"Priest and Priestess are you, as are we," Juniper said, raising them and exchanging the ritual kiss. "Free are you, and your folk, as are we."
She'd known Tom Brannigan for a decade and a half now, since she first drove herself through Sutterdown to visit the land she'd inherited from her great-uncle and stopped for a beer and to try to set up a gig playing her brand of music. Most of that time he'd seemed a slightly stolid sort like his wife, Mora, people whose imagination came out in his brewing and a mutual gift for making others feel at home in their tavern. She had no doubt he'd taken up the Craft because everyone else in Sutterdown seemed to be converting after the Reverend Dixon dropped dead, which made it a likely looking thing to do, and had risen in it because he was shrewd and popular, ambitious for his town and himself as well.
Together, Juniper and Dennis chanted; and now there was a look on Brannigan's face that she had never seen there before, but recognized without a moment's hesitation-recognized from the inside. A wild torrent that was joy and terror and neither, a communion with something utterly Other and yet as familiar as a parent's touch in the night; vast beyond knowing and woven into every atom of your being.
When he rose the Dun Juniper pair stepped back and bowed low and listened as he called the Goddess into his High Priestess, and tears of happiness poured down her cheeks.
For Juniper the feeling was different this time; more like warm hands pressed on her shoulder, and the shadow of an infinite smile: Well done, daughter of our hearts.
Speeches, Juniper thought. Do I never get away from them?
Brannigan and Mora were still shaken; joyful, but not all that coherent. And it took a lot to leave Tom Brannigan speechless:
There were about a thousand people living in Sutterdown, and double that here for the festival; more than one in eight Mackenzies, and a rather higher proportion of the teenagers and adults. All of them seemed to be looking up at her, grouped in a big semicircle on the eastern slopes of the hill that held Sutterdown's great covenstead. Behind her the needfire crackled in the new covenstead's hearth, and torchbearers stood ready to race out with the teine eigin blaze to kindle festival bonfires and household stoves.
"Mackenzies!" she said. "Ostara is the promise of spring, and Beltane is the promise fulfilled as summer comes back to us. We've pruned and we've planted, plowed and sown, sheared and doctored our stock and seen to the lambing, swept winter out of our houses and our hearts. I think we've earned a little celebration on this night when the veil between the worlds is thin, don't you?"
A roaring cheer spread up the hillside; the bagpipers were at it again, and the massed drums at the foot of the hill thundered, until she raised her hands once more.
"Now, we've dedicated this town to the God and the Goddess, and that's something else to celebrate. There's one thing I want each and every one of you to remember, though: That does not mean that it's any less the hometown of our friends and kinfolk who still follow other ways. There are many pathways; what matters is that they head for the same place, and rightly walked, they all do. Remember that!"
And don't be unkind to poor Reverend Jennings and his flock, she thought, nodding to where they stood among the crowd. Dwindling and aging though they were; not more than one in five here in Sutterdown, less elsewhere in the Clan's territories. And few of them under thirty these days; she suspected their children would be the last Christians among the Mackenzies. Poor wee, well-meaning, bewildered man.
She raised her arms and her voice, casting it to reach them all. "And listen to the words of the Great Mother, Who of old was called Artemis, Astarte, Dione, Melusine, Aphrodite, Ceridwen, Diana, Arianrhod, Brigid: Sing, feast, dance, make music and make love, all in My presence, for My law is love unto all beings: all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals."
She paused, put her hands on her hips, and tossed her head. "Well then, what would you be waiting for the now? Didn't you hear what the Goddess just said? Get out there and have fun, by Divine command! Go! Scat!"
The drums roared, and a long chain of dancers began to weave its way through the flower-decked streets.
It was the third night of the Beltane festival, and Juniper Mackenzie and her First Armsman were down in the parkland outside Sutterdown's western gate. Juniper's mask was that of a raven; it overshadowed her mouth without covering it, which was convenient as she watched the dancers and nibbled on a skewer of chicken grilled with an intriguing honey-mustard-garlic glaze. By unspoken convention, festival masks meant you weren't really you, and so nobody could approach her on business.
She felt a little hoarse from the singing she'd done over the past days, and the talking; her legs were slightly sore with all the dancing. She'd been around a dozen maypoles, and presided at games and contests, in archery and sword-play, running and wrestling and jumping, music and dancing, judged pie-baking and embroidery and cabbages of unusual size and children's cherished hand-reared prize sheep. The festival had been fun; also useful, taking the pulse of her folk, chatting with leaders from this dun and that, quite a few quiet sessions with the Brannigans and others prominent here in Sutterdown; they'd agreed to repay help they'd had with the town wall by assisting several smaller settlements to improve their defenses, and take a lead in the building of Dun Laurel.
The likelihood of another serious clash with the Protector had been glumly accepted.
Other needful things had gotten hammered out: the new high school, a preliminary consensus to clear the pilings of the bridges in Salem at low water, after Lughnassadh, if they could get the Bearkillers to help, which she was fairly confident of. The look and range of goods brought to sell or swap also told her much about how farms and workshops and trade were going, as much as Andy Trethar's record books. Things were going well, or would be if war wasn't looming over them; in some ways her people were better off than the Bearkillers. They seemed to have a broader range of handicraft skills, if perhaps less machinery, and they didn't have to support a group of full-time fighters either, or Corvallis 's heroic but slightly crazed determination to keep their university in being.
To top it all off, Rudi had led the Juniper Ravens-his Junior Little League team-to triumph in the inter-sept competition just that afternoon, and was now sleeping off a well-earned ice-cream gorge back at the hostel Sutter-down's Ravens had set up in an old building for the use of visiting members of their sept. Most of the town's residents were of the Elk totem, and many had been Elks even before the Change, but there were a fair scattering of others.
Juniper gave a reminiscent smile that verged on a purr. Speaking of topping: On the second day of the festival she'd also managed a very pleasant time of her own in a Beltane bower with a friendly Sutterdown shoemaker of her acquaintance, a handsome man who had extremely educated hands.
And Sam and I got something still more private yet put together, too, she thought with a mixture of grim resignation and wistfulness. I've plenty of good friends, but love, that hasn't come my way. Someday, Goddess willing:
The pair near the bonfire were doing a sword dance in modern Mackenzie style, only distantly related to the old Scottish version. Here the swords were Clan-style short swords rather than claymores, and they were laid in turf with one edge down and the other up, points inward to make a circle divided into four Quarters. The dance was done with a partner, though still with one hand on the waist and the other high, and it involved a good deal of stepping and leaping; the tune was "Ghillie Chalium," which began slow and then went more and more swiftly as fifes and pipes squealed, bodhrans rattled, and the fiddle rang.