A Queer Utopia, Continued: House of Refuge, Chapter 4

4 Brightsong

Arrowshot woke me not long after dawn the morning before Full Moon.  We had work in the shop and instructions to give his apprentice before meeting the others headed up country outside the Longhouse. A rucksack of bread and cheese and a corked bottle of ale sat by the kitchen door that Bracken had filled for us the night before. The walk would take two hours , not counting stops along the way.

I’d hardly slept the night before.  Yarrow’s face drifted before me every time I began to doze. The curl of his hair across his shoulder. The fall of the tunic across his chest. The thought of his arms around me, as they’d been that summer four years before. The feel of the stubble on his face against my cheek as we’d embraced before he left after the Coming-of-Age.

My dreams of what could happen between us up country had no more substance than the mist drifting down that morning from the hills toward the lowlands. I knew no more of the House of Refuge and the ways of its men than anyone else, man or woman, who’d never been there. I had only the story of Cernunnos and Gil that Firesong had told us, and the light it had kindled in me--though not, its seemed, in any of the other new men who’d come of age that day. There’s deep wisdom in the reverence around the secrets of Refuge--and almost always pain in learning them, at least briefly, for those who come longing for a life of companionship with one beloved down below.

At mid-morning, six others had gathered before the Longhouse for the trek--four of them men I knew only by  sight, the youngest perhaps ten years older than me, and friendly with the three others, who were around Arrowshot’s age.  The four were deep in conversation with one another.

I’d never have expected to see Amberleaf. He’d come of age with me; and was one of those who’d exchanged smirks the night of Firesong’s story. Next to him stood his older brother Bowstring, who I knew had made the trek before. Amberleaf looked up, met my eyes, ignored my smile of welcome, looked down again. Bowstring nodded to us both, but made no move to speak.

Arrowshot put his arm over my shoulder.  “Gathering for the trek isn’t always a friendly occasion,” he said. “Don’t be put off by it. Some men need the length of the walk to leave their life here behind. Some prefer to make the trip on their own. We’ll likely find at least two or three townsmen up country who’ve already set out on their own. ”

A few minutes later, with no more than a nod to one another, the eight of us set out--the strangers in the lead, then my father and I, Amberleaf and Bowstring twenty paces behind. As we crossed the bridge and took the uphill road, the distances between our three parties grew. The road rose, and the mist grew thicker, until it might as well have been just the two of us turning along the switchbacks.

“Your first time at Refuge will be full of things you didn’t expect,” my father said. “It is for nearly all of us.” He hesitated, then went on, “Being with Yarrow won’t be like your times together down country.”

I imagined I knew what he meant and smiled. Images of Cernunnos and Gil, sitting as Not-One-and-Not-Two, flooded my imagination. He went on, “You’ll have a guide this afternoon. Every newcomer does. Not Yarrow,” he added. “A newcomer’s guide is never the man he’s come up to visit.”

I puzzled over the anxiety I heard in his words. Did he imagine I didn’t understand that the call of the Staghorn Lord was the love between man and man? Did he imagine it wasn’t love of Yarrow and Yarrow alone that had set me on the road this morning? I needed no guide but Yarrow to welcome me.

As we walked on, it came to me like the shape of a mountain looming out of the mist that I had no idea who my father visited at Full Moon, other than Yarrow and Firesong. That Arrowshot had a life up country, if only at Full Moon, of which I knew almost nothing. Did he sit in embrace with a man whose name I didn’t even know as Cernunnos had sat with Gil, as I longed soon to sit with Yarrow? What did my mother know of this other life, in her good cheer at his monthly departure? And knew even less of her visits to Women’s Haven. This, too, was what it meant to have become a man.

The mist began to burn off about halfway through the trek. The road ran across a broad meadow dotted with great boulders. The four men ahead of us had already entered a sloping savannah of oaks at the far side. Then came another steep rise and three streams to ford. By then, the sun had flashed through, and shadows lay across the road. Around the bend after the third stream, the road levelled out again, and just ahead of us lay the gate of Refuge.

Arrowshot led us to a flat stone a few paces from the road and slung the rucksack from his shoulder. As we settled, Amberleaf and Bowstring overtook us. “We’ve enough for four,” my father offered.

“We ate just before we left,” Bowstring said. “Thank you, but we’ll head on in.”

I was just as glad to have our meal together, at the end of the journey, on our own. The stone under us now radiated the warmth of the sun, and we shed the quilted doublets we’d needed below.

“I didn’t expect Amberleaf,” I said.

“Their cousin is here,” said Arrowshot. He smiled and added, “You said no one else from your ceremony would come.” He broke the loaf, cut a slice of cheese for me, and took a swallow from the bottle. “Do you remember a new man named Willowwind?” he asked.

I thought back through childhood. “I must have been about seven. He came with us upriver for the Outerlands trading and helped steer the barges back down to town.”

“He took Refuge the year you turned eight. He’s never come back down country. I’ve asked him to be your guide this afternoon.  Asked him before,” he went on, “because I was certain you’d want to come.”

I remembered the smiles that had passed between him and my father that day, the hands laid on shoulders and on arms. And understood at once.

But yet had no words to acknowledge it. We ate in silence for a while. I heard laughter beyond the gate, and Arrowshot nodded toward it. “It’s important for you to understand that everyone who goes through the gate is son to the Staghorn Lord for as long as he stays. In Refuge, Yarrow is not your uncle. I’m not your father there, you’re not my son. Those are the bonds of the life down country.The other side of the threshold, we’re brothers.” He looked at me. “Does this make any sense?”

“I think so,” I answered.

“It’s why neither Yarrow nor I can be your guide, nor Firesong. Every newcomer learns the ways of Refuge from a man who hasn’t been part of his life down country.”

But you’ve picked mine for me,” I blurted out. “Your friend.”

He met my eyes. In his, I saw tenderness and more hesitation.“Yes, my friend.” He drank again from the bottle and offered it to me as he began wrapping up what was left of the rest. “He’ll be waiting for us at the workshops. But first let’s see if we can find Yarrow.”

The gate was rough, two unhewn cedar trunks sunk into the ground, with the trunks of two thinner, younger trees lashed horizontally with hempen rope, one above the other, to form a lintel. From these hung several dozen bands of cloth, all brightly colored. We had to part them to enter. My  father paused and turned back to them just as we’d passed through the veil they formed. “These belong to all the men living in Refuge,” he said. “At Winter Solstice every man takes down his old banner that’s faded with the year’s weather and ties one anew. Or once in a great while unties the old one and makes the decision to go back down country.”

As my grandfather had, I thought.

Arrowshot went on. “As we passed through, all these men took us as brothers, for as long as we’re here. Cernunnos took us for his sons.”

My heart leapt up at this simple act and my father’s explanation. Yarrow had touched me, through his banner. As had Firesong, and Willowwind, and the half dozen other Refugetakers I knew, or had heard of. And another thirty men I hadn’t met. My stand stirred along with my heart.

Inside the gate, the road led another thirty paces through a cedar grove and then opened out into a broad courtyard. Large buildings flanked either side, and yet another gate faced us, with a fountain beyond it and the facade of a third hall. Walkways led off between the buildings, and beyond the one on our right I heard the pounding of a hammer and the rasp of saws.

Towering beyond the gated hall at the far end, I saw, for the first time,  the upper branches of the Great Tree.

At the steps leading up to the door of the hall on our left, Boswtring stood with another man, their hands on one another’s hearts as they talked. The man he was with saw us, smiled, and placed his palms together before him in welcome, before turning his attention back to Bowstring. My father returned the greeting, and looked sidelong to me in encouragement to follow his lead. Two more men came down the path from the sound of workmen, carrying three long boards to the hall on our right.

One of them was Yarrow.

Carrying the planks into the hall and emerging again, they turned to each other on the verandah. The other man laid his hand on Yarrow’s heart as Bowstring and his companion had done. Yarrow reached up to cradle the man’s neck, and their foreheads touched. Only when they’d released each other did Yarrow look up to see us.

For a frozen, endless moment, I felt only confusion. And then Yarrow broke into a broad smile and ran across the courtyard to us.