Flag Fen

I wake very early in the morning to stoke the hearth fire back to life. Although spring is unfolding gently across the land, the mornings are still wrapped in the mist that rises from the waters overnight. The heat of the flames that lick the dry burdock stems warms the early morning chill from my hands. I feed the fire so that it may feed us. My knees sit in the groove that was worn by my mother’s knees, and as I rest here, I feel her around me, though she has travelled through the water to the lands of the ancestors these two summers past. I hang the pot over the fire and heat the rich stew leftover from dinner last night. Wild garlic grows abundantly now and I’m overly fond of it, my father says, but my mouth waters as its scent wafts up on the rising steam.

Today is a special day, celebrating spring in its fullness. We must be out of our houses and at the meeting place, the platform that sits on the water, for sunrise. I can feel the weight of the darkness press down on the roof as the flames send shadows dancing all around our beautiful roundhouse, making my father’s face flicker as he starts to awaken. His eyes open and lock with mine, a wave of confusion passing quickly as I resolve into his daughter and not his wife. I know that I look like my mother, as she was when my parents met, and I see the pain of grief in my father’s eyes when he looks at me sometimes.

He rises silently. We must hold our peace until we reach the causeway out into that otherworld on the water, and can speak our first ritual words. I ladle some stew into a bowl and hand it to him as he comes to sit down on a sheepskin next to me. His beard has a lot of grey now, and the wrinkles around his eyes and on his brow have deepened since my mother died. But I can still see the kindness and love there, etched into his skin, his life captured and held as plainly as if it were tattooed. I take a bowl myself and gulp down the stew. I rise and start to gather my things for the day, taking my pot of ochre with me.

I check my feet, cold despite the woven rush mats and sheepskins that cover the floor, but I am pleased to see them still a deep red, the ochre has stained them well. It’s our custom to stain our feet red when we are ready to seek a lover, and this spring I am finally ready. The ochre looks like the heavy blood of my womb and I am proud to display it, even if my feet will feel like ice until the sun has risen high.

I wrap myself in my favourite thick shawl that my mother made for me, grab the basket that I prepared the night before, and together my father and I head out, The moon is heavy and big, hanging low in the west and dawn is greying the eastern horizon. The sky is so big here. I’ve heard in other places that the earth rises up towards the sky and cuts into it. I don’t think I could live without feeling the wide heavens above me, tracking the sun and moon and stars as they weave their celestial dance above me each day.

My breath catches in the air and I keep to the side of the well-worn tracks so that mud doesn’t cover the ochre. I glance back at our roundhouse, the turf roof silvery-grey in the moonlight, surrounded by our neighbours. The causeway is ahead, my heart thuds heavily and my mouth goes dry. It allows us to cross the water safely, but the otherworld presses in, visible between the posts as they rise out of the water. Spirit eyes peer in and voices whisper. I am excited and terrified, I am terrified that one day I will follow those whispers down below the surface and go with the spirits. I clutch my basket tightly and walk closer to my father.

The early morning is filled with the sounds of newborn lambs bleating and many thousands of birds, lapwings, curlews and snipe, the constant song of this land that plays across the water. I stand at the entrance to the causeway, people already moving along it. My father takes my hand and squeezes it and we step onto it together. We say the words as one, begging for protection, good fortune and safe passage.

I can hear them, the keening of the spirits, the call of the ancestors, tugging at me as we make our way along the causeway, the otherworld flickering between the posts that reach higher than our heads, brief glimpses across the silver mist. I slow my pace, eyes drawn inexorably to what lies beyond.

My father grabs my head and turns it forwards. I can feel his fear in the strength of his grip. We are in dangerous territory and I shouldn’t let myself get distracted. It seems like many hours have passed, but the sky is still just grey when we reach our side passage. It’s open at the end, facing out towards the moon as it is swallowed by the waters. I shiver. Even the moon could not escape that pull, compelled to sink into the spirit world each day, dying piece by piece only to be reborn again.

I set my basket down and bring out a wrapped dagger, a jar of beer and the finest loaf I could bake. We stand together, my father and I, and sing the ancient songs, in words so old that no one alive remembers what they were or where they had come from. But we know their meaning. We sing to our ancestors, to the spirits of our family and of the water. We sing to honour and appease them. My father takes the jar and smashes it against the post at the end, allowing the shards and beer to fall into the water. I take the loaf and tear it into pieces, allowing them to sink with gratitude and fear. 

Despite the cold I am sweating. If we displease our spirits, who knows what havoc they could cause? My armpits feel unpleasantly damp, but my breathing lightens as my father carefully unwraps the dagger. Blue is creeping into the sky now and the bronze shines like a ray of sun in his hand, warm and golden.

He feels in the basket for the two stones he has chosen specifically for this task. He lays one flat and puts the dagger carefully on top. I can see the dagger better now, its details picked out in the pre-dawn light. It looks like a long leaf, curved and beautiful, it sings with the magic of earth and fire. Raising the other stone, my father brings it down hard onto the dagger and breaks it. It is for the spirits now. He picks up the pieces, broken and bent, and carefully lets them fall through the water. Just as he does, a small brown head breaks the surface, an otter! A good omen! Our offering has been accepted. I turn to look at my father and see the relief on his face echoing mine.

The sky is full blue now, we need to hurry. Amid the cacophony of birds we continue onto the platform. It’s huge, bigger than our village, and it seems to hover just over the water, held in sacred space between water, land and sky, neither here nor there. Many have gathered already, from our village and from the village at the other end of the causeway, the platform sitting between us. Smoke from sacred herbs weaves with the wet and marshy smell of the fen, mist curling around ankles and the bright blue sky.

I look down to check, and my feet are still red, though the side of my soles are rubbing off a bit. I frown and resolve to top up after the ceremony. The elders are gathered in a knot at the centre of the platform, while the sound of dozens of people excitedly staying quiet swirl around them. We join our neighbours, a young couple with three small boys, all of us glad for the familiarity of company for the ceremony.

I look around eagerly and see him. He is tall, with dark skin and dark hair. His eyes catch mine and I see his eyebrows raise. We lock gazes until I turn my face away, cheeks blazing red-hot with embarrassment and what I guess must be lust. He must be from the other village, but I don’t recognise him.

Now the slow, pounding drumbeat starts and we fan out in a circle around the elders as they croon and chant in waves with the beats of the heavy, ancient drum. It is huge, carved out of the tree of a sentinel oak that blew down in a storm, long long ago. It takes six people to carry it, the drum skin dark with ochre and oak ink, rubbed into it by many hands. It sits in the middle of the platform, its thunderous roll sending shivers through the wood beneath my feet. It has been carried from far away, with my people since before we came to our home, out here where sky, earth and water merge. It holds the magic of our ancestors, their homeland and our journey here. And now it holds the deep, wide power of our home in its massive, dark belly, that flows out whenever the skin is struck hard by beaters, throbbing resonantly with the voices of our elders.

We start to move in slow steps around them, the view of the misty fen shimmering between the posts. I can feel it in the air, the shift that comes as the sun is about to break through the horizon, when it is neither day nor night. It’s a potent time, and one filled with danger out here, suspended between worlds. My red feet flash out from beneath my dress as we step round, but my mouth is dry and I can’t feel anything except awe and dread.

We turn towards the sun, and as we do so, the golden orb spills over the horizon, melting the last of the night from the sky. The drumbeat increases into a heart pounding rhythm, and I lose myself in it. The music carries me away on voices, both familiar and strange, and my body moves of its own will, limbs flung to the sky, to the misty waters, to the sun, to the spirits and ancestors that surround us and weave between our dance. It becomes increasingly chaotic and I yell and leap with abandon, feeling the spirits spin through my body, my flesh, my young and pulsing womb and fling me ever higher. It is pure ecstasy and all the energy of the rising sap fills me, the dawning spring sun envelops me like a cloak, wrapping me head to toe in golden sweetness, my feet catching strands of the mist, hands entwining in the soft breeze blowing.

The energy rises and rises, ever higher, building to a point where it seems to pour from my eyes and mouth, flashing from my teeth, sparking in my hair, until we reach a crescendo and it flies from us, out across the waters and up to the sun. I fall heavily, sweat running down my face and in between my breasts, my hair wild and tangled. Laughter bubbles out of mouths, joyous and exultant after such a release. The elders come round and give us all sips of honey beer, sweet, heady and fragrant. I am nowhere near my father, but the world seems benevolent now, and I am content to sit next to a mother and her baby on one side, and a group of middle-aged men on the other, all smiling brightly.

And there he is again. His eyes shine in the early morning light and I feel a thrill run through my body, anchoring into some unknowable place deep inside me. He glows like a marsh spirit, feral and free. I stand, and it feels as though some inexorable force is drawing us together. His gaze flicks down to my red feet and a smile comes to his eyes that catches my breath. He reaches out for my hand and without hesitation I take it. I have chosen my first lover.

© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2023