He coughs oak leaves and stands up. He is taller than the
forest. He is the forest and it is him. The antlers of a deer twist like
branches out from his head – they run through his leaves and he is of them. He
stretches towards the sun, his sapling sinews crackling and pulsing – life beats
on thundering hooves and paws through the forest.
The sun rises red gold over the cowslips. The green man shakes
out his yellow green coat and walks into the year.
As crocuses wither and daffodils droop, hawthorn blooms. Children
from the village wearing flower crowns bring offerings to the stone circle on
the hillside.
The green man stands forest vast in the centre and ribbons
are tied to him, bells waved, and all the people dance. He is wreathed in tumbling
badgers, cubs and singing birds. To him will come his queen, his Beltane Bride,
the hawthorn queen. And they will fruit summer together.
* * * *
Maya was the loveliest girl in
the village. The last winter snows cleared to reveal her body taller in the
spring, her hair laburnum yellow and her bluebell eyes shone. This would be her
first year to dance with the older girls for the Beltane festival.
She was ready for it. The spring
had swelled in her breast over the April weeks as the weather gentled and she
found she had not stopped smiling in a fortnight and went to bed with aching
cheeks. Her mother would call her impatiently as she stood by the stream,
gazing at the sunlight on its rushing ripples that hurt her eyes with their
dazzle. On getting the sheep in, she would pause on the hillside and glut her
eyes on the bluebell copse’s fragrance and the soft way hawthorn threw its
white blossoms on the field edge. But most of all was that feeling in her
breast, that swelling, alive feeling, of something beating that caught her
throat and held her mind and made her stomach tickle. Like something was about
to happen. Something incredibly beautiful and exciting.
This feeling called Maya from her
bed before dawn. The silvery moonlight tapped on her eyelids and she
unconsciously registered the change and woke up. She slithered out of bed and
went to the window. As she struggled to lift the old sash, her sister stirred.
‘Maya, what are you doing?’
Maya winced and froze. ‘Sorry
Freya. Go back to sleep love.’
Freya cleared her throat of
bleariness and groggily sat up. ‘Are you
trying to get out the window?’
‘No!’ Maya laughed. ‘Maybe, I’m
not sure! It’s so lovely isn’t it? Everything’s silver, it feels magic.’
Freya stumbled over to the window
and leaned on her sister’s shoulder, resting her arm round Maya’s waist. She
stared a while, then rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.
‘Beautiful,’ she confirmed, turning
around. ‘Now go back to bed.’
‘I’m going out,’ announced Maya.
Freya turned again. ‘Really? What
if you fall in the stream? Or knock your ankle on something you can’t see? You’ll
be no good in the morning for the sheep.’
‘It’s so light Freya – it’s like
day! You can see everything! I’m going now.’
Freya was crawling back into bed.
‘Fine,’ she resigned. ‘But put some shoes on’
Maya runs into the horned silver
night. She stops on the slope of the hill and looks down to the lake and forest
and back up the hill towards her home. Her lips part in wonder as she sees the
hills reflected ivory in the lake waters and her heart beats fast. She runs
down to the forest.
The green man hears her coming
and turns. Squirrels swarm down his arms and the buds on his brow flower into opulent
green as he sees her run. A silver, hawthorn white girl. She stops, stunned,
when she sees him, high as the green canopy above her. Tall, strong as summer,
green as oak and beautiful. She goes to him. She is dazzled.
* * * *
‘Maya, really, that lamb was nearly left behind!’ her mother
scolded. ‘You just stood there in a daze, then tranced down without even
noticing her.’
Maya hung her head and mumbled her apologies, urging the
lamb down the hillside with her crook under her mother’s thunder.
‘What’s the matter with you today?’ she continued. ‘You’re
normally so alert. Did you not sleep well?’
‘Maybe that’s it,’ Maya admitted, stumbling on.
* * * *
The moon was suspended full and hovered swollen as if time
stood still. That night it called Maya out to her green lover again and they
stretched themselves out by the lake’s stream on its moss. His bark muscled
arms crooked to cradle her, and his green finger leaves cushioned her sharp
bones. When they kissed, the air was the fragrance of honey and hawthorn and
the deep green freshness of moistened peridot moss.
He leaned toward the stream and scooped out a palmful of
water. It wreathed itself into a silver ring and its patterns were the rushing
currents and soft eddies of mountain streams, bound in silver threads of
droplets and the shimmer of moonbeams. Displaying it to her first on a bed of
leaves, the green man then slipped it on Maya’s finger.
* * * *
‘That’s pretty!’ Freya exclaimed, her eyes widening over
breakfast. ‘Where did you get it?’
Maya came to herself again and followed her sister’s eye.
She fiddled the ring idly, then covered it with her other hand and put both on
her lap under the table.
‘I found it,’ she said, then cleared her hoarse voice. ‘By
the lake.’
Freya’s eyes narrowed and she leaned in over her bread and
honey. ‘Did you go out again last night?’
Maya chanced a quick glance over at their mother whose back
was busily moving to the rhythm of the mangle in front, and nodded.
‘Well tonight it’s the green gathering,’ Freya whispered. ‘So
I’ll be with you. You can show me where.’
Maya smiled. Freya pushed the last of her bread into her
mouth and stood up, brushing crumbs off her skirt. ‘Doesn’t matter what we find
– so long as you look as lovely as possible, little May queen!’
Under the moon before dawn, the sisters easily woke themselves.
They cast aside the rough, course materials of their shepherdessing and dressed
in Sunday-fine muslin. Laughing together and whispering, they left the house
for the forest.
At the edge, they waited still and silent. Then a set of
badger cubs came running across the worn path and carried on down the hill. Freya
turned to Maya, eyes shining. Every year. The girls carried on to a good spot
and began collecting ivy. They worked for a solid half an hour with their
hunting knives, filling their baskets. Then anemones, bluebells, clover, cow
parsley and early dog rose. Running home with it all, they heaved it upon the
scrubbed table in the kitchen and Freya and her mother set about crowning their
May queen.
* * * *
The green man waits as dawn reddens at the edge of the
forest on the hillside. His wedding day. Song thrushes sing the bridal march
and he watches the village bedecking windows, door jambs and children below. All
the village and all the land to celebrate his marriage.
* * * *
Smiling Maya took her place behind two long columns of
girls. They all wore white and had ribbons on their dresses and flowers
wreathed in their hair. Freya turned and winked at Maya. Here we go. The drums
started to set the rhythm, then the fiddles joined and all the girls as one
began the processional dance up the hillside towards the stone circle.
The sun is so blinding bright in Maya’s eyes and she has
only the impression through the ache, of green, green; blue in the sky and the
dizzying whiteness of the dresses and the stones above, the dazzling grey-white
of horses. It is all sensation, the warmth of the sun on her face and arms, the
squeeze of the silver ring and the fluttering breathlessness in her chest. Her
head is light and there are no thoughts now – they are diffusing out like pollen
and mixing with the dew in the air and the wings of bees; and the scents of
flowers drift in and mingle there. She feels herself slip and become the
forest, the movement of ants, the grains of earth, the colours of smells, the
very May itself.
They reach the stone circle. The girls stretch their arms
into an arch while others scatter petals. Maya dances down the arch and enters
the circle. She sees nothing now, but green and brown and the arms of her lover
open, then enfold her deep to him. She dances into the heart of the oak.
In the stone circle, the village watch a girl and a tree,
then a man and blossom, then in the confusion of the brilliant light and the
sound of fiddles and birdsong and petals and cheers, all lifts and slips.
Then stepping back, the revellers see an oak tree, its
leaves fragily small but irrepressibly green and ready, and the wind dandles
the branches so there is almost a face of a man high up that comes and goes. There
is no girl, but a beautiful white hawthorn bursting with white lace frothing
flowers, and the branches of both are twined sweetly.
The children step forth and tie ribbons to oak and hawthorn
and sing. And bees fly out in their ponderous progress and pollinate the
blossoms and the flowers. Spring is for lovers.
The yearly offering.
