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By the dull wintry light of morning, Attis had begged Cybele to tell no-one of the previous evening's experience. "Not even Cabirius?" she asked. "No, not even our most trusted counsel." "But he may know what we should do," she protested. Attis shook his head firmly. "I would trust him with my very life, Cybele, but I would not burden him with this darkness. It is a mystery now of belief, not logic, and Cabirius has no strength in such things. His feet are planted too firmly on the earth." "Do you even wish my help," she asked in a broken whisper, "or do you mean to stand alone against Her pack?" Attis could not help but think that he was not even sure of that much. Stood against them? In his mind and heart, yes. But in his soul? "I will be fine," he told her comfortingly. "Look you Cybele, by day it seems hardly to have been real." He pulled the heavy curtain back from a small window and the cold grey morning spilled in. He had his back to her, and hurried to put on his gown before she could look upon the weeping wolf-brand on his chest. When dressed, he turned to her and offered to make her a mug of tea. She eyed him suspiciously. "Since when do you make tea?" she asked. "Thank you very much. Perhaps it will be the last time I offer, if you are so insulting!" he jested. "Well, the last and the first time both together, then!" she replied, throwing a pillow at him. He caught the pillow and leaped onto the bed, playfully batting her over the head with it. She giggled, and struggled with him. He accidentally prodded an elbow into her belly, and she gave a small cry. He pounced backward like a cat hit by a coal. The babe is fine!" she hissed in sudden bitterness. She was so sick of this thing within her. "I only thought that I may have hurt you," he said. "Or your precious child, more like. If it is yours. I feel sure sometimes it is Cabirius's, as it could just as easily be." "So you have said before. It bothers me not that you coupled with him, and I know well that the child is me." "You mean mine?" "Whatever. It has none of Cabirius's soft blood, you can be sure of that." She found him so infuriating at times. He could be so tender and loving, then suddenly so chillingly cold. She climbed from the bed and dressed in a heavy winter gown and cloak, then pulled on thick woollen hose and oiled canvas boots. "Jenna said you should stay abed for another week," Attis censured. She ignored him and pushed past. She felt just fine. "Where are you going?" he asked. "To convene the panel. Perhaps with some new members, we can make progress at last," she hissed. "Do not dare to tell them of last night," he warned. "Why? Are you for Cerridwen yourself now? I always said that She was within you, did I not?" "If you cease to trust me, Cybele, you will regret it." She did not reply, and left the hut, slamming the heavy door behind her. He cursed to himself and kicked the bed angrily. He left by the other door, determined to walk out his black mood with exhaustion. He strode along the coast in only his gown and sandals despite the heavy frost. By the time he had travelled a quarter of the Isle, his anger was ebbing away. He looked far out to sea as he walked, and thought of his mother, trapped for so long on the Mainland by a Christian husband with only the best intentions. What do any of us understand of the motivations of others, he thought. How many actions were truly committed with evil intent? Even the murders which had been committed on the Isle were probably done in the belief that the spirits of those so slain would now be more at peace even than in life. He stopped at the Northern cliff and looked down to the rocks below. It was here that they had discovered little Arithea's body. Twisted and broken, yes, but she had died quickly and as painlessly as any of us could hope for. Ioin? He had no idea, but probably he had been gotten drunk and drowned. Not such a terrible death, they say. Like returning to the womb. Annia was in a mutilated state when they found her, but she had been so butchered only after her death. And the babes in the Hall of Kore? Who could know? Their tiny lungs would have been filled with smoke, and silenced well before the flames reached them when the heavy peat and thatch roof fell in. He wondered if such thoughts were being put into his mind by Cerridwen. Such surreptitious manipulation had been done to him before by the other aspects of the Goddess, why not the Crone? He did not fight against it. Why tear himself apart in torment for something which emanated from within his very being? He continued on his journey around the Isle and passed the hut in which Cabirius had been kept prisoner. It had been many years now since it had been used as a solitary confinement for children new to the Isle. The Hall of Rebirth, they had called it then. In fact, he was probably its last resident until Cabirius, he thought. Certainly, he had been aware of no newcomers to the Isle after his own arrival. Further along, the lone pine tree stood tall on the north-west cape. He went up to it and embraced it as though it were human. "I forgive you, noble tree, for what you must do." How much did he really believe in destiny? If the future could not be changed, then why did he fret so about the unborn child in Cybele's womb? In his visions, Brigit lived a long and glorious life. Perhaps that was what so drove him to not refuse his own part in that destined future. If he did not die, then perhaps she would. He kissed the rough bark of the tree with tenderness. He was suddenly filled with a deep craving to be only human, to be purged of the visions and passion and godliness that he had been born with. To wake up in the morning wondering only what you would have to eat that day, with which cowherd you might couple, with anger at a boil on your leg. Simple things, things that you could touch, things you could see in the daylight. But with that, a dull dread of his own looming death began to creep into his mind. He shook his head, as though to clear the thought. He released the thick tree trunk, and walked south. I am Attis, he told himself. Attis, Consort of Cybele. I can never have the uncomplicated life of a once-born mortal. I am a child of the Gods, and cannot escape my Fate, to be born and reborn forever until the sun and moon no longer rise in the sky. He took a path which led down to a coarse rocky beach and removed his sandals to walk barefoot ankle-deep in the icy water. He stared out onto the horizon, and felt the vague hand of an oncoming trance. A ghostly ship seemed to float in the sea in front of him. It was a huge wooden thing, large enough to carry two score passengers. The bow of the boat had a high crested figurehead, a fierce serpent baring its fangs. From the large boat rowed a smaller one, plain and unadorned like a common coracle of the Mainland fishing villages. It ran onto the rocky shore only paces from him, but made no sound at all. A fair giant climbed from the tiny boat. He had a long beard and startlingly blue eyes. His arms were enormous and powerful and he stood with his hands akimbo after dragging the boat ashore as though it weighed no more than a child's toy. Attis saw that the beach was no longer rough and rocky, but soft and gentle sand like the coast of the Mainland where he was born. The vision was clear and true, and Attis was trying to calculate whether it was past or future when a woman appeared in front of him. More precisely, she appeared through him, as though she had been dwelling in his very body. Her hands came forth from his own, and she walked forward like a breath of wind. She looked just as solid as the man of the sea, and walked toward the blond giant. He knelt to her in greeting, and spoke noiseless words. Attis could hear them not, but understood their conversation as well as they. They did not share a language, it seemed, and so communicated mostly by gesture and smile. The woman pointed out to sea, and as she turned, Attis sharply drew breath. It was his mother! He cried out to her, "Cecilia!" but she could not hear him. She looked so young, no older than himself. The Saxon smiled at her with a look that needed no language. She was beautiful and so young, with thick dark hair curling down her back and lips like rose petals. He nodded to her in agreement, and she gave him the silver crescent brooch Attis now secretly wore himself. He shook his head gently, and placed his hand on her cheek to show what payment he desired for taking her with him. She nodded to him and pulled his huge rough hand up to her breast. The great man put both his hands around her tiny waist and lifted her easily from the ground to kiss her mouth. She kissed him back willingly, and pulled open his rough-sewn vest to reveal a furred chest. She wrapped her legs around him and he pulled up her gown. He wore thick woollen hose under his tunic and vest, and he reached into them to free his hardened phallus. In proportion to his frame, his erection was of no great size, but it was with difficulty that he forced into Cecilia's maidenhead. She cried out soundlessly, and the Saxon closed his eyes as he quickly spilt into her tight young body. As he threw back his head in a passionate roar, a fishing spear came flying through the air from behind him, piercing his body and killing him instantly. He collapsed to his knees, then fell forward, pinning the girl beneath him. She was screaming hysterically, and from the shape of her mouth, Attis could see the name she cried in fury. Elias. His father, and the name he had been given himself at birth to gladly surrender when he arrived on the Isle. So Elias had married her afterward, Attis realised. Could this dead Northman be his father? No, it was not possible. His mother had given birth to him nearly two years after she married Elias, and had already lost one child at birth before Attis was conceived. Perhaps his mother's first babe had been the child of this Saxon, he wondered as the vision before him of the dead man on the struggling girl slowly faded. Perhaps even the babe had not died of its own accord, but been smothered by a jealous Elias when it emerged blond-haired and blue-eyed. His mother had never even told him if the child she had lost was a boy or a girl, but he had been with her to a tiny unmarked grave where she had knelt and cried and begged the forgiveness of the poor dead babe. How different things would have been, Attis thought, if Elias had not happened upon Cecilia and the Saxon warrior. She would have gone with him, and Attis would never have been born. But perhaps she would not have died the slow death of melancholy that he had watched her suffer for so many years. He had once watched his mother and father couple in their bed chamber. It had seemed such an unpleasant duty for them both, nothing more than a futile attempt at conception. Attis wondered if his mother had secretly taken some potion from a village wisewoman to prevent conception. Although she loved Attis dearly, childbirth and rearing seemed to reinforce to her the feeling of being kept a prisoner by Elias. She often whispered to Attis even when he was very small that one day, when he was grown, she would go with him in a boat to the edge of the world where the sun touched the water. The strange thing was that she had not been told of her birth on the Isle of the Moon until many years later. Perhaps it had been in her blood, the desperate need to sail west and find her home. Slowly, the spirits before him faded into nothingness, and the soft beach sand formed back into hard coarse pebbles. Attis listened to the swish of the lapping waves around his feet, which had turned quite blue with the cold. It was time to leave. He did not really know why, but he had to get back to Cybele's hut. As he turned, he noticed a shining flash where the ghosts had appeared. He bent to pick up a flashing coin. He had never seen one like it, even on the Mainland. It was rough, but shone as clearly as only true gold could after so long in seawater. On one side was the shape of a wild sow, with nipples hanging and stout tusks. On the other side were strange symbols which he could not read. He knew where it was from, even though he had never seen the like of it. It was Saxon, a gift from the ghosts who had touched him on this barren beach. A gift from his mother and the lover killed by his father's hand. Had his mother walked within his own body for all these years, and been freed only now, pulled from within him by the Saxon's spirit? He felt somehow changed, but could not quite tell how. If his mother's spirit had left his body, perhaps she could now be at peace, or be reborn. He knew that he would be a lesser person without her goodness within his own veins, although perhaps the goodness of our forebears always remains in our veins, he thought. And their evil also? He had never felt love for his father, but now he resented him more than any other. To kill, for no more reason than jealousy and race. There had been no rape, and the Saxon had made no raid. Perhaps he had simply come ashore for water, if there had been no rain and the journey had been long. Elias had made no enquiry, but murdered with a spear in the man's back, before he could even turn around to make a defence. If it had been thrust ever so slightly harder, it could easily have pierced his mother's breast also. Perhaps Elias would not have minded, the death of a defiled girl. Then he would not have had to marry her. No-one would have complained of the murder. They both would have deserved their deaths, according to the villagers. Attis spat at the pebbles contemptuously. He did not miss Mainland life at all. He held the coin tightly as he ran back across the Isle to the main settlement. He burst in through the external door, but Cybele was not there. Still with the panel, then. He dipped the ladle into the water-bucket and swallowed a draught of the cold water. He sat then at the table, closed his eyes and spoke aloud. "Cybele! Hurry back, I must speak with you."
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