Month: November 2020

M3 Gerraint: Tara to Avalon, part 3 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Gerraint came around when the sun returned, but this time it came as a more normal sunrise.  Granted, the sun reached near noon in only a couple of hours, but it appeared relatively normal all the same.

“Land!”  Lolly was the first to shout.

“Land!”  Trevor echoed from the helm.

“Make ready to come ashore,” Macreedy shouted.  “Lower the sail, and be quick.”  Everyone helped, and not especially quick, but from the way the land grew in their sight, it seemed as if they were in a speed boat.  Before then, no one knew how fast they were really going.

“We’re going to crash.”  Gwynyvar hid her face in her hands.

“Keep her dead on.”  Macreedy ordered.  Trevor did not argue, but he closed his eyes.  Gwillim already started praying.  Arthur and Lancelot had Gwynyvar between them in case they were needed to cushion her fall when they crashed.  Uwaine came up to stand in the bow beside Gerraint.  Bedivere and old Peredur followed.  Gerraint, however, turned and got Luckless’ attention.

“Keep watch over your charge,” he said and made sure that Lolly also heard.  Arthur and Lancelot were both hard in battle, but they were fish out of water themselves, and could hardly be counted on to protect the Lady.

“Lord,” Luckless acknowledged the reminder.

The dock came up fast.  Uwaine and Peredur involuntarily squinted, expecting a terrible crash.  Bedivere had to look to the side, but as it turned out, they missed the dock and it now looked as if they were going to crash right up on the shore.  Everyone held on to whatever they could grab, but the ship came to an instant and absolute stop, their momentum and inertia rose up in something like a bubble and rushed into the sky, while not one of them so much as leaned forward at the stop.

“You missed the dock.”  Gerraint pointed out that they landed nearly a foot away.

Macreedy and Gerraint went to throw ropes around the posts and heave the boat closer to the planks.  “Amateur at the rudder,” Macreedy said.  “And don’t rub it in.”

Gerraint laughed, while the others came up to help, and soon enough they were up on the dock and headed toward the shore.

“Keep together and watch your back.”  Arthur gave some general instructions as they began to walk down the dock.  They stopped a few feet before the end.  Two men waited there.  One looked blond, middle aged and dressed like a king.  The other looked dark, dressed in black, and as old as Peredur.  No one knew them until Gerraint squinted.

“Gwyn?”  He guessed at the younger one.

“And Pwyll.”  The older man gave his name.  Gerraint would have never guessed since he had aged so much.

“Enid?”  Gerraint asked

“At the house.”  Gwyn smiled.  “Safe enough.”  He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

“The treasures?”  Arthur asked.

“Safe,” Pwyll answered.

“That Formor wanna-be, Abraxas left when he knew you were coming,” Gwyn said, and he added a word.  “Coward.”

“And Talesin has gone into hiding,” Pwyll said, but he smiled.

“The ghostly hands and cauldron.”  Uwaine put two and two together.  Arthur and Lancelot looked up, stern anger on their faces.  But Pwyll and Gwyn laughed.

“Fat lotta good it will do him,” Gerraint said.  He began to walk up toward the house and everyone followed.

“How many are there?”  Bedivere asked.  Lancelot looked.  He should have thought to ask that question.

“Well young squire,” Gwyn said, affably.  “I should say eight, but I suppose you mean six.  There is old Pelenor and his friend Ederyn, the Raven and his druid, and two men at arms who follow the Raven.”

“Nine on six is not bad,” Arthur said.

“Eleven,” Macreedy corrected him.

“Ten,” Luckless said without explanation, but he and Lolly were side by side with Gwynyvar, and Luckless fingered his ax.

The house appeared a simple thatched cottage from the outside.  It seemed an idyllic scene, like the home of a gentle fisherman and his wife, set out to overlook the sea.  There were even flowers in the garden.  Gerraint knew better.  He opened the door without knocking, and they stepped into a vast hall where they saw row after row of great oak tables and a vast, distant fire burning in a great stone fireplace in the center of the room.

Enid looked tied to a chair at a nearby table, and gagged.  Guimier was allowed to play at her mother’s feet.  Four men sat around the table on all four sides, like men arguing four different propositions, which they were.  The two men at arms held back, but kept an eye on the mother and child.

As the company entered, Pelenor looked up, but his eyes looked defeated already.  Ederyn smiled, briefly.  The druid stood suddenly, having been seated across from the lady. His chair fell back and clattered to the floor while the druid fingered his sword, but he did not draw it.  Urien quickly drew his knife and placed it at Enid’s throat.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Urien said through his teeth.

Arthur and his men spread out.  Luckless and Lolly kept Gwynyvar by the door.  Her impulse had been to run to her friend, but of course, that would have been foolish.

Gwyn and Pwyll stepped up beside Gerraint.  “Cannot interfere, you know,” Gwyn whispered in Gerraint’s ear.

“I would like a visit with this lovely child, though,” Pwyll said.  Guimier began to rise from the floor.  The men at arms looked at each other, but did not know what to do.  Gummier giggled and floated into Pwyll’s arms.  Everyone stared, but Guimier shouted.

“Daddy!”  Gerraint touched his daughter and smiled.

“Thank you Pwyll,” Gerraint said, and Pwyll nodded, tickled Guimier in the stomach and looked on her like a grandfather might look on a favorite grandchild.

“Now tell me about this doll of yours,” Pwyll said, as the stepped back outside.

“Yes,” Gwyn said, eyeing his brother god.  “Now that he mentions it, I would like a little talk with this woman of yours.”  He winked at Gerraint.  “Maybe she can tell me how to blunt a mother’s anger.”

Urien grabbed Enid by the hair and pressed his knife close to the throat, but it did no good.  Enid simply vanished out of his hand and appeared beside the blonde God.  He whispered in Enid’s ear, and Enid giggled with a look at Gerraint.  Then they walked out, Enid and Gwynyvar hugging, and Luckless and Lolly following.  Luckless alone glanced back once.  He was going to miss it.

************************

MONDAY

Don’t you miss it.  The end of the story… Until Then, Happy Reading

*

M3 Gerraint: Tara to Avalon, part 2 of 4

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Gerraint led them through a door and they came to a Grotto carved out from beneath the rocks with only a cave that led out into a gentle bay.  There were several ships tied to a dock there, but none of them looked big enough to carry them all.

“Gobinu’s work,” Macreedy said.

“And we helped,” Luckless interjected.

“One will do,” Macreedy finished.

“For this great company?”  Arthur began, but then decided not to doubt.

“Will you be joining us?”  Gerraint asked the elf.

“Aye,” Macreedy said.  “But not the ladies.  They have decided to keep Tara for a time, with their Lord’s permission.”  Gerraint nodded slightly, but said nothing.

“Oh.”  Peredur sounded sad.  He had yet to let go of his elf maiden’s hand.  The other maidens backed to the door, but Peredur’s maid paused to kiss him as a lovely granddaughter might kiss her kindly grandfather.  Then she seemed to think about it, and planted one right on his lips.

Most smiled, and a couple of the men ooed and awed before the maiden finally let go and went to join the others.  Peredur could hardly shake himself free.

“Another kiss like that could kill this old man.”  Peredur mumbled and Macreedy grinned.

“So here we are,” Bedivere spoke at last.  “One Lady.  One elf, two dwarfs and nine men to invade Avalon.”

“Not much of a force at arms,” Lancelot said.  Like Bedivere, he was thinking in military terms.

“D-day, certainly,” Gerraint quipped, and invited them all aboard the first ship.  It had appeared no bigger than a lifeboat from the dock, but once aboard it was found to be spacious, with a central mast as big as an oak, and even a below deck to store their things.  They shoved off, and under Macreedy’s direction, the sailors, Trevor and Gwillim set the sail, with the help of Luckless who had sailed in the days of Festuscato.  The men said there was no purpose in raising the sail inside the cave.  All the same, the wind came and nudged them out into the bay.

“Well I’ll be,” Trevor said.  Only the sailors were surprised.  The others either knew what to expect or did not really understand that a normal sail would have been useless until they got out in the open where it could catch the wind.

“I feel sick.”  Bedivere complained almost immediately.  Gwynyvar looked green and Arthur and Lancelot appeared about to join her.  Uwaine laughed, because for once he did not feel the least bit sick.

“We have passed out of the world altogether.  Welcome to the endless sea in the second heavens.”  Gerraint held up his hand to forestall questions.  “It is that divide between the first heaven that covers the Earth like a blanket and the Third Heaven wherein is the throne of God.”  He pointed behind and all heads turned.  The hills, perhaps cliffs if not the cave that they expected to see were nowhere in evidence.  All they could see was the dark waters of the sea, stretching off to the horizon in every direction.

“Are we dead?”  Gwillim asked as the feeling caught up with him.

“Hardly,” Macreedy said as he checked the sail.  “But we may die if we lose the current.  This sea is boundless.  It has no shoreline, though there are shorelines everywhere.”  Macreedy went to stand with Trevor at the rudder.

“But say, that doesn’t make any sense.  Either there is a shoreline or not.”  Gwillim objected and tried to come out of the feeling of having died.

“There is and is not,” Gerraint said.  “Normal rules don’t apply here.  The place folds in and back on itself and even turns inside-out.  It is utterly unstable.”

“Apart from Lady Alice,” Macreedy spoke up from the helm.

Gerraint nodded.  “She tries to keep Avalon and the seven isles and the innumerable isles beyond in a more stable condition, but it is like living in the eye of a hurricane.”

“Olympus?”  Arthur said the word, but made it a question.

Gerraint nodded again.  “Aesgard, Vanheim, the Mountain Fastness and all.  All once found in the Second Heavens.  All gone now,” he said.

“All but Avalon,” Mesalwig said.  Gerraint looked at the man.  Mesalwig had been silent almost since arriving in Tara.  It was impossible to tell what the man might be thinking.

“Avalon of the Apples,” Bedivere corrected Mesalwig.  He started feeling better.

“Give it up.”  Uwaine teased Peredur who still stared at nothing in particular and touched his lips.  “She is undoubtedly too old for you.  May be five hundred years too old.”

Gerraint shook his head for a change.  “Only three hundred,” he said, and Gwynyvar giggled.

Gerraint went to stand at the bow.  It was not that his eyes could see any better than the others, though they could, but he was really getting anxious and trying hard not to show it.  He did not know if Rhiannon’s aura of protection around Enid and Guimier would hold up in the Second Heavens.  He did not know what Urien and Pelenor might have found on the island, nor where that Abraxas might be, nor where that most disobedient of all of his children, Talesin might be.  He tried not to think of these things, but he could not help it.  His stomach churned from worry.

“They will be all right,” Gwynyvar said.  She had come up alongside him and offered him a cup of water and a bit of bread and cheese.  Gerraint thanked her for the water, but turned down the solid food.  He did not think his stomach could handle it.  He turned and they looked together.  Arthur paced the deck.  Lancelot sat with his back to the mast and watched Arthur pace.  Peredur leaned on the railing to look out over the water, and Bedivere stood beside him.  Their conversation was quiet.

Gwynyvar nudged him.  Uwaine finally leaned over the opposite rail, responding to the sea in his accustomed manner.  Gwillim appeared to be supervising and offering his supposed cures.  Mesalwig sat apart.  Gerraint wondered about the man again, but again Gwynyvar nudged him and pointed to the stern.  Trevor appeared to be having a hard time keeping the rudder in the current and not touch the elf at the same time.  Macreedy enjoyed teasing the man.

“How long is the journey?”  Gwynyvar asked.

“Long as a wolf takes to finish howling at the moon.”  Luckless said as he came up alongside them.  They spied Lolly trying to get some flavor out of the bread and cheese.  Gwynyvar thought for a moment.

“But how does a wolf know when it is finished?”  She asked.

“When it stops howling,” Luckless said.

Gwynyvar turned a very confused face toward Gerraint.

“An instant, a week, a month?”  Gerraint shrugged and turned his eyes ahead.

“Then again,” Luckless said.  “We might have arrived ten minutes ago, only we haven’t realized it yet.”

It got dark.  They had no sundown, no dusk, and no chance for their eyes to adjust.  One minute it was light and the next it was dark apart from the infinite stars and a perfect full moon that appeared fully risen in the sky, directly ahead.  The moon seemed exceptionally large, like it rose a bit close to the earth.

“How lovely,” Gwynyvar said, once she got over the sudden change in the time of day.  She looked confused again when Gerraint pointed to the stern where a half moon followed them.  She shook her head and went back to Lancelot and Arthur.  Arthur needed to stop pacing.

“Better go see to bedding down,” Luckless said.  “It has been a tiring day today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, whichever it was or is.”  He wandered off and began to turn people toward sleep.

Gerraint could not sleep.  He knew it was foolish.  He would need to be well rested and more than likely he would need all of his strength and wits to deal with whatever they might find, but he could not sleep, no matter what.

Soon enough the others were dozing.  Luckless took a turn at the rudder and promised to wake Macreedy before long.  Gerraint was the only other one awake when an image appeared beside him.

“The woman is fine.  And the child,” the image said.

Gerraint paused before he spoke.  “Thank you.”

“I imagined you might want to rest after the Tor,” the image spoke again.

“I don’t think I can,” Gerraint answered honestly.  “I was thinking about having to kill Urien.  Such thoughts always twist my insides.”

The image manifested.  The god of the sea.  “Not your promise,” Manannan said.

“’Twas,” Gerraint insisted.  “Even if the words came from your Mother’s lips.”

Manannan nodded, slowly, and then the two just stood there for hours feeling the wind and the spray and watching the waves.  Gerraint could not be sure, but he suspected that under the hypnotic swells in the water, he may have slept for a while standing up.

M3 Gerraint: Tara to Avalon, part 1 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“My word.”  Peredur spoke first.  The elf maiden had fallen on top of him and appeared content to lay her head on his chest and smile.

“Up, girl,” Macreedy said.  “He may be injured.”

“I don’t think so,” Peredur said quickly.

“Everyone present?”  Arthur asked.

“All present, sir,” Bedivere said.  He already made the count.

“I say, though.  I never knew there was a hole in the old Tor.  What is this place we have gotten to?”  Mesalwig asked.  He seemed to have ruled Ireland out as impossible.

“Tara,” Trevor said, not doubting in the slightest as his eyes got big.

“Tara,” Uwaine said with plain certainty.

“Tara,” Gwynyvar said, a bit breathless.

“Dusty,” Gerraint said and wiped his fingers across one column.

“What say you, Macreedy?”  Gwillim asked, and then wished he hadn’t.  The glamour that made Macreedy appear as a man had gone.  His true elf nature showed fully evident, creepily evident as Trevor’s shriek indicated.  The same was true of the elf maidens.  Bedivere looked startled, even though he knew better.  Arthur and Gwynyvar already knew, and Lancelot surmised as much.  He had long since ceased to question such things.  Uwaine did not bat an eye, but Peredur asked sweetly if he could touch his lady’s ears.  She blushed as he did.  Gwillim looked at least momentarily terrified.

“Are we all being transfigured?”  Gwillim wondered and touched his person over and over.  “What bewitchery is this?”

Mesalwig surprised Gerraint by finally accepting things at face value.  “So, this is Tara,” he admitted at last, and he poked his finger at Gerraint.  “I always suspected there was something about you.  Meryddin suggested as much more than once.”

Before Gerraint could respond, there came a flash of blinding light, and fires burst up all around, though no one got burnt.  They heard the woman’s voice.

“Who dares desecrate the halls of Tara with mortal flesh?”  The goddess appeared, and in such glory even the great men of Christ felt the need to humble themselves on their knees.  Only Gwynyvar remained standing, though that may have been because she became petrified.  Gerraint stood, but he simply looked cross.

“Bridgid.”  Gerraint named the goddess.  “Come here.”  His voice sounded stern and clearly the goddess looked taken aback by this unprecedented response to her glorious presence.  “Come here.”  Gerraint spoke with some force.  The goddess hesitated, and then walked slowly in Gerraint’s direction, a most curious expression on her face.

“Why are you still here?”  Gerraint asked the question, and then he got more direct.  “You should have crossed over long ago with the others.  The time of Dissolution is passed.”

“What do you know of such things?”  Bridgid wondered.

“Rebellious child,” Gerraint said.  He saw her back arch.

“Who are you?  I am the goddess.  I decide what will be.  My will be done.”  Her ire was rising and the others, including the little spirits cowered.  But by then she got in Gerraint’s face, and he did not hesitate.  He slapped her hard enough to knock her to the ground, and the shock of her feeling his slap only got tempered by the sting in her cheek.

“Get thee to a nunnery, Ophelia,” Gerraint said, even as he went away and the Danna came to stand in his place.

“Mother?”  Bridgid looked up.  “Manannan said.  But I didn’t believe him.  Mother?”  Danna opened her arms and Bridgid rushed into them and immediately began to cry on Danna’s chest.  “I’ve been so alone, but for the Formor of few words and no grace.  Mother, help me.  I am tired.  I cannot keep the way any longer.  I want to go home.  Please.”  And Danna remembered how Bridgid had been left to guard the way to Avalon, and she understood in that moment what Gerraint had not understood.

“You failed, child,” Danna said and stroked Bridged’s hair gently from her eyes.  “But all is not lost.  I will close the way,” she said, firmly.  “And you must have a child.  Yes.  Kildare, I believe.  Then you will understand the value of a child in the hands of evil men”

“But…”

“Hush.  Then you can go home.  I promise, only make sure your child is a true child of the church.”

“Mother?”  It felt hard to say if Bridgid objected or became offended.

“I mean it.”  Danna shook her finger at the girl.  “You failed.  It is the only way.”

Bridgid lowered her eyes.  Her mouth did not have to say, “Yes mother.”  The sentiment was there.  Danna, meanwhile, had blunted the awesome nature of the goddess so the others were beginning to stir.

“You lived as the Danu.”  Gwynyvar gasped as she understood what had been hidden from her.

“The Don.”  Lancelot gave the continental name for the goddess.

“That explains a bit,” Arthur said, though he knew this already.

“Yes, well I was hoping I would not have to make my presence known,” Danna said.  “This is Gerraint’s life after all, and you must remember, he is as ordinary and mortal as any of you.”

“Not quite, I think,” Gwillim said.  He really had a hard time swallowing all that was happening.

“Oh, but mother.  Oh dear!”  Bridgid interrupted and then got quiet.  Danna became Gerraint once more and he leaned over and tenderly kissed Bridgid’s hot cheek, the one he had slapped in his unthinking anger.  It had been his fear for Enid and Guimier that ruled him for a moment, and Bridgid accepted that, even if she did not entirely understand it.  Bridgid’s mouth opened.  “But mother.”  She still called Gerraint by that name.  “I have done the most terrible thing.  I see that now.  I did not understand.  But that Abraxas asked so kindly.  I let the others through ahead of you.”  Bridgid braced herself, half expecting to be slapped again.

Gerraint merely stroked her cheek, gently.  “I know,” he said.  Danna had figured it out.  “Enid?”  It became a question.

“Oh, the Lady and child are fine.  Lovely.  I am so happy for you.”  Bridgid felt genuine about that.

“Go on.”  Gerraint said and let her go.  “Only raise your child in the Lord as well.  Then you will understand.  Then you can pass over.”

Bridgid had to swallow hard before she said, “I will.”  It was as near to a promise as one ever got from a god.

“Go on.  Rhiannon and Manannan will follow after,” Gerraint said.

“And Gwyn?”  Bridgid started to speak, but quickly bit her tongue.

Gerraint almost slapped his hand to his face.  Another one?

“Pleased to meet all of you,” Bridgid said quickly, though they had not been introduced.  She gave everyone her best smile and decided the better part for her was to back away.  She vanished, but that did not prevent Gerraint from shouting.

“Kildare!”  Perhaps she was still listening.

“I didn’t follow all of that.”  Bedivere admitted what most felt.

Gerraint sighed before he explained what he could.  “She was to guard the way to Avalon of the Apples to be sure it stayed closed to all but the gods,” he said.  “She failed at the end, when it mattered the most and let the others through ahead of us.”

“Kildare is penance.”  Arthur grasped at understanding.

Gerraint nodded.  “It is the only way.”

“But say.”  Gwillim had a question.  “Why have you been calling it Avalon of the Apples?”

“Because the real Avalon is an island apart.  This Avalon, the island of the apples is the island given to the children of Danna when the Celts first came up into the land.”  Gerraint said.  He began to walk down the long columned hall and the others followed.  The evidence that this place had been virtually abandoned for centuries was everywhere in the dark and dank hall.  “The Irish call the island Tir na-nOg.”

“The island of the living, the promises, the young, courage and honor; the land over the sea, the land over the water.  It has many names.”  Luckless spoke up.

“Hy Brassail,” Macreedy added.

“The treasures the men seek are called Celtic treasures, but in reality, they are not.  They are ever so much older than the Celts.  In fact, they were first put away when the Celts came up into the land.   The Gods also backed away from daily life among the people.  Some went underground, but some came to the island in the second heavens which had been given to them.  Avalon of the Apples.”

“I thought it was given to Manannan,” Trevor interrupted.

“Well, it is surrounded by the sea,” Gerraint responded, but he explained no further.  Then he shrugged.  “This was common in the last five hundred years or so before the time of dissolution.  Olympus was not seen much after Troy.  The Egyptians were not much in evidence after the collapse of the New kingdom.  The Middle East withdrew after Babylon fell to the Persians.”

“Dissolution?”  Gwillim was the one to ask.

“When the gods of old gave up their flesh and blood,” Gerraint said.  “The spirits remain active, but now they are deaf, dumb and blind, and work only as directed by the Spirit of the Most-High God.”

“The Lord has come.”  Once again, Arthur grasped at understanding.

“And so have we,” Gerraint said.