The bodhran drum began, beaten slow but gradually speeding its tempo, and then the pipes behind it. The young man's clear tenor joined as Juniper's fiddle did:
"Donnal's come up the hill, hard and hungry
Donnal's come doon the bill, wild he is and angry-"
Mathilda leaned over, looking at the kilted dancers; Aoife was familiar, but the other woman was a little younger, just turned eighteen, with long brown hair in a single braid and an unremarkable round face made pretty by youth and health and happiness. She wore her shirt open a little to show a new tattoo at the base of her throat. That might have been a crescent moon, but it wasn't; it was a strung bow, the Warrior's Mark, a fashion among the younger Mackenzies when they passed the First Armsman's tests and became liable for the Clan's fighting levy, and for duties like this trip escorting the Chief. Sam Aylward himself disapproved of it, as he did painting faces before a fight, but both new customs had spread nonetheless.
Rudi thought it had come from one of the old songs or stories, but he wasn't sure; he was sure he intended to have it done himself, just as soon as he was old enough.
Mathilda whispered in Rudi's ear as the two Mackenzies unsheathed their dirks and held them overhead, the bright metal catching the lantern light; they stood side by side, left hand on hip, weight on that leg and right toe just touching the floor, and they'd put their flat bonnets back on, with the signs of their sept totems, Aoife's raven-feathers and Liath's tuft of wolf-fur.
"Liath: I thought her name was Jeanette?" she said. "Doesn't she live at Sam's place?"
"She's his wife's youngest aunt's daughter," Rudi said automatically, leaning forward as the dancers took their first step forward. "Changed her name when she was Initiated just a little while ago-you know, the way a lot of people do, if their birth-name's old-fashioned and silly. Aoife used to be called Mary, I think."
"Oh," Mathilda said. "I think some people do that up north, too. Different stories, though, so the names are different. Arthur and Roland and Ger and Lancelot and Verranger."
Liath and Aoife bowed and twirled and leapt, their feet flashing faster and faster, the sound of them on the worn oak boards of the barn's floor like the skittering throb of the bodhrans themselves, dancing side-by-side, then face-to-face, then back-to-back. The audience clapped to the rhythm and roared out the chorus:
"Come like the white wolf, Donnal MacGillavry!
Here's tae the Chief and to Donnal MacGillavry!"
"Oh, no!" Rudi said suddenly, slapping himself on the forehead.
"What?"
"That's what Dan meant about Aoife falling in love again! He was bummed about it too!"
"I thought her boyfriend's name was Connor?"
"Connor Ianatelli? He dumped her and got handfasted with someone over at Dun Carson and moved there just after Yule. Didn't you hear about it?"
"Who cared about that soppy stuff? I was sooooo excited when Sam gave me that bow. A new one! All my own!"
Rudi smiled. "Well, Mom did lay that geasa on all of us, you know. So Sam had to be as nice to you as he was to me. Besides, he likes you. It's hard to tell that with Sam if you don't know him."
"So Connor got married and left?" Mathilda said; she liked to keep things straight and orderly in her mind.
"Yup. To a cousin of Cynthia Carson, a girl named: named: " He slapped himself on the forehead again. "A girl named Airmed! Her family's got a part of the new vineyard there. I remember it all 'cause Mom yelled at Aoife about it."
"Yelled at Aoife because Connor dumped her for Airmed?"
"No, 'cause Aoife was so mad she tried to cast a spell to make Airmed's toenails split and her hair fall out and things."
"Can't you witches do that?"
"Well, of course we can, we're just not supposed to, it's against the rules. Besides, Airmed's a witch too. That's really really really not a good idea, putting a hex on another witch. They can tell."
"Oh. Well, so who's Aoife in love with now?"
"Liath, of course," he said impatiently, gesturing towards the dance, and rolled his eyes upward.
"But Liath's a girl too!"
"So?" Rudi said, puzzled. "Sometimes that's the way it happens."
Mathilda looked at him. "But that's against the rules. And it's: icky."
"Why?" Rudi asked, and then nodded as he remembered. "Oh, yeah, it's geasa for you Christians, isn't it?" he said tolerantly. "Like not eating meat in Lent? It's different for us witches."
"But then why was Dan bummed about it?"
" 'Cause Aoife's cool most of the time, but she's a complete pain when she falls for someone, everyone knows that. You weren't around the last time, with Connor. She gets real boring; all she wants to talk about is how wonderful whoever-it-is is; she won't do anything that's fun at all, it's all gooey eyes and mushy songs and stuff like it wasn't just the same way the last time. And we're gonna be stuck listening to her 'cause Uncle Chuck has her guarding us all the time: maybe it'll be better this time: Oh, Lord and Lady, Liath's in the First Levy now, she'll be on guard with us too! You're my best friend, Matti, but this guarding thing is a pain in the arse. Really. I wish your folks would: oh, never mind."
"Am I?" Mathilda asked, her voice quiet.
"Are you what?"
"Your best friend."
"Well, duh, why do you think I hang out with you all the time?" he said cheerfully, giving her a punch on the arm. "It's not so Uncle Chuck can have the same boring grown-ups following us around with spears, you know. Or because you're my fostern-sister. You're cool."
They leaned back against the hay bale, sharing their plaids as the night grew a little chilly, and passing the chunk of fruitcake back and forth for the sort of small bites you took when you were full and just eating for the taste. Mathilda felt her eyelids drooping as Juniper sang "Odhche Mbath Leihh," slow and sad and sweet.
Then they came open with a snap, a wariness prickled by a change in the air. Not at anything that was said or done, or any sudden sound at first. Then she noticed a mud-splashed man in leather pants and jacket talking to Edward Finney; and the farmers face changed. He came over to Juniper, bending to talk in whispers. Juniper's face changed as well, and she rose to walk over and crouch before the children. Rudi smiled sleepily at her, and she absently smoothed a lock of red-gold hair back from his forehead.
"Mathilda, my dear, I have news for you."
"What?" Mathilda said, feeling a sharp stab of fear draining away the good feelings.
"Your mother has come to Corvallis, child. You'll be seeing her tomorrow, or very soon."
Chapter Six
Corvallis, Oregon
January 1lth, 2008/Change Year 9
T he fort on the eastern bank of the Willamette guarded the twin bridges running into Corvallis town, but the ground around it was open save for a small lake and a few woodlots, cultivated fields that had been part of the University's experimental farm, and more that had once been a golf course. In midwinter all that was fallow ground, dusty green pasture, or the lumpy dark brown of plowed furrows, patches of it covered by a drifting ground-mist that turned distance to shadow and trees to looming shapes.
A small stone monument outside the gate listed the names of those who'd died defending the desperately needed crop in that first dreadful year. Lieutenant Sally Chen remembered those days, sometimes much better than she wanted to, late at night; remembered the cramping hunger in her belly as her bones poked through her skin, and the cry of bring out your dead: She'd been a first-year student then, and used a sharpened shovel in the scramble to keep refugees and foragers off the fields of grain and vegetables and the hoarded livestock; helped bring in the harvest too, often with her bare hands or a kitchen knife. She'd also fought in the internal battles, carefully not commemorated, with those who wanted to fall in with the state government in Salem and its insane plan to put all the food in one pot and try to carry everyone through. When that civil war was over-and the plague victims had been buried in mass graves north of the Hewlett-Packard plant-there had been food enough for the survivors in the city and its surrounding territory to keep eating until the next year's crop: just barely.