Arden kept a careful distance from Valeria, but his eye was almost always on her, watching her eat with the others, a kiss on her cheek here, a cheerful insult about her Roman origins there. She moved with quiet aura like the goddess she was about to play. What did she think of them now, in her secret heart? What would she do when her husband finally came for her, as someday he surely must?
She had her own goblet. "I'm learning to like their mead and beer," Valeria confessed to Savia, even while discreetly keeping her own eye on Arden.
"Don't drink so much that you forget who you are."
At length, Brisa touched Valeria's arm to escort her away. Arden disappeared as well. The merriment and feasting went on in their absence, more logs hurled onto the fire. Finally there was the low, long call of a horn, echoing down the pasture, and the crowd quieted somewhat, most of them drunk now.
Kalin's voice came out of the dark. "Make way for the good god Dagda!"
Music began, the beat of drums and swirl of pipes, men and women tapping and swaying to its rhythm. Out of the darkness a stag appeared: five-pointed antlers, muzzled head, shoulders draped with dressed deerskin. It was a stag with two legs, human and yet not human, quick and strong. The animal darted, stopped, stepped hesitantly, and stopped again-and then, its head up, it recognized the clan and the fire that welcomed it every year, and danced ahead. Blue human eyes looked out from the holes in its head, the great rack of antlers dipping up and down like a god in rut.
It was looking for its mate.
"Dagda!" the assembly cried. "Lord of all the gods!"
Round the fire the stag danced, three times. Then the horn sounded again.
"Morrigan of the horse roams free on the pasture," Brisa cried. "Now she comes into the circle of fire!"
The goddess ran headlong into the circle as if pushed, rearing to a halt just before crashing into the flames. The horse-goddess whirled in confusion as if bewildered or intoxicated. In truth, of course, she was both. Her head was that of the horse, a framework of hide and free-flowing mane, and her body, freed of its cloak, showed a goddess's form. A light dress was belted in an X across her breasts, and the firelight through the tunic silhouetted slim, muscular legs. A belt of gold cinched her narrow waist, its ends tied over and dropping into the grotto between her thighs. The tusks of a boar gleamed at her neck. The goddess-pony dashed this way and that, every attempt at escape blocked by the surrounding corral of laughing humans. Giving up, she danced light and carefree as a filly around the tower of flames, the antlered stag following half a circle behind, the drums pounding harder and the pipes swirling toward some kind of climax.
"Morrigan of the horse! Her belly promises spring!" Fearing that something irrevocable was about to happen, the goddess kept darting ahead. She'd pause, allow Dagda to approach, and then bolt. Around and around they danced, Dagda ducking and rearing in feigned impatience, Morrigan whirling to give a glimpse of her thighs. The heat made them sweat, and the night made them shiver.
The drums were accompanied by pounding feet and clapping hands in rhythmic thunder, the pace accelerating as Dagda drew ever nearer to the goddess whose fecundity would bring back light and food. She was slowing from exhaustion, looking over her shoulder at the antlered buck, her movements becoming more liquid and seductive as her soul was swallowed by her costume. Her hips were in rhythm with the music, her bare feet skipping on heat-curled grass. The sweat and heat picked out the points of her breasts, the geometry of her hips. The stag's arms were bare and powerfully muscled, a bone necklace rattling on his chest as he danced.
"Catch her, good god! Give us promise for the end of winter!" Yet still she darted away. It seemed the tension of the dance might never end.
Then Dagda suddenly stopped, crouched, and whirled, darting swiftly around the fire the other way. He met a surprised and dazed Morrigan on the other side before she realized he'd changed direction. He grasped her with his arms and swept her around in great, dizzying, dancing turns, the two animal heads muzzle to muzzle, his horns like the branches of the bare trees that reached for the moon. He'd captured her! Or had she allowed herself to be captured? And even as the goddess stumbled, exhausted, he swept her off her feet and into his arms, her horse's head falling off. Valeria looked up at the beast who held her with dazed, surrendering eyes.
The Celts howled.
Then the stag ran off into the dark, still carrying her.
Savia was weeping.
Arden's horse was waiting, and he cast his own headdress aside, the antlers tumbling away on the meadow. Valeria was lifted up onto the stallion's back, and he vaulted up behind her. "Let's reclaim our home from the dead," he whispered. They pounded toward the sentry line of lighted lanterns, their candles guttering, the moon orange as it set in the west. The horse galloped up the winding line of light as the others watched from the meadow below, and then it disappeared into the hill fort.
It was dark and silent inside Tiranen. Arden slipped from the horse and caught Valeria as she slid down, holding her tight to keep her bare feet out of the frosty mud. Then he strode toward the Great House where the dead had feasted, banging open the doors with the confidence of the greatest of all the gods. He saw with satisfaction that the mugs of milk had been drained and the platters had been emptied of their apple and barley. Their ancestors had been satiated. The ghosts were gone.
He carried her past the fire pit, his boot kicking a fresh log onto the embers of a fire. Then through a tapestry of winged birds to a chamber she'd never seen before.
There was a winding wooden stair, its balustrade carved with the scales of a snake. At its top was a sleeping loft. Thin windows looked out over moors and mountains silvered with starlight. Valeria had swooned as he'd carried her, not entirely sure if she were goddess or mortal woman, alive or dead, in a dream or reality. Now Arden laid her on a bed piled high with bear and fox fur, closed the chamber's shutters, and lit a fire on its hearth. She watched him dazedly, and all she knew was that she wanted the arms, chest, and heart of Dagda.
He knelt to whisper. "Let's tear down the Wall, Valeria."
He grasped her hand and gently slipped off her silver wedding ring with its intaglio of Fortuna, goddess of Fortune. She'd forgotten she even wore it. Then he produced the sea-horse brooch she'd abandoned in the forest so long ago. "I've kept this since I first saw you. For Samhain we join these in a golden goblet."
The ring and brooch rang as he dropped them into a cup.
She was trembling. "I don't know where I am. Who I am."
"You're one of us."
He came to her then, the warmth of his skin a renewed fire, and kissed with a tenderness she'd never known. Instead of the rough urgency of the stag, he was gentle as he undressed her, murmuring words and stroking her skin in transcendent wonder.
She was more beautiful than he'd imagined, her breasts high and full, her nipples roseate, her hips like the curve of the polished apple that had fallen from her hand.
His body was hard and hot like sanded wood, and as they continued to kiss, his passion and urgency grew.
She opened to him like a flower.
The gods joined and cried out even as the setting moon sent beams of radiance through the cracks of the shutters. Then the east glowed with promise, and the last of the grinning gourds, in the smoky line far below, finally burned out.
The New Year had been achieved.
XXXII
Valeria woke at midafternoon to a world that seemed utterly changed and newly magical. She stretched her drowsy body in its nest of fur and woolens with languid laziness, physically satiated. What joy, followed by what an odd combination of depletion and fulfillment! Who'd known her body could be made to feel like that? Their beings had joined like flash and thunder, every nerve on fire, and now it was the aftermath of a vast and wonderful storm, everything wet and glistening in its wake.