She stroked a gentle finger across the baby’s brows, which were knitting briefly in some infant dream. The child’s skin was soft, downy, and the long, dark eyelashes curled and made shadows on the rounded, perfect cheeks.
Lora had earlier taken the baby outside. In a brief ceremony that Joanna knew about and accepted — even if she could not wholeheartedly approve it — the elder had briefly stripped the baby naked and laid her on the ground.
‘Child of the Earth, feel the Earth beneath you.’ Her quiet chanting tones had reached Joanna, inside the hut. ‘Mother Earth, feel your child who lies on your great breast.’
Margaret had squawked her protest at the sudden chill of the night air on her bare skin, and Lora had bundled her up and brought her inside again.
But before she had given her back to Joanna, she had knelt down in the firelight and studied the child. Margaret, eyes wide open, had stared back at her.
‘She will be one of the great ones,’ Lora murmured. ‘She will have the skill, Joanna. And, unless I am very much mistaken, she has the Sight.’
Joanna leaned over the edge of the platform. ‘But why? She is not of the blood, is she?’
Lora smiled. ‘Not at her conception, maybe. But you have spent the months that you have carried her learning new ways and new crafts, my lass. Do you not think that some of your acquired knowledge may have gone into her making, as she grew steadily in your belly?’
With wondering eyes, Joanna had stared down at her child.
Now, holding her once more, little body snug against her as the baby slept and dreamed, Joanna tried to work out how she felt. A daughter born safe and well was a joy, perhaps the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her. Oh, there was Ninian, of course. There was always Ninian, even though he was now, and always would be, far away from her. Another son would have had to go the same way; living in a forest hut with his wiccan mother was no life for a boy, not once he grew towards manhood.
A daughter, now, was another matter. But a daughter who, only hours after her birth, was marked out as a great one. . well, that was something else again.
After some time — Lora had gone to sleep, and Joanna at last had the illusion, if not the reality, of being alone with Margaret — she came to the sensible conclusion that it was no use worrying about what might or might not be to come in the future. The baby was here, she was sound and, if she really was what Lora said she was, then there was nothing whatsoever Joanna could do about it.
‘My job is to love you and keep you safe, my little Margaret,’ she crooned softly. ‘That, for now, is all.’ Settling herself — it took some time to find a comfortable position for her bruised, sore body — she cradled the baby in the crook of her arm and, like the tiny child and the old woman lying down by the fire, soon fell deeply asleep.
Outside, the moon rose up in the sky and the small clearing was bathed in pale light. The forest was dark and silent, the stars above like the tiny flames of candles an unimaginable distance away.
All seemed still.
Yet the folk of the forest knew that another soul had been born to them and, in secret, unknown dells and caverns, there were quiet celebrations. It was Samhain, after all, one of the forest people’s major festivals.
To have a Samhain child to welcome just made it even better.