It is today in a small and remote clearing in the forest 1300 years ago. Our people gather as they have gathered before. Old and young, weak and strong, we come. We must come, for we are bound, bonded by circles of family and friendship. By fear and by fable.

Beyond the cleared edge of the hertha, the forest looms cold and dark—a miasma to our minds from what we do not know. As the smoke from the fire rises, shadows flicker against the circle of our darkness. A spirit slowly awakens, summoning the shamanic seers for worlds unseeable.

And it begins to dance.

The Spirit of Forest, now before us, speaks to us in movement. It tells us what we know our forebears know. It tells us what our children must know. It tells us of Nine, of the Tree of Yggdrasil, as the one tree for Nine. It seers a Ragnarök of our line. It tells of life and of death and of rebirth.

So we begin to dance.

We dance against the darkness of our Dark, as weak and strong, as living and dead, as we came. Hand to arm to hand. Pulsating in the monotone of drum, we dance to become the circle as one. One tribe, one people. And in our oneness, we come to know what Odin knows.

For we must know.

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