Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [119]
The Goddess receives her consort and she will slay him again at the end of time, she shall give birth to her Dark Son who will bring the King Stag down. . . .
A little girl, painted blue from head to foot and bearing a broad dish, ran across the plowed fields, scattering dark drops as she ran, and Morgaine heard the great cry that went up behind her.
“The fields are blessed; give us food, O our Mother!”
And for an instant, some small part of Morgaine, dizzy and drunk and only half in her body at all, remarked coldly that she certainly must be mad; she, a civilized and educated woman, princess and priestess and kin to the royal line of Avalon, Druid-taught, here painted like a savage and smelling of freshly shed blood, enduring this barbarian mummery . . .
. . . then it was all gone again, as the full moon, serene and proud, rose over the clouds that had barriered it from sight. Bathed naked in the moonlight, Morgaine felt the light of the Goddess streaming over, through her . . . she was Morgaine no more, she was nameless, priestess and maiden and mother . . . they strung a garland of crimson berries about her loins; the crude symbolism struck her with sudden fear, and she felt the full weight of virginity pouring and flooding through her like the spring tide. A torch flared in her eyes and they led her into darkness, echoing silences above and beyond her, a cave. All round her, on the walls, she could see the sacred symbols, painted there from the beginnings of time, the stag and antlers, the man with the horns on his brow, the swollen belly and full breasts of She Who Gives Life. . . .
The priestess laid Morgaine on the couch of deerskins. For a moment she felt cold and frightened, and she shivered, and the old woman’s brow wrinkled in compassion; she drew Morgaine into her arms and kissed her on the lips, and Morgaine clung for a moment to the old woman, hugging her in sudden terror, as if the woman’s sheltering arms were her mother’s own . . . then the woman smiled at her and kissed her again and touched her breasts in blessing and went away.
She lay there, feeling the life of the earth around her; she seemed to expand, to fill all the cave, the little scribbled drawings were painted on her breasts and her belly, and above her the great chalk figure, man or deer, strode with erect phallus . . . the invisible moon outside the cave flooding her body with light as the Goddess surged inside her, body and soul. She stretched out her arms, and at her command she knew that outside the cave, in the light of the fecundating fires, man and woman, drawn one to the other by the pulsating surges of life, came together. The little blue-painted girl who had borne the fertilizing blood was drawn down into the arms of a sinewy old hunter, and Morgaine saw her briefly struggle and cry out, go down under his body, her legs opening to the irresistible force of nature in them. She saw without sight, her eyes closed against the glare of the torch, hearing the cries.
Now he was in the door of the cave, the antlers gone from his brow, his hair streaked, his body smeared blue and stained with blood, white skin like the white chalk of the body of the huge figure above the cave . . . the Horned One, the consort. He moved dizzily, too, naked, except for a garland like her own about his loins, and she could see the erect life surging in him like that of the chalk figure. He knelt by her side, and by the torchlight, dazzled, she could see that he was no more than a boy, not one of the little dark people, but tall and fair. . . . Why have they chosen a king who is not one of their own? The thought darted across her mind like a moonbeam and was gone; she was not thinking at all.
Now it is the time for the Goddess to welcome the Horned One—he was