Our Liminal Inheritance, part III
A Tale of Wild Roots and Belonging
This is part three of what some might call a ‘Fairy Tale’, which will be told around this Story Hearth in four parts. You can go back and read part one or part two.
‘Our Liminal Inheritance’ was born as a small tale within a much greater Story, a novel I am currently incubating, slowly and in increments, as it keeps revealing to me layer upon layer of a complex web across dimensions and parallel realms…
This Tale had its own mind about how it wanted to be told; more than once, it wrestled with my mind and pen, surprising me with curious shifts in narrative voice & the strange pathways it lead me down… I did my best to surrender, to let it have its way with me. And now, it is done. The Tale is ready to be told, ready to go out beyond my hearth and cozy corner, and do what tales are meant to do. That part, I know, is not for me to meddle in.
If you feel drawn to the magic and warmth of this little Story Hearth in The Mystic Corner, you may, in time, encounter more secret tales and glimpses, backstories and myths from that Greater Story, which has yet to tell me its True Name. At least, that is my hope. Though I am merely the messenger, and alas, can make no promises…
When the sap starts rising in spring time, every red-blooded creature quickens, an intimate arousal of viridescence deep in the living marrow of hollow bone; it begins with a lifting of eyes and noses to the sun and the winds, the taste of memory on a sharp breeze.
When the sap starts rising in the trees of the wild world, our human blood will take up the chant and soar alongside it, a paroxysm of aliveness to warm not only flesh and bones; it is the soul that sings most arduously and feels the heat, the surging of heart-blood and tree-juice, the audible ecstasy of life…
To creatures such as Noleen, the song of green sap breathes with a gravity that will not be denied. In the spring of her own quickening into womanhood, the roar and rush of it through her veins is nearly deafening, a torment of indistinct longing.
She follows the pull, retracing the footsteps she has walked so often before as a child, over the hills ambling up behind their croft and land, over the beck which marks the boundary into that other world she feels so keenly; she doesn’t know what is waiting there for her or why - she only knows it is waiting, and beckoning, more insistent and impatient now than ever before.
Spring has come early this year, though the high hills are yet crowned in white, and even down in the sheltered hollows patches of snow still cling to the shade beneath boulders and trees.
Noleen steps carefully, reverently; everywhere she looks, dense drifts of snowdrops push their cheery heads up through damp, cold soil around trees still frigid and bare. The sight of the first snowdrops of the year always makes Noleen weep and rejoice all at once. She feels an innate affinity with their unapologetic impatience, the irrepressible urge to throw all caution to the wind and emerge from deep within the darkness, pressing towards the first rays of the sun no matter how pale and chill the light, how fickle the moods of the old Winter Hag. Noleen admires the modesty of their simple beauty, their courage of tenderness irreverently pushing against the thrall of a world encased in the frosty sleep of forgetting.
The old Hawthorn trees at the edge of the woodland stand sentry, quietly assessing those who enter between them, as they have done for centuries. Scarlet clusters of last year’s berries gleam in bold contrast against bare, dark umber tangles of limbs and bark, a red promise of danger, passion and things forbidden in a season of absence still guarding the secret life within.
Noleen hesitates; something feels different today. She feels the invitation, the shimmer in the air, the spell of the wild settling over her as she always does; and yet, there is the tinge of something else that she has never sensed before. The hush around her is complete; no bird song, no squirrel nor breeze dares disturb the suspended breath of the grove. Even her heart seems to still, as though straining to catch the tail of a tune barely audible.
But nature will always have her way - her lungs grasp for a sudden, greedy intake of cold air, startling Noleen out of her freeze; like a river freeing itself from long captivity of ice, her body seems to crackle, unsettled. And yet there is no turning back. Not today, not while every nerve in her body is twinging with a yearning anticipation barely tolerable.
As soon as she steps through the arcing branches of hawthorn, Noleen feels it; a distant thrumming. She recognizes it immediately - she has been feeling its reverberations in the tautness of her breasts and belly for weeks now. A fierce tingle of joy flits up her spine and gathers behind her belly button; the thrumming anchors there, calling and tugging her towards it. Noleen does not question; she willingly gives herself to it, allows her body to be pulled deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest she thought she knew so well. Today, she barely recognizes where she is going, does not look about her, so intent is she on listening to the summons in her soul.
There are places on earth with an energy so vast it cannot be contained within just one world or time. The very nature of those sites is to spill over and share their imprint across many worlds and dimensions, never heeding the constraints most earthly beings feel afflicted with.
The ancient oak inhabits such a space, or rather, he is the very embodiment of it; his roots forge deeply into the heart of the eternal wellspring of life, drawing from and contributing to it in the unfathomable ways of the Great Mysteries.
The reach of his majestic branches is as wide as his roots are deep, and the golden shimmer suffusing the winter-still glade around him is his, emanating from deep within his ancient core and crown. He is king of this realm, though his reign reaches far beyond the mere physicality of it. Even after his body will have ceased to grace this land, his heart will beat on and continue.
There are many secrets held in the folds of sacred spaces such as this; some hover, ready to be shared and imparted to those with the capacity to sense and know beyond the normal means; others will lie dormant, waiting for the right time, the correct constellation of events that will signal a readiness of fertile ground for seeding.
Sometimes, the two collide.
Noleen is immediately aware of the shift in energy as she emerges between trunks of slender ash and birch, a retinue of white and silver encircling the clearing opening up before her. She halts, sensing the tangible mood of reverence pushing firmly against her chest.
Her breath catches, and a wave of dizziness makes her stumble and reach for the birch beside her. She clings to the cool smoothness of peeling bark, allowing the constancy of wood and earth to steady her, to regain her breath and composure as she takes in the sight before her.
She does not think she’s seen this majestic oak before, although the place feels achingly familiar. The very air around her vibrates and breathes, a thousand pinpricks of consciousness upon her; and yet, she has eyes only for this giant king of trees at the heart of the glade, regal even without the glory of summer to crown him.
A faint whisper, like laughter, rustles through the remnants of dry, brown leaves that have not yet succumbed to the force of winter’s gravity. Noleen’s eyes are being drawn upwards by a flash of crimson; deep within the shelter of broad, naked branches, a lone red leaf trembles and flutters, a mirror to her own unsteady heart.
She finds herself moving towards the ancient one, moving through rays of amber bathing the sphere around the tree in dancing specs of gold.
The massive trunk, thick and gnarled, is covered in layers of emerald moss and rusty lichen. It smells earthy, of resin and rain, of sunshine and endurance.
If there were five or six of her she might be able to circle and embrace it completely, but as it is, Noleen merely reaches out and lets her fingertips explore the coarse ridges and deep fissures of rough, warm bark.
And she feels it - the surge of green life pulsing beneath her fingers, traveling from deep within the earth until it meets the world above; it quivers and sings through her loins, warming, singeing her, before it shoots up her spine, jolting it backwards in an impossible, rigid arc of mindless pain and ecstasy… the blood-red flutter at the heart of the oak is all she can see now through eyes blurry and tearing with the violence of feelings rushing and trembling through her, pushing for a way out. Her chest shudders and heaves with emotions and sensations she has no name for, no context for understanding.
She has no choice but to let this torrent of awakening senses have its way with her, to let the great river within her rage and break through the groaning floes of ice, to let it flood its banks and rid itself of all constraints of winter.
When finally her inner storms abate, she finds her breath straining in her chest, her body crumpled upon naked soil, cradled by roots and tree bark. Beside her hand, a leaf of crimson and blood; she is thrilling from head to toe. She does not need to lift her eyes to know - he is here, beside the oak, watching her, waiting…
Join us here around the Story Hearth for part four…