In my last blog I spoke of the spirit of place and the transference of energies that make such wonderful stories of mystical overlays. This piece I offer, is a short story from my collection in Scraps and Wild Gatherings, published in 2018. Prior to this, on returning to the UK for a trip down memory lane, rediscovering my earthly roots and birthplace, the stories in this volume took shape and grew into what has become an offering to my ancestry. Enjoy…
Cairns and Crocus
Spirit of Place
Chapter 1
An elusive breeze ruffles heart-shaped leaves. From outside the grove the Birch appear randomly sown. Closer in, it is evident, they create a ragged circle. Increasing in force, the breeze becomes a soughing wind. Autumn-toned leaves swirl away. A pale form walks the circle. Young and willowy, her saffron yellow dress matches the Crocus at her feet.
A sigh echoes. Busy Wren freeze in their seed and bug harvest. As the sound dissipates, one trills – its rustling feathers send a wave of warm-scented perfume, spilling from green-antlered Oakmoss.
Pia
Chapter 2
Sunlight filtering through the swaying canopy above, plays on my head, a warm balm on this chilly day. Chittering birds fly in, squabbling over a large moth, roused from daylight dreams. One perfect wing floats down, landing on my open sketchpad. A gold-powdered smudge. I focus on a small bloom, Saffron Crocus, Crocus sativus, a litany in Latin, rare in Victorian forests.
Energy surges from the earth, accompanying the words, “They keep me bound.” I have no idea what this means. I hear them, when the honey-pungent, Crocus scent engulfs me. Maybe I’m falling into psychosis? Hearing voices in the trees. Wispy visions of a girl reflects in pellucid dewdrops. It’s morning, but the dew has long since evaporated.
I laugh at the notion, although unnerved by my thoughts. I’ve visited this curious stand of trees often and find it odd that spring bulbs flower into autumn. There is nowhere else in the forest where a stand of Birch thrives amongst native trees. Perhaps there was a settlement here. I stand to pace, careful not to crush fragrant blooms while stretching my stiff back.
A twig snaps! The sound, like gunshot, ricochets around the grove. A Doe bounds into the glade. Exhibiting no fear, accustomed to my presence, she is another anomaly in the landscape and classified as feral to purists. All I see is a magnificent, sentient being as I back away to lean against an elder Birch. It quivers in response… merges with my essence.
My foot nudges a moss-covered rock, dislodging it. A rumbling noise has me clinging to the tree. A spill of rocks cascades across the ground, sandstone and glinting quartz. Earthquake? My nervous heart pumps, adrenalin surges. I’ve never stepped into the circle before, its message of intolerance at my curiosity, evident. Now, despite my panic, it beckons. I clamber over strewn rocks to stand in the heart of the grove. The Birch-canopy of amber and gold quivers. Trees shudder as I pass. Silence returns. I can see a shape that might be building foundations, reminding me of the stone Cairns in Britain.
I gasp. Falling to my knees, I stare in horror at the slender foot revealed, jutting from beneath the rubble. Skin, at first blue-tinged, then only a frail, skeletal foot remains. I shake my head, to clear my vision. A Cairn, impossibly Celtic, here in these Australian forests? A murmurous sigh fades from in the trees. Sobs escape me. Darkness sweeps down, smothering me in a cloak of silence.
When I wake, chilled to the bone, there is no trace of the Cairn or fragile remains, just a pile of mossy rocks on which the twisted Birch exert their unyielding hold. Scattered petals of rusty red, glisten… bright daubs of blood in the grass.
Michael
Chapter 3
Michael walked, careful of every step. He cursed silently as a twig snapped underfoot. Stalking a wild Doe, he watched her pause, bowing her head to something unseen. It took a second to align the telescopic lens, aim and fire. No gun, his weapon, but a digital camera. Whirring, electronic clicks, sent the Doe leaping. As she sprang, he got the shot he was after, her brown and white flecked hide, silhouetted against the broad trunks of silvery Birch-bark. Proud neck raised, eyes rolling, she fled. His second shot captured her grace.
He eagerly viewed the results on the camera display and, stepping back, oblivious to all else, tripped over a canvas bag, spilling its contents. Pages of detailed flower images blurred and shiftedunder his gaze. He felt suddenly woozy. The parchment sheets appeared faded, the bag, mouldy with age. Kneeling, he stuffed everything back unceremoniously.
With a cry of outrage, a slender woman launched herself at him. “What are you doing? You have no right to go through my things. How dare you! Look what you’ve done to the flowers!”
He dropped the bag, causing the contents to spill over crushed blooms. “Flowers? What flowers? No, please …I’m so sorry, I tripped and was just…” He blinked. The bag was no longer mould-covered but a clean, modern, leather satchel.
“…wanting to see what you could steal?” She finished his sentence.
“No!” Michael cried, outraged. “I’m no thief. You left your stuff lying around.” He stopped in his tracks. Close up she was exquisite. Before he could blink, rich perfume invaded his senses. Her features blurred. Bag and girl were gone when he came to, sprawled on the ground among whispering trees.
Raindrops pattered on the sparse foliage above. He smelled the lingering fragrance of flowers, crushed by his body. Flowers? Seeing a riot of colour, he gathered his wits and checked his camera for damage.
“Flowers! There were no flowers here before,” he muttered, “and the trees had leaves. It’s like autumn and spring in one place.”
His camera bleeped. Glancing down at the red-light flashing, he cursed the unusually short battery life, then paused, staring at an image he’d not consciously taken. It was the Doe, but superimposed behind her on the Birch-bark was a translucent figure.
He blinked. It vanished. Again, he felt dizzy. Three hours passed while he lay comatose and the trees wept their leaves.
Pia
Chapter 4
I return the next day; the trees are not welcoming but the flowers are blooming. There’s no trace of any crushed under trampling feet. Bemused, I sit to take it in, feeling anxious in the energy. “What’s the history here?” I wonder. A voice within replies, “You know. You just need to remember.”
Sighing, I settle to work on yesterday’s sketches of Saffron Crocus, adding rich orange- colour to spicy stamen, yellow to curve-edged petals, green to sheathed leaves. It’s quiet. No birds, no rustling leaves, a carpet of skeletal leaves has fallen overnight. “How odd,” I mused.
An icy draft raises hairs on the back of my neck; the Doe stands just inside the grove alone. Alarmed, she paws the ground, releasing pungent, leafy odours. Behind her, faintly outlined, is the woman. She is agitated, striding the circle, wide eyes staring.
What’s happening to me? Haunting images interrupt my sleep. Too real, all pervasive, they overflow into my waking state, beginning with dreams of the Birch grove, the vision of the spectral, saffron robed girl.
Why me? Self-indulgent tears well and the Doe springs away. I pace again, restlessly aware of my shadowy companion.
Michael
Chapter 5
Surprised to see the woman from yesterday at the grove again, Michael hid. He watched as she paced, crying. He wanted to reach out but witnessing her evident fragility, knew intervention could be counterproductive.
Last night he researched regional stories of Dreamtime legends describing volatile, Spirit activity. He found nothing of note relating to settlers, but intrigued, he read…
This location is a place of women’s healing. Underground streams create vortexes of energy, conducive to birth and death rituals, evident in ancient cultures.
He brought himself back to the moment. Ghosting behind the sobbing woman was another. Her double, dressed in saffron robes that swirled around her ankles. She sang, sad words ringing clearly in the crisp air…
“Where do we move between here and there
What do we become in transition and where
To a place within? Meanderings, sweet or sour
…and then in sleep, lost, many an hour… yet
summer wings enfold me and I fly
soaring, shadow-less, I soar
Winter wings enfold me and I die
…’til summer’s sweet renewal comes once more
Ancient sounds emerging make their mark
Winter keeps her own notes in the dark
Spring’s light brings soft and fragrant tunes
…while autumn sounds her notes like silver moons
All the while I watch and wait for you
to sing your song in saffron-coloured hue
Each season turns anew upon the wheel
When will you wake
…and in that sweet transition truly feel?”
Scents of saffron reached him. Looking down, he saw a tiny flower, knocked sideways by his careless feet. Saffron, a scented herb used in curry and cake alike. Saffron, the colour of the crying woman’s shirt and the robe of her translucent other. He knew he was witnessing a mystery, a magickal overlap in time. He had no means to comfort her. Not after the events of the previous day.
Pia
Chapter 6
I hear her song and promise I will discover what happened to leave her haunting the site. There seems to be an overlay to what I’m seeing, another scene drifting in and out of a different time and place. Leaning against my favourite tree, I listen, the words invoke grief… grief I’m not aware of personally experiencing. I listen, hearing the music to her song, feeling the rhythmic throb of a Bohdran vibrating deep in my belly and the accompanying, sobbing tone, of Uilleann pipes.
Suddenly other figures are weaving through the trees. It’s like looking through misted glass. What I thought were people dancing with her, are a group of huntsman, well dressed but not of this century. I hear hounds baying. The Doe bolts, but the girl stands proudly erect, waiting. There is nowhere to run or hide. Hounds, and shadowy huntsmen, burst into the glade. One, tall and gaunt, approaches her. Behind them, I see a building of sorts, its rough, circular shape, reminiscent of a crude, squat croft. She backs away. I see the fear in her eyes as he reaches her, pushing her roughly inside. His men jeer and hoot obscenities.
Then I’m there with the cruel-faced man. I feel her horror, her sense of inevitability permeates, and I feel faint from the fear of it.
“Witch,” he hisses, “you will die for your sins and no one will mourn you or send you to your Summerlands.” He spits the words at her.
When he is done with her, she is dry-eyed. Seeing her thus, her strength is enough to pull me back to myself. I scream at him, but he can neither see nor hear me. For a moment, she sees me. Our eyes meet across the centuries and thousands of miles. Briefly, we are one mind, one soul. “Free me,” she whispers.
Her murderer screams, “Burn Witch!” In my horror, in the unreality of it all, I giggle, thinking he could find something more original to say than words from an old movie, but it’s no movie. It’s real. Somewhere a young woman experienced this terrible death. Was it I? I will hear her screams always.
The hounds scent me, sniffing at my feet, unable to see my substance. One whimpers, licking at my hands. He can see me, sense me, as I lean against the ancient tree that trembles against my back.
I watch numbly as the man re-emerges, slamming and bolting the door behind him. Smoke belches from the roof, dry thatching ignites in a roaring shower of sparks. More crude comments, yelled by the watching men, chill my fear to a cold, seething rage. They may wear respectable clothing but they are worse than the lowest, ugliest life form to me. I am helpless to change a thing.
With a scream, I fight off arms that come from behind. Kicking and cursing, I turn, scratching at the man’s face. He holds me tight, whispering, “Be still. It’s okay. You had some sort of nightmare vision. Shhh now.”
He manages to calm me. I realise it’s the man from yesterday. I pull away, although I really want to hold on tight. I scream at him but it’s only in my head. I reel with shock. The vision fades and all that’s left is a Cairn of stones and a fragile, blue-veined foot. Then it’s gone too and the grove is still, but for the fleeting notes of her passing. A tendril of wood smoke carries fluttering parchment scraps, covered with intricate drawings of Saffron Crocus away into the forest.
“Michael,” the man says to me and I pull myself together, taking his proffered hand. It’s smooth and warm to my ice-cold one.
“Pia,” I reply. “Er …did you see …hear anything before?” My breath hitches. My lungs struggling to draw in air.
He reaches for me again in concern. “I heard music and saw a girl in a saffron dress, dancing. Then I heard screams, yours and hers.”
“Then I’m not going mad?” I giggle again, hearing hysteria in my high, tremulous notes.
“I think you had some sort of vision. Did you fall asleep or were you lucid? You were screaming at someone. You sobbed a name but I couldn’t understand it. It sounded, maybe Gaelic? Geni…?”
“Oh, I was lucid all right.” My voice breaks as I fall to my knees in the flowers.
Again, Michael holds me until my crying is spent and I manage to tell him what I witnessed. Instead of scoffing, he surprises me. “Well at least we have a story to follow up on. Although I’m sure it’s not from here, but somehow, a sending from another layer in time.”
“Another layer?” I repeat, hypnotised by his soothing voice.
“It’s okay. You can trust me. In fact, I think I have my credentials in my wallet.” He grins an open, friendly grin. “I’m a hypnotherapist. Well, that’s my day job. I’m a photographer too and I caught something on camera yesterday that made me come back to this place today. It’s haunted.”
His candid nature is refreshing. He takes out his camera, and searches for an image. It’s the girl in the saffron dress. Her face is mine. Everything shifts sideways. He calms me again and we sit to talk things through, his hand warming mine. I hear laughter from the grove and spin around. There she is, whole and happy, humming her haunting song. She dances the circle once before vanishing into the trees.
Michael drives me home, although it’s only a short walk. We agree to meet in a few days when he will hypnotise and regress me, back through the scenes I experienced.
I go back to the grove, but never experience the visions again. I often hear her song, until one day it simply ends. Her last note drifts away on a sigh. I see her in dreams.
Someone, somewhere, stumbled across a Cairn in a forest far away from here. Archaeologists discovered ancient human remains, which, later, they reburied under moss-covered stones.
A plaque reads…
R.I.P
We don’t know her story or name. She was a woman of approximately 20 years, who died, possibly after raiders came through. It was a time of witch-hunts, as Christianity made its way across the Isles. We can safely assume, by the well-preserved pots of herbal unguents and remains of dried Saffron that escaped a fire, she was an herbalist. Enough to be classified a Witch and executed.
We ask that you tread carefully here. Saffron Crocus grow in abundance. Scraps of cloth discovered, showed traces of Saffron dye from these same plants.
May she find peace.
Walking to the grove a few months later, I catch up with an elderly couple, going the same way. Their accents are broadly English as they greet me with a cheery hello, smiling as I pass.
The woman stops abruptly, blanching as she looks at me. Recovering, she says shakily, “Excuse me, do you happen to know where there’s a grove of Birch trees here?”
“Why yes, I’m heading there. It’s just a bit further.” They glance at me furtively, speaking with muted voices as we walk. When we reach the grove, they fall silent. I’m about to leave them to their reverie when the woman asks my name.
“Oh well, Pia… Pia Trethaway,” I tell her.
Exchanging glances and a nod, they tell me the grove is identical to one on their land. Archaeologists carbon-dated remains of a girl, discovered under a pile of stones. A Celt ancestor, they tell me excitedly. Reaching into her pocket the woman takes out an odd image. It’s a digital, facial reconstruction of the woman, found in the rubble. My face. I gasp, remembering my dream.
They tell me of Padarn Woods, Cornwall, from where the tree seeds and bulbs growing here, originated. Their Australian cousins brought seeds to Australia for planting around their homestead, to remind them of the Trethaway family in the Old Country.
Spirit of Place
I am earth, moist clay, trickling water, oozing sap. Suction exerted, my body, liquefied, moves up through twisting root. Under tender, silver bark, lichen and moss, I pass. All awareness gathers in one small seed. A cell of all my memories in one spark of life, before I sleep, dormant, enveloped.
Light awakens me; I recall snow, rain, heat and mist. Movement, the wheel of life spins on. I hear seasons change, a tinkling note. A leaf clinging tenuously lets go, as I must, all I once was.
Life is a strange omnium-gatherum of colour and odour, the light blinding in velvet-wet darkness. I push upwards, a shoot breaking free through Saffron clouds.
I have only fleeting memories of how I came here, being other than I once was.
I am the Genius Loci… Spirit of Place.
Where do we move between here and there?
What do we become in transition and where?
Space within, meanderings sweet or sour
…and then in sleep, lost, many an hour
…yet, summer wings enfold me and I fly
Soaring, shadow-less, I soar
Winter wings enfold me and I die
…’til summer’s sweet renewal comes once more
Ancient sounds emerging make their mark
Winter keeps her own notes in the dark
Spring’s light brings soft and fragrant tunes
…while autumn sounds her notes like silver moons
All the while I watch and wait for you
To sing your song in saffron-coloured hue
Each season turns anew upon the wheel
When will you wake
…and in that sweet transition truly feel?”
What do you think? Did the birch seeds carry memory of their ancestors all the way from Britain and was the imprint of the young victim of atrocities, strong enough to sow her cell memory by blood into the seeds, to heal ancestral pain?
Walk softly… you never know on who’s bones you tread… Awen /|\
Penny
Photography, art and words, copyright ©️ Penny Reilly all rights reserved.
Penny Reilly Artist Beyond the Gate 
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