Untitled Story by Ayslyn Cerridwyn

        The wind swept through my hair, blowing its blonde locks to the east. I pushed it aside and continued to dig in to the hard dirt with my spade. I don’t remember why I agreed to come on this excavation with my father, but somehow I ended up in Scotland, digging side by side with him and his crew. Maybe it was not having Michael anymore, the loneliness eating away at my soul or the thought of having to work a part time job again just to pass the time, I don’t know. But I am here, clawing away at the dirt, brushing it away like so many memories I wish to forget. Growing up, I never spent that much time with my father. He was always away, dredging up the secrets of the past and putting them on display in some museum for everyone to view, dissect, and violate. Meanwhile, I was at home with my invalid mother who had not recover from my birth. We had a nursemaid who lived with us, and guess I could only call her mother in my heart. She was an elderly woman, jolly and fat, who cooked the best pancakes in the world. She would always wear her hair in a twist, not too loose and not too tight. She used to smell of cookies when I was little. But she died when I was 13 and my mother was taken to a rest home, so my father had to come home. He began teaching classes at the local college, but still spent more time with his work than me. I left home as soon as I could, moved in with a man I met in college, Michael. We were together for 2 years before he left me for Cindy Baker. So I went home again, and my father wanted me to spend time with him, but not let it interfere with his work. So I guess that’s why I came. T o get answers from him and resolve some issues with myself. To find who I was and what I wanted to be. Even though I had been studying English, I wasn’t sure if I wanted that to be my life. I felt hollow inside, like a geode, with many layers of dirt on the outside, but you had to crack it open to see the emptiness, surrounded by beautiful stones. Maybe I was beautiful on the inside, but couldn’t see it because it was too dark, and I had to wait to be cracked open. The only thing I knew was that my life had to change, irrevocably shift from what I was. But how does one initiate that change? Does it just happen, do you find some secret light inside yourself, or does something spur it on? Was my father looking for something to change his life in this dirt? Something to change the reality he lived in? That his wife is an invalid from giving birth to a child. Did he hate me for it? Is that why he spent so much time away? To close his eyes on his wife and his daughter, just to shut out the pain. I thought it despicable to do something like that to your family. That is no better than a coward’s walk, no better than putting a gun to your head. You are still running away from your problems without dealing with them. Or maybe he was just as lost and confused as I was, but never ready for the change. All I knew is that I was ready for that change, more than I had ever been in my life. Michael had been the only man I ever loved. He had been so sweet and romantic, all the things I had wanted in a man, but I guess I was not what he wanted. That was his choice, not mine, and maybe he was running as well. Running from the commitment a relationship as long as ours required of him. Well, whatever his reasons he was gone, and nothing I had said to him had changed his mind. So I ran away, with my father, looking at the world through different eyes, hoping that the change I so longed for would come.

    My heart suddenly filled with rage at the thought of all the pain my father and Michael had caused me. I took up my spade by the handle and stabbed it into the rock floor beneath me. I was stunned for a second at my outburst, then sighed out load. Suddenly, I felt the rock underneath me start to shake as it slipped out from it place in the floor. I let out a shriek as I fell down about 10 feet and slammed into a soft pile of dirt. I shielded my eyes as drifts of dust and dirt showered my face and let them adjust to the dark of the room. A room, that’s what it was, about twenty feet long and 5 feet wide with no windows. “Danielle!”, my father screamed from the hole in the ceiling above, “Are you alright?”. “Yeah, Daddy, I’m okay. Can you throw a flashlight now here? There’s some kind of room down here”. The air was stale and musty, with a slight stench infiltrating my nostrils. I couldn’t see anything outside of the small ring of light that streamed from above. I stood almost petrified, afraid to move less I find another hole in the floor or an animal that had wander into this space. “Here you go Danielle, we’re lowering the flashlight now!”, Brian, a student of my father, called out as he dropped a light on a rope. “Let me get this ladder tied down and I’ll be right down, Danielle!”, Daddy shouted. I flicked on the light and shined the beam around the room. It was enclosed on all sides by large pieces of stone mortared together. The floor was dirt and covered with hay and a small table sat in the corner with a small bed on the floor. I gasped as my light fell across a glint of white in the corner of the room. Slowly, the light revealed a skeleton curled up in the fetal position with a few scraps of fabric clinging to it. Daddy grunted and huffed as he climbed down the thin rope ladder behind me. “What is it Danielle?’, he asked. “Look, Daddy, a skeleton, over there behind the table”, I said. He turned on his own flashlight and began to wander over to inspect it himself. “It looks like this room has been sealed for a long time. Maybe it was craved out of the hill so that someone wouldn’t know it was here”, I postulated. “Yes, it does appear that way my dear. I have a hunch that this room has no been opened since it was originally sealed. By the look of the furnishings, I would say it was filled in the late 1400’s”, he sighed and wiped his face, “We need to get this room opened up so we can have more light and hopefully be able to safely remove these artifacts”. He tilted back on his hunches and looked around the room. I fell quiet as I spied what sat on the table. A leather bound book sat there, open and it’s pages covered with dust and dirt. I moved around slowly, my English major instincts drawing me to the pages. My father moved around as well and shown his light upon the book. “This writing appears to be old English”, he cleared his throat,” I cant read it myself, so we will have to send it off to the university for translation”. “No Daddy, that wont be necessary. I can read it fine”. “How can you read old English?”, he questioned me. “Well if you hadn’t noticed, I have been studying English for the last two years and I specialized in ancient English…”, my voice trailed off as the first few words danced in front of my eyes. Slowly, I drunk in the room and its precious treasures. “This is not a tomb, father, it’s a time capsule”.

    The brittle book and a few other treasures had been placed on a table in the main tent. The skeleton, identified only as a woman of 20 to 30 years of age, was no locked down in a wooden crate, ready to be shipped back to the university in the morning for analysis. No one even wanted to breathe on the fragile artifacts, for fear that they would crumble to dust. But my curiosity was peaked. I had slipped into the tent unnoticed, determined to get my hands on that book. Father said that he would send it off in the morning, and that I could begin translation on copies of the book after it had been treated. But I could not wait that long, besides, it would be a whole two weeks before I could touch it again. I had only caught a glimpse of the words of the book before, but they had sent my mind into tumbles of thought and visions. The best translation of what I had seen was coven of earth lovers, but I did not know some of the words that had been written. What could it mean? Was it a book about a coven of druids or some naturalists? I had to know. I sat down and very carefully opened the pages as to not damage the book and began to read.

    My name is Rhiona Nightflower, although that was not my Christian name at birth, but that name is not my true name. I was a midwife and healer in a village about 200 miles south of this sanctuary. I lived a peaceful life and was well know by the other villagers. Whenever someone was sick, they were always brought to me for help. I say this only to have realized that I was not a wicked woman, only that I became hated by those who once loved me. I had healed in that village for 6 turns of the year wheel and grew up for 12 in the previous one. My mother had passed to me the ways of healing ever since I was a young girl and had been an adept by the age of 11. The fires came first to that village, as soldiers of a new God rampaged the countryside. I saw them take my mother, beat my mother and eventually chain her to a post, where she was burnt as a witch and heretic. My mother forced me to leave before they came for her, but I watched long enough to see what they did to her. Then I ran, traveling by night for many days, until I came to the next village and made my home there. I practiced my healing, all the while afraid that the soldiers would return and take me to the fire as well. But as moons pasted and they did not come to my new village, I began to relax and resume my life. In this new village I did great things for its people. I was called Bridget by the villagers and I used my knowledge of herbs and remedies to cure many of the aliments that afflicted them. I lived in small building with two rooms, one for healing and one that I lived in with a young boy named Hollan. Hollan was a good boy that had lost his family to sickness and had no where else to go. He was but 13 years old, so I took him into my home and he helped me care for my patients. He would gather herbs and bring water when it was needed and do other odd jobs for me. He would also ferry messages for me and go shopping in the marketplace. You see, I soon became afraid again to go out of my home, for a young doctor moved into town, having gone to a university, and wanted to start a medical practice. Most of the town already trusted me and my skills, so the poor doctor was shunned. But he was not the type of man to take rejection easily.


More to come later!!!