The hunters in the sky began to light their distant white campfires. A sleepy owl called out and began to hunt for breakfast. A wolf pack sang farewell to the setting sun. The frogs and crickets began their nightly jazz session. And somewhere, deep in the forest, a young man stepped past the torches and took his place in the circle of stones.
Like all the young men and women gathered here, Bres was nude except for a loin cloth. Scars and tattoos earned in previous ordeals covered his body, their patterns echoing the turning of the wheel of the year, the patterns of the wilderness and the dance between this world and that of the spirits.
Bres’ shoulder-length fiery red hair and yellow-flecked moss colored eyes made clear his heritage as a descendent of the wild geese, the sons and daughters of the Gael who had scattered from their homeland two centuries before to escape English tyranny.
Now, after nineteen years the sun and the moon returned to the place where they had started that first Beltaine eve when Bres at five years of age had chosen and been accepted to begin the training that tonight, if he passed this final test, would finally allow him to serve the forest and the town of Abish hidden deep within it as a Druid warrior.
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