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

5 Willowwind

Brightsong walked into the workshops hand in hand with Arrowshot, his face all timid smiles and yearning curiosity. I expected them: Arrowshot had asked me months before to serve as his son's guide, and Yarrow had confirmed they were coming at Full Moon. I hadn't seen him in eight years. He had the set of his father's shoulders now, and the line of his jaw.

Once or twice a year I take my turn serving as a guide, more often than not to younger brothers or uncles, cousins or friends,  who make the circuit of Refuge with bored indifference--or else masking their uneasiness with a show of boredom--months or even years after their Coming of Age. We often joke about young men who needed to convey clearly how little interest they have in our life--and who then appear unexpected, on the excuse of visiting their kin, for all their indifference on that first visit, to take full part in another Full Moon a few months later.

Then there are the men, one or two a year, who arrive looking like they've come home at last after  a long journey through the Outerlands. It brings back the joy of our own first arrivals, seeing in the elation and relief of younger men something like what we ourselves felt.

And sometimes, the momentary heartache.

Yellowwood had been one such, Yarrow told us after he'd guided him around the compound, two years past. It was easy to fall instantly in love with such men. It wasn't uncommon for love-matches to come out of those visits, pairings that lasted sometimes for months or years once the newcomers had taken Refuge.

"Take care of my fine young son," Arrowshot said, laying a hand on his shoulder, and a hand on mine, and then corrected himself, “--my fine young brother.” There was loving mischief in his eye. "I think you'll find him a keen observer." The jest wasn't lost on the new man, who blushed like a ripe cherry. I felt a little sorry for the lad. I could see Arrowshot had been right about him. But it was only what he chose for himself, in his own time, that mattered.

I touched his heart, and tentatively, he laid his palm on mine. “We’ll start here, “ I said. “Some of us are out in the gardens. A few are preparing for New Moon. But here’s where we build what we need , and repair what needs replacing.” Starcourse was operating  a treadle saw while Elmroot and Brookstone fed a cedar log along the guide, shaving it into clapboards to repair the side of the bathhouse that wind and sun had weathered beyond soundness. They stopped long enough for me to introduce them to the newcomer. “Brother in Cernunnos,” they each greeted him. With less hesitation than with me his first time at the gesture, he put his hand to the chest of each man.

In the next shop, Broadleaf was removing clay tiles from their molds and glazing them for firing. I heard Brightsong’s breath catch for a moment at first sight of him and couldn’t but smile at his stammer as they spoke greetings to one another. No wonder in that. The kiln was already blazing, and Broadleaf had stripped to his waist. There’s no one in Refuge who wasn’t mesmerized by the sight of him when he first arrived. The poor man couldn’t wash, those first weeks, without being hailed by the stand  of every man in the bathhouse rising to greet him. Though he seemed unfailingly to enjoy the attention--as new brothers often do, in their hunger for our life. Or at least received it with good humour and grace, till we’d all come to take his beauty at least a little more in stride.

Not much more was happening in the shops. About a dozen of us were tending to undone work in the garden that day, and another six in the kitchens, preparing an evening meal substantial enough to carry us all through Full Moon.  From the back workrooms, I led him the long way around toward the Great Tree, along the path that overlooks the gardens. Below us, brothers were cutting greens for dinner, hoeing early weeds out of the rows, watering seedlings that wouldn’t thrive till the next rainfall. But it was the sight of Waterfall and Bowstring, in the shade of an arbor this side of the beds, that snared Brightsong’s attention.

Witnessing Brightsong’s astonishment, I could see the two of them through my young visitor’s unaccustomed eyes. Waterfall had thrown his spade aside, and the two of them were locked in each other’s arms, Bowstring’s head bent back, his mouth open, clutching at Waterfall’s shoulders, whose face pressed into the hollow of Bowstring’s neck.  A few men working in the garden looked toward them, exchanging smiles at the sight, or fascinated for the moment and stirred themselves, but then going back to their tasks to leave Waterfall and his cousin-down-country the unintruded freedom of their reunion. They hadn’t seen one another for three Full Moons. Bowstring’s unsteady attentions had cost Waterfall unhappy days--and cost those of us in whom he confided hours of listening to his hunger for a man he loved with so little reservation--with so little insight, some of us would say. It needed my hand brushing Brightsong’s arm to bring him back to himself. I led him on to where the path looped back toward the compound and  from there to the meadow of the Great Tree.

The bowers had already been set up and furnished, and our banners untied from the gate of Refuge and brought here for the night to hang from the lowest branches. As we rounded the rear corner of the dormitory I turned aside from the path to face him. “This is the holiest site in Refuge,” I began. “And it’s now that I ask your promise to say nothing down country, ever, of our life here--of Full Moon, of your brothers in the Staghorn Lord, of the House itself, of the ways of this place. Refuge depends upon this. Can you swear by Cernunnos and by all the Six to this?”

The lad nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes from the Tree. “Yes,” I said. “It’s Him. His living presence among us, above the grave of His beloved.”  At this, his face radiated surprised, unmitigated joy. Without hesitation, he took my hand and continued to gaze on the enormity of the trunk that the holy records say began its life six hundred years ago.

So I began to prepare him for what would take place when the Full Moon was at the height of Her nighttime journey, sending Her light down through the branches: we are sons of Cernunnos, all of us, but sons of Gil too--twice-begotten of the great seedflow that made a garden of this place. We gather around the Tree of the Staghorn Lord to offer Him our own seed, for He has now no hands but ours, no voice but ours, no heart but ours, no seed but ours. In our seedflow gifted to His roots is the continuation of His seedflow, calling His sons here in every generation. In His taking up of our seed into himself, we ourselves become Cernunnos. The seed of brothers long departed has become the strength of His branches, the greenness of His leaves.

This we do at Full Moon, as men have done since Cernunnos sent down roots to emrbrace His Beloved. We welcome you here and invite you to join us in devotion to the Staghorn Lord. As a newcomer, you may choose to stand aside, I added. If men return, it’s understood that they’ve come to take part.

I could see him struggling to take it all in. As almost every newcomer does. Especially those who’ve come to be united to a Refugetaker they’ve loved down country. But the wisdom of our elders in Cernunnos has always dictated newcomers should understand this centre of our life from the day they arrive. There’d be no profit to them, nor to Refuge, in delaying the knowledge. And new men who arrive just after their Coming-of-Age are less likely to shrink from the ritual, when they’ve just finished years of being naked together for their lessons in the Longhouse every month.

“Arrowshot will be here, as he always is,” I explained, as gently as I could, his hand still in mine. “As will I. And Firesong.”

“And Yarrow,” he added.

“There’s place for the love of two men for one another here,” I said, turning to face him and laying my other hand to his heart. “The bowers are here to shelter a couple who want to withdraw together before they make their offering.

“Or sometimes, three or four men together.” The more fully he understood in advance what he’d witness, and perhaps take part in, the less likely he was to withdraw when Full Moon began. And I longed for him not to withdraw. If the Staghorn Lord had ever twice-begot a son, it was this new man.

“But we never learned...” his voice trailed off.

“Never learned what?” I prompted.

“We never learned how to be with another man.”

I smiled encouragement. “You already know here,” I said, pressing my palm a little more firmly over his heart. “Everything you learned how to do to bring yourself pleasure, you can do to bring pleasure to another man. To Yarrow.”

I was falling in love with the lad. It felt a little like falling in love with Arrowshot, all over again.