Brigid and the Cailleach

Brigid stood and watched the sun sink below the rolling green hills. A cool breeze lifted goosebumps on her skin and she felt the chill of the night reach into the vestiges of the day, and lay them to sleep on the earth. Her red hair blazed like fire and she felt the ancient pull, irresistible as time itself. The age-old dance of light and dark, and as the last of the equinox sun disappeared below the horizon, she knew it was time to leave her gentle, fertile valleys and turn her steps towards the north.

Winter was coming, and while the sun still held warmth in the days, the nights would grow longer and darker from now on. She felt the subtle shift in the air, could taste autumn leaves, could feel the swelling of the haws, rosehips and sloes, the change in pace as the animal life started to head south, or prepare for the coming winter. In the very deep of the night, there was even a subtle hint of ice carried in on the bitter north wind.

Brigid, the maiden of dawn and fresh life, grew wearier and weaker as she travelled north. Her feet found hard granite beneath them, and she battled through autumn storms, over craggy hills and savage mountains. Rivers ran wild in spate, the wind blew ferociously. There was a gently fierce joy in her heart though. The coming dark of winter brought deep dreaming and wisdom of blood and bone. She could release her energy to the earth, and transform. It was bittersweet, the transformation, but she knew that the cycle would turn, another round of the spiral, back to spring again, in time.

The nights grew longer as she travelled up this island, opening herself to the rawness of the land, along with tender moments of late summer warmth. She reached the far north just as the threshold came, the one that thrummed though the earth and through the darkness, a veil thinning until she felt all the ancient peoples of the land walking alongside her. Many had known her, in one form or another, for millennia, and she greeted old friends as their shades faded onto the path with her.

Here she found her feet on the path that she had worn, across so many thousands of years, leading up the steep and forbidding mountains. Deer gazed across at her from another mountain slope in the distance, briefly bowing their heads before moving on to find shelter. A storm was brewing, as the dim light faded and the veil became as thin as shadow. Feral winds tore at her cloak, and whipped her golden-russet locks around her head. Rain poured in sheets, turning her path into a torrent, frothing past her, granite slick. The cold seeped into her fingers, and her energy faded as dead voices sang on the drumbeat of the wind. But she would not stop, the pull that had started so lightly all those weeks ago, now pulled her insistently upwards.

All through the dark and storm she battled, slipping and slicing her fingers, barely feeling the wounds as her fingers were so numb. Spirit blood paid to the land. In the deep of the night, when all her strength had left her, she crawled up into the waiting cave. She was home. A fire burned there for her of oak and Scots pine, dancing shadows and light on the cave wall. Many spirals were carved into the rock, one for each time she had done this. There were thousands, stretching across the floor and wall and ceiling. She dragged herself to the fire and held out her bleeding and ragged hands, feeling as old as the mountains. 

Spirits of the ancestors clustered thickly and she nodded in acknowledgement. All of her things were there. A battered ancient copper kettle, a simple clay cup, and her herbs. She took them and huffed a deep scent into her lungs. Mugwort. Yarrow. Belladonna. Magic so old it was barely magic, just the way things were. She set the kettle over the fire and crushed the herbs into her cup. 

Brigid stood, and let her green gown, the colour of spring leaves, drop and puddle around her feet. She looked down at her body, and saw the changes already. Breasts sagging, belly rounding, skin wrinkling on her hands. She reached up to touch her face, and found the spiderweb of lines around her eyes and mouth. She sat naked, in front of the fire, and used her gown to wrap around her hand as she lifted the kettle and poured the steaming hot water over the herbs. She grabbed another handful and threw them into the fire, thick fragrant smoke clouding the cave. She heard spirit murmurs of approval behind her.

As the tea brewed, she summoned up the little spring magic that still ran through her veins and laced it to her breath. Then she began to chant, words that no human now knew the meaning of, but many of the ancestors around her understood them. Low and throbbing, her voice filled the firelit cave and spiralled into the fire, words of release, death, darkness and winter. The fire licked the words, consuming them and turning them to ash. When the last of the magic had gone, Brigid took the cup in her hands and drank deeply.

A wolf howled from outside, cutting through the lashing rain and rumbling thunder. She shuddered and placed the cup down, letting the brew swim through her. Despite the fire, she felt cold, down to her very bones. Her skin faded from a rosy pink, to bone-white, to ice-blue. It wrinkled and sagged, her bones cracked, her hair became ice-white, like a glacier under the midday sun. She shuddered and shook as she transformed, feeling the cold of the mountain leak into her, turning her insides into granite.

She lay quietly for a while after, then rose slowly, old body stiff. The Cailleach looked at her hands and smiled a grim smile. To shed the expectations of youth freed her to do her winter-dreaming, her storm-bringing, her shadow-riding. She is the hag of the mountains, who with her magic created the very land, the very mountain she was now on. She looked around and found her thick woollen skirt, her good boots, a warm furry cloak, which she swung about her shoulders. Her staff laid against the cave wall, and she picked it up with satisfaction. It was as old and as gnarled as she was.

The Cailleach whistled low, pursing her blue lips together. She could sense her old friend, and as her old friend padded through the cave entrance, dripping wet in storm rain, the Cailleach smelled the predatory wolfy smell. The she-wolf had blazing amber eyes full of wisdom and sharp teeth, thick grey fur and a stout heart. The Cailleach smiled and thumped her staff onto the earth. The tempo of the rain outside changed, harder and icier, now sleet and hail.

The Cailleach nodded her head to the ancestor spirits, who now started to drift back out and down the mountainside, having witnessed the transformation, as they did every year. The Cailleach pulled herself up onto the she-wolf’s back, gripping the thick fur, and settling her cloak around her, hand still gripping her staff. With great bounding lopes, the she-wolf leapt out of the cave and into the roiling storm. The Cailleach shook her staff and lightning cracked the sky, lighting the land below. Winter has come.

© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2023

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