The word theatre is an interesting one. It refers to any set-apart area in which events take place which are viewed by people out with that area. There is the Theatre of War, the Operating Theatre and the Dramatic Theatre. The dynamics of any theatre are also interesting. The events that take place in the theatrical space appear to be the most important part of the arrangement. The actors rehearse the action so that it runs smoothly; a writer and a director slave to enslave the audience; troupe and crew appear to do all the work. However the action is really dictated by what the audience will look at. The work of the audience is to stare, stare fixedly at the play. If they stare fixedly enough then they can send emotion down their line of sight like tiny gobs of poison down a thread. The players need the attention more than the audience needs the entertainment. The soldiers dying at the front line need to know that they are honoured heroes more than the generals need to know that honoured heroes are dying for them on their front line. In an operating theatre the ailments of the particular sick person undergoing surgery are less important than the possibility of saving other lives, later, if the audience sees something useful in the operation before them. So the quiet but excited people thinking that they are passively relaxing whilst they watch a play are actually delivering an intense current of adoration towards a drama that they control. The skilled actor delivers what the sea of eyes will not close to, what the ranks of eyes are pleading for, so that the eyes will see him also and raise him above reality into fantasy. As a character the actor is free. The limits of the stage are their only limits. The only restrictions are decided by the audience; what will they believe?

Catriona, this story is about her, held a slew of power in her hills. Even here, where she is officially a barbarian, and a barbarian woman at that, she is treated with respect. Even though she cannot fend for herself she is still treated with respect. Even though four of her attendants have died and two have absconded, she is still treated with respect and her needs are taken care of.
Each morning she is brought a cheering cup of the local hot drink by Mama, who was travelling as an esteemed guest until the tragic stop in The Middleland. Mama is a hardened, rounded, tough old woman, like a nut. She is not kind but she makes it her business to see that the needs of all are met, starting with Catriona and extending to the lowest among the travelling party, the boy, Lek. Mama adjusts her mistress’s cushions with the same detached determination that she would have used for building a fire or plucking a bird for the pot or thrashing the boy. She keeps her mouth shut, or mutters under her breath so that they cannot hear, but her eyes tell clearly of the reproach she feels for all the helpless living things that rely upon her every day for their very survival. Her eyes curse the donkeys, in front and behind. Her eyes speak eloquently to the remaining warriors, about what would befall them, if they gave in to their fears and abandoned their mistress, like the thrice cursed cowards that had run off. She tried to keep her eyes from lingering where her mistress could see them because they spoke equally clearly about who’s fault had been the death and desertion. It was Catriona’s fault that they were there at all. It was Catriona’s fault because she was, as tribal leader, responsible for all events in creation. Hers was the originating will of the universe and as such she must have a reason for all the terrible things that had befallen them since they had left The Hebrides. It was Catriona’s fault that they had left Hebridea because she could not seem to cure herself, not even with the help of the best bone-shakers and herbalists in the business. She seemed to need a more exotic cure than had ever been taken before. It was her own fault that she had become so ill, if she had not fought so savagely to be at the head of The Families then there might not have been a plot to end her reign, and her life. Mama could not fathom why, and indeed it was sacrilegious to attempt to, but the prime motivating will in the universe, Catriona, must have tried to kill itself. She must have raised her enemies’ hand against her for some hidden purpose, known only to her deep self, hidden even from her waking mind. It was while her waking mind slept that her enemies felt compelled to introduce biting snakes to her sleeping chamber. She was bitten repeatedly but had survived, in fact it was sacrilegious to think that she might have died. The poison had, however, maimed her body. She could no longer walk; and the strength had gone from her voice. She fought, with all her Warrior-PriestQueen’s strength, fought to live long enough to recover. She was back on her feet quick enough to call a tribal meeting and execute her principle enemies but at the end of the gathering she fell in her tent and did not rouse for days. Her people kept her ongoing invalidity very quiet but she knew that with each doctor that she summoned and sent away, however stealthily, she spread the fame of her weakness. Mama’s eyes told her daily, on the long journey, that she should have died. She had chosen to live, and it would be sacrilege to think that she should have done otherwise, so Mama kept quiet, not even speaking to herself about her feelings. Whatever Mama might plainly think Catriona could not have died. She could have chosen death no more than she could have chosen to let the tribe that she had fought so single-mindedly for slip slowly away, into other hands. She was still God-Absolute when she called her final tribal gathering. There would be no murmurs of dissent before any revolt, one day her people would just have killed her and the next priestess would have forced her bloody way into her hallowed place. She forestalled the process and set it in motion at the same time with her final decree. She was leaving The Families’ lands. She knew that her place would be filled in a moment and that a few of her biggest rivals would be killed in the struggle, whether she knew they were her rivals or not they would go for her space and only one could fill it. If she returned soon, in good health, from the warm Southlands, this would be an advantage, and all advantages must be looked for. She was not leaving alone, with her would go the twenty best warriors in all The Families. And the two finest cooks. And her Sylphie (a religious novice to help her in her rituals.) And venerable and esteemed Mama to run the outfit. And a boy to tend the animals.
She left on a thickly decorated and richly cushioned litter slung between two sturdy pack-mules. There were eight warriors ahead and eight strung out behind with the best of them close on her either hand and two scouts way ahead charting the lie of the land. Mama led the mule in front and kept her eye on everything. And everyone, Catriona included. The boy stood immediately behind her litter, idly beating the mule in front of him and leading the mixed flock of vicious goats and long-legged sheep that would feed them when the soldiers couldn’t rustle anything up from the lands and farms through which they passed in their fruitless searching for the cure that never came and especially while they made their sea crossing to The Mainland. They would stop for a few days every few days and Catriona would closet herself in her tent with a new Madman and inhale his vapours and learn his chants before again despairing of a cure and moving on to find new knowledge. As she slowly emptied all the medical and mystic talent from The Homeland of The Families she became morose. She gave short shrift to the healers that she rousted out of their cosy hermitages. She would scream at them to stop wasting her precious time and cut out the hours of mumbo-jumbo that their other patients demanded. She would not suffer the same treatment twice and to make her point she had the most derivative killed. The originals got through; but many of those were so insane, a result of too much holy-mushroom or natural calamity, that they could do nothing for her. She had to leave the islands just as she had had to leave The Families’ Lands.
At first things were encouraging, the warmer atmosphere made many things much easier for the caravan and the villages were larger and more populous. The healers spoke a different language also, which made repetition less apparent, at first. Slowly Catriona learnt the new words and started to decline, a cure would never be found, she was sure. The shock of doubt, an alien feeling for her, galvanised her and she widened the search. She sent word in all directions that a Queen sought a cure and that the finest healers should seek her out on her slow road southward. No success came to meet her new hope however and the straggling band came to The Middleland; a fertile, flat plain upon which people were as common as sheep and many towns flourished. In that land they heard tell of a great healer, Rakshmann. Rakshmann was in the act of healing an entire city when first news of him came to Catriona’s ears. Although he was many weeks journey ahead of them when he was first mentioned Catriona did not meet any new healers on the road but drove her train straight for him with her last burst of strength.
The capital of The Middleland shocked the travellers from the north. Lek took one look at it and paled in fear. He could not think of coming down out of his safe mountains without fear, to do so was madness, he had only come through the flat Middleland because to do otherwise would be against the original will of the universe and sacrilege. He was too afraid of the city to even think about going there and took his animals silently away into the few low hills that were on hand, while the soldiers and Mama and The Sylphie escorted Catriona into The Middleland’s capital. The Middleland was a vast plain; rivers took most of the traffic. The city sat astride the confluence of the two mightiest, The Blue and The Green, which then became The Brown. The rivers had gouged out great cliffs on each bank and the city was a mass of stairs, and the plague. The plague, passed by touch from person to person, had gripped the city and Catriona’s caravan were the only incomers to the usually busy river-port. The inhabitants stared at the pale Hebrideans and made protective signs. Were they an illusion brought by the plague? The party searched for Rakshmann and found him to be well known and holding court in the crammed town square.
Catriona’s four foremost warriors cleared a path through the packed crown of milling, wailing sick. Some had come to seek a healing from Rakshmann but others were obviously there merely because other afflicted people were there. Whole families stood together, arms around each other, all looking in one direction, crying. Her soldiers pushed through them and pushed them back, they were too weak to resist. Through the corridor formed of suffering Catriona saw Rakshmann. He stood with his eyes closed, his outstretched hand resting on a boy-child’s forehead. He was very beautiful. His face was cut in straight black lines, from heaven, down. Those near him were quiet, they had no panic, he had taken their fear by making them look at him. The mules took her slowly towards him, as if he was reeling the litter in on a thread.
He had not seen her and Catriona ordered the litter brought to a halt a little short of him; she wished to see him perform miracles before she pressed him into her service.
He finished his communion with the boy and returned him to his mother. There was no lessening in the boy’s rash, his sores still wept but he did not. Catriona watched Rakshmann draw another poor devil out of the crowd and, through the laying on of hands, bring that poor devil to peace. Eventually she could wait no longer and she had her four warriors lift her onto the dais upon which Rakshmann was performing.
He started when he say a face unblemished by the pox and he washed his hands in honeyed water before he touched her. He held her forehead in his cool grip and shut her eyes with cooling fingers. Her mind went instantly blank and she floated up, out of her body, and into the sky. She flew and flew and flew. The wind brought snatches of cloud and the drops dusted her face. She felt power beneath and behind her but also release. The worries of the long pilgrimage had bitten her more deeply than the snakes of treachery had at home. Her body had suffered in her betrayal but her mind had been run ragged on the frantic search through strange lands. Now all that was somewhere else, and not her responsibility.
That thought jarred slightly; indeed for anyone else it would have been sacrilege. Catriona was the impetus of the universe; her will was The Prime Mover. There was none but She to worry about all the things in her world. All events flowed from her and all people were but fragments of her many faceted glory. This healer-man, this Raksh-man, was nothing. It was only is she was sufficiently impressed with his performance that she would make herself well again. Was this blissful loss of the self enough to cure Her? Was it enough to cure any of these people?
She woke up to herself quickly and demanded more of him. He washed her with scented waters but she had been washed before and that wouldn’t bring back her slack legs or her seared kidneys. He called to the three-million gods of his religion but she knew that they were but tiny reflections of herself in the eyes of a distant, mad seer and she demanded more from him. He became worried as the warriors looked sceptically at him and looked back to her, looking for a sign from god. He pulled out all the stops and had her bathe in the blood of a wild boar that he bought at great expense from the hungry crowd. Sure that it would work he dragged her from the pot like a dripping infant and stared in dumb terror when, infant-like, she could not walk. He whipped himself into a frenzy, and lashed her for good measure, screaming at the demons to leave her body. Catriona was used to a little medical pain but she could see that the great Rakshmann was a one trick pony. He tried to put his hand on her brow once more, to float her away from him on clouds of resignation and release. He failed, it was her will. Her men cut him in two and threw one half in each river. It isn’t known if anyone managed to put him back together again.
Mama’s eyes were openly contemptuous of the whole debacle as she hurried her useless clutch of children out of the sickened city. Lek was pulled down out of the hills and the caravan continued south. Catriona should have felt defeat, had she been merely human, but her life was a constant lesson to her and she took the lesson from killing Rakshmann. She felt cheered and a little more confident. She didn’t give Rakshmann’s Damp Forehead Treatment any of the credit; she placed that on killing him; but even the few seconds of child-like peace that he had given her had helped to clear her mind. A Warrior-Goddess has need of a clear mind, if she clutters herself too much then humans can get the edge over her. Her good humour, that had only just started to grow, was crushed quite dramatically when the four soldiers who had come with her to the town square developed the plague and had to be killed to protect her already shaken health. It was an agonising blow to take; especially for someone who took complete responsibility for it; and she had to, as God. It was another blow when two more men scarpered, considering the wrath of god easier to bear than her company. Her reduced company of men meant that she had to be more careful, she could no longer count on besting any resistance that she encountered, something that was bound to become more common as the towns became bigger and the fields gave bigger crops: as they went further south.
Mama’s eyes were sizing them all up for coffins when the dusty train pulled up in a Greek Metropolis. Lek devoted himself to the mules, the livestock had all been eaten. The remaining fourteen men all walked behind the litter but one, who walked ahead with Mama. The Sylphie, thin, pale and wan, walked beside her mistress, clasping her hand and seeing to her constant need for water.
The Greeks laughed and welcomed them. As honourable and honoured barbarians they were clothed and shown to a cosmopolitan area of the city where they were housed with a worshipful Britannian ex-pat who grimaced with fear when told that Catriona had been bitten by snakes.
“There are no snakes in my house. You can sleep in safety for as long as you want.”
Catriona told him that if everything went well she would not be staying for long and if things did not go well then she would be dying soon and his house could be his own again.
“You could never die.” He said; to do otherwise would have been sacrilege.
Catriona had come to the metropolis to visit the shrine of Asclepius. Asclepius had famously been killed with a thunderbolt by his grandfather Zeus for curing death and his shrine had many miracles to its name. She had a small brass likeness of her withered body to take to the shine and offer to the wandering doctor’s spirit. He, his story and his shrine, might impress her enough for her to heal herself. She felt that something would happen here. Was it her death that she had come to meet here, in the deep, dry South, by the sea?
Mama led the mules through the imposing crush of foreigners that she dismissed, with each and every glance, left and right. Catriona flopped on her cot, stroking the brass offering that held her shape even as she held it in her hand. She had The Sylphie sing a song of her own holy grove as they went, to show that she was not bowing before these heathens’ ancestors. The warriors had washed and burnished their scant armour. They walked proudly behind her: proud that they had brought her safely so far: proud that they had brought themselves with her all the way to this fantastical city of clean stone and rich cloth. Lek, with no animals to keep in line, ran wild and happy behind the troop, overcoming his shyness for a day in the sun. The road to the shrine took them out of the bustle of the city and into the stark beauty of the olive groves. The endless brown dust in the hot sun looked unearthly to the travellers from the cold, wet north. The trees looked crazy and twisted. The sun seemed to be just beyond arms reach, just above the head, not remote like the moon but near and intimate; as if it was looking down and brushing its shining hand over everything it saw.
The temple of Apollo, in which the shrine to Asclepius, his son, resided, took the form of a shallow stepped amphitheatre with a backdrop provided by the dark blue sea at the centre of the world. All the Greeks called this sea, “The Sea at the centre of the world.” but the centre of the world was Catriona, to think otherwise was sacrilege, even if these foreign heathens didn’t know it. But the shrine was so peaceful and the Mediterranean was so beautiful that she didn’t mind if no one here knew that she had created it all to teach herself a lesson. She waited in line with the supplicants and placed her image on the Altar of Asclepius with as much reverence as she could summon up.
After offerings were made the sufferers stayed at the temple all night, waiting for the advice of either Asclepius or Apollo to come to them, in whatever form that the gods chose;
 birds, clouds, dreams, the speech of friends, the images of memory.
While they waited they were entertained by a group of players who used the clear centre of the amphitheatre to depict the life of Asclepius. Catriona’s Britannian host made sure that the assembly was buzzing with talk about the barbarian queen who had come to them to be healed. The Sylphie was asked to dance and she did: filling the vacated stage with the simple dances of the sacred grove, such as were suitable for the uninitiated. Apollo’s priestesses had taken over the use of the laurel leaf during their dances and they gave some to The Sylphie and danced with her. The priests told Catriona that their god Apollo had killed the mighty snake Python and Daphoene the pythoness. He had tamed nature and introduced the harmony of stringed music into it. Apollo was a cruel and inactive god but it was sure that he could cure her body of this poisoning. She was shown a string from Apollo’s lyre that had been carried by his pupil Orpheus. The scene distracted her; she was feeling more and more distanced from the surrounding events. The sun dizzied her. The voices of the greeks, singing, talking to her, praying to Apollo, wove a thick spell around her eyes and they closed. The sun sat still. Her world was all red and loud. The dances of The Sylphie and the priestesses grew more frenzied. More and more robed women joined The Sylphie on the lowered stage and followed her darting dance. She danced the steps of the partridge-catching dance. She danced the steps of the corn-girl. To complete the dance Catriona should have danced the sacred steps of the corn-mother. The priests told Catriona of Apollo’s love for Daphne, the innocent daughter of Mother Earth, who they called. Apollo chased The Sylphie, or Daphne, but she was too fast for him. The dancers spun and whirled in the Hebridean way, lost in the fury of the women’s mysteries. The sacred grove of her home was there in the sacred olive grove of this mad Southland. The Sylphie was dancing in the heat-haze, the sun was a lion in the sky. Catriona was a deer, a stag, a lion, the sun, the earth, she changed her form so that she would never be caught, as the seasons change to avoid being caught by time. Apollo almost caught Daphne but Demeter spirited her away to Crete. Demeter left a laurel tree in her place and the love sick Apollo made himself a laurel wreath for his head, to keep what he could of her for ever after. The moon slid across the sun at midday and the darkness fell like a blow on the head. Apollo had stolen the sun from the weak titan that drove it across the sky every day, Helius, and now his great power was brought crashing down. Persiphae went down into Hades and the winter was the sadness of Demeter. The winter of Demeter was the illness of Catriona. Apollo, Adonis, Daphne, The Sylphie, Demeter’s heart, and Aphrodite plunged down to Hades. Winter bit. The priests wailed in terror but the priestesses roared in triumph. The sun beat down invisibly on the dark side of the moon. Aphrodite pleaded with Persiphae for the life of Adonis. Orpheus descended to Hades to bring back Eurydice who had died of the bite of a snake. The Maenads tore Orpheus into pieces and threw him in the river. Apollo killed Python. Orpheus called the sun Apollo. Demeter pleaded with Hades for the life of Persiphae. Heracles went down to Tartarus to rescue Theseus. Catriona was Apollo, chasing The Sylphie in the dance of the sacred grove, the sylphie was her daughter. Hermes tamed the two snakes and made them tools of healing. Heracles strangled the snakes in his crib. Asclepius cured death and so stole a man from Hades. Zeus killed Asclepius to even the balance. Demeter won back Persiphae from death for another six months. Daphne is a stag running with Artemis. Artemis is Apollo’s sister; they both strike men down with poisoned arrows. They kill in secret, like a snake bite. Catriona danced in the line of priestesses behind The Sylphie. A sliver of sun appeared from behind the moon, a jewel of savage brilliance which opened all eyes like a starglazer. Hermes tends the gods’ flocks even though he is just a boy. Hermes brought Persiphae back from Tartarus on Helius’ chariot that carries the sun. Mama’s eyes are shining with joy. Lek watches the dancers as the sun is reborn in the near sky. The soldiers look respectfully away, into the olive grove. The frenzy of the laurel-priestesses breaks and they run away into the olives and down to the sea. Catriona is left alone, Goddess of the sacred grove. She stands alone on the stage, the sun shining behind her, the sea singing behind that, the sky arching behind all. The sun had picked her up and pushed her to dance the sacred dance. The river of the sun’s power had flowed into her in this quiet southern shrine, each vein, each muscle, each organ was complete again. A moment of darkness made the light seem brighter all around.
The worshipful ex-pat, with whom they were staying, stared and stared and stared at the endless play going on and on in the centre of the amphitheatre. Had a day and a night and a day gone by?
And he stared at the beauty that had blossomed, reborn, from the dead, splintered wreck on the dusty litter. She rose with the majesty of a Queen from where the miracle had been wrought and took command again. It might be that The Sylphie was not coming back but she and her men were going home to claim what was hers. Mama had dried her eyes but Lek’s still shone in the last rays of the evening sun.