The people gave their heads a quick shake, then looked at one another, appalled.
“Did I really say a thing like that?”
“Rhys, I’m sorry!”
“I can’t believe I’d be telling such lies”
“Rhys, I can’t imagine what got into my head!”
“I can!” Rhys pointed a trembling finger at Kerlew. “His words!”
Everyone stared, then muttered with superstitious dread and moved a little farther away from the strangers.
Grandma appealed to Gar. “Bid him stop, stranger!”
“Stop?” Gar protested. “I haven’t even told him to start! It’s the gods who command him, Grandmother, not me!”
“All right; plead with your patron for us,” Grandma growled. “Which god do you serve, anyway?”
“I speak the words of Taranis the Thunderer,” Gar answered, “God of the Wheel and of Change!” His voice rose, carrying to the whole clan. “Do not kill anyone of your own kind, says Taranis—and your own kind is any Celt, any of the New People of this world!” His voice sank to an ominous rumble. “And of course, I do not need to tell you what would happen if you were to slay or even hurt one of the Old Ones!”
“Why should we heed what you say?” a clansman demanded angrily. “The gods are only stories for small children—they aren’t real! All that’s real is food and houses and rifles and gunpowder and bullets!”
The crowd muttered in answer, trying to work up enough anger to counter their sudden superstitious fear.
“Are your clothes real?” Gar demanded. “Are they as real as the cloth from which they were cut? Of course, for both were made by people! But was the cloth as real as the person who made it?”
“Why … of course.” But the clansman sounded uncertain; he looked to his kinfolk for support.
“I see what you’re saying.” An old woman frowned at Gar. “We may be real, but not as real as the gods who made us. Trouble is, stranger, they may not be real at all—only one more thing that people made up, like a song or a dance!”
“If you invented the gods, then they stand for you,” Gar countered. “Who is the patron of your clan?”
“Why … Toutatis,” Grandma said, frowning. “But he’s just a figurehead, a…” She left the sentence hanging, not wanting to finish the last word.
“Symbol?” Gar finished for her. “Then if you don’t honor him, you don’t honor your own clan—and if you fail to honor your clan, you fail to honor yourself.”
“You don’t mean we each have to have a god of our very own?” Rhys said, lip curling.
“Don’t you?” Gar challenged. “When you were small and hearing the tales of the gods, wasn’t there something within you that seized upon one god, one single one out of many, and said, ‘Yes, this is my favorite!’ ”
Everyone looked astonished, then glanced quickly at his or her neighbors to see if they had noticed.
“Well … sure,” Rhys said. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“Everybody does,” Gar agreed, “or if you can’t find one, you develop your own picture of the Godhead, the ultimate God, your own understanding—and it helps you discover what kind of person you are, which is a very large step towards discovering who you are. Which god did you choose, young man?”
“Mider,” Rhys admitted reluctantly, “the God of Good Judgment, the God of Common Sense.”
“No wonder you insist on hearing proofs of what we claim!” Gar smiled. “And haven’t you lived your life ever since as that god would have?”
“I see what you’re saying!” the old woman cried. “If we don’t respect our gods, we don’t respect ourselves.”
“Yourselves, each and every one of you.” Gar nodded. “Yourselves as a clan—and yourselves as Celts, as New People, as human beings! Whether you believe in your gods or not, you must respect them or begin to fall apart!”
“Fall apart…” a few voices repeated, and people looked at one another in astonishment.
“And you’d have us respect the gods by doing as you tell us?” Grandma studied Gar from under lowering brows. “What else would they have us do besides stop killing?”
“Don’t steal, not just from one another, but from other clans!”
A roar of protest answered him. Gar waited it out, then raised his arms. “Stealing, started more feuds than one! Especially don’t steal anybody’s wife or husband either, not even for a few hours! That’s the kind of thing can make clansman kill clansman.”
“You’re telling us the things that can make a clan fall apart,” Grandma growled. “That’s only common sense.”
“Then you agree with it?”
“Within the Leary clan, yes. Clancies are another matter.”
“Are they?” Gar demanded, looking Grandma straight in the eye. “How much of what you think to be their wickedness is really simple slander?” Grandma started to protest, but Gar’s voice rode over hers as he turned to the people again. “The gods hate lies like that! Don’t slander one another—no insults, no lies, no foul words aimed at other people! It might not only start a feud between clans—it might start a feud within a clan!” The people stared at the thought, then shuddered.
“Speak truth or don’t speak at all!” Gar orated. “Say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when you mean ‘no’—and if you can’t make up your mind, say so!”
“Next you’ll be telling us not even to think of doing any of those,” Grandma said with contempt.
“Think about them? You can’t help some of that! You can’t keep from wanting someone else’s rifle, if it seems to be better than yours—or other people’s spouses, especially if they’re really good-looking. But you can keep from really trying to get them, planning for it, scheming for it. Will you or won’t you, that’s the question. Wanting it you can’t help—willing it, you can, and shouldn’t!”
“Anything else?” Grandma grated. “How many other laws will the gods load upon us?”
“Only those, and they’re a lot fewer than the backbreaking load of laws your ancestors had before things fell apart. Anything else people are doing wrong, you can figure out from those.”
“And that’s all Taranis asks of us?” a clansman asked, looking worried.
“I’ll make it simpler,” Gar called out. “Respect your kinfolk and respect other clans as though they were kin, because somewhere far enough back, they are!”
Uproar filled the room. Gar waited it out, waited for the question he knew was coming, and finally Rhys voiced it. “What if we don’t, stranger?” His eyes were hot, his voice acidic. “What if we don’t choose to stop the feuding? What are you going to do—lay a satire on all of us?”
Kerlew nodded slowly, eyes glittering with all the bitterness and hatred of the outcast.
“Worse than that,” Gar said quickly. “How would we know you were doing it, after all?”
“That’s so!” A smiled curved Rhy’s lips. “You can’t punish what you don’t see!”
“But the Old Ones will see you!” Gar called out. “The Wee Folk honor the gods, even the gods of the New People—and there are many, many of them: an elf in every pasture, a fairy in every tree!”
The people turned to one another in furious muttered debate and fear shone in many eyes. The gods’ existence they might question, but nobody doubted the presence of the Wee Folk—their presence, or their power.
“Disobey the gods at your peril!” Gar cried out. “March to war against the Clancies and the Wee Folk will strike you down!” The crowd’s debate died down to a fearful mutter; lamplight reflected the whites of their eyes.
“All well and good,” Grandma said sourly, “but what if the Clancies march against us? We’re not going to stand there and let them butcher us!”