"Hey, Unc' Will, you don't believe those stories about dumb blonds, do you?"
"I used to, truth to tell, but now I got me a tow-haired Swedish grandson and he's as smart as a whip," he snorted. "I won't say which side of the family he got it from."
She blinked then, shocked that the tears she'd fought back were still waiting. I can't cry now. Later, but not now. "Oh, God, Unc' Will, I miss him!"
He nodded, gave her shoulders a brief squeeze, then stood straight beside her and waited for the noise to die, blocky and strong and looking out at their people with shrewd eyes dark in his weathered, coffee-colored face. The crowd fell quiet bit by bit.
"Mike Havel was like a son to me," he told them shortly. "I'm grieving with you."
He crossed himself. "I hope he's with God now: or that he doesn't have too long a spell in Purgatory. God knows and we all know he wasn't a perfect man; he wasn't the prayin' sort, and he had him quite a temper, and he was a bad man to cross, a hard man to his enemies. Hell, folks, if y'all find a perfect man, come runnin' and tell me-I ain't going to nohow waste my time looking around for one, except Jesus his own self."
A burst of startled laughter cut across the crowd's mood; when he went on they were coming back to the light of common day, from that other place where Signe had led them, even as sun and winds and shadows fell towards the west.
But that's OK, she thought. They'll remember it the more strongly because it wasn't long. I don't think it could be long, or we'd burn out. Common day is where we live. That other place: it's for visiting and coming back.
Hutton went on: "But Mike Havel was a good man, as good as any I ever met. He stood by his friends and his kin and his given word, and he wasn't never afraid of nothing in all the world. There was no give in that man, and no step-pin' back. Sisu, his old-country folks called it, and Mike had all there was to have. Everything around us here today is his work. Now he's gone."
He put his hand on the head of the boy Signe carried for a moment.
"But like Signe said, his kids are still with us. They say our children are the future, and that's God's truth; I've got grandkids and I hope to see their kids before I go. Mike Havel wasn't afraid to die, for his kids, or for yours, for our future. That's right and fitting; it's a man's work to fight and die for his fam'ly, and it's his pride. But it's also a man's pride-or a woman's-to work for his kids and their future. You know that; you work every day to grow the food they eat and make the clothes they wear. We've got work ahead of us, Bearkillers. The Outfit has to fix up what this war tore down, and we're going to have lots of people moving south. Some'll be honest and hard-workin' folks who'll want to join up with us. They won't have much, but they'll have their hands and their backs and the guts to use them-and remember how we got our start, from people just like them. Others won't be honest, and likely we'll have to fight again.
"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 pinned at his shoulder with silver plaques bearing the five roses of the House of Loring, gifts from Major Jones over in Corvallis.
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 bonnet.
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 grinned at her, the wreath a little askew once more. "Something to that. I felt the same way the first time, you see, even though it was only dress uniform and not this kilt."
"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.