“Come, Lugh, and take thy gift!”

“Oh, Lugh, can see a’s crippled.”

“And dull-witted.”

“Does barely answer to a’s name!”

“Be patient, be still,” Morgana promises the heavens, “till can bring thee better.”

Then a grass-doll or oatcake must be thrown to Lugh instead of me—and am all in favor of it since my drunken brothers are holding me too close to the fire. There are sparks smoldering in my sheepskin, and I’m smoking away like mutton a-curing. Morgana still runs about the fire with the doll, bargaining frantically with Lugh. My brothers heave me back and forth and one and two and three—

Morgana hurls the doll into the fire, but Urgus and Bredei stumble and fall. Urgus’ leg goes into the flame, along with most of me.

“Mind out!”

“Drag him free!”

Morgana’s pleading and praying and cursing in earnest now as they haul me out and roll me on the ground with my sheepskin a Bel-tein fire of its own. AH 1 can see is feet and flame, being tumbled about, ground, sky, ground, sky, and then the fire’s out with cheers of relief. Little harm done, but Bredei is tongue-72

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lashed by Dorelei, and Urgus—ah, God, do pity the poor man, drunk as he is and feeling foolish and sorry for it all, covering his head from the blows Morgana rains on him.

“Foolfoolfool! Drunken, dirty horse!”

It’s funny because Urgus is worse burned than me. The oil in the new sheepskin makes it burn hard, but it’s thick and I’m not hurt. I tear it off and jump between the two of them, but Morgana flails out at me, too. The tallfolk men wonder why we take these humiliating blows without striking back. They beat their own wives regularly, but that would be deepest insult to a fliain woman. Besides, few Prydn daughters are mad as Morgana. But when she draws her knife on Urgus, it’s too much. I turn her over my knee and spank her skinny bottom till Cunedag stays me, laughing, and Urgus pulls Morgana away, panting mournfully:

“Thee would not kill me.”

She seethes, “Dost think not?”

“When I’m so painful burned and do love thee so?”

“Ha!” hisses devil-wife. “Give back my knife and ask again.”

“Nay,” Urgus trusts. “Would not.”

“Would!”

Urgus stops her mouth with a kiss.

“Would …”

Again, pulling her to him.

“Would.” She relents, suddenly, completely. “But, oh, would much regret it, Urgus.”

She kisses him hard, then points to me. “A sign!” she cries to Prydn and tallfolk alike. “Was a burned by fire? Was a hurt at all? My husband be oak no more, but Belrix.”

She rises to face the tallfolk, smiling, though her eyes dance with a cold elation in the firelight.

“And from this lord of fire will come another. Hear me, Lugh! Hear and remember the name of Prydn. Mother, wake and remember your own.”

The night spins out, the fires bum down. The east, light for hours, becomes early morning,, and the Venicones go home. Crops and cattle have been blessed, good fortune sought for one more year. We’ve eaten and drunk together, but the brief feast that made us one is over. We are separate again. They go home tired and happy and drunk, shaking their empty heads over the ways of the Faerie who steal and brawl and love in a single breath, who have no sense of fitness or dignity.

“Like children,” they say. “Give them beer and oatcakes, they’re happy enough. What can you expect from people who

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live dirty as their miserable herds, won’t put a seed in the ground, won’t own any more land than the wind? Children.”

But they can’t read Morgana’s face or the set of her jaw. Something stalks behind it, livid and raging. Even I will never know where it was bom; perhaps one curse, one rowan switch, one broken bargain, one insult too many.

“Belrix,” she whispers against my throat as we lie together. “Belrix, firelord.” And-Jt is not me she names.

Spring deepens into summer, a good year with plentiful rain. We follow the herds as they graze east toward the sea, moving carefully with cattle and sheep under close watch. This coast land is claimed by the Votadini. We’re not sure of our welcome, though Cradda says they’ve never troubled us before. They are valley dwellers, we stay on the ridges. When we do meet them, they are much like the other tribes, a little distrustful and wary of us. Priests have been among them; some Votadini wear the cross, but the old fear of Prydn is deep in them. A pale around the village marks how close we may come unasked. We enter to trade under a dozen hard looks: fresh milk for eggs and vegetables, half of a butchered calf for our women to use a loom. There is no hut without iron or rowan charms.

And yet, where Artos-sleeper learned of soldiers and princes, I leam of men. They respect our magic, we show the same for their space. The men I meet feel a need to look down on us, even though I can see the fear that prompts it. I understand and humble myself under the scorn. We Prydn tread a narrow line between their contempt and reverence, and address each man or woman with a huge respect we ape and laugh at in the rath, but we play the game no matter how false. They cannot show their fear; we can’t let them see how few and helpless we are.

One man is decent to me. While I draw water at his well, he talks easily of crop signs and chasing wolves and how hard it is to find good provender for horses. He is concerned for the same things we are, and as I look into his eyes, I see there is little difference between us. He must understand; he looks away, then says, “Not for myself that you have to stay outside the pale, but for the women and children. They—they’re afraid.”

So I learn. Behind a man’s actions, the things he must do, is the fear for his own little space or that generosity may cost too much. Mercy, kindness, these step back while someone or some-tiling says “This must be.” So men at die end of a life may

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wonder, Why? That’s not what I meant at all. But it’s done anyway.

“Few young men about,” Uredd muses over his broth by the rath fire. “A said be all gone north like the Venicone youths.” “And a great cutting of trees,” Bredei ponders, “and dragging them down to ships, did hear.”

“Be sailing somewhere,” Cunedag guesses. “Maybe Skirsa.” “Fine,” says Morgana. “Does leave more room for us.” And no more said on that; tallfolk are not much to talk of, and tonight all ih&fhain is most interested in me, you’d think I was about to shatter did they not watch close. How dost feel? Dost rest well a-nights? Belrix must keep up his strength this week. Much giggling and elbows in ribs and nods to Morgana. There’s some secret joke on me. I leave with Cunedag to take our watch over the herds and to settle them for the night, but when I come back to the rath, there’s a sheaf of green leaves on my blanket and a sprig of vervain blossom. The fliain has chosen me for summer lord.

Morgana shouts from the glen: “Summer king, summer king, come to me!”

I jolt forward down the steep hillside, balancing only by wide leaps and digging in my heels. Our bodies are tight-wrapped in leaves and vine, and I look like a drunken tree staggering uphill and down in the dance with Morgana, Bru-dog running after and woofing his joy in the game. We dance the summer in along the ridges and fire-gleaming hills, circle the herds and leap over the jhain fire as day fades to twilight and the moon, risen for hours, grows from pale to bright in the sky. There will be no real dark, only a softening of light. Tomorrow Lugh sits on his highest throne before beginning the long descent to winter. All through the night in this Votadini land, summer lords and queens will dance on the hills and run through the forests till exhausted, but spent or not, they will couple before the night is out. In some places they will roll downhill locked in each other’s arms, or take each other in the furrows of the sown fields. For Prydn cattle-folk, it is dancing on the hills, circling the fires and the herds, and coming to rest gasping on the cool hillside grass.

From far away I know my body is tired, but I don’t feel it. My skin shines with the ointment Cradda rubbed into it, mutton grease mixed with nightshade and foxglove, stinging a little from the small cuts she made to let the magic work in. To drink it

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would be sure death, but taken beneath the skin it makes me drunk without dizziness, lets me fly weightless over the hills after Morgana, stabs beauty into my eyes. The moon is a fountain of light, earth a shimmering pool to catch it and Morgana the center of the world in sheen and shadow, reaching to pull me close.

“Now,” she whispers. “Now, Belrix.”

She strokes my loins to excite me as if that were needed. I try to free us of the vines, impatient, then furious, give up, no longer able to wait, and Morgana wraps around me, half flesh and half green, so that each movement rustles and whispers as dark whispers to coming day. We love each other through most of the night while the magic of the ointment works out of our bodies; till, able to fly no more, we flutter down to stillness. Silver becomes gray, night becomes morning. A moor bird sings. Nearby Bru snort§ in a dog dream, and Morgana sleeps in my arms.

The white-hot furnace of her energy, the dark drive of Morgana, are hard to imagine when she sleeps. The restless god has moved off for the time, leaving a tiny girl less than five feet tall, soft and vulnerable in a mass of black hair, leaves and vine. Watching her sleep, I frame the silly words / love you, but they’re beggars. Words put space between will and being, between people. There’s no room for them in us. What I feel is a kind of wonder and fear, for where once 1 was whole—dim, hard to remember—now I’m only half. Morgana is half, and if something tore us apart, the halves^would die. I can no longer see her complete or apart any more than myself. It’s like the moment when I lifted Drost to heaven and cried aloud for happiness, so close is meaning and the smite of God.