The bear came in, sat beside them, stood on hind legs. Lily watched as Glynis danced with him carefully at first, then with more movement, more love, more ecstasy.
Their plain forest clothes shimmered deep colours, red and burgundy, green and purple, gold and silver. It became a magnificent occasion. Even the bear was wearing a fine embroidered silk vest, shining in the gypsy fire light. It was a transfiguration. Music and drumming filled the forest with familiar magical rhythms.
The women in the circle were fully present with them now, their fire was the same fire, their forest was the same forest. Lily couldn’t tell if she and Glynis and the bear had come to the women or if they had come to her. They were all standing, singing and drumming. Between them and the central fire, Glynis and the bear were dancing round and round, Glynis’ skirt turning colours as it nearly glanced the fire, her arms outstretched nearly slapping the faces of the standing women. And the bear’s nose glistens in fire light, claws magically flashing gold and silver, eyes projecting a tremendous projecting love as he caught the eye of those old women standing, moving, clapping and singing, jingling their shakers and tinkling bells, striking their ancient decorated drums.
Round and round they all circled the fire, and above the treetops, the night sky circled. It was right, the world was right. The drums stopped. One woman came forward holding an ancient copper plate before her. She held it hard, it’s inscription facing the fire, then turned and held it in each direction. Then back to the fire before wrapping it again in its old worn ceremonial blanket.
As she held the plate, the bear bowed to the fire, shrugged off the vest, and padded back into the forest on all fours again. Glynis came back to sit beside Lily at the fireside. Their view of the old women was obscured by smoke. The fire had shifted, they moved their seats to the other side. But when the weeping began she had no way of stopping it. Some smoke must have got into my eyes, she thought, but the waves hit her heart over and over again, and Lily was truly weeping and keening.
“Why is it happening?” she asked Glynis, but she was nowhere to be seen. Lily realized she was alone and she saw no one – as she turned to the east, to the south, to the west and to the north. Up, down, not a soul, or a plant or a being. It was as if she was in a large empty sphere in the very centre of a misty planet or place unknown. Instinctively she closed her eyes and dreamed of home. Instinctively she called out for her mother. And when she opened her eyes she was home in her own bed. She hadn’t been gone for years, only a few weeks.
They had all heard stories, so when Lily returned they knew. And when her grandmother was dying, she told Lily the way to go to the woodland cottage, and the best way to hear when she might be coming. Usually a certain type of black bird with red on its wings would arrive a day or two before. Then a dream would come – a specific dream of gold and green. These two signs meant Lily was to take food and drink to the hut, prepare firewood and water, make it ready. Lily was the youngest ever to have taken on such a task but she was more than prepared.
“I saw the bear,” she told her grandmother, who nodded and smiled. It was tremendous, for only one in 100 years could ever know the bear — only one. Her Lily. When she grew older, Lily spent nights in the woods, sometimes in the hut, sometimes near it sitting by the stream in the evenings.
It was there, one night, when the moon was a silver comma in the dark sky, that Glynis came to her. She stood on the other side of the stream with the moon’s crescent just above her head, she was aughing and holding out her hands in warmest greetings. Lily stepped over the stream toward her, but Glynis wasn’t as close as she had seemed. Already she was fading back into the woods. So naturally Lily called her and went closer ever closer.
Then she saw the wounded deer, lying by the forest fence. It’s eyes cried out for help, and Lily brought water from the stream but she knew it was a lost cause. So she sat on the ground with her back resting on the fence, holding the deer’s head on her lap, singing to her as she saw the light leave his eyes. The deer’s body emptied of its gentle energies and the forest saw.
“Glynis!” she called out into the empty forest night and up to the crescent. The deer was disappearing, for it was a magical apparition sent from the being of the deep forest.
She went over the fence into the place that had called her and she began to live again. Just like before, when she apprenticed with Glynis as a child so many years ago, Lily remembered everything, how to live, how to find the forest huts, how to call people into the clearing, how to spread out under the moss to rest.
She never saw Glynis in all that time and never knew anything more about life in her own village. She didn’t know if there was a woman in her village who tended the hut – for she hasn’t seen anyone at all when she was there. She only knew of her grandmother and herself.
But then she called her cousin, Suzanne. A delightful girl much younger than her – she had babysat Suzanne and taken her near the woods, telling her the story is her grandmother had told her. After Suzanne moved away from the village, in thought, Lily scanned the area and found where her cousin was living. She went to her that night by dream travel, and told her of her new mission to preserve the hut and prepare it for Glynis from time to time. To test it, she went to the hut and found that Suzanne had placed food, water and firewood there. She knew it was good. Lily ate the food and lit her fire so Suzanne would know that her work had been received.
But still Glynis didn’t appear. In dreams Lily saw her emerge from the body of the deer, with the deer’s head on her own like an elaborate head dress. The antlers were wound with multicoloured wool, and there were bells attached, shiny silver bells shaped like tiny antlers. At the sound, she was dancing in a stately series of deliberate movements. Night after night Lily saw this dream-Glynis dancing in the deerhead dress by fire light, or by the stream, or under the moon, in a clearing. She walked through the forest with the bells tingling by day. At night she danced.
Many years passed, and Lily became integral to village life. Her knowledge of the plants’ medicines was revered and she had trained a few assistants to help her with gathering in the old ways. Some time ago she had fallen in love with a village boy a blacksmith son named Bjorn. Together they raised five children. Two became blacksmiths, two became plant healers and one was all alone in her interests and destiny, for she was a dreamer, a seer and storyteller. Whenever a traveller came through town she asked so many questions. In this way is she learned about the world, and shared all she knew with the family, then others in the village. Soon, on all occasions, she was asked to stand and speak, and tell a tale of far away. But one person she had never asked was her own mother.