Loki's Daughters (47 page)

Ahead, the sounds of cattle lowing, the whinny of horses and bleat of sheep heralded the arrival of the animals from the pastures of the upper valley. Dogs and men worked the herded creatures within tight, flowing circles.

In the west, beyond the hills, the sky reddened in streaks, and darkened. All the fires in the village were extinguished, and on this night a new fire would be started.

Mildread, the oldest among them, since Old Ferris still pouted and refused to come, assembled her tinder and kindling and knelt close to the gathered heaps of wood. Just as well. Arienh doubted if the old man had enough left in him to make a spark.

Mildread rubbed the spindle in her hands. The smell of smoldering wood scented the air. She rubbed faster. Smoke rose from the wood, as the tinder glowed and Mildread teased the coals with her breath. The smoky aroma tickled Arienh's nostrils. It sparked, then burst into flame.

A cooing admiration rumbled through the crowd. The new fire. The kindling caught, then ignited a rush torch soaked in fat. Arienh held the torch to the old leaves and twigs at the base of the first pile of brush until it roared to life. Then the other.

In the deepening night, a new song rose to mingle with the fires. Joining hands, the women circled one fire then the other, chanting and skipping the way it had always been done. When they finished, they looked to the Northmen.

Garlanded oxen came first, patiently accepting the goading of the men. Behind them, cows with their calves.

The rams followed, then ewes and lambs, harried by the dogs which nipped and circled, forcing the reluctant animals between the flames. On the opposite side, they were released to graze. The sheep took it all in as if it were only one more ridiculous thing the humans expected of them.

The horses balked. Their eyes flared like huge round disks and the beasts bucked and snorted as two men forced each animal through separately. Some reared and flailed hooves in the air, fought to turn. But each was driven between the fires, until the last of the hoofed beasts had passed through the flames of Beltane once again. Protected yet another year.

Then the men left. Gone as if they had never been there at all. Vanished into the hills, returning their herds to their pens or loose into the higher summer pasture. But they did not come back. Hardly surprising, since they had not been asked.

The world, the cool night air, all felt empty. It was not like things had been in the past. Beltane was once again theirs alone. Silence replaced the accustomed revelry and joy, and the women sat down on pallets to watch the fires blaze.

All theirs. Alone. Lonely.

Stars scattered like jewels in the dark side of the sky, and the full moon shone from the south like brilliant silver over the ocean, coating the dancing crests of a quiet sea. Liam wandered off to play with Mildread's girls.

A lone pipe whistled the mournful tune of the Celtic dance, faint, hollowly echoing. Arienh glanced at Elli, for only she still piped the tunes. But Elli watched the fires as if she were lost in happier times, her reed pipe resting on the ground beside her. Arienh scanned the darkness behind them. But the music didn't come from there.

The echoing strands of a harp joined. No harp had played in this valley since her childhood. Arienh strained her eyes to see if the sound came from the tall hills behind the circle.

The flames danced where now there were no men. Nay, she saw them. The old ones. The spirits.

Didn't she? Arienh focused her eyes on the flames. It was an illusion. Shadowy and vague, undulating like the will-o-the-wisps in the bogs.

A young man leapt over the flames, a powerful, graceful leap, skimming just at the edge of danger. Admiring gasps hissed and skimmed across the crowd. Startled, Arienh, glanced behind her. Nay, not from this crowd, which was absorbed in its own doings. She turned back. The shadow figure leapt again, soaring over the licking flames. Niall. Beautiful Niall, who had been swept away in a Viking raid. Vanished forever.

"Niall. It's Niall!" she whispered. "He's come back!"

Interrupted from a sad reverie, Birgit jumped. She squinted hard. "Where?"

"Don't you see him?" Arienh's heart raced.

The figure of a young man, a different one, leaped and swirled before her, clear, yet oddly indistinct.

"Trevor!"

"Arienh, are you mad? Trevor's dead."

"Aye, I know." But they were there, spirits, yet somehow real. Ungarmented, faces without form, yet she knew them. It was Trevor's gentle, caring smile, the way she remembered the older brother who had thrown her into the air and ridden her on his shoulders, who had pulled her from the stream. She remembered the time when the rushing waters had suddenly frightened her, and she had stood stark still in her terror, certain she would be swept off her feet and battered by the raging waters against the huge boulders. It was Trevor who rushed to her aid that day, as he had many times. She saw him now, the loving brother she adored, not as he had died, crushed, in agony, in her arms.

Tears collected in the corners of her eyes.

Was it vision? Memory? Or was it real?

She saw her father, his arms laced over the shoulders of uncles, cousins, as the shadowy dancers circled. A heavy sob lodged like a wad in her throat, choking her, then burst forth, shuddering through her. His loving eyes beckoned her. She ached to run into the circle and throw herself into his arms. To dance, arm in arm, swinging wildly.

She was not a man. Women did not dance with men. She did not belong. Yet she felt their pull as if they tugged her hand. Weylin, her cousin. Grandfather. She had been so very little when he had died. Great-grandfather who had outlived them all. All of them, not as they had been when they died, neither old nor young, but without age.

The circle widened, spinning in a slow turn about the stones, around the fires. Arienh rose to her feet, drawn by the compelling force. Closer, closer. Stepping into the circle, she raised her arms, to touch, yet not, upon the shoulders of the dancers. Daringly, she raised her foot to begin a dance that had been reserved for men since time began. The spirits drew her in, enclosing her with an aching, welcoming warmth. Of their own accord, her feet began the steps, surefooted, in complicated patterns that were both familiar and untried.

 
The circle expanded as if it meant to fill the earth.

 
Women. Her mother, gone so long, she could not even remember mourning her. Aunts, children she had not known, yet knew. Forms of those gone before her birth. She saw them clearly now, ethereally real, the old ones, who had always come at Beltane, who had been coming since long before her birth. Celt, Not-Celt, even the ancient ones. She knew them all by the way they touched her soul, knew the feel of their ancient blood still coursing through her veins.

 
She danced, danced with all of them, man, woman, child, Celt and Not-Celt. The pace quickened, whirled around the circle. Hands clasped living and spirit, the eternal living thread of time that had no beginning nor end. In the dance, she embraced them all, spinning back to a time when everything was whole.

Tears streamed down her cheeks in hot, stinging trails, and still she danced, caught each ghostly partner by the arm, swinging round, took the next, knowing each, loving, aching, hungering, mourning each one she had lost. Remembering the wonder that had been their lives, that she could never have again. Her feet flew through the rapid steps known to her only from watching, understanding now what she had never understood before, the true meaning of a ritual begun in time so ancient there were no words to explain it. It was as if she had been born knowing the dance, had somehow forgotten it, and it was reborn in her. Her throat ached from the pain of her sobs. But here, in the bosom of the dance, among those she loved, it was as if they wrapped her in loving arms and shared her suffering.

The pipe wailed its sadness, the harp plucked its joy. The dancers spun away into lines and pairs, changing, dipping and swaying, a rhythm like the restless sea. Arienh spun around, taking each new partner in turn by hand, or perhaps by soul. Tears poured from her eyes, and she let them flow freely.

Once again, the circle tightened, even though it seemed that all were still there. Across from her, she saw the Viking. Ronan. Drawn, perhaps, by the Celtic part of him, standing motionless within the circle as the spirits swirled around him.

He did not belong. The interloper. She ached for him. Yet had not the Celts once been interlopers? Had not the stone circle been built by the old ones, long in the distant past before there were Celts?

They swarmed about him, these old ones, whirled him in. The Viking melded with the spirits, joining the frenzied steps of the dance as if he, too, had been born with the knowledge.

As the Celts before him had done, as those before the Celts had done, the Viking joined the circle. For the circle was shared by all.

Arienh raised her hands, and the Viking's palms touched hers. His eyes darkened, smoldering with hungry longing as they danced, palm to palm, in the middle of the circle of swirling spirits.

Then would it be true that Vikings would dance with Celts? For surely, the circle would never end. Just as Arienh knew the blood of these ancient ones still flowed in her veins, so the Celts and Vikings would be remembered and revered by those still to come.

She was part of both past and present. And future. The Viking was a part of it all.

Life would go on. And the dead would always return for Beltane. They would never be lost.

She blinked at her fading tears, and through them saw the circle of dancers dwindle into shadows. The Viking was gone. The spirits departed. Niall. Trevor. Father. Mother. Grandfather. All of them, one by one slipped back beyond the mystical veil.

Clean, cold air rushed into her lungs with each new breath. How glorious it was to be a Celt. To be alive, and know one's world was filled with those beloved departed ones.

The circle of dancers was gone.

Had she seen it? Or imagined they were here? Was the Viking really a part, or had she merely wanted him to be there?

Arienh looked back at the women who sat, transfixed, on their blankets. Had they seen what she had? Or had they decided she had suddenly gone demented from that bump on her head?

"Did you see them?" she asked Birgit as she sat again.

"The spirits? Of course not. I could hardly see you."

"They were there," Arienh said, but her voice sounded foolishly weak.

"One doesn't have to see them to know that."

"Nay, I mean it. Truly. I wish just this once you could have seen."

Birgit smiled, wide and dreamily. "Niall, too?"

"Aye. I told you."

"I wondered if he would come back. Once he died, I mean." Birgit swallowed a big, visible lump, and smiled. Arienh thought about how close Birgit and Niall had always been. "I thought he must be dead. Do you think you can let them go now, Arienh?"

Go? Had she been holding them here? Never had she cried for the dead, until the Vikings had come. She had always feared, if she ever began to cry, she would lie down and mourn so deeply she would never be able to get up again. Then the last of the Celts in this valley would have died out, for no one would have been strong enough to keep them alive.

But she understood now, she could not keep her grief buried forever. Perhaps those who were gone had needed for her to grieve for them. And sooner or later, she had to let it loose, and with it, let go of that terrible, possessive fear for all those who remained. Aye, she would lose them all someday, if they did not lose her first. She could not stop what was meant to be. But none were truly lost.

"Aye," she answered at last. "They will be back next year."

She sat in silence beside her sister, studying the flames, cherishing the moments past. The ancients, the vision of the Viking dancing with them. "Where are the Vikings?" she asked.