AVIA……………………………………….wendy salter

‘Her Stories’, Story 1, Part iii

Chapter Five

It was dark and cool inside the tower, out of the warm morning sun, and now Brieze was inside, she relaxed again. Standing in the grand hall, recollecting the old musty smell, she looked up at the small slit window and watched the flecks of dust sparkling in the beam of sunlight streaming through the gap; it looked like a sprinkling of glitter dropped from above. It all looked the same as she remembered it: the dark oak settle against the wall and the old Persian rug on the floor. There was a small inset in

the wall behind her, in which was placed a copper bowl. She went over to it and, just as she remembered, found the bowl contained some water with rose petals floating on the surface. She dipped her fingers in the water and drew a cross and a circle on her fore-head. In the corner of the room there was a little door that led to the stairs and a thick blue, tasselled bell-pull beside it, hanging from a hole in the ceiling. She walked over to it, took the rope in both hands and pulled hard, once.

A clang resounded dully somewhere above her and then faded away. She waited. After a while, just when she was about to try again, the little door opened and out stepped Lizzy, just like a swarm of bees leaving the hive.

“Well, well, well! Hello my dear! How lovely to see you again! I had heard you were coming to visit me. How are you? And how is Tom? Did you get in alright? Yes, of course you did, you’re here, aren’t you! Silly me! Come on; come upstairs. Let’s go and have a nice cup of tea, and you can tell me all your news!”

Lizzy turned on her heels with a swoosh of her long, full, multi-coloured skirts, all puffed out with petticoats, and left a whiff of wood smoke, lavender and mothballs behind her as she stepped up the stone stairs again in front of Brieze.

Brieze loved Lizzy, so bizarre and funny without knowing it and Kindness herself. She watched Lizzy’s tiny feet as they climbed the stairs, tapping on the stone steps one after the other, and peeped at her blue and white striped stockings under her skirts. She followed her into the upstairs room which was as warm as summer and so bright Brieze had to shield her eyes for a second. The curtains, carpet and chairs were all patterned with colourful flowers and there were little vases of wild flowers in every available space: it was like being in the herbaceous border in Grandma’s garden.

“Sit down my lovely, over here next to my chair, and take the weight off your feet. Not that you are carrying any extra weight, are you? When did you last eat? Did you have breakfast this morning? No! I bet you didn’t. You girls! You just forget, don’t you? Other things on your minds, I know. Boys I don’t doubt. Here, look, I’ve got some tasty honey bread, just made, and some mint tea. Or would you like something else? Berry juice? Warm milk? No? Alright, maybe later! Have this to start with, I have plenty more where that came from, I can tell you. Can’t go without our honey bread, now can we?”

Brieze thought the old woman would never stop to draw breath but she knew there was no point in interrupting Lizzy until Lizzy had decided to direct her attention to her visitor.

“Now,” she said at last, “tell me how I can help you. What question do you have for me?” Her skirts deflated around her as she sunk into her chair; she picked up her cup and saucer and sipped her tea.

Brieze cleared her throat of honey bread crumbs and took a quick sip of tea, then said, “Lizzy, can you help us? We want to know what our Soul’s purpose is.”

Lizzy swallowed quickly with a little cough and filled her chest with air, her bosom rising several inches. “My! Goodness me! That’s an awfully big question for a young girl! Are you sure you’re ready to know such a thing? You know, it’s a great undertaking to seek such an important thing? You do realise that Old Saturn has to go around the Heavens and come back to the front door before you can be ready for these matters? Old Saturn is very strict about that, you know, he won’t have anyone jumping the gun!”

“It is time. My earthling has sent me to find out. She has come to her 28^th birthday and she is waiting for me to come and find the answer for her”. Brieze paused, eyes fixed on Lizzy’s face. There were small flowers decorating her grey hair, framing her kind, wrinkled face and she watched it, waiting for the moment when her mouth would move with the words she needed to hear.

“Mmm? Now let me see. I think I must take some advice on this. Let me just get my crystal orb.”

Lizzy’s skirts inflated again automatically as she stood up; she brushed some crumbs off her blouse onto her plate and put it down on the table, then went to a small cupboard over by the window and removed a large round object under a black velvet cloth from inside. Bringing it back with her, she returned to her chair, next to Brieze. She removed the cloth, folding it neatly to one side, and held a sparkling, midnight-blue crystal orb in both hands. Lizzy and Brieze both stared into its depths with the expectancy of children looking at a carefully wrapped present.

“I see your path goes on from here to the edge of the River of Sticks. There I see two knights who will take you on the next stage of your journey. You must go with them to meet a woman – yes, I can see her - in the City of The Martyr. She will show you what you need next to help your Earthling.”

“Oh, thank you!” Brieze paused. “There’s something else,” she said quietly. Lizzy looked up from the crystal orb, blinking. “When I crossed the bridge just now, I looked over into the water and my reflection told me that I would see what I saw before. It made me jump and I feel afraid. And why was the key not in its usual place?”

Lizzy frowned and stared back into her crystal orb. “Mmm. There is a problem. There are always many things that are changing in the world and sometimes the changes are difficult: always have been, always will be. It seems you may have to return to a time you have been in before to overcome some difficulties, but if you have learned all the things you have been taught, there could be something useful you can find for your Earthling. And the key? Well, since the Master sent the Janus Storm, we haven’t been able to find it. All the keys seem to have been blown away. I have taught the butterflies to show visitors how to open the door without the key. They are very clever, aren’t they? They are such willing helpers, but they are not here for long so I have to keep teaching the new ones. Now, first things first,” she said without ceremony. “Let’s get you on your way. I shall put this honey bread in a napkin and you can take it with you.” She popped the parcel in Brieze’s bag and walked ahead of her, out of the room and down the stairs back to the front door, impelling Brieze to follow. Outside, Lizzy, like an animated feather duvet, enveloped Brieze in a long embrace, but then held her arm before she could move away. “Take care, my dear one: don’t forget your directions, and heed this warning: there is a trick you must watch out for. The trickster will fool everyone unless they stay alert. Keep your senses awake and remember: wait for the crow!” Lizzy popped a small object into her hand and then gently pushed her in the centre of her back to encourage her to get going. Brieze popped the object deep into her pocket.

“Goodbye, Lizzy! Thank you! I’ll come again one day.” Lizzy pulled a white lace handkerchief from her sleeve and waved it exuberantly in the air, then rubbed it across her nose before pushing it back up her sleeve. Then with a swirl and a whoosh she disappeared indoors, pulling the great door shut behind her.

‘Her Stories’, Story 1, Part ii

Chapter Thrtee

The opening to the cave was high enough to stand in upright easily’ and wide enough to touch each side with out-stretched arms, measured now by Brieze. There were little ferns clinging to the edges of the rock and an Ash tree seedling was growing out of the side, seemingly in no soil at all; the rock was smooth, rubbed by wind and rain and was warm in the late afternoon sunshine. Brieze watched as two little spiders played hide and seek near a small hole. She loved the little world. She could down-size her imagination and pop in to visit, just for a second or two.

She spread her brown leather coat on the ground and, easing the strap off her shoulder, unloaded the weight of her bag, dumping it on the ground. Then, stretching her arms and flexing her back to expand her rib-cage and fill her lungs, as a newly-emerged butterfly would, freed from its pupa, she breathed in her Otherworld. She sat down, removed a stone from under her buttock, and then pulled some raisin cake and a water bottle out of her bag. Munching happily, she looked out at the view before her. It was only a couple of hundred feet up but she could look down over the plain stretched out before her unhindered, right to the horizon, where the sun was just beginning to descend. She felt like a bird of prey in its eerie, looking down over its territory. Little clouds of mist rose up from the green face of the valley like hot breath on a cold evening and the rows of trees edging the fields looked like bushy eyebrows, meeting in a frown over closed lids. Rooks flying home to the woods called across the fields to bring their mates back to roost.

“Oh, this is lovely!” she said out loud. “Lovely!”

She watched the great vermillion balloon of the sun slip down behind the edge of the world and as several geese flew across it in silhouette she decided she would move as soon as it had disappeared completely. ’It moves so quickly’, she thought. ‘You don’t notice that until it’s sinking.’ Within a few minutes she had put her coat back on, slipped her bag-strap over her head onto her shoulder, pulling the tapestry-cloth bag up to a comfy position, and stepped back onto the path. She looked across at a pair of beech trees standing up on the ridge and a small hut close by, which was where she was heading, and wanted to get there before it was truly dark so that she would have enough light to get herself organised. As she walked up the track, flanked by open fields like the shoulders of the valley, she gazed out at the dusky sky, marvelling at the colours - how the turquoise and violet merged with the fiery orange glow and how the sparkle of the first star punctuated it. It was one of those evenings when the traveller can see the stage of Nature’s Theatre, on which all the players want to perform together. As the sun left the scene on one side, the full moon entered on the other, rising silently into the spot-light to perform her part.

Brieze had been away from home at night before, especially to sleep in Hunter’s Lodge, because she had known Tom the Hunter all her life and sleeping in his lodge was like sleeping at home it was so familiar to her. He wasn’t exactly her grandfather but he had been a friend to her grandmother ever since she could remember. He was old-fashioned, always under a flat hat, always smelled of pipe smoke and leaf mould, and whose clothes were kind of rough but woolly, worn like an old blanket. He used to disappear into the woods for hours, then come out with a dead animal dangling in his hand and Grandma would always know what to do with it.

Brieze remembered when she was fourteen, listening to her Dad telling Tom to watch over her. With a laugh and a slap on his back, he’d told Tom: ‘Keep your eye on her for me ‘till I get back, there’s a good man!’ as though he thought she may be a bit of a liability and that it would only be for a couple of weeks. Her father did what he did best and went off to be a soldier. He never came home. They said they couldn’t bring his body home, and she had never questioned why, so she only had her memories and some photos, not a grave, to remember him by.

She faced the door of Tom’s lodge, which was not much taller than she was, and lifted the small key-bag from its little hook under the thatch. ‘Tom must have left the door open for me,’ she thought, finding the little bag empty; ‘that’s unusual!’ After trying the door and finding it open, she went inside. Her priority was warmth. She went quickly to set a light to the dry kindling in the hearth, finding the matches in an old baccy tin, then added a couple of logs to keep it going. They hissed and spat, like a couple of old cats fighting, which made her smile inside. She remembered Grandma’s cats, Whiskey and Gin, as different as two animals could possibly be; they were the most unlikely bed-fellows yet they always slept in the same chair, curled up into one furry thing. Sparks exploded like little fireworks and she stayed to watch, easily mesmerised by the flickering flames. When she was sure it going well, she moved on to priority number two: food. Tom had shown her before how to open the small cupboard where the things she would need were kept. It had a small lock on it and she knew where the key was kept. This time, though, it was already unlocked. Was he already here somewhere? He never left things unlocked. No, he couldn’t be here because the fire wasn’t lit, and the kettle wasn’t on. She took out a jug and a bowl from the cupboard, a kettle and a pan and a small bottle of lamp oil and a box. She moved over to the table in the corner. The box held biscuits, hard dry cheese, some rice, a few nuts and dried apples and some leaves to make a brew of tea. She lit the lamp, (a mouse scurried into a black hole), and then took the jug outside, bringing it back after a few minutes with some water in it, collected from the stream that trickled past the lodge. Within a short time, she was settled in Tom’s big armchair with a supper of warm food and a mug of tea. She put out the lamp and just enjoyed the glow of the fire while she finished her food. Within a shorter time she was asleep.

As soon as she was aware of her surroundings again she found she had company. The outer areas of her consciousness were blurred but coming into focus in the centre was a form she recognised. “Tom?” she whispered, “Is that you?”

Tom came closer. She rubbed her eyes and pushed herself up out of the chair.

“There you are, Brieze, I thought I would miss you. Are you alright?” Brieze nodded and yawned without censor. “I’m sorry I’m late. I went across to Fiddler’s Field to make sure the stream wasn’t blocked. When the rain starts, as it must soon I hope, that stream will become a river. Are you ready to go?” Brieze nodded again and stretched like a cat. “Come on then, get your skates on and let’s go. Follow me”. Brieze pulled on her coat, grabbed her bag and, closing the door behind her, followed Tom, running to catch up with him because he had walked so quickly. The path was stony and she had to miss the pot-holes, but she raced on, keeping Tom’s broad back in front of her eyes. For an old man, he set quite a pace using his stick as a third leg.

The morning was still forming and the grey light held the trees in silhouette. Every creature that could make a noise was making a noise, like an orchestra tuning up, only in tune. After about an hour, going this way and that, through a maze of paths, they turned a corner and came out of the cover of the trees into a clearing. A building stood right in front of them. Only Tom knew these woods well enough to find this place. The small single tower was linked to the path they had been hurrying down by a bridge, which spanned a deep ditch filled with green water and lily-pads. The sun made his entrance on the morning stage again and shed new light on everything. A butterfly flew across her path, narrowly missing her nose and she ducked to make sure they didn’t collide. “Oh, be careful! Look where you are flying!” she said, as the butterfly swerved upwards in a bright yellow sweep.

The tower was just how she remembered it: only two stories high, squarely built of dark grey stone, with little turrets around the top and small slit windows in the wall of the ground floor; bigger windows were set into the upper wall and the great wooden door was symmetrically centred at the front. It was about the height of a tree.

“Will you be alright now, my sweet?” said Tom.

“Yes, fine, don’t worry about me: I know where I am going!” Brieze rose up on her toes and kissed Tom on the cheek and, touching the fingertips of his big hand reassuringly, said goodbye. Tom lifted the hat off his head and promptly slapped it back on again, turned to walk away and then stopped, looking back at Brieze.

“Go on! I‘ll be fine. Are you forgetting I have been here before?” She smiled at him and Tom saw her mother’s smile. He stood still for a few more seconds taking in the memory of her mother then turned and walked away; he raised his hand in a quick wave and was quickly taken in by the trees.

Chapter Four

The last time Brieze had come here she had found the key in the special hiding place as usual and she would go to that place now. She walked over the bridge, pausing to look over the wall into the water to see if there were any fish. The reflection of her own face looked back at her and frowned.

‘What you saw before you will see again,’ the reflection mouthed.

Brieze jumped back away from the wall and threw her hand over her mouth, with a sharp intake of breath. ‘Oh, my God! What was that?’ she thought loudly to herself. Her heart was beating too fast and she ran off the bridge towards the great wooden door, instinctively running for cover; she tried to turn the heavy metal ring handle, which creaked and moved a little, but didn’t turn enough to open the door. ‘Damn!’ she thought, and ran away to the left of the door, round the side of the tower to a small garden. There was a bird bath at the end of a dew-laden, grass path. She tip-toed to the bird-bath, unconsciously not wanting to disturb the colourful droplets on the grass and, lifting the top of the bath up with one hand she felt underneath for the key. ‘Oh, no, where is it? Where is it? I have to find the key.’

Another butterfly flew straight past her face again. ‘What do you want? Go away!’ She bit her lip and tried to think quickly. ‘Follow me,’ she heard a voice say. Brieze looked around to see who had said it, but the butterfly just flew back across her face. Wide eyed, she searched the space around her for an idea as to what to do next. ‘Follow me’ the voice said again. This time she looked at the butterfly and sighed, realising the where the voice was coming from. “Ok” she said, “I’ll follow you, but don’t play any tricks on me! I have come for a special reason and I can’t go back until I have got what I came for.”

Brieze pushed the overgrown branches away from her as the butterfly led the way and she followed. It flew up and down, to the left and to the right, but roughly followed the path back to the front door. ‘Push’ said the butterfly.

Brieze stepped forward and lent against the door, pushing as hard as she could. The door didn’t move. ‘Close your eyes. Imagine the door opening and then push’. She followed her instructions and tried again. The great timbers yielded to her small hands and gradually moved inwards. She opened her eyes quickly in disbelief but saw the door ajar. The butterfly flew away, up into the blue sky. Brieze could have sworn that she heard a faint giggling sound, although it may have been the water gurgling under the bridge. She stepped inside the tower.

‘HER STORIES’, a novel by Wendy Salter.

I am thrilled to announce the arrival of my new novel, a four-story continuing adventure of a woman, called Brieze, who discovers her own history by traveling beyond earth time, into the past and the future.

Here, on this blog-site, I shall be writing short excerpts from the book and invite you to enjoy them in the comfort of your arm-chair, online.

Over the past twenty years, I have discovered that I am not just an insignificant blip in a questionable reality, but that I have a past and a future that stretches beyond this life-time and an ability to travel to them. I have written these easy to read stories for you to enjoy and whether you believe that we can all re-discover these forgotten memories or not, I hope that you will just enjoy the adventures. Because I am a woman and I have children and grandchildren, I suspect that these stories will appeal to women from between about eleven, [the age of my grandaughters] and eighty-seven [the age of my mother]. I hope that men will enjoy them, too! [they are not exclusively about girl things]; the stories visit known historical events and Brieze’s adventures are very much about human relationships in those times, now and in the future.

‘Her Stories’ Story1, France 1788, Part i

Chapter One

She watched as a single drop of blood fell onto the earth. The dry grains of soil soaked it up and it was gone. A second drop fell and followed the first. Another followed on behind and the earth accepted it without question. As each drop fell a small circle formed, a little patch darker than the earth around it and moist. She stared at the little pool, now sticky and shiny and felt her mind going away.

She slipped slowly and quietly into sleep. The whisper of wind-in-trees became fainter and fainter until it was no more. She surrendered herself into the deep pool of unconsciousness, falling, falling, falling.

Chapter Two

When Brieze was a baby her mother had brought her to this place, holding the little girl in her arms, wrapped tightly in a blanket. She came alone, except for the black and white collie called Shadow. Shadow, of course followed her everywhere. Her mother, Mary, never came without a gift. This time she had brought a shell, an oyster shell, because she loved mother of pearl. She had never seen a real pearl and looked down at it wondering what it would be like to find one. She wondered where she would have to go to see one; what part of the world, which ocean? She placed the shell in a small hole between the stump of a branch and the trunk of the Great Oak Tree, kissing it first then letting it fall into the secret place.

Her mother had died when Brieze was three, so her grandmother told her these stories. When an alien ‘flu, Russian or Chinese they had said, had come to the village her mother, being an herbalist, visited the sick with teas made of dried herbs from her collection. Her mother, apparently, was more than an herbalist. Grandma said she was a healer who loved people and spent her whole life caring for anyone who needed a bit of help. It wasn’t just the herbs, she would wash-up or walk their dog, or just sit and listen to them talk about what was bothering them. ‘Get-it-off-your-chest-time’ she used to call it. She knew that when people were sad they kept all their sad things on their chest. She tirelessly tended the sick people, making soup and washing bed-linen. One day, when the epidemic seemed to be subsiding and the village folk were recovering, Mary had gone out early in the morning to pick herbs to replenish her store-cupboard. She had come here, close to the Great Oak Tree and searched for the best fresh leaves and flowers. She had gone beyond the tree, out across the field close to the cliff, looking over the edge for those flowers that like to cling to the earth while getting the moist, salty air from the sea and the bright sunlight right out away from the trees. When the men of the village found her, draped over the rocks below, her hand was still clutching the tiny pink blossoms.

Brieze hadn’t come here, to the Great Oak Tree, to weep over her mother’s grave. That was over there, just beyond the tree. She had been before and done that many times. The grave was just a large stone, her own personal monolith, where they had scattered her ashes, but now it just looked like a part of the scenery. Nice, she thought, very understated and private.

No, she had come here for a special reason. Her grandmother had brought her up and taught her the ways of the old folk and she knew that by coming here today, around her 28^th birthday, she could do something that would give her something special, a present to herself. She was going to call on the Spirit of the Tree, to open a door into the Otherworld, to find her Soul’s purpose. She would do it tonight, the night of the Spring Equinox, very conveniently bright with full moon light and mild and still. She needed to prepare herself for the journey.

Brieze had gathered some sticks, carefully, making sure that they were all from the Great Oak Tree: twenty-eight small sticks, one for each year in her life. She then set them on the ground in a tidy pyramid shape and stuffed some dead ‘Old Man’s Beard’ flowers in the middle. She hit the two flints that she had found together hard and after the umpteenth strike she got a small spark, but then she put the flints down and took the lighter she had brought with her out of her pocket and lit the fire. The kindling took light quickly and as the sticks began to burn she placed some larger dead wood around the fire. She had brought a bottle of water and a small kettle and after placing the kettle of water over the fire, she steadied it with two large stones. While she was waiting for the water to boil she spread her ground-sheet and sleeping-bag under the great tree, under the canopy of crooked branches and the frill of delicate green, newly emerging leaves and close to its huge roots, which bulged out of the ground like knobbly knees. She burned some cedar wood shavings to purify herself and the area around her bedding then placed four smooth round pebbles close to its edges, to mark out the directions of the Northern Winds, the Eastern Dawn, the Southern Seas, the Western Woods and one in the centre for Godness.

She hadn’t made up her mind whether her God was male or female, or both, or neither, or just an ‘Infinite Cosmic Mind’. Infinite cosmic minds were hard to have a relationship with; she didn’t know how to talk to an infinite mind, it was too big. It was much easier for her to talk to the Great Oak Tree. Here it was, big and beautiful, touchable and permanent, for her life-time anyway. It was living and she could talk to it and it would listen. She knew it would keep her confidences. Was it an ‘it’? No, it was a She-He. A grandparent. One day it may be a grandfather, another day it may be a grandmother. She could hug it when she was feeling lonely and He-She would let her.

As soon as the water was boiling, she plunged the blade of her little ceremonial knife into its bubbles and steam and counted to twenty and then poured the water over some lemon balm leaves in a mug. Holding the knife’s edge against the skin of her fore-finger, she hesitated. She waited and looked out at the darkening world around her and up at the first star of the evening. It was the 21st of March, and the days were bright with warm spring sunlight, but cool and fresh at night. She grasped the mug and took cautious sips of the hot tea. Moving back to her bedding she wriggled down into her sleeping-bag. She propped herself up on her elbows, facing the fire, which had settled into hot, flickering embers and it warmed her face. She placed the knife back on her finger.

“Greetings to the Spirit of the Sun, the Moon and all the Stars! Salutations to Mother Earth and the Spirit Winds from the Sunrise, the Noon-time, the Sunset and the Night! God bless my mother, and Dad, wherever they are, and Grandma and Tom, and all the animals, and the trees - especially this one, the Great Oak Tree, and the fire, the sea, the sky and the stones…and me…and ” Brieze paused to search her mind for anything she may have forgotten. “…and the Angels.” Looking above her in case there were some angels listening, she prayed. “Please help me find my Soul’s purpose.” She looked back at her finger and the steel edge resting on it. “Oh well, here goes…”

The sharp blade slid across her pale smooth skin like a dash on a page and a row of little red beads appeared. She winced but didn’t feel anything - yet. She unscrewed her eyes and watched the ruby red droplets form, then let them fall onto the earth one at a time. After they stopped Brieze wrapped a tissue round her finger and lay down to sleep. It wasn’t long before she slipped through the Doorway of Time.

ALL COPYRIGHTS RESERVED BY W H SALTER www.wendysalter.com