The post Enchanted Waters appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

Sometimes when we fight,
I want to slip on my seal skin
and disappear beneath the waves.
I warned you when we married
there are only so many times
I can drink my own tears
before the ocean comes frothing
and roaring to claim me,
because the ocean loves her daughters
and doesn’t take kindly to men.

The moon glinted full and fat-bellied
over the sharp steel and spires
the night we first met.
Your kiss was the carbon of earth and of beer,
and I, intoxicated,
could not drink enough.
We spelled each other’s names
high above the river
and in the factory far beneath us
in the early morning hours
came the soft smell of yeast and
freshly baked bread.

I followed you south like a snowbird,
body bright with the promise of dunes and bath water,
to a land where mosquitos bit like wildfire,
where haints lingered in front hallways
and bottles decked trees
to keep away the dead.

Where were my rocks and my mosses,
My shaley-cold waters of green?

Where there were dunes and bath water, there were dishes to scour
and laundry to fold.
I tucked my seal skin away
where it moldered and stank
as my body grew old.

One night I’ll break free,
and hair streaming behind
I’ll race for the beach.
The wind, brackish and thick
will soften the air
and cling to my cheek.
I won’t be able to hear you
over the sound of my feet
pounding the wood
the roar of the water
the hot lure of sand.
Around me the sea-brush will twist and sing,
sheltering the boardwalk
in a thousand arches:
a tunnel of green
that will carry me away
back to the sea.

Article From 2017 Spring Issue #38
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Julia Jeffrey is a Scottish artist and illustrator. Her fairy and fantasy-themed work has been featured in numerous international fantasy magazines and her first tarot deck, The Tarot of the Hidden Realm, was published in 2013. Learn more at stonemaiden-art.com.

The post The Seal Wife appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

The early summer sunlight lit the lake water like translucent jade. Everywhere, the Dachstein Mountains crushed in, their cliffs and dark crags filled with snow and shadow, thick emerald forests cascading down their slopes. Far across the water, the village appeared, swathed in cloud and mist like an ancient Avalon.

As I stepped off the ferry into the cobbled square, I knew two days here would never be long enough.

Millions of people visit Ireland or the United Kingdom looking to connect with the enchantment of the Celtic world. But what many don’t realize is that if you really want to experience Celtic civilization at its purest, you should visit its root: the hidden village of Hallstatt, Austria.

Tucked beside a clear green lake against an alpine backdrop that oozes with Tolkien-esque adventure, few would guess that the sleepy village of Hallstatt is actually the cradle of the Celtic civilization. But hal is the ancient Celtic word for salt, and it was here—thanks to the oldest salt mine in the world—that seven thousand years ago a small tribe of people (who would become known as the Celts) began to trade, travel, and grow rich, eventually colonizing new lands and creating an empire that at its height stretched as far east as Turkey and as far west as Ireland and the United Kingdom.

It was late May, and in the village flowers spilled from window boxes, sprouted wild and purple in hilly green gardens, even clung in swaths to the wooden walls of alpine houses. The air was cool and smelled like snow, the snow that even in early summer still lay in folds at the peaks of the timeworn giants that soared overhead. Fresh water trickled into town through dragon-headed iron spigots, and far above, a tumbling white waterfall spilled over an ebony cliff into the village, rushing through a covered tunnel at the back of the square.

I had never been to Austria before. And yet somehow this magical mountain village felt like home in a way that rendered me silent, its ancient magic thrumming deeper than any site I’d visited before.

Three treacherous sets of stairs brought me and my husband to our room at Gasthof Zauner on the main square, an old building bursting with history and leaning with age, where I was giddy to find a teetering balcony that overlooked the lake, a glassed-in porch with a couch overtaken by ivy, and a set of windows that edged the waterfall. Restaurants and cafes lined the narrow streets where shops peddled hand-carved wooden treasures, alpine hats, climbing gear, and holistic soaps, lotions, and freshly herbed salt mixtures for cooking. We slept that night with the thick-paned window cranked open, despite the mountain cold that came with the dark, falling asleep to the waterfall whispering outside our window. Early the next morning, it was an easy walk to the funicular that took us high above town to the place it all began, Saltzwelten, or Salt Worlds, to tour the ancient salt mines. But what I hadn’t expected were the prehistoric grave mounds.

We disembarked to find ourselves on a misty forest path and followed it until it opened onto grassy timber-fenced fields bursting with buttercups and lace. The flowers grew over countless soft lumps of earth hunching against the landscape—burial mounds of the ancient Celtic elite. The treasures discovered within these mounds are some of the earliest known Celtic artifacts—gold-tipped shoes and golden torques, exquisitely carved carts, brooches, pins, vases. It felt as sacred and peaceful and charged with memory as any stone circle I’d visited and I lingered there, soaking it in. The salt mine tour was equally surprising: dark caverns illuminated by crystalline pink chunks of salt. Here, the ancient statue of a long lost goddess, unearthed nearby. There, a slick wooden miner’s slide visitors get to slip down, deep into the depths of the mine.

On the second day it rained, and we tugged on raincoats and struck out to find the source of the waterfall. On the way through town we meandered into a beautiful churchyard and stumbled over the Bone House, a room in St. Michael’s Chapel filled with the skulls and bones of the village residents dating back to the twelfth century, many of them ornately painted with ivy and flowers, their name and their date of death. I was anticipating an eerie feeling. Instead, it was truly beautiful to stand there, witness to all those lives. The path to the waterfall led us on a steep switchback trail through the woods the locals call the Märchenwald, or “Fairy Tale” woods, and alongside deserted mining lean-tos and an enigmatic painted stone cliff until, breathless, we reached the top of the falls. Beyond it the path continued, and we followed it up steep sets of stairs all the way to the foot of the salt mines, where we had disembarked the cable car the day before. The sun peeked out. We found our way to a beautiful lakeside resort and basked with an Austrian beer in hand at the edge of the Hallstattersee.

As I sat beside the clear, lapping waters, a swan drifted by, and a feather breezed onto my lap. I puzzled over the enchantment of the place. Salt mines. Bones. Fairy tale houses and whimsical storefronts. Winding lanes and purring cats. Sure these things were nice, but never had I felt such a nameless magic—in Hallstatt, the source of it is from everywhere. To sit beside the lake beneath the towering mountains and breathe that air, the waves of tranquility feel like the melody a mother would hum that has been lost since long ago. But she is not just one person’s mother, she is every person’s mother. And it makes her children feel heady with mystery.

I did not want to leave.

Sometimes we find the most magical places where we least expect them. So I hope you’ll go. The evocative power of Hallstatt is available to everyone, and I, for one, would be eager to hear what you find waiting in the village and forests nestled beside that magical lake.

Faerie Magazine Issue #26, Spring 2014, Print

Faerie Magazine #26, Spring 2014, PDF

The post Hallstatt, Ancient Kingdom of the Celts appeared first on Enchanted Living Magazine.

The Lost Queen by Simon & Schuster was published in September, 2018. Read more about Signe at signepike.com.

Read Carolyn Turgeon’s, EIC of Faerie Magazine, interview with Signe Pike.

A chill wind stirred, gusting over the nearby pastures, turning my face clammy where tears yet clung. A feathery fern brushed against my forearm, and I reached to yank it from the ground, the uprooting of the tender shoot somehow nourishing the darkness that consumed me.

That was where Cathan found me after some time, sitting on a half-rotten log by the trickling stream, a mound of tattered ferns at my feet.

“You’re clogging up my head, child.” His knees creaked as he crouched down beside me. His coarse gray hair had come loose from his braid, making him look more like a wildwood recluse than Lord of the White Isle.

I can feel you thinking on me as surely as you are in the room, he’d once told me. And yet I could never sense it when Cathan thought of me.
I looked up. “I think Lailoken has broken his foot.”
“If he did, then he likely deserved it.”

I bent once more to the streambed, my dirt-crusted fingers searching for more shoots to unearth. “Gwenddolau is going off to the Borderlands, where babies are dashed against rocks and whole villages are reduced to cinders.”

Cathan eased down next to me, wrapping his long arms about his knees. He paused a moment before speaking.

“Languoreth, the earth is very old. Tragedies will occur on nearly every patch of land, given enough time. But given enough time, miracles will unfold on every hillock and valley, too. Who are you to say a disastrous fate awaits your foster brother? Gwenddolau’s future is his own, and he has much to accomplish before the Ancestors call him home.”

I stared at thesoil, saying nothing.
Cathan turned to me, his blue eyes calm. “I do not think it is only
Gwenddolau’s leaving that troubles you.”
He waited, but I could not find words for the shadows that had stirred since I’d woken from my dream: my mother’s voice. Her ghostly apparition standing in the winter river. The glistening wounds. The mud-caked boots of the little boy. And so I told him of the stag. Cathan listened keenly, the tips of his fingers pressed together until at last I fell silent.

“You and your brother have been visited by the stag, the spirit of your ancestors,” he said. “This is a mighty thing.”
“But what does it mean?”
“The antlers of the stag arch into worlds unseen. This is why he is seen as a messenger. Perhaps he came to offer comfort. Perhaps he came to show you he is a power that may be relied upon. Perhaps he was only looking for a quiet drink.” His eyes sparkled with humor. When he did not find such a reflection in mine, he bowed his head. “This message has come unto you. You and your brother. But I can tell you one thing of importance. Spirit does not choose to show itself lightly. Spirit cannot be commanded. It comes to those in need, when it is needed, and, most importantly, in its own time. I can promise you that should you desire to know the stag’s true message, you will discover it when the time is right, and not a moment before.”

I let out a sigh.
“Do not sigh like a servant who’s burnt the pudding,” he said.

“I have not finished yet, you know.” He lifted a finger. “Most importantly, the stag comes to tell you of a journey that is about to unfold.”
“What sort of journey?” I asked.
“Oh, an epic sort, always. Filled with dashing heroes, a wicked villain, battles, enchantment, and lion-hearted feats of bravery. This is the stuff of stories told round the fire.” But as Cathan looked at me, his smile waned.
“It’s the living of it that’s the hard part,” he said. “There may well be shadowed days. The stag comes to signal the beginning of a new journey you must take. And so the path of this adventure has been laid at your feet. You and your brother’s. Soon, I think, you will be asked to walk it.”

The journey to Partick. The Wisdom Keeper’s words had taken something once enthralling and hung it with a cloud of doom. I shook my head, eyes stinging with a fresh swell of tears.
“Eh, now,” Cathan said. “Have I not been at your side, all these years? I who foretold you and your brother’s coming? I have bent my life to the task of your learning, Languoreth, and not only from the tenderness that grows for two young babes. I have seen the shadows of the times that lie ahead. You and your brother have roles to play in the events that must unfold. And I mean to arm you to the teeth for battle in ways perhaps only a man such as I am able.”

“Lailoken may have a role, but what role have I?” I challenged. “I was not chosen to become a Keeper like Lailoken. And I was born a girl. Neither will I be allowed to fight!” My role was to marry and someday bear children, but I could not say those words because they sickened me.
“Do not envy your brother, Languoreth. It is true, the Gods have not chosen you for Keeper. And, as a young woman, neither can you become a warrior like Gwenddolau. But you will have your own influence, as is your fate. You will come to understand that each of us has the power to fight.”

He meant to encourage, but Cathan’s words nearly sank me. I did not choose to live in such shadowed days. For generations our land had been torn by violence. Now Cathan spoke of more battles to come, of the roles I and my brother must play, as though we were little more than game pieces on a wooden board.
And to what end?
Because there were men in the world with black hearts who brought pain and gore to this place of clouds and trees and swift-moving rivers. Who brought slaughter and death to our timeworn mountains and the people working to carve their abundance from the hardened earth of our fields. A shiver coursed through me and Cathan draped his thick white cloak about my shoulders, engulfing me in warmth. We sat that way for a while, the Wisdom Keeper’s strong arm about me and our eyes fixed upon the hills that slumbered in the north. Twilight was falling. The lowing of a cow sounded in the faded grasses and against the purpling sky; a hawk circled beyond our ramparts. Cathan watched it keenly before turning to me.

“If you are afraid, then you are wise,” he said softly. “But you have nothing to fear, for I will be with you. Now come with me, Languoreth, daughter of Morken. There are trunks to be packed and provisions to be seen to. Your journey awaits.”

Book Excerpt from the Outlander Issue #44

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