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"So today we bury Mike Havel, and we'll remember him the way he'd have wanted-what he did for us, and what we did with him leadin' us. Then tomorrow, we get to work."
Signe Havel nodded as she stepped down from the cart, and the coffin-bearers came forward. Her eyes flicked eastward for a moment.
All right, she thought. Your son is his too, and you've got an inheritance for him. But this is for mine, and the children of their children.
Epilogue
Dun Juniper, Willamette Valley, Oregon
September 22nd, 2008/Change Year 10
"N ot much longer," Nigel Loring muttered to himself. "You can do it, Nigel-not much longer!"
Juniper Mackenzie laughed aloud as the crowd filed up the mountainside towards the nemed, the Sacred Wood, and felt her feet trying to skip a dance beneath the steady pace. She'd made the trip so many times; alone sometimes to speak with the Mighty Ones and the landwights, with her Coven before the Change, and even more since-in sunlight and dark clouded night, by moons that shone on spring flowers or white as salt on winter snow, but seldom with a crowd as joyous as this, as the couples went up two by two. The path wound back and forth up steepness, through towering Douglas fir where summer's last heat baked out the resin scent like strong incense, past hardwoods whose yellowing leaves glowed even as the sky began to darken ahead over the snow-peaks eastward that made a wall to the world. Squirrels streaked chattering along branches, wings were thick overhead as the flocks went south ahead of oncoming winter, and somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.
"Nigel, you're going up this path to be married, not executed," she chided gently, squeezing his sword-hardened hand in hers. "You're supposed to enjoy this, you know! And you're looking so indecently handsome I could ravish you on the spot, sure."
He did, erect and slim, trim and graceful in kilt and ruffled shirt, the plaid belted and pi
Rudi went by, skipping nimble as a goat on the rough verge of the trail, at the head of a pack of boys his age doing their best to induce maternal despair as they plunged on heedless of carefully arranged finery. Juniper's eyes followed him for an instant, as the bright red-gold hair shone in the cathedral dimness beneath the flat Scots bo
Thank you, Mike, she thought. Thank you for my son, and for the sweet night when we made him, in that time of terror and despair. Thank you for your strength, and your kindness, and for saving us all. Horned Lord, he'll be so surprised there beyond the Gate! Guide him home to the lands of Summer beneath the forever trees, and be a friend to him, for here among us he walked in Your forms: the wild Lover, the wise Father, the strong Warrior who wards the folk.
The shade of the great trees gave breaths of cool grace between bursts of sunlit summer warmth, like autumn casting a shadow through time before itself, and the beams of light that slanted through them made a green-gold glow that seemed to explode on bushes of late Cascade azaleas, their last blooms frothing white and filling the air with their sweet-tart citrus perfume. Glimpses westward where the path and the forest allowed showed blue distance and yellow-brown stubblefields, sunset flashing from river and pond, and the thin spires of smoke that marked the hearths of humankind, all nearly lost against the sinking sun. Earth was warm and dry beneath her strong, bare feet, duff and fir needles prickly, the fallen leaves rustling and crunching, even the swirl of her robe across her insteps like a caress. The circlets of silver bells she'd strapped about her ankles chimed in chorus with those the other women wore. Her neck felt bare without the torque, but that was for a reason this day.
She and Nigel went with wreaths on their heads as well, pink fireweed and scarlet gaura, daylilies creamy white and lavender, orange rose mallow. Drawn by the nectar, moving flowers-California Sister butterflies, black and orange and silver-fluttered about their heads.
"You look like Silenos the father of fauns dancing with the wood-nymphs," she whispered into Nigel's ear.
"My dear, you look like a dancing wood-nymph. My son looks like a young Apollo with Artemis on his arm. Even John Hordle is managing to do a credible imitation of Hercules with your lovely daughter as Hebe. I look like a complete middle-aged idiot, or at least I feel like one."
"You're being English again, my darling."
He gri
"You could have worn a robe, too," she said, just to see him shudder theatrically.
The others followed, wreathed as they were for the joining. Eilir and John Hordle were just behind Nigel and Juniper-he'd complained that he felt like a bull at a county fair and bellowed like one when Eilir nodded in calm agreement, stately in her robe and airsaid. Alleyne and Astrid followed, both in long robes of fine white linen as well as garlands, looking like the Fair Folk come again in their tall blond handsomeness-though she'd bristled like a great cat with silver-blue eyes blazing at the sight of Tiphaine d'Ath in Mathilda's train, the Protectorate warrior quietly bristling right back. Others followed them in turn; Judy and Chuck's Dan, beside lanky brown-haired Devorgill the huntress, her long bony face transfigured into beauty, and many another. There was nothing like the memory of a war just past to put a hand on shoulder and say: hurry.
But now we have peace, she thought. And new begi
"I'm sorry we were too busy at Beltane," Nigel murmured.
"Mabon is a good time for handfasting too. It's a season of fruitfulness, isn't it?" she said, and laid a hand on her stomach for an instant. "I wasn't going to tell you just yet, but I want you to be as happy as I this moment, my darling nervous one."
For a moment his reserve cracked into incredulous joy, and she laughed at the sight; and again at how quickly again a tinge of worry crept in. He would always be concerned for her, and that was like welcoming light burning through a window on a winter's night, when you'd traveled through sleet in darkness.
"My beloved, I'm a mother twice over, remember, and neither birthing gave me the slightest problem, and Judy is the best midwife in all the Willamette country. Have some confidence! Shall we name her Maude?"
His brows went up under the wreath; she reached out and straightened it.
"It: it: " He stuttered for a second, and she basked in the look he gave her. Then he won back to self-mastery, as this man of hers always would. "It, ah, might be a boy."
"No, somehow I don't think so." She looked at him slyly, green eyes glinting from under her fox red brows. "And I'm a witch, you know."
To herself: And there's power in names. All our loves return to us, my poor, strong, stoic darling. We and they are braided together, the dancers and the Dance.
More flowers starred the sides of the pathway, planted by nature or patient hands. Today there was an arch of roses over the place where the pathway gave onto the flat knee that stood out from the mountainside.
Music played as they emerged from the close hush of the forest into the open wind and the vast blue distances of the mountainside clearing; flutes like that wind given form, the sweet eeriness of the uillea
"A Bhe
Is bhi