Sunrise nipped at his heels as he retreated from the cobbled streets of old London, and the neon-lit signs of new London, for the world between the worlds, the place that is just as much a state of mind. His solitary country, the forever harvest world of the Holly King. There's a saying, well several: that man is an island unto himself, no man's an island unto himself. If any man could be said to have embodied that saying, it would be Davydd ap Owain.
     He rested, fell into a sleep as hard as death, seemingly as final, surrounded by tangled and grasping vines bearing grapes purpled with juice, beneath the shade of the white trunked holly trees, their deep green leaves and bright crimson berries shielding him and shading him as he slept.
     (He had noticed the call on his cellphone, but it was too late to return it. The next evening would offer him little opportunity, or such was his assumption. An easy assumption to make, and in truth it was a conversation he wasn't ready to have.)
     In the extending shadows of retreating Day, with illumination peeling off the stones, melting away into the darker tones of twilight, a figure moves out of an alley, one of the many in the city within a city within a City, to join the throngs of Londoners heading home from work and onto the rest of their evenings. He is clothed as they, in the layers that still respect London's tendency to be cool but with a hopeful eye toward summer. He moves as they, darting into intersections, dodging traffic, people watching as he makes his way to the Financial District. Ah, the lone salmon swimming against the sea of people leaving the Financial District for the night.
     I am a salmon in a pool...
     The burnished head full of bronze and copper stands out amid the blacks and whites that he wears, stands out amid the crowd around him, even as he does without really thinking about it. Perhaps without even realizing it. He hasn't realized much in his time. But he has, at last, come to see that. Uncomfortably clearly...
     Elevator doors open to the lobby of Cooper-Farzad, the legal office on the upper floor, and Davydd ap Owain steps out and to his resigned fate, hands out of his pockets, a cigarette nowhere near at hand and a look on his face that may be said to be blank if anything. Waiting upon word before assigning itself to one emotion over another...

     As usual, the evening at Cooper-Farzad finds most leaving and a few industrious getting in their last jabs of social and financial advancement for the day. The young man that works at the front desk remains, already in his jacket for the night. Apparently he's required to remain until the last visitor arrives.
     "Good evening," he says, looking to the elevator. "Welcome again. They are expecting you - do you need anything, Sir? Tea, coffee..."
     Tea and coffee is much like 'hallo' apparently.

     "No, thank you," comes the reply, lilting un-English but certainly of the island. Somewhere in the country. Davydd pivots only briefly toward the young man at the front desk, out of a polite recognition for the courtesy, then continues to the door.
     He takes a moment outside, only a moment for one exhalation, and his hand moves upon the knob, turning it. Inside, gears work and shift as designed and destined, without issue. That is more than he can say for his tenure upon this world.
     The breath gone, Davydd steps into the room and the one (or the many) who awaits him.

     The door is scantly closed when it no longer is there. The handle vanishes upon the closing, leaving an empty fist breezed by a waft of air. No office walls exist. There is but white, filling a void. Beneath feet, there is substance to hold a stand, but in truth, there is nothing but white.
     From the left, the light parts brilliantly. In it, Isabella stands, dressed in a black suit and heels, her black hair pulled back in a knot at the top of her head. Before her, her hands are clasped.
     "A return." Isabella of Bristol's lips purse slightly as her eyes shift left and right.

     Again, Davydd ap Owain stands upon the void without trepidation. He stands, in a black suit with a thin white sweater, a stark thing in a starker place. No less than you. "Isabella..." Davydd says in salutation. Dark green eyes glance about, a quicksilver survey. None appear at the moment but you. None that he can see.
     His burnished bronze-copper hair is short, no curl visible, only enough left to burn where it sits in fiery color, like fires on the hills at Samhain, dotting the most solemn plain. And he is solemn where he stands, his hands behind his back, his fingers laced.

     Begin now...
          Yes, yes, it is time...
     What say us all?
          Do so, yes.

     Isabella looks down for an instant, as if reluctant to continue despite the voices. But prior experience shows and says that she must, and certainly she shall.
     "My mind is clear, Davydd - I will not have you believe that such is unanimous. But we are such that the mind understands what We must do. You have not shown that you are able to do these things, and for my part, I believe that trend shall continue. Yet better minds and beings are here with me, and for that I am glad. I understand my Role, and I shall continue in faith in such."
     "This," Isabella lifts her gaze, "...is their wish...."

     Davydd brooks no argument, what can he say? What the White Lady says is true. He has not shown ... anything. But for that one act, that one act that he can actually not claim the glory of, having been done not in forethought of planning but in the reaction of self-preservation. Hardly a lofty laurel...
     He inclines his head, his eyes settling on Isabella. He waits without commentary, his expression bleeding through the evenness of his visage. He registers her displeasure, he recognizes its origins and he will heed the word, whatever the word will be. Positive (he is not expecting), negative (a reasonable assumption), anything in between (anybody's guess).

     You will commit Yourself, all of it.
          You and more than You.
     All parts. Mind. Body. Soul. Being. Extension.
     "Nothing spared," Isabella adds.

     The look is unflinching. "Done..." Davydd says in Welsh. There's nothing flippant, no lilt, no drag. Just the Welsh to seal the vow, just the Welsh to mean it. There is no going back. What would be a life without this? What is the life he has led?
     Davydd's gaze shifts slightly to the Unseen Others, but returns to the White Lady in the chamber's center. "Done..." the Brythonic beneath the Welsh is uttered.

     Isabella looks about the room, as if she's expecting more. Perhaps there is. But she is in no rush to speak it. It will come from the others as they choose. "You say that so easily," she smiles slightly. "It is easy to say so, but harder to do. And I believe you have little idea of how to make such happen..."

     "All I need is a beginning, Isabella. And I have that..." His hands free one another and he moves his hand in the void. All around this chamber, there appears a world that is here and not here. Not Anywhere but Everywhere that He Is. Thick and tangled wood of holly and yew, ash and thorn trees, hazel trees bearing their enlightened fruit in clusters, rivers running clear. And around it, thicker than thieves, the thorn trees that have held it as solitary as he has held it.
     "There is a place for the Lost, a symbol and a refuge. It has been mine..." fiery eyebrows quirk upward, "... it is me, and as this land surrounded by an Impenetrable Wood, I have held myself removed. But that...that I end tonight. That I end with the word 'Done'. It is and will be done." As he speaks the trees along the borders of that broad, wild land disappear. "I have been as Lost as they have. Who understands Them better than I?" the druid's rhetorical, metrical statement. "This land is theirs. I give it to them. It is time for Avalon to return to those who need it most. This body is theirs, I give it to them. With it my soul. With it, my being. For this land and I are indivisible. I am Avalon..."
     Who but the slayer of Mithras could return the kingdom of Avalon, once the heart of this island Albion, back to Albion? Who but the one who inherited it, not with Mithras' death, but in his own life.
     "That is my beginning," Davydd speaks to the room, his hand moving again and the vision of his world fading back into the white void like some dream of Creation in Creation's own beginning.
     "It will be hard to do. It has been hard. It is hard." Again, the Celtic triad. It will, it has, it is. "What legend of Ours," of this Island, "... is without its forest of thorns, its insurmountable odds, its hopelessness or its oblivion, but ending in the persistent hope that the sun will indeed rise again, that the longest night will not be forever... that is who we are. We are hope. Stubborn hope."

     It is true. Our Albion is but this. Times are difficult, the way shrouded. A veritable wall keeps us parted.
     Isabella's impassive face shows a sign of dismay. "Easy for you to say. We are hope. Yet, when have you believed there was Hope until others said there was, there is, and there should be?"
     Come Bristol, be not so...
          Yes, the past disappears into your deepest memory, dear Isabelle. Hope, yes?

     "No, the past does not disappear. It is very present," Isabella comments. "Very real." Her faint smile turns into a frown. "All of the past..." she whispers.
     You linger too long...
          He has made good points. If his words are true of such Truth.

     "I'm still standing, aren't I... for all I know, lady, that's what hope is..." So sayeth the Slayer, for whom standing, once, was indeed Hope. "And...you are right. For too many years, I thought there was ...nothing I could do, nothing else was in my power. But I can be more... and we can be more... that I do know, lady...I won't claim to know everything, I'm neither insane nor foolish, but I do know that..."
     Davydd looks to the white of the white void, for a moment to the Nothing that is beneath his feet as solid as Everything. "It is not easy to say," green eyes lift and the Celtic face, the dream of Briton, "...it has been hard to say, hard to believe, and hard to know how to make any of it happen. If it were easy, if any of it were easy, Isabella, we would not be standing here today. I would never qualify ...anything I have ever experienced, good or bad, as being easy. Nor are these words, or standing in this room, easy."
     Davydd laces his hands behind his back again, his head tilting in a slight bow. "What hope is... is the persistence to Believe in the face of ... everything telling you that you should not. So... do I have my weaknesses, Duw oes," he murmurs. "We all do. I don't want them to have the last word. I choose to be More. We suffered, we choose to live. That is what we do, we who hope..."

     You must lay a holly wreath comes a voice, clearest of clear. Around old Sarum...

     The room suddenly seems quieter, if possible. No voices come, no pressing of energy. Isabella stands still, her eyes narrowing as she looks slightly to the left again. Without turning back, Isabella's brow arches as she gives a gaze to Davydd. She too remains quiet, her gaze lowering as she looks to her shoes.

     Davydd looks toward the clear, ringing voice. "As you wish..." he says. "The sign and symbol of Rebirth will be there for all to see..." Dark green eyes, within them the reflection of hollied woods and worlds, turn toward Isabella. He waits to see what else he must do. He accepts it all. There is nothing he would say no to, even if he could.

     Isabella pauses for a moment, turning fully to see the other present in the room. Her hands unfold and rejoin behind her. For a moment, she thinks, eyes falling to the floor, and then they lift.
     "More than a symbol," Isabella explains. "For rebirth there is death. You know this."
     "Your time will be limited," Isabella says, "...in this realm. You will do this," she goes on, "...and you shall cease to exist. Ninety-nine years, thirteen cycles of the moon...and a night."
     "Therein -- Sarum shall have its wreath of Holly."

     "There is no Life without Death, no Death without Life. It is... as it should be..." Davydd replies. "Sarum will have its wreath of Holly," the berries will be his blood, the green of the plant shall be his life and the cycle will be made whole.
     Davydd nods his head once, a slight bow of his head. Where his blood shall drip upon the earth there will be Life, Rebirth, Reincarnation.
     "I've lived through many varied shapes, before I came this form. Swordblade, raindrop, shining star, the thunder of a storm..." he breathes in lyrical intonation, the song of Taliesin. "I have been a written word, and I have been a book. I've been a bridge that passed above ten rivers and a brook..." Davydd's face warms in aspect, the green eyes dark, glistening woods. "It will be done..."
     I have been a lantern's light, an eagle flying free...
     I've commanded men at war and sailed upon the sea...
     I have been a warrior's sword and I have been his shield...
     I've been the strength set in a heart, and viper in the field...
     I have been a water's foam, the stone inside a mill...
     An oak tree in a sacred grove, and snake upon the hill...
     I have been a shining star...
     ...and know the secrets held therein...
     Of stars before the earth was made...
     Nothing is that I've not been...

     "It begins when you leave here," Isabella says softer. "If you choose it. If you wish to speak to us, you know how you may reach us. We shall be here for occasional...consultations. You will know when these are, if you choose this."
     "Once it is chosen," Isabella notes, "...it cannot be undone."

     "From the moment I was made, there was no other way..."
     It was just delayed. Just delayed.
     His voice contains the quietude of Understanding, understanding that which he has always known but seldom recognized. There is no going back. This is what he was here to do. It is, in short, who he is. There is no harvest without sacrifice. Hope has an altar and he must take his place at it.
     Davydd looks to you, Isabella, and he nods. "Then it begins tonight. No distractions. Time is as short as it is long," his mouth twitches a little. "There is much to do... and no time like the Present..."
     Davydd inclines his head, and gives a look around the room, a quick survey as his hands free one another. It is time to go. "You will hear from me," he nods. All of you. The first messages will be unmistakable. The opening of a world and the ripples it will cause.

     Indeed... comes the unison of voices, including Isabella's.

Posted by rowan at October 25, 2004 09:21 PM