Strange, since our word for tallfolk and not-to-be-trusted are the same, but he says it with no doubt. The fhain thinks about this. Nectan agrees; he’s considered this, too.

“True, have heard a can’t feel pain or love, but …”

Cradda spits a piece of gristle into the fire to hiss and sizzle like the bitter truth she speaks: “A’s tallfolk.” And that ends it. We know what they are, we go on eating. The sky dims a little outside the smoke hole, Drost dozes in my arms, and we feel close.

There’s barley beer to finish our feast. My tongue remembers it as mild stuff after the uisge Artos drowned me in. We pass the beer, sing a little, laugh much. Then Dorelei, in the middle of a story, starts to say a name. Just the first part of it, then she stops and in the sudden silence round the fire, she drops her eyes and whispers, “Forgive me, sister.”

Just a moment, then all are talking again, but Morgana makes too much of poking up the peat fire. It hurts me to see pain in

The Earth Is a Woman 63

her. She has not Dorelei’s peace, nor any child. Urgus speaks softly to her. She rises and leads him out of the rath.

Everyone is curious about my Briton clothes, and they make a game of peeling me to examine how they’re made. Cradda and Dorelei admire the close weaving of the wool trousers and how such softness can be worked into a cowhide jerkin. The heavy cloak goes to old Uredd to keep the night cold from his bones, but the rest of the clothes are too big for anyone, and I roll them in a bundle for a pillow while Dorelei fetches me a good sheepskin and girdle. Nectan threw away the iron dagger long before we came home. It would be unlucky for the ./torn. When Dorelei gives me the garments, I press my hands to her belly to show my love and respect, not only for her but the child-wealth she bears. She kisses me and laughs at the girdle that barely goes around me.

“Too little girdle and too much thee.” Oh, there’s dear fun in Dorelei, and when she has me giggling, she tickles my ribs and presses my face to her stomach. “Be wasteful to be so big, Druith.”

In spring and summer, Lugh-sun never goes far under the rim of earth at night but glows there, lighting the duns and glens with a kind of magic twilight. To see it alone, to sit outside the rath and listen to our cattle settling for the night, brings peace to my soul, but to share it with someone would be better.

At last, Morgana comes up from the glen, hand in hand with Urgus. She kisses him; he goes into the rath. Morgana comes to sit by me, and the light is clear enough to see the shine of sweat on her skin and even the little bruises and bite marks Urgus left. She was away a long time, and Urgus missed her, but seeing his marks on her fills me with so much wanting, I want to cry.

“Did see thee many times on the Wall and riding with Redhair,” Morgana says. “Dost remember his true name?”

I try hard to remember. Faces and happenings float to the surface without meaning, bits of sleeping Artos. “Was a long time ago.”

She comes into my arms willingly enough, tiny, quivering with life, and I tell her how I hate being so big and ugly beside her.

“Not ugly, Druith. Saw thee ride often, and stand and shake thy yellow head full of worries.” Morgana laughs quiet and deep in her throat. “Many days.”

“And far from the rath. What did thee so close to Briton-men?”

64

Firelord

Her hard little body presses against mine. She doesn’t move, doesn’t answer, but after a time she pulls away, eyes glistening in the twilight.

“Be good to have thee here. Thee will be my husband soon.”

I try to pull her back down into the grass with me, but she won’t. “Urgus needs me tonight. Have been away and do want him.”

I take her hand and plant it on my own need, but it does no good.

“Be not—we can make no child-wealth, but Urgus loves me.”

“Thee’s crying.”

“No.”

“What is it, Morgana?”

“Be not!” She tears her hand from mine. “Urgus is waiting.”

She lay all night with Urgus. He’s’a gentle husband and twice wakes her from troubled dreams when she cries in her sleep and calls a name.

Three days to Bel-tein fire, the spring festival. Life stirs and wakes, the lambs and calves are born, there’s green in the world again. Urgus and I go miles to the sparse forest east of our grazing where the old birch trees stand and climb them all to pluck from their tops the agaric, the tein-eigin that grows close to the sky. From this we wili kindle the Bel-tein fire. It will be a special time for me. Bredei has come by on his way from the scrap pit where we save our broken tools. Melted and recast, they’ll make a new bronze knife to mark my cheeks with the ./Twin-sign. That done, the knife is mine to keep.

I haven’t bedded with Morgana yet since Cunedag and Urgus have older rights, but should be soon ere I start chasing ewes.

Cradda and Uredd sit outside the rath now that the sun has real warmth in it, close together and silent, needing no words for love and understanding. Doreiei passes, walking a little heavier, her. face high-flushed with the wealth of her body. Drost tugs away from her, wanting to play near me. It’s a game we’ve made up with no words but strict rules. I pretend not to notice him, and Drost becomes very busy, and if he catches the looking, he’s the winner.

Today he really seems to forget me, lost in some world of his own. Something on the ground, a stone or ant, who knows, has caught his eye, some small miracle grown large with wonder.

The Earth Is a Woman

65

Still, still as a cat before pouncing. What could it be? I lean in to see—

To see\ It’s clear as sudden sunlight, something looked at so often and never seen: a child playing. But more than play. Meaning. Drost moves to a sure music I’ve forgotten in growing up—dances to it, floats, celebrates and delights in it. Drost is three, and in this magic, discovering summer, sees the world fresh without hanging names and signs on it, reaches for and touches it before knowing it forever apart from his prisoned self. The small feet stamp and mountains tremble before his challenge, the arms sweep up in the growth of flowers, and I know why men lose sight of the face of God: because it is so close. Then—

“Yah!”—and he’s won again, caught me watching and loving him, and as he runs to be hugged, I learn a lesson deep in my heart. I’m a fool and named one, but never so blind as Artos-tallfolk, who could ride all his life, carving his way with the great sword toward the crown mad Merlin promised, could bed the pale Parisi bitch, hunt a silly cup for a dull Cornish girl with nothing more important in her life, conquer, rule, make laws— and never, in ail that royal wasteland, find a greater treasure or truth than this small, shining life in Druith’s arms that is the sum of the world to this moment. I lift him in triumph to Lugh-sun.

“Mother! Lugh! Look at thy children, me and Drost!”

One of the secret names is mine to keep.

Small wisdom beside what’s yet to learn. Morgana, now: there’s a coil of a woman. Cunedag’s been with her two years, Urgus one, living, eating and bedding with her, and both feel married to the wind, lovers to the mist. Like a pot before boiling, the surface moves just a little to hint of what’s heaving and surging below. The others give in to her headstrong ways; only Druith-fool is reaching to understand the woman and yet a little apart from her, returning her curses with the same. It’s because we haven’t loved yet, and I’m drawn tight with it. She’s been gone since morning, who knows where.

When her pony plunges over the hilltop, lathered and straining, we puzzle what there is to run about on a day like this in the good warm sun, but Morgana jumps off the poor spent beast just short of the rath and stalks inside without a word. Uredd wonders what ails her. Gern-y-fhain just shakes her head.

“Has always been between two fires. A loves more what’s lost or never can be.”

I put Drost down. “What’s that?”

66

Firelord

“There be more fools than you in the rath,” she says. “Go in and comfort her.”

But just then Nectan hoots from the glen where two new calves have wandered away from their mothers on perilous legs and stuck in a patch of bog. It takes a good while to pull them out and drive the herd to high pasture, and Morgana’s not in the rath when I get back. Uredd prepares me with a knowing look.

“A’s below in the crannog.”

“About what?”

“About a pot of beer and sad songs and cursing the stone walls. Do you go down, be ready to fight.”

Well, that would be thought about. Climbing down into the tunnel, I wonder why mel Cunedag and Urgus always walk clear of Morgana when she’s brewing a storm, but I don’t and won’t. Maybe it gives her something she needs then, something to batter against. I won’t be soft or pitying; will get softness when she gives it. She cannot caress without drawing blood, it’s the way of her, and perhaps me, too. We want each other, that’s the only easy part of it all. For some there might be the plain reaching out, but for Morgana and I, there’s always an anger in it, a darker need to tear at love before accepting it. Oh, must be lovely to be a sheep or a cow with such a simple future.

She’s there in the crannog with a fat lamp for light and the beer beside her. Her face is twisted tight with the things that eat at her, but I think never have 1 seen her more beautiful, a sum of things all wrong adding to right, eyes too big, nose too long and thin, mouth too wide and curled in a snarl now as I sit down across the light from her.

“Thee’s a sad lump, Druith. Be not man enough in thee to give thy hair true color.”

“Says most-fair, looking and smelling like the hind end of a sick horse.”

“Did come just to flatter?”

“Gern-y-fkain sent to find what ails thee.”

Another long drink. “Nothing.” /

“Only nothing?” Silence. “Will speak of this nothing or let it feed on thy heart?”

Morgana drains the pot. I watch her, looking for the right words with my own fire rising, knowing it will not be any word that calms her. “Thee’s a marvel of weakness, Morgana. Aye, thee’s lost a husband and none may speak a’s name, so that the silence of him crowds us out. Thee’s lost a child and what else,