Cradled In the Mist and Moonlight of Her Druid Nights
I make my bed in a patch of clover perchance to dream. And I dream of her under the stars on a summer night. There she is the woman whom I have known but whom I cannot name. Often, I have walked the desert sands with her in Africa where we tread lightly upon the parched earth. We stroll the Sahara as pilgrims in search of an oasis to drink cool water and share dates from the palm tree that will shade our journey from the hot eye of the sun.
But on this night, we are Irish and she makes her bed with me upon the clover. She whispers to me of making this place our home. Wherever we are together we are citizens of the earth whose home is together by the hearth which would one day warm us in cold winter nights. But still, I cannot not name her. Yet she lives in my heart this ghost lover who lays with me.
Always there just out of sight is the weaver upon whose loom the silver threads of my dreams are woven. Her I can name. She Aibell the nimble-fingered goddess who orchestrates my vision quest. But tonight, she is here arrayed in her dress of spider webs. Her coterie of faeries is always close by her dancing in unison under the Irish moon.
“True to my reputation in Irish folklore, I am the faerie Goddess of love and fire. As such I am often a matchmaker. I brought you and your true love together centuries ago. But you my dear are a lucky lad. Your true love has requested to reunite with you. As always, I will grant her request. I get all misty eyed and melt into a puddle of acquiescence in the presence of eternal flames.” Upon Aibell’s words and I awaken like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.
I remove my frock to bathe in a spring-fed pool. But as I draw closer, I spy a woman behind the shrubbery drinking from the same pool. I approach slowly as not to frighten her. I begin with, “Sorry to behold your nudity. Most maidens run wild as the Irish Ivy here. But you don’t seem to mind.”
She could be any woman out of a thousand. Yet there is a ghost of a chance that she is the wraith who haunts me in my dreams. But if she is another and seduces me then woe betide me, for I will have banished myself to a life with a stranger. Morning wonder sighs through my heart which throbs only for her.
Soon the noon sun casts its warm rays upon her bare body. Her long curly red tresses of hair fall down around her shoulders in a luxuriant canopy.
Clouds pass over us casting shadows. The clouds are fringed with a lace of fiery golden light as they block the sun. When they pass, we are once more immersed in a bath of solar warmth. I watch silently as the sun makes its path across the sky. Soon the sun sinks below the rise of land. We are immersed in a sea of darkness. So far, she shows no sign of recognition of me. If words were gold, she would be a miser.
She gazes at her reflection in a pool illumined by the flash of fireflies as Helios dips below the horizon. Venus emerges in the night sky. It is a bright white gem shining in the east. The summer night breezes are warm and brush against my skin softly. The full moon rises above us. It casts its pale-yellow light on my fevered skin. I feel warmth rise from my belly only to swell through my arms, legs, hips, and thighs. I sink into a blissful sleep.
The sun rises in the sky. We walk through green grass by the artesian well water. I feel the moist earth under my bare feet. I ask her, “Is your native tongue Gaelic or were you schooled in Latin by the Romans?” The only sound is birdsong. I stick my tongue out. She mimics me by pointing her tongue at me. I press my fingertip upon the tip of her tongue and repeat my question but her only response is “ahhhhh.”
I tell her, “Though I don’t recollect your name, it seems like I know you from somewhere.” If she is the woman in my dream, she may also know of our sojourn in Africa. So, I sketch sand dunes and a palm tree in the mud. She grabs a stick and inscribes an Egyptian ankh in the mud. Memories surface in my soul like bubbles and I draw a man with the head of a jackal whom in a flash of recollection I recognize as Anubis the guide to the Egyptian underworld. Her eyes open and her soul light shines through them. Then she puts her stick down and tears form in her eyes. I don’t know whether she is crying for love or despair. My heart sinks. Has her love for me since ancient times withered like grape leaves too long unwatered?
“I took liberties by gazing upon your bare body. I presumed the women here cared not a whit if men saw them naked as a shamrock in the forest. This may be the cause of your silence. You have my apologies.”
I take her hand, hold her finger in the mud, and with it I etch ‘Lugh’ in the muddy soil. She smiles like the risen sun. She repeats, “Lugh, Lugh, Lugh.” I blush and she touches my cheek.
She addresses me, “You surmised correctly that being naked in front of a strange man was the source of my quiet. But you are no longer a stranger. What moniker do you go by now?”
I reply, “Lugh is my name.”
“I go by Brigitte these days. From Egypt to Ireland, we always find each other no matter how far apart on the planet we are born. I hope you don’t mind that I rent my clothes and tied the rags to a tree leaving me bare as a rowan in winter. I was on a pilgrimage to the spring that feeds this pond which any true Celt must know is a cloutie well. This is my way of honoring the spirit of the well and thereby bringing the luck of the Irish to this lass and any passersby such as yourself. But enough of my babbling, tell me what brought you here.”
“My travels had been along the eastern shore of our fair island. The pull of the western sea drew me here.”
The sun finds its way across the ancient path of the sky. Unlike the fireball, we do not sleep with the shades of dusk.
Brigitte leads me into a patch of clover that bears a haunting resemblance to the one upon which we made our bed together in my dream. She lays down upon the soft clover like a bride for her groom whose only dowry needed is her.
Smoke from aboriginal funeral pyres rises on the horizon. The incense of burning bodies wafts on the moist breeze. The fragrance of the distant burning bodies reminds me that the flesh is fleeting like the wind or a whisper of love in the night.
She says, “I have always been sensitive to the brushstrokes of the shaman when he painted me blue for our Druidic rites of spring. The touch of the brush on my bare skin illuminated in the moonlight made me feel more alive than I have ever felt. Please, dye me before we die.”
“Though I illustrated manuscripts in my youth, I have no dye or brush.”
“I already have prepared blue dye from the Woad plant in anticipation of such an evening as this. You will find it in the Mortar by the clover patch where the pestle already has done its work. And the artist’s tool you need is there as well.”
She lies on her stomach, still as a blade of grass on a windless night and for just a moment her bottom quivers perhaps from nervousness or maybe excitement I can’t tell which. But the moment passes and she regains her composure. I sit beside her and she is motionless as though mesmerized by the feel of me tracing swirls upon her skin.
I dip the brush in the Woad puddle and paint “Celtic Tree of Life” on one scapula and a “Trinity Knot” on the other. My river of art flows down her back as shamrocks take shape from the dye on my brush upon the canvas of her derriere skin.
She gets excited and says, “You stained a good luck sign on my bottom! Your tracery upon my skin feels like when a girl drew her name upon my hand with her quill. It feels like you are writing a love note upon and to me.”
After the ink dries, I take my treasured book of spells out of my knapsack. I reply, “This is a book of spells for any occasion. I consider this to be the right one.”
“Are you the sole proprietor of your spells? Because exclusivity will be in the past. Besides, My Gaelic is so rusty my responses might give you tetanus. But you know, one day my dream is for all the paper books to be recycled into posters for husbands and wives lost to nefarious home-wreckers.”
“Yes, that way the spouses could face off their competitors on hopefully even ground.”
“Think of all the trees felled in our ever more denuded Irish forests all to build armories for our wars,” she says.
“Our woodlands are the lungs of the earth. To what useful purpose do our wars serve? It is time for sanity on this planet lest we perish” I say.
“Oh, and don’t get me started on honeybees. They have a utopian matriarchal society with the queen bee at the center. And they are the key to the pollination of fruits and some vegetables.”
“The male drones meet death before their lives have truly begun.”
She says, “Yes but they do so in ecstasy with the queen.”
“Well aside from their macabre but necessary mating ritual what is the trouble in bee land?”
“The vinegar our farmer’s use as a pesticide is wreaking havoc on the drone’s potency. The drones, whose primary role is to mate with the queen, are becoming impotent.”
“Where on earth did you learn so much about bees?”
“I read the book ‘Naturalis Historia’ by the Roman author Pliny the Elder. Sadly, that was his last book before Vesuvius consumed his mortal coil.”
“We think alike on this issue and others to I bet.”
She looks back at me with a wicked grin. Our dance of words opens a door. “There is a deed repository nearby where I worked once upon a time. As a worker in a civil records office, I surmise that I am a document you could check out for whatever legal proceedings you might need me for. Would you like to check me out and take me home? You can only have me for one the duration
of the court proceedings.”
“Don’t I get renewals?”
“Unlimited renewals as long as you keep me in good condition. You know it’s just you and me alone here. Now, please recite some love spells to bind me as your lady.”
I reply, “You were forged by the blacksmith of the dungeon Lord with iron in your veins and fire in your heart. Your molten love was to be given shape by an anvil.”
“Your recitation is quite beautiful.”
“When Orion ran across the Irish hills your cast iron feet caught fire and found flight. They became light as a flame dancing on the range in search of the only sustenance a woman can thrive on.”
She says, “And what, pray tell, would this be that is the sole provender for a woman such as I?”
“For women, love is the moan of Danu, Goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, that lingers for millennia.”
She pouts, “I should hope love lasts for you men longer than a wink of a maiden.”
“Longer than the stars above for men like me.”
Giggles of delight are born from her burgundy lips. She says, “I am a bit drunk now, pardon my mirth.”
I say, “But you haven’t been drinking?”
She replies, “I am drunk from this encounter and am intoxicated by your bookish charm. Though you are well versed, your fingernails are those of a woodsman, rough and unhewn. When we consummate our love, I want you to pinch my bottom for me being Irish but not wearing green like the men in the tavern did when I was a barmaid.”
Fireflies blink on and off like stars in the Galactic night. Our little-winged lanterns illuminate the trail to a bed of moss softened more so by the welcome of a patch of clovers.
On the rise in the land, the flames of the funeral pyres glow as she leads me into realms of light and darkness.
Her touch is the rich earth that nourishes my roots. Her body is the open flower craving my pollen. She opens each petal of my heart with gentle persistence and lays bare my center. She gently cradles my most secret self-holding the vulnerable egg of my deepest feelings. She tenderly strokes the nexus of my sensate swell.
Our floating flashbulb friends illuminate us imprinting my retinas. Our tail haloed friends blink merrily to the tune of her deep-throated warble to let me see the passion play on her face as though she were a soul rising in ecstasy from purgatory into heaven. When her reminder to wear green comes as promised courtesy of my claws, she howls like the wind across the moors.
And the years pass as our faces grow wrinkled. Simple tasks fill the hours. We walk the memorized paths from the seashore to our home in the hills. My life as a fisherman brings us sustenance and income. Though Brigitte has fished from the beach she desires to go out on a boat with me to experience for her own self offshore fishing.
So, we take to the ocean in our currach with my crew rowing us so far out that a storm capsizes us into a grave that has no name. But my love and I find ourselves sailing a heavenly sea until we are welcomed ashore by those who went before us.
There, the fish swim freely as I become a farmer whose crops feed us in this new earth. One night my wife hears a knock on the door. We are told our lease on this land has expired and we must move on. There is no need to bundle our woolens as we lock up our home and part ways with the hope that the life we made together will find a new lease.
Once more I am in the world of similitudes. And Queen Aibell with her merry band of faeries greets me. I follow her through a magic forest where dreams are reality. My beloved is there and I feel her spirit touch me like an autumn leaf whose colors are those of love.
Brigitte addresses Aibell. “You do conjure the loveliest dream. To be here with Lugh gazed upon by the watchful eyes of you and your band of merry makers is a delight. But why is it that being garbless with Lugh witnessed by your troupe in bedroom sport doesn’t feel immodest at all?”
Aibell parleys, “Chalk it up to your wild Irish spirit that cannot be vanquished even by death.”
Brigitte replies, “I am an Irish lass after all. What need have we wild women of the moor for such a gratuitous thing as garb? Yet are you not embarrassed to witness our intimate moment?”
“My dear I am the friend of lovers everywhere. I have not only witnessed thousands of such amorous rendezvous but have been a gentle guide. When the fires of passion grow weak, I stoke them. How could I feel ashamed to be the marital aid for lovers in desperate need?”
“What will be our next destination teacher?”
“Where would you two like to go?”
Brigitte’s mirth is irrepressible. “One more life in Ireland pretty please.”
I enjoin, “Yes, I vote for Ireland too.”
Brigitte giggles and tells Lugh, “We can go au naturel by a pond like when we first met in our last incarnation.”
I reply, “First impressions are lasting.”
Aibell says, “Then the Emerald Isle it is. Shamrocks and heather for you two.”
I interject, “And mead, plenty of mead.”
Brigitte replies, “Aibell you are such a dear, giving us our choice.”
Queen Aibell’s inimitable wit comes to the fore. “I always was the torch singer of your dreams.”
So Lugh watched her bathing, and Bridgette thought it was ok to gaze upon her. That is nice. Then, when they took the boat ride and died together, (aww) At the end, they decided where to be reincarnated, wrapped it up nicely, and the fact that they said the Emerald Isles, I smiled at that.
Love your observations on my story my friend. Much appreciated. Yes this was a kind of romance through the centuries. Glad the ending made you smile. Thank you so much.
John