The Remembering
She is called out into the brief sharp days of mid-winter. It’s the sharpness that calls her and walks her footfall by footfall. The walking turns her step by step, and step by step re-calibrates her compass.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
Through widening circles she follows the winter trails. feeling her way through the old years’ runnels of now blackening summer bracken. Pathways are opening and re-emerging.
‘cross and follow, cross and follow’
She moves under the water heavy skies, a new made creature of the moor following the trail of deer and badger, of fox and stoat, listening through the darkness for the echo of the great she bear.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
The tender footfalls in the dark begin to gather together and emerge as a map of the fading trails. The ancient paths are lit from above by the constellations of the stars. She is guided by the points of light that shimmer in the winter cold granite, a shimmering coverlet that cradles the roaring groaning darkness of the deep moor. Walking the coverlet of stars takes her through and through, meeting and parting from herself, ending and beginning again in each moment.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
As she walks, scales and feathers, claws and hair fall away from the old dream of her existence, an unknowing is beginning, an unlearning of a body. The dark earth is calling, the scent is whispering to her to follow, her nostrils fill with the soft fecund perfume of all that has past, of all that is present and of all that is still to become.
Four limbed now she is moving over the earth shedding the old skin. Shoulder blades newly glide as panther, flipper of seal slips her under the level of a gaze, tail of young black colt flicks into the wind, oily stench of she bear emits from her skin, she gasps for breath through her own stink.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
She is held, she is held by the mountain depths of the mother, held amongst the valley folds of the mother’s belly, she takes her place amongst the unborn curled in the darkness of the vast mother womb. Fierce weather moves all round them and it tugs the turning of the cycles. For nights and days and days and nights she turns amongst the multitude of others buried deep within the body of the mother. They are being sung by the songs of the mother as they sleep through the cavernous nights in the deep ocean belly. Murmurings of the ancestors join the mother songs that warm and feed them, filling their bones as they sleep, the old tales seeping into their marrow.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
After aeons it seems, having lost all time but the moon, she becomes aware of a stirring entering the depths of her dreams, she is being called up from the depths, pulled with the sounds as they rise to the surface. She climbs the valley sides following the sounds upward up and out of the valley folds. She crawls out animal blooded, animal bodied into the early light, she is clothed in a new and delicate translucent skin. As she emerges, the mother, in readiness, holds out a warm covering, a cloak of moss gaze hue, lined with sky. She is enfolded in the robe of earth and sky.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
The old ones have been waiting for her and gather about to welcome her, gather about her in their decrepit beauty. Their toothless mumblings enter her ears, old old stories to map her way, to map her way and to call in The Remembering. She gladly receives the muttered stories, she breathes them deep into her lungs, their scent curls around her.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
Now….Deep under the sky ocean there is a stirring of the ancient fire hags. They are rocking gently at first, while mouthing the old stories that they offer to the fire, their great empty orifices emit sparks as their lungs work like vast bellows to build up the flames. As the fire builds, fuelled by nettles, by thistles, by twigs and by driftwood from across the oceans, she hears a great creaking and a groaning as the great old trees are now on the move, their deepest roots unfurling from the earth. The trees uprooting in great numbers willingly fling themselves into the growing broiling furnace of the fire, they joyfully hurl themselves from the mountain tops and from the valley sides to join the mounting heat of the burning raging throng.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
The old old women groan as they, creaking and moaning, straighten their ancient limbs and take to their feet in honour of the fire and in honour of the trees, and they slowly begin to turn between the heavens and the earth, their ancient bodies are softening with the heat of the fire. Loosened now, their wild movements leap with the flames, shadows are rising and falling and the hags are dancing and dancing, calling in all else that is to be remembered. Great flashes of light hiss and spit form the sky. She finds herself moving to the song of the fire and joining the ancient hags in their dance of remembrance, as one of them, she is one of them.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
They dance the days and moons, they fly the thirteen turns of the moon and another thirteen and another thirteen more, one thousand nights are drummed through their hearts and through their feet. After myriad nights the fire falls back into itself, the ancient trees are mightily transformed into silver ashes, the old ones coo and call, whisper and sigh, they sing and chant and drum our drums as they read the silver of the ashes. They sing the ashes, fill great bowls with the songs of the ashes. They turn and fold and paint the stories of the ashes upon their ancient skins. They move out far and wide painting the earth, renewing the world around them with the silver of the ashes. Where the ashes fall, colour is returning to the deep dark lightless places and into the lifeless and forgotten places.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling
Hush hush hush now….We hear frozen hearts begin to thaw, begin to beat again in tune with the circles and cycles of life. We sit quiet, enter the stillness within the embers on the fire, our bodies silvered.
We are warmed.
The remembering begins as a scent uncurling