Magdalen Rising Read Online Free Page B

mountain shapes.
    Growing pains, my mothers had explained the aching to me. How big would they get, I wondered? They already overflowed my palms. And when would I bleed? My mother’s stock answer,“all in good time,” was worse than no answer at all. I also did not appreciate their jokes about torches flaming at both ends. That’s right; my pubic hair had grown in as bright as the hair on my head. I can only be thankful that they did not know the story of Moses and the Burning Bush or I never would have heard the end of it. Clearly they were guilty of great parental crimes. They did not take me seriously enough or regard with sufficient awe the volcanic changes in my body. Worst of all, they knew things that I did not, things that they could not or would not teach me. Today, I resolved
as I shook the last drops from my fiery thicket, nothing would stop me. I was going to find that valley. I’d waited long enough.
    Luck was with me. After we milked the goats and ate our oatmeal stirabout, my mothers fanned out: two planting barley; another two pruning the orchard; two in the forge mending spears; and two more out on the moors gentling the wild horses. I took care to spend some time with each pair. That’s the advantage of having so many mothers. By the time I’d made my rounds, each pair could assume I was with another. Before midday, I was on my way, the pockets of my tunic stuffed with flat, round oat cakes. By the middle of the afternoon, I had reached the edge of my known world.
    The boundary place was mysterious enough itself: a grove, primarily of oak, that had been growing in the sheltered center of the island ever since this isolated bit of earth had surfaced from sea into air. Who knows how the acorns got there? The spoor of some prehistoric flying boar? Or perhaps a voyager had landed, traveling with a herd of swine. Our own pigs rooted about in this wood from Beltaine to Samhain, and I’d helped drive them back and forth. The day I ran away, the trees were not yet in full leaf, though some had baby leaves, perfectly formed, that looked almost comical in contrast to the massive limbs and trunks.
    I decided to rest for a moment and eat some of my oat cakes. I’d need all my strength to cross the invisible border. It was very quiet in the oak wood. When I’d been here with my mothers, I’d noticed that our voices had sounded unnaturally loud, yet also flat, as if the wood absorbed any floating vibrations. Or as I’d put it then: “The trees are listening to us.” Eavesdropping. Now the sound of my own chewing roared in my ears. I was glad of the burbling indiscretion of a small stream that meandered nearby. Politely offering part of my oat cake to the grove, I took a drink, then rose. I made my body as compact and unyielding as I could and marched straight to the edge of the grove. Twice the power of my mothers’ spells hurled me backwards. The third time, I dropped onto my belly and slithered through like a snake. I stood and looked back. “Don’t tell!” I whispered to the trees. Then I turned, my breasts pointing towards Bride’s, and walked on.
    Hers were more massive than I’d imagined. They loomed above me, endlessly pouring blue-white milk into the bowl of sky. Still a child in my perceptions, I thought I must be almost there. For hours I scrambled up a long, gradual slope through patches of heather and clumps of furze, leaping many brackish tarns, and still the mountains remained incomprehensibly
remote. Nor was I prepared for the way they appeared to shrink from me when I did get close. I felt disoriented, and the path seemed much less obvious. When I turned and looked back over the way I’d come, I got a shock.
    The oak grove had disappeared behind a swell of land. I could not see the orchard or our fields. I had never been so far from the sea in my life. The distance made it appear strangely silent and motionless. A cool wind