Might lie together.
For you and I, diddle diddle,
Now all are one,
And we will lie, diddle diddle,
No more alone.
One of the women turned to the last one to sing, and complained, "Tabitha, you dunce! You missed a verse!"
"Oh, did I?" The girl asked, only to set several of the others to giggling.
Tabitha frowned. "Well, Lavender's Blue was never one of my favorites. "Ask me about The Bailiff's Daughter Of Islington, or about The Bold Pedlar And Robin Hood, and I'll sing brighter than the entire lot of you!"
"You sing of adventures," One of the others teased. "But you are as adventurous as an old cow with a hobbled leg."
At this several of the women giggled, before they turned toward Emelina.
"Enough." Emelina said. "Go on with your dance while I entertain my Mathew. Unless one of you would like to entertain him instead."
Matt noticed a couple of the girls blushing, but they were more than ready to reform their pagan circle and resume their bizarre walking dance. All of them drifted off save for one. This last girl was gazing at Matt with a little more than passing curiosity.
"He is handsome!" She said, before she turned abruptly and went off to join the others.
Matt found himself grinning. "What's her name again?"
"That is Remember." Emelina teased him. "Will you be able to remember her name? Have you forgotten of me so quickly, Mathew?"
"Oh, no." Matt shook his head. "I was just asking, that's all. She's very pretty. All of your friends are very pretty. And you, you're very pretty also. What were you were saying about this clearing? You were headed here back in my world, right, when the crows attacked you?"
"I will remember to tell Remember that you are fond of her." Emelina gaily laughed, as she caught the pleased look in Matt's eyes and the nervousness in his response. "But yes, this is the spot of land I wanted to set eyes upon in your world. I would have been content to see what has become of it after so many years. It must look so unlike the land that you see here."
Matt took a good look around. He shrugged. "It doesn't look all that different to me. Trees are still trees, where I come from."
Emelina reached out to snag Matt's wrist. She led him into the shade trees at the edge of the clearing. From this new vantage point, they could still see the five other women dancing, but Emelina and Matt were now far enough that they would no longer be in the way. The five had taken up a gentle, melodious chant, Matt observed.
"We found this place when we were only young girls." Emelina wistfully revealed. "The six of us would come here in all of our finery after our Sabbath mass. We wore small linen caps of white under our hooded scarlet cloaks, and long dresses of linseywooley (a coarse fabric made of both linen and wool) colored in dark blue, green or brown. By law, we were prohibited from wearing the clothing of the wealthy, but we always fancied our dresses made of cotton or silk. They were bright with color and with trimmings of golden or white lace. My sisters would play here and we would tease one another. We would tell one another fanciful stories wishing we'd been born as duchesses or princesses.
"Even then, Pan watched over us. We would see him at times, standing beside one of those trees there. He appeared to us as a kindly old man with long hair and a beard, both the color of pepper and salt. He wore a wool cap and a tunic of a rich brown color, unlike any we had ever seen. He used a long, gnarled stick to amble about from one tree to another. We would see him from afar and playfully hide from him. When we set off to approach Pan, he would always vanish and be gone from our sights. Pan was attracted to our stories and our songs, you see.
"As we grew older, we would still gather here to sing or to dance. When we began to grow fond of boys, we would dance with one another while we pretended to dance with a boy we liked. We taught one another how to kiss while we were in this very clearing."
Emelina sighed, taking a few moments before she spoke again. "We were all so innocent back then. Even after we were all married, we would still come here to talk and to share gossip, and we..."
"You were married?" Matt cut in.
"Of course we were!" Emelina laughed. "My sisters and I were betrothed in our thirteenth and fourteenth years, as was the custom in that age. All of us were married, save for Tabitha. Her mother and father held out the hope that she would dedicate herself to the Lord." She laughed again. "As you have seen, she has turned out as unruly as a bad stitch!
"I myself was married twice. Both of my husbands met untimely and unexpected deaths. The people of my town assumed that a curse had been placed upon my head. They had good reason to think this, as it turns out. At the time none of us was the wiser as to what precisely was hanging over my head, or who the culprit behind the stage was. Walk with me, Mathew, that I may show you the way to our town."
"There's a town here?" Matt asked. "Just how big is this dream place?"
"Oh, for the people of my time it was an adequate enough land." Emelina replied, as they trudged over a path so narrow it could only be managed in single file.
Matt could not help but take in the soft sway of Emelina's hips.
"Donald tells us that your people can travel through the air like birds." She mused. "And that your wagons can carry your people past a dozen towns in a single day. Compared to that, I suppose that a man such as you would find my town a very small place in the world."
"I'm ready to leave my world behind." Matt replied to her. "I'm ready to lose myself in the mountains somewhere and never, ever come back. I just don't know if I want to end up in a place like this where I may not even exist anymore. And this whole worshipping Pan thing, I am definitely not liking that either."
"It was a necessary act for us." Emelina said. "Had we not done this our souls may have been condemned to Purgatory for all time. This even though my sisters and I were innocent of the crimes we were accused of."
"I can't believe that." Matt rebutted. "God would have done something to prevent that."
"In my day, this world belonged to Satan." She replied. "Tell me this is not the same in your world."
"I don't..." Matt began to retort, but he stopped himself. He'd seen enough evil in his life to know the true answer to this. "Well, you girls were all having a grand old time doing your thing there in the clearing. What happened to change all that?"
"It was a man that proved our undoing." Emelina divulged. "His name was Solomon Cabot. It was unbeknownst to us then, but he had lusted after my sisters and I ever since we were very young girls. I was the one he lusted after the most, of all of us. I was the one he cursed with the worst evil.
"The lust would become inflamed in his heart, whenever he saw any of us walking through town. He would watch us when we gathered together, and he would observe which path we took when we came out to the clearing. His lust for us grew heavier, as he observed our bodies ripen from those of mere girls into those of maturing young women.
"Pan was a wandering god then. He held no real power, as it had been many ages since he had received the attention and worship of his followers. He had grown attached and protective of my sisters and I, as he was pleased with our simple songs and dances. It was these very things that Pan lorded over in his distant past. He also watched as we made the transition between girls and women. In his own fatherly manner, he wished us the best of fortune.
"Pan knew what went on in the mind of Solomon Cabot. He sought to warn us when Solomon would come to the edge of the woods to hide and watch us. Pan would frighten the crows from their perches in the trees, or cause us to turn in the direction where Solomon hid. After a time, we would know when Solomon stood nearby or when he first approached us. We fled from him. Of course, this maddened Solomon. This is when he began to resort to more wicked measures to snare us."
Emelina stepped to one side once the narrow path widened out. As it did, a small assortment of rough buildings came into view. Most of the dwellings were simple lean-tos supported at the corners by trees, with three walls made of old cloth, or branches and mud, and one large open section. There were quite a few structures that resembled actual houses, however. These were one or two room homes built with interior walls made of wide vertical boards, and the exterior surrounded on all sides by dilapidated clapboard. The roofs were covered in thatch. As for the tiny windows, Matt later found out were made of oiled paper, or pieces of cow horn cut so thin they were nearly transparent.
As Matt took up a stride next to Emelina, she led them toward one of the more presentable of the structures, which boasted one of the few chimneys in town. A lean and sweaty man sat on a very short stool. He used a crude iron sickle to cut down the bullgrass encroaching the edges of the building. The man wore a doublet of faded red and rather plain corduroy breeches in brown. On his head was a dark brown felt hat. On his feet rested a very modern pair of brown thong sandals. The man paused from his task to examine them both.
