'Confessions of a Pagan Nun'

Giannon's home was a configuration of branches, stones, and mud. A dome and a shed of these materials leaned against one another like old drunken warriors at a banquet. All around these structures was a variety of grasses, blossoms, and bushes that I had never seen before. Drying herbs, jars on tethers, and staffs of yew and oak hung on the sides of his dwelling so that it reminded me of Giannon himself when he traveled beneath a tangle of druidic accessories. The clearing with its gardens and dwelling was empty of human life, though a ragged gray wolf scampered into the woods from there. Some might say that the wolf was hungry and weak, for the past winter had been fiercely cold.

I entered the dwelling and found the inside also strung with dried plants, jars, and staffs. There were shelves on which a chaos of boxes and jars sat along with feathers and scrolls and dust. The only furnishings were a table, a small bench, and a bed made of straw covered with the skins of bear and fox. More scrolls, codices, and tablets sat upon these furnishings, as though the originals had multiplied in some orgy when their master was away.

I well understood Eve's determination to awaken some desire in Adam, even if it be desire for forbidden fruit.

I walked carefully though this strange chamber, afraid that all of Giannon's belongings and the dwelling itself were capable of collapsing into a dusty pile of rubble. And I believed that a druid's dwelling could likely be set with spells from which I would emerge transformed into a beetle or bee. I waited for Giannon outside, until the world grew dim and I could see wolves running along the tree line beyond the small clearing in which Giannon's home nested.

Finally I saw Giannon approach as a moving and dark form emerging from the trees. I stood, so I would not startle him, and he nodded and entered his dwelling without speaking my name. I waited to follow him, and when I did, I found him in his bed and a wax candle lit upon the table. I lay down beside him. That night we warmed each other but did not become husband and wife. And in the morning when I awoke he was laboring devotedly in his garden. As I watched him there, bending to disappear into the reeds and emerging again as from a lake of grasses, I felt cold, for he had no words nor glances for me. I remembered and grieved the death of my mother as though is had occurred the night before. I was a child, with a child's fear of loneliness.

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