Ritual and Runes, a tale from the Green Man

 

Ritual and Runes

 

Godwin was a convivial sort of fellow; he even liked humans, which was more than could be said of many of the fae, even the most upright of the Seelie Court. But he had his limits.

He had concocted a potion with deep ritual and he was writing on his right palm sigils which no scholar of runes could have read, since they were old long before the first primitive marks made with meaning by those humans with the vision to translate thought and word into visible representation.

Even if anyone could read such glyphs, they would still have trouble, since Godwin was laying them on his palm in a precise mirror image. As he worked, he muttered in his own tongue, a rhyme of his own devising, which might be rendered approximately into English as follows.

“By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn

May you wish you were not born,

By Heath, by Moor, by Sedge

May you wander to the edge,

May you pass the twilight veil

May your senses start to fail

As the trees on you prevail

By the beating of your heart

By panic I bid you depart.”

 

Whistling to himself an air which anyone in the village may have recognised as ‘Teddy-Bear’s Picnic,’ Godwin strolled down towards the village guild hall, where the meeting protesting against the sale of Pharisee Woods was being held. To anyone who heard him whistle, it was a reminder, perhaps, of a long gone youth, when such tunes were popular. To anyone who knew Godwin, and knew that he was fae through and through, with the lack of ruth of his kind, it was a horrifying reminder that Godwin had a rather individualistic sense of humour; and the words, ‘If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise’ did not refer to anything so benign as a teddy-bear’s picnic.

One of the very few who did know was Peter, seventh son of a seventh son, who appeared to be about the same age as Godwin; but being mortal, Peter’s appearance was genuine. He felt his blood run cold.

Godwin smiled at him, and Peter nodded.

“You don’t want him awaking those powers best left torpid,” said Godwin.

“No, I know,” said Peter. “I just see the implacable ages of the trees in your eyes. But you don’t flinch to look into mine as... she does.”

“I don’t have to fear what she does,” said Godwin. “I can even enter the church; I have no fear of your God, and He has no enmity to me, as I do not see Him as an enemy. Sometimes, perhaps, I even regret that I have no soul; but my descendents can choose to go on where humans go, or remain as unchanging spirits until the death of the universe.”

“What happens then?”

“I have no idea,” said Godwin. “We are close to nature; we live very much in the now. It is how we handle such long lives.”

“I see,” said Peter. “Thank you for explaining. But I would not have said I was especially devout; what can she see in me?”

“Seven souls whose choice is to remain as your protectors. Your father and his brothers summoned to the aid of the seventh son of the seventh son; their wild magic that wreaths around you like a storm.”

They went into the guild hall together, and Godwin approached Theodore Morecroft, holding out his hand.

“We may be on different sides, but you will not, of course, refuse to shake my hand in the expectation of gentlemanly proceedings,” said Godwin.

Morecroft sneered.

“I suppose I can make that concession,” he said, holding out his hand. Godwin slapped his palm to the other’s flesh, transferring the runes.

How the meeting went was now immaterial, though he nodded to a nervous and unhappy Rupert, who wanted to sit with the villagers, but had compromised with being neither on the dais with his father, nor amongst the protestors, but hovered betwixt the two.

His mother sat with the villagers.

Morecroft scowled. If he only dared to beat her into submission, but the nightmares he had suffered last time he had beaten her still made him sweat.

He little realised that they were nothing compared to what was to come.

 

The meeting was, as expected, of no help whatsoever. Godwin would not make the same mistake again of letting the land pass in ownership to the heirs of his body; Amelia, Rupert’s mother, had been the only child of a father too obsessed with his researches, and at seventeen, orphaned, and vulnerable had been easy prey to the floridly handsome and utterly unscrupulous Morecroft when he bought the manor, land, and a lovely bride, after she was left destitute, at a time when Godwin had been away on other business, and was unable to stop her making such a disastrous decision.

The villagers went home feeling bereft and deeply dissatisfied.

 

Two days later, Rupert appealed for aid to find his father.

On the whole, he was considered a pleasant youth since he had separated himself somewhat from his father, and was making amends to the girl he had got with child, so despite feelings towards the youth’s father, the villagers made up a search party.

They brought back the man’s body on a hurdle. Dead of a heart attack, the autopsy concluded, and the look of terror on his face an artefact of the rigor mortis.

Godwin knew better.

He had some idea what Theodore Morecroft had seen.

 

The contractors wanted to get on; respect for a son’s feelings for his dead father was not on their agenda. They could hardly believe their ears when Rupert told them where they could put their proposals.  He started out politely enough, saying, ‘No, the land is no longer for sale,’ progressed to suggestions that they could take their proposals and fulfil them where the sun did not shine, and finally fell into outright scatology. He had every right to refuse to sell, after all; the contracts  to do work had been signed personally by Theodore, and with his death, Rupert declared them null and void.  Now he knew a bit more, he knew why the love of the woods was in his blood. And with his support of the woods, he became very popular.

 

Rupert knocked at the door of Godwin’s cottage next to the Green Man pub. Having once been inside, he could see the door at which to knock.

Godwin let him in, and drew him a tankard of mead.

Rupert sipped, straightened, and sipped again.

“Is this some fae drink?” he asked, awed.

“No, just mead; though we invented it,” said Godwin. “That was a good settlement you made on Jane, the cottage for her lifetime, to pass to your child with her and the heirs of her body in perpetuity, and a stipend.”

“I owe you a lot for opening my eyes,” said Rupert.  “I asked my mother what the ritual was, that father was so dead against; the passing of a child’s body through the hole in a tree, or natural cleft where two trees have grown into one... or whatever it was.”

“There was a glacial erratic around which a coppice grew, and merged into one tree, and the fae mined the rare mineral from which it was made. A magical mineral, which imbued the tree with its essence,” said Godwin. “I expect you  have researched how sick children are also passed through it, who subsequently thrive?”

“Yes, and that it is said that there is a geas upon the tongues of all that they cannot speak of this to outsiders so that we are not inundated by visitors like some Fae Lourdes,” said Rupert.

“It would kill the magic,” said Godwin.

“What I have not discovered is what happens if a healthy adult goes through it of his own will,” said Rupert.

“Ah! Well, if he or she is purely mortal, what happens is nothing; though the immune system may be boosted. If he or she is of fae blood... do you know what happened to your grandsire?”

“No; mother will not talk about him.”

“He went through the tree. It enhances the fae and suppresses some of the human. He came back to the village, but he could not settle; and he squandered all his wealth on fool ideas about the fae, encouraging charlatans and witch doctors, modern druids, and mediums, when he could have got all the answers if he had just asked me.” Godwin snorted his disgust. “And then, he set off deliberately for the veil between the worlds, whence you have been, and chose to stay.”

“That sounds decidedly cowardly.”

“To hide in the revels of court, and the pleasant harmony of the now, untroubled by planning, thinking, worrying, or making decisions, provided for by magic? It is the Fae way, which I rejected for the love of this place and my descendents. Some have made the decision to go there, usually those who are unhappy for some reason. It is their choice. If you go through the tree, it will be your choice.”

“Untroubled by planning, thinking, worrying, or making decisions, and provided for, each one according to his needs, from each one according to his abilities; a perfect picture of communism. Which doesn’t work,” said Rupert. “At least, not for humans.”

“It doesn’t work that well for the fae, either, but it’s an illusion of contentment which pleases most,” said Godwin. “And to maintain the power for providing for all, the Unseelie court take humans as a teind, not for hell as the folklore says, though it might as well be for those taken; but, as you might say, as batteries to power up the magic.”

“And the seelie?”

“Oh, the odd affaire with a mortal gives some power; and those of us who have left our seed have offspring whose hybrid vigour adds to both the gene pool of the fae, and the general power of the Tir, the land.”

“I want to go through the hole; but I want to stay,” said Rupert. “Knowing that you know what is there and what is here should help. You will help me adapt?”

“I will,” said Godwin.

“I want to call you ‘Grandpapa,’” blurted out Rupert.

“Make it ‘Great Grandpapa,’ or your mother may be upset,” said Godwin.

“Thank you, Great Grandpapa,” said Rupert.

“The best time will be at Samhain, when the walls between worlds are thin,” said Godwin. “Naked and with runes of protection drawn on your skin.”

“Very well,” said Rupert, trying not to shudder at the idea of being naked in the forest on the last day of October.

 

oOoOo

 

The villagers were not surprised that Rupert was a little withdrawn after the horrific death of his father, though they toasted his health for stopping the bulldozers.   Including the one of the contractor who said that a contract was a contract; Rupert had shot out all the wheels of the JCB, and when the contractor came back next day with new tyres, the JCB was visible only in part where a grove of trees had grown around it and enclosed it. The sort of grove which normally takes one hundred years of growth. Rupert shrugged when taxed with stripping it down and reassembling it inside the treeline, and declined knowledge of how it had got there. A robin fresh hatched that spring took up residence in the cab, and raised a single late brood with his lady love; and the scoop was angled most conveniently to make a shelter, rapidly provided with a bench for the convenience of canoodling humans.

The contractors went away.

Rupert was, meanwhile, learning with Godwin; and went out with him to the mystic tree. Stripping naked, he let Godwin paint runes of power on his body, and as midnight struck, he went through the hole.

Godwin waited.

One o’clock struck, a mile away as the crow flies, on the village church clock.

Rupert stumbled back, bemused.

“I met Rosamund,” he said. “She introduced me to a beautiful girl... not fully grown... she said she is part human.”

“Elaine had leukaemia,” said Godwin. “She was passed through the tree, but Rosamund took her to rear because the tree was not enough. She will make a very good lady of the manor in the future; and you will both live long, and prosper.” He had heard the phrase somewhere in the village and thought it sounded suitable.  He had no idea why Rupert grinned and held up both hands with  a v-shape made in the middle of his fingers, the two each side pressed together.

 

The villagers were glad that the young squire had overcome the problems that beset him taking over from his father. Indeed, they said, he had grown fairer in all ways, being even more handsome than before.

But Rupert did not exploit this with the village girls anymore.