She drifted up in the mists of morning on an incoming tide, they said.
No, she swam up to the shingle as if the intervening sand were still water, they said.
She was all grey and dressed in finest sea-softened furs, against the cold, they said.
No, she was clad in the midnight greens of bladderwrack and kelp, flowing in the promise of warm-waters, they said.
She was grey, or green, or pale-morning-blue, or the brownish earthish colour of tide-tossed beach, or silt-glitter-silver.
They said many things about her, and all of them were true, and none of them were, because humans like to fill in the gaps of what they do not understand.
And where what they would call facts cannot be established, they are free to paint the colours as they would wish them to be.
Some know that the world was better when such colours could be seen.
But they are now too few.
Whether she drifted or swam and however she was dressed, all agreed that she came out of the sea and danced across the marsh in all the exuberant youth of spring-time. She was swathed in lark-song, and carried on the air of black cap and chiff chaff and chaffinch, given an extra push by the haunting calls of mated geese, paired up now and settling. She walked through the air, on the warbling of Chetty's bird. Until she came to the solid land.
There she stood. With the sea at her back and the land rising ahead. To her left, the bank was swathed in the celebratory sweet-scented whinny. Whin, not whine. Whin for wishes and for wisdom. Some called it Gorse. Gorse for purse, for money, for hope. Others said Broom and called its powers to be those of divination and purification. All called upon it for Protection.
And it set the hillside a-blaze in a golden hue, like a sunrise of a new dawn, and sent smokeless scent out to perfume her route.
She paused at the portal. The tunnel was as dark as ever it had been, and her glamour dropped away as she stepped toward it. She too was now dark, as the depths of the oceans. Those who think that pure Water is clear as crystal have not swum in the depths. Water is all of the colours and none of them and when she steps out of the light of the sun, she is as dark as they come.
Water stepped forward. Imagine her in whatever shape you will, so long as that shape is lithe and living and full of springtime. In the doorway she bent low and picked up her bouquet, a posey of claytonia perfoliate, known as Spring Beauty, known as miners' lettuce, known as a preventive of scurvy, known to her as a beautiful green goblet with a tiny white candle to light her way through the tunnel: for flower speaks unto flower.
The tunnel was of blackthorn. The boughs were black and had thorns, for this was the wood, this was Wood in one of his personae. And he too was only one of his kind, and all of them. He was to be the place, first of all, and then the welcomer, and the requirer of the promise, and the receiver of it, and the returner.
The branches were strewn with the gold and grey and green of colonising lichen, but that was their everyday dress, and if that was all they could adorn themselves with, they retreated into the shadows.
For this was a wedding, and so all the prominent boughs were decked out in their spring finery. True bouquets of flowers were strewn along the walls of the tunnel and in the rafters overhead.
In later years the human-folk would speak of snow-drifts, but this was more like clouds coalescing into their constituent stars. The protective coconut scent still carried on the wind, through this wynd of white, and black, the Wood and the wonderful.
And of course the birds sang for the promise, for the vow to be renewed. The birds sang for this Wood Water wedding.
Water stepped slowly. She walked the rising, twisting path. She paused to honour the carolling of the winged ones. She paused to honour the flowering of the Wood. The green heart of each floret, the white petals, the delicate pale filaments holding anthers of gold or bronze, in its colours honouring the elements of Earth and Metal and Fire.
Water was sure of herself, self-contained, and protected, but Wood needed her for more than quenching. Wood allied himself with Water, because only between them could they sustain Earth and all that would grow in and on and under it. But Wood also knew, better than Water, the ways of Metal and Fire – and while he feared them, he knew that they too had a place in the elemental balance. He spoke not of it, but he honoured their hues in the colours he showed his bride. A code. Another pact to be spoken of another time, not on this day, not on the day when Wood and Water sealed their vows.
Spring was not the time for Metal or Fire. Spring was not yet the time for Earth. Spring was the time that Wood and Water claimed for their joining and their joy.
She walked up through the tunnel, delighting in the confetti that showered upon her shoulders and decorated her path. Petals falling. Whole blossoms caught in her hair and wove the semblance of a crown.
And Spring Beauty lighted the way.
All the while the blackthorn over-arched her, and spoke his vows to her in scent and in the song of those he had live within him. All the while she stepped slowly, a little of her self dampened each passing step, her vow to the Wood. He promised her flowers in the springtime. She promised him rainfall and babbling brooks and unseen underground streams.
Water promised to quench the thirst of the Woodlands and all the plants and the animals of the Earth and the Air.
Wood promised to feed the Fires that would create the Earth in which the creatures could live and the plants could grow.
Water and Wood promised each other that they would hold Fire in check so that it could not obliterate the creation and the sustenance. They made that promise to each other and to the Earth, and held it as a warning to Fire, to hold its place in the balance.
Earth and Metal and Water had other things to say to each other, at other seasons. But this was Spring. Spring is the season when Water gives way to Wood. Spring is when the pact between them is renewed.
She walked up between the rows of hedging, through the tunnel decked in white and green. She was sung on her way. She left her promise in footprints. He returned his in a shower of petals.
At the crest of the hill, she emerged, and rested on a bed of Speedwell: Veronica, who is remembered for wishing another traveller on his way, stays yet in the fields, for all who need reminding that everything is but one more step on a journey, one more turning of the planet in its wheel through space. One more season in which to confirm that all our vows are renewed.
