“Here, eat this. You look as bad as you claim I do.” Cu handed her a bowl of steaming stew and flopped down beside her.
She blinked her eyes sleepily at him. “Is it safe?”
“Like I’d poison you? I’d have to drag your carcass back to Partholon.”
Brighid sniffed the stew apprehensively. “You’re probably not strong enough to drag me,” she muttered.
“Don’t underestimate me,” he said.
Brighid met his eyes. There was something behind the flatness. It wasn’t that he looked like the Cu she’d spoken with the night before-the happy, carefree young warrior whose charisma drew others to him-but she was sure she saw a spark of something, and that spark suddenly eased her exhaustion. He was talking to her. Actually he was bantering with her. It had to be a step in the right direction.
“I like the goose, Brighid!” Like an annoying habit, Liam took his place beside her with an impish grin. “Kyna said she thought goose tasted like grease, but I don’t.”
“Well, grease is good for you,” Brighid answered inanely as she struggled for something adult and wise to say to the boy.
“I knew it!” he said joyously, digging into his bowl of stew.
“Good for you? Grease?” Cuchulainn said under his breath.
“Do you want to trade places with me and sit next to him?” Brighid whispered back.
“Harrumph,” Cu said, becoming very busy with his own meal.
“That’s what I thought,” she murmured, and then concentrated on her own stew while she let the warmth of the tightly circled tents and the gentle sounds of tired children wash over her. When Cu passed her the wineskin, she nodded her thanks and drank deeply from it, feeling the strong, red liquid spread its heat throughout her body.
She was just about to tell Cu to take first watch so she could retreat to their tent before she embarrassed herself by falling asleep sitting up, when Nevin and Curran stood. Anticipatory whispers swelled and then stilled as the twin storytellers waited patiently for the children to settle themselves.
“Our journey to the land of our foremothers continues,” Curran said, looking from one upturned face to another.
“Today we feel their ancestral pleasure in the joyful tears they send from the sky,” Nevin said.
Brighid snorted softly to herself. If the miserable drizzle was tears of joy then she wished the damned foremothers would contain their happiness. She felt eyes on her, and looked across the fire at Ciara, who caught her gaze with an amused smile that said the Shaman was reading her expression again. The Huntress looked hastily away.
“Bathed in ancestral approval, our tale tonight evokes a time long past,” Curran said.
“It begins in a place of legends, celebrated for the beauty, wisdom, and integrity of the women educated there,” Nevin continued.
Brighid’s curiosity was pricked and she roused herself from her sleepiness. They had to be talking about the Temple of the Muse-there was no single place in Partholon more celebrated for its rich history of higher learning or for the gifted women who studied there.
“Tell us, children,” Curran said, “what are the names of the magical nine Incarnate Goddesses who dwell at the Temple of the Muse?”
“Erato!” Liam’s voice called eagerly from beside her. “She is the Muse of Love!”
Brighid ignored the besotted look he gave her, as well as the soft laughter that followed from the adult hybrids. Thankfully Kyna was quick to call out the next goddess’s name.
“Calliope! The Muse of Epic Poetry.”
And then the other seven names and titles followed, shouted by young, eager voices.
“The Muse of History is Cleio.”
“Euterpe, Muse of Lyric Poetry.”
“Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy.”
“Polyhymnia, Muse of Song, Oration and Mathematics!”
“My grandmother!” A small winged girl said as she jumped up and down, wings fluttering wildly. “Thalia, Muse of Comedy!”
“Urania is my great-aunt, and she’s Muse of Astronomy and Astrology!” said the young man Brighid recognized as Gareth.
“And don’t forget Ciara’s grandmother, Terpsichore, Muse of the Dance,” Kyna called.
“We would not forget Terpsichore, child,” Curran said.
“She is the subject of our tale tonight,” Nevin continued.
His pronouncement was followed by a smattering of claps and delighted sounds from the children. Brighid looked at Ciara. The winged woman was smiling happily along with the rest of the New Fomorians. How much time had passed since Terpsichore’s death? Or, for that matter, how long had it been since Ciara’s mother, the Incarnate Muse’s daughter, had committed suicide? With a start, Brighid realized she had absolutely no idea how old Ciara was. She knew one of the attributes the hybrids had inherited from their demon fathers was an unusually long lifespan. Elphame’s hybrid mate, Lochlan, appeared no older than a man in his prime, yet he had lived almost one hundred and twenty-five years. The Shaman looked as if she had lived barely twenty years, but she must be older. She carried herself with the same confidence that Brighid’s own Shaman mother exuded.
Curran’s words reined in Brighid’s wandering mind with the threads of the story.
“Each of the nine goddesses was lovely in her own way, but Terpsichore was a rare beauty even amidst those divine. I remember her well from my childhood. Her beauty was not based simply upon the perfection of her face or figure.”
As if they were one being, Nevin picked up the strand of the story neatly. “Terpsichore’s beauty lay in the magical grace with which she moved. Even as the fragility of her battered body kept her from dancing prayers to her Goddess, she never lost that singular way of moving that clearly marked her as goddess-blessed.”
Battered body? Brighid wondered, already intrigued. It had long been believed by Partholon that after the battle at the Temple of the Muse was lost, the Incarnate Goddesses and their acolytes had been slaughtered by the Fomorian horde. The Huntress thought about the amazing beauty of the paintings and carvings left behind at the New Fomorian settlement. Her eyes slid around the circle of winged people, noting the delicately carved bone jewelry so many of the children wore and the fine tooling of their roughly cured hides. The historians were definitely going to have some rewriting to do. The thought made her lips curve up. That was just one more in a long list of surprises for Partholon.
“Ah, but we get ahead of ourselves,” Curran said. “Terpsichore was the first of our foremothers to die, but not before she left a legacy of life in the bringing of death.”
“Makes no sense at all…”
Cuchulainn’s grumble echoed Brighid’s thoughts, but she frowned at him and shushed the warrior, not wanting to miss any of the story.
“It was a summer’s day like any other at the Temple of the Muse. The trees spread their green coolness throughout the smooth ivory halls of learning. As the women went from temple to temple, studying dance and poetry and the stars, the sweet scent of golden honeysuckle perfumed the walkways. Jewel-colored songbirds darted amidst ceiling frescoes that seemed to be alive.”
“Emerald ivy and bright ropes of flowers cascaded curtain-like from the roofs of the temples.” Nevin smiled at the children who were listening as attentively as the Huntress. “Even in the rooms dedicated to the learning of medicine and nursing of the sick, there was comfort and joy. The Temple of the Muse is a place of great beauty.”
“It is also a place of peace,” Curran continued. “Unlike Partholon’s patroness, Epona, the Muses are not goddesses of war, and thus their temples were ill-equipped to be used as fortresses for anything more violent than the war against ignorance. Terpsichore had been entertaining the young acolytes who had fallen ill with a debilitating pox. Those of us who knew her, understand that the Incarnate Goddess used her talents to bring others joy and to honor her Goddess, even if in doing so she put herself at risk. So it is not surprising that she, too, became ill.”