’Twas Peace we reaped, Lammas last.

‘The silence of the dogs.’ You declared, down the bottom of the garden under the Ochil hills. One dragon’s eye glinting in the Craig – high in the blue sky. Peregrine falcons have lived in that slit since Merlin was a boy.

‘Yer Maw did that, aye, yer Maw’s some woman, eh?’ Said Taz-Baby. The one strawberry root had burst into fruit. His drool was strawberry coloured. ‘What do ya feed they strawberries, ah haavenae tasted anything like that for years. Oh that’s good.’

‘Do Not Tell Him.’ You mimed loud and clear.

I laughed hard and loud.

‘Mum, don’t laugh with no teeth in.’

We sat in the plans of my tiny wee croft. One turn of the sun, the one strawberry root has her second crop filling four beds. She came from The Braes, by Portree. From Sorley’s croft. She has huge delicious fruit nearly ready to suck. This Lammas I harvest all the goodness the Goddess can provide. My tiny wee croft is abundant. The peace we had did not last long. That moment of peace, when you swished in emerald silk, was created by crime. My crime. My violence.

Peace from Creepy Texan has been discussed, displayed, strategised for two Imbolcs now. Any service, any official, legal route has been investigated. I met him first at our front door. We had just moved in. He rang the bell and banged on the door. I was stupid then. I descended the dark stone stair and opened the door. A small white English man had his foot on my doorstep and was complaining.

‘I know things about you.’ He stretched himself in order to be level with my groin. ‘I’ve seen photos of your bare cunt.’ He said, linking him to only one specific individual. I failed to kick him off my step at that point.

He placed one small strong podgy hand on my door frame. My cervix cleanched. My hole closed. A shudder ripped up my spine.

‘Get her out of here’ My seanmhathair screamed in my head. I closed the door without kiCking him, returned up the stairs to our study. I planned your escape, rolled a smoke. There is no length I would go to to keep you safe from small white predatory men.

Where, in my experience, would my young woman be safe for a few years? He banged and shouted at the door. I gave you my Bose speaker. You turned up the bass. 

‘He wanted your phone video footage of Lizzie and her dog.’ I lied.

‘And you told him get to fuck, eh Maw?’

‘Aye, lass, aye, that I did.’ I lied again.

One turn of the sun, my wee free croft has attracted more than all the bees. All the colours people can be have wandered in.  I made a wee free library too – on the bottom of the driveway. An eight year old with a purple mohican has been a regular.  Fred’s daughter came for unicorn books. Fred snipped mint for his wife. Kate’s dog stopped for a drink. Kate came in for borage leaves. She returned for peas, lavender, spinach. I tried to give away jars of cornflowers and sweet peas. They were bunched on display at the corner. On the wall between Creepy Texan and Lizzie’s house, and mine. After the third time they swept the flowers off the wall, I gave up. Folk began walking up the path and asking to come into my garden. Just like in Findhorn when my home became a portal for weirdos. I smelled the magick in these hills, felt the Sacred Feminine in the glens, tasted silver in her waters. Great magick once lived and breathed in these hills. I know it. I also know how to harness that ancient power.

You peered your one good eye and longest lens into a tunnel in the hill. We found the cairn of Neachtan on our second venture into Alva’s enigma.  Carnaughton Burn gleamed at us from our new home. She’s the reason we had a study. I liked to smoke and watch her mare’s tails fly in a deluge. She was a shiny thing. She distracted me from my troubles, stalkers and haters.

When Creepy Texan was aboot, I told you my research into this strange place we landed into. We had known many cairns. The ways cairn has been modified to fit language changes is a study

You sniffed out the tunnels. You did the same on Skye, several times, as a child. Hand worn, finely chiselled. ‘Look Mum, there’s a hand rail’. Took me back to Struan. From Dun Beag, walk the road perpindicular. It leads to Ullinish. At the first gate on the right is a path. That path curves round the hill, to the right. At the old wall, there are two mounds. One is a passageway. When you were ten you wandered in. You talked to the Ancestors there. I have photographs. They were indigo orbs.

Your camera lit the tunnel in King Neachtan’s Cairn. You stepped in. I invoked God, the Buddha and the Dharma. You told me shush. Me and my dog sat in the burn. We drank. We soaked our paws.My knackered feet healed after a while.

‘Smells like dragon, mum. But it’s long dead. The bones created a wall. Maybe it was trapped behind that wall and died.’

‘The water holds her memory. Taste this.’ I tried to coax you out. You went further in. There’s been a portal here, I thought, sitting on a rock, the swelling gone from my ankles. Cool clear ice freeze water flushed from a hollow further up, further in, tastes to me like silver dragon. When were silver dragons based in the Ochils? 

‘Any orbs?’ I asked.

‘No mum, this place is way older than orbs. This is the kinda place the orbs would like to visit and study. They are so not the same worlds.’

‘Will you come on out so?’ I pleaded. I thought then of the house by Loch Ness, where druids were. Crowley’s old place.

‘Does it feel like Boleskine House or Callanish?’

‘Like Boleskine, but more powerful. Older.’ The Slytherin in you sneaked forward. ‘Did you bring a hammer?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll do dishes for a week if you run home and get one?’

When you couldn’t go any further, you came back. You sat for a while before thinking or taking a breath. You were dazed. I filled a purple pottery goblet with water from Carnaughton burn. Handed it to you. You drank.

‘There’s some deep dark weird shit went on here. Gotta tell Jon. We’ll need tools, bags and lights.’

A predator on my doorstep and dead dragons in the hills? My child might be safe in the uni. My name, in Hebrew, means Light. Many men have tried to put it out. Women too. There is Hebrew mixed in with the old Irish language. Either way, my name means Light. I am of Brehon lineage, from the House of De Dannan. The hills above me are named for those legends.

One turn of the sun, you are gone. My source in CIAO BofA told me you passed first year and look good. I have worked hard here, as my feet would permit. I dug up all the muck, cleaned it, cleansed the earth, blessed the earth. Sarah Alice made smudge sticks from Findhorn mugwort. I burned a dozen so far. I hunted the old buzzard, butchered and dried him. I hung his entrails as an offering to Crow. Crow calls when Creepy Texan is aboot. Crow sees through dimensions. As do I, sometimes. 

It was you named him. ‘He wouldn’t be out of place at a Texan dog fight.’ You told Katie the cop and Jo the HO, that first ‘mediation’. We had ‘mediation’ because we knew I would kill him. Katie saw it in my soul. She has that x-ray vision gift. Katie the Cop knows about women and safety. She gets it. She could change the country we live in, if we gave her the tools. You looked at her as something to be. It was her helped me get you into Stirling University.

‘Women like us could save Scotland from Boris.’ You droned on. About a cop. I didn’t ask how. That debate always ended in a row.  I completely and totally and utterly believe that we have to over grow the system. I still cannot accept  any other way.

The back bed at the very bottom of the garden is fertile and ready to grow CBD. I need the cops, the Court, My Lord and my lawyers to see me. I want a licence from the Home Office to grow CBD here, in Alva. Tom up Wood Hill says the Council have a few acres would be perfect. He might donate for a few polytunnels. Deer and CBD are not a pretty mix. A year has passed since my animal instinct tried to rip the balls off of Creepy Texan. Each time I tried to give a statement, the local cops dismissed me. Even now, this blistering Sunday as I type, two male cops have been and gone. They were inside for two minutes.Their minds already decided to ridicule and humiliate me in some way. Victim blaming is the only tactic of Police Scotland in 2022.Make the women shut up. That is their only job. Control the victim, keep her vulnerable, invaded upon, unsafe.

Would a public pardon for all the women executed as witches help change this vile attitude? Possibly. Define witch as a contemporary woman. What would she look like? How would she behave? By woman, I mean adult human female. This is not the paragraph for the womb-ones discussion. 

August 2022.It is my sure and certain belief that women are not safe in Scotland today. It is my experience that Police Officers prefer to persecute the victim rather than investigate the situation. Police Officers in Scotland will keep you in custody if you call 999 after an assault. They will lock you in the van. They will shuggle you about driving viciously. They will deny you any treatment for your injuries. They will put you in a cell. They will tell you it was your fault you were assaulted.  Police Scotland do not protect. They blame and walk away. 

A public pardon for all the women executed as witches might be a fine place to begin the vast conversation required regarding Scotland’s misogyny.