The Arianrhod Treasure

For hours now, she'd flitted through the freezing forest, evading the thieving blighters. All Grannie had told her was to follow the call and that "It will come to you with the gloaming," she'd said.

Euphemia had laid low in the cold damp of the deep forest since late morning. The voice came as the old woman had promised, at dusk... a haunting murmur on the wind merging with the night chorus... calling... leading deeper into the woods. The woods seemed to be denser and deeper than she knew them in daylight.

She'd grown up roaming these woods with Grannie and mum. But, the deeper the voice led her, the more unreal the forest became. And yet... there was a knowing in the depths of her soul of every leaf and stone. Eóghann would probably say it was "quantum."

The voice led her along a path appearing as she stepped. The path circled upward through the high forest, toward the peak of the craig. As she ascended, the trek became labored and she puffed mini-clouds with every breath in the cold air.

Why didn't you just give up the treasure, old woman? she mused. But, no... you're determined the Arianrhod Treasure must pass to me. Euphemia didn't want the treasure. It's just tat... a couple of blackened old Celtic artifacts only a museum would want, she fumed as she continued following the where the voice led, running lightly between the trees. She ran for hours more through the velvety darkness of advancing night.

The old woman had been trying to convince Euphemia, to accept the Gift ever since her mum had died. Euphemia wanted neither treasure nor Gift. It should have been mum, her heart wailed. For a full year, she'd been able to fend off all Grannie's machinations.

Grannie began telling her all the time that the Gift would fade if she didn't "take up the mantle" before the year was gone. Fine by me, she thought furiously. In a month, it would be a year passed since mum died.

So naturally, Euphemia had at first thought this whole thing today -- on a rare full moon Samhain of all days -- was another of the old woman's ffealla-dhà to get her to "carry the mantle" as Grannie called it.

Some distance behind her, Euphemia heard the men who'd been chasing her for that treasure since this morning. They were same blighters who'd broken down the cottage door and dragged her and Eóghann out before school, into the cold, misty morning without even a jumper. When Eóghann kicked the man she'd been struggling against, Euphemia had been able to break free.

That was when she knew this was no prank. One of the men pulled a gun from his pocket and struck down at Eóghann's temple with the butt. When she saw her brother's hand come away with blood, she started to rush back to his side, but he waved her off, "Run, Effie!"

She turned and fled. A reverberating pop rang out, echoing around and up the lane as the sun's first rays fell upon the village hedgerows. Euphemia felt a tiny gust of wind as something whistling whizzed past her shoulder.

All these hours later, in the late night sound traveled strangely around this primordial forest. Her musing was interrupted by the echoing sounds of the men bashing their way through the undergrowth. Shouting and cursing angrily, they crashed and bumbled through the woods. Euphemia could tell from the sounds that they'd lost her trail and were moving away from her.

Then, a younger voice cried out in pain. Before she could stop herself, she called out her brother's name in alarm, "Eóghann!"

He answered back reflexively, "Effie!"

The men shouted mockingly, "Effie! Effie!" She squinted briefly angrily at their taunts. One of them raged at her, "It'll be the worse for ye both if ye don't give over!"

Loudly beating the forest undergrowth ahead of them, the men were heading in her direction now. She turned and fled, racing through the trees. Fleet footed, Euphemia quickly outpaced them, barely making a sound.

This is so stupid. What's the old woman going to do about those bruisers?

A sudden stitch in her side made Euphemia hunch over. She mustn't stop, though. Heaving and out of breath, but still running as fast as possible, she lurched onward. Scrambling between the trees, she spotted an opening in the forest.

It was moon-high on Samhain when Euphemia stumbled out of the dense forest. Euphemia paused for a breath of gratitude for the warm dancing wind. She halted at the edge of the clearing she'd always known. Now, she had a knowing, but this wasn't the place she'd always known. Before her now was a place beyond this earth... the heart of the clearing was magically verdant... otherworldly and bathed in ethereal silver moonlight.

Clinging to a gnarled, hollow tree, the earthy musk of oakmoss filled her nostrils as lichen crumbled under her fingers. Rot-dampish wood broke away from the opening to the hollow. Euphemia pushed her frazzled braid over her shoulder. At first, she only heard the thumping of her heart. With a will, she quieted her breathing, listening intently.

Carried on the wind, the sounds of darkness filled the night. And, that haunting call made of the sounds of night came to her, directing her to search the hollow. The susurrus of the forest's night chorus felt welcoming. Breathing easier, she plunged an arm deep into the hollow's recess and froze in a moment of elated relief.

Just like the old girl said.

Euphemia retrieved something wrapped in a ragged linen cloth. Hands shaking, she frenetically discarded the linen, revealing a soft tapestry bag. Her breath caught as she drew out the artifacts, no longer crusty and blackened with age.

She'd never seen them like this. The disk was now a shining, finely wrought silver wheel, and the old stick was a sculpted curling, pale birchwood wand. The artifacts were artfully bound together by new-looking willow bark twisted into a complicated Celtic knotted rope. The silver wheel detail of the disk was also stamped in gleaming silver on hilt the wand.

She turned the disk over and over in her hands, admiring the handiwork of a some long forgotten silversmith as she unwound the rope. Argent light danced across the bas-relief of the Celtic knot pattern on the wheel. Forming the wheel's hub, the central sigil held her rapt gaze. The sigil glowed from within.

"Beautiful..." she breathed in wonder. As beautiful as it was, she knew, holding it in her hands, she confidently declared a knowing, "This is never Arianrhod's Treasure."

A loud crack of breaking branches came from the forest behind her, crashing sounds and rough voices coming closer. Hurriedly kicking off her shoes, Euphemia glanced quickly over her shoulder toward the threat. She reverently brushed her fingertips across the lighted sigil.

Euphemia's body went rigid and absorbed the light, absorbed the sigil... brilliant and luminous as moonlight. Simultaneously, the moon's silvery light beamed blindingly into the clearing. Euphemia, arms wide, murmured in a pulsating drone. Her voice merged with the night symphony and rose with that haunting call as she was propelled by an unseen force across the clearing to the very center. Coruscating light undulated around her and then around the wheel in one hand and the wand in the other.

Energy pulsed like a heartbeat up from the ground, through her bare feet and into her. Euphemia directed the energy flow through her and into the wand which she aimed at the ground. At the same time, she gently wafted the seemingly weightless silver wheel to float from her hand and hover above her head.

The silver wheel spun gently as it expanded. While it expanded and spun, it was descending to settle on the ground with Euphemia at its center. She was the hub. Her bare feet still rested upon the grassy fecund earth in the space where the wheel's sigil had been. A magnificent silvery-grey dire wolf appeared out of the forest and came to stand at her side as majestic snowy owl glided across the clearing, coming to rest upon her shoulder.

Behind Euphemia, two large men barreled across the forest's edge. Ahead of them, they compelled a preternaturally calm teen with a trickle of blood at his temple. Staring at the tableau before them, the men tossed aside the thick branches they'd used to beat the bush.

A shimmering female apparition appeared behind the boy, between the men. Startled by her sudden appearance, the men jumped several paces away from her. The figure's form was glowing but indistinct.

A tendril hinting at a hand reached out to Eóghann. Where it stroked the boy's cheek, a sigil glowed briefly. The figure faded as a voice like wind said, "Rùisg do chosan, a bhràthair."

Eóghann took a step back, but one of the men rushed him and shoved him to the ground. "Stay put, runt," he growled at the teen.

Both men started toward Euphemia, whose back was still turned. Neither noticed the boy furtively kick off his shoes. The men were about to cross the wheel when they stopped short, unnerved by Euphemia suddenly facing them…  she didn't turn or move; she was just facing them.

One of the men blustered, "You ran us ta hell an' gone for this light show?" He gestured around the clearing.

His buddy aimed a pistol at her, adding menacingly, "Light don't stop bullets. Stop muckin' about an' give us the Arianrhod Treasure."

She locked eyes with the armed man as the corner of her mouth stretched in a slow, creeping smile. A look of horror crept into his eyes... he couldn't look away and couldn't move. The gun fell from his nerveless fingers.

He found himself in the center of the wheel, nose to nose with her as Euphemia whispered, "I am Arianrhod's Treasure." The light of the sigil flared in her eyes. And just as suddenly, the man was back next to his partner in crime.

In the same breath of time, a whirring wind rose as the men determinedly surged forward to grab Euphemia. In the same moment, a colossal apparition of light expanded up from the wheel, forming with Euphemia at its center. The apparition became a transparent, glowing goddess in flowing robes and bare feet, wearing a diadem with a crescent moon among star. The lunging men rebounded violently off the sparking edges of the apparition. Vines and roots shot from between the trees, reaching across the clearing to entwine themselves about the men.

The men clutched and clawed at the earth as they were inexorably dragged back toward the forest edge. As they writhed against their living restraints, they reached for the boy's legs. Both bellowed in pain when an arc of electricity sparked and flung their clutching fists away from the boy.

And, as they were dragged from the clearing, the furrows they'd gouged down to the bare soil folded over and knitted themselves together until no sign remained of the men. Euphemia rushed to Eóghann's side, "Did they hurt you?"

"I'm okay, Effie." Euphemia only barely winced at the hated nickname. "Grannie said it would all come right," he added with a sparkling grin.

As they were talking, a rustling wind swirled about them, carrying fallen leaves dancing across their vision. The wind died as quickly as it had risen, letting the leaves rain down. As the leaves fell, the otherworldly verdant green of the clearing shifted to the dampish dead grass more normal for this time of year -- and the cold. The cold came rushing back, prickling along the skin of her arms under the thin blouse.

The owl on Euphemia's shoulder protested as she bent to pick up the wheel and wand. The artifacts had returned to the old blackened state she remembered as she reverently bound them with the now decaying willow rope and placed them back in the bag. Looking around for the linen cloth, she spotted it waving gently in the wind where it had snagged on a tree branch.

She started toward it until it lifted off the branch and floated toward her. As the cloth neared, the glowing goddess appeared. She was clothed in flowing robes, with bare feet, and wearing a diadem with a crescent moon among stars.

The goddess smiled with a twinkle in her eye as she held out the cloth for Euphemia. The owl fluttered from Euphemia over to the goddess' shoulder. As the glow faded from the goddess' form, the owl's appearance shifted from the majestic Snowy Owl to an ordinary, rather scruffy Little Owl.

While trying to put his shoes back on, Eóghann was being nuzzled aggressively by the wolf as it morphed back into Grannie's old deerhound. Euphemia sighed in overwhelmed relief, and returned the goddess' smile. Then her mind replayed the day of racing about in terror and almost dying... and... and...

"We could have died, Grannie" she turned to face the goddess beside her, as she paced back to where she'd left her shoes next to the hollow tree.

Following, the goddess chucked her under the chin, "Right sorry I am too. But, ye had te get them to this grove for me te summon the goddess,"

The glamor of Arianrhod the goddess fell away, leaving old Granny, as she took the bundle from Euphemia and placed it back in the hollow of the tree. "This is where I could handle the eegits. This place held the last of me power." Her tatty party-favor diadem tilted rakishly while she rooted around in the recess of the hollow and came up with a triumphant grinning, "Me shoes!"

Smiling indulgently, Euphemia gave the old woman her arm, and held her hand. Grannie continued as she patted her hand, "And, the power's passed to you now, Effie."

The old woman turned Euphemia's hand over and showed her, visible in a beam of moonlight, the sigil of Arianrhod glowing in the palm of her hand. But, she already knew that. Euphemia had felt the knowing the moment she touched that sigil.

* * * * * * * * * *

Epilogue

The old woman turned Euphemia's hand over and showed her, visible in a beam of moonlight, the sigil of Arianrhod glowing in the palm of her hand. But, she already knew that. Euphemia had felt the knowing the moment she touched that sigil.

Incongruously, Eóghann interjected, "Excellent demonstration cryptophenomenological illusion," as he took Grannie's other arm.

"Krypton feno whatsit ILLUSION?" Grannie demanded, and in the same breath continued, "That was no illusion, boy!" She yanked her arm away from his support and snapped her fingers in front of his face, catching the tip of his nose.

Skipping a few paces ahead, Eóghann opened his mouth to placate her. However, when put up his hands in acquiescence, moon bright light coruscated around his digits and sparked off his fingertips.

Grannie made to step bumptiously around him, but he stopped short in his tracks, staring in wonderment at his own fingers. His grandmother querolously chided him for bringing her up short as he scrambled to keep them both from tumbling to the ground.

Euphemia stepped around them both, letting their chatter fade dreamily to the background. The theme of their argument wasn't new. Eóghan would work himself around to "It's be quantum." 

Granny liked the word "quantum." To her, the word and the way her grandson explained it, "quantum" was just explaining magic. And, Eóghann liked "quantum" because magic can't be real, so everything must be quantum. And there it was... she caught the word and their conversation shifted, as Eóghann launched into a long supposition about the "quantum" of the goddess' power.

Euphemia held out her own hand before her. A silvery light sparked in her palm. Concentrating, she made four more sparks appear, then made them dance briefly on her palm before extinguing them with a pleased smile... a smile of knowing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Glossary

argent: silver; silvery or whiteness; the heraldic color silver or white

Arianrhod: Celtic star goddess, sky goddess, considered by many as a Moon Goddess, a primal figure of feminine power; also rules arts, magic, and manifestation. As the Goddess of the Silver Wheel she is associated with spinning and weaving. With Her wheel she magically weaves the tapestry of life.

cryptophenomenological: Relating to hidden or obscure aspects of perceived reality; the study of phenomena that are not immediately apparent to the senses.

Eóghann: Ewan

ffealla-dhà: pranks

oakmoss: any of several lichens that grow on oak trees and yield a resin used in perfumery

rùisg do chosan, a bhràthair: bare your feet, or get your shoes off

© 04 October 2024 by D. Denise Dianaty.