Woburn Village, Bedfordshire

The harvest was in, and the people celebrated with the Festival of Ingathering. A parade wound its way through Woburn village on the weekend, and villagers danced in the field and went to church to lay sheaves of grain on the altar as thanks to God for their bounty.

Noah—Eaving—and her sisters celebrated in an entirely different manner. This was a time of great power for Eaving. Pregnant herself, she blossomed as the land ripened into harvest and as the creatures of field and meadow and forest dropped their young.

On the night of the Festival of Ingathering, Noah, Marguerite and Kate gathered in their bedchamber. Marguerite’s two children were asleep in their bedroom, while Kate’s baby was fed and laid down between them to sleep.

The three women sat in a circle in the midst of the bed. They were naked, their hair unbound, their eyes thoughtful and introspective. This would be the first time they had formed their own Circle.

“Will you go to…” Marguerite asked of Noah.

“Brutus-reborn? No. It is too dangerous. You have told me how Weyland has used the Circle once to confront him. I do not want to risk that happening again. Tonight we will walk the Faerie, using the power of the land and of the waters which river it. That is magic foreign to Asterion. With luck, we will stay safe from him.”

Marguerite raised her eyebrows and nodded at Noah’s belly, now gently rounded with the child she carried. The imp?

“I will risk it,” said Noah. “I am not willing to allow this imp to entirely control my life.”

At that Marguerite reached for the box she had brought with her from the continent, and she placed it before her.

“When Charles was fifteen and forced into exile,” she said, not raising her eyes from the box, “he took with him a small piece of the land. It was instinctive, that snatching, but powerful.”

She opened the box, and withdrew from it the dried piece of turf that had, until so very recently, accompanied Charles in all his travels while in exile. Charles had given it to Marguerite, saying that he and Louis would not form a Circle on their own, and that it was best that the turf return home. “I think we shall not be long following it,” Charles had said.

Now Marguerite held the turf cradled within her hand. Then she reached out and gave it to Noah.

Noah raised her eyes to Marguerite and Kate. “From now, until the ending of the Circle,” she said, “I live and breathe and speak as Eaving.”

A subtle change came over her as she said this. Her bearing and demeanour became both stronger and gentler; her eyes transformed from their normal deep blue into a dusky sage green shot through with lightning flashes of gold. Her thick, richly coloured hair, flowing down her back and over one shoulder, almost snapped as a surge of energy ran through it.

Her skin, so pale, now glowed in the darkened room, as if it were the moon itself.

Marguerite and Kate both took a deep breath, and bowed their head and shoulders to their goddess.

“Eaving,” they said as one.

Eaving lifted her hands, and tossed the turf into the air. Magically, as it always had for Marguerite, it transformed into the shimmering circle of emerald green silk, but then, unlike what it had done for Marguerite, it fluttered down towards the three women much larger than previously.

Just before it settled over their heads, Eaving spoke.

“Let us greet the land as it rises to meet us.”

They found themselves beyond the bedchamber, standing atop a grassed hill in gentle sunshine. All about them rolled many hundreds of forested hills, as if into infinity.

They stood within the Realm of the Faerie.

No longer naked, all three wore very soft, almost diaphanous, sleeveless loose-fitting robes of ecru, cream and silver, the colours all merging and shifting as each wearer breathed or moved. The material flowed down from the women’s shoulders, draping softly over breast and hip, to a calf-length hemline that seemed to fade rather than to actually end. At one point the material was still visible, at the next it appeared to dissolve, and at the next point it had vanished altogether.

“Welcome, Eaving,” said a voice, and Eaving turned to see Long Tom standing a few paces distant.

Eaving smiled, and Long Tom came to her and kissed her briefly on the mouth, before greeting Marguerite and Kate in the same manner. Then, as he turned back to Eaving, the other two women gasped in surprise, for they found their little group surrounded by a crowd of the most magical creatures they had ever seen.

They were of similar colours as the women’s gowns, and they were thin and very short, the tops of their heads coming only to the level of the women’s waists. They had very fine, copper-coloured hair, and round eyes the same sage green as Eaving’s.

“Water sprites,” said Eaving, and touched individuals gently on the crown of their head as they crowded about her, murmuring their names. Several reached up delicate hands and stroked her rounded belly, but as soon as they had touched her they turned away again, frowning.

Eaving frowned herself at this, and would have spoken of it, but Marguerite spoke first.

“Where do we stand?” she said, looking about her in wonder.

“We stand within the Faerie,” Long Tom said. “It wakes around us as its gods move towards rebirth. This hill is The Naked, and it is the heart of the Faerie.”

“And as the land wakes about us,” Eaving said to Marguerite and Kate, “so is the Lord of the Faerie rising. Soon he will walk among us again.”

Marguerite, rarely lost for words, hung her mouth open most unbecomingly.

Kate stared also, and although her brow creased she managed to keep her mouth in working order. “Who?” she said.

Eaving looked at Marguerite.

Marguerite’s face cleared and she clasped her hands before her in a gesture of utter joy. “Of course,” she said. “Coel. Coel-reborn. I should have known. Ah, no wonder he is so powerful in this life.”

“Can he be with us here, tonight?” Eaving asked Long Tom.

“No. He will not come back to the Faerie until it is time for him to be crowned, and that cannot happen until he sets foot on the land. Now,” he said in a graver tone, “where would you go this eve?”

“I would visit my daughter,” said Eaving. “I long so much to see her as you cannot imagine. Long Tom, is this possible? Can I use the Faerie to touch her?”

“You are not afraid of the imp?”

“I would visit the imp, as well, I think.”

“Eaving, your daughter may not be what you expect.”

“Marguerite said she would be different,” Eaving said, “for she has been to the Otherworld and back, but she is my daughter, Long Tom, and I want only to love her.”

“Will you love her whatever she might be, Eaving?”

“Of course I shall love her!”

“The dead don’t always return as you think they might,” said Long Tom.

“She is my daughter!”

Long Tom sighed. “Very well. I can take you into the stone hall to your daughter.”

He looked at Marguerite and Kate. “Sisters, would you watch?”

They nodded, each reaching out to touch Eaving as if in reassurance, then Long Tom took Eaving’s hand, squeezed it, and said, “Walk down The Naked.”

The girl and the imps were rounding a corner, walking from one maze of laneways across a narrow street into yet another maze, when the girl lifted her head.

“My mother!” she said, her voice hard. “She comes for a visit.”

The imps started, and looked anxious.

“Do as I lead,” the girl said to the imps, then her face assumed a look of complete innocence, and she grabbed an imp’s hand in each of hers, and tugged them towards a nearby open doorway.

I did as Long Tom said. I walked down The Naked and soon meadow grass and flowers turned to marble underfoot, and the vast space of the land was replaced with the smaller, if still vast in its own right, space of the stone hall.

As I drew near to the central portion of the hall beneath the great golden dome, I saw two figures sitting cross-legged before each other in the heart of the patterned floor.

One was a stumpy, knobbled, blackened creature. My imp. I shivered, for this creature marred the beauty of the stone hall.

The imp sat as if deep in thought, his chin cradled in his hand, his brow furrowed, looking at the hands of…

My daughter.

I shivered again, but this time with happiness. There she sat, her hands spread apart before her, red wool twisted between them—and it was at the pattern this wool made that the imp stared.

The wool was nothing…but, oh, my daughter! She was so beautiful, a true amalgamation of Brutus and myself. Black curly hair tumbling down her back, ivory skin, my dark blue eyes, a touch of her father’s carriage, and his pride.

I slowed my steps, trying to calm my eagerness lest I scare her. As I approached she raised her face, turning it towards me. “Mama!” she cried, and, allowing the red wool to fall from her fingers, leapt to her feet and ran to me.

Ah! At first she felt wonderful in my arms. Warm, alive, complete. Love overwhelmed me.

She wriggled a little, and I let her go and dropped to my knees before her, so that she should not have to crane her sweet face to look at me.

“What game is that you play, sweeting?” I asked, for want of anything better to say.

“Cat’s cradle,” said my daughter. “Don’t you know it?”

Of course I did, for Lady Anne’s daughters had often played at it. But I had a feeling that the game Lady Anne’s daughters played and what my daughter played were very, very different.

Suddenly the feeling of warmth and love that had enveloped me when I first held my daughter abandoned me, and I felt hollow, and a little confused.

“Aye, I know it,” I said to my daughter, trying to smile at her. “Are you teaching it to your friend?”

“Friend”. I had no idea what to call that dark hatefulness which now stood a pace or two away, peering intently at us. Friend was a somewhat uncomfortable compromise.

She turned a little and looked also at the imp. “Not truly,” she said. “I challenge him to best it.”

“And can he?”

She looked back to me, and grinned, and my heart thudded in that expression, for it was Brutus’ mischievous smile, that which he used when he felt most sure of himself.

“Not yet,” my daughter said.

“I came because I have missed you so much,” I said, wanting to turn the conversation from the imp.

“I will be born this time,” she said. “Don’t you believe it?”

I stroked her cheek, and felt hurt when she moved away her face. “Yes, I believe it. I just want you to be safe.”

“It is far more important that you be safe.”

I felt more uncomfortable than ever. This was no child speaking at all.

“Be careful of the imp,” I said, wanting only to mother her.

“The imp does not bother me,” she said, rejecting not only the imp, but the mothering as well. Again I found myself fighting away that strange, uncomfortable feeling.

Almost as if she knew how I felt, my daughter leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Are you walking the land tonight?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then know that the other imp lies quiescent tonight.”

There was a movement behind the imp, my imp, and, yes, there stood another one, his expression dark and cross, and I knew that my daughter had been playing cat’s cradle with both.

Again I shivered. What dark sorcery was going on within my womb that my daughter could summon that other imp hence?

“Genvissa-reborn—Jane Orr—lies alone,” said my daughter, “with no one to love her. Go to her, mama, for you shall both need to be friends if you are to learn the arts of Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

My smile felt frozen. Dear gods, what did she not know? Tentatively, I touched her cheek again, then gathered her into my arms and hugged her tightly. “Be safe!” I whispered even as she wriggled in my embrace, and then both she and the stone hall and its impish inhabitants faded.

“You saw,” Eaving said as she stood once again atop the hill.

“Yes,” said Long Tom.

“We all did,” said Marguerite.

“She is very knowing,” said Eaving.

“She is your daughter,” said Long Tom, “and as such you should love her, no matter.”

Eaving shot him a sharp glance. “I wanted…” she said, then turned her head aside, as if she could not bear to continue.

“What is this cat’s cradle?” said Marguerite to Long Tom, a little too brightly.

“A version of the Troy Game,” said Long Tom. “She creates the winding path of the labyrinth between her fingers in red wool, and then challenges the imps to find their way from the heart of the labyrinth to its exit. They can’t, for they are evil incarnate, and the Game’s very purpose is to trap all evil within its heart.”

“But what is my daughter doing engaged in this trickery?” said Eaving. “She should be just a child, a baby, innocent of all that has gone before.”

“Eaving, do you not recall what I said to you earlier?” said Long Tom. “You should love her no matter what, even if she is not quite what you expected.”

To that Eaving made no reply.

Eventually Marguerite spoke. “Will you go to this Jane?” she said. “To Genvissa-reborn?”

In the stone hall the girl stood, staring at the space where her mother had vanished. The two imps stood at her shoulders, also staring.

“I wouldn’t trust that one, if I were you,” said one imp.

“I have no intention of trusting her,” said the girl, “for she carries not only the seeds of my victory, but those of my destruction as well. She shall have to be carefully managed.”

She sighed, and, after a moment, the two imps followed suit and sighed as one, their black, bony shoulders heaving exaggeratedly.