This is a folk tale about the meaning of love, and I wrote it for my wife-to-be, performing it the day before our wedding on the shores of Erie.
When Angus met Jeannie he was the apprentice to Jock the silversmith, a craftsman of enviable repute known far and wide across the glens north of Loch Lomond. The first time he clapped eyes on her, she was knee-deep in the mud trying to drive her father's cows across the ford for milking, her straw hair in her eyes and her skirt looped into her belt. He said hello and did she need some help, and when she looked at him through her curls, her blue eyes lit the morning, but it was the muck smeared on her nose and her laugh that made him instantly fall in love with her.
Angus walked out with her for two years and in that time his love for her grew and his skills as a silversmsith came on at an inspired rate. He saw a future for them and one afternoon he took her back to the ford across the river, laid his coat down under the boughs of a rowan tree for Jeannie to sit upon, and went down on bended knee to ask her if she'd have him forever. Her laugh coursed like magic down his spine and her reply made his heart feel as if it would burst in his chest. He laid Jeannie down on the coat and made love to her for the first time. As the autumn sun sank in the sky he carved their names into the bark of the tree, then Jeannie linked his arm and took him back to the farm to speak with her father.
Over the winter Angus sweated over his work for Jock, and in his spare time he took to crafting a wedding ring for his wife to be. He drew the design, an intricate weave of celtic knots, and made a mould from wax in which to cast it. The process took as many months as it took Jeannie and her mother to make her dress, but both were finished by the time the new year dawned, and in good time for their Imbolc wedding - though Jeannie's dress had to be let out as bit as her belly grew with child. Angus kept the ring in a small wooden box by his beside and took it out each morning and each night to look upon it proudly, thinking it his finest work, always wondering how he could improve upon it, never knowing how.
The morning of the wedding dawned over the Highlands and as the sun crept higher and burned off the land-lying mists, Angus washed, ate his porridge and took down his new suit from its hanging place. He took the ring and walked to his small window, admiring it as it glinted in the early sunlight, then tucked it safely into his pocket and set off on the short walk down the lane towards the village.
The day was just glorious and he whistled a happy tune as he walked, careful not to get his borrowed shoes muddy. Birds sang in the trees and he saluted them, especially the magpie that watched him with beady interest, not wanting to attract any bad luck that day. The bird clacked its greeting to him and circled around him once before flapping away, a blade of glass in its beak.
As Angus approached the village he patted the ring in his pocket - and came to a sudden halt, feeling the blood drain from his face. It was not there. He delved his hand inside - nothing. He checked his other pocket - nothing. A lump rising in his throat, he quickly retraced his footsteps back to the smithy, eyes moving left and right - nothing. Futiley, he opened the small box he had kept it in for weeks: empty.
Ring or no ring, he wanted to marry Jeannie more than anything so he ran back to the village and was still in good time. Jeannie had still not arrived but the guests had. While Angus was a human man, the Highlands were a wild place and many of his friends were, shall I say, a little different to your usual wedding guest - vampires, wolves, felines, faes, demons and - oh my word, even some that could almost pass for human.
They could see his state of panic. His best friend helped him mop his brow and straighten his clothes, and the pagan priestess listened to his anguished tale of losing the ring with a crease in her brow. As some of the assembled guests had very keen hearing indeed, Angus's plight was sweeping its way around the village green in no time at all. Many offered him their own rings to borrow, but none were as pretty and he was more than reluctant to use a second-hand item that belonged to someone else - and that was certainly not the beautiful ring he had worked on for weeks.
Then a fae he did not know approached him, her hand palm-up, offering something to him that he could not see. As he stepped over to her, through the murmuring, milling crowd, he realised it was a small and delicate ring, woven from - what he realised when he drew close -was a blade of grass.
In his pride he almost laughed - how could anyone expect him to slide a ring made from common grass onto his bride's finger? But the look in the eyes of the fae was compelling ... more in the fact that her eyes were like mirrors, and as he felt himself drawn closer to their amethyst depths, he saw the reflection of his beloved as she arrived in the square on her father's arm. His heart thudded powerfully within his chest as he turned and looked upon her - and only then did he realise his guests had formed a circle, a ring even, within which he stood, awaiting her.
The priestess laid down a broom and he waited beside it as her mother and father brought her to the circle of their friends and released her from their care into his. She walked towards him, smiling, her cheeks rosey with love and impending motherhood, and he was breathless to watch her as she came to stand beside him. So humbled was he that he forgot about his disappointment over the ring he had made, and barely noticed that the ring he slipped onto her finger was made from grass. As they stepped over the broom, and their circle of friends applauded them, he felt himself the happiest fellow in the world.
Walking Jeannie home later, bathed in their mutual happiness, they fell silent, holding hands and listening to the birds singing. Then came the cocky clacking of a magpie again, and he looked up as the bird swooped. The sun glinted off something shiny in its mouth and his eyes followed the sparkle as it fell from the bird's beak and landed in the hard dirt at his feet. Stooping, he saw it was the ring he had made for Jeannie.
Amazed, he picked it up and looked at it, then turned and held it up for his bride to see. The happy expression on her face turned to slight confusion and she looked at the grass band on her hand. "I hadn't realised it was made from grass," she said, softly, as he slid his silver homage to his love onto her fourth finger. "How lovely, Angus."
Angus looked up and saw the magpie had alighted upon a branch nearby. As the sun lowed in the sky, its rays diffused across the landscape and dazzled him, but still he was certain he saw the bird shift into the form of the fae he had met at the wedding. She seemed to smile upon him, then her form disolved into the gold of the sunset. And Angus realised then the meaning of love, which did not lie in material things, but which resided permanently in the seemingly fleeting - but always reborn - hues of the universe.
The couple went back to the house, which they made into their home. Angus worked even harder at his job, though this time with a more humble heart, and he always made time for the things that were important. And when Jeannie gave birth to the baby a few months later, they called her Maggie.
The End
(c) Blitz Salamander
No comments:
Post a Comment