The Swan Kingdom Read Online Free Page A

distorted by a series of curved banks and ditches that made the earth seem to undulate gently beneath its green skin. Puzzled, I walked a little further along the plateau and looked down again. The same curved lines continued all the way around the base in a series of concentric circles, as if the hill had been dropped carelessly into the countryside and its landing had caused ripples in the earth. Such formations could not be natural, but why and how would men do such a thing?
    I squinted at the ground, allowing my senses, which had narrowed defensively in my earlier fear, to sweep downwards. I felt for the enaid that should have been washing at random over the earth, and was stunned to discover that it was flowing through the spirals of land as tamely as a channelled river, funnelling into the base of the hill. I turned back to look at the plateau. Enaid welled up through the earth mound at the centre and wended in and out of the circle of stones.
    “Who built all this?” I whispered.
    The stones replied,
We did.
    I jumped again. After a moment’s hesitation, I asked, “Who are you?”
    We are the wise women who once ruled this land from the desert to the sea.
    “Why did you create this place?”
    So that a part of us might always live on here, and we might know our descendants.
    I looked back down at the rippling earth in wonder. A gust of wind buffeted me and I reached out to steady myself on the nearest standing stone.
    The instant my fingers made contact a sigh rose from the circle of stones. A shimmer like a heat haze rose with the sound, and suddenly I saw not smooth green ripples in the earth but the earth itself, laid open in its rich strata of black and brown. Hundreds of men and women scurried over the great earthworks, digging and carrying soil, working to complete the gargantuan pattern. Beneath my hand the cold stone warmed and softened, then flexed; I touched not rock but skin and cloth. I tried to snatch my fingers back, but they were caught and held in a firm grasp.
    I looked up into calm green eyes set deep under auburn brows – my own eyes, but older, happier and serene. The woman gripped me with a wiry strength I recognized from my mother, her eyes gleaming with amusement.
    “Hello. I am Angharad, your great-great-great-great-grandmother. Goodness, child! There’s no need to look so worried. I know that where you have come from I am long dead, but that is all the more reason to rejoice in this opportunity to meet me. Here, such things are irrelevant.”
    I was looking at my own Ancestor. I didn’t know if I should fall to my knees before her or simply beg her forgiveness for my intrusion. What was I doing here? This was no place for the youngest child of the king – the useless daughter. This was a place for real wise women and for Great workings. But no, no. I tried to collect myself, even as my scattered wits seemed to flutter about in the wind. Mother had sent me here. She must have had a reason.
    “What must I do?” I managed.
    “Do? You must listen, dear one. You are good at that … perhaps too good. Look down again at the earth. You see the followers of the Old Ways, labouring to make this sacred place even more powerful. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them in this time. Look out over the forests and mountains, and at the sea.”
    Angharad turned me back to face the centre of the plateau. It was the same hilltop, but no standing stones had yet been placed here. The earth mound was still – or already – there. She drew me to it and sat down with a sigh of relief, bumping her heels idly against the sloping side. I perched beside her, noticing distantly that her hands and mine were the same; except that mine were perhaps a little smaller and less weathered. The blood of our line must run strongly indeed. The thought brought a sense of pride, even in my dazed state, and I sat up straight.
    Angharad smiled as she observed this, and continued. “For a long time, wise women have been