Winter Solstice by hakukamizaki via www.DeviantArt.com

Unspeakable Quiet

Gwen pulled aside the deerskin door and went out into the night. The winter solstice neared and she wanted to see the stars. She pulled her shawl close, the night bit through her woolen dress. A few steps from the door her night vision cleared and the stars sprang into view.

She drew in a deep breath, remembering the lessons of Bodecia. “Look to the North Star, Gwen,” the old woman had told her. “Center yourself, feel the earth beneath you and the sky wheel above.”

That was two years ago, when Gwen was twelve. She loved the lessons the old priestess had shared. The clan was small; many of the men and women had been dragged off for Roman slaves when the local War Lord, called King, by the Romans, bartered his people for Roman favor. The priestess did her best to raise the few children left. She was over thirty-five and already gray haired.

Gwen swallowed her anger and worked to center herself. Bodecia had died last winter, just after Solstice, from a racking cough that no amount of willow bark or cherry bark tea could cure. The cold bit at her earlobes and nose as she stood, face up to the North Star, doing her best to feel the Great Wheel above her. The Romans claimed all the land around, forbidding the Summer Solstice great hunt. Not that her clan had a young man capable of being the Huntsman. There were only small boys left after the last Roman slave raid.

A tear formed in the corner of her eye and she dashed it away. Bodecia had told her not to feel sorry for herself when she lamented the loss of her parents and the restrictions the King made as he bent his knee to the invaders. “It’s the way of the world, little one,” she told Gwen. “The Romans believe that men are the leaders and women are cattle, fit only to bear sons. Fight, find a way to hold onto our customs.”

A cold breeze blew and clouds skittered across the night sky blotting out the stars as they passed overhead. How do I fight? My training just began when Bodecia died. I’m here with a handful of children and an old man and woman who are too worn to help. She stood, mind focused on that thought and connected with the Earth and the sky.

A feeling of warmth flowed through her. The sky danced with color rarely seen in her short life. Pictures flowed through her mind. Some were memories from her childhood. She saw the local druid chanting in the oak wood nearby, the entire clan circling him, chanting in return. The War Leader and his Queen, one warm summer afternoon, sharing a stag with the village and everyone dancing until long after the child, Gwen, had fallen asleep at the edge of the bonfire. New pictures formed, the Romans riding through the village on their way from the sea to the Queen. The War Leader and Queen on the battlefield, fighting the Roman cohorts, the Queen speared through the heart as she charged the Roman lines.

Gwen knew these were visions sent from the Gods. She had been only a child of ten when the Queen had died. The Romans had chosen a new wife for the now King, one not druid, unable to lead her people. The country suffered as the King, glutted with sorrow, sank weary to his copper sheathed stool and stayed there.

Another vision came, the countryside green and plowed and quiet. A tall white building as she’d never seen before made of wood. Atop it, a cross, the same cross the Romans used to execute their criminals. People chanted inside and a feeling of peace flowed over her. No one looked hungry or cold. This was the sign. Peace was needed, freedom from Warlords and Romans. Then the fields could be tilled and food grown for everyone.

In her trance, the Earth below her and the sky above were forgotten in the unspeakable quiet that flowed through her whole being. The old ones found her in the morning, unconscious on the ground, her wool clothing covered with frost.

“You shouldn’t have been out in the cold, child,” the old woman said after they took her inside to her pallet. “What were you thinking?”

“A lesson of Bodecia’s,” Gwen whispered, still hoarse from the cold. “I had a vision.”

The woman clicked her tongue. She knew Bodecia, they’d grown up together. The power wasn’t in her so she never studied the druid way. She handed the girl a mug of hot tea. “What did you see?”

Gwen sighed, remembering. “Peace. Plenty. No war.”

The woman snorted, she’d not seen peace in the land since the Romans had come twenty winters ago. “How can there be peace, child? The Romans want our land, our tin, our bodies for slaves. There will be no peace until they’re gone.”

“They will be gone, someday.” Gwen sipped the tea. The old woman had dropped a little mint into the mix of rosehips and raspberry leaves. It helped clear her head. “We need to prepare for the next ones to come. The ones in black. Then there will be peace.”

“Black, eh,” the woman repeated. “Better than the blood red the Romans wear.”

“They’ll carry the cross, the one the Romans use to execute. We must be ready to join them.”

“Why would they use that as a symbol?” Raised in the old ways, the woman understood the importance of symbols.

“I don’t know,” the girl told her, blue eyes wide with the memory of her vision. “I only know it’s so.”

Made Leader, she prepared the tiny clan. Decades later, on Gwen’s deathbed the first rumor arrived of men in black, the symbol of a cross hanging around their necks. She told her son, “Welcome them. They will be our salvation.” She died that night, in the unspeakable quiet.

The End

998 Words

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