Moon Song (30 page)

The only answer she got was another chuckle.

‘Well, it’s beautiful,’ Isoldé replied. ‘It would be very nice if it’s still here after we finish.’

She really felt she was getting a handle on this now. Her asking was making things happen, like when the mole had appeared with the soil she needed. Or maybe enabling them to happen was a better way of putting it, she really must get out of the habit of thinking she controlled things. Perhaps the agate globe had arrived in the carpet bag as a result of her asking the Earth for something to represent her. The thought was both exciting and scary. She had to ask for something for Middle Earth next …what would that bring?

Nervousness made her fiddle about with the things she already had for the altar, reorganising them, making different patterns and relationships. She knew she was prevaricating, not getting on with it, but the revelations had been coming fast and
furious, her mind was whirling, unable to keep up with it all. That was no excuse, she knew. She wouldn’t be asked to do anything impossible …at least she hoped not. Would she?

A warmth passed over and through her, comforting. No, she felt, not impossible, but it might well stretch her to her absolute limits.

Another deep breath and she asked again. ‘Middle Earth, what am I to use to represent you?’

That was the most direct question she had yet asked and it produced a very quick and direct response. No pictures this time but one of the faer folk themselves was suddenly standing on the grass just in front of her.

‘Oh shit!’ she breathed.

‘I’d really rather not,’ the little man replied in a broad Cornish accent, sweeping off his scarlet pointy hat in a bow to her.

She was speechless. He seemed to realise this and carried on.

‘I’m a pixie,’ he said. ‘Not
the
Piskie, of course, but one of the faer folk. I’m quite safe, too,’ he added as he watched the expression on her face.

Isoldé knew a little about pixies, and the Piskie, she’d read up about them after the visit to the witchcraft museum. The Piskie was said to be very dangerous and also much larger than the little man standing in front of her. Pixies were like the Little People of her own land, less dangerous according to folk lore but quite tricksy, you had to be on your toes to work with them. She was glad the big one hadn’t come in response to her call.

‘I’m one of the Ellyon,’ the little man went on. ‘In your country you call us the Little People. We’re the faer folk in whichever of your languages. We hold Middle Earth together.’

Ellyon …the name of Tristan’s song cycle. The pixie watched her face, following her thoughts, nodded to show her that she was getting it near enough right. He was dressed in greens and browns with the scarlet hat, and scarlet boots, she now noticed. Her mind gestalted, if she passed him in the woods and he was
lying down, curled up, she could easily mistake him for a pile of leaves. The pixie looked at her. I’ve probably done just that lots of times, she thought, smiling back.

‘I asked Middle Earth for something that would represent her …’ Isoldé began.

‘And you got me …’ the pixie answered. ‘That’s because I can, and I will.’

‘Does it matter that you’re a person? All the others are things.’

‘And you think they’re different?’

Isoldé blinked. Things weren’t people, were they?

‘Everything has soul, has anima,’ the little man said, quirking an eyebrow at her. ‘I’m an anam chara and so are all the things that came to you, came to help you, when you asked them. How are they different in soul from me? Do you think soul only comes to certain shapes?’

Isoldé swallowed. This was certainly a morning of getting a completely new handle on the world. All the patterns she thought she knew seemed to be coming apart at the seams, making new and shocking valuations of everything she had ever been. She crouched beside the altar pile and began to touch each of the things there, naming them …fir cones and their seed-fire, cup and the water in it, Tristan’s dish and the soil in that, the silken rope with its wind knots, the crystal prism that held and divided sunlight, the agate that was the Earth. As she named each one she also thanked it for being there, for holding the energy she needed for the ritual she was going to do for Tristan. She came to the little man last.

‘And thank you too …for being here, for the lessons you’ve given me, for holding Middle Earth together while I work.’ She stopped, another idea coming. ‘And you, and all of you, please help me to get it right. Help me to restore Tristan’s soul-part, make me do the right things, say the right words. Help me make it all come right.’

The pixie came close to her. He had a blade of grass in his right
hand and now he struck her cheek with it. It stung. Isoldé managed not to jump.

‘You’ve done well,’ he said. ‘Learned, learned quickly and as you worked. That’s good. We’ll work with you because you’ve asked us. We’ll help you because you’ve asked us. We’ll not obstruct you for you are on the work of the Lady, of the Mother.’

‘Thank you,’ Isoldé replied.

Something was happening in the altar pile. Smoke seemed to be rising from each of the things there, grey and silver, some shot through with red and gold, pink, green, blue. The smoke formed itself into shapes, almost human shapes, shapes she recognised. They were the same as the faer folk she had seen that night here in the grove, when the little demon had first shown her the lines and threads. In fact, the demon was rising now out of the fir cones, all silver smoke sparkling with red and gold.

‘You are the spirits that inhabit the things of the Earth,’ she said, yet another revelation piling on top of the rest.

‘We are indeed, my lover,’ they chorused back to her. ‘We are indeed.’

They began to dance, circling the grove. They would each dance into the middle, to the head-stone, touch it and then dance back out again. As she watched, Isoldé saw lines forming as they did this, like weaving, a pattern of light-threads forming in the grove, made of all the colours of the rainbow. The threads pulsed, it was a living web.

She saw it then. This was the web, the wyrd the little demon had told her of, this was the web that Nial meant in biodynamics, even if it might not be quite as he thought, this was the web of life, all interconnected. She saw the threads touching herself, the trees in the grove, Mark, Tristan. If she peered hard enough she could see the threads reaching to every blade of grass. She blinked and shook her head. Seen like that it would make you think you couldn’t actually move because you were totally caught up in a bundle of threads. She looked down at herself
now, in fact she
was
a bundle of threads. Her clothes, her body, her form seemed to have almost disappeared, wavered in and out of existence, but what was strong in this new sight she had suddenly got was the interweaving of the threads. All the new age stuff about all life being interconnected was true, she could actually see it, all the threads interwoven with each other. She watched a blade of grass grow, it was like a natural history film of speeded up slow-motion. As one thread grew so other threads reached out to join with it and the threads it came from extended and grew to become the new grass.

Her mind boggled. She blinked, shook her head and shut her eyes.

‘Can’t do it anymore!’ she gasped. ‘How do I turn it off?’

It was gone, immediately, just like that.

‘Just ask,’ said the pixie.

Isoldé sat in the grass, taking big, long breaths, eyes shut at first, hands hanging onto grass stems, fingernails digging into the earth.

‘Whoof! Ooof!’ she gasped. ‘That was big! Huge!’

Gradually her breathing slowed along with her heartbeat. She dared to open her eyes. Things were back to the normal she was used to, trees, grass, herself, her own body, no threads visible.

‘Thanks,’ she whispered. Then a thought struck her. ‘Eliot was right, you know, TS Eliot the poet. He said
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality”
and he was absolutely right. If everyone could see that they’d go nuts.’

The pixie was sat beside her now. He chuckled. ‘Mmm! We know. But there’s the problem …as long as human beings think everything is separate they make a total cock-up of everything because they try to work it all as separate things. Something has got to be done about that and that’s what Tristan’s songs are about and why we need the Moon Song to bring it all together.’

‘You aren’t proposing that everyone sees what I just saw, are you?’

‘No. Well not at first, not until they can. You couldn’t have done it, seen it, if you hadn’t wanted to, if your soul hadn’t known it already, if your Self hadn’t wanted to see it.’

Isoldé cocked an eyebrow at him.

‘It’s self-limiting,’ he said. ‘You can’t see until you can see. That’s what things being occult is about. They’re hidden, occluded, by the person’s own ability to see, until that person is able to see.’

‘You mean,’ Isoldé said slowly, ‘it’s like Uncle Andrew in the Narnia book where Narnia is created, sung into life by Aslan. Uncle Andrew has arrived there by accident, is terrified of the lion, of Aslan, as the light comes up and he can see him. He doesn’t believe it can possibly be a lion singing so he tells himself, over and over, “Lions only roar …lions only roar” and so convinces himself that the lion is only roaring. He never hears Aslan’s song, only roaring and growling. He never gets any of the joy and beauty and blessing the others get …because he has told himself it can’t be so.’

The pixie was looking sad. ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Some of you folk call it mind over matter. You are so strong in your brains that you can convince yourself black is white and you often do, unfortunately. That’s why the world is in such a mess. And why we need you and Tristan’s songs to help begin the process of getting it balanced out again.’

‘So …how do I help the process get started?’ Isoldé asked.

‘You already have,’ the pixie told her. ‘You enabled us to show this web here, rebuild it, or rather, reaffirm it, as it already existed or the grove wouldn’t exist. Now we have to get Tristan’s soul-part back with him, get him to sing and Mark to record it, then get Tristan back where he belongs.’

‘Is that truly in the Isles of the Dead?’

‘The Isles of the Blest, yes. When you take him back this time he will be blest indeed.’

Tristan had followed Mark and Isoldé to the grove, sat beside them so they were in a circle by the head-stone. Sunlight, dappled by the young leaves, filtered green-gold onto the three of them and onto the little pile of things Isoldé had collected in the middle of their circle. Some he recognised, others he didn’t. His hand went out to touch the agate globe then drew back before he reached it. It looked like a miniature Earth. Had that been his? He didn’t think so. Where had it come from?

There was a tension, a presence in the air, like a newly strung harp. Tristan peered, looking at the other two more closely, they were powerful, far more than he’d ever before thought Mark could be. It was their love, he realised. And it was Isoldé herself.

‘Are you ready?’ she asked him.

‘As ready as I know how,’ Tristan replied. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Whatever the spirits tell me when I ask,’ Isoldé told him.

That sort of rang bells …asking …letting the spirits help …but asking intelligently and asking the right questions.

‘How will you know what questions to ask?’ Tristan looked at her.

Isoldé smiled at him. ‘Somewhere, inside of you, you know the answer to that. I suspect it’s part of what we’re looking for.
The part of you that knows how to ask has got lost. It’s that part the Moon Song needs, that part that she has to show to everyone, through you.’

Tristan looked at Isoldé, for once he didn’t desire her, that seemed to have washed out of him. He felt empty inside, sort of cleaned out, perhaps walking back across the moonpath had done that. He felt himself fading into and out of existence in this world he sat in, here and not here. He wondered if he could hang on long enough to do whatever was necessary. His gaze was caught by a movement. Here, in the world again, Isoldé had taken a birch twig bound with hawk-bells out of the old carpet bag he recognised from the cupboard in the cottage.

Of course, she’d found his stuff, he realised. That was some of it in the pile there in the middle between them. Oh yes, he’d seen it before, just now. Memory was difficult. Had they just arrived? Had he been here a little while?

She was going to conjure him with his own paraphernalia. That made him smile. She was right, it would work, he would be caught by his own magic and there would be nothing he could do about it. In fact, he realised, there was nothing he wanted to do about it, he wanted the transformation …transmutation, he corrected himself. It wasn’t his form that needed changing, it was his essence that needed moving on, moving out of the rut he’d landed himself in.

He stopped, shook his head, that was a new thought, one he’d not had for …oh …it seemed like ages, not since he’d been in this limbo place after he’d crossed the moonpath. What were they doing? What was Isoldé doing already to change him?

After Isoldé had begun to invoke the sacred space Mark slipped quietly to the edge of the grove. He had no idea what was going to happen but the feeling of power from her was almost overwhelming. It reminded him of playing something huge and wonderful on Exeter’s organ, or being inside the crazy land of pipes that was the Liverpool organ when someone was playing that.

He knew he had to get out of her way. He’d been necessary to bring Tristan to the grove but now he absolutely knew he must not be within the sacred space any more. Things were already happening there and they would affect him too if he was inside.