White Flame of Ealga

By David Murphy

Gronaun sat on the southern shore, rubbing a stick furiously between

his palms. Friction of wood on stone ignited leafy twigs beneath his

pot. He made his discovery then. Not fire, mushrooms. Magic

mushrooms that sprouted on wet mornings only to rot in the twinkling

of a summer sun. Mushrooms that had to be teased gently from the

clammy grip of earth. Horns of plenty and shaggy parasols, wooden

hedgehogs and giant puffballs, fairy clubs and phallic stinkhorns.

Gronaun sampled them in slivers, knowing some had to be avoided.

When a small portion disagreed with him, he spat it out. Most were

edible, others... Gronaun had always known the druids to keep

mysterious things to themselves, deeming them too sacred for the

populace to eat. With his back against a tree, he knew why.

He checked what simmered in his pot for fear of not remembering. Two

quarter moons it had taken him to find it in a dark, moist glade

between giant oaks. Confident that he could unearth more, he laid

his back against the bark and let the sunset wash him with rays more

mystical than the greatest druids could know. In the morning, when

the effect had worn off and the world was again a mundane thing, the

idea came to him that he should share his new-found pleasure--but

only after serious experimentation.

Six days of warm, wet summer was enough. He found plenty to fill his

baskets and had more than enough to experiment with. The druids were

wrong to dry it out and pound it into powder. A touch of cookery was

needed. Gronaun discovered that peaty lake water was more conducive

to mind-distortion than the clear emissions of virgin springs. Age

and condition were important, as was temperature and time of

immersion. Simmering, rather than boiling, brought out the flavour

and the magic more effectively than raw chewing or smoking. Even the

aromatic tendrils from the fire found their way into the pot. Bark

of birch added a woodiness to render the magic complete. Armed with

this knowledge, Gronaun left his improvised hunting-lodge and

returned to the Kingdom of Ealga.

Word spread. Soon mushrooms simmered, cauldrons of them,

everywhere--at least everywhere the druids would allow. Renowned for

the kindness of his heart, Gronaun now became famous for his

woodland discovery. Palisaded settlements and stone forts opened

their gates to him. Swineherds and old crones, soothsayers and

courtesans, bards and cobblers, all raised their horns of drink.

Chieftains offered him white-breasted steeds, whelps of mastiffs,

and, most valuable of all, cattle. The King himself offered the

greatest prizes. Land and maidens.

"It is not an easy thing for a young man without land to maintain

himself," the King said royally, "unless that young man is a

warrior, which you clearly are not."

Though well-born, Gronaun held no claim of land to his name--until

that moment.

"You make no objection to my offer of land for you to graze your

cattle," said the King, the glazed patina of woodglade magic in his

eyes. "Yet you refuse my offer of a maiden to grace your bed. Why?"

Gronaun shrugged. "I am not ready for women... Yet."

The King's smile shone through his silver-bristled face. He nodded

sagely.

"A wise decision, from a man wise before his years."

Gronaun had always preferred the compliant flora of the natural

world to the challenging nature of the female persona. When the King

suggested that he invite fertility to his land by spending a night

spilling seed into a virgin, he almost ran from the palace. The King

stood, chuckling on the battlements, as Gronaun rode out, barely

able to contain himself from breaking into a gallop for fear a

maiden might give chase. The royal druid stared also, less than

amused that a man could turn his back on such time-honoured customs

as de-flowering a virgin. News spread of Gronaun's decision to tempt

infertility to his land. Neither nobles nor peasants took it

seriously. "Let him be," they shrugged. "Is he not a whimsical man,

given to strange pursuits like studying plants rather than serving

as a warrior? Have we not a lot to be grateful to him for?"

The druids held council. Bad enough that Gronaun brought the magic

of mushrooms to the masses, now he ignored sacred customs. They

hatched a plot to damage his reputation by sending him a twelve-year

old boy whom they had instructed in certain practices. Gronaun

ignored his advances, preferring instead to instruct his new-found

friend in the art of plant grafting. When the boy returned, he had

no words to speak except praise, which he spoke willingly to all who

would listen. Frustrated by this, aware that Gronaun was popular

everywhere, the druids decided to let him live on his generous

patch. "Now that he has his own land to obsess with," said the

King's druid, "he probably will do us no further harm."

"Aye," said the others, nodding sagely.

Some nodded more from hope than sagacity.

So it was that Gronaun occupied himself with his new-found land.

Time spent planting fitted him like a suit of armour, making his

body strong as oak. The measured pace of growth, the unvarying flush

of seasons, reflected his even-tempered nature. With passing time,

his mind grew like a frond of ferns reaching out, touching all the

stalks of his personality, encouraging them to mature. His heart,

always soft, expanded like a watermelon ready to be picked. The

shyness of his youth dropped from him like petals in the wind.

Sometimes, when it was spring, he wondered if he had been wise to

depart so hastily from the palace the day the King had offered him a

virgin. Maybe women were a challenge worth considering after all. He

shrugged his shoulders and continued to tend his land as eagerly as

a lover.

The passing seasons connived with him to create a garden that became

a legend. In it grew all the flowers of Ealga. Lilies so big they

overlapped the ponds. Ferns so tall they dwarfed the trees.

Buttercups so small they could not be seen by the eyes of falcons.

His garden attracted bees that made the sweetest honey. Birds

nested, their singing beyond beauty itself. Bards sang for him, too.

The length of the Kingdom they travelled, and the width of it,

spreading the news with their poems and ballads. Beyond Ealga they

sailed, crossing the treacherous Sea that Gives Birth to the Sun

until they reached the Land of Mountains where a well-born daughter

heard of Gronaun's garden and determined to visit it.

She went sailing across the sea, much against her father's advice.

Stubborn as the deepest root, she knew she had to go. With a name

that meant Face of Flowers, she felt pre-destined to seek out this

magical gardener. Gronaun had never gone walking abroad, and had

rarely left his garden. Though many a maiden would have lain down on

the grass with him, he had few female visitors because of his

reputation for being wary of them. Unused to seeing beautiful women,

he was not prepared for the vision that stood at the far end of his

herbal field that fatefully hot day. The raw power of her beauty

seared his mind like the hot metal of a forge. She illuminated him

like the sun's rays shafting the darkest chamber at solstice-time.

She lit up all his inner secrets: the chamber of his heart, the

chamber of his soul, the chamber of his mind. He even felt her

seeping into that innermost chamber where secret stirrings and

desires had remained in darkness for too long.

"What's your name?" he asked softly.

"I am from the land beyond the Sea where the Sun Sleeps. My name is

Blodauwedd. You may call me Blodau. My name means Face of Flowers."

Gronaun sighed almost reverentially. No flower had ever looked so

beautiful. He knew then that he had been waiting all his life for

this moment. Standing before him was the stem of all incantations,

summation of all that was truthful, wondrous, divine. With a smile,

he recalled his hasty departure when the King had offered him a

maiden. There would be no running now. The vision before him was

prettier than all the maidens of the Kingdom of Ealga, and all the

maidens of the cantrefs in the Land of Mountains. He could feel

himself getting weak-kneed and knew it was not from weeding. Her

beauty twisted and turned every sinew of him. He longed to take her

in his arms that very moment, but his garden had taught him that the

best things come with nourishment.

In the long hours that followed, he showed her his life's work. The

fields where cattle grazed on the greenest grass were only a small

part of his personal kingdom. He took her to the waterfalls where

aquatic vines climbed through the glittering flow. She was amazed to

see them break through cascading water and sparkle at the sky. He

showed her all the flowers known to Ealga--and some from further

afield. Though Blodau was aptly named, nothing in the garden could

rival her beauty. Gronaun could not resist telling her that as he

took her hand, which she let him do though they were in the darkest

wood. She asked him plenty, he answered all. He even told her his

greatest secret--how his garden could assimilate dead matter and

thrive upon it.

"Isn't that what all gardens do?" she shrugged.

"Yes," he smiled. "But my garden does it more."

He took her to the meadows where butterflies flitted like a thousand

tiny kites. This was the place that meant most to him, he said.

They were standing by a stream in the full rays of the sun. Her

forehead glistened from too much walking, too much heat. He watched

her dip a dainty square of lace into the water. He took it gently

and dabbed its coolness upon her, pressing his fingers slowly along

her forehead, then down one cheek, then the other. She was so close

she overflowed his eyes. When his fingers came to soothe her lips he

felt her kiss them gently, her heart tender as it filled with the

same love that had filled him hours before. The thoughts that had

often come into his mind, especially in spring-time when spurts of

growth were all around, came to his mind again. Except now they were

in his mind all at once, overwhelming him with a wave of desire.

Gronaun could wait no more. He pulled her to him. She embraced him

hard. They lay in the meadow's long grass and gave themselves to

each other with no thought for the innocence of songbirds overhead,

nor for the prying eyes of a druidic spy hiding in the bushes at the

other side of the stream.

With the passing of the summer their love grew stronger. Two moons

later Blodau knew she was with child, so they arranged for marriage.

Her father sailed from the Land of Mountains, and was impressed to

see a King at his own daughter's wedding. He was amazed to see how

his prospective son-by-marriage could attract such a huge throng. At

least five hundred souls, he reckoned, stood on a massive lawn.

According to Blodau, that was only a fraction of Gronaun's land,

both in quantity and beauty. The King spoke at length, making many

references to fertility rituals, not all of them to do with land. At

the end of his address, the King put all joking aside and solemnly

announced that he regarded Gronaun almost as his own son. Given that

Gronaun could produce such miracles with land and the things that

grew from it, he added that he might install him as his successor

because he himself was growing old and had engendered no male issue.

"He is our Champion!" the King announced.

From the crowd there rose a mighty hurrah. Even Blodau's father

joined in the cheering. Looking around, he could see that the crowd

had swelled. Must be six hundred here now, he thought, watching his

daughter walk hand in hand with Gronaun.

The royal druid knew the exact attendance. It was five hundred and

seventy-two. He had the crowd counted by those loyal to him, and to

his beliefs. For him, the number was frightening. What made the

prospect dimmer was the King's announcement.

"We cannot have Gronaun rule us!" said the druids in conclave. "He

treats us with disdain, and would strip us of our magic in front of

the masses!"

"Aye!" they muttered in unison, hearts heavy with foreboding until

they saw the gleam in the royal druid's eye. Then their gloom

lifted. They knew he had a plan.

For Gronaun, winter's onset heralded no gloom. This was to be his

season of greatest joy, surpassing even those magical days when, as

part of the hunting-lodge exile demanded of most young men, he had

perfected his technique of extracting enchantment from mushrooms. It

also surpassed the many years tending his garden, and the

acclamation this toiling on the land had brought. Even his wedding

day paled compared to seeing his wife grow large with child. Their

love grew, too. With the passing of the solstice they renewed their

vows to stay together forever, and looked forward to the lengthening

days which promised their own first-born.

To Gronaun, Blodau was the tenderest shoot, the most medicinal herb.

Her loveliness was like his garden at spring-time equinox. A thing

of raw beauty, some of it showing, much of it hidden. There for him

to nurture, to bring forth with a touch of affection to dazzle in

the summer sun. Much of Blodau's beauty was in her face and in her

body--the most graceful of all nature's gifts. Other men saw this,

too. Sometimes, with womenfolk and children in tow, they came to

catch a glimpse of the man who would be Champion now that the King

was growing feeble. Gronaun watched some of them cast their eyes

over his wife. He saw how even in her ripened state, despite their

own wives standing beside them, men's eyes would gape like mouths to

betray their lust. Women stared, too--so did children in wonderment

at what Blodau might give birth to--a wise leader, a great athlete,

a boundless warrior, a prince of untold prowess who would lead his

people to a benign future.

* * *

In the howling gales of early spring, Blodau screamed with pain as

her time grew near. The King sent his maids to deliver what the

druids had foretold these past moons. A monster would be born, they

said. Grotesque yet pitiable, it would live only to curl up and

die--but not without taking its mother with it. So it was that

Blodau emptied of blood, the best efforts of the King's maids failed

to stem the haemorrhage, so ruptured was she by the birth-passage of

a creature made hideous by malign spells and maledictions. Her

monstrous baby had been deformed not by magic, but by poisons

secreted in her food by one of Gronaun's own garden-keepers, a man

in tune with the thoughts of the royal druid.

Alarmed by her shrieks, Gronaun ran to the birthing bed, a sea of

crimson in a chamber filled with terror-stricken maids. He tried to

stem her flow with his own hand, but most of the blood had gushed

from her in the violent discharge that had belched forth her ghastly

child. Whimpering now, ashen-faced from the draining of so much

blood, Blodau barely had strength to move. Gronaun took her in his

arms, his grief mixing with the helplessness of all the King's

maids. He pulled her to him, resting his head on hers. Through a

tear-stained veil he saw his child: eyeless, sexless, lifeless; no

maid near it as it curled up on the chamber floor. He felt Blodau

heave one last sigh. "No!" he pleaded, but she grew limp and heavy

like a felled willow. He wailed then into the night, tortuous

screams that carried all the way across the Kingdom to where they

were heard by a dying King and all his druids.

Within the waxing of a moon a new King was installed, a dogsbody of

the druidic order. Gronaun's name was like blood-stained mud: who

wanted a Champion who could father only mother-eating monsters?

Exaggeration spread by druids kept people away from the garden. Not

that anyone had stayed since that woefully ill-conceived night when

maids shrieked and monsters curled up to die. All had fled by dawn:

the King's maids frightened by the terror of awful birth and death,

Gronaun's garden workers scared by whispering druids who arrived

upon the scene with uncanny speed, and no little delight.

The sun rubbed its rays against a cloak of mist with barely a hint

of breaking through. Pale as the morning around him, Gronaun carried

Blodau to the meadow where butterflies had once flitted like tiny

kites. His favourite place, and hers. The temple where they first

made love became a tomb as down to the stream he carried her,

stumbling, to where, long ago, she had dipped laced cloth in

sparkling water. The stream was mournful now, a trough of green

winter rain. Gronaun's tears would have doubled its flow, if they

had fallen in. Had it been summer the water would have grown silent.

Butterflies would have folded their wings in prayer. This dull day

held no noise, no butterflies. No songbirds hovered overhead.

Gronaun laid Blodau on the bank of the stream and gazed at her, his

eyes bleeding one last horn-full of tears. Then with ragged breath

he ran through the gardens to the birthing chamber. Though their

child had been born dead, and a monster at that, it was still their

flesh and blood. Nostrils curling from the stench, he bent to pick

up the foul creature from the chamber floor. It was not the child's

fault, he told himself, that it had been born so grotesque. Carrying

it before him like a warped offering, he staggered back to the

stream. He laid it, in all its day-lit monstrosity, its

druidic-induced deformity, alongside its beautiful mother.

When he had clawed out a pit of roughly the right size, he pulled

Blodau and her child into their final bed. A grave hewn of purest

earth--the resting place of life and death, the scattering dust of

hopes and dreams, the end of all that ever was. He scooped in earth

around them with blood-stained hands, never once thinking that he

had no strength left from all the weeping, all the carrying, all the

digging. The grave soon filled on his side. He leaned across her

breasts to draw in soil, but his heart, which had always been

strong, decided to go to sleep before it broke. He fell upon her

with eyes still open, his last breath giving her cold neck one final

lick of warmth. They came then, out of season, out of nowhere, a

thousand tiny butterflies to lay upon him, and her, like tiny

garments of brocaded silk. Had a druidic spy been watching, he might

have seen a lepidopterous shroud, rigid, motionless. Birds came,

too. Their song was sorrowful first. Not for long. The sun broke

through in the afternoon, illuminating spores that floated about in

the air. The butterflies lifted their shroud to let the spores in.

Wind blew, in small circles, accurate and powerful like miniature

maelstroms, until it had lifted and deposited enough earth upon

Gronaun, upon Blodau, to cover them and insulate them for the night

to come.

Night lasted a whole season long. The meadow became a focal point

for the creatures of the garden. Mighty oaks leaned toward it,

striving to protect the sacred grave it contained. Birds built their

nests in sight of it and looked toward it when they sang. Bark

borers lined up their tunnels, as if aiming from a distance.

Squirrels scurried away from the mound. Wild boars grunted around

it. Ants stepped politely over its earth. The spores vegetated

within and took root, utilising the whole of the inside, thriving on

it, rendering a perfect shape to harden into a quiescent mass. The

mother galleries laid their eggs. The eggs gelled within the

chrysalis. When the time came a great silence descended on the

garden and on the Kingdom. Then the mound cracked open.

In all the fables of the Red Branch; in all the Books of Takings, or

Invasions; in the manuscripts so painstakingly transcribed by monks

in monasteries--tales of White Knights and Indarba--never did

anything resemble what came out of the meadow that bright summer's

day. For every wave that broke upon the Sea that Gives Birth to the

Sun, for every story in the Land of Mountains redacted from the

branches of the Mabinogion, from the White Book or the Red, nothing

compared to the creature that flew over the land that blessed,

messianic time. Nobles, peasants, druids--especially druids--quaked

when they saw it. At once legend, at once divine, christened White

Flame because of its colour and shape, it instantly seared its place

into the history books of Ealga.

According to lore, it hovered briefly overhead to look down upon the

druids. The legend, passed on to countless generations of listeners,

is that somewhere within its vast consciousness, part human, part

god-like, it considered crushing the druids with one flap of its

wings. But that would have been vengeful and petty, and White Flame

was far too mighty for that.

© 2001 David Murphy. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author.

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