‘They pulled love and mystery from the very air around us, the very air they breathed, they made mystery come alive in their songs and tunes, and I felt this mystery run up and down my backbone and over my skin and enter my body. Magic!’
This extract describes the poetic and fearless talent of L.A. Wilson to perfection.
Heroic deeds are matched by heroic suffering, intense highs are followed by matching lows and Arthur’s pain, the burden he carries of being the ‘one’ is made plain in ‘Facing the Bear’. The Battle of Baddon Hill is an experience beyond writing. I went through each moment of the fight and collapsed exhausted at the end. Two thousand warriors of Arthur’s Clan Bear face eight thousand Saxons. This is Arthur’s greatest battle, of which traces remain in historical documents.
‘...there was Arthur, sitting on his horse on the hilltop, alone and bathed in a single beam of sunlight spearing down from the clouds over him, a single ray only on him, where all the rest of us stood in darkness, and the single ray shone gold on him, on the hilt of his great sword, on the torc at his neck, and he looked a god..’
With so much danger and death, gods, goddesses and the Otherworld are always near, intense feelings heighten perceptions. The existence of Avalon is, for me, ‘a great mystery on the wind so high’ and ever present throughout ‘The Silurian’ series. It has nothing to do with religion or the Romani Christians who claim that their god won the Battle of Baddon Hill and torment Bedwyr because his life doesn’t fit their rules. I sighed over the story of Bedwyr and Sawyer. Here is love in action, such power and passion, a universal lover’s truth, regardless of gender.
Events at Dun Pendyr, the hall of Medraut, ‘so high only birds, sheep and men could reach its summit’ again stunned me. Medraut, the green-eyed blonde haired Snake, whose suffering as an abused child has broken him into pieces, hero and villain mixed, beyond his power to control. His pain cracks through the armour of his heroism and courage and twists it, so that he can suddenly strike out of nowhere, a true snake.
At Dun Pendyr we learn Lord Darfod’s prophecies, predictions that made me cry, for their power, beauty and sorrow. And truth. My truth anyway. Lord Darfod predicts that the Saxons will say ‘that Arthur never lived for he is the very one who defeated them so long ago.. and this will shame them and they will deny he ever lived...’
I dream, with Arthur, that ‘all our lost brothers are resting now and without pain or suffering, so why mourn? They are in Avalon and waiting for us.’ Arthur, Bedwyr and all the heroes of Britain, I hope to meet you there.