The trader’s bull has stood with at least seven of our cows, thanks to his own ardor and a little help from Cradda’s magic in his feed. The owner may wonder why boyo-bull sleeps so much for a few days, but he’s a wee spent, bless him.

The grass is not the best here byvthe sea. Our few sheep can manage, but the cattle need better before autumn sets in. Yet we linger; the weather is still blue and gold, the east wind has no bite. We fish the beach shallows, salting away as much as we eat. Morgana and I run .on the downs or lie together with great Bra’s shaggy flank for a pillow, making dream shapes out of clouds. Every day she makes me look to see if she’s grown. Our child-wealth is still mouse-sized, and I have to stretch a bit to say yes. Morgana wants it so much, it’s not a very big lie.

We speak no more in the ram about land, but often between us. We have passed other Prydn folk during the spring and summer and hailed them as family, but we are a straggling few beside the tallfolk. Fhains, we decide, should band and travel together for strength. A dozen fhains as one, a hundred folk! Morgana finds it hard to picture. She’s never seen a hundred folk at once or owned a hundred of anything, but she labors at it.

“What be hundred like, Belrix?”

“Ten times ten.”

“But what dost look like?”

“Well, do have ten—ten times.”

No, that won’t do. She’ll have it laid before her, so I must find a bare patch of earth, draw ten strokes and nine more rows of ten under them. But once she sees it, she’s triumphant as Drost and the mountains themselves are not too tall for her to step on.

“A hundred folk,” she dreams. “And a hundred after mat,

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and still a hundred. Cattle and sheep like waves on the shore, crannogs loud with children, tens and tens of braw horses—yah"

I grab and wrestle her down beside me, biting her ear, her breasts and the laughing mouth. “And Gern-y-fhain Morgana over it all.”

“Stop, fool, stop. Not till Dorelei.”

“Ah, sister could not rule such a thing.”

Though Dorelei is first daughter, I can’t imagine her leading such a great, bustling fhain full of comings and goings and things to be done. Gentle Dorelei is as much child as wife and mother, lazy and playful, uncursed with Morgana’s will or restless discontent. Her love is the giving kind. I’ve seen her wait at the pale of a tallfolk village while her husbands traded. Just waiting, no more. Sure and soon there’s a clutch of shy, curious children drawn close around her, just watching or bashfully asking who she is. Is she in truth queen of the little folk? Can she do magic for them? Their suspicious parents always snatch them away. Dorelei does nothing the whole time, but children and dogs are a good measure of grown folk. They can’t pretend to see a love, they feel it there or they don’t.

In the slanted morning sun we wait on the downs for Dorelei and Nectan, who are to help with the milking today. It’s a game to Dorelei, who only wants an excuse to ride her new mare. And here they come slowly across the meadow, queen and groom, Nectan leading the horse, Dorelei brave in her new blue wool gown, and we wave back to their greeting.

“Hail Queen Dorelei, hail Prydn queen!”

It happens even as we stand watching, so suddenly there’s no time to cry out or even feel the horror of it. The flushed bird dramming into the air, the startled mare rearing high with a scream, Nectan snatching at the loose rein, Dorelei’s arms flailing to catch at anything, and we’re running hard even as she falls. When we get there, Nectan is kneeling beside Dorelei as she writhes on the ground, trying to curt into a ball against the agony. When he looks up at us, we see the whole thing in his face, see it wash out replaced with red slaughter. With a scream, he leaps at the horse, but I head him off.

“Nectan, no.”

“Win kill it.”

“No, fool.”

“Get out of my way!”

“Put up thy knife.”

He puts it up in a vicious blind slash at me that goes wide.

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Firelord

Small as he is, I pick up and slam him down hard on his back, the wind out of him.

“Enough, brother.”

“Kill it, kill it, kill it!” Tears of helpless rage and guilt rolling down his cheeks. “Was me brought the beast to do its evil. Should be whipped from tk&fhain. Did thee not tell me—?”

“Enough, be still. Be strong. Look to Dorelei, who needs thy hand more than the blood of a stupid horse. Leave tlfat to me.”

When the murder’s out of Nectan, I let him up and turn to Trouble-woman, who waits, skittish, ears laid back.

“Now, you misbom daughter of a dog.”

I grab the dangling rein, get a grip on her bridle. She rears away, but I hold on and pay her a.cruel rap across her tender nose. The pain stops her long enough to get hold of one tender ear and twist. When the mare finds she can’t move without pain, she stands still. I let go the ear a little, soothing her. “There, now. Be still. Were only frighted by a silly bird. There, now.”

Morgana runs to me, urgent. “Nectan must ride home for Cradda.”

“Dorelei?”

“Not huij, but a’s waters broke. The child comes.”

It’s too much for a man to grasp. Here, now? “Be not time

yet.”

“Tell the child that. It comes.”

“Will go myself.”

But she stops me. “Nectan will only hinder. Need thee, Belrix.”

True. Hovering Nectan is helpless with love and desperation. Morgana coaxes him away to me, and I try to embrace him with one arm and hold Trouble with the other.

“Ride, Nectan. Morgana’s with her. Will be well.”

He climbs up, eyes still blind to all but agony, a man hollowed out as he kicks the mare’s flank to run away across the down.

Dorelei lies on her back, brown fists clenching as she fights to keep from hindering her sister. Dangerous to move her at all; Morgana slits the gown up the front, freeing the distended belly. I strip off my sheepskin to make a pillow, feeling sick inside. This is ho place for a man, but Morgana was right. Better me than Nectan. If it were she lying there, I’d be no use at all. I smooth the hair away from Dorelei’s face with a shaking hand, frightened in the presence of things beyond me. “How is it, sister?”

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“Give—give me something to hold.” “Thy wrists,” Morgana tells me.

Dorelei’s small hands close so tight on my wrists, I couldn’t tear them loose. Morgana can no longer count between pains, they’re so close, and now the first great wave comes.

“Now, sister.”

The cry tears out of Dorelei as out of rended Earth herself, pain and the impossible strength to bear it. Her fingers dig into my wrists and I feel my will, my self pouring through the joined flesh. My whole body tenses and strains with her, we sweat as one; not she but we bear this child. In the bright morning sun, we lurch together through a darkness.

Morgana straightens her back a moment. “Good, sister. Do see a’s head. Again.”

And again that dawn-cry of creation. Dorelei grips till there’s no more feeling in my big, useless hands. Still I try to pour strength into her. Another wave—

“More, Dorelei. More!”

She pushes again, but it’s not enough. She goes limp, breath rasped with exhaustion. She lies still, lets the pain take her while she gathers herself to go on. I’m glad Morgana pays me no mind, because I’m praying so hard it comes out in tears. Because I see too much at once, that the fall hurt Dorelei more than we knew, that the little body can’t do of itself what it must, and the desperation hits me like a fist. Mother and Lugh, Mother and Lugh, give us this child alive. Take cattle, sheep, this is all that matters. Give it to us and we will spend our lives in service to you.

But our parents only watch with the cruel, unblinking eye of their sun.

Morgana pushes the hair out of her eyes. She’s sweating, too. “Wipe a’s face.”

Dorelei’s pale, but still better off man me. “Need not fret so, Belrix. Be not the first time or the last for me.”

I get behind her head again so she can’t see how I’m crying, how much I care. That’s an answer of a kind. It’s not mere life our parents gave to make us human. No, we’re human because we care, and where have I wandered and wasted that I shouldn’t learn this till now?

One small truth to hang onto, the only profit we will see. For all our struggle and caring and Dorelei’s pain, the bairn comes just as Nectan and Cradda appear across the down. Too small, too early come, the child not due till Samhain. A girl born dead.

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Nothing left but to let Cradda read it in my eyes, to face Nectan with the plain fact, let his numb, naked grief stab into me as I hold him a moment before he stumbles to Dorelei to say — what? What does life say in the face of Not?

Cradda wraps the child in the swaddling she brought. It must be buried, but Nectan can’t be torn from Dorelei, won’t even look at the tiny dead.

“Go away. Take it away.”

So it’s mine to do. I mount Trouble. Morgana passes the small bundle up to me. Her gray eyes are dark as slate with the helpless anger pressing behind them.

“Dost see now, Belrix? Dost feel it? Our own must live. If we tear Earth apart for it, Prydn must live"

I stand alone on the cliff. Overhead the noon sun sparkles on the sea beyond. There’s a cleft in the cliff face that draws down to the beach, and here I dig the small barrow, line it with stone, Carefully clay over the infant eyes that never opened. Cover the barrow with dirt and turf.

Finished now. Done.

Trembling.

Trouble-horse grazes. Still part of life, she eats. But for me, after the love and the hope and the desperate caring, there’s only rage and a spear of why to hurl at Lugh. I can’t, I won’t accept such waste and loss without a reason. Like Morgana, I’d tear at creation for this, rip the earth, throw the pain back in God’s face.

Deep in me, Artos stirs.

Stay away, I tell him. Go back to sleep.

But Artos wakes.

I scream at him. “Go! I don’t need you.”

But Artos opens his eyes inside me. “It’s time,” he says.

Time for what?

“I know what Merlin wanted to teach me,” whispers Artos in my soul. “To be a king over men. To know what they are, and the price of knowledge.”