The Rootless Isle
This was the last council before the Great Council which would take place at Year’s End. Like all council days, Nimerly kept herself inside. It had been a manner of coincidence or perhaps blessing, that her courses ended right before this time. Growing up, she’d heard a great deal of rapturous talk about the nature of women and the flowing of one’s courses, how they made women like the Goddess herself, but to Nimerly, since the age of fourteen, they had been bloating, bleeding, discomfort and weariness which were made better only by her seclusion from the business of the Rootless Isle.
As the oldest daughter of Viviane, the leadership had come to her immediately after the death of Coviane. Senaye, Ohean’s mother, was often gone from the Isle, and had never shown a desire to take her mother’s place. It was said that in the Rootless Isle every girl might not be an enchantress, but every girl was a priestess. This was not entirely true. What was more, some girls brought to the Isle had the talent for neither witchcraft nor the craft of a priestess. The Rootless Isle was school and finishing school and it wasn’t until the age of twelve or until a girl’s first bleeding that the finer points of magic and then, later, of the apprenticeship to the Goddesses was begun, but from the moment school began, at six, Nimerly was head of her year, and by the time she was sixteen, and in the midst of a particularly wearisome cycle where she could not rid herself of sluggishness and a headache, she was appointed head acolyte of all the girls going into the service of the Birch Goddess.
This evening she slipped the hoop earrings with their abstract owl designs into her ears, and she put the black cord hung with the golden key about her neck Upon her burgundy hair she placed the silver circlet, and then she came out into the anteroom of her house where her loose retinue was waiting. Meredith, her daughter in her blue and white gown, her twigged dreadlocks reset immaculately, Nesset and her younger sister Sorcha all the way from Southern March with her red headed daughter, Siona. The wind came in through the great stone windows and they could see in the valley where the women were gathering. They could hear the singing and they took it up:
Fairest Mother
I hear your singing
Fairest Lady
I hear your call
Our sweet Mother
We hear you calling
Holy Mother
Enfold us all
As they exited the front door of the house and descended into the valley where the women assembled, Nimerly, her sister, her daughter, her red headed cousins chanted:
“Auset, Hemace, Amana, Demeter, Arsane, Inte, Addiwak, Ivana…” All the Goddesses of their people, and the Mothers of other people long forgotten who, in the shadow of the Rootless Isle and its ancient mysteries were known to be the mothers and the daughters, the faces of she who is One Face the One Goddess.
Selu, Belecane, Ammatae, Kemeter, Asha, Sheradah, Itame, Thedater, Hama, Sayophan, If and Regan, Morgan, Atanna, Evan Ima Nada
They sang:
Fairest Mother
I hear your singing
Fairest Lady
I hear your call
Our sweet Mother
I hear you calling
Holy Mother
Enfold us all.
As she took her seat on the Stone Chair, Meredith placed her mother’s wand on her lap. It was of light wood, and old, one of the first she had made as a girl of fifteen when her Grandmother said, “A witch must find her power. Go out and pull your first wand.”
She sat, surrounded by her small retinue at the apex of a crescent of women. They were divided roughly into three groups, the Three Branches of the Tree over which she presided. There were the enchantresses of the Rootless Isle who had separated themselves from the Men of the Tower long ago. They were, in truth, derwydd and wizards as those men were, and their training and Orders corresponded, for the most part, to those men. They sent their daughters to the Tower sometime, and sometime the Tower sent their sons here. They had split up not in anger, but in a time of danger when the treasures and powers both held had been attacked. Well over seventeen hundred years ago, the sorcerer Akkrebeth, and his sister Nimue had separated the men from the women in order to preserve and to protect their power, and their magic.
Akkrebeth…. Who now is Ohean.
The next group, at the western horn of the crescent, were the women of the hedge, the various groups of magical women from all over the land who were loosely assembled in covens and taught each other the old inherited magic around fires at the full moon. Theirs was midwifery, house lore, the cures and simples. At the Great Council, this group would include even the Red Women, the witches far south in the land of Armor from whom the Princesses of the Desert.
Lastly¸ on the eastern horn, under their high brimmed, pointed hats were the Witches of the Heap. Though these women, who had not so much separated as arisen from the women of the Rootless Isle, were the only ones who called themselves witches, and they eschewed such terms as wizardess or enchantress or derwydd. But all the women here were, at the end of the day, witches. Nimerly, sitting on her stone stool, looking at the three Schools, rejoiced in her witchcraft, and in the solidarity of the sisterhood.
Now, from the Heap Witches, the white haired Semana lifted her head and sang, her voice ringing through the amphitheatre:
Return, return, return, return
Time to give all to the Mother
By the water, the fire,
earth and the air,
may the Mother bring us back
to her.
She has given
All earth and heaven
Return, return, return!
And they all sang in rounds and harmonies swooping around each other. The song would end when it was time to end, and the Council would speak of great issues when it was time, and vote on them as well, but the power, the energy, the unity had to be raised, and it was all raised first through the singing.
The music carried on until the sky turned black, and large stars, white, purplish blue, bruised the night, and when they finally calmed down, Nimerly rose, placing her wand on one of the great arms of the stone chair. She stretched her hands over her sisters and called out:
“By the water, the fire, earth and the air, may the Mother bring us back to her. May the old religion be ever new.”
She took up her wand, and now Meredith came forward and placed a small table in the middle of the gathering of what must have been about one hundred fifty women. There were always this many at a Council, though far more lived on the island. No one ever said, only this many of you may come, but it just seemed to work itself out that, at the most there were two hundred. The council lasted three days, and to be sure, different women came and went, but all the time there were never more than these.
“I have received word from my cousin, Ohean,” Nimerly continued, “that Prince Anson, long out of favor with our new King, has arrived on the Island of the Mages and undergoes the Testing.”
Murmurs of, “Well, will he be king? Will he depose Cedd? What will come of this?” or “How much longer will he and Ohean allow our people to be harmed?”, but Nimerly continued, “More than this, I cannot say.”
Now, one of the hedgewitches stepped forward and she picked up the wand.
“Sisters, I am Dissenbark from the village of Layton near Kingsboro. Before the death of King Anthal, it is said Ohean insured that King Caedmon could not move against us. But I know of this Cedd. Every woman, every cunning man by the road, and all apothecaries who practice the Art Magic know of this Cedd. He has the hatred of magic many of his ancestors had. Do you remember the Burning Times? He will not directly turn against us, but he is sure to look the other way while others do.”
“It would have been better for us if Anson had received the Crown,” called out one.
“It was the whole reason Essily went to King Anthal.”
“Sisters, enough,” Dissenbark called out. “We all know this, that Essily was a witch of the Rootless Isle, mighty in power. We all know how—foolishly perhaps=many of us looked with great hope to the reign of Anson, but all of that, it seems, is in the past—”
“Unless we, here, work a great magic!” cried out another one. “We could come together, all of our minds, all of our power, and force the new King’s mind.”
Dissenbark shook the stick, which meant she still had the power, but now, serenely, she saw a woman in a white hat, among the Witches of the Heap, holding out her hand, and so Dissenbark brought the wand to her, bowing:
“Sisters, what you are speaking of is bending a king’s mind by out power and such a thing is forbidden. Down such a road lies only destruction. Do you not remember that the first rule of power is power over oneself, and to take power over another is the road to ruin?”
There was much nodding, and even some applause over this, and the witch continued:
“I am Avreday of the Grey Order, so quickly did I have to quelsh this idea of ruining a new king’s brain, I had not the chance to introduce myself. I understand your fears, especially the fears of the hedgewitches. But now that one idea has failed, perhaps another one can be found.”
Nimerly came forward, and she took her own wand up. She brandished it about the gathering and said, “I do not know if one way has been found, but there are many ways, and there is one which may succeed.
“As you may remember, the wife of Sussail’s king is Queen Hermudis, and she is a princess of Armor, trained and of our number, as is her daughter, the newly made Queen Isobel. Some of you will doubtless remember her.”
Dissenbark Layton put up her hand, but when Nimerly extended the wand, the hedgewitch only shook her head.
“Lady, are you saying that no one knows this queen and this princess are of us… are like us?”
“Did you know?” Nimerly asked her.
“No, Lady.”
“Then the secret was well kept, and may it remain so,” Nimerly said.
“And in the time between this proposition being made reality, and the return of Prince Anson, may the Mother of Mountains and Horned One keep all witches safe,” Dissenbark added.
“Let it be so,” Nimerly murmured. “Let it be so.”
