sure-footed as her oldest brother had once been. She paused for a while, feeling the spirit of the apple tree around her. It was a strange sensation, almost impossible to explain; there was a sort of aura that pervaded the whole tree, wreathed around the trunk and woven about the branches. It was a life-force, an energy that swirled slightly, ebbing and flowing as if the tree were breathing. It was a benign force and she greeted it respectfully, making the sign of the pentangle in the air.
Leveret sat in a cleft of branches for a while just feeling the energy and aligning her own energy with it, so they worked in harmony. Then she rose and reached up to the mistletoe, growing thickly in a huge clump. She knew the relationship between the apple tree and mistletoe was a strange one; she’d read that mistletoe was a parasite, but she knew instinctively it was a more complex partnership. She muttered the words she’d memorised from the Book for cutting the sacred plant; they meant nothing to her, for they were words from a different language that she’d never seen or heard before. Leveret wasn’t to know just how ancient these words were, passed down orally through the generations and only recorded in the Book of Shadows comparatively recently. She hoped she’d remembered them correctly and, just for good measure, added her own words of honour to the mistletoe, asking forgiveness for the cut.
Taking the white-handled knife from her pocket she made a clean, sharp cut and removed a good piece of the white-berried, sickle-leaved plant. She kissed it and carefully put it in her flaxen bag. Then with a farewell stroke of the tree trunk Leveret jumped down from the tree and ran silver-footed from the orchards back towards the Village Green. She’d become so engrossed in her mission that she’d forgotten all about Maizie and her own deceitfulness. She was heading for an ancient holly tree that grew slightly back from the Village Green on the far side. It was a beauty, its trunk silvery-grey and pimpled with tiny growths, enormous branches sweeping down to the ground all around it. It was covered with jewelled red berries at the moment and although they were not specified in the spell, Leveret thought they’d add to the potency if she gathered some with the deep glossy leaves.
She skipped lightly across the huge expanse of grass and felt a tingle of something ancient, some pattern that must be traced and grounded. She began to leap and twirl, following a blueprint laid by many feet several millennia ago in this ancient woodland temple. It was the dance of the moon, the earth, the life force – the Dance of the Goddess.
Leveret was not a natural dancer but she moved gracefully around the empty ground as if in a trance, her feet stamping and pointing, jumping and tiptoeing to the ancient pattern. She heard a primeval drumbeat reverberating in her soul, a rhythm that marked the dance, and it felt so good to be alive, so powerful. She raised her arms and shook her wild dark curls in joy, spinning with her cloak billowing out around her. She felt the energy from all the different trees crowding around the Green, the eddies and swirls of tree spirit energy that flowed around her almost giving her wings. Here too was the potent spirit of the Green Man; Leveret sensed the myriad energies and felt herself becoming part of the whole ecstatic dance of life.
Inside the Barn, Maizie had finally completed the baking rota to her satisfaction. The labour was fairly shared and nobody felt put upon or left out, which was no mean feat. She looked across to the trestles where people still worked busily on the Yule decorations. The huge Barn interior was alive with the buzz of conversation and the lilting sounds of a group of musicians practising some of the Yule jigs. They’d recently been persuaded to record some of their songs, and Maizie had heard that Harold and Yul were trying to arrange something for them in the Outside World.
Maizie couldn’t see Leveret’s distinctive dark curly head amongst the people working diligently at the lanterns, but assumed she’d simply gone to the privy. She rose a little stiffly and went over for a word with Rosie. Her elder daughter’s cottage was right over the other side of the Village so they rarely bumped into each other in passing, especially as