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Surely they couldn?t take it literally? The fey don?t really do that. Not often, at least.
He wasn?t altogether sure about how the Southsiders would take it, though. If you had an empty place in your soul where such things should be, something would fill it.
We need tales to make sense of the world. ?Tell?s another story, Rudi!? one of the children said, as he took up the next billet of the hickory, spat on a smooth hand-sized rock and began to hone hatchet and knife before he began his work.
The hunters and warriors and women who were gathered around to watch him fashion the longbow murmured agreement. Jake unstrung his new weapon and scooped a little congealed fat out of a dish and began to rub the wood, squatting and looking eager for the tale himself. The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that prickled at his eyes. Without that tapestry of color and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary things, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning.
It surprised him as well as saddened him. Granted their pamaws had been young, any random group of Mackenzie children today would have known more and handed it down.
Though the Clan?s youngsters have had two generations of loremasters by now, he reminded himself.
He remembered long evenings sitting at his mother?s feet with the others in the great hall at Dun Juniper, listening to her storyteller?s voice weaving music and magic as strong as any she made in the nemed, the Sacred Wood. Her hands shaping images and the light of the fires on the god-faces carved amid the rampant vines on the log walls; flame-crowned Brigid and Lugh Longspear of the clever hands, elk-horned Cer
And the most of our clansfolk?s parents and grandparents were probably no better off than these before they became Mackenzies. Before the Change.
First he demonstrated how to measure the proper taper from grip to tip of the bow by the joints of your forefinger, and the length of the stave by multiples of your drawing reach, and how to calculate the proper fistmele between the belly and the string. A little to his surprise he was better at teaching the bowyer?s craft than Edain; the younger clansman knew so much he was impatient with their ignorance. ?Well, then,? Rudi said, when he?d reached the working stage. ?It?s a tale you want, is it now?? ?Yah!? ?You betcha!? ?No shit, dude!?
Ah, he thought, sorting through scores he knew. Yes, this will speak to them. And there?s nothing like telling one of the old stories to put away your own worry and care and fear! ?Then you work on this one as I showed you, friend Tuk, and I will tell the tale-and correct your work if your hands go wrong. Now, the story! This happened very long ago, you understand, and far away, in a land across the oceans, among my ancestors and yours.?
Most of mine, and a lot of yours. ?There was a man named Niall who was born to be King… to be the big boss… who later came to be called Niall of the Nine Hostages. And once in his youth he was traveling alone through the woods at night as he journeyed back to the hunting lands of his people.?
They all shuddered and leaned forward; to be benighted alone was a thing of fear to them. ?He came across a hut, and in the hut was a withered and ancient crone… ummmm… an ugly old bitch… of an ugliness which hurt the eyes to see-but unknown to him she was not just the poor old woman he thought her; she was the Sovereignty of Midhe, the eldest of the Threefold Morrigu, and herself the patron Goddess of that earth.? ?I thought you said there was this Lady and her stud who made everything?? someone asked. ?That there is,? Rudi said.
His voice was casually confident; he was as sure of that as he was of his own breath and heartbeat. ?One of her, or a lot of her?? ?Both! Her forms are more numerous than the stars! How not, when the stars themselves are but the dust scattered by Her feet as She and the God danced all that is into being??
Many of them nodded. Nobody had ever told them to prefer either/or to yes/and, nor that it was impossible for something to be one and many at the same time. Which meant it didn?t drive them wild.
The way it would say a scholar from Corvallis. Or Father Ignatius. ?Each form She takes, or the Lord, is true; yet each a part of a greater whole. As we put it-?
He paused, then filled his lungs and sang, a hymn his mother had made, the?Farewell to the Sun.? As might be expected of his parentage and rearing, at song he was better than fair even by the reckoning of Dun Juniper, where all the Clan?s best bards were trained and many outlanders as well. Here Edain was the journeyman to his master craftsman, and his deep baritone filled the cavelike space effortlessly: ?We know the Sun was Her lover
As They danced the worlds awake;
And She lay with His brilliance
For all Their children?s sake.
Where Her fingers touched the sky
Silver starfire sprang from nothing!
And She held Her children fast in Her dreams. ?There was a glory in that forest
As the moonlight glittered down;
And stars shone in the wildwood
When the dew fell to the ground Every branch and every blossom;
Every root and every leaf
Drank the tears of the Goddess in the gloaming! ?There came steel, there came cities
Wonders terrible and strange,
But the light from the first-wood
Flickered down until the Change.
And every field, every farmhouse,
Every quiet village street
Knew the tears of the Goddess in the gloaming! ?Now the Sun comes to kiss Her
And She rises from Her bed
They are young-and old-and ageless
Joy that paints the mountains red.
We shall dance in Their twilight
As the forests fall to sleep,
And She whispers in our ears the word remember!?
When he looked back, the Southsiders were rapt; there were tears in some eyes, and some of those were scarred warriors. Back in the Willamette country there was a saying that Mackenzies were a clan, divided into septs, duns, choirs, choruses and soloists, and he was used to praise for his singing from that exacting audience. The Southsiders were more than moved; transported, even.
And sure, you can strike home in a man?s soul-or a woman?s-more easily by telling them stories that speak to their heart than by making arguments to convince their minds. Listening to stories comes naturally to us. Argument you have to study, like sword-work or archery, however much it seems a part of you once you have it learned. Striking home in their souls is what I need to do the now.
He went on, his voice falling into the storyteller?s cadence: ?Now Niall was a great warrior… fighter… bitchin? tough stud… but he had been fostered far from home because of the hatred of his father?s second wife, and he was almost a stranger to the land of his birth. Yet the King must be as a husband to the Lady of the land, for he stands in the God?s place; as She is the Earth, so also Lugh of the Sun-so that folk and mine call Him-is the rain that brings the soil to life in springtime, and the warmth that ripens the harvest. This crone invited Niall to share her fire and her food, which were poor enough, but he being a man well trained in seemly ways did not refuse the hospitality even when she asked him to lie down on the same pallet as she-?
He told most of it and sang parts-the Southsiders had a few simple catches, as much chanted as sung to nothing more complex than the beat of palms on thighs or sticks on rocks, but they?d never heard trained singers before and they hung on every note, often weeping openly or looking half tranced.