"Cannae turn back now, cannae send Padrec away. Fhain would nae trust me as gern. O Mother, send one of us child-wealth. Fhain would take that as a good sign. Send something. Cannae understand this Padrec."

And what she did understand was impossible. He was not of Mother and Lugh but of a certain father-god of whom Dorelei knew nothing. There seemed no place for a mother or any woman at all. The abnormality, the heresy made her ears burn. Lugh might depart forever and Mother freeze over for good and all. No place even for a woman in his own life. He said men like himself should not marry. Most strange when he seemed male and vital in every way, comely and a rugged mountain dweller like herself. Dorelei had never seen hair so crisp or angry-red or skin that freckled about the forehead and the backs of his hands. Freckles were new to her, Pad-rec's word when she asked him. She'd thought Mother was undecided what color to make him at first. He intrigued her. The idea was not beyond possibility, especially in a fhain without children. Padrec might make a good second husband if he could change some of his silly notions about the world in general and women in particular. Yes—a good strong body the man had, built to endure, perhaps even for the delight of loving.

She forced her thoughts back to prayer and need. They must move soon to a new crannog for the winter.

In a Venicone hut she'd once admired an ornament of two glass cups connected by a thin tube. Sand ran from one cup to the other through the tube to mark what tall-folk called an hour. Dorelei's own instincts prompted her to move, but she measured by a different glass.

"Mother, if Padrec is to help us, show how. Must ride north with winter coming. Be wise? Be young and new and. . . frightened, Mother. Lead fhain as thee did Mabh. Send me quickly thy wisdom. And some to Padrec, who could much use it."

The Venicone women gathering herbs on the hillside passed close enough to Dorelei for her to speak to them without raising her voice. Because she willed it so, they didn't see her at all. Through the magic taught by Gawse, she was so still as to be merely a nondescript patch on the heath.

Nothing but her eyes moved when the sound piped over the moor. The song she waited for, no other like it. Dorelei saw the flash of yellow-green plumage as the finch drummed up into the sky. So her own glass turned. When Finch sang, fhain must think of winter. No sign was so reliable, but the Venicone women were deaf as they were blind; they'd be surprised once more when winter came early. They never learned.

Above Dorelei on the hill, Cru observed, "Five tens of days to snow, Padrec. Nae more."

Padrec squinted dubiously. "Will be early then."

"Dost hear Finch? Will start."

"The new crannog? Where?"

"Will be there."

"Where?"

"When do find it. Padrec, dost tire me with asking." Cru waved a bronze arm out over the valley and the world. "See? All answers. Need no asking."

"Those women down there, they walked right by Dorelei. Are they blind?"

"Yes," said Cru. "Like thee. But thy sight be opening to Mother."

Move they must and much to do. Sheepskin saddles were mended, new baskets woven from broad-bladed stalks, available food gathered. Blackberries bursting ripe now in the lowland thickets were marked by day and collected in sunset forays when tallfolk were safely inside. Guenloie and Neniane replenished their stores of herbs for tea and medicines. The men butchered those sheep too old or weak to make the journey and dried the meat. Most important of all, their bronze scraps—broken knives and tools—were packed for travel along with the clay molds for new ones, while Padrec dug with Drust and Malgon into the chalk ridges for usable flints. Few orders needed to be given; each of them had prepared like this twice a year since they were old enough to run behind the ponies. It was their earliest memory.

Fhain ate well the last night before moving on, mutton basted in its own juice and a gravy thickened with the last of their hoarded barley flour, and only when they were down to nibbling and picking did Padrec signal to Dorelei that he wished to speak. He chose his time carefully, since ritual speaking was a precise custom. He must sit cross-legged, hands loose across his knees but with his back erect. Not the most comfortable position for a man used to standing and moving when he preached. Padrec waited until it was clear Dorelei had no ritual speaking to take precedent.

"Would speak, Gern-y-fhain."

Dorelei looked up in hopeful surprise, then nodded. They all turned expectantly to Padrec, as if they'd been waiting for this. "Gern-y-fhain is wise," he began. 'Truly have I come from my God, even a shepherd like thee to lead fhain to Him."

"To Tir-Nan-Og," Dorelei murmured. "Do thee speak of it."

"But who will come unclean to his father or mother?" Padrec impaled them all on his pitiless stare. He felt the power of God rising in him like a tide. "Who among thee is without sin? Before thou canst come to they Father, thee must be washed, yea, even in the blood

of the lamb, for each of you lives in sin!"

He had their whole attention and alarm at his sudden vehemence. At the reference to lamb's blood, Bredei glanced bemusedly at the remains of the mutton.

"The Grace of God is not cheaply bought, sinners. I tell you it is a narrow door, a needle's eye—"

Drust touched his knee in concern. "Dost ail, Padrec?"

"No, do not ail!" Padrec jerked away from the compassionate hand, banging one of his ankles hard against a stone. He gasped with the sudden pain that shattered his holy momentum. "Which of you ..."

Clutching the throbbing ankle, he thought of the night the Venicones crippled him. They hadn't understood any more than fhain. He'd thought to build an edifice to God, with fine words about laying the first brick; yet, like an idiot carpenter, he was beginning with the arch of the roof. He rubbed his ankle, seething, while fhain waited politely.

They must be led to Grace, not flogged to it. All right, Meganius. Not the blood of the lamb; for now the gentleness. He looked up at Dorelei, wondering where to begin. When he spoke he used the words and pictures that had meaning for them. For the first time in his priestly calling, without realizing it, Padrec spoke to his congregation, not at it. The result was less of a distortion than he would have thought. Dates and years had no meaning to them. Their stories from the past began in a certain way; they would relate to no other.

"Was in the first days in a village like Venicone but far away. A girl named Mary was working in her father's rath when the Raven-spirit of God appeared to her and said: 'Woman, you bear the spirit of God in the flesh. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb. The Son of God shall thee bear and he shall be called Jesu.' "

Fhain nodded thoughtfully. Padrec spoke of strong magic, and any such discussion was a serious thing. For a virgin to carry the child-wealth of Lugh or any god by whatever name was magic of the most potent sort.

"Now, when her time was nigh come to bear the child, a speaking went out from the king of the Roman-men, that each man go to the village of his birth to be taxed. So Joseph took Mary on a mule—see, Bredei? Did tell thee were mules—and went toward his village. They stopped at a place called Bethlehem at a large rath where there were so many others traveling alike that there was no room for Joseph and Mary, so they by red in the crannog with the sheep and cattle. Cold winter it was, atwixt Samham and B rigid-feast."

"Crannog be best," Cru mumbled, picking at a rib bone. "Warmer."

"Always," Malgon agreed. In his view Joseph was a shrewd and fortunate traveler.

"Now, there were shepherds like fhain watching over their flocks in the night."

As a shepherd, Padrec loved the Gospel of Luke. Sometimes, when he shivered on an Irish hill, he thought of those herders on that night of nights and knew exactly what they felt. He spoke of these things to fhain now, and they recognized them. He'd been whereof he spoke and knew the common things familiar to them. The dry, unsalted barley bread dipped in herb tea and munched under the whisper of night wind; the muffled bleating of a sheep here and there, the chill beauty of night and stars; the sense of being along and naked to Lugh peering through the bright-lit holes in the sky that looked close enough to reach and touch. And one light, Padrec told them, brighter than all the others on this blessed night.

"When the Angel of God appeared to them and said, 'Do thee go to this crannog at Bethlehem where a virgin has borne the Son of God.' So a did follow the light to the place where a found Him in the cradle much like Neniane's. Even the animals knelt in worship, and there were three high gerns from far fhains come with gifts for the holy bairn."

Cru cocked his head to one side. "What did look like? Raven-spirit?"

"Did look a child. The Man-Son of God."

"But if a child," Dorelei asked, "then what did look like? Tallfolk? Red hair like thee?"

What indeed? Padrec was already learning to sketch his pictures to the frame of their imagination. If he waxed canonical in describing Christ or gave the formalized answers, they would have no meaning here. To fhain the halo would only look as if Jesu's head were glued to a flat dish. They needed a picture they knew.

Drust: of all the fhain men the youngest and most sensitive. When his intensity relaxed, when Guenloie had favored him with love, there was a fresh-washed radiance and innocence to his expression. Padrec tapped his shoulder.

"Did look like Drust."

"Who be most fair among men." Guenloie stroked his thigh in approval of her second husband.

Fhain sat rapt as Padrec recounted the wonders of that holy night. How the angel-ravens sang on high; how no dark spirit had any dominion on that night ever after. Fhain hung on every word. His first sermon was a thumping success, although perhaps not as he intended it.