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Then Rudi spoke himself; clear, yet without any stress, as if he spoke to her rather than the great black bird whose wings near enfolded him. And he smiled, a smile full of joy, and fearless youth.
"Of course, Mother. Whenever You call for me, I will come."
Juniper blinked. She saw her son, the child she had carried and nursed and loved, here in the dawning of his days. The raven's wings moved, slowly, once and twice and again, and its beak dipped forward. Despite herself she caught her breath in fear; that flint-hard dagger could take out an eye in a single motion. And peck it did, a quick sharp stab, but all that left was a single drop of blood between his brows.
And then she saw him still, but not the child she knew, or in the nemed.
Instead the wings beat about another face, the face of a man in the first flush of his grown strength, jewel-cut strong-jawed handsomeness, with a bleeding slash on his forehead that he dashed at with one impatient hand, scattering clotted drops into his glory of curling red-gold hair. His mouth was stretched wide in a shout that was like the expression in his blue-gray eyes, a cry terrible and fierce and beautiful. His black horse reared beneath him, and in his right hand was a sword held aloft with more red drops flying from its sweep-a great, straight double-edged thing with a crescent guard and staghorn hilt, its pommel a glowing opal gripped in spreading antlers, like the head of Cernun-nos raised against the Hunter's Moon.
Behind him she could sense ba
As the horse reared and the sword shone in the light of another setting sun a growing chorus sounded, louder even than the threnody of pain. A roar from thousands upon thousands of throats, beating like the heart of some great rough beast, or like the Pacific surf once, when she'd stood on a cliff in a time of storm and felt the living rock tremble to the blows of Ocean.
"Artos! Artos! Artos! Artos!"
Juniper closed her eyes and shuddered for an instant; above the chant and woven with it, she heard the words she'd spoken in this very nemed at Rudi's Wiccaning, or which Someone had spoken through her as she lifted her infant son over the altar:
Sad winter's child, in this leafless shaw Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!
Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law His people's strength-and the Lady's swordl
When she opened them again her Rudi knelt before the altar, watching the raven sweep aloft and vanish into the blaze of the setting sun, mouth and eyes open in wonder. Red light washed over it, from the direction that held the Gate of the Summerlands, and back into the dying sun.
Juniper stepped forward, putting her arm around the boy's shoulders as he rose. "I: I think I saw something, Mom," he said slowly, looking at the drop of blood on his questing fingers.
She nodded and stroked his hair, then looked up at the people and spoke, her voice soft-seeming but pitched to carry:
"Now indeed, I am thinking that this is a sign, and a wonder."
Folk looked at her, and to her-and blinked, and shook themselves a little, and began to breathe once more. Eilir's eyes stayed wide, and Astrid's; they had seen something as well, then. The others were uncertain; only a fleeting moment had passed, after all, less than a minute between the raven's landing and its departure. Most had been aware of nothing else.
Juniper smiled at them all, feeling weight lifting from her shoulders and a return of everyday happiness. Suddenly she was hungry, and eager for feasting and dancing and love.
"But my best beloved-" She looked at Nigel and smiled again; at her daughter and new son-in-law, at Astrid and the others. She held out her arms in what might be the gesture of blessing, or a welcoming. "All my beloved ones, look around you. Isn't everything a sign and a wonder?"
She put her hands on her hips then, and her grin had an impudent, urchin glee. "So let's take the feast prepared, not to mention enough music and wine to grow tiddly but not soused, and the nice soft bridal beds, and the season of our happiness. The story never ends, but our part in the tale does, for a while, and I'm in the mood for some happy-ever-aftering! We earned it, as the Gods themselves know!"