Part one

I had always known about the Tree. Every day I passed it and, as was the custom, I would make it a greeting in my mind and touch its rough bark with my fingers. It was just something we did. People went out of their way to pass it and greet it. You often saw people standing beside it, lost in thought; sometimes they would seek its advice or just tell it their troubles. Sometimes, when the night was clear and still and the moon was full, it seemed that the Tree throbbed with some kind of power. We didn't know what power that might be, but respected the Tree and revered it, all unknowing. It was a pleasant place, not a place of fear. New-made pairings would linger beneath it late in the evening. Touching it when the moon glowed round and fecund above was supposed to be a guarantee of fertility. To court there when the moon was full you needed to be sure of your lover, for pregnancy was sure to follow.

I was seventeen and had been courting Alin for three years. We walked and whispered and held hands, and spent our share of time beneath the Tree. We were comfortable together, but there was no fire in our companionship. He had never touched me and I was in no hurry. I made sure we kept away from the Tree when the moon glowed. Most girls of my age had a baby. Most boys of Alin's age were fathers. Grandam said that I, as my mother's daughter, should not need reminding that the health of the community came first. I didn't, it was because I was my mother's daughter that I put Alin off when he suggested it was time. I continued with him because he didn't push, but I knew I would have to make a decision soon.
That autumn was full of storms and grief. A sickness took hold of our village and Mother and I hurried from house to house doing what we could. Grandam took sick of it and it was my turn to mount the night's vigil by her bed. In the darkest hours she slipped lower and lower. I ran home for my mother, my few skills exhausted in every sense by her pain. Mother grabbed her bag and hurried back with me. Tired beyond telling I followed more slowly and found my feet dragging past the Tree. I put out my hand to it for comfort before the clouds of storm parted and I realised a full moon glowed gold above me. I snatched back my hand, but the Tree and I both knew what I had done.

I fled to Grandam, where she lay in her sickbed, and placed my hand on her brow. I wiped my fingers gently back and forth through the sickness glistening there, hoping to transfer to her the blessing that I didn't need, didn't want. Perhaps it would heal her where we couldn't. My mother looked up. I could see at once that she knew.

'I hadn't thought of that.' she murmured.

I gave her a frightened look, across Grandam's pale, unconscious face.

'Will I have to have Alin?'

A mother with Sight was able to give such sound advice, but not tonight.

'I can't See now.' she said. 'But I'll give it thought, when there is time.'

I couldn't ask for more.

Grandam's pangs seemed to ease and at last we dragged homeward as false dawn shivered in the sky. Mother took my hand, the one with the finger ends slightly roughened from the touch of the Tree.

'You could do worse.' she said.

'But I'm your daughter. Mayn't I have the Gift?'

My mother sighed.

'It doesn't seem so, child. You're a fine nurse, a sensitive healer, but I feel no magic in you.'

'And only the magic means I needn't wed ...'

She squeezed my hand. On our way home we passed the Tree, bulking dark against the lightening sky. We stopped and looked at it together. We waited for ... something. Then my mother pulled me forward and together we embraced the tree - no tentative touch but a full blown embrace, such as one reserves for a lover. I felt the roughness of it's bark on my breast and belly. She said,

'We shall have need of new life after the sickness has gone. I have need of it now. Too much death makes me weak.'

She laid her cheek against the Tree and murmured softly to it.

Grandam died of the sickness, two nights later. Her lungs filled with fluid and her breathing grew shallow. We felt glad for her when at last the awful dragging breaths stopped, but sad beyond telling for ourselves.

Her passing left my mother head of the family. There were a number of women in the village now in this position. Every family head was entitled to sit at Meeting and help decide things for the village. Mother made sure that all the women now entitled to attend did so. It was an important time, she said, and they must take a full share - women were, now more than ever, important.

When the men wanted to revitalise the village with raids and sought to defend us against outsiders with weapons my mother spoke out against it.

'We must put our energies into rebuilding our village from within,' she said 'Go home and love your wives, put away your knives and take your hoes and ploughs, spades and seed into the fields. We dare not go abroad yet. We are weak and the contagion is still in the countryside. Only here are we safe. We must start here - at home.'

There was a minority of the Meeting who disagreed with her, but most people thought her idea the best one. They elected her Leader of the Meeting and asked her how they should go about achieving the rebirth she had spoken of.

'Sow seed,' she said.

I knew that she was looking for a mate to do just that with, but it was hard for her now. Most men were suspicious of the Weirding Woman who was now also Leader, against all probability and custom. The ones she could have considered would have nothing to do with her now.

'They aren't strong enough,' she said to me. 'One little upset and their weaknesses are displayed on their sleeves. I need a man who is bigger than that - a man like your father was.'

But who that might have been she never said.

The ones who wanted to suck on her strength she had no use for.

'I don't want to bed my son,' she said.

Her desires made her restless - and reckless - just when she needed all her wisdom. Our house was under siege day and night. People wanted to know what they should do about everything from a difficult birth, to when to plant to avoid danger from frost, to what to do about an unwanted litter of kittens.

'Do we need more cats? Should we keep them or drown them?'

She was lonely, I could tell. I kept as close to her as I could and helped out as much as possible, particularly when it was a medical matter, but they all wanted a piece of my mother. They gave nothing back. Often she was close to slamming the door in their faces. But she had been given this to do and felt she must keep on at least until she could See where it was leading. She was busy and tired with all this policy and I knew that she hadn't had the Sight for ages - and that she was awaiting it anxiously.

'I need to know what to do,' she said.

'But you know very well what to do, ' I said 'that's why they chose you, that's why they keep coming.'

'Oh that. I can do that - but the question is how long must I do it for? Rebuilding will take years. I don't have the stamina. Grehna, whisper it, I don't have the patience.'

They began to call her not Leader, but Mother - an endearment that irked her intensely.

'This village is not the child I sought to bear. They are holding me captive now. I must be free - I must be free.'

I held her hand and tried to sooth her, but she had begun to feel bitterness towards the village and it ran deep within her. I was afraid for her. She had had such great expectations, and they were turning sour. She went about with a face that would curdle milk.

The people did as she bade them, they tilled the land and bedded each other with a will. A number of new couplings were made in the cold ashes of grief for the lost ones. They were blessed with the Rites by my mother. The spirit in the village was good. Everyone was busy. It felt good to be alive. The business of survival had never had such an edge to it. Many couples had recourse to the Tree at the full moon - indeed when the season warmed the musicians gathered there in the soft dark when the day's work was done and played just for the pleasure of it. Men and women would join them and dance about the Tree - and on the special nights now the whole dance would end by embracing it. It became a place of laughter and music. Even in her misery this pleased my mother very much.

The village was still looking inward, as she had advised. We had seen no-one from outside since the sickness. It didn't take a Wise Woman to know that soon we would become bored with our own company - and worse than bored. When all the possible couplings were completed we would need to seek for companionship outside again or our people would begin to fight amongst themselves.

My mother told me that at the next Meeting she was going to ask if there were any who would be willing to go and see how it was outside in the world. The Meeting was a week away and she was preparing in her mind for it. I knew she wanted to hurry along the time when she could become just the village's Wise Woman again. I kept my own counsel, but I wondered how she thought that could be accomplished now that she had been so much a part of the reconstruction. She knew too much of **peoples' hearts for them to allow her to become what she had been to them before the plague. I feared that when they no longer turned to her they would turn on her instead.

For my part I had been so wrapped up first with the sickness and then with helping my mother with her new burden that I had seen little of Alin. Finally he and another had embraced the Tree together. She now being pregnant, Alin asked me if I minded if my mother gave them the Rites. I told him quite truthfully that I would be happy to give them my blessing.

'You should touch the Tree,' Alin said. 'You of all people should touch the Tree.'
It was as close as he ever came to reproaching me. He was a good boy - but there it was, he was a boy to me and not a father for my child.

Nevertheless Mother and I had both touched the Tree and since then had apparently flouted its power. With all the tension in our house, bred of the turmoil within my mother's heart, there was also a sort of sub-sonic throb of ill-omen. It wasn't our fault - my mother had had the woes of the village to contend with and she had needed me at her side. We had neither of us had time for dalliance, even had suitable partners been available. I began to be concerned that the Tree should know this.

The next full moon came and I resolved to tell the Tree how it was with us. I didn't join in the merry-making around the Tree in the evening - I stood in the dark behind the musicians while they played. The Tree was in full leaf now - and the women were in full bloom. Several of them would soon have to forego the dancing as they were near their time. Many others displayed the bloom of pregnancy - in fact my mother and I were the only two women of child-bearing age in the village who were not with child.

The musicians grew tired and the dew fell. Sweethearts wended homeward, arms about each others' waists. I waited beneath the Tree. When all were gone I stepped out from the Tree's shadow into the moonlight and addressed it. First I opened my heart to it silently, then I said,

'You see how it is. My mother has put all this your way - she has done her best for you and them. I have helped her. It has been hard for her. She so wanted another baby and now no-one worth the having will touch her. And I am, for now, just her daughter. I have no life of my own. Do you see how it is?'

Then I went forward and wrapped my arms as far around the trunk of the Tree as they would go and laid my cheek against the bark as my mother had done on that awful night months ago. I stayed there until I got cramp in my back, but no comfort came to me, no sign. Then I stepped back respectfully, said my goodbye inside and went home.

In the morning I had occasion to pass the Tree very early. I needed some herbs which grew on the other side of the village and the remedy had to be gathered before sun touched the leaves. As I passed the Tree I noticed something at the foot of it. Going closer I saw what seemed to be a large bundle of cloth. Closer still the bundle appeared to have feet and I realised that someone was asleep there among the roots, head pillowed against the trunk. My heart thumped heavily in my breast and I felt my face flush over. Who could have done such a thing and why? It was an unheard of liberty.

Before I could think I bent over the bundle and shook it. I had to be quite rough before it stirred. It uncurled slowly and stiffly and unwrapped the cloak from over its face. It was a man - the strangest I had ever seen. His face and hands were the colour of sloe berries, except for his palms which were as pink as mine. The man sat up.

'I am sorry to intrude,' I said. 'But this Tree is special to the village and it is not customary to rest here in this way.'

He seemed to have trouble working out where he was and what I was and it was some moments before his eyes focused properly and he took in what I had said.
'Pardon me. Have I broken some law?'

'Not exactly. Its just that we hold this Tree in high esteem and don't usually take ... er, liberties with it.'

It sounded stupid when I said it, but was none the less accurate for all that.

'If people see you here like this they may be rough with you.'

'That would be unfortunate', but he didn't sound frightened.

'Have you been here all night?'

'Yes, I happened on the village after the lamps had gone out and didn't like to wake anyone. It proved a comfortable bed for a dry night - only I am a little stiff and stupid now, the dew has got into my joints.'

What happened next was inevitable. When I thought about it later he could only have slept there, and only have been found by me. I said,

'Please, come home with me and have some food. My mother is Leader here and you should speak with her before anyone else sees you. We have not seen a stranger since the epidemic. My mother was going to raise it at the next Meeting that it is time now to go out into the world again, but you have beaten her by six days. You will be safer out of sight.'

'So that is the way of it here,' he said.

He got to his feet with difficulty, but soon stretched his muscles as we walked back home through the early morning. I was glad no-one else was about. The man was the strangest I had ever seen, or could have imagined - and being my mother's daughter I had a strong imagination. I preferred not to dwell on what some of the villagers might think of him. Particularly if they knew where he had spent the night. As he began to move more easily it was apparent that he was very tall, slender, and carried himself well. He moved confidently and with much grace. His clothes swirled round him and seemed to be more drapery than cut cloth, dyed in colours that I had never seen out of nature and shot with something that glittered. He was quite beautiful.

Such a prize! How would I tell my mother? So many words crowded into my throat I couldn't choose between them. When we got home I opened the latch and shot through.

'Mother, mother come and see ...'

I sounded like an excited child that has caught her first frog!

I believe that at that moment her Sight returned, for when she came out from the sleeping room her face was ashen and her hands were clenched tight. Even with that tension in her face and her hair in disarray she was a beautiful woman. A match for him. They looked at each other and something passed between them. I turned my prize over to her. I think I already knew what I had found.

She held out her hand and he advanced with an opulent swish of his cloak and took it without taking his eyes from hers. He held her hand a long time, neither of them said a word and I felt their minds meet in their eyes and hands. While this strange greeting continued I busied myself with breakfast things. They would eat when they were ready. I put out bread, honey, nuts and dried fruits as I usually did and hoped he would find something he liked.

At last they returned to me. I was full of curiosity and hoped that explanations in words would follow that wordless exploration, but at first I got only gestures. My mother withdrew her hand and with it indicated that the stranger should sit by the fire. Wordlessly also he did so. He seemed surprised at the food before him, but nibbled on the nuts and fruits - presumably to be sure what they were - and obviously found them palatable. He ate his fill delicately and in silence. I began to chafe but would not have broken the stillness for worlds.

It seemed that pragmatic things had not formed part of their interchange, because at last my mother said,

'What has brought you here?'

'I will tell you everything,' he leaned forwards towards my mother across the table, I came and sat beside her. 'My name is Taro. I am an outreacher from a place many days walk away. We suffered badly with a sickness which came last year. We lost so many of our women that our community has ceased to be viable. They gave it to me to go and find other settlements where there might be women who would be willing to come to us and give their strength to help us build our community again. We thought to find widows and young ones who now have no prospect of a mate at their own homeplace. We were wealthy and depended much on trade for that. Since the sickness there has been no trade. From fear of re-infection some villages have made themselves self-sufficient and do not want our goods, others are hostile to us who were friends before. I have walked many days and have been shunned or reviled wherever I have gone. This is the first place where I have not been driven out. I come to beg you to let us have your surplus women. We will make them welcome, they shall want for nothing.'

'We have no surplus women. The only two in the village who are not pregnant and fully committed with life here are sitting in front of you. I am Leader and my daughter is ... what are you Grehna? My sanity.' My mother laughed, a little sour sound. A prickly silence followed. She continued 'What attractions are there in your shattered community that our women should uproot themselves and go with you?'

I chipped in,

'What rights do your women have?'

'Rites? I do not understand, they have no special observances. Our priests do all that is needful. Are your women priests?'

He looked hard at my mother taut as a harp string before him, feeling from her something that could be power, was certainly knowledge - priestly attributes. He looked momentarily uncomfortable. My mother laughed softly,

'My daughter means their treatment - what privileges do they hold, what justice can they expect?'

I could tell she was as interested in the answer as I.

'Justice and privilege are for warriors, controlled by the priests. Women bear children and take care of the hearth.'

'And the men of your village, what is their role?' As if casually he took a long curved knife, like a cat's tooth, but very sharp and shiny, from his belt and cut a fruit in half with it, then toyed with the blade.

'They kill what is needed for food, and enemies who would take our women and the other things that are ours.'

I could feel my mother's disappointment.

'We do not eat animals.' she said gently. He seemed almost shocked.

'Why then, I can help you. I can show your menfolk how to ...'

'We used to do so. We used to keep them captive, make them work for us, eat their flesh and steal the milk from their children. But we do it no longer. We consider it barbaric. We eat food such as you have just consumed. We wear clothing made of plants. We have no priests.'

'But you ...?'

'I am not a priest. I am a facilitator. I represent no deity.'

'But the tree this girl found me under. She said it was sacred.'

'No,' I said. 'I said we held it in high esteem. That's not the same thing. It has Power certainly, but it is not a god to us.'

'And yet you know the concept of godhead.'

'We are not savages,' my mother said 'we too travelled before the plague. But like many others we found it expedient to withdraw after the sickness had weakened us. We are stronger now and can hold our own in the outside world. I shall recommend that we begin to rejoin it when the next Meeting is held.'

He licked his lips, his eyes were bright.

'I wonder if your men could hold their own against us,' he said, 'if they take so much notice of their womenfolk. Such diversity of purpose can only weaken a community.'

Her eyes were bright also. She leaned towards him across the table.

'I have no fear on that score,' she said softly, 'but I hope it may never be necessary to pit our two ends of the spectrum against each other. We seek harmonious existence with other living things. Sometimes we have to work very hard to remember that is what is best for us, but it is long since we disregarded it. Even the epidemic did not destroy that.'

I thought of the men's desire to use violence to solve the problems the plague had set us. She was telling the barest truth. But I said nothing. The Wise Ones of ages gone had decided the state of the tribe could best be improved if it sought outlet for aggression in the triumph of growing and building and making beautiful things. It was not a new song my mother had sung in the Meeting.

My mother sat back on the bench beside me.

'I will introduce you at the Meeting,' she said. 'In the meantime it will not be wise for you to be seen in the village. Our people have come to mistrust the idea of the outside world. It will take time to undo that. If you want to put your case to them I recommend that you stay with us here, out of sight, until that time. I am sure that you have much useful information for us. And you will learn something of our ways.'

Considering the glimpses of his people's ways which he had given us, I felt this could be dangerous. I thought I knew what lay at the back of it. My mother was deeply impressed with something in this man. To put it simply she wanted him. Less simply, she had Seen something about him which made this way forward seem good to her. I didn't like it, but once again, I held my counsel. She was the Wise Woman, not I. There seemed an awful inevitability about it all that I didn't understand.

To be concluded next month.....