Heart of Albion…

THE DARK VIRGIN REVISITED

“The nails in the tree stump have gone.

The church is ready for a funeral…

There is a bier in the chancel.

No one is around.

The porch is tidier somehow…

The place feels good.

And there are colours now…

Rainbow colours…

As I come out,

A Red-Kite flies Left to right across the graveyard…

Another bird wheels in low…

And then another…

Oh Don, they are just beautiful.

Whatever has changed the place,

It is incredible…”

Anu has been staring up at the Ball of Power for the last ten minutes. He attributes to the Ball of Power magic in the form of independent movement, which it simply does not possess. Every so often he glances at me and then back at the Ball of Power. He knows that I hold the key to this independent movement. He cannot see that this makes the movement dependant on me.

“It’s just a ball Anu.”

“He thinks it’s a bird. He’s a bird dog.”

This bald statement conjures a picture of a bird-headed dog in my mind, closely followed by a dog-headed bird, immediately followed by the question, which suits Anu the best?

“You’re not a bird Anu… you’re a dog!”

Anu looks from me to the Ball of Power and back again, then starts to whine, or ‘sing’ as Wen calls it.

I rise and stand, and start to walk over to the Ball of Power…

All Hell breaks loose.

Excerpt from Heart of Albion.

HEART OF ALBION

Stuart France & Sue Vincent

Unwittingly drawn into the mysterious and magical landscape of The Initiate, Don and Wen pondered the visual language of symbols, stumbling across revelations and realisations that would alter their perception of the age-old stories they thought they knew… tales that entwine across the tapestry of time.

A hilltop steeped in tragedy, a child whose eyes see too much… a Word-Weaver’s birth into darkness… strange forms shimmering on the edge of vision. They learned to walk the Living Land, listening to the whispers of Earth memory and the ghosts of the most ancient past. And from those tales, another line of communication opens as they explore the folklore, legends and traditional tales handed down, from heart to heart, over the millennia.

As the two friends travel between the sacred sites of Albion, they discover stories that tell how the leys were made, the true origins of the hillforts and the reason why Father Fish had breakfast in Slug Town.

Striding across this landscape of myth are the giants. From Cerne Abbas to the top of the Beanstalk, from Camelot to the Castle of Maidens, how and why is their presence stamped on the Living Lore of the land by their seven-league boots?

Join Don and Wen as the adventure continues, unravelling its mysteries and the magical relationship between Albion and its people.