Fire Arrow (17 page)

The day went quickly and it wasn't long before the shout went up. "We've got the grainne!"

"The grainne, the grainne!" Other voices echoed and a knot of women rushed forward and busied themselves; Brie could not see with what. Finally they stepped aside, to cries of "the grainne maiden, the grainne maiden," revealing the last sheaf of wheat dressed in a white flowing gown, belted with a criosanna and colored ribbons.

The effigy was attached to a pole and the tallest and strongest of the reapers hoisted the grainne maiden high. Meanwhile, a gaily decorated wagon, pulled by horses with flowers and ribbons plaited through their manes, was filled to the top with sheaves of wheat. Then a procession formed, led by the men carrying the grainne maiden, followed by the decorated wagon, which was in turn followed by the brightly dressed harvesters.

The procession made its way into town and was met by many such processions. Then all the wagons and grainne maidens converged on a large grassy bluff overlooking the sea. The grainne maidens were set up along the bluff looking like a promenade of finely dressed, highborn ladies, their ribbons blowing in the sea wind. Tables were swiftly set up and almost as swiftly covered with food.

After all had gorged on the harvest bounty, the dancing began. It started with the drol, a traditional Dungalan dance in which a human chain is formed by linking hands and the dancers weave in and out in complicated patterns, never breaking the chain. It was led by Sago, the Sea Dyak sorcerer, his paper-thin legs following the ancient patterns easily and surely. Gradually, though, as more mead was consumed and twilight fell, the group of dancers split into pairs.

Contentedly munching on borrog, Brie had watched the drol, thrilled by the graceful, colorful patterns made by the dancers. Then Lom stood before her, flushed and smiling.

"Will you dance?" he asked.

Brie looked out at the whirling skirts and capering feet and felt a longing to join them. But she shook her head. She saw Lom soon after dancing with a tall, slender girl with coppery red hair.

Brie suddenly remembered herself as a child watching the Midsummer bonfires, wishing to dance. She strained to spot Lom in the diminishing light. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of the indigo shirt he wore. He was still with the red-haired girl. Brie found herself trying to remember if she had ever seen Collun dance. And then for some reason she thought of Aelwyn's words of Collun's comeliness. She flushed, irritated with Aelwyn, and with herself.

Jacan and Ferg came to sit with her. Jacan talked of the next day's fishing, but Ferg was distracted by a saucy girl named Beith, who took great delight in teasing him.

The dancers began to disperse; Jacan drifted off to talk with some fellow fishermen, and Ferg went running after Beith, who had stolen one of his shoes. Brie could no longer see Lom. A knot of fiddlers began to play a lilting ballad about Fionna, the queen.

Brie sat peacefully, gazing up at the three-quarter moon.

Lom suddenly appeared, saying, "I cannot stay on my feet a moment longer," and sank down beside her on the grass.

"You do not like to dance?" he asked.

"I have never danced."

He looked at her in surprise, but said nothing. Then he followed her gaze upward. "They say," Lom spoke, "that on harvest night a shower of beautiful flowers falls from the moon."

Brie smiled. "I can almost believe it will," she replied dreamily.

Suddenly Lom lifted his hand into the sky, and when he brought it down, he unclosed his fingers to reveal the delicate blossom of a sea pink in the palm of his hand. Brie laughed, and with a grin Lom reached over and carefully plaited the stem into Brie's yellow hair. Brie felt an odd stirring. She flushed again, unsmiling, and looked down at her hands.

Then Ferg ran up, his shoe restored, and Jacan returned with Hyslin, as well as Hanna. Jacan asked if Brie would be joining them on the Storm Petrel the next morning.

"Of course," she replied, standing.

Lom spotted his mother and father and went to join them, giving Brie a quick salute as he left.

As she walked along in the darkness with Hanna, Brie reached up to touch the pink flower plaited into her hair. She thought of Collun, sitting by the fire, drinking chicory with Kled, but his face wavered and she had trouble summoning it back again.

***

That night Brie dreamed of Collun. She was running toward him. He stood on a rise, his back to her, and although she was running very fast, with each step he seemed farther away instead of closer. She pushed herself until she was almost flying over the ground. Finally she reached him and put out her hand to touch him. But where her hand brushed against his skin, red appeared, dripping red, and she realized it was blood. She looked down at her own hands and they were covered with blood.

Brie woke. Shaking, she lit a candle. Closely she inspected her hands. They were clean; nonetheless she crossed to a bucket of water and scrubbed and scrubbed with honey lye soap until her skin was raw.

A week after the harvest festival, Jacan told Brie he had decided to take the Storm Petrel out to the deep water. He was beginning to worry that there would not be enough fish to hold them through the winter when bad weather and storms kept them ashore for weeks at a time. There was also Hyslin's wedding celebration to think of; it would take place on the first fine day after the dark months.

Sometimes, he said, when the catches had been poor nearer in, they had more luck on the deep water, far out to sea. It was time-consuming and dangerous, especially now as the weather became more unpredictable. He and Ferg would go, as well as Lom, Henle, and a fifth fisherman called Stulw. Brie asked to be included and Jacan agreed, though he warned her that they would stay out for at least two nights, perhaps three, with little time for sleep.

They set out well before sunset the next day. As they headed out on the open sea, Brie noticed Jacan's lips moving. When she had occasion to pass him, she heard something that sounded like chanting or singing. She had noticed Jacan humming before, but not singing.

By midday they had been out of sight of Ardara for some time, farther out than Brie had been before. As she gazed at the vastness of sea and sky, Lom came to stand beside her.

Brie gestured at Jacan, saying, "I didn't know Jacan liked to sing."

Lom smiled. "Jacan is singing the cerdd-moru, the traditional Dungalan songs of navigation."

"Cerdd-moru? Is it magic of some kind?"

Lom shook his head. "They are the songs of the sea. Everything Dungalans know of the way the sea moves was put into the songs. For thousands of years we have sailed on these waters, and the songs have guided us. At night there are also the stars, but it is the song that shows us where we are on the water."

Brie watched Jacan in wonder. His lips moved constantly, sometimes imperceptibly, but always with the rhythm of the sea. "Do you know them?"

"I know some, but there are many. I have only begun to learn the songs for the deep water," Lom answered.

Then Jacan gave the call to lower the nets, and after that they all worked feverishly, lowering, hauling, and hoisting nets; scooping the flipping, whirling fish into the holds. All through the day and night they worked, into the next day and even the next, with only brief breaks for sleep.

Before dawn of the third day, Jacan's boat could hold no more fish and he turned the ship back toward Ardara. On the long journey home, they took turns sleeping, except for Fara, who made a game of racing with the Storm Petrel, and Jacan, who remained at the helm, quietly singing the cerdd-moru though his eyes were glazed with exhaustion and his throat hoarse.

During her turn to rest, Brie lay on the bow gazing at the stars, numb with fatigue. She recognized many of the star patterns, though their places in the sky were different than they were back in Eirren.

Lom came to sit beside her, yawning. "Do you have stories for your serennu in Eirren?"

"Serennu?"

"The star clusters."

"We call them patterns or realta. And yes, we do. The bright band there"—Brie pointed—"with the two points above it, that is Amergin's Crown."

"For us it is Sandyman's Hat. Sandyman is a Dungalan sand monster, sometimes comic, sometimes frightening. The children enjoy being scared by Sandyman."

Brie smiled. "What do you call that one?" she asked sleepily. "There. It looks like a large cup. We call it Ea's Cup."

"Unnla's Spoon," Lom replied.

As the Storm Petrel skimmed over the sea waves, Brie and Lom continued comparing names for the constellations: the Wheel of Light and Bootes, the Dragon and the Ox, the Harp and the Eagle, and so on. Few were the same. Brie loved hearing the Dungalan stories behind the star clusters and kept asking for more. Finally Lom threw up his hands, saying, "Enough! It is Hanna you should ask for serennu stories. She knows them all." Brie apologized and they fell silent.

Brie was half asleep when Lom broke the silence. "Do you see that serennu, the one there in the far western corner of the sky?" Brie raised her eyelids with an effort and looked in the direction he pointed.

She saw the star pattern called Casiope, the archer.

"We call it Hela," said Lom, "or the Huntress. Hela was an archer; she had great prowess with bow and arrow."

, "Ours is an archer as well."

"Who is your archer?"

"Casiope," Brie replied, then went on, her voice toneless. "He was a man who sought to destroy one who had wronged him, but instead he killed his own son with an arrow." Brie's eyes glittered with unshed tears as Collun's voice echoed in her ears,
like Casiope ... an arrow that will surely return one day and pierce the one who shoots it.

Lom gazed at her sideways. "Biri?"

She swallowed hard, then smiled falsely. "Tell me of Hela."

"There are several tales. She was brave and kind and ... beautiful." He paused, then added shyly, "You remind me of her."

Through the haze of her sadness and exhaustion, Brie felt a wave of astonishment and looked at Lom to see if he was joking, but his face was composed. He was looking at her with a curious expression.

"Biri, there is a sadness in you," he said, haltingly.

Brie stared at Lom. And suddenly she found herself telling Lom of the bog and the two men she had killed. The words spilled out, unchecked, and as they came, Brie felt a sort of easing inside her, like that of a spring wound tight that was letting go at last. Lom listened closely. When she had finished, he said quietly, "You killed those men to keep from dying yourself. Choosing to live is no dishonor."

"But I had sought their deaths."

"It matters not. You could have killed one when his back was turned, but you chose not to, risking your own life. It is a brave thing you did, Biri."

Brie looked into Lom's face and knew he spoke the truth—his truth, at any rate. For herself, it was not so clear, but some of the pain had seeped away with the words she had spoken. Soon she slept.

***

Dawn was just breaking when Ferg, who was on watch, let out a cry. The tone of his voice jerked Brie awake and to her feet. The boy was pointing at the water. Brie left Lom, who stirred but remained deep in slumber, and went to the side of the Storm Petrel. She peered down.

There was a dark shadow passing under the boat. It spread out over the sea a good distance.

As Brie stared, her eye caught a movement. Something detached itself from the dark mass and came closer to the surface. Brie got a glimpse of the long undulating form and protruding round eyes rimmed with a line of shining orange. "Sumog!" she cried out. Fara, at Brie's legs, let out a hiss. Then the creature dipped down into the thick swathe of darkness.

Lom had awakened, as had Henle and Stulw, and they joined Brie at the side.

"Did you see?" Brie said, her voice urgent. The fishermen said they had not. Jacan had seen only the darkness from his place at the helm.

They watched the dark band until it was far out to sea and they could no longer see it. Brie's throat was dry. To make up that wide band of darkness there would have had to have been hundreds and hundreds of sumog.

"Are you sure it was sumog?", asked Lom.

"Yes. And look." Floating on the surface were fish bones, tails, fins, and bits of flesh. The Storm Petrel sailed over the grisly trail as they made their way back to Ardara.

Too tired to hike up to Farmer Garmon's barn, Brie stayed the night in a small shed behind Jacan's house, as she had done a handful of times before.

Brie dreamed of Collun again. It began as a peaceful scene, Collun bent over his mother's garden, staking some white cosmos that had grown as tall as his shoulders. Then a light snow began to fall. Collun looked up, puzzled, then afraid. Brie woke.

She remembered as if from long ago a day at Cuillean's dun when she had come across Collun sitting silently beside an overgrown patch of weeds. He had been very still, with a blank look on his face. She had knelt beside him.

"Cosmos and briar roses," he had said, a tangle of winding roots and stems clutched in his hand. "They were Emer's favorites. This was her garden." Brie could see unshed tears in Collun's eyes.

"Can we help it to grow again?" she had asked softly.

"Yes." And they had spent the rest of the day weeding, watering, and staking the neglected plants. When they were done, the blank look in Collun's eyes was gone.

But in her dream he had been afraid.

Still exhausted from the deep-sea fishing, Brie could have easily slept through the rest of the day, even into the night. But she quickly got to her feet and dressed. She must go to Collun. She had postponed it too long. Pulling on her boots, Brie flinched as she remembered her bitter parting words to him.

She checked on the fire arrow. It hummed against her skin, but not with warmth. It seemed faintly displeased.

As she stepped outside, Brie breathed in the morning air. Something was different, she thought. There was a tang, a chill that had not been there yesterday. Sharply she turned her face toward the mountains. Snow. And clouds heavy with darkness hovered over the highest peaks.