A druid belongs to the world.
They said one day he would grow up and go off, but the young druid could not bear to wait.
His hands were steady as he tied his bindle—filled with enough food to give him a start. Weeks he had spent planning, bargaining herbs to the Giver to laden his stock. No one had questioned him.
The wind jostling through the canopy made him shiver. Not of cold—he rarely was—but the voices it carried.
He tied the cloth satchel a little tighter.
Kneeling, he poured water over the firepit, and after gathering his sparse belongings, ducked his way out of the tent. The camp slept. Midnight blinked through the tangled branches above, a million silver stars bobbing between. Long had he imagined seeing the stars unhindered. What would it be like to see them free? In the Arran Fáoth, the pines stood like embracing giants, and everywhere one looked was the endless green. It was all he had ever known.
And all he had come to fear.
Somewhere in the treetops, an owl cooed. He gripped his staff and went quietly, making it to the edge of camp. It had never crossed his mind that maybe he might regret leaving that place behind. After all, that was the way of his kin. When a druid came of age, they were expected to begin their wandering—unless some ill or wound hindered them. He, too, would have been sang away, come the year of his sixteenth birthday. As he looked at the sprawl of tents in the waning hue of lantern light, he wondered if he should see it again. Nothing might stop him save his aching ears, yet he felt this time was the last.
“To where do you roam so late at night?”
Startled, he glanced up, finding a woman watching him from under a knitted cowl. He had not heard her come up, though would recognize her voice even in the dark. She had nursed him long ago and given him his name. “Cerys” meant love.
He had never known hers.
She was calleddáihe, which meant something like shepherd, but the children she herded weren’t encouraged to flock. Still, she knew them better than perhaps any other. Even long after they had left the breast.
“I want to go out and stand beneath the sky,” he said.
It was only half a lie.
“You are much too young yet, little one. You’ve still two years before your day shall come.” Her wrinkled face was honey-warm in the moonlight. “Gentle thing, I would have you stay till you are ready. Do not be in a hurry to grow up.”
But hewasin a hurry. The forest wasn’t quiet anymore. He heard things in empty places. He saw things in the night.
Only one of those could he outrun.
As if she had heard his thought, she said, “Running from the song will not make it silent.”
“I am not running,” he said, “I am going; setting off upon my path. I wish not to go in ceremony, butnow. Dear dáihe, won’t you listen?”
A tired expression captured her face, but in her eyes was understanding. “You have always been my little grey fleece. When the other bairns wept for their woes, you stayed a-hush and would have wasted away without careful watch.”
She smiled. It was tender, or so he supposed. But for years now he had grown far from comfort.
“I cannot stay here,” he whispered. “They frighten me.”
“Aye. And if you are frightened, it must be frightening.” Her earthy brown eyes cast out to the wood, twinkling with the gold of her lantern. “You know well he would not have wished you to live with ghosts.”
Yet, he did live with them. And they chased him endlessly. In the branches… in the boles. They called to him. He had to get away.
“Imustgo.”
Another nod. “Aye.”
“Ma bhuthír, dáihe,” he said with a bow. She let him go.
There was little druids felt in the way of attachment, but affection oft came in the shape of grace. To accept and to honor, to respect and live gently, that was the sound of their life.
In a way, he was afraid of the going, though he had set upon it with his whole heart. He feared the vast unfamiliar, but as his bare soles hit the path, he felt no regret. He decided he would travel west to the wychwood and make his way through the Everstretches, which he had never seen.
Thus, he embarked his first day alone beneath the sun with naught but his hope, and his staff, and his strong feet.
