NarrativeMagazine.com
Ride
Octavia Randolph uses historical fiction to explore the development, dominance, and decline of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. She is interested in the spiritual dimension of her subjects’ lives, particularly those not known for overt religiosity. Her Circle of Ceridwen Trilogy, set in ninth-century England, has attracted a worldwide readership. She is currently researching a novel about the eminent Victorian John Ruskin. More of her work can be found at www.octavia.net.
A STORY
by Octavia Randolph
1042 ANNO DOMINI
In the heart of Engle-land
THE GRAIN OF MY HAIR—the weight of it! A woodsman felling oak in Arden knows my hair, has struggled in the leafy arms of his chosen. Just so my hair pins me in my sleep, thick strand about throat, fingers webbed in yellow netting.
My hair is oak grained, strong surfaced, ripples sliding crosshatched at the toss of my lifted head. But beneath is another warp, smoother, denser, like unto the walnut trunk the joiner grasps with ready hands and tames with adze and plane. This underhair shows reddish. Sun never touches it. Damp, it smells of cedarwood and pine resin. When I part it with my comb and draw it about my shoulders, giving it to the drying air of the fire, the pulling on my scalp makes me quiver. Ruddy is this undergrowth, ruddy pink like that between my thighs.
Not silken this hair of mine, not silk but oak, I tell you, coarse grained, strong. The yellow of wheat bursting its sheaf, a river of dry gold flecked with silver flowing down my back.
My eyes are green.
I comb and comb. I rub my hair with oil from the crushed seed of flax, wool fat boiled from the shorn fleeces of ivory ewes. The hair shines and glimmers in the Sun falling through the iron casement of my chamber. I am driven by my need. I am trembling with my fear. I step free of my linen shift. Nothing can stay me. It is time to go.
Cold underfoot are the stones of the stableyard. My pink toes press white curled against them, gripping. I keep my eyes upon them, one stone, the next, and the next, feet numb. How low my breathing.
The Sun is hot and high above me, my shadow stunted at my feet. I can see nothing in my outline save the smooth curve of my flowing hair. Metal jingles. I look up.
I am no longer alone. At the far end of the yard stands my bay mare; she was not there when I entered. Her coat like oiled chestnuts gleams in the noon Sun, oat fed, glossy. Her raven tail streams to her feathered fetlocks. No flies trouble her; she stands still. Her red back is perfectly bare.
No saddle cloth of woven gaiety, no saddle of coloured and carved leather, no harness strung with silver mounts, no gilded bells to sing merrily when she carries me. She is as bare as me, save for the lightest of bridles, brown-plaited leather.
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