But there were certain distinctions involved in becoming a Sunrunner: the rings of earned rank and periodic visits to the grove of pines near the keep. In the year 693, when Sioned was sixteen and had earned the first silver circle on her right middle finger, she went to this place where, if her talents were strong and the Goddess was disposed to revelations, she might glimpse her future.
After a long walk through the woods, she emerged into brilliant sunlight that warmed her body and danced over the waves far below. Towering coastal pines formed a ring around a small rock cairn from which water bubbled up and splashed its way down to the sea. Sioned paused outside the circle, removed all her clothes, and stepped lightly across the carpet of blue and purple flowers to the spring.
Each of the five pines had a name: Childtree, Maidentree, Womantree, Mothertree, and Hagtree. Clad only in the cloak of her long red-gold hair, Sioned knelt beside the cairn and caught water in her hands, spilling a few drops for the first two trees before turning to the Womantree. She had come here twice before—first as a little girl to offer some water and a lock of her hair, then a year later when her first bleeding meant she was no longer a child. Now she was ready for the next step: declaring herself a woman. For the previous night she had known the embrace of a man for the first time.
She returned to the spring and knelt, facing the Womantree. The sea whispered against the cliffs at low tide, reminding her of the soft sounds of flesh against flesh last night. There had been no words spoken and in the total darkness she had not known who the man was, nor did it matter. No girl ever knew, for the spell woven was a powerful one. Care was also taken that no children would come of the woman-making night; when Sioned chose her husband, then she would come to the grove and ask the Mothertree for a glimpse of the children she might bear.
She could wait for that. It was some years off, and she was barely sixteen, after all. A smile crossed her face as she thought about the silent encounter, all warmth and excitement and potency in the darkness. But she also knew that something had been missing. There had been affection, learning, and joy, but it had lacked the communion her friend Camigwen told her she’d found with her Chosen, Ostvel. Sioned wanted the same thing for herself. Perhaps the Womantree would show her the man with whom she would find it.
Tossing her hair back, she gazed at the tree and wondered what the boys and young men of the Keep felt during their own rituals here. For them, the trees had different names: Child, Youth, Man, Father, and Graybeard. No one ever spoke of what occurred at such times, but she hoped that others heard the water singing and their names sighing through the pines. She smiled as she listened, then lifted both hands.
Her first ring had been given the previous day, when she had formally proved her ability to summon Fire, and tiny flames burned at her call atop the rock cairn. The Air of her own breath fanned them higher, brighter, until they were clearly reflected in the Water. She plucked a single hair from her head to represent the special portions of the Earth from which she had been made, and floated the strand on the still water. Her own face was mirrored there—pale, big-eyed, soft with girlhood and framed in a tumble of bright hair. She slid her hands into the water and gazed at the Womantree, holding her breath.
The Fire leaped higher on the rocks, startling her, and her fingers clenched around silky water. Her face had changed: her cheeks were thinner, the high bones and delicate jawline in proud relief. The green eyes were darker, their expression more serious, and her mouth had lost its childish curve. This was the woman she would become, and her vanity was pleased even as she chided herself for the conceit.
Sioned memorized the face she would one day wear, eager to become this woman with her confident eyes and composed features. But while she gazed into the reflection of her future, the Fire flared again. Another face was next to hers in the water now, burning with a light of its own through the mirrored flames.