Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [439]
Ceridwen, Goddess, Mother, Death-crone, Great Raven . . . Lady of death and life . . . Great Sow, eater of your young . . . I call you, I summon you . . . if this is truly what you have decreed, it is for you to accomplish it . . . time slid and shifted around her, she lay in the glade with the sun burning her back while she ran with the King Stag, she moved through the forest, softly, snuffling . . . she sensed the life, the hunters trampling and shouting. . . . Mother! Great Sow . . .
Morgaine knew in a random corner of her mind that her hands continued to move, steadily, green and brown, brown and green, but beneath her lowered eyelids she saw nothing of the room or the threads, but only the new green springing beneath the trees, the mud and dead leaves brown from the winter, trampling, it was as if she rooted on all fours in the fragrant mud . . . life of the Mother there beneath the trees . . . behind her the little gruntings and squealings of the piglets, tusks tearing up the ground for hidden roots and acorns . . . brown and green, green and brown . . .
Like a shock to her nerves, as if it ripped through her body, she felt the sound of the trampling in the forest, the distant cries . . . her body sat motionless before the loom, weaving brown threads and changing for green, shuttle after shuttle, only her fingers alive, but with the starting thrill of terror and rush of rage, she charged, letting the life of the swine rush through her . . .
Goddess! Let not the innocent suffer . . . the huntsmen are nothing to you. . . . She could do nothing, she watched in dread, trembling, shuddering with the smell of blood, the smell of her mate’s blood . . . blood spilled from the great boar, but this was nothing to her, like the King Stag he must die . . . when his time was come, then must his blood be shed on the earth . . . behind her she heard the squeals of frenzied piglings and suddenly the life of the Great Goddess rushed through her, not knowing whether she was Morgaine or the Great Sow, heard her own high frenzied grunting—as when, in Avalon, she had raised her hands and brought down on her the mists of the Goddess, so she flung her head back, shivering, grunting, hearing the terror of her piglings, making short little rushes, flinging up her head, rushing in circles . . . green and brown under her eyes, an irrelevant shuttle in automatic fingers, unnoticed . . . then, maddened by the alien smells, blood, iron, strangeness, the enemy rising on two legs, steel and blood and death, she felt herself charge, heard cries, felt the hot stab of metal and red blurring her eyes through the brown and green of the forest, felt her tusks tearing, felt hot blood burst forth and gush as the life went out of her in searing pain and she fell and knew no more . . . and the shuttle went on, leaden, weaving brown and green and brown over the agony in her belly and the red bursting through her eyes and her pounding heart, the screams still in her ears in the silent room where there was no sound but the whisper of shuttle and warp and spindle and distaff . . . she swung silent, in her trance, exhausted . . . slumped forward at the loom and lay there, motionless. After a time she heard Maline speak, but she neither moved nor answered.
“Ah! Gwyneth, Morag—Mother, are you ill? Ah, heavens, she will weave, and always it brings these fits upon her—Uwaine! Accolon! Come, Mother has fallen at her loom—”
She felt the woman restlessly chafing her hands, calling her name, heard Accolon’s voice, felt him lift and carry her. She did not, could not, move or speak—she let them lay her on her bed, bring wine to revive her, felt it trickle down her neck, and wanted to say, I am all right, let be, but she heard herself make a frightened little grunting sound and was still, agony ripping her, knowing that