Court of the Mere

On certain still evenings a mere with stones on its island shows several powers at once: a veil of mist, a heron of light, a ring of glowing lilies, and behind them a column of moonlit water greater than all of them. The fen calls it a court, for want of a better word.

The fen parishes that live round such a mere tell it as a thing seen once in a life, if at all. The water goes still as glass around the island and its stones. Then shapes stand on it, at different heights and different distances from the centre: a tall veil of silver mist, a heron made of drops and light, a ring of lilies glowing from beneath. They are not one creature. They face inward. Behind them, over the island, a column of water and moonlight rises far higher than any of them, and the lesser shapes turn towards it.

The fen's learning is that one water can keep several powers, each a spirit in its own right, all drawing on the one source, with one of them greater than the rest. The parishes call the greater one the First Stillness, and call the others by the shapes they wear, the Veil, the Heron and the Lily Ring, knowing those are not names. A term struck with one of the lesser powers may be good or may be nothing. The tale they tell is of a company that drained the north shore with the agreement, as it thought, of the lilies, and of the night the column stood up.

These are avatars, of several spirits on a shared node. The pact-keepers' rule is that any change to the mere must be put to the whole court, in the old order, beginning where the parish always begins.

As witnesses describe it

A great dark mere at twilight with standing stones on an island; on the still water stand a veil of mist, a heron of light and a ring of glowing lilies, and behind them rises a column of moonlit water. The other picture shows the mere at dawn, a heron of light flying beside a great sweeping current of luminous water over the stones.