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and fed on the fhain’s love and pity like a horse let loose in a grainery, till thee’s swollen fat with-—”

Then duck—just fast enough for the main part of the beer pot to miss my head, though the base catches me a nasty rap as it sails past to shatter against the crannog wall. We face each other, boiling, across the lamplight.

“Morgana, wife—”

“May not call me that yet!”

“Was not brought here to pick flowers.”

Seething: “Speak so to second daughter?”

I uncoil across the space between us and pin the squirming mite of her under me, holding her wrists. “Be still, now, be still. Thee’s a treasure among women—”

“Let go!”

“—and heavy with loss and sadness—ow"

“Will cut thy heart out—”

“But if ever dost strike for no reason again, may count thy remaining teeth on one thumb, dost hear?”

Morgana makes one great effort to push me off, earth itself heaving to reject what fetters it. Then the fight sobs out of her and she lies still.

“It just—”

“Let me touch you, wife.”

“Just …”

“Let me touch you.”

Her hands cover her face, her small head snaps back as the agony tears out of her and batters at my chest. Not at me, but what holds and wounds her. I’m not what she strikes at, nor do the blows hurt. She tires, slows, and I hang on to her. Then her arms go tight around me, holding on to keep from slipping away and drowning, her mouth clasps and tears at mine, pulling me over her.

“Druith, help me.”

“Do love you, Morgana.”

It is painful and delicious between us, a starved need beyond hunger, and somewhere in it is the thought: I have never said love before. And though there’s a memory of beds and faces gone or yet to come, the echo of the same words deeply meant and even better understood, this first time a piece of self arcs out like a fierce comet, burning with a never-again brightness and falling, always remembered, down the lonely space of life.

Brief and blurred and too soon over. We have cried and clasped and fought to the brink, hovered and plunged. Sight

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returns, time returns. The tight knot in Morgana loosens, shudders and trembles to quiet. Her breathing evens, the little face peers up at me, eyes intent as a fascinated bird’s. I hold her a long time, stroking her hair and back, caressing away if I can the misery that holds her.

“Will talk to a husband now?”

“Of what?”

I raise on one elbow over her.She’s not looking at me but into the darkness for something lost beyond the lamplight. “What, indeed. With riding off and near killing ponies and sour looks and hurling of beer pots at husbands. Such a what that thee must—”

“Fight something!”

“Fight or love or cry, and thee’s done all. Why—why is there so much pain, Morgana?”

Still and quiet at last, she tells it.

“Because there’s no wealth in me. Because thee plays so well with Dorelei’s Drost, and cannot look at that without remembering. Because this empty body mocks me with a’s bearing marks. This morning …”

I listen to her on this discovering day, sadder, happier, richer than any man who ever breathed. Did the Artos ever hold a woman like this, lover and hurt child at once, shield her, comfort her, open to her pain? Never; in all its beds, did only snap up leavings and call mem plenty.

This morning Morgana passed a village of the Venicones. She was thirsty, though none was in sight but a young woman rocking a cradle by her house. Others peeped out, women and old men only. They saw Morgana was Prydn and fetched their charms, rowan sticks and woodbine, and one old man made much of laying an iron bar across the hut entrance.

Morgana spits, “Do beg our magic with one hand and warn us off with the other.”

“Lucky the fathers didn’t come out to beat thee.”

“There be no young men left in the village.” And when she asked why, the woman said they were all gone to the meeting on the coast, Pict-men and Saxons from south and oversea. No matter, the woman went to draw the water. Her baby seemed safe enough under the eyes of her village.

“But the slattem’d not changed a’s swaddling. Could smell it and see the poor bairn chafing. Did want to comfort it, as if—only wanted to—”

Without thinking she picked up the child to soothe it. “Was

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like my own that died, my own before the sores covered it, and Melga—”

Holding the child she remembered her own lost wealth and husband, for a moment not empty but filled again. But they came shrieking at her with switches, and the woman tore the baby from her: drive the witch out, a would curse my bairn. And they flayed her with the rowan switches till she leaped to her pony and escaped to scream her rage at them from the hilltop. It is out now, told, but Morgana is trembling again.

“Curse them? Yes! Curse their bairn, their blood, their plenty while Prydn go without, their cradles where we’ve left our own so they, at least, might not starve. Nor ever come near again for fear of heartbreak. Curse them with all do have in me, with the strength of Melga lost because did only try to feed us. Curse them with ghort a bhaile, famine in their farm, famine to their loins and may their children come withered and dead from their fat, fed bodies.”

Her hard tittle fists shake in mine.

“Melga and I were south looking for better graze since that here was poor. There was nothing. Our oats ran out, we ate roots. Melga went over the Wall to get food for me. A never came back, though did wait and cry for him and mourn alone under the hill of the fires till Cunedag and Nectan came after to fetch me home. Be happy with what thee has, a said.”

Morgana gazes a long time over my shoulder. “Be happy? Not yet. Do know what will have, what the People will have again. Melga was more than husband. Did teach me and bring hard truth to my eyes. We lose, we lose every day because we are small and weak and fewer each Samhain-time. Because we be not bound together like tallfolk, but a poor fhain here, a poorer there. Because we let the gods forget us. Be you truly of the People now, Druith?”

“No other.”

She pulls me to her again, the anger not dead, but banked, glowing behind purpose.

“Tallfolk took my husband, will take one from them in kind. And such a one, Druith. When I saw thee walk. Oh, when I saw thee. Love me again. Now.” Her mouth seeks for mine, undeniable. “Nay, thee’s rested, love me again. And from the king and queen of summer will come Belrix, lord of fire. The People will rise again, Druith. Iron-magic will go down, and Earth will remember her first children.”

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My knife is finished and hammered over wood to a fine edge. I lie on a blanket in the rath with the/ftam gathered about, and Cradda uses the new blade to cut two straight lines over each cheekbone. She is deft and draws little blood, Morgana staunching it and working woad into the cuts with a needle. There will be a new name for me; till then, I am no longer Druith, but simply Dru, which means oak tree and is much more respectable.

Bel-tein comes. At sundown all other fires are put out and the charred wood from last year’s fire is brought from its drying-place. With the tein-eigin we gathered, this will kindle the new spring fire.

The fires are laid and lighted. With the first flame that comes forth, Gern-y-jhain lights a torch and passes it to Cunedag, who runs his pony along the hilltops and ridges, torch held high for a signal to the valley tallfolk that on this night they are welcome to festival with us.

The Venicones come with the customary oatmeal cakes, some to be eaten, some rolled for luck through the flames. They settle in a ring about the two blazing pyres of logs laid three on three, and as the barley beer passes round, I listen to their gossip. Morgana was right: there are only a few young men. All the rest are gone to the sea.

“North to Cathanesia,” an elder tells me.

“So far?”

“So far as Skirsa.” He doesn’t know why, nor do I care. The fires blaze up. We drive the cattle and sheep between them for the blessing of Earth’s new spring. Dorelei follows with Nectan and Bredei. The sky darkens, but from far hills all about the bowl-rim of Earth, other fires reach to honor our father and mother.

Cakes are eaten, beer drunk. Little Drost gets his share of both, pinching from mine and trying to out-burp me. Morgana nestles between me and Urgus, arm linked with mine. We are wed now and happy, though we fight more than thefhain thinks respectable, and though he’s my brother-husband, Urgus seems a little jealous. He tries to hide it; thefhain would call him foolish. When the fires are highest, all who care to leap across the flame for added blessing from Lugh. Again and again we race, jump into the air, feel the heat on our skin as we pass through it, others catching us on the other side, beating out the sparks from our clothes.

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At Bel-tein and Samhain, someone is always given to the fire. Long before bronze broke flint, the gift was very real, a tallfolk prisoner or one of their babies. So the story they still frighten bad children with: “Mind or the Faerie‘11 come for thee.” But now it’s only fun. Someone is caught up and hustled toward the flame with everyone yelling for Lugh to come and claim his well-cooked gift, whose wife or husband implores the god to take something else. We never know who it’s going to be. One large cake has been cut into equal shares around the fire. One portion will have some small token in it, a stone or the like, and when it’s discovered, the finder must show it to all. This year it’s me.

“The carline!”

“Carline!” roars the whole circle. All four young husbands of thejhain leap on me, one to each limb, and drag me between the fires, and the cry goes up: “Come, Lugh, and take thy gift.”

Morgana runs about the fire, imploring, “Nay, a’s a poor gift and stringy!”

Dorelei prays, “Would take my sister’s last husband? Would find no pleasure in it.”