The Tribe is the story of Liam’s passage to manhood, the development of his spiritual vision, and his people’s progress to meet their destiny. A ‘must read this’ magical, visionary and inspired novel by Michael Conneely
ISBN:  978-1-84685-469-9
311 pages

Text excerpt:

Liam took his axe, his bow and arrows, his spear and knife – he took these in case he needed to defend himself from the wild dogs and packs of wolves that ranged around the Fells, preying on the sheep.

      Conrad, the leader of the men’s group, gave Liam some of the earth from the hearth of the cave, to take with him. This made Liam cry as he headed away alone. It made the experience of separating from his beloved home become more real.

      The whole of the first day, Liam spent walking, each step taking him ever further and further from the land he called home. It was very strange suddenly realising you could do what you liked. There was no one to tell you what to do. But then the strange thing was that there was no one. What do you do when there is nothing to do?

      He walked and walked, covering many miles. At one point he saw a great front of rain driving across the plateau landscape towards him. There was no shelter. There were no trees. He stood and waited for the rain to hit. It was torrential. It soaked him right through to the skin. He accepted it, drinking the water as it ran over his face and lips.

      With the dawn of the third day, the rain stopped. The sun came out and shone brightly, making everything steam in the heat of its rays. As he walked on he became more and more hot. He was sweating a lot and felt he was doing more than just sweat, he felt he was somehow ridding himself of some sorts of poisons that he had not noticed were in his body.

      Eventually, overcome by the heat, Liam opened his arms wide to the sun. Without the sun, there would be no life. Warmth, such generous giving. Warmth! The daydream that caught him was dazzling, delirious. A woman stepped out of the huge dazzle; her golden hair tangled with the rays of the sun, and smiled and was gone. But now he didn’t feel alone. After the squall, the flowers opened like ripe buds. There was a breath on the air from unseen presences, like many beings lived on that huge empty plateau. He felt their breath enter him and quicken something in his bones. Out of the air he began to hear a song, repeated endlessly for a long time. They were singing to him, calling him by his name:

‘The Earth must be loved
  The Earth must be loved
  The Earth must be loved’

The dream went on. He travelled on, the sun was strong and the wind was strong. He was beginning to feel light-headed because he had had no food since the day before.

      The humidity became more and more oppressive. As the sun sank, thunder began to roll around the distant mountains, coming nearer. The rain poured torrentially again and he was surrounded by flashes of lightning and crashing thunder. The song in his head changed:

‘Thunder Child
  Thunder Child
 Thunder, Thunder, Thunder Child’

When the thunder eventually rolled away to the other side of the sky, the sun came out again and its dying rays lit up the falling raindrops, making them look like crystals dropping from the sky. They were floating down. ‘Falling, falling, falling rain’, Liam repeated to himself as he walked quicker and quicker in a straight line across the plateau.

      A wind arose as the sun sank. It caught him in cold gusts and eddies. He started to run with the rising wind. Running alongside him but some distance away, he saw a woman, a wild woman running in the racing shadows of the clouds. As she chased the wind she spiralled and leapt in the night. Oh no! Behind her his life as a child seemed to be dying, she was leaving a trail of flames behind her. He wanted to shout ‘stop,’ but she spun and leapt all the more and above her a falcon flew like an arrow towards the sunset, the underside of its plumage bathed in the reddening light – the light that was fading into night.

      Over the darkening plain, Liam ran on. ‘I’m being told about women.’ Liam laughed at the way everything was coming to him, it wasn’t what he had expected, but it was nice and he felt pleased – ‘women and the elements, but it all seems to be one.’

      The stars appeared in the now clear cloudless sky. The woman still ran and twirled like a leaf blown on the now-fading thin evening wind. Orion the hunter swung above the horizon, mighty archer who so many men had witnessed rise and set for so many thousands and thousands of years. Orion acted as a guide. Liam raced towards him, until he reached the lip of a steep-sided valley. He climbed down the sheer cliff face and found a small river flowed along the bottom of the cleft. He sank exhausted next to a pool where two streams flowing in deep side valleys joined. Over the pool jutted a limestone pinnacle, and to the pinnacle clung a rowan tree, its crop of berries heavy in the darkness, its roots clinging to the limestone.

      The wind woman joined the tree, she merged into its branches, entrancing him with the undulation of her hands, the flash of her eye, the tilt of her head, the turning of her feet and the sway of her body, so that as he fell down into a deep sleep beside the pool, her dancing feet seemed to stamp dreams into being inside his head, as his eyes closed to the stars winking in the clear blue-black skies above him.

      When he woke it was hot. He did not know how long he had slept. Anyway, time didn’t matter. He was light-headed with hunger, but still at the stage where hunger brings extra alertness. He walked up one of the side valleys to drink the water out of his cupped hands, then returned to the pool and the waterfall and waded naked into the cool depths. He stayed there a long time, and as he stood in the water he became aware, lying in the water some little way away from him, the same yellow-haired woman. The tresses of her hair streamed out in the water and her smile was ancient. He dived towards her, but she shattered into a thousand droplets. He spent a lot of time ducking under the water looking for her, checking where she had gone to, then he went back to the bank, turned and saw her again in the same place, in the water, but whenever he tried to reach her she dissolved yet again into the water itself.