A Bond of Blood & Bone

By Aura Mighton

Kala was fated to be the Fire Warrior Queen of her people, the Camuni. She felt honoured to lead alongside her sister, the Oracle of Light, and yet was haunted by a sense her purpose was meant for more. As though something or someone was beckoning from the edges of her mind, or perhaps even the universal pools.

How could she ha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hagalaz Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778294754

Book preview

To the one who haunts my past, present, and future.

Prologue

I sit before the fire on my last days, breathing my last breaths, as all humans must. The wrinkles on my face and the scars on my heart tell of the hardships I have endured, but the silver marks of stretching and the folds of my flesh reveal the joy I have birthed. Sit with me and I shall share the story of this old woman’s life. It is a story that bends and weaves, swirls like embers through the roof of the lavvu, for this is how we see before the death fire. The queens of my family can see through everyone’s eyes at our end, regardless of our given gifts; if we live until our braids turn white.

If you can follow the threads of my wandering story, it will stir a hidden place in your heart, where the memories from the beginning of humankind are kept, where each of us is tethered to the universal pools. This is the time I come from, the beginning that you no longer remember or feel. I see the confusion spreading on your face. You are sleeping while awake. Many of the people of your time are asleep and have forgotten how to be alive. This slumber has broken the magic that is this earth, the magic of discovering your purpose amidst seeming chaos.

Listen.

For the waking this story stirs may feel confounding, but in your time, humans are being yanked from slumber and sharing these words is the only way I know to help you remember how to find your way.

Part One

The Stag and The Eagle

Hagalaz Publishing

Chapter 1

My skills arrived like the flash of first spark on the bonfire. Not surprising, for I was to be a shapeshifting fire warrior. A group of us bairn were running through the field between our village and the forest. It was the year most of us would come of age, so we were given the freedom to be wild for parts of the day.

Be back before dusk! Anana yelled from the group of healers watching us race while they minded the younger bairn.

The cicadas were loud in the hot summer afternoon and an eagle was flying overhead. How amazing it would be if I could fly like that. No one would beat me to the mountain lake if I had wings. I would have the first blissful jump in the waters before anyone else. As I ran through the grasses up the hill, I closed my eyes with my arms outstretched and imagined...

Suddenly, I was flying – without even trying, I was in the air.

I was shocked. Those were not my arms, nor my fingers, but feathers. A current of air ran through them. That screech was not my voice. Startled, I dropped to the ground, a stumbling mess.

The others ran to me as I regained myself, yelling at each other as they came closer.

Kala’s a shifter!

Did you see that? She was an eagle before she fell!

Kala, are you ok? came Pasha’s voice as he stood over me. Pasha, my childhood friend; with his dark hair, dark eyes, constant smirk, and always chiding. He was a cross between a fox and a bear. In that moment he looked more like a concerned father bear than the mischievous friend I had been running beside.

I stared at the sky for a minute, panting, and grinned back at him.

I wanted to do it again. I stood, leapt in the air and sought to soar. So it was done – I flew to the lake in eagle form. They chased me on the ground below, but I was the one to have first plunge in the waters that day.

We lived upon a vast forested mountain range. The wild creatures and plants of the land existed in harmony with us through the magic of the universal pools. Magnificent beasts like the mammoths we rode over long distances, elegant horses that ran the grasslands, majestic stags that watched from the hilltops, and the many wondrous birds that filled the skies and trees. There were rivers and streams that wove through the lands, deep mountain lakes with cool waters that we swam in during hot summer days, and waterfalls so stunning one could lose their senses in the churning energies.

Our tribal village arose in a large clearing deep within the forest. A golden field of grasses filled the eastern side, bordered by a mix of grand trees. Our homes and meeting hall filled the western side before the wall of trees rose again. A stream flowed around the northern side, meandering through the western woods, before turning south to join with a great river that ran to a large lake. North beyond the stream, the forest filled the valley up to the mountainside, with its glacial waters, cliffs, outcroppings, and snowcaps.

My mother was the queen of our tribe – an oracle and a shapeshifter. In my lineage the women are granted a gift of our mother’s, in addition to one of our own from the universal pools. This is why our line of women has always led the tribe; we have always been granted two gifts to carry our leadership and support our people. We are meant to lead while also fulfilling our individual purpose.

My father, Talos, was not our king. He was known as my mother’s consort and an important member of our council. He was a crafter by the gifts of the pools; those are the ones with the gift to weave, build, and invent as the tribe needed and the ways of wood were his domain.

I came to be a shapeshifter through my mother; the pools granted me the gift of fire keeper. Meile, my sister, was an oracle, keeper of tribal stories and seer of future paths like our mother, but also a healer by her own gift. She and I were like night and day – she had the golden hair and blue eyes of our father, while I had the dark hair and hazel eyes of our mother. She was the calm and brilliance of the moon in her temperament, and I was the fiery passion of the sun blazing through the sky. Yet these differences only seemed to bring us closer to each other. Difference is something to celebrate, not a source for competition, shame, or envy.

Meile and I would lead the tribe together when we were older and our mother was gone. Of course our paths could always shift, just as our mother and her twin sister took – one could be called to leave and the other to stay and lead.

Once everyone knew I inherited the gift of shapeshifting, curiosity about my personal gift grew. It was not long after that my drawing of the fire spirits happened. Pasha and I discovered it together one afternoon. We had been sitting in the grasses near the river, watching the water, and teasing each other as we often did. He fell silent and waved his hand just above the ground.

What are you doing? I asked.

Nothing. He replied quickly.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

I feel it, he whispered, like it’s heating my hands. He tentatively returned my stare, almost shy, something I wasn’t used to seeing in him.

I tried what he was doing. I don’t feel anything, I replied simply.

Close your eyes, he said. Don’t try, just feel.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, being serious for a minute. A tingling flowed over me. Everything felt heightened. Then there it was, like a pooling heat, drawing up from the earth. A small, swirling warmth collected in my palms.

I opened my eyes and grinned at him. I feel it.

We shall be fire warriors together, Kala. He nudged his shoulder against mine.

I laughed because we had a long way to go before becoming fire warriors. One had to master being a fire keeper before even being offered to train as a warrior. As I thought this, though, I realized being a fire warrior would indeed be the purpose that awaited me; it would be expected of me as a future queen able to protect her people.

Chapter 2

Parents are to teach their bairn how to be good humans, but gifts did not always follow the line of the family, so the elders saw to the mastering of gifts. Aoife was our elder for training with the fire spirits. She was both a fire keeper and warrior.

On our first morning of training, Aoife led us up to the mountain grasslands where the lake lay in sight. We were a noisy group and our excitement echoed through the woods on the hike. She gathered us in a group in the centre of the grasslands, walked a distance away, and turned to stare at us. I looked at Pasha as an uneasy hush fell over the group. Aoife’s gaze was icy and stern.

She swiftly raised her hands and in an instant a ring of blazing fire surrounded us. I gasped and some of the others around me let out startled yelps. I could feel the heat on my skin and tried to step back, only to bump into others doing the same. Then just as quickly the ring was gone, leaving a scorched circle around our group.

Now sit down! Aoife commanded. We quickly obliged in silence, slightly fearful of what was to come. What Aoife said next burnt into my mind:

I want you to remember how scared you feel right now. Remember how hot that fire was and how quickly it ate the ground around you. Never forget that being gifted as a fire keeper is serious work. If you lose control, everything you love could be gone in a flash. I assure you this is a lesson you do not want to learn through experience. Do you understand me?

We all nodded with wide eyes, in shocked silence.

No, say it to me. Do. You. Understand? Do you understand how serious and important this training is for the safety of this tribe?

The gravity of what she said began to sink in. This was going to be focused and intense training. The safety of everything was at stake. I replied to Aoife with a firm, Yes, I understand!

Aoife continued to stare at us until we all met her gaze. "Manifesting fire is not done in a fit of rage, scorching the earth. It is quite the opposite. It requires calm and respect for the spirits you are drawing from the earth’s great universal pools. You will never generate even the smallest spark as a fire keeper if you cannot connect with the source energies and work peacefully with them. You will NEVER be granted training as a fire warrior if you cannot show you are responsible as a keeper first. This gift has the power to help renew life and the power to kill all life.

Do you understand me?

We all immediately responded, Yes!

"Good. You will have all seen this as bairn, but I will explain it to you here, so you may understand your training. Fire keepers keep the warmth of our tribe alive. We ignite the home hearths, we light the night torches to see, we work with the earth keepers to scorch the fields and renew the soil for planting. We light the ceremonial bonfires. You must learn to do all of this calmly and safely. In mastering this, you will earn the trust and confidence of our people.

If you can accomplish this, you may request to train with the protectors and earn status as a fire warrior. Only then will you be taught how to fight and to protect with fire spirits. Before any of that you must master calm and control your emotions under any form of threat, no matter how small. It is too easy to succumb to revenge and fury when protecting the ones we love and that only burns a path to destruction.

She paused and looked over our faces.

Your first goal in training is generating sparks. To do so you need to enter a trance state and connect with the fire spirits. This will feel like heat pooling around you. Many of you have experienced this warmth as part of your gift surfacing. To truly connect with the spirits in trance, though, you need to draw the fire spirits from the earth and bond with them.

Aoife moved her arms in a sweeping motion. I braced myself for a wave of flames, but instead hundreds of red, orange, and yellow threads began to swirl up from the ground and flow around her.

These wisps you see surrounding me are the fire spirits I work with. We have been with each other since the beginning of my gifts. She moved her arms outward in a graceful wave and the threads fluidly followed her motion. We have a relationship of balance and harmony, so we may work peacefully together. You must also do this with your fire spirits. Find them, connect with them, build a bond. Only then will they grant you access to their flames.

She brought her arms down and the threads disappeared back into the ground.

But do not be fooled. This is not easy work. Once you generate flame, the real danger begins. You have to learn to control the flames the fire spirit grants – to light them and to extinguish them just as quickly. So, let’s begin! We are going to start with learning how to enter trance. Spread out from each other. I want at least two arm-lengths between each of you.

We all shuffled apart and found a place to sit.

Good. Now make sure you are comfortable. You will be in this position for a while.

The rest of the day was spent learning to settle and quiet our minds, control and slow our breathing, and enter the trance. Aoife and the other elders supervising our training, Brigid, Finn, Mattias, and Mara, walked among us, stopping to provide guidance and answer questions. We were all exhausted walking home later that afternoon.

Could you make it happen? I asked Pasha.

I could feel it start… the tingling everywhere. Tomorrow I’ll get it, I’m sure, he replied. You?

I… I guess I’m not sure, I said. I feel like I can’t hold it. I paused as I reflected on the day. I get frustrated that it isn’t coming quickly to me.

Pasha chuckled. Of course you do. You are impatient. Things usually come easily to you, but that will not help you with this.

Things do not come easily to me! I am not impatient! I rolled my eyes at him.

Ha! Kala, you always have to run where we go, never walk. You shapeshifted without even trying because you wanted to be first to the lake, he chided. You are impatient. I know you.

Hmm. We shall see, I guess, I replied as we walked.

Pasha laughed again. It will be fine. You will figure it out and you will find your patience with your calm.

So began the habit of Pasha and I talking about our wins and disappointments from the training day. Meile was waiting for us as we came out of the forest into the tribe’s clearing.

So, what was it like? You look exhausted, she said as she looked us over.

How does one explain a ring of fire surrounding you in an instant, watching hundreds of fire spirits flow from the earth and the challenge of having to command your mind to be calm, yet focused? I blinked at her.

That tough? she said as she linked her arm in mine and walked us home. Meile needed no words to read the experience on my face.

There was no rest with Aoife. She pushed because she knew the cost of losing control; of ego, arrogance and rage mixed with fire. I hear her voice even now; crisp, calm, eyes piercing your soul, pushing for your breakthrough:

Again.

No, from within.

No, again.

Again.

No. Again.

Again.

I spent much of my training time with Aoife. My bond with the animals came so easily; they somehow already felt familiar to me and I managed to shapeshift without even trying. My mother spent part of her time teaching me the ways of shifters and with Meile the gift of being an oracle. Within these moments, she also taught us the lessons of being queens of our tribe: how to lead with kindness, how to listen in order to hear, not to speak and pontificate, and the importance of respecting the balance of life even in leadership.

Despite those teachings with my mother, my loud nature and impatience was the reason I had to spend more time working to find calm and control under Aoife’s training. I was able to master trance as Pasha predicted we would, but as Aoife had warned, the real training and danger happened once the fire spirits granted me access to the flames.

You see, the more energy you draw from the spirits to generate fire, the more the force of inertia has to be balanced. We had to draw the fire spirits to us, pool the heat into sparks, use that energy to form physical shape, then set the blaze at the intended point with accurate size and outcome. Stance, strength, and confidence had to be in place to hold balance during this work, which is why finding calm was so important.

Every time I fell while building the pillars of energy to my hands, every time I lost control of the flame and scorched the grass around me or missed my target, my anger would rise. Just as the mammoths pulled water from the lake to douse our errant flames, I tried to use the force of my will to extinguish my rising frustration. In those days, the tears of rage on my dirty face at the end of the day’s training did nothing to quench the heat I felt within me.

Aoife knew this. It was how she had been long ago, and it was why she was chosen for me. That didn’t make any of it easier. My fists still slammed in the dirt when I felt I had failed at a lesson.

One day I could feel her watching me after we were dismissed and I ran to the cliffs instead of joining the others to walk home. I stood at the cliff edge and screamed at the sky. I was angry that I was slow when Pasha had taken to it so easily. Angry for crying, angry because I could not find my way to calm when I knew how critically important it was. Eventually I went back home. I would try again the next day. My impatience and my temper were not allowed to keep me from my role in the tribe. I had a responsibility to my people. This was my purpose to fulfil. Perhaps breaking myself was necessary to understand that.

Much of our training in the beginning was with small elements of ignition, ensuring that we could start and extinguish torches and small fires, and hold a flame within our hands. Once we demonstrated proficiency with those small tasks, we moved on to target practice. We lit fires at a distance, away from people, to prepare us for the larger duties of fire keepers. The final step of training was igniting fire in the presence of people. This was an obvious expectation of a fire keeper – to light a family’s hearth with that very family surrounding you – but also the most dangerous.

This lesson was the one that changed everything for me.

Aoife explained the instructions for the day in her commanding voice: Today, you are going to learn to light a bonfire, just like a home hearth, with your friends surrounding you. She paused to take in our faces. "You all know this is the last of the lessons you need to master before you can become fire keepers. It is one of the most important and one of the most dangerous roles you will have. Trust is imperative. Your command and control is