from
Marsh Tales and Other Wonders
by Walter William Melnyk
©2008 All Rights Reserved
Do not copy without permission.
Chapter Six
It was a time beyond the memory of times. The marshes were vast and dark, and the boundaries between earth, sea and sky were less certain than they are today. The Dark Lady was a rumor that haunted the reeds, hovered above the black waters, sank into the deep mud. All was empty and silent, save for the soft whisper of changing currents. For the marshes always were, but it was the Dark Lady who brought them to life.
The Mendydd’s were towering hills in those days, for no hand had begun to take their ores, and they cast their long shadows across the low marshes. Under those hills, in a place where land became bog, and bog became marsh and then open water, lay the reed ringed darkness. High above all, the changing cycles of the moon marked the slow passage of time, her silver face reflected unseen in the quiet waters. And so it went for cycles without end, and there was no change. The same turning of the moon. The same flowing of currents. The same silence. The same shifting patterns of light and dark. The same ancient lingering marsh.
But then the currents began to shift and change in the growing and dying reeds. Endless turnings of tides carved new channels in the black mud. Eddies became currents, currents became flows, flows turned and twisted back upon themselves. One moontide as the surface rippled beneath the full, silver face in the heavens, the face reflecting back from the depths looked up, and recognized what it saw, and the waters were living and aware, and they called themselves “She.” She saw the marsh water that surrounded her, and she called it Llyn y Cysgodion, the Lake of Shadows, and it was her home. At first the marsh knew her only as Llyf, which means Current, but with the coming of the first folk She was called Morwyn. In later tales she and those who followed her were often called Vivian, Giver of Life.
She rose from the depths as a darkly shimmering mist. Her face was as the reflection of the silver moon on the dark rippling waters of the flowing current; her eyes not so much black as deep, fathomless. She was short, little more than an arm span in height, and slightly built. Her skin was the color of shadows. Her long black hair fell to below her knees, where it disappeared rather than ended, and it swirled about her like the flow of the currents. She was clothed in marsh reeds, and her song was the sound of deep waters. Llyf was one with the water, and standing reeds, and the black mud. In that moment she knew she was the Dark Lady of Llyn y Cysgodion, though that was her only awareness, and she felt nothing but the slow passage of time.
In the ages that followed, the slow, inexorable flow of the marsh currents stirred something inside Llyf. Her awareness began to grow, and she knew of things that had not yet come to be; living things that would crawl and swim, walk and fly.
From the waters and the mud she called forth the marsh spirits: fur and feather, leaf and fin. They each bore within themselves the power to beget and to conceive, and they called forth more of their own kind, and the marsh swarmed with the new currents of Llyf. They danced with her in the channels of the marsh as the silver moon waned and grew, and the ancient stars shone overhead. As they came forth, from the first, simplest folk to very last, Llyf sang to them the same knowledge, and invited them to the gentle dance.
About
Marsh Tales and Other Wonders
Planned for Release in 2009
The story is not, strictly speaking, a sequel to The Apple and the Thorn (Melnyk, Orr; Thoth 2007) though most folk will experience it as such. It derives from chapter 17 of that book, which is titled “The First Apple.” Vivian, the Lady of Avalon, is recalling her first meeting with Eosaidh of Cornualle, many years past:
“Did we talk that day? Lying in the grass in the sunshine, with the hum of honey bees and dragonflies, we did speak, of marsh tales and nature’s beauty, of how high the sky truly is, and other magical wonders.” (p. 241)