Dorelei held out the knife. See, sister. No edge will break it, yet it broke Prydn until I walked Mother's breast. Even Reindeer called me fool, but Salmon will always go where she must to make new life. This was my magic. Am I not a gern as Mabh?

In the flickering gloom, it might be thought the small head moved in assent, even admiration.

My sisters made a law out of fear, Mabh, but I was not afraid.

The smile was not Dorelei's imagination, a slight, hard curve. / was.

Ai—yes. I too.

But not so afraid I could not cross the salt marsh.

Nor I to dare the iron.

A braw knife, sister. Would dare for such myself.

Did cost us much. It is a thing hammered out of fire, yet we could not beat the whole evil from it. There was much death, much blood. There are those nights still, even in my husband's arms, when I am too much alone.

Does my sister think I came any surer to this land? I

was young as you when we started, old as you when we reached world''s-edge. There were many harrowed behind, many spirits who ride with me yet in my dreams that others never saw.

Aye, sister. That is the way of it.

The supple, delicate hand moved in the shadows, grasping the flint knife fallen from her side.

Will you dare Tir-Nan-Og?

I must, Mabh. There is no way but forward.

The knife stretched forward to her, its facets glinting red in the last of the light.

Will you rade with me to see what you have asked, the mole on you back?

What does Mabh ask of me?

Only what you asked of Mother. Does your courage fail?

Can I dare to let it fail, any more than Mabh could?

/ see the end of Prydn coming sure as night. Do not say you have not seen it or that you are without fear.

But without hope if I yield to it. Who is not without fear? I have see Bruidda, your own sacred blood, ask for truth and then run from it. I must dare. Show me Tir-Nan-Og.

Across world sea wider even than dream of it?

Show me.

Beyond world's-edge with no returning, east to west as the wind blows?

Show me!

Hold out the iron.

Dorelei stretched forward her hand with the knife. The flint blade dipped to touch it.

She had struck fire many times from flint and iron, but this light suffused the chamber, blinding her. She felt weightless, picked up by the wind like dust, sucked through the spirit hole, rising to lightness and freedom. Whirled like an autumn leaf, her hand in Mabh's, up through bright sunlight. The barrow receded below them, smaller and smaller, and wider the world in Dorelei's wondering sight.

"Come." Mabh veered gracefully as Hawk on the wind. "Will ride with Lugh."

They were of Lugh Sun himself, part of him in his radiant course over the earth, and there, impossibly far below them, was Mother, the full, true shape of the breast Dorelei was born in. Lowlands, mountains, loughs, glens, and rivers—all drew together into the whole, like wrinkles in a skin. She saw where and why they all joined, saw their common purpose, and cried out in her joy.

"la! Mother. Do see thy face!"

Clasped to Mabh's hand, Dorelei soared like a bird too long caged, looping, diving, hovering still in the warm wind but moving always westward with Lugh. There! Along the razor-backed high ridge, the forms so distant only their slant shadow betrayed them, a fhain on rade, the sheep swirled out behind like a brown cloud, herded by great dogs like Rof.

"And the dear wealth!" Dorelei laughed to see them skipping behind the ponies. "Mother bless thee, Lugh ride thy arrows. Mabh, our world be beautiful."

"And larger than thee knew," Mabh said. "Come."

Swooping down past the ridges to the lowlands: the folk who cut Mother more than they loved her. The plowed fields, straight tallfolk lines that no strength would stay in, an open thing from which the simplest magic could escape. Mabh pointed yet ahead to the ragged coastline and the sea pounding at it with a turbid white fringe. The claws of land splayed out into the water, tapered off, fell behind. The islands loomed up, sudden as shipwrecks upthrust from the sea. These, too, fell away as the horizon darkened, became a green shore spreading north and south.

"Tir-Nan-Og!" Dorelei cried. "Have I found it?"

"Not yet," Mabh said.

No, only a coast like the one fallen behind them, and the land stretched out before them much like Dorelei's own. Oxen scarred the land with tallfolk plows below

hills mazed and ramparted with earthworks and centered with large thatched halls.

They flew on. Beyond the plowed fields, lonely in the mountains, Dorelei saw what she most sought, the familiar line of riders along a ridge.

"Prydn."

"Our brothers, the Sidhe," Mabh told her.

"And not yet Tir-Nan-Og?"

"No," Mabh whispered, the sound of her like the wind in Dorelei's ear. "Only a place of men."

"But most fair. Let us go down."

But Mabh bore her on toward the sea. "Nae fear, sister. Salmon will cut a new sign in this place, and a's name be sung as yours and mine."

"What gern will that be?"

"No gern but man." Mabh turned to smile at her sister. "Dost think we have the only knives to mark the land?"

The green hills sank behind them in gathering darkness. They flew on with the daylight, leaving night behind, over the last bleak rocks and scattered curraghs of the fishermen, on and on. The sea changed in hue and nature, a world in itself—slower, heavier in response to the deep beating of Mother's heart. Where the wind caught them, there were sudden whitecaps; in other places the same wind caught up sprays of mist and carried them, as her own nipples stretched out rigid in loving Cru or Padrec, called forth by their urgent mouths on her breasts. And as the plow broke Mother's flesh, great black creatures rolled and slid over and through the moving surface. On and on they flew until Dorelei wondered if there was an edge to the world. Always before her the horizon fled as she raced after, like Rainbow. But this water, tens and tens and ten times again more sea beneath Dorelei than ever she imagined there was land to ride. Like the land there was sunlight here and storm there; storms to make those that whipped about their northern broch mere breezes for rage. The

waves reared up tall as hills, white spray torn from them and sent hissing down the wind before the hills crashed into each other, broken yet again as slow, majestic creatures rolled through their chaos, serene as prayer. Tens of them, with blunt heads and giant flukes, each as long as two barrows dug end to end.

Gradually the heaving of the sea beneath Dorelei grew gentler, the air softer and scented with flowers. She smelled the green.

4 'Be sweet," Mabh murmured like the sea lulling below them. "Thee hast only a word for Dronnarron, but I remember it."

They glided lower, close over the subsiding waters gone greenish-blue now, the flower-scent mixed with the richer smell of moist earth somewhere. Dorelei couldn't see far ahead: a writhing fringe of surf, hints of a sandy shore under a low-lying blanket of white mist like clean-carded fleece. Then, just below her . . .

"Do see the Prydn, Mabh! The spirit folk of Tir-Nan-Og—oh, see!"

Mabh only guided her on toward the mist. "Dost think it so?"

"There in the long curraghs. Do laugh and call to one another. Have found Tir-Nan-Og!" Dorelei sang in exaltation. "Found it."

"A could be," Mabh answered like the wind on Dorelei' s skin. "Be nae the first to find it or the last."

They soared on toward the fogbank, into it, through it into green splendor shimmering in the sunlight. Dorelei's eyes opened wide as her heart and imagination to see it all, to smell Dronnarron, and she was honored beyond Mary who bore Jesu, to see it all, to see the green stretch on to blue, distant hills and more land beyond that. The glory was endless, too large for the earth men knew. In her joy she broke free of Mabh, soaring high alone, hovering on the wind like a bird drunk with flight, rolled on her back to gaze unblinking and grateful at Lugh Sun over it all. . .

'Thank you, Lugh-Father. I have found it. I see it."

. . . While the golden light faded, darkened, and Mabh flew on past Dorelei, too swift to catch again, and the scent of Dronnarron in Dorelei's nostrils went acrid with pine smoke and tallow.

"Dorelei!"

Padrec. She murmured his name in the dark. With the sleeper's sense, she knew he'd been calling for some time. She lay in almost total darkness, the torches only a blue sputter, the slight bones in the great chair only a pale blur against the dark.

/ have seen.

"Dorelei! Answer me!"

No, not dream-journey. The memory didn't fade or mock in waking the truth found in sleep. She had flown with Mabh to world's-edge and found no end at all, only more world and more after that.

/ have seen.

Tir-Nan-Og: huge, young and green, with her own copper-brown folk on the shore. It was there, waiting.

"Dorelei, call out!"

She heard Padrec in the passage now. She stretched her hands in respect to Mabh's bones. "La. Mabh."

"Do you hear me, Dorelei?"

"Here, husband."

He turned the sharp corner and stepped through the entrance onto the raised floor, reaching for her. "You've been hours. We heard your voice again and again."

"Hours...?"

"It's night outside. And there seemed to be ... no." His chest rose and fell against her as Padrec held her close. "No, just the wind. My God, this is not even time, but outside it. Be more wonder than I have ever seen."

Dorelei read the awe in his dim face. "Or I."

"Where are we, wife? God's world or Mother's, where are we? We came out of the barrow—not one hour were we underground, and yet be night outside. Ponies wandered off, and who can blame them, thee and

the wind speaking to one another, the rest of us turned turvy, not knowing. Be all right?"

Dorelei nodded, rubbing her eyes. She took up the one torch still sputtering and moved past Padrec into the passage. The fresh morning wind blew a little renewed life into the pine nub. Together they moved back along the passage, which seemed shorter now. They easily marked the dim rectangle of light that was the entrance and passed through it. Dorelei held her light high, feebly illuminating her people, who squatted a little distance away. Dorelei drank the fresh air in long breaths and ground out the torch.