Thistle Dreams

Part 1

By

Solus Aurora Borealis

Serene thoughts passed through my mind.  I tried to focus on this day, the sun piercing its great embers overhead heating the mist from the ground.  Dew lay thick on all the stones that surrounded the glen.  Heavy oak trees lumbered in the distance with the slight breeze that began to blow.  It parted the clearing into a bright blue day.  The morning began quite enough but soon the drums would begin to play.  Calling forth the druids and the warriors from behind the ancient fort and the walls that hid their multitudes.  But only the people chosen to observe this ceremony would truly come to even see what the importance of it meant towards their survival.  This is a day when the gods would oversee their sacrifice and deem them another year without war.  But in either matter it was not for the simple to choose, the ignorant to sing the blessings of the sun, it was for the masters.  It was for those that the gods would play directly like a harp of the ancient ones.  It was quite now but the moments ticked by measurably long in the rapt observers who now began to witness the spectacle.  Colored ribbons danced about on sticks floating in the crowds of children. Bright laughter chimed through the air but weighted heavily on those who would begin the telling and raise the dagger to their own breasts.  Three young maidens, dressed in pure white would be of the choosing.  And I watched them walk among the bright colors and harmonious crowds, celebrated for their purity and for their beauty.  I remember clearly the way of my choosing.  How it was I who stood out as the last of the three to be taken to the bride of this God, trembling with power.  I began to sing higher and higher, becoming part of the rich rays that pierced the clouds of this gray land.  My breast bearing the mark of the star dagger to this day, oh yes I remember the choosing.

I was to over see another initiate, in this bloody game.  Ritual sacrifice to the fields of war and of harvest the virginal blood flowed to replenish this land.    My thoughts began to waver under the lifting fog, my prayers lifting to the solid air around me, only to be picked up and carried to the east where the father awakens.  The great mother never long from my heart awakened the birds, and they flew overhead.  In some years it would be crow in others it would be hawk.  And with this the telling of the future that lie in the lay of the nature spirits about me.  Nothing on this day would escape scrutiny.  Except it wasn’t really me who watched but some pure form that entered me every day since my star birth. 

My dagger lay shining on the center stone before me, the stone seemed cold but warmed under the breaking day.  Dark with white patches that dotted the surface, the ring was carried here from a quarry some distance form here by ancestors deeply lost in history, but yet still lead my heart to their words.  They did not remain silent for long.  Their sole purpose unending and held within this space to guide the chosen.  The initiates would be either killed or saved by this song.  The strong one would go on to be cursed by this gift of knowledge.  It drains the human soul with voices demanding attention; like a child begging ceaselessly on the sick mother.  It was also the first time I was able to truly conceive of my own death.  Struck by the images flooding me of possible futures and of the lessons of the past.  But with these images came ultimately the time of where I would choose for my people, when three summers have passed and I would then take charge of the choosing of the three maidens.  Torn from the hills, their families, and in some cases – love.  Ah yes that unspoken treachery that would lead to any of these girls to death, untimely and unfortunate if it was returned.  For even in purity the maiden had to be innocent in its ways of the heart and therefore blind to everyone but the God.  It was also treacherous to dwell on the recent loss – a family must be proud to draw such fortune.  To take a daughter, is to take an endowment off of the family’s shoulders.  It would be one less child to care for.  The only circumstance that permitted a family’s denial would be as an only child.  And since the girl must be at the age of 13 before entering this trial, it was time enough to judge if such grievous misgivings were possible.  All of this had to be gathered and attended to months before the actual celebration.  To me it was never such as that. 

As the days grew longer and the ground un-thawed under the snows of winter; my soul began to surge with the task ahead of me.  For no matter who did the choosing I must stand to watch it, as a woman of 27 it has been long since my gift was laid upon my shoulders.  The elders watched me closely with great expectations.  My song was strong they said and the years will be long but challenged.  As such the bards would give me instruction as long as my identity and my heart remained in it.  I was thirteen then.  Merely a child - as the three now approaching me are.  There had been few times when more than one survived the ritual.  There had been those times when none had.  Those were years where the sisterhood stood to watch closely the events to come.  There was magick in the air about me. 

My dagger flashed before me, revealing my centuries of training and of my tool that completed the task in each of them.  Scrollwork adorned this one, a great dragon emerged from the etchings and a falcon perched on the hilt.  A small thistle wound it in gold ornament from which the beast took shape.  I could see a silver one from a country far away from my home, the great falcon resting on the perch also but with the sun in its silver ornament.  Shapes and pictures – writing of the secret ritual covered the handle.  A slight curve to the dagger was barely noticeable to anyone but myself.  I remember describing the very thing to my teachers.  They just looked at me and nodded.  I recall but once when one of them broke silence near a heated fire, a cup of mead placed firmly in hand.  “My child, tis’ a strong gift we have.  In you there has been many different lessons, this is the light within that penetrates through your song.  Many of us who have come through our initiation will discover similar talents, and this is why our blood flows strong through the beat of the drum.”  The male initiation was much more different, and remained separate from our own but the principles always remained intact. After each of us received instruction in the ways of the soul.  Many of the young girls never saw another male figure until we passed the most severe of these lessons, so as not to disturb the flow of minds with the simple pleasures that would have killed us on that first night.

I didn’t know what I was really getting into the day I was told I would walk the parade to stand before the stone circle.  It was always regarded with hushed words and respect.  Men and women did not linger with such musings; it was just the way things were always done.  Strangers to this land were not allowed to view this procession, although not much could be gleamed from such unless they were actually allowed into the circle to hear the ballads of the seasons.

A gentle wind stirred my hair, lifting it up and into my face.  I brushed it away to my shoulders and judged the point of the rays in the sky.  I began hearing the ancestor’s pleas for me to listen once again.  I had learned when to block their voices so that I could listen to others in their place – to the voices of the animals and to the voice of the stars.  Their songs always seemed more amazing; they had been watching far longer in this small place among the isles.  Here the green grasses are dotted with purple flowers and rocky cliffs, which demanded knowledge of the land for survival.  Seagulls wheeled off the coastal cliffs.  But seldom did they come this far inland without the winds to let them play on.  Their laughter much higher in the sky seemed but an ever-constant reminder of the sea and its temperament. 

I began humming to the day.   Recalling again my time as the white maiden.  I am sure that all my brothers and sisters did the same.  It is such a tremendous and shocking experience to such an innocent that these stones always bring a tinge of memory that tugs the truths learned within the span of mere hours.  I had walked with my two young brothers dancing about me, and an older sister gently smiling at me from among the crowd goers.  My father had become enfeebled some years before and my mother did not wish to see her daughter wasted on the “slab” as she called it.  I was mystified at her reaction, and felt very proud since my sister had never been chosen.  I came to find, in hushed voices that my mother’s sister had died many years past in the initiation rites.  But this did not deter me; my mind was astute in its soul purpose.  I had been strong willed all my life, always rebellious against the common will of people who would not stand for themselves.  My parents felt unburdened somehow by this very fact, they would have room again in the small home and be able to feed more mouths.  In my vision I knew this to be true, sons’ were a much-desired thing among my clan.  I suppose the choosing took a toll on families who must give the sons away – but then they were conducted with different goals in mind.  The ways of both sexes differ but are singularly needed; no sons are lost to the dagger. 

When my feet touched the first of the cobbled stones the main parade dropped away.  Two more girls emerged from the town both dressed as I had been.  A wedding gown adorned with our embroidered braids and needlework, spirals danced in the gold among tiny purple flowers.  My name had been Thistle, before the animinity took me as a servant of the people.  I suppose it was because I was a sore thumb as a babe.  I was always crying, and so under the full moon my parents gave me to the druid priestess and they brought me here under the naming to release me from such fits of angry spirits.  It was the first time I had seen this ancient grove, but certainly not the last.  By the time I was a year old, it was apparent that the red hair would not go away; it was “unnatural” among my kin.  It was a constant source of alienation from the other children.  So my childhood became one of the woods.  Searching for the rabbits that lay in the thick bushes, or the deer that shadowed the woods.  I was given a bow and dagger before I reached the age of 9 to become useful in my wandering, I suppose.  My father was injured in an attempt to search for me when I was but 6.  Already good at hiding, I had decided to lay down for the night in a hollowed out tree when a large storm came up.  He went out into the driving rains, his small pony reared in the rain and he fell from its back, breaking his leg in several places. 

So this choice to except the first blessings of the Maidens of Iverna, were entirely welcome by me and by them.  My short steps quickened as we passed through a wooded screen, I had watched raptly upon the hillside where white robes drew into the circle beyond the woods.   I found a pair of blue eyes cast upon me then, a hood slid from his head and curly brown locks fell to his shoulders.  He smiled with big white teeth at me and then pulled his hood back up.  A gust of wind that must have knocked it off, whipped around me, ruffling my dress.  I paid no more attention to the stranger but had this vague sense of knowing that always shrouded my dreams.  Frowning then I passed no more time to him, and watched the wood line as a great stag came forth into the meadow, cautious and watchful.  A large crown of horns adorned his beautiful figure.  His ears moved, as a gentle white doe came out with a new faun.  A guardian is all I thought as my mind raced with familiar images of the woods and smells that came to me then.  Small girls barely the age of 6 danced about us leaving rose petals at our feet.  I looked down, and then the spell was broken.  The stag’s head went up, alerted by the new sounds of merriment.  The doe and faun bounded off into the wooded edge, and then the stag took one long moment in which his brown eyes seemed to focus on only me and then leapt off into nothingness.  My feet, unsteady, had stopped so I had to double my time to catch up with the other two maids. 

I did not see either of them even look to the woods beyond.  I think then that they had a sure bet that each of them would be the ones to make the promise and to rise above.  We had been prepped with but the slightest hint of what to expect, but our orders were clear.  We were to proceed to the stones, and then on some queue from the head person we were to plunge the athame into either our heart or to slice both wrists.  I did not know then what either choice would do, but we knew we were to die in either with some sure assumption that our lives would end honorably and be held as a singer in the stars upon death.  By good fortune and were we to live we would be a singer to our people and as a vessel to the will of the ancestors. 

I could not understand what the priestess was saying, her tongue lilting with her song.  It seemed to me to be a lament and she knew her task was of courageous kind.  She was to strike the bell that would kill us, in only her third summer of training.  I suspected at the time it would be a hard task to complete, for she could hear all of our songs upon death and watch our spirits fly from the seed of our bodies. 

When her song ended she paused and told us to raise our voices in note and do not break it until the pain becomes to great and you are silenced by the void or the means to which utter a sound.  I felt grim in this choice; honorable death or not.  We three stepped to the great altar stone and picked up the lethal pointed daggers.   I looked to the east from where the wind blew and saw great clouds building.  My feet were bare and tingling with some sensation, some weird specter.  I felt the circle close around me.  We were to line up like lambs to slaughter, but this occurred to me only afterwards - after I was able to pass my third summer among the maidens.