crispina kemp

Beckoned over a bridge high over a chasm by a mysterious old man, and led to a cave, now Mideer has imbibed a foul-tasting brew. Is it prejudice only that says that doesn’t bode well? . . . Read on.

Perhaps I passed out though I’d say not (I’d no recollection of it). Rather, I saw lights—on the dark wall of the cave—the colours of fire, and ten times as bright. Not huge lights, not first. They began tiny, like seeds, then erupted and exploded before me. I would have been frightened but that they were restrained by some kind of sinuous net. But I was greatly confused. That, and the foulness in my belly . . . oh, and now a horrendous roar and a buzz in my ears!

I’m not sure when I realised I was no more in the old man’s cave. I was, instead, in an entirely and unlikely world. Perhaps now I was dreaming.

“No dream,” Hean said though I couldn’t see him. “This is the Holy Land. Feast. Feast all your senses.”

Feast all my senses, as if I needed his bidding—as if I’d a choice. Write it all down, they have told me. Yet how? So much I haven’t the words for. But as much as I can I shall try.

First, I now was outside on a plain. But it wasn’t the plain I’d seen outside the cave. That plain had been scantily scattered with trees and bushes while here was of a more luxuriant growth. Was I now in the jungle? I thought I ought to be afraid, and yet I was not. I was bewildered, I’ll not deny that, but I wasn’t afraid. And that in itself was rather alarming. Maybe it was because, though I couldn’t see him, I knew Hean was somewhere here with me.

The sky—let me describe that. It was night, there were stars. Yet they weren’t the twinkling white we see in our night. They each were a tiny kaleidoscope rapidly spinning with sparkling colours. And the colours fell from them, like rain, and I tried to catch them. I wasn’t alone in that. A beast of sorts was rearing up, maw full open, guzzling of the falling spangles. I watched falling spangles and guzzling beast for an uncountable time—perhaps for a year, perhaps less, perhaps less than a minute. Time seemed to yawn and contract as if it were breathing.

There were flowers. Yes, I suppose you could call them that: flowers. Yet flowers are plants and these weren’t that. They were . . . I suppose you could say people. People whose flesh was growing these flowers. Such a strange thing, I laughed to see it, and that seem incongruous. Yet these people didn’t remain people for long; now they were birds—brightly petalled birds that filled the air with their song. Strange, that their song had human words. Oh, it all seems so very confusing now I try to tell it. Yet it all seemed right at the time, as if this was how the world ought to be.

And there was a snake.

No small snake this, and neither evil. She seemed . . . I suppose you might say friendly. She oozed acceptance of me. Love, yes, that’s what it was: she oozed love of me. I held out my arms to her, inviting her into my being. And she came.

How she entered I do not know yet she was within me. I was aware of her there, aware of her cleansing me (from the inside out—yes, that’s how it was). She moved with sinuous motions through the base of me, through my organs, through my intestines and into my heart. She wriggled herself through my airways. She wreathed and climbed the tree of my spine and entered my brain. I remember how I smiled at that. I chuckled. I grinned. I was happy, so happy, content to have her coiled there.

“Who are you?” I finally asked her. “Our Mother?” I meant our Mother-Goddess.

Though she offered no words yet I knew her answer: « I am the Daughter. »

“The Mother’s daughter?”

Again, her wordless answer, « No. » She showed me.

Between the people who really were birds, beneath the trees that were star-sated beasts, all around that plain before me, there sprang what I thought at first were a hundred-million fungi. Earth-balls, perhaps. But even as I watched so they grew taller, and more turgid. There was a great tension, I could feel it inside me, almost unbearable, as their filmy skins stretched over their straining glans. Then, all as one, their hundred-million skins ripped and tore, and they showered the land not with spores but with a thickly viscous pearlescent fluid. Me, an unbroken virgin, ought not to have known what it was, yet I did.

“You are the Daughter of the land.” I said. “This land, I mean, this Holy Land?” I knew the Holy Land wasn’t the land of Macara.

Apparently I had said it right for then she left me. Yet it was only to twine into a tree. She left her voice within me. « See, Holy Daughter, me. »

The tree blossomed. Yet . . . the blossoms weren’t flowers but coupling snakes—coupling as they do in spring. Thousands, beyond any counting, hanging from every branch and small twig, from the top of the tree down to its very first sprig. And as they ripened they didn’t fall as blossoms will do but they drifted away, bubble-like floating high into the sky there to form a hundred waterfalls, cascading down. I knew, though she didn’t tell me, that this she was showing me was the line of the Queens. It reminded me so of the tree in the painting in my mother’s own chamber, the tree that was to be mine.

Branches fell from the tree. Some landed and withered and faded away. Others rolled log-like until hitting a stone they upended and rooted and grew and blossomed. I wanted to say, for I knew it, that these were the lesser daughters in every generation (for only the first three born were eligible queens). My eyes searched the tree. Where was the line which would be mine?

But before I could find it my eyes were distracted. From the newly-rooted branches fell a myriad of multicoloured petals. And as they fell they changed to seeds. But not, as you’d think them, hard encased things. No, squirming these, as wormlike they buried into the ground—thence to erupt as more fungal-heads.

« You know what it means? » she asked me.

And, yes, I knew its meaning. I believe I always had known though it always had been buried deep, awaiting this moment to erupt like those heads. “Every Madja-woman is related to me. We all are descended from the First Queen.”

« Every woman of the Three Lands, » she corrected me. « Of Macara, which is the Mother; of Madjaria, which is the Middle; of Glyntland, which once was the Father. »

I must have pondered on this yet it seemed that I didn’t. for my response was fast-coming. “Then the prophecy doesn’t belong to only me?”

She laughed. And with her laughing I found myself smiling. Yet—

“The Macaran . . . ?” I frowned. “No, they cannot be Queen. And the Glyntlanders? No!” And at once I felt abashed of what I had said.

In an instant, before me appeared an infinite range of numbers, all busily changing, all confusing. I knew their meaning: they were Glyntlanders. I didn’t like them; I wanted them gone.

She untwined her body from the tree and spread her mass across the numbers and bit-by-bit and little-by-little her massive body simply absorbed them. « My children, » she said (though afterwards I thought I’d mistaken and she had said, « My husbands, my men. »).

“But . . . ! No!. Glyntlanders care only for numbers, for coins.”

« And in the beginning there was the Queen and her three daughters, » she said which ought to begin an ancient tale I’d known from the nursery yet didn’t. « And becoming women each of the daughters went a separate way. Three different ways. Macara. Madjaria. Glyntland. Which way is the right way? You would judge them? »

I sat back, feeling shame and deep in guilt. I was sure I stank like I’d rolled with the swine. Bile filled my mouth. I shuddered. I wanted the stink and the taste and the shame gone; they were spoiling my pleasant day. I knew the way to be rid but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to admit that the Holy Daughter was right. Who was I, by what knowledge, by what right, did I made this judgement against the Macara and the Glyntlanders?

« Mideer, » the way she whispered my name was like warmth caressing me, loving, accepting. Yet it made me feel the shame the worse. « Mideer, there is no ‘right’. No ‘wrong’. No ‘good’. No ‘better’. No ‘best’. There are only a myriad of different ways. Each has value. Each belongs. Accept. »

*

As I’d had no awareness of entering that land so I had none of leaving it. I merely found myself by the old man’s hearth in the cave with a belly that wanted to eject whatever potion I’d drunk. I felt gross. I was sweating. Parts of my body were tingly, other parts seemed not to be mine. I want to sleep and yet to escape—but escape what? My body? My guilt? My shame?

It took me a while—registering my ailments, wallowing in these foul sensations—before I noticed the old man was gone. In his place was Hean.

He nodded to me. I wasn’t sure what that meant except it felt good. I was pleased for a reason to smile.

“I shan’t ask you,” he said. “I’ve been there.”

“You met the Daughter?”

He nodded a gentle assent. He seemed to be smiling though not with his mouth. Perhaps it was coming from deep within him.

“Now,” he said, “and what will you do to complete the prophecy?”

“Can’t this wait till I’m . . .” But I suppose he wouldn’t have asked so soon if it could wait. “Return to Madjaria. Tell them what I have seen.”

“And what have you seen? I mean, what have you seen that will convince your Madja—priests, lords and all—that they’re wasting their energies in resenting the Glyntlanders; that those Glyntlanders aren’t so bad? I suppose that is your first call. Then I suppose you’ll do likewise for the Macaran? Well?” He looked at me.

But what amongst all I’d seen could I tell my Madja that would convince them?

“And, of course, your people, the Madja, will listen to you, breath-held in awe,” he said, stacking high the obvious objections that had escaped me. “The charismatic new queen, teaching her people the basics of love. Is that how it’s to happen?”

I now felt awkward, looking about me, not at all liking what Hean was saying, yet recognising the truth of it.

“Anyway,” I tried to duck out of it, “who’s to say your prophecy refers to me. Every woman in all three lands—EVERY woman—we all are descended from the same Queens Line. Your prophecy could refer to . . . to any one of them.”

He chortled softly, the while shaking his head. “Yes, you speak true: Every woman is of the same Queen’s Line. But not every woman has been raised in the Queens House; none trained to the role that now awaits you. You think the Madja would accept any other but you?”

“My uncles’ daughters. They’ve been raised there too.”

“Your uncles’ daughters.” He nodded and chuckled. “Oh, indeed, your uncles would like that. But first they must battle, brother to brother and wed-man to wed-man, until they agree whose daughter to name. But, Mideer, those girls, those women, have not been trained to it from birth as have you.”

I sat up sharply—which was a mistake. I hadn’t realised how much my head hurt. Had the cave spat rocks while I was away? Yet the worst of the pain was inside, within the brain-case. Lords! But I didn’t ever want to drink that muck again, no matter that it did transport me to a Holy Land.

“I have not been trained from birth,” I objected, slowly and not too loudly, yet firmly. “I received no training until . . .” I paused while I thought when it was. It must have been when the Landed of the Assembly had grown weary of waiting for my mother to produce the next king. No sons. Just a single child. Me.

“Mideer, think,” Hean pressed gently (I guess this was the first time I really suspected he might know my thoughts). “Your father has no sons. None.”

That was true. 329 daughters (as far as known), but not one solitary son. I’m not the eldest of his children. Half of those daughters were born before me. Heading-on 200 children before I was born and not one son amongst them. By the time of my birth, I’d wager, the Landed of the Assembly had long been talking.

“You have been trained to this from the day of your birth,” Hean persisted.

“Then why no talks of succession until—”

“Your mother, Queen Megan, is dying. It had to be done, to be set in stone. You cannot imagine the chaos caused by a vacant throne.”

“Hean, sorry, ” I said. “I need fresh air.” I held out my hand for him to help me.

*

Outside the cave I still wasn’t able to stand unaided. I rested against the rock-wall and allowed the air to wash around me, to fill me, refresh me. It felt . . . it felt like I was newborn and these were my first breaths.

“Now,” Hean said, “shall we try again? How do you intend to complete the prophecy?”

“Good, better, best,” I said, and he seemed to understand my intent.

But though he nodded still he objected. “And you are an untried woman. Though their future queen, you are no priest, no preacher. Why then should they listen to you?”

“I could . . .” But I didn’t know what I could do. I was wildly searching for a solution (not easy with a head that hurts this much). Then what seemed to me a solution: “I will instruct my father in it. They’ll listen to him.”

Hean raised a brow at me. I looked away. “If I had told you these things you now have learned—”

“Of the snake-tree?” I asked. “Of we women all being one line?”

“Is that all you have learned?” He raised that same brow at me.

I looked away, speaking now to the plain instead of to him. “I have learned, too, of the good, the better, the best: that we all have the same values, we just tread different ways. But I’ve already said of that.”

“So consider this: If before we came here I had told you these things—and we ought to be walking,” he said, a glance off towards the darkening sky. He held out his hand, to beckon, to encourage, to lead me away. Where would he take me? I don’t remember ever asking it. Did that mean I now trusted him implicitly? He said, now we were walking, “If I had told you these things when we were still in Madjaria, would you have understood them?”

I was quiet while thinking on that, and he didn’t press me. And now I could see our destination: a village in the distance, quite close to the shore.

“I would have believed of the tree—it’s there on my mother’s wall.” It had not yet occurred to me to ask how Queens House had came by their heirloom. “But I admit I would not have understood of the other. Can you imagine the priests saying to me of the ‘good, better, best’? No, it is the antithesis of what they teach. They want to keep us all hating each other—baiting their gods, for a baited god grows strong.”

As soon as I said it I shuddered. For I realised with a sickening sensation that this was exactly true. And it is true, you priests. Moreover, you keep us hating the Macaran and Glyntlanders so we don’t stray towards them, begin to like them, to understand them. You keep us tied to your strings where you can control us. And, for saying less, men have lost their heads, so don’t say it’s not true.

“Hmm. Good,” Hean said. “Now, Mideer, see how your wrappings are falling away? But the same isn’t true of your people. And it certainly isn’t true of the Glyntlanders.”

“I know where you’re steering me,” I said. “I know what I must do. I must show them.” We were almost at the village before I added, “But how?”

Mideer has learned many things from her visit to the Holy Land. Some things cannot be put into words. Others are hard to put into action. Yet there was one lesson that threads through them all: that to ‘see’ is to understand. Now, if she can find a way to apply it she might thereby—maybe, possibly, perhaps—fulfill the prophecy. But she’s not there yet. And then there are the priests to contend with . . . and her uncles, maternal and paternal. See the next episode, A Spot Too Tight.

Hean has brought Mideer to the island of Macara. Something to do with ‘unwrapping’, to fit her for the prophecy she is to fulfill to unite the three lands, but more he won’t tell her. But after the headman’s incomprehensible babble to which, apparently, she had failed to respond, she now is surrounded by Macaran spearmen, her own corps seemingly numbed into inaction. And where is Hean? There is no  sign of him . . .  Read on.

Ignorance, I object, is not bliss. Rather it is terror and a frantic search for explanation—any explanation. But none was forthcoming. Meanwhile  these spearmen proceeded to ‘escort’ me I knew not where, nor yet for what reason. I’d said in jest of providing their meal but now I wasn’t so certain. And, again, where was Hean? And why did my supposedly protective corps do nothing? Why didn’t they rescue me?

I wanted to rail and bewail. But to what effect? That’s hardly the desired image for the future queen of Madjaria. So instead I offered some panicked beseechings to every one of our gods. Yet even as I rattled the words I doubted any would hear me so far from our home. Our gods—your gods, my priests—do not travel so well, being thoroughly attached to the land.

Questions raked through me. Did these Macaran intend to kill me? Would they eat me: I mean seriously eat me? Then I remembered their reputation for raping women. At that my body launched into a sweat. Oh gods of odd hue, where was Hean? Why was he allowing this to happen?

It was then this thing of my uncles, maternal and paternal, hit like a hammer. I realised until then I’d been toying with it: putting it on to see how it feels; pulling it around to see how it responds. Now I suddenly saw it in all its frightening clarity. What more perfect way to be rid of the heir apparent. For without me, Queen Megan’s daughter, they would have no recourse but to name the eldest daughter of my eldest maternal uncle who then would wed Jon, my baby cousin. Even if these Macaran didn’t kill me, all they need do is to keep me here and never release me.

But was Hean a part of this? Could I believe that? Was he in the pay of my uncles, all this talk of ‘unwrapping’ a shabby deceit? And I had fallen for it. Now, even more than ever, I was that game-piece, heedlessly manipulated.

*

My captors did not mistreat me. That gave me hope that they wouldn’t kill me. If only I could understand their speech—just a little of it. Why hadn’t Hean taught me at least the basics? Yet to what effect? Did I think I could talk myself out of this? No, but perhaps I’d pick up from their talk some clue as to what was happening. Only they said not a word. We walked in silence.

Ahead I could see the land beginning to rise. It wasn’t long before we were climbing. So were they taking me to their village? I supposed they did live in villages, even if on a temporary basis. I mean, they must live somewhere.

Though the climb began slow it soon became steep. The track now was strewn with sharp stones. Despite I wore shoes, I could feel them jabbing my feet; feel the stones and the heat that rose from the ground. How did their feet not burn? For none wore shoes. On, and on, higher and higher. Would they imprison me in a high cave, there to freeze to my death? Yet rather that than to descend to the valleys with their dangerous beasts. And who had told me of this? Oh, none other than Hean, of course. He had now thoroughly slipped from my trust.

Midday: I knew the time for the sun beat directly upon us burning my unprotected head. We crested the narrow pass—at least, that’s what I thought it to be until we were there. Then . . . nothing. No further track leading up. None leading down. Nothing! Just an abrupt declivity. To my horror, we stood at the very edge of a deep abyss. A rock-formed chasm, at the bottom of which (if I dared to look) was a river raging white—though I only knew that by its roar and the steam that patchily veiled the jungle-jammed valley below. So (gulp) . . . whither now?

The answer seemed to be a rope-formed bridge that crossed that chasm.

To say I didn’t want to go there is an understatement worthy of any Glyntlander. The bridge comprised but two ropes: one for the feet, the other for the hands. Moreover, that rope looked terrifyingly fragile to me. I turned, refusing—and there stood Hean! I almost cried at seeing him. All mistrust forgotten. Blessed, blessed Hean, whence he? But far from coming to my rescue, he signed for me to turn about and face the chasm with its terrifying bridge.

*

There stood a man upon that bridge. Though I swear he’d not stood before. He looked . . . ancient: as if carved from some gnarled part-rotted tree with sun-bleached vines and mosses for hair. He held out his hands to us—No, to me. For now I realised I was alone on that precipice. My armed escort had mysteriously melted into the rock. (Though more likely they’d retreated when I wasn’t looking.) Hean remained. He nodded to me, encouragement—Yes, accept. I might have been more eager had he made some sign of accompanying me.

I did not want to cross that bridge. I did not want to go alone with this most ancient man. Who was he? But there he stood on the bridge, beckoning me. And I found that I dared not refuse him. Was that Hean’s doing, pushing me on? For all my previous doubts and mistrust of him I guessed this crossing could be part of his training of me; that in some way it would aid my ‘unwrapping’ as he had called it. (Though I was also aware I could be clutching at explanations.) I remember wondering, was this part of a Macaran rite.

Despite since our arrival in Macara Hean’s behaviour hadn’t exactly inspired my trust yet, I argued, I had agreed to his training of me, and that training required that I trust him. And I could certainly see how this crossing could be a test of that trust. All those things I’d been thinking of him, in cahoots with my uncles, maternal and paternal . . . was I to allow them to fall away?

Oh, but I did not want to cross. If I could have flown like a bird I’d have done it. But to set foot on that rope, above that abyss, with the river roaring, and every savage beast down there. Hah, but if I fell I’d be dead before they came prowling around me.

As soon as I set foot to the bridge it violently swayed, the two strands separating. I took a deep breath, hoping the meagre structure soon would steady. I chanted a charm I’d learned in my childhood. I called upon whatever gods present though they’d not be my own. But, NO! Hean had said these Macaran were godless. No gods, then. No gods to call on.

I took another deep breath. Somehow, despite the incipient panic, I had managed to reunite the two strands of the bridge. I figured then to do this quickly. Don’t look down. Don’t think what I’m doing. Just get across there quickly. Soonest done . . .

*

The old man was gone. That’s what I thought now I was across the bridge. I looked around but couldn’t see him. All I could see was a track leading down—down to that ghastly dread-filled valley.

What to do? I looked at the bridge. But I wanted never to set foot upon that two-stranded structure again. Maybe if I waited Hean would join me? At least I was pretty sure now this ‘adventure’ was all part of his training of me. I mean, he could have been rid of me without bringing me here to this bridge. He could have just pushed me over the edge.

So I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

No Hean.

Instead the old man returned. From his gestures I gathered he’d been waiting for me a way down the track. He beckoned me on. Well at least this track was easily walked . . . though, how far would he take me? I refused the thought that he intended to make a sacrifice of me, to feed me to flesh-eating fish. Indeed, I convinced myself to be . . . confident. Yes. And trusting. After all, nothing bad had happened. Yet. But there still was the question of where he would take me. And once there . . . ?

To answer my first question: he wasn’t taking me into the valley to feed me to fish nor beast. There appeared a cleft in the cliff and, though a tight squeeze, this led onto a plain. I smiled—perhaps the relief to be away from that chasm and the jungle beneath it. But more likely because here was pleasant. Here was a balmy breeze perfumed sweet from the scattering of trees. Though I was surprised to see no village here. No buildings at all, no matter how basic. There was a herd of . . . something. Perhaps they were deer. They weren’t sheep or cows, that I do know. But then, to my surprise, he didn’t lead me across the grasses but held close to the rock-formed cliff, here as steep as it was beyond.

I didn’t see the cave until we were upon it. In truth, I didn’t see it until my guide disappeared and I had to look for him. Where could he have gone? Answer: that dark-shadowed hole had swallowed him. Whither my guide, there goest me. Rather that than to stay on this plain. Alone. Though Hean had said nothing of any nasty beasts here. But, then, he didn’t need to.

You remember Samlin, priest to my father when I was a child? Well, I remember him telling me about the Landed-lords’ hunting birds, their birds of prey. He said, where there is a vulnerable creature, there too will be a predator. But the predator is not to blame and must not be reviled, for the predator needs food as much as the prey.

Now here on this otherwise most pleasant plain were vulnerable deer. And though they had the protection of being a herd, they hadn’t the protection of a human herder—at least none that I could see near. Therefore, somewhere on this plain there would be at least one predator. And I had not a herd around me.

Like or not, I followed the old man into the cave.

*

He hadn’t had time to build a fire and to light it. Yet there he sat cross-legged upon the floor, a fire merrily burning before him. He indicated that I should sit. I sat.

I am not used to sitting on hard rock floors. I soon felt the discomfort. Yet looking about I could see nothing that might soften my ‘seat’. That’s where a cloak and my old woollen gown would have served. I jiffled, trying for a more comfy position. The old man looked at me. Despite he said nothing, and I could see no facial expression to tell me, yet I knew I had to sit still, which I did. After one last squiggle.

The old man had been wearing only a loin-cloth. And I had followed behind him all the way here. And though I’d remained at a distance I swear had he been carrying the paraphernalia that now sat beside him I would have seen it. Therefore, I reasoned, he had prepared this in advance. I allowed my thoughts to range over that. Perhaps it was always kept here . . . in readiness, on the off-chance? Or perhaps he had hurried ahead while Hean was jabbering away to the headman? Then again, maybe he had been pre-warned? Some arrangement, perhaps, between Hean and him? Though I couldn’t see how. Even if I wanted to believe in telepathy (and I had had cause to wonder at times with Hean) a two day-and-night journey lay between them. So no, this last I couldn’t accept as explanation.

Further mulling was denied me. The old man handed to me what appeared to be a heavy pot. In that I was right: it was heavy; heavy with liquid. And that liquid was thick. It had the consistency of a creamy sauce you might put on a pudding except it was more oily than creamy. And it didn’t smell sweet. It smelled . . . pungent, pungent and foul. Yet not foul as in spoilt. Not rotten. Not even fermenting. Just . . . unpleasant, as if it advertised how bitter. And it was bitter.

He signed to me that I should drink it. I lifted the pot, reluctant to sip. No problem there. I wasn’t to sip it, he signed. No, I was to take it straight down.

Maybe two-thirds slithered down my gullet. The rest was ejected by my throat’s outraged spasm. Memories of my recent seasickness didn’t help. I dearly wanted to upchuck the rest. Lords! What was it doing to my guts? Corroding them? Setting up a colony of fungi? Turning my guts and me inside out? By the Lords, but I wanted to heave, heave till my inwards were thoroughly outwards. I had a vaguely slippery notion that Hean’s ‘unwrapping’ was about to begin. Quite literally. And being unwrapped I then would be naked and raw.

There was no sympathy from the old man. He seemed to find it amusing. He signed that this . . . this . . . foulness wouldn’t last long. Oh good. But what would come next?

Foul potions tend to a limit range of effects. To kill. To render unconscious. To cause an upswelling of everything eaten—though Mideer has already vomited. To cause a disruption in veils of reality. Find out in the next episode (Tuesday 5th July 28), A Confusion of Daughters .

Mideer is to go to the tropical island of Macara, home of the reputedly savage Macaran hunters—and how did her tutor Hean slip that past the king and Assembly? And why there: what is it about Macara that’s essential in this mysterious ‘unwrapping’ of her? And how would that help her to fulfill the prophecy? Read on . . .

Was it a boat or a ship? Of course, I hadn’t then seen the Glyntlander vessels. Yet ours was no cockle, fit only to sail round the bay. There were quarters for sleeping, for the captain, for me and for Hean. The crew and my corps slept on deck. The hold, I was told, was tight-packed with gifts.

“Gifts? Bu-but why? The Macaran have no king to need our gifting. Ah! It’s gifts for their gods. So what are we giving them?”

“No, they have no gods,” Hean said. The crew and my corps, overhearing, gasped. They were already scornful of this Outlander who spoke to their would-be queen without as much as a respectful nod and no ‘My lady this’, ‘My lady that.’

“Godless?” I voiced their fears. “So the talk is true: they do worship demons and devils? I’m surprised my father allows me there.”

“Mideer, your fears are due only to the conditioning of your past lives—so many of those lives. This is the reason your packaging all must go. This is my task, and this I have told you.”

“Then are you saying these Macaran are not godless? Yet just now you said . . .”

He rolled his eyes. “I will not discuss it. I have already stated my refusal, I will not say overmuch of what’s to happen. I want from you honesty, not something pre-formed.”

“So . . .” I shrugged back my shoulders not to be seen by the crew or my corps as chided, “if not for their gods, for whom the gifts?”

“We have brought for the Macaran the gift of fruits.”

“Fruit? They have asked for it? Ah, fool me. So far south, they’ve suffered a drought, and now we must feed them—for which, of course, their gods will be grateful. And being grateful they’ll welcome us and not cause us storms to wash us away.”

Hean again rolled his eyes. But at least now we were leaving the port we’d no audience the crew busy with their crew-duties. I noticed at least half of my corps looked wistfully back to shore. Were they as anxious as me? I guess the crewmen weren’t but . . . I wondered how many had left a young family at home and feared never to see them again. But Hean and I were still talking of gifts.

“No one is starving; we need not feed them.” Hean said. “Neither have they asked for what we carry. It is done from politeness. As the Landed bring gifts when they visit your father, King Gehon.”

I squinted at him, and not only because the sun was against me. Truly, I did not understand. “The Landed bring wine to ply the king hoping to inebriate him, that in his drunken stupor he’ll agree to whatever their wants. Is this the reason we’re to give the Macaran a whole hold of fruit? To oil our deals? Then I must ask, what deals? Have we become Glyntlanders?”

Hean sat me down—for which I admit I was grateful. The ship—boat—whatever you’d call it—had hit open water. O Blessed Sea Mother!—and we weren’t yet into the treacherous parts. I thought it likely I’d spend the journey prone in my quarters.

“We bring them a gift to honour them,” said Hean.

“Honour the Macaran? But . . . I mean, they’re only Macaran. Ah!” Realisation grabbed me. “It’s so they don’t kill us as soon as we step onto their land. So they’ll know we’re not those grabbing Glyntlanders.”

As you know, the Glyntlanders long have dealt with the Macaran. But while they called it ‘deal’ rather, now, would I call it rape, a rape of the land. But as yet I knew little of that, only that the Glyntlanders ‘acquired’ certain ‘commodities’ from Macara (i.e. the chemicals required for their manufacturies). I was yet to become fully informed upon the depth and reality of that.

In truth, I admit, my head was a muddle. I didn’t want to be leaving Madjaria. I feared my mother would die while I was away. And I didn’t trust what might happen behind my back. Moreover, I still didn’t know whether to trust Hean. What if he was in some conspiracy with my uncles, maternal and paternal; what if he had some magical hold over my father? And my thoughts might have been clearer had he taught me nothing at all. But now I was half-in and half-out of my people’s values, half-believing, half newly-seeing the truth about me. Also, I feared I might fail in the prophecy and in some gruesome way meet my death. I tell you, on that day of leaving my head was in a worse troubled state than my belly—and that didn’t feel good.

*

There was a storm. But you don’t need to know that. I thought I would die, so certain the ship would break beneath the hammering waves and would sink. I expected it at any moment. I clung to my bunk, feeling utterly wretched, with Hean wiping my brow. Oh bless the patient, tolerant man—though I’d have preferred to have my lady Loyse with me. The savagery of that sea seemed to last an eternity, so wretched did I feel. The rain raddled the roof-cum-deck above me. The wind screamed through the sails—like ghosts howling for revenge. We could not survive it; it seemed impossible. Yet I woke the next day with the ship gently rocking—and there was Hean, still holding my hand. He told me the storm had lasted less than a day.

“We’ll be there,” he said, “before this night. You might care to wash? To change your clothes? Something more suited?”

At his prompting I looked at myself. My gown—a deep crimson-red wool, heavy and warm—was befouled with the acidic slime of my guts. It stank. And it was wet. And in being wet it was heavier yet. And in being heavier it scarce held its shape. It was not a good advertisement of me, of Madjaria and our Royal House. I shooed Hean away. But what to wear?

“A shift will do fine,” he called through the boards of the door.

“It would not be decent!”

“Mideer, I have seen your shifts—”

“What?!”

“On the bushes to dry in the kitchen garden. You will be as decently clothed in a shift as you are in a gown and a wrap.”

I shrugged, for I supposed it was so. And who but these Macaran were to see me . . . and my corps . . . and the crewmen. And Hean. But I was not so ‘unwrapped’ as to be happy naked. However, rummaging into my trunk—a trunk I neither packed for myself nor supervised—I found I’d no choice but to wear a shift. While whoever had packed for me had included several of the simple white linen garments, they had included no other gowns. I was surprised to see the culprit had at least packed a spare cloak for me.

Oh, Loyse, Loyse, why did you not accompany me? But she did not, so pointless bewailing. And this past day or so I had managed without her. It’s not so hard to comb out one’s hair, to wash one’s hands and one’s feet. And that other matter was nigh a month away; I hoped to be home by then. Even so, I did wonder at my father, that he allowed me this voyage with no woman attendant. What had Hean said to him, that he so agreed it? I glanced across to the door, again feeling uneasy about Hean. Kind man though he seemed, exactly what interest had he in me? Was it only because of this prophecy? Or was he in league with my uncles, maternal, paternal or both?

*

Macara. Have you been there since my voyage? I know few had been there before but now we hear the sea-captains barking that ‘Queen Mideer has opened it up’, hoping to earn some extra coin on a journey.

It is a mountainous land; a land of valleys and heights. Snow lies late upon those heights despite in the valleys there are sweltering swamps. Ah, those swamps. “I prefer not to say much of Macara and its people,” Hean had said more than the once. Yet he told me of what lived in those swamps. Snakes. And leeches. And fish that will strip the flesh off your bones. And others that jolt you clean out of the water as if you’ve been struck by lightning. And then there are beasts. Unimaginable. Some equipped with teeth that will crunch through a bone as easy as look at you. Of all the things Hean kept to himself, why had he told me of the swamps?

It is perhaps because of the uninhabitable valleys and the forbidding cold of the peaks that despite Macara is thirty-times the size of Madjaria, only seven bands live there. Seven separate bands that each speak a different tongue. Seven only, and they not populous. Seven, when we have 150 Landed-lords with all their households in a land a thirtieth of its size.

Between the valleys and the heights are the plains—plateaus I should say: some quite extensive. It’s there that the Macaran live. Though I know you’ve now seen at least a few Macaran walking the lanes of Madjaria yet I will describe them for prosterity (at least, the bands that I saw) so none need fear them or misrepresent them again.

The first thing noticed is—well, two things really, simultaneously. The men are bald. At first I thought that a natural state but then I discovered they shave their heads. Those living in East Macara shave only the front. I think their different styles serve as a badge of sorts, like the devices painted upon our Landed-lords’ shields. More universal amongst them is their complexion. The Macaran are darker than any here though, it’s true, not all Madja are corn-field fair. Our farmers who labour each day in the sun, our fishermen inhabiting the Madjarian coast, are roasted dark as toffee. But beside the darkest the Macaran are darker.

It was on seeing their complexion that a strange thing struck me. Though in all the time Hean had been my tutor never once had I noticed it, yet beside the Macaran Hean now seemed equally dark. He could have easily been taken for a Macaran. Indeed, by his behaviour and everything around him too. But there I go jumping ahead again.

In all the time I stayed in Macara I never saw a native with hair as fair as one finds amongst us, not even amongst their young. I remark on that for though my hair is now burnished brown, yet as a child my head was golden-crowned. But one doesn’t find such colouring there.

Though I took in the whole of their appearance lightning-fast, to describe them needs some kind of order. So, their next striking feature is their bodies (and who can avoid noticing them when they wear so little). Everyone, old and young, looked as lithe and as firm as our best-bred horses. I saw no crocked backs, no humped shoulders, no flabby bellies; none of the postural defects found across our lord-lands after long years of farming. I saw no blackened teeth either, though I did see some missing. Hean tells me that’s part of a religious rite, same as the markings upon their bodies, pricked in with soot.

Also, everyone there seemed happy. Though that I discovered was only a first impression.

We were greeted . . . no, let me be accurate in that. Hean was greeted. He was greeted like a returning brother. The children danced around him. The women variously grinned and cried. The men patted him. At first I thought it for the sake of our fruit. Yet how could they know what we’d brought? Moreover, when we Madja disembarked they suddenly stood back a distance.

I ought here to explain that they have a harbour some little distance along a river, complete with wharfs and wood-built quays and . . . you know, as we have. That surprised me for they, like we, are not reputed sailors. Indeed, I’d say we’re more sailors than they. But then I remembered the Glyntlanders interest in this southernmost land. And now I’ve seen the Glyntlanders’ vessels—how huge—I can well understand how they’d need such proper facilities. Whereas we, on this visit, might have easily used a simple cockle to reach the shore.

As I said, the Macaran stood away as we disembarked. Did they fear us? Did they think us Glyntlanders? Yet the Glyntlanders are fairer even than we. Did they think we’d come to plunder? Perhaps. For it took Hean some rapid speech to persuade their headman to come and greet us—or ought I to say, to greet me.

It was an awkward moment despite Hean had tried to rehearse me. I was a visitor, I was a supplicant, he’d said. The Macaran cared not that I was the future queen of Madjaria. I must remember at all times, it was I who sought them. I who asked of them a favour. I did?

Then to confuse me Hean had changed how he said it. “Nay! You ask more than a favour. You ask for an honour.”

Fine talk for him, an Outlander, possibly (as now I could see) a Macaran. But for me to be anything other than a commanding queen-in-the-making was far outside my usual realm.

“Imagine the headman is your father,” he said. I suppose he thought he was being helpful. It would have been more helpful to tell me what the heck was happening. But I played along.

“You want me prostrate upon the ground?”

“When have you ever done that with your father?”

“When our audience is public—as this meeting will be.” He ought to have known that. “But, Hean, I cannot lay myself down on the ground. I just . . . cannot. Supplicant I might be but . . . no, please, leave me some dignity.”

My outrage seemed to amuse him in his typical Hean-ish way. I swear he has an innate sense of irreverence which amuses him mightily. He said, “There is no need to graze your knees upon the ground. Just hold in mind that you want something from him. And the only way to acquire it is to be humble. Grabbing it as if you’re a Glyntlander won’t work. Neither will demanding it as if you are a Madja-lord. Could you possibly adjust your manner to that?”

It was during these ‘rehearsals’ that it most forcibly struck me that I didn’t yet know what I was asking. Hean hadn’t said. He wanted me to know as little as possible so I could be honest in my reactions. All I knew was that this was part my ‘education’, as he put it, an acceleration of my ‘unwrapping’, the better to fit me to my supposed destiny, i.e. to fulfil the prophecy. But he had been appointed by the Landed of the Assembly, agreed by you priests and my father too, thus I must trust him. Yet he was also appointed by my uncles, maternal and paternal. That ought to have alerted me. I ought at least to have questioned.

*

I held a humble image in mind as I responded to the headman’s greeting. I had not a notion of what he was saying, and Hean didn’t think to translate. Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to know. He could have been asking me to dinner—with me as the main course. Toe, or a finger, for hors d’oeuvre? We have brains for desert—or would you rather minced tongue on biscuits?

The headman gabbled at me. I smiled and tried to be small. That wasn’t easy. The Macaran are not a tall people. Also, I tried not to look at his sleek muscled limbs. I was not used to this, this excessive ‘undress’. So much flesh. And all in such remarkable condition. I’d wager few Madja could stand beside a Macaran and seem his physical equal.

What did he say? Did I make a wrong response? Should I have done or said something different? Whatever, I failed—and I blamed Hean for that, for not properly preparing me. Unfortunately it was me paid the price. That price was to be immediately surrounded by Macaran, all half-naked men, all hefting sharp-looking spears.

What . . .? I looked around me. Where was Hean? No, really, where was he? All I could see beyond these naked limbs and fierce-looking spears was my own corps. And to a man they seemed as stunned as me. Yet not one raised a weapon. So much for my safety.

I regretted now my jest of having me for dinner. What was to happen to me?

Indeed, what is to happen to Mideer? And the question remains of why Hean has brought her to here? What is here that might facilitate her ‘unwrapping’, that shedding of layers of past-life conditioning? Perhaps we’ll learn more in the next episode.

Next episode, Blindly Into A Cave, Tuesday 28th June.

According to Hean with every encounter, be it with family, friend or enemy, or even a chance encounter along the way, we each of us gather about us another wrapping. According to Hean these wrappings fall away at the end of a life. Thus when we are born again we are each of us naked.

Only that’s not quite what he said. He said ‘ought’, and ‘should’. These wrappings ought to fall away, and we should begin naked again. But, as he says, we now number so many that souls are called back before they’ve had time to unwrap.

Yes, I know, my priests, this is not what you teach. You tell us that those who are favoured by the First Lords are taken into their care in the gods’ holy land. You say nothing of any return, not of the favoured nor of the rest, but leave us in our graves to decay, body and soul. As for us women, our children are formed of our bodies and thus you allow us continued existence.

Were this all, I would not voice complaint and we might—you and mine—reside in good harmony. But, my priests, goaded and pressed by my Landed-lords, you have empowered a dark coterie that you call ‘gods’ and now must stand as a buffer twixt them and us, afraid of your own creation. Now, I say, these must be released. But fear not, for my holy men will guide them back to the light. All will be well, I promise.

Ah, what’s that I hear you say?—and I do hear it though you are not here in my audience. That this requires more trust than you can muster? I acknowledge. I understand. And so I, Mideer, being Queen of Madjaria, write this chronicle, that you might see, and might understand, all that has led me to this proclamation. I hope thus to inculcate that trust.

*

Hean told me this of the ‘wrappings’ as explanation of why he must train me. Imperative, he said.

“Excuse me. Why?”

“Because of the prophecy.”

“What prophecy?”

“That you, Mideer, are to unite the Three Lands.”

Me? You would understand why I laughed, my priests, had you known me better in those naive days. “And whence this prophecy? For I’ve not heard it before.”

He left the school-room to return impossibly soon with a slender book which he laid on the table before me. It looked new, as if bound just yesterday, its front cover embossed and picked out in gold: Book Of Queens.

“Whence?” I asked. I could not believe he’d had it from my mother. I doubt they had met.

“An Outlander, I’ve travelled,” he said and seemed content to leave it at that. A half-year before I would have accused him of foisting Glyntlander fakery upon me. But I now knew a thing or two about the wider world (courtesy of Hean’s tuition.)

As he opened the book a smell most ancient broke free. New it might look, and yet it was old. He turned to the relevant page. Many centuries of handling had polished that parchment and darkened the script.

I allowed my eyes to track the text but it was written in some form of Madjarian not familiar to me. I looked back at Hean.

“And why do you think this applies to me?”

“Because you are the daughter of the king,” he said.

I tst’d the Outlander’s naivety. “But, Hean, the king has more daughters than this one before you. Three hundred and twenty-nine at the last count. Why should this prophecy apply particularly to me?”

“Then perhaps I ought to have said, You are the queen’s daughter.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Not after the recent eruptions in the Assembly on the matter of my succession. But I am more than Queen Megan’s daughter. I am a daughter such has never been born in Madjaria before: the first ever Madja queen’s daughter. And you, as you’ll remember, my priests, with the Landed of the Assembly, had recently assigned to me Hean, a tutor at our Royal College. But that wasn’t why you had chosen him. No, as I remember, you and they said that as a non-islander he would have much to teach me. I suppose you were thinking of political philosophy. I doubt you suspected he would want to unwrap me.

I looked up at Hean, standing tree-like in front of the table. “You care to expand?” (I didn’t demand of him, I wasn’t yet the queen.)

“According to the prophecy, the king’s daughter—one such has never been born—shall unite the Three Lands. That daughter is you.”

“And how am I to unite the lands? You want me to marry a Macaran instead of my baby cousin Jon? It could be no worse, though I doubt the Assembly would ever agree it. Or have you in mind a Glyntlander? And how much will we pay them? You know as I do, they do nothing except for coin.”

“There are other ways,”

I believe at that I rolled my eyes. That was the beginning. Oh, such an innocent I was. I could never have imagined what awaited me.

*

This thing of ‘unwrapping’ seemed to occupy an inordinate dose of time though it was not the full of the Hean-set curriculum. No, you and the Assembly had chosen well. As expected, he taught me political philosophy—and every other philosophy: cultural, societal, cosmological, religious. How I marvelled at that: How could an Outlander understand so well our particular gods?—Your gods. His answer: But all gods are the same, they vary only in the matter of light allowed them. And, my priests, you allow your gods no light.

I told him he was sounding more like a Glyntlander. “Will you burn us, next, for our beliefs?”

“I meant it not like that. I promise by . . . oh, by next year,” he said, a vacant hand waved in the air (such is his way), “that you will understand. But I hope you shall understand long before then—when I take you to Macara.”

Hah! I laughed. I didn’t think he meant it. As if my father, or the Landed of the Assembly, or you my priests, would allow such a voyage.

Never mind that the seas between here and there are known to be treacherous, that was deterrent enough. But add to that, in the eyes of we Madja, the Macaran were deemed little better than demons . . . Oh how I maligned them; I cannot claim myself free of it. But then who did not in those days? Even the Outlanders (few though they number here; more plentiful amidst the glittering machines of Glyntland) even they disparaged them, holding them to little worth. Animals, that’s what was said of the Macaran. I know many a Madja, even now, would happily take a rod to them. ‘They are not to trusted; they’re lazy and lustful. Our women aren’t safe to be near them.’ (None of which is true.) And here was Hean saying he’d take me to Macara? I paid it little mind believing it would never be passed by the Landed of the Assembly; you my priests would never approve it; my father, King Gehon, would forbid it. But I was wrong in my thoughts.

It took Hean a full moon round to persuade the Assembly etc, etc, to allow me the voyage.

What did he tell them? What arguments used? I doubt I ever shall know for I was barred from their discussions and deliberations and . . . oh dear, to confess it, the Assembly Hall was set afire in the rebellions that followed my return. As for Hean, he will not say. An irrelevance, he says. And how naive I was not to wonder at the motives here. I should have at least questioned those of my uncles, maternal and paternal, they being the prime advisers to my father, King Gehon; they having the most to gain should I not return.

But I must stop telling it before it has happened. It is a gift of the ‘unwrapping’. Once unwrapped and naked, one sees backwards and forwards as if they are the same.

*

It took Hean yet another month to arrange the details of this fabulous but dangerous journey. First, who was to go with us? For we could not to go alone—perish the thought. What he and me, together, without chaperon? No, no, no, no, no. But exactly who was to be chaperon caused such a ka-muddling.

I, of course, wanted my lady Loyse along with me. Who else was to dress me? Comb out my hair? Attend to my toilet? All those womanly things. But Loyse said rather the axe than those nights on the sea and the Macaran after. Heels dug in, she refused to accompany me.

“Please, my lady Mideer,” cried the youngest of my companions, no more than twelve birthdays passed. “I’ll happily make the journey.”

And so she might but Landed Jorner, her father, refused his permission, and my father refused to intervene in it.

“Must you have a woman attend you?” he asked—and before I could answer Hean had told him no. No, I hadn’t the need.

So could not my honour and safety be handled as one? After all, I would need a guard: we were going to Macara and the Macaran were known to abduct any sailor who dared to stray close to their land. Moreover, our stories had it that the Macaran did (upon a time) raid our south coasts and steal our women. According to those stories they raped both women and land. But that, you note, was a long ago. Lo! Before our books ever were written. And so I was assigned a corps of ten guards. The Assembly thought that sufficient. Ten, plus the sailors that manned our boat.

Now let me tell you this for, though you ought, you may not know it. Never did a Madja set his seat on that water without a great need; we are not by choice or innate desire seafarers. The Glyntlanders, however, are different; I could tell you—but that’s yet to come.

So, rituals must be performed. The sea must be fed, the Sea-Mother satisfied else she’ll rear up a hand and pluck at the traveller. The winds must be baited lest they leave us, unblown and stranded twixt neither here nor there. The Night Lord must be consulted. What sign will he give us to lead us there? Two days and two nights in the sailing. So far away. Yet nothing compared to the journey to Glyntland . . . But I must not yet go there.

The gods were satisfied, the contracts made; the gifts were presented and spoiled. I made a last journey to my mother—she had already returned to her natal house, the Queens’ House, a house empty of sisters with daughters. Only brothers and nieces dwelt there.

My mother, Queen Megan, was dying. I’d have been a head-in-the-sand fool to think it otherwise. Why else all the disputing about the Succession. And when she died I then would sit beside my father. But he would as yet be long in dying—or so it was thought. Long enough that his younger brother’s son, my baby cousin Jon, had time to be growing.

But again I digress.

If you believe all this time I was happy to go on this fearful excursion to Macara you are wrong. Not for the first time I had the sense of being a game-piece, moved here and there by players out to conquer (or at least to outplay) each other. I had no say, my wishes didn’t count, I did as told. ‘Don’t wail, child, you’ll lose your smile.’ Those I’d thought my friends, who I could trust, now were dropping away from my side. My father. My woman Loyse. Certain favourites of the Landed. And though I liked Hean well enough, of him I now wasn’t so sure. But if any would fight for me, it would be my mother. This was my last chance not to go.

“Say again where you go?” Her pale sunken eyes seemed to plead. Had no one consulted with her?

And when I told her, Macara, her cold fleshless hand clutched at my wrist. “Why there?”

“The prophecy. I’m to unite the Three Lands.”

I don’t know what I expected of her but it wasn’t this: “But, Mideer, if you fail . . .?”

“If I . . .?” I’d not thought of that. I’d not asked Hean of it. He hadn’t said. To fail in the prophecy, so soon after the Succession Disruptions . . . would that prove against me, that I wasn’t the rightful queen?

When I didn’t answer she gave a faint nod. She seemed now to gaze distantly. Yet I noticed her eyes were fixed on the painting that would become mine, an heirloom of the Queens House. You have not seen it; it hangs now in my personal chamber. A tree, but such a weird tree none ever existed. A mishmash of blooms, the colours all wrong, the branches twisted and thin where they ought to be thick and vice-versa. Her gaze was a prelude to her closing her eyes.

No! don’t sleep, I wanted to shout. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to ask her. I wanted to know why particularly there, Macara. Hean had never answered me that despite he deemed it the only place where I could receive my ‘unwrapping’. And it seemed to me that my mother had known. Why else her exclamation, ‘why there’?

I know the answer to that now: why Macara, and how she knew of it. But then . . . how woefully ignorant I was of what lay ahead; no more knowing than my mother with her imminent fate. Oh yes, she knew she would die. But what then, after she’d been carefully placed in her coffin—the coffin the masons had chipped from the living stone by the coast while she and I watched (how many years ago now?) —after the final rites, the court in attendance (the only time they’re allowed into that labyrinth known as the Queens Sepulchre), after they’d left and the stones were replaced behind them, what then?

Is there a priest alive throughout our land who can answer me that? (I speak not of my holy men.) Perhaps, my priests, once you have read this you will no more embroider your stories, pad out the whispers you’ve heard from the past. But then, no more than you did know the answer so it would be wrong of me to blame you and your forebears.

It tugged my heart to leave my mother that day. Would she yet live to see my return? Or was this to be our last conversation? Left with so much wanting.

Two days later I walked up the gangplank and boarded our boat . . . to sail to what would become a new life and a new world.

Macara. The southern island. Hotter, more tropical that Mideer’s native Madjaria. Inhabited by the Macaran, bands of what we would call hunter-gatherers. What exactly has Hean devised for her there that has passed the approval of king and Assembly? And what is it about Macara that’s essential in this mysterious ‘unwrapping’?

Next episode, Godless, Tuesday 21st June.