucidity (the ability to affect dreams), repetition, reflection, interpretation, messages and lessons to be gleaned. This is a self-directed process of discernment and consideration, along the path of self-awareness and true self-knowledge. When asking ourselves about the origin of our inspirations and influences, considering legacy and personal development, thinking about our own heroes, we learn to see ourselves not only as having a place in this moment but also in the history of time. Exploring our emotional awareness by refining our perceptions develops patience and improves our listening and conflict resolution skills while teaching us about our own reactions.

Imagination, so often the sense at best taken for granted, at worst dismissed as false perception, is the cornerstone of creativity, invention, visionary work, independence and autonomy. Coaches have been using visualization techniques for years, which is the practice of seeing in the mind's eye that which you desire to manifest in the physical world, but they are the latest in a long line of teachers to recognize the power inherent in the holistic connection between imagination, determination and will. True leaders, those who envision change, engage in original thinking, and possess the inner assurance to support them in the face of adversarial opposition, have the capability of altering not only the course of their own lives, but affecting every life with which they come into contact simply by being themselves.

Each of the little people-in-the-making who come to us here embodies this potential and we have the privilege of helping them on their way as they seek to realize and actualize all that they can become. How many of us still question our purpose in this life and wonder about the impact we're making? Children ask these same questions of themselves, and we would be doing them a disservice not to facilitate their internal processes as they develop in consciousness. We do this more often by listening and allowing a child space and time for reflection and silence, than by explaining. We often choose to answer questions with questions rather than to pretend we know the answers that may never be found and are different for each questioner. It is the seeking that matters, the journey itself that enlightens us, not the achievement.

Leading us to Peace

As if all of these benefits were not enough, Cultural Studies lead us so far past the old idea of tolerance as to render the word obsolete. Tolerance is a veneer barely managing to conceal the unease and discomfort beneath. It was an important step to encourage people to tolerate those things with which they disagreed in an attempt to bring about peaceful coexistence; however we must continue to evolve ourselves beyond this initial phase. With understanding comes acceptance, and from these values respect is born. When we respect one another conflict resolution becomes a relatively simple matter. Where there is a willingness to come to terms, to compromise, to practice receptivity, wisdom, and grace, there will be peace. Hoping for peace to settle in will not bring it about: we must be pro-active in our peace-seeking. When we allow this pursuit to fill us to the very core of our beings, the quest itself has the power to transform us into the very emissaries we seek.


*Originally written for the newsletter at the Montessori/Pre-school where I teach, referring to our program for children aged 2.5 - 6 years.


~ Abhaill

[Brianna]

What does Druidry mean to me?
11th of May 2007

Druidry is for me boundless freedom with the grass between my fingers, the rich scent of a forest in my nostrils, the sound of a waterfall and the wind rustling through the trees, it is the deep profound and yet simple connection to mother nature, to Gaia, that pervades me, dissolves the outer boundaries of my being, the superficial patterns laid on me by the world I live in, it is being in the now, completely, fully and wholly, and experiencing my life in this now with every sense of my body and my soul, feeling my life running like hot blood through my veins, and knowing that it is her love that burns so hot in me, that gives me so immensely much joy, so much power that fuels my passion to ever new heights.

It is the strength of my very being, and it longs, it longs so much for nature, it longs to live in ancient times when being so close to nature was natural, was part of every days life. It longs to run, run over the green hills, up to the stone circle, up to the grove, and then dancing there, yelling my pure joy out over the plains and hearing the birds, animals and even the winds answer to my call, knowing that they actually understand what I'm feeling in that moment, becoming one with them, becoming one with the hill, the trees, the summer breeze, the endless sea and merging with the fire burning high within me. The fire of freedom and boundless love.

It is the feeling when I ride my horse without a saddle, being wet all over from having dashed through a little lake with my powerful white companion, and then a large grass plain stretches out before us as we emerge out of the forest into the bright noon sun light and I can feel his urge to run, run and revel in the power of his strong body and hearing him scream out his joy as we seem to become faster than the wind in a scream that sounds almost human and yet profoundly wild and boundlessly free when we merge into one being, and through him I can feel his connection to the mother and everything else ceases to exist, and this moment becomes an eternity of pure joy.

It is lying in a summer meadow and forgetting about time as I watch the clouds roll by and try not to wriggle my legs when little bugs and ants start crawling up and down them and the pure magic of the moment when a butterfly takes a rest on my belly, accepting me as a part of this summer meadow. Smelling the smell of the sun and the grass on my skin, the most beautiful perfume I can think of.

It is sitting in front of a roaring fire, feeling the heat on my skin, feeling my inner fire flaring up in response and watching the ever-changing beautiful patterns in the flames, the manifold colour shades of red, yellow, blue and orange, the crackling sound like the voice of a laughing child, the sparks exploding from the burning timbers and the feeling of pure raw power and joy that this wild fire kindles in me, the feeling of familiarity, like this fire was my sister or my brother, warming me, dancing with me, laughing with me and transforming everything it touches, burning high, fueled by the winds of change. Promising nothing but change and power, oh, what a sweet promise, what a powerful experiences, my element.

It is climbing a tree, even one that seems impossible to climb and reaching the highest branches, looking at the breathtakingly landscape around me seeing a sight that no other has seen before and merging with this tree, how would it be to stand here on this spot like this tree, having this view day by day, what would it see? Has it been there when the love for the mother was still part of every human being? Oh how I long for the time when there were women whose life it was to live this love and nothing else. To show, live and express this deep deep devotion every day and experience this joy and being in the perpetual now, able to share their love with and for the mother so directly, so intensely.

It is me when I was a child and communed with wild spirits and animals as if I was one of them, when I was not restricted by so called conventions, when I didn't know what was possible and what was not. When I didn't care or think, when I just was.... was me in that moment and experienced each moment in nature like a new world to discover, like a new life to live, like a dream come true, like true magic. How I long for this child me, the Druid I was, starting to sing some kind of melody that my soul taught me in that moment, dancing when I felt like it around an especially beautiful tree and feeling her love deeply, wholly and completely in everything around me and within me. This is my passion, this is my love and my devotion, my path.

This path gives me the room, the space to be myself, to walk my own path, to take my own steps when I feel ready to take them, but within an open-minded community. To be able to yell out this love to everybody if I feel the need to, to live my love for Gaia, to reconnect with her in a deeper and deeper way, in every days life, in a ritual, in a circle with others who share this love. To grow through this experience and to freely express and share the gifts that come with that love, my Awen.

(Dedicated to the Druid Path and the Earth Mother Goddess)

[wyeuro]

Xhamhiz the elf lay sprawled on the moss, his back against the root of a prickly moses tree, enjoying the morning. It was a particularly fine one, cool, but not cold, dewy beyond the shelter of the bush, but dry enough under its branches. The sun, newly risen, was slanting its rays right to the foot of its short twisty trunk. Delicate rays they were and they made the moss glow, and the bark of the root gleam, and the sand crystals glitter with the touch of their clear, sparkling light. The earth, still damp from the last rain, was interlaced with odours that the elf’s sensitive nostrils could read like a book: the fragrant trails of ants, the scents of beetles, snails and moths, and even the lingering perfume of a caterpillar or two which had passed that way during the night.
Xhamhiz was listening to the twittering and carolling of a thousand birds in the trees and bushes all around, and the busy buzzing of the early bees among the wattle blossoms, and the hum of a hoverfly just above his head. Beside him on the moss lay a head of sweetheart grass with most of the seeds gone, because he was cracking them one at a time between his teeth, extracting the crunchy kernels and tossing them into his mouth – and a fine, nutritious breakfast that was. His beetle, which he had tied to a nearby grass-stalk with a handspun spider-silk rope so that it couldn’t crawl off or fly away, was meditating contentedly on the moss. It was a handsome beetle, a big spiny longicorn with a spiky brown thorax, dark brown wing cases, and a pair of magnificent antennae nearly as long as its body.
It was a glorious start to the day and nothing to spoil it – yet. But Xhamhiz was a solitary elf, accustomed to a life of danger and intrigue, and not one to trust the promises of a fair morning. Besides, his keen subtle instincts told him that something was about to happen, and he guessed it would be trouble. He crunched his seeds and let his gaze rest on an empty spot in the air, just up ahead.
Before very long, just at that very spot, the light began to quiver and a faint mist of colour began to sparkle. It thickened into a shining haze of palest lilac like a barely visible oval cloud, almost as big as a hen’s egg; and within it, quite suddenly, a fairy appeared. She wore a short, flared dress of lilac gossamer with a shimmer of silver about it. She had a small, shrewd face with delicate, pointed ears and long, silvery feelers. Her arms and legs were long and graceful and she had slender hands and neat, bare feet. The colours of her hair and her complexion were hard to make out. At a glance they too seemed to be lilac, but they could just as easily have been white, or silver, or no colour at all, only reflecting the colour of her aura. Rainbows of lilac and lavender and mauve shot through with purple flashed in her wings, and the sun made a sparkling lilac halo of the wispy curls that floated about her face.
While she was manifesting, five other fairies appeared in the same way, three of them males and two of them females, each in a sparkling mist of a different colour: sky blue, crimson, jade green, a soft yellow-orange and a pearly white. As they got their bearings they stood in a close group staring with their big, half-scared eyes at Xhamhiz.
Now elves don’t get on very well with fairies. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but they don’t. Not that there’s any war between them or anything like that – they just, well, they hate each other, in a casual, on-going way. Xhamhiz shot distrustful glances at each of them in turn, and then fixing his eye on the lilac one in front, he carefully got up. She stood firm and stared back.
It’s best to act casual, he thought, and cracking another seed open with his teeth, he swaggered forward to greet her, to show that he wasn’t afraid. He even grinned. ‘Sumpin’ on ya mind?’ He stopped a few paces away from her and grinned again.
The fairy’s white teeth flashed for a moment. It might have been a smile, it might have been a sneer or a snarl; you can never tell with fairies, but her words were courteous enough. ‘Yes, there is. We need your help.’
Xhamhiz narrowed his eyes at her and said, ‘Not dis elf, Bencasi. Dis elf doesn’t do odd-jobs for no wallaby-gone moon-sung fairies. Not in dis day an’ age. You fin’ sumpin’ dat likes bein’ treated like a quoll-gone dingo-wove beetle on a leash an’ get dem to run yer errands for ya. Dis elf won’t.’ And he turned and took a purposeful step back towards his beetle.
Bencasi made a slight, barely visible movement of one finger of one hand, and all at once all six of the fairies rose into the air and surrounded him, spun once and landed in graceful postures, like ballet dancers, around him, with their toes pointed and their fingers extended, their heads inclined to right or left, and their half-opened wings vibrating. Very beautiful they were, and exquisitely perfumed too; not even Xhamhiz could deny that. But this was no ballet dance. As they landed there appeared in the air a silvery phantom, or visible force-form, like an airy sketch of an enormous flower with five pointed petals with a fairy at the tip of each one and a stem with Bencasi at the base of it. That put Xhamhiz right in the centre of it, where he was forced to be the stigma, surrounded by the gleaming phantoms of a dozen or so anthers. He tried to step out of it but he couldn’t. He was caught as securely as a fly in a cobweb.
He took a deep slow breath. ‘Orright,’ he said, ‘waddya want?’
‘We don’t ask favours of elves if we have any choice,’ said the jade green fairy behind him, a little contemptuously. ‘It’s a matter of great importance.’
‘Yeah? Well waddya wastin’ time for, Kasmit? Why doncha jus’ say wotcha want an’ I’ll say no, an’ den yers can all go home an’ I can have me breakfast in peace. Orright?’
‘Be polite, elf,’ said Bencasi coldly.
Xhamhiz almost laughed at her. They interrupt an elf first thing in the morning in the middle of his breakfast even before he’s fed his beetle, they ing-dance him till he can’t move, and then they order him about like a lizard-gone hopping mouse so they can lecture him about politeness! But he only tapped the toe of his skink-skin boot rapidly on the moss and tossed his last two sweetheart seeds into his mouth both together. Then with a sudden grin he shot out his hand and gave the nearest anther a good hard yank. Now the fairies were all part of that force field, and you can’t yank one part without another part reacting. It was the yellow-orange fairy to his right who pitched forward onto the moss as the petal whose tip she was being was flipped violently upwards. Clumsily she landed on her knees at Xhamhiz feet.
‘Now dat’s politeness,’ said Xhamhiz. ‘Flistor’s got it right. Dat’s da sorta politeness dat’s due an elf. Ya shoulda all dun dat!’
Bencasi stamped her foot, snapping a taut ripple through the force-field that flipped its anther back into its proper place and released the kneeling fairy. Flistor flung him an angry glance as she scrambled ungracefully to her feet and resumed her pose.
‘Now den,’ said Xhamhiz when the flower had stopped quivering. ‘Wot’s dis problem ya got dat’s so hard to solve ya gotta get a elf ta do it for yers?’
‘If you’ll be quiet I’ll tell you,’ said Bencasi with an impatient toss of her head that sent another spasm of quivering through the flower. ‘Just listen.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Xhamhiz the elf.
‘Last night, in the place we call Tia-Sil, in the vale of the native violets, under the lemon-scented gum trees as the glabris moon reached one sixth of its way to its zenith, we and sixty one other fairies of the Aerie Fane danced the Ing of Got.’
‘Hope ya had a nice time. An’ was dere samwidges and buns ta folla?’
‘Please don’t be sarcastic,’ urged the crimson fairy at his left. ‘Listen to Bencasi.’
‘Menadûl! You wid dis mob now den? Well, well, dat’s news fer da folks back home. But sorry, youse guys, Ya gecko-gone mosquita-wit ings jus’ aren’t my problem,’ said Xhamhiz.
‘But if you don’t help us, this one soon will be,’ said Flistor.
‘It could affect the whole planet,’ Kismet added, ‘material, astral, ethereal, the lot.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Xhamhiz with heavy irony. ‘I can jus’ see all da kings an’ queens an’ emperors an’ empresses an’ presidents an’ heads o’ state on all the seven spheres o’ Planet Eart’ an’ all da five spheres o’ da moon, too, I bet, all getting’ deirselfs inta a tizzy cos a mob o’ rat-witted, wobbegong-song fairies bungled deir bilby-gone, cat-song ing-dance.’
‘You can laugh us to scorn if you like, elf,’ warned Bencasi, her aura flashing little sparks of anger, ‘but take care! Little things sometimes have large effects. And you know we fairies aren’t given to panicking over nothing.’
Xhamhiz frowned and thought for a moment, his hand lightly brushing the tops of the phantomic anthers in front of him. They were taut and rigid, and he knew he could not escape. He had to stand there until he’d heard them out. So at last he said, ‘Okay, tell me den.’
‘While we were dancing, at the climax of the dance, when the ing was made and stood like a bright, majestic crystal in the air…’
‘Yeah, like dis one,’ said the elf, twanging another anther.
The fairies steadied the trembling force-field and Bencasi continued as if there’d been no interruption, ‘… throwing its frail and tenuous shadow on the ether…’
‘Cut da poetry an’ get on wid it,’ said Xhamhiz.
‘Someone took cognizance,’ finished Bencasi.
‘Took wot?’
‘Cognizance, elf,’ she repeated with a hint of a sneer. ‘It means someone saw it, took notice of it. Someone got knowledge of it. We were spied on.’
‘Uh huh. Who by, an’ why?’
‘We don’t know who by, but we do know why, because they stole it.’
Xhamhiz shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sure, well, why not? It’s a good ing, dat Ing o’ Got, an’ not easy ta get hold of. Sixty seven points, eh? Dat’s how many of yers it took ta dance it, is it? Even I might be interested in da ing o’ got if I foun’ it danglin’ about in da air an no one ta look after it but a mob o’ bat-gone cricket-witted fairies. Betta dan hoppin’ about in da frost huntin’ fer ya berries an’ herbs an’ diggin’ up ants’ eggs in da blazin’ summa sun. Jus’ sit back, flash out da ing o’ got, an’ dere it is, herbed spoggy haunch, stir-fried earwigs in waterbush-berry sauce – anytin’ ya wan’ an’ all da plates an t’ings ta go wid it. Not surprisin’ someone took it. Well, good on ‘im. Dat all da news? Or is dere wedda an sport ta finish?’
Bencasi rolled her eyes in exasperation and flashed them at the elf. ‘I’m telling you if you’d listen, it wasn’t the Ing of Got they stole. They couldn’t steal that without taking us all, because we were still holding that. But whenever you dance an ing, whatever it is, because you create it out of nothing, you create also its shadow, its mirror image, and that you project away so it won’t collapse back into the new ing and annihilate it. So it was this mirror image, the Ing of Lost, they stole.’
Xhamhiz gave her a half-snarl that faded rather quickly. He cleared his throat nervously, and fidgetted with the stem of his empty sweetheart-grass ear. He let his eyes run over the lines of the phantom flower, and he tried again to shift an anther, which the fairies, all alert by now, prevented by asserting the set of their postures. It was a very simple example of the sort of ing the fairies dance, with only six fairly simple points where the energies were focused and directed via the fairies’ gesturing bodies, but there was no denying its power. It was a very effective holding ing, you had to give ’em that.
He gave it thought and at last conceded that the theft of an ing of sixty seven complex points of any sort with that kind of power, danced in the right place at the right time in the right way, might be important enough to concern even an elf, and an Ing of Lost might well be dangerous in the wrong hands. In his mind’s eye he could see people disappearing as they walked down the street, ships and aeroplanes and transnational passenger trains vanishing into thin air, buildings full of people, schools, churches, perhaps even whole streets, towns, cities, with wealthy nations, even the whole planet, held to ransom. Someone who was really evil could do a lot of harm with an ing like that.
He shook away these alarming visions. ‘S’pose I took yers up on it,’ he said. ‘Wot would yers want me ta do?’
‘We want you to tell the wizard.’
Xhamhiz stiffened. ‘Wot wizard?’
‘The one you’re friends with.’
‘So ya spy on me, do ya?’
‘Oh there’s no need for that,’ laughed Flistor. ‘Everybody’s heard you boasting your head off about knowing a wizard.’
‘Just tell him, that’s all that matters,’ said Bencasi.
‘He’ll want to know more about it dan I got ta tell ’im,’ said the elf slowly. ‘Like, wot’s it look like, dis ing?’
‘We’ll show you the Ing of Got. The wizard’ll be able to work it out from there.’
‘Orright, fire away, den.’
‘So you will help us?’
‘Maybe. Definitely not if ya don’t lemme outa dis possom-gone echidna-witted ing-thing pretty close ta straight away.’
‘Well, if you promise to stay when we release you…’
‘Elf’s honour,’ promised Xhamhiz.
‘For whatever that’s worth,’ muttered Kasmit. But they relaxed and the force-form dissolved into the air and vanished, and Xhamhiz was free to stretch out his arms and breathe a bit.
‘Now show it to him, Fengan,’ said Bencasi, to the pearly-white fairy behind Xhamhiz.
‘Indi’s got it, not me,’ said Fengan. He pointed to the sky-blue fairy next to him. She left her position in the circle and went up close to Xhamhiz. She put her hand out into the air, and from a sudden mist of blue that appeared there, she took her wand. Then she held out her other hand palm-up and flipped the tip of her wand towards it. There was a tiny tinkling sound and a shimmer of blue in the air, and there formed above her outstretched hand a miniaturised version of the silvery force-field in which the fairies encode the Ing of Got. It was no bigger than one of Xhamhiz boots, and the shape of a wind-sock. It consisted of an intricate network of filaments and films with shell-shapes and fan-shapes and scallops and crescents and stars, like a very delicate piece of lace made of something much finer than silk, finer even than gossamer, that caught the early morning sunlight in its traceries and flung it back to the air in rainbows.
As pretty as it was, Xhamhiz was more interested in its mathematics. He examined it carefully, memorizing every angle and curve, each not and node and nodule, every twist and turn of the energy field of which it was made. ‘Dat all of it?’ he suddenly asked, suspiciously.
‘It’s all the wizard will need,’ answered Indi, rather sharply.
‘Du’n’ look like enough ta me,’ the elf persisted. ‘Sure ya haven’ left sumpin’ out?’
‘I assure you, it’s quite enough,’ snapped Bencasi. ‘The point is, will you take it to the wizard and tell him about the theft or not?’
Xhamhiz straightened himself up, put his hands in his pockets and raised and lowered himself on the balls of his feet a few times. Indi returned her wand to the air and the image of the ing began to fade. Xhamhiz watched it until it was gone and said, ‘I might… and I might not.’ Then he smiled, and the fairies smiled, and Bencasi nodded, her lips pursed, her wings a-quiver. The elf tried briefly to outstare her, but she had the advantage, and he soon gave up. At last he drew in a deep breath and said with a hiss as he exhaled, ‘Well, orright, I will… Now gwa-a-an, git!’
They all sighed, and turned grateful eyes on him before taking to the air and fading away.
Xhamhiz watched them out of sight, and then went to feed his beetle.

[pangurban]

This a fairy tale written for the birth of a friends child.

NEW LIFE.

All through the enchanted forest there was upheaval. The Faeries were flying around in circles (in fact there had been a few collisions) . And as for the Dragons there was so much smoke in the air from their excited flamings that this was only making it worse for the faeries.
Just when things were descending in to total pandemonium the Lord and Lady the rulers of this magic realm came to the forest riding on their snow white unicorns “what is going on my children” the lady asked them.
Of course as is the way of all excited beings they all started to speak at once, you would have had to cover your ears for the noise. There were the high pitched voices of the Faeries and the booming bugles of the Dragons. Also the Dryads had to shout the loudest of all as they could not go far from their trees. Sitting watching all the kafuffle with an amused grin on his face was a white cat. The lady got down from her mount stooped down and picked up the cat “perhaps you can tell me whatever the matter is pangurban” she said. “Well milady said pangurban. They are in this state of excitement because they have heard that there has been a wondrous event. They have heard that there has been the birth of a human boy”.
Now this was a rare event in the enchanted realm as there were few humans living there”. “Oh is that all” the Lady of the forest said with a laugh that sounded like the waters of a babbling brook. “Well it is true” she said, the human you know as Suncrow has had a little one. Of course this set them of again there were questions coming from every direction and just when things were threatening to get out of hand again, a loud strong voice cried out, SILENCE, it was the Lord of the forest. Now all the forest dwellers were slightly afraid of Him so there was total silence in a split second. Now pangurban knew that the Lords bark was worse than His bark, (even if it offended his sensibilities to use the word) . “Don’t just sit there smirking cat, tell me what they want to know?” Well Lord they want to know the usual things, his name and is he handsome being the main ones, oh and there is one precocious fairy who wants to know if all his bits are intact. On hearing this, the Lord let out a bellow of a laugh “is that all my little ones, this is why we are here you have been invited to come and see this child”.
So a few days later the Faeries and Dragons were all gathered at Suncrows cottage in the clearing at the centre of the forest. Everyone was there but they were as quiet as mice (as they did not want to wake the child) the Faeries flew in one by one to see this wonderful child, But the Dragons had to be content to poke their heads threw the window on account of there being bigger than the whole cottage itself. Last of all pangurban who had been elected spokes cat came into the cottage “I have been given the responsibility of giving the best wishes of us all” he said as he settled on Suncrows lap. The Faeries wish, hold on what is his name he exclaimed! That has yet to be determined said Suncrow. Oh well then said the cat they wish him health and happiness and his hearts desire all his days. Just then one impatient Dragon stuck his head through the window and we will protect him all his days it said. And as for me said pangurban I will tell him tales and sooth his troubles as long as he needs it. Then the Lord and Lady came forward and said as for his name it is Ian. And as is the way of all magical beings there was much merrymaking to be had.