Druids on fire
Prague - April 6, 2016
The night started by a race for the tram for OndÅ™ej, my host, was meeting his friends for a few beers. For my part, after a courteous hello, I left him in this good company to head to the nearby ParukáÅ™ka where, at sunset, a pagan celebration would take place.
As I arrived in the park, a small crowd had started to form, a group of drummers closing the circle on one side and toying away on their instruments. Some people were playing with poi and clubs, killing time, amusing kids. The electricity in the air was slowly rising, the view over the whole city of Prague in the crispy orange sunset wasn’t the only spectacle we had all come here to see.
As the light of day faded, flames came into view, making their way through the assembly and into the center of the circle. There, they started circling their masters, held on iron leashes, ruled by staffs or restrained on hoops, moving at the sound of drums and tambourines. Darker grew the sky and brighter glowed the ground. Three flames soon became ten, then twenty, and were quickly too numerous to count, still circling, still jumping. 
Faster resonated the percussion in our hearts, more inspired the flames became, ablaze with passion, feverishly dancing on these ancestral sounds. Among the smell of early dew, acrid smoke, and fuel fires, amidst the ever present chant of drums reverberating in our skulls, the congregation grew thicker, blackened hands and faces exited the scene to rest; the inferno submitted to new masters.
From my vantage point in the trees, I could see men and women clad in black and red, hoods framing their faces only lighted by the moving flames, as Slav druids of old celebrating under the benevolent shelter of the lime tree. But soon, I found my way amongst them, breathing in the pleasant smell of burning coils, feeling the warm iron in my hands, blinded by light, dancing with fire, timeless memories floating back to the surface, oblivious to the gathered circle watching the moving blaze in awe, as I had been minutes before, and as I had been moments later.
So many were here, so many had come to celebrate the first event of the season, the first of bi-lunar observances recurring until the Earth had travelled midway around the sun.
Drums resonated for hours, fires kept on dancing, becoming bolder and faster, or thinning out and quieting, as rhythm would dictate. 
Which of the inferno, the beat, or the druids was master, and which was slave, it was now impossible to say.
Prague became a distant glow in the dark, a vague presence which reminded us now and then of her existence by the changing color of it’s nearby TV tower and ÄŒerný babies.
But all of a sudden, the drums receded, only a fading beat could be heard. One by one, the fires went out and weren’t replaced. Our eyes accustomed to the darkness. Seeing across what had been a circle of fire was now possible. A few stars shone on our hill, and the whole of Prague police’s fleet appeared out of the shadows. 
They were waiting peacefully, probably enjoying the show, waiting to be called on an errand which could only be more exciting than noise complaints.

One talented pyromaniac druid, a little bolder than the others, a little surer of his abilities to master the flaming beast - or maybe just under the spell still - lighted up and started spinning, only to be asked by the police to kill his fire. He was quietly escorted out of the thinning circle to the foot of the lime tree, where I was standing. There, he lovingly laid down his slave to extinguish it. Policemen were standing around us, no defiance in their eyes, only watchfulness. A madman cried at their fascism. His shouts weren’t taken up by the assembly. The police regained their vehicles as soon as all flames were out.
Our now small company had been abandoned by drums and by fire. The passion had floated away. The energy had left us. The police’s spotlight did the rest. Nothing was left to us, only to dissipate silently, murmuring farewell words on our way out, returning to the colourful and artfully decorated walls of the whispering city.