Elen Awakens

I can feel the pulse through the earth beneath my bare feet, the heartbeat of the land. Drums and voices throb between the trees, this tiny scrap of ancient forest, clinging on in a deep and hidden ravine. Many years, many lives have led towards this point and I am ready.

The voices of the gathered people weave through the air and set my spirit loose from my body. Indigenous people from all over the world have gathered to bless our rainforest, to show us how to honour it and feed life back into it. But the truth is that I need their energy for something greater.

I grew up in the wilds, what remains of them on this crowded and dying island. My mother kept me to the mountains, wandering caves and snowy peaks, down into valleys, bathing only in wild waters, only breathing free air. Where the crashing waves met rocky shore, where forests were adorned with fern and moss and lichen, that was the energy of my life. I learned the way of the deer, the eagle and the wildcat. I dreamed through winter and felt the ways of how to be a guardian, to feel into the power of a place and create a feral shrine.

But most of all, I learned her ways, the horned goddess, Elen. I studied the tracks weaving through deep forest, the movement of deer through the seasons. I listened to the wisdom of waterfalls and I slept in the ancient tomb-shrines of my ancestors. I lay in peat and sank through its layers, I laid on the forest floor and let moss cover my skin. And she spoke to me, as she had to my mother, and my mother’s mother, and so on back through many generations.

The women of my line had been working towards this day across centuries, millennia perhaps. I carried their stories in my heart and on my breath and I felt them gather behind me, my matirja, my mother-line, bringing sky and earth and water here, now, to this small fragment of the wild wood that still stands.

I had gathered these people, these people that know what it is to love the wild, because she was ready. Elen was ready to awaken. And I would be her vessel. Deer and wild ponies are gathering now, drawn into the trees adorned in lichen, hung in luxurious ferns, thick moss cushioning the dark soft earth in a lush opulence. I can smell the life, I can feel it buzzing in my skin.

The people gathered here, maybe thirty or so, look around in wonder at the gathering animals, sensing the magic in the air. It thrums with it, the energy rising and rising, the joy of the people feeding it, more voices, more drums, and my spirit drifts down into the earth. I fall to my knees and thrust my hands down into the black soil, feeling the myriad of lives that make their home there, unnoticed by the people. She is there. Elen of the ways.

This forest is clinging on here because this was an ancient deer path, their trods marking the land with a magic not even the fertilisers and pesticides have been able to erase. I feel her, her sovereignty of the land leaking into my blood, turning it as black and thick as the earth. I send my spirit down into the web of roots and mycelium and life and become one with the earth.

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I open my human eyes, the first time I have seen this world with a mortal gaze for many many centuries. I breathe in and feel the thick rainforest air in my lungs, the energy pouring into me from the gathered humans, now lost to the music they’re creating. It gives me what I need. I feel fingers deep in my earth and I allow the energy to flow through me. A sound like the breaking of ages tears through the trees, my poor trees, so starved, so empty of life. But not for much longer. The sound is accompanied by shoots reaching up, twisted oak and hazel spreading out, unfurling up the ravine and out onto the land above. I can see them, their beauty, as they stretch towards the sun.

I feed them and they grow, spinning and curling up, the mycelium stretching out, root, to root, the land becoming soil again, a living thing. The ferns and mosses and lichens spread from tree to tree. I hear gasps of awe and terror behind me as the people realise what is happening, and see me, glowing golden-green skin, but I can’t allow them to stop. My beauties, my deer come to gather around me, their heat and wild musk a welcome familiarity in this strange, cold, dead world.

I send everything I’ve got, not much, not anywhere near my old power. I’m so weak, but this is it. No more. I am Britain and I will not allow this to continue. It has taken me everything, guiding my loyal women down through the ages, ready for this moment. My wild, feral women, giving themselves and their whole lives with joy, for this. I tear the pollution out of the water of the streams and rivers as the forest grows. I can feel them return, the pine marten, the red squirrel, the mountain hare, the beaver, the bison, the elk, the lynx, the wolves. Howls are heard across this land for the first time in centuries and tears fall down my cheeks.

It drops, the energy, and I fall onto the earth. The music has stopped and I can feel their eyes on me. They have not seen anything of its like, they have forgotten everything. Only one comes over, one of the leaders of a group from another land, far away across the wide ocean. I see in his eyes the wisdom of ages. He knows what I am, and there is a wary acknowledgement in his gaze.

He helps me up, and I see that where I have lain, flowers have grown, lilies and orchids. I walk towards the group of people that are too shocked to move. At each step, flowers spring up from the earth, the deer following behind me. This feels more like home. A wolf howls and the sound of bison crashing through the forest reaches us. Birdsong fills the air, and this land has not been this alive since the last time I walked it in human form, after the Romans left my shores.

I see cameras pointed at me, half-forgotten in hands. I look at the gathered people, and see some hope and wonder on their faces.

“The wild has returned”.

© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2023