Skin by Ilka Tampke Read Free Book Online

Cad’s cattle up the hillside. The air was filled
with their screams and the smell of their terror as they, too, were run through the
flames and onto the safety of their summer pastures.
    When the animals had been purified, Fraid called forth the First Maiden. I pushed
my way forward to see her. A deerskin cloaked her naked, painted body, and beneath
her antler crown, the mask of the doe covered her face. None could see who had been
chosen. She was the earth now, a Mother.
    The drums began again and the young men of Summer formed a line before her as she
walked the length of them. They stood tall and bare-chested, baring their teeth and
making animal cries to attract her attention.
    We all swayed and stamped as we waited for the Mother to make her match. From the
corner of my eye I noticed Ruther, standing well back from the line, and I wondered
why he, of all the young men, would not contest this honour. Finally the Maiden held
her hand out to Juc, the newest of the warrior initiates. He dropped to his knees
to accept her and then together they ran through the fires to the crowd’s screams
of excitement.
    Now all were free to run the fires. The threshold maidens were brought forward first
and Llwyd called blessings on their wombs as they entered the flames. Young men raced
to the other side to meet them when they emerged.
    Tribespeople were dancing furiously, drunk on the fireheat. Maiden and knave were
writhing in pairs, then racing down the hillside or coupling right there by the
fire.
    I hovered at the edges and saw Bebin bounding away with Uaine. Ianna and Cah were
nowhere to be seen. I turned back to the fires. They were why I had come.
    When all the tribespeople had run and only those without skin remained, it was my
turn. I walked to the threshold. Once I had run through this passage of fire, I would
be something other. Something new.
    The heat was searing. It pushed me back, yet I forced myself forward.
    ‘Run! Run!’ chanted the few who awaited their turn.
    I ran. Embers blistered my feet and stung my eyes, but I pushed on blindly. The passage
went on and on. The heat was too great. I stopped, panicked. Were the fires collapsing?
There was no way forward. I cried out, my voice drowned in the roar of the flames.
How had others endured this torment? Every part of me commanded me to turn back,
but I kept going. There was a final, unbearable surge of heat. My bones softened
like iron in a forge, then I burst out the other side into the cool night. I had
done it. I was through.
    I beat out the sparks smouldering on my dress and looked around, unable to wipe the
smile from my face.
    ‘Found you!’ Ruther was at my side.
    I threw my arms around him, unexpectedly happy to see him, then screamed with laughter
as he scooped me up and began to run. With my height, I was no easy load, and he
staggered as we careered down the hill. I could not stop laughing with his every
clumsy step.
    Where the hill met the flatland he set me down and we fell to the grass, panting
as our laughter faded. Out of the fire-warmth, it was dark and cold. I could not
make out his features as he took my face in his hands.
    ‘Do you accept me?’ His voice was hoarse from chanting.
    ‘Ruther, I am unskinned.’
    ‘I follow the laws of my own judgment, Doorstep. Do you?
    ‘Don’t call me so!’
    He pulled me closer. ‘Will you take me?’
    His hips were hard against mine. My singed skin howled for his touch. ‘I will.’
    His mouth descended and I startled at its strange, serpent softness and its taste
of ale.
    We stood and walked a short way to the shelter of a fennel bank. Then, with the crackle
of fire masking my sharp cries of pain and pleasure, and the cool grass beneath
my back, the doings of a man and a woman were made known to me.

    We slept entwined, part-hidden under the fennel. I awakened with the starlings’ cry.
In the rosy light I watched Ruther’s face: his smooth, broad cheeks and lips half
smiling, even in sleep. The thick