YULE

YULE: Contraband

Stillness fills the hall while each one holds their breath, Maggie maybe more so than the rest, as the Effigy is carried high by her son, David, and his son, and his sons, as she has commanded. The room gasps, some look away. A bairn whimpers, and is pressed against a chest close-cloaked, shush-hushed.

Kilts sway and a bagpipe keens lament around the massive dim-lit hearth which Adam built. All around are white-berried garlands of mistletoe, grown in neither earth nor air, partner of the oak that must burn here, and cut by a golden sickle at Maggie's behest. The log looks just like her. No-one now recalls why this is always so.

"Death to Death!" the chieftain yells.

"Light the Dawn!" the ragged people roar, with tears and strained voices, desperate now.

Refuged here, the new-islanded clans survive in empty shells of factories abandoned by Multi-Nationals, from the Days of Nations, before the sea came in and split them all apart. Only Maggie now recalls the Old Ways of the Times of Plenty, as she calls them. She speaks of food banks, and touchless books, and magic ways of moving pictures, just like they have in Harry Potter. The children study Rowling well, to prepare them for the Times to Come. They will have more to eat than contaminated seaweed and toxic mussels, or rock-smashed two-tailed harbour seals. New times are a-coming.

The Effigy of She, the Crone, lands fractiously amid the readied flames, upon which girls in ivy crowns throw herbs and scented hay to crackle. Then children advance with mothers' guidance and throw their aromatic cones of pine and larch, of course de-seeded, in the general direction of the log.

Do you remember learning to throw? Getting the direction, speed and velocity right, and then remembering to actually let go? They have been practising for weeks, and their pixie magic breaks the dour spell. All the room breaks into grins and laughs and the mood is lifted. Flames take and the driftwood log roars. The chanting begins, a few at the front turn-taking, others round the hall just humming and harmonising as they sense it, setting out the tables and checking on the food. Not yet. Hands off! Not yet. But soon, soon. No, you can't help me, thank you very much. Go sing, and play, I'll call you.

All night until the dawn Maggie sits in the communs room, deep in meditation. Some say she retreats there too much. Others know this is the front line in their battle to survive. The wires went down, satellite systems and undersea cables were wrecked under the sabotage. They had been completely cut off, but Maggie, day after short dark day, sat still on the floor holding the Exiles in her heart, and she got through anyway.

While the log of the Crone burns in the grate, Maggie enters the heart of the spirals. The grace and power of the clan resides in their tattooed symbols of the endless path of She: the Crone, the Daughter, and the Child, seeking, moving evolving and reforming. Outside, the slender windmills softly stir, a good omen for the task tonight.

Out on the rig, a party has begun.

                                                     * * * * * * * *

Help will always come to those who ask...

Help will always come to those who ask...

An image of the rig forms in Maggie's mind, although she has never been there or seen it.

A worker softly treads an inner staircase to the outer edge, looking up to the inky sky. He shakes his head, and pushes back his plait, a small spiral partially protruding at his cuff. Something troubles the water.

Maggie breathes soft and steady and then gasps. A kitchen. The scent of meat. Suddenly, a fat man laughing too much at the assembly, red-faced. And Adam. There Adam sits, raising a glass as he is wont to do, but never quite drinking.