Evidence of another autumn come and autumn gone, of the passing of the seasons from the napping of the earth to full on sleep of winter, is all around. Boots sink into soft sod, the seeping wetness of good Welsh soil. A garden and a land well-tended. Shovel in his hands, the Oak King made his rounds, from terraced wonder of Powis Castle gardens to the wide and opening plain.
     It is the third autumn of his return, once heralded by the trees of remaining Cymric forests and groves, resounded by the roman-candle-like presence of glamour and magic. Three years, and the ground rises up to greet him now. Three years, and his golden effect upon the Otherworld, the human world, can be felt by those in the True World, the one whose heart has not forgotten how to beat, the mouths to sing, the mind to dream.
     Powis Castle is the hub now about which so much spins, an "in between" place -- such as there are several in Wales, lending to its magical 'hue' that tourists flock to see. And he... the Oak King... the consort of a Queen who never knew him, in the husbandly sense... tends the earth. There...
     And here...
     For he walks the two worlds at once, Davydd ap Owain does. One foot on terra firma and the other on sinking Welsh sod.
     Perhaps you see it first, in the springing up of periwinkles, of such flowers that bloom only in summer. Behind the veil, the earth flushes in summer remembered, and it is the Oak King who walks, trailing sunlight and southern winds, glowing golden. In his hands, a shovel in one reality -- in another it is a golden, oaken spear.

     How do you see the world, Davydd? Do you see one world with one eye and still another with the other eye? Do you need to concentrate to see the one slightly skewed from 'reality', switching your focus as one would to see the difference between an object near and another far away? Or do you see them both, simultaneously?
     Do you see the slender woman standing some distance away? Her gown is the green of the grass once lush; her hair is bright and vibrant, the colour of copper; her flesh is as pale as freshly fallen sun; and her gaze is as blue as the sky on a clear summer day. Those eyes watch you from where she stands among the trees, already beginning their long slumber. She stands among their ranks -- solid, unmoving, strong...like her honour guard.
     The Oak Queen watches her consort with an expression of peace, of serenity, and of calmness. There is admiration within her for you...you who shines like an evening star. She has looked in on you from time to time, but it has been a little while since she has shown herself to you. Will you see her now? Do you catch a glimpse of her in that other world?

     It is a lack of concentration. It is a letting go of effort. It is a hazing of the mind just slightly. A daydream. An errant thought. Meditation while gardening. When he passes through, all things banal and dreary seem to drift away, like so much clutter of leaves at his feet. And even in his Holly Winter, when the Oak King himself is most prone to Banality, to the disillusionment that can come so easily from so modern a world, he is radiant.
     Here, in this forest that no longer exists in modern Welshpool, he is radiant. And he sees you -- a tree, at first, one without compare. And as the mind drifts in some introspection upon all of the tree's most incomparable qualities, he sees you standing there.
     He has had three queens in his lifetime: his Spanish countess and a Queen of the North. But before them all was the Queen of Summer herself -- the Oak Queen.
     The golden spear is embedded in the ground -- it becomes an oak tree, full of acorns.
     In Welshpool, thick earth thuds with the implanting of a shovel in the sod...
     Though the curse is with him still, the earth runs bloody beneath the periwinkles, bloody with the crimes of the one who cursed him to a life out of the sun, he looks ... renewed. Strong. Beautiful. Even with a bare face and short hair, shock of copper though still it is. He thinks to be a cool running stream splashing around your feet, and then he is. A silver river through the heart of the wood, edging just past your toes, before he, Man again, stands beside you. Golden light edges each strand of copper hair and lights across his forest-colored eyes like high noon.
     Then Davydd smiles, and then he is on his knees. A bow of his head and your consort, King though he is called, gives the Queen her due...

     Though it is not her time, either, the Oak Queen is radiant. The wind lifts her coppery locks a bit and scatters them lightly about her, as they would the leaves of a tree... and for a moment, her locks are the leaves reflecting the sunlight's brilliance. Then she is a woman again.
     Even as you are movement, she is stillness... the eternal, time-defying stillness that immortality brings. She remains unchanged as the day you first met her. Beautiful, serene, eternal.
     Her eyes see the blood beneath the periwinkles, the crimson tide beneath pastel flora. It is seen...and accepted. For this came upon you -- you did not seek it out...at least that's how she knows of it. The sight of it brings sorrow to her perfect face, darkening her gaze, making her look weary... but then this passes.
     And then you are on your knees. Soft lips turn gently into a slight smile as slender hands touch the sides of your face. Hafwen, Queen of Summer, bends to you, her lips brushing your forehead ever so gently. "You need not bow before me, Oak King," comes her gentle, musical voice, as though whispered at your ear.

     Where he goes, It follows, his permanent cloud, the curse that obscures the face of the sun from the King of Summer. The King who was never able to take up his crown, nor his Queen. He most assuredly did not choose such, no. It came upon him, captured him, nearly swallowed him whole, that darkness. In some ways, it did swallow him whole -- for he has since been consigned to the world of Evening, the domain of the Mischief Makers and Chaos Itself. He has called them brothers and friends, even lovers.
     This is why he must kneel...
     You touch his face and Davydd lifts it, eyes bright upon you. Soon the rest of him follows until he towers there, a man of uncommon stature -- the stout heart making him seem all the taller. "It is no shameful thing," his voice lilts Welsh, "... to bend a knee before a queen. Worlds have done so, Hafwen, before such queens not even half as worthy as you."
     He touches your face. The feeling is like... morning sun upon the skin when one is waking. Warm. Serene. Davydd ap Owain smiles, a comet-streak as ever. "For one not accustomed to seeing the sun," he continues, "...you will pardon, I hope, a little worship now and then..."

     As you rise, her hands slip away from your face, falling back to her sides. She stands straight and erect before you, an errant breeze plucking at the silken gown, letting it flutter about her ankles, about her arms. It covers her and yet is part of the very fabric of her being, as is all of this. She is one with this realm.
     'Hafwen,' you call her, and this causes her to smile. It has been a while since she has heard her name on your voice. It is a sad little smile. As resigned as she is to your situation, she would be lying if she claimed it did not pain her.
     Ah, you compliment her, and it only makes her more radiant, erasing the melancholic sadness from her face, replacing it with the heat of a blush. Yes, even queens can be flattered. Her gaze slips away from you, the brightness of her dimming momentarily, as she looks at the landscape of the 'real' realm momentarily, peeking in. "You have been busy, Davydd," she comments lightly, looking at the work done, her gaze slipping to the golden spear, then watching as it dissolves into a shovel, and then back again.
     Then the sunlit face turns back to you once more, bringing with it its light, its life, its warmth. "I did not mean to interrupt," she murmurs gently.

     Davydd casts a glance over his shoulder, as if to give a glance back to his work and efforts over the past cupful of years. He looks back to you, eyebrows opening outward. "It took me a long time to realize it, my work. Existence." He laughs suddenly. "I thought I was supposed to ... save the world, you know. From what? Maybe myself, those like Mithras... to be... saviour, Christ, Krishna, Cernunos. But..." another glance back. He sees his castle, his grounds. "It is none of those things, my Queen. It is life itself. And how do you think I shall be doing this? It is a fair question." Another comet streaks across his expression. "By living... and by tending to the world, or my plot of earth on it."
     Davydd looks to you again. "Most importantly," he notes, "...to those who live in it... and so," hands slip into modern pockets. "... I have found something To Do. My work is living. Now, it shall never be dull," he cracks. "Goddess hope not," he continues in a rumble, "... else I'll get a massive headache...truly."
     Such is the burden of banality -- the pain of a dulled mind or dream.

     Sky-blue eyes gaze over that which you tend to and marvel at the work done here, the care taken, and the love poured into the Earth. This pleases her. Despite the curse, you have found a purpose, your purpose, and not succumbed to the darkness so willingly or easily as others in your place might have.
     That slender hand of warmth reaches up and cups your cheek gently as Hafwen murmurs softly. "Living... that is something that the cursed," pronounced 'cur-sed', "do not usually figure out. Or if they do, it is with great struggle and pains. I... I apologize, dear one, that I have found no cure. I seek for this every day of my own existence, so that you might be freed of it, but I have failed you every evening you awake, leaving the Sun behind you, naught but a mere memory."
     The smile has faded not just from her lips but from her entire being. Her light dulls, her intensity fades, and the breeze which blows about her is no longer warm... but is tinged with Winter's chill.
     Such disappointment and despair threatens to overwhelm her, and her hand begins to move from your face once more, as she whispers, "Even if I cannot be graced by you, if I could give this to you, I would, Oak King."

     "The curse," he says, thought trailing out the words moments longer than they would have existed from another's mouth. Davydd smiles a little, there is sadness there, too. A life unrealized, he sees it in you. Things that Were Supposed To Have Been but now Can Never Be. He is solitary, even when he is at the center of a crowd. But he smiles, Queen of Summer, and sorrow never lingers long.
     "The curse is what one makes of it," he says finally. "It could have been the end of the world. It was only the end to sunlight on the skin. But I can see it here, and I can feel it when I must rest." Another effect of the curse. "And here I am, and you with me, so... what have I truly lost to it..." Only that which I never had.
     Leaning in, he places a kiss upon your forehead, his voice whispering in your ears now as he speaks lowly, "Do not weep for winter's sake, nor for mine," Davydd murmurs. "For the curse can only take what we give it."

     Those blue-blue eyes close, blotting out the worlds around her, and your lips touch her head. Even as they remain closed, she whispers softly, "You were chosen... and still are. The curse changes this not." You are right...in a way. Eyes open once more and look up at you now, taking you in. You are still alive. It could be worse.
     "It is perhaps more likely that you have become more than I could have imagined. It pleases me that you are still so strong, and living so freely. Tell me, Davydd, how do you fare these days? Is there anything you need or desire? Speak it and I shall try to grant it for you, if it is within my means." Above all else, she cares for your well-being, as is obvious... even if she cannot have her King, not really, she can still try to provide for him what she is able.
     A bit of the warmth of Her presence has returned, as her mood improves a little. Just being able to speak with you, being able to spend a little time with you, that is enough. It must be.

     "Give me your hand," he says, he smiles, and perhaps that is the sum of his needs. "By the Three Graces of Three Queens I have a family. I want for nothing material by the grace of my Two Hundred Years a highwayman." The smile slants a little at that. Black Jack Davy, indeed.
     "So long as I walk this earth, I may be thankful for all I have already received. I have... freed myself from the poisonous grasp of an ill-fitting woman," his hand slips in yours and he brings it to his lips. "And until such time, Lady, as I retire to the True World for all time, I have the companionship of a good lady. A trusted friend, though she be far more cursed than I." She actually has to drink blood. She, unlike him, is something more than dead but less than alive. "For now, it is enough. Though there be but one woman in all the universe who understands me," he whispers, leaning in again. Forehead to yours, he smiles a crooked smile.
     That woman would be you...
     "I can see you every summer in Wales, so clearly, as easily as starlight. Feel your hair on the wind, smell the roses in the air. It reminds me... that in the end we will be as we should have always Been, Hafwen. Because though the Oak King may fall, he shall only rise again..."

     A slender hand slips into yours and squeezes gently...an act of warmth, of familiarity. Nodding a little, she murmurs, "I have seen your family... they are beautiful and proud. I look over them, too, Davydd, for they are of your blood, your essence. They are, in a sense, you. So, I do what I can, when I can, for them as I do for you. My influences are limited in That Realm, as I have not fully manifested there for some time, but when I can, I pull strings if needed." Your smile is echoed by her own, growing in warmth, in size, in feeling.
     "Know that I fretted for you when you were with That Woman," the phrase is said with such distaste that it may seem she had just bitten into bitter fruit. "But, I knew that you would leave her when you tired of it. And you did." Another squeeze is given to your hand. "Your current Lady is lovely...though I do see the curse is strong with her. Your presence helps her, I think." This is said with a glance to the Real, to Powis in the physical realm.
     Then you are leaning in again, and so she looks back up at you, her eyes nearly as wide as the sky itself, and certainly the same hue. That crooked smile... was that perhaps what first caught her attention? Softly, she murmurs, "While I would never want your current life cut short, I look forward to that day, Davydd." To the day in the end. "I have patience. I am unending." At least she would hope. "And while I may find distractions for now, they are merely that... a distraction." She, too, bides her time with others. But they could not compare to her King, and they know it.

     "We are two strange creatures, she and I," Davydd says, a glance toward the physical realm, tinged with magic though it is wherever he goes. "Walking the world, solitary as shaman, closed sometimes even the one to the other. She frozen, me obtuse," Davydd grins. "There is nothing more I could ever ask of you, Queen of Summer, than for the blessings you have already bestowed. It is a comfort to me that you watch my children. I love each one," and so long as he blesses them, they are as immortal as he. Even the most mortal are miraculously long-lived.
     He smiles to the notion of cutting his life short at some eight-odd-centuries and he straightens from his earlier lean. "One day, I will steal my way into that flowered bower, such as the ones poets dreamed of, and lovers too. I think I have gotten close a time or two. I could smell roses in my sleep and feel the barest scratch of thorn."
     One day...
     One day, daylight will not stop him and the curse will have its end...
     Davydd lifts his hand to your face again, a gentle touch. He leans in for a kiss... and he can feel himself slipping away. He can feel the earth at his back. He lifts his head, he sits up in the otherworld of modern conveniences, to find he has slept half the night away...

     Even as you lean in for that kiss, her voice echoes through your mind softly, like a lullaby: And when you do find your way into that bower, I will find you. I will be there, as I've always been, my King, my love. Time Itself is all that separates us. Remember that. Remember I am always near. Just call if you have Need. I will find you again soon, to check in. Her voice fades, even has the touch of her hand in yours does...until they are but a wisp of a dream as you awake.
     She stands still, among the trees in the moonlight, watching you solemnly as you awaken. The Oak Queen stands in shadow, her warmth fading, her light hidden. A cool breeze picks up and she wavers, stepping further back, unsure at this point whether you see her or not. Turning, she moves into the shadows of the trees, her honour guard, melting into the shadows.

Posted by rowan at January 16, 2004 11:22 AM