THE APPEASEMENT OF THE GODS

In a forgotten time when Druids ruled Celtic kingdom there was a drought....

Baba was sulking.

Somewhere out there, in a clearing deep in the forest, his father was at work, preparing for the sacrifice.

Things had been going awry recently. The weather had turned cold in high summer and the fruit was barely growing anywhere. The gods - all of them, he supposed - were unhappy, but especially the goddess Sulis* who had withdrawn her sun disc for many days this year, and caused ice to form on the rivers still in late Cyntefin** when the mayflower should be a white shroud on Nature and not shivering almost invisible on its branches.

Food was scarce and Baba was hungry. But that wasn't what made him sulk. The gods, even Sulis, needed appeasing and it was down to the Druid Council to appease them, and a sacrifice was called for. All had agreed. It was the only thing they could do. And not just any sacrifice. Baba loved the mundane sacrifice of this or that creature of the forest, the howls of agony from the fiercest Wolf as flames singed its living flesh, but such sacrifice was for more pedestrian causes and did little more than confirm the superiority of Celtic man and in particular the Druid class over everything.

Small problems could be settled with that kind of sacrifice, and the lesser Celts, yearning for blood, could be satisfied. It was the Druid way: the Priestly way. But recently the ice on summer rivers, the refusal of buds to bloom, all these things had sent a chill through his father's heart and he had arranged an ultimate sacrifice and even seemed to have one more thought up his sleeve.

This should have cheered Baba up, but it didn't because he knew the sacrifice.

In his mind he traced the imagined the walk to Celie's home. Leave the front of his own home-hut and weave your way down the narrow worn path that led East, just a short distance, it could be walked easily in five minutes, away from the Druid settlement and there was Celie's more humble home.

But Celie wasn't more humble. Far from it. When the sun had beamed down last year he had seen her in the river, swimming and splashing alone, and he had frozen inside himself at the sheer beauty of what he saw.

She was beautiful clad in her day-to-day clothes, but far more wonderful when splashing in crystal water, its bubbling and spattering jewels leaping around her. He had seen his mother naked, of course he had, living in a one-room home-hut it was inevitable, and he had seen other womenfolk down by the river, washing, frolicking, being women - but none of them had the sheer beauty that was Celie's.

And Celie, being then known as the most wonderful young woman in the wildwoods was going to be the offering to Sulis, and Sulis would accept her flesh in the smoke that took it high into the air, and Sulis would make the chill go away and the people and the forest would all be bathed once more in warmth and heat.

It had been his Father who had told him. He would have loved to protest, but daren't. His Father was chief Druid, and couldn't be gainsaid. And he supposed it might be an honour - and anyway the sun might shine and the sacrifice be cancelled.

Sacrifices, he knew, were never cancelled.

Then he went, as was he had so many times, down the path he had just traced mentally, the one that led to her humble home, and he saw her moping and scowling, and asked her what was wrong.

“Ask your father!” she said, crossly.

“But I'm asking you, Celie! How could my father properly divine what might be wrong with you?”

“I know that it's an honour...” she started.

“What?” He knew where this was going but feigned ignorance.

“I know it is the best thing that could ever happen to me...”

“What?” he repeated.

“I am to be offered to Sulis,” she replied, simply, and in those few words he finally understood the whole dreadful truth. This beautiful, wonderful girl was to die.

“They will send me to her in flames...” almost wept Celie. “I will be dead and Sulis will be alive, and Sulis will thank the people of the forest by beaming the sun down on us... on you... and by the end of Cyntefin you will have to find another girl to … to … whatever it is you feel,” she said wretchedly.

“Love?” he asked.

“Love.” She nodded. “Do you love me, Baba?”

He thought for a mere moment, and that was enough.

“Of course I do...”

“Then you must be pleased at the honour your father is bestowing on me.”

He was. And he wasn't.

He was about to tell her they should run away together, maybe to another wildwood where they were both unknown and where winter had gone away, but the soft superiority of his father's voice cut through the air to him.

“What are you doing here, son?” the softness said.

He was silent. One person he was more scared of than any other was this softly-spoken Druid. He was the highest Priest of all, and what he said always went. It had to. Even if he said that grass was pink it had to be believed. And he did sometimes come out with odd ideas, especially after he'd been smoking the widow's weeds on dark nights under the moon.

Then, “Celie's my friend...” spluttered Baba.

“Oh yes, And she's no doubt mentioned the honour, the great honour. But has she told you of the even greater plan I have?”

Baba shook his head.

“The need is great. Has never been greater. Sulis demands more than the one offering. I have been divining, and I know.”

“She does?” stammered Baba.

“It is a great honour for me, my boy, that I should also be offering my own son...” droned his father.

“Not Baba!” Celie couldn't help herself.

“A virgin girl and a virgin boy,” rumbled the Druid Priest. “The best gift we can offer, and the sweetest, to be sent to the almighty Sulis at the very moment when they both cease to be virgins....”

Baba didn't understand, not properly, but that had to be that. Baba couldn't gainsay his parent, for that parent was the most powerful Druid Priest in his world. He had total control over everything " except the misbehaving gods, of course.

By the next dawn neither he nor Celie lived or breathed, and the frost shone like jewels on the still smoking burning site with its stone altar, yet for the rest of that summer the fruits failed and the forest looked as good as dead, and the people went hungry. By cynhaeaf*** another sacrifice was planned…

A bigger one, a better one, a more convincing one, and by then it was folly to be a virgin….

*Sulis: Celtic solar goddess

**Cyntefin: May day, or early summer.

***cynhaeaf: Autumn, or Fall.