Grace (Short Story)

[Oresai]

She had no grace...knew this because others told her so. A clumsy girl she was, watching others dance like swans, move with fluid beauty, while she knocked her belongings over, bumped into people, who, irritated with her, shoved her rudely out of their way. No grace. No beauty.
Watching children play she saw their own dance of grace, an unselfconscious, youthful thing that had long since deserted her. Watching the dancers at the summer fete she saw the twining of their bodies in the music of love and envied that, sitting alone, wide eyed at the spectacle of it all.
In the lives of the clan, grace and beauty were prized. "touched by the gods", folks were called who had been favoured by grace and beauty. And they were marked as that, as favoured, and treated with respect earned only by the way they looked, the way they moved, and the clansfolk flocked to them when they spoke, and basked in the glow of who they were.
So she lived her life in the shadow of the others, a plain and unmarked woman, and her days were filled with the work of the clan, her people, the essential work of cooking and spinning and weaving the cloth which the clansfolk wore, tilling the strips of land for winter crops, herding the kye down from the hills and sitting at the milking, morning and night.
But she saw the graced ones did no work, but sang their days long and played with one another as they raced the ponies around the township, and danced the dance of love among the stooks at the harvest dances. Charmed lives, they led, the ones blessed with grace.
And she watched her friends flock to them, and bask in their glow, and mimic their ways.

The riders struck in the night. Whooping and hollering their rage, they fired the thatch of the crofthouses and slaughtered the kye and the ponies with poison tipped bolts from blackened crossbows. In the fire of the ruined township the folks were herded and penned like the slaughtered cattle, but for a few who hid from sight and sought ways out of the township to run and get help.
But she never ran. Watching the enemy riders, she counted twice until she was sure of their number, of where they all were, and of how they were led...she marked the leader and his group, for had she not had practice, watching those who led and their sycophants?
Under the burning thatch of the smithy she found a blackened, hot-hilted sword and a small throwing axe.
Running swiftly and quietly behind the mounted enemy, she reached the smouldering remains of the wattle coop and hunkered down. Marking the second in command, she threw the axe at his back and was rewarded by the sight of him pitching from the saddle and the ensuing panic of the other men trying to control their whinnying ponies, startled at the sudden attack.
Amid the panic she ran onward to the safety of a ruined hut and watched as the men of the enemy whirled around, seeking the attacker, and saw two of them ride down the wattle coop, reining the ponies to trample it into the dirt.
And at the edge of the circle of her herded clansfolk she watched the leader whirl his own pony around and around, seeking, searching...and that is when she chose to step out into the firelight and walk toward him.
With a shout he stayed the hand of his warriors who would have shot her with their poisoned bolts. She had relied upon this, upon his curiosity, his arrogance......
She stood before him, a small woman, ragged and dirty and dragging a mans sword beside her. Looking up at him, she issued a wordless challenge in the frank and angry eyes.
Laughing, he dismounted and handed the reins of his pony to another warrior who took up the laughter, as did they all.
She could see behind him, as he strode to her, the remains of her people, shivering, dirty, wounded, the graced ones among them, looking with disbelief at her own stupidity.
She took her gaze from them and appraised the chief before her. A big but slight man. Muscled, lean, not so different from the men of her own clan, different only in ornament, in the cut of his skins and the paint of his own skin.....but in his eyes she saw the expectation of her death.

All grew quiet as all watched, expecting her to die quickly. And in her own heart she knew she faced her death.
But this was to be her moment of grace......
Raising the sword, she felt it become part of her, an extension of will and memory and all she had watched of the menfolks at their training for war lodged in behind her eyes and she met the chieftans sword and did not feel the jar of steel ring her bones like to shatter them, did not feel the force behind his sword arm as she parried and danced with grace the sword dance, a whirl of muscle and steel and the song of blood ringing in the ears and in the heart.
And in a moment the sword she bore pierced his chest and she watched with a bloody, mad grin on her face as his eyes looked into hers and clear disbelief lived there....
Placing one foot on his stomach she kicked and he slipped free, dead, of the blade.
Breathing heavily, she turned to her people, not seeing the graced ones, not seeing favoured ones, seeing only those of her blood as they watched her with fear and terror in their eyes.
Slowly, the sword once more dragging the earth, she turned round to meet her death, and gave once more the warriors mad grin as she danced the battle dance and entered the gateway to the Underworld at the hand of the enemy.

[Oresai]

Where are the sealfolks now, I wondered, walking along the shore. In a wind grown bonedeep cold I buried my nose in the scarf and peered at waves grown huge and cold looking and fierce, tumbling onto the shore with no little force. These were never the waves that gently lapped foreign, golden shores in warmer climates. These weren`t the waves you would see folks surfing in, like merfolk they could seem skimming the sea on sealshaped boards.
These waves belonged to the North, the icelocked lands not so far away, and you could smell the cold in them, you could smell the briny air of shingle shored lands where the great whales swam and the huge white bear birthed her cubs.
So I kicked the stone into the water, staying well enough back not to get wet. For once I`d let the biggest wave wash over me and almost died for it, the chill grip of death reaching my very bones.
So yes, I respected the sea.
It was winter now. In summer these shores were barely warmer. But the sea now, the Sea Mither quietened a bit. Enough to watch the seals come to shore and follow your path along the beaches.
With their dog faces and their doe eyes they popped up and down beneath gentler waves and if it was an especially quiet sea day, you could follow the shape of them, quick grey darts beneath turquoise glassy water.
The sea belonged to them, the seals. Ungainly and heavy on land, they became beautiful beneath water, graceful, fair formed like the Sidhe women who captured the hearts of men deep in hollow hills with song, with dance, with a glance beneath long sweeping lashes....
Once selkie women graced the rocks of these islands. Once the lore of them was known to every child, every adult every gull carrying the sighting of them for folks with the ears to hear.
Once merfolks lived in the shallows and lured sailors to deep cities where old gods dwelled with fins for feet and ridged spines along their backs, gills to breathe water, they had...
Once the goddess of the waves demanded gild price for travel in stormy weather and every sailor who valued life paid it....once the god of the deep demanded blood for the survival of a doomed ship far out to sea, and every sailor who valued his own skin paid it, yet one would lose....
Where are they now, the sealwives, the mermen, the temperamental gods of the sea?
All that survives is the dim memory of superstition, when sailors will offer their spit alone over the side for a fair wind, or toss a meagre silver coin of little value to the denizens of the deep.
Do they hide their form from us, our cousins who love the water? Are they glad to be shot of us, with our arrogant trespass upon their realm?
Or somewhere is there a mourning of sorts, a waterlogged hall wherein dance mermen with courtly grace borne of weightlessness, where upon a coral throne like old worn bone sits an ancient god with sight turned inward, thinking on times past when he netted his coin in great vast catches of respect and the dialogue of ritual?

None of this shows upon the violent, stormy surface of the sea. Like the breath of a vast ice beast the chill from the water mists the shore, like the drumming of the oldest, weariest heartbeat, the waves beat the shingle.
It is no great distance to turn home. One short walk along a track where sand sits under the rock.
There had been no real need to visit the shore on this day. But I was glad I had. Closer to the edge of it, I listened for the song of the merfolks, that eerie haunting ballad which captures the heart and mind and lures you to take ship and journey.
I looked over foam and ice-blue caps for fin or nose or bright liquid doe eyes.
Nothing moved on the surface of the water excepting the mist spray of the foam blown by the winds.
I mourned a little. Where are the children seeking the selkies, where are Ran`s daughters, Manannan`s riders?
I turned my back on it all and hunched deeper into my coat.

And behind her a graceful head rises from the violent waves, grave green eyes watch her head for home, strong muscled arms and fin-bedecked legs tread water, and a salt laden tear adds to the great grieving ocean.

[Oresai]

She ran her hands through the coat of her hound. A big mongrel of a beast he was, long and lean limbed, fleet footed and steady and with a keen sure eye for the hunt.
The hare spitted before them now over the fire had been brought back by the hound.
He had no name, for she didn`t believe in naming beasts...names of their own, they had, secret beastkind names loaded with meaning and form. And her kind rarely got to know them. Oh, he would answer to any name she gave him...repetition of it would teach him to heel at command.
But she loved the hound and hated the things which took the wild out of him, which curtailed the freedoms that were his birthright.
For he was no ordinary hound. Mongrel he assuredly was, but white he was, with pale wild eyes and blood red ears, one of those beasts belonging to the Quiet Folks.
Loping out of the night like a vast, white wolf, he had come to her fires, wary at first, then hungry, jaws slavering with longing for the meat she`d had roasting.
And she had given it all to him, that great white hound. She knew at once she would keep him for as long as he cared to stay.

And they worked well together, hound and woman. He would lope steadily before her, in and out of the snarls atween the trees and shrubs, nosing softly the undergrowth under the thorns and briars, ears pricked high and coat laid sleek.
And she would follow slowly, keeping a distance away so as not to scare the prey, keeping downwind, eyes keen to spy out the land, watching for deer track and burrow and holt.
And in a flurry of white coat and a soft `whuff` he would put up a rabbit or hare or, rarely the red fox, and the chase would begin and breathlessly she would follow, heedless of thorn and catching, clutching branch, a wild excitement in her heart and blood pounding in her legs and always the spectre of the white hound before her eyes.
And in a blurred moment he would bring down the creature, a snarl and a snap and a broken, bloody neck....and then he would drop the meat and sit, and wait...wait for her to come to him, to lift the meat, to show approval with a soft stroke of white throat and a gentle pat to a heaving, sweating flank.
And back home they would go, a hut in a clearing, nothing more, nothing grand, but silent and safe and quiet. Home.
She would clean the meat and spit it or pot it and add what herbage she had. No salt sullied this meat, no spices overshadowed the fine taste of it.

Because this was the meat of the Quiet Folks. And finer meat she had never eaten, before the hound came....

And at night he would lie outside the door, never coming in, hating the confinement of the hut, the excessive heat of the small fire. She always slept easy with his guarding of the threshold. Great noble head laid on wide paws and he would keep eyes open until she slept on her straw pallet.

She wept on his death, on finding him cold and stiff still lain across the doorway. As if asleep he seemed, still. But his limbs were stiff and chilled and a fine dewy dampness covered his coat. So she wept and cradled the huge, fine head on her lap and wondered if she had angered the Quiet Folk.
It took a whole day to dig the pit for him to be laid in. She gave him her only blanket, a mean thing of open weave and scratchy wool it was, but all she had. She placed him with his face turned North, for his soul to find the way home with ease. And mounding earth over the pit she sang the wordless song of tribute to the Quiet Folks to let them know, this wasn`t her doing, she loved the hound, please do not punish me Kind Folks, I loved him well, I fed him well, I cared much for him, I miss him greatly....
And over the mound of earth she planted spring bulbs and wolfsbane to keep his mound from desecration from the other beasts. And around it she placed stones, old and river worn and smooth.

And spent a cold and lonely night in her hut, the fire a mean thing against the dark, and if she heard a soft snuffle around her door she did not go to see, and if she scented a perfume never before known she did not go to see, and if she saw under the thin planks a light that was not of nature she did not go to see, but spent the dark hours shivering and holding her knees and rocking and keening in a quiet, simple way, and wishing for her hound, her beautiful Sidhe-born hound.

At last sleep took her, as the sun filtered softly through the trees. The wind played with leaf and branch and the whole forest creaked and danced the rhythm of the trees when no-one sees....
And at first she thought the scratching a dream, like the dream of the sounds she heard in the dark, those things she knew she must have dreamed, for nothing like them existed in her world, in the forest world.
But the scratching carried on and soon there was a high whining and she knew the sound well enough....and finally, with no little courage, opened the door.

At her feet, wrapped in an old, open weave, scratchy wool blanket, a small white head poked out. Red ears it had, this pup, red red ears and long, whelp lean legs. A tail lashed the threshold and thumped recognition.
She picked the small beast up and looked into eyes that seemed to know her.
Cradling the hound, she carried it indoors. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks.

In the forest, hare and fox took to their burrows.

[Oresai]

Puffing and panting, she managed to get to the space between the firs through the deep, foot-sucking snow. In the thin moonlight her breath misted and spiralled in the air before her face. She paused for a moment to catch her breath.
Behind her, the track of her journey here was already covered by the soft, fat flakes of snow falling with increasing thickness. She could see cloud moving down from the North, getting ready to blot out the moon and knew that shortly she`d have only the light of the snow itself to see by.
On each side of her stretched the young forest, short fir trees made round and soft looking with the snowfall and throwing scant shadows out around them.
She was cold. Shouldn`t have stopped. Already her furs were icing up around the hood and neck, the moisture of her breath freezing and becoming icy. If she could have seen herself, she`d have seen an ice maiden, one of the Mountain Women maybe, a creature made out of blue light and ice, frosted eyebrows and lashes and the tears she had cried frozen like diamonds upon her cheeks.
Feeling the tingle of pain from the cold in her hands and feet, she pressed on.
The snow fell thicker, and with it came the hush such snow brings, the blanket of silence it throws over forest and earth, and she could hear her breath in the thin air and the thing that followed her too.
She knew it was a young black bear. Had seen the shadow and shape of it when she had turned to look back an hour ago.
She knew it would be hungry, should have been sleeping, but wasn`t, should have been further south but wasn`t, should have attacked and eaten her, but hadn`t.....
So she pressed on. And her mind worked on what to do. She had nowhere to go in mind. Ahead was North. That was all. Mountains, should she reach so far. Thickening forest and wolf and cat, all hungry, all cold and winter-angry for food.
But for now here she was, in the young part of the forest, small trees and much snow, and plenty cold to spur her on.

And on she went.

In a small hollow ringed by the young firs she had to halt. Her breath was ragged and though cold, she was unbearably tired. She knew she had to stop, to rest. And if she left it too long she would not be able to make the fire she needed.
Kneeling, she scraped a patch of snow away to reach the ground. It was deep, that snow, and taking a cold hand from fur glove she touched
the earth beneath. It was frozen, hard and brittle and for a space, felt soulless. But she kept the hand there, and slowly felt the beat of the earth beneath, the soft thrum of life locked in the soil, slumbering beneath the dark and cold of winter.
She stood and put her glove back on. Her breathing was settling now, which made it easier to see. Sharp eyes picked out deadfalls of wood, and though she knew it would spit, rich with sap and tar, she needed heat. So struggling to the rim, she picked up clumsily the branches and twigs, armfuls of it she carried back to the pit and laid down, three journeys she made to gather firewood.

With cold, numb hands she struck the spark which caught the tinder of dried moss, lit the small fire, carefully crouched over it, blowing softly, and when it caught the heat melted the frozen tears and wet her face, melted the frosted lashes and brows and gave her the look of the sauna.
She knelt beside the growing fire.
Looked around. The flames threw increasing darkness around the hollow, the light making it hard to see outside the circle of it. But she knew what was there....the trees, the snow, the bear...
The snowfall began to lessen and the cloud cleared a little, and she looked at the moon. A thin sliver of scimitar he was, a knife edge to cut the darkness, nothing more.
Clumsily she scraped a hollow in the snow beside the fire and laid herself down in front of the flames. She did not care if the sparks caught her furs. Did not care if she slept and did not tend the fire. With the growing warmth feeling was returning to frozen limbs and with it came pain. Weeping quietly, she wrapped her arms around her and crawled into the position of the babe, and watching the fire, slept the sleep of exhaustion.

And in the night the bear came, a scrawny, hungry, confused beast. He had followed the girl because he knew no other thing to do. He had no memory of before. Had no notion of what he should be doing. The wound on his head, made at the point of a spear, had stolen his wits.
And in the dark he saw the flicker of light and flame the girl made. And he retreated a pace, back into the darkness among the trees and snow and moonlight.
He could smell her own wounds. The raw blood of them. Could smell the fatigue and fear and pain on the human. Hunger and need rose up in him. Blood and meat would help his failing strength.
He watched the girl lie down and sleep. He waited, pacing back and forth on silent pads amid deep and smothering snow.
When he heard the regular beath of sleep, he crept forward.
Pacing on silent pads amid deep, soft snow, he scented the blood on the girl, smelled the tracks she had made, followed the thread of her work as she gathered the firewood, lit the fire, scraped the hollow to lie in.
Snuffling quietly, he nosed her fur hood.....

The hunters shout broke the silence of dawn as they spotted the mound of fur. The curve of the bear echoed that of the girl beside the dead fire. With the caution of hunters who know the arts of the bear, the changeling nature of them, the trickster cunning of them, they toed the beast to make sure he was dead before examining what they found.
The bear lay facing North, as if to keep the wind from the girl. At some point in the night, she had turned and made to burrow into the thick, soft black fur, seeking warmth.
The dead fire mocked them both.
Her face was pale and perfect, only the tracks of frozen tears upon her cheeks, the glitter of frozen lashes laying soft against skin.
A hunter reached down, pulled her hood back....they all looked, all backed away, ancient superstitions and fears arising in harsh, warrior minds.

Black, thick hair cascaded out of the hood, like a shadow against the snow. In one part of it though, a wound, a spear wound, bright still with blood and sticky around the raw opening. This wound echoed that of the black bear. And they knew that this bear would not return home with them, the pelt would rot here in the cold Northern air, the bones lie here forever under the uncaring skies. Wordlessly, they turned for home.

And around their hearthfires the children listened to the story of the witch who kept her soul in the form of a young black bear. And when the brave hunters killed the bear, the evil witch also died, wrapped around it like a lover. But when the night wind howls in the coldest winters the children hear a snuffling, enquiring snort outside their hut doors, and the bright and brittle laughter of a young girl, and they scent the heavy musk of bear and glimpse the shadow of a furclad girl upon the walls in the lamplight.

[Oresai]

She drifted off on the heat of the suns rays, shut her eyes and let the soft wind bring scents of summer to her, of flower and cut wheat and seabird and distantly, raucous crow....
And somewhere within the boundaries of summer and her mind, winter came, with the chill of snow and ice and the harsh bitter air that hurt the lungs to breathe.
And somewhere within that landscape she stood up and began to walk, not across a tiny island busy with farming activity, but across a tundra with spirals of dancing snowdrifts, beneath a wide and corpse grey sky heavy with thunder.
And she followed the track of wild geese in the vast skies, north.
And she followed the song of the hungered wolf in the dips and hollows of the landscape, wolves from the north.
And she walked for an age, heedless of time, north.
And stopped at the edge of a ravine and looked down.
Steep and ragged sides spat patters of loose snow and skree into the hollow bottom of it. She laughed and her laughter echoed and faded.
And was answered by the ragged whine of a hound in pain.

So it took another age to climb the ravine, a best left story of slip and slide and heart in the throat at the danger of it, til, leaving bloody handprints on the virgin snow, she blinked in the darkness at the bottom of the ravine and let her sight adjust.
And there, in a corner, half under a fallen boulder, a wild hound lay, eyes rolling in wariness, sides heaving and panting.
A bristled, brindled, grey mottled hound it was, ragged and hurt and watching her approach and still spirited, ready to take a hand, rip a throat, if it could but move.
So softly, quietly, not baring teeth in any foolish grin, she walked toward the hound, and without thinking, put her shoulder to the stone and rolled it away from the torn flank of the beast.
Snarling, the hound half slid, half hauled itself to the relative cover of the side of the ravine, and began to lick the flank clean of blood, still showing her the whites of its eyes.
She just stood, and watched this happen and watched the hound minister to itself the only healing it knew how.
And saw, it was a young male beast, skinny and unkempt, one of the tundras wild hounds which raced the wolves for fleetfooted meat and, sometimes, won, one of the wild hounds which, if winter bit extra hard, took an unwary child or old woman for meat, leaving behind only bones, and tattered strips of cloth, and maybe a half gnawed shoe....

Seeing the twist and turn of the ravine ahead, she turned away from the hound and walked the path of it.
Snow began to fall, soft fat flakes, thickening the quietness, blanketing the light.
Out from the ravine she walked, and into the twilight the snow gifted the vast space ahead.
Hearing the soft pat of the hounds paws behind her, she stopped walking and turned around.
A mere foot away from her, head waist high, soft glowing eyes watched hers, and slowly, he inched forward until he reached where she stood, and the narrow, feral head moved forward to let a damp and rough tongue lick her fingers.
She saw the wound had stopped bleeding now...he limped a little but it would heal.
She saw the ribs stark against the staring coat but saw he would live to bring down meat again.
Carefully, she stroked the head, caressed the ears, and turned again to walk into the snow.

The cry of a gull, nearer now, opened her eyes. The summer sun drew a haar from the sea with the war of heat and chill and water....
The scent from the roses drifted to her like the finest perfume.
And beside her outstretched hand, in the grass, a perfect paw print began to fade......

[Oresai]

Inside the longhouse, there was relative quiet. The men shuffled feet and muttered amongst themselves as the women moved quietly from hearth to the small closed off space behind the skins.
In there, the woman on the bed writhed and twisted, a rag wrapped stick atween her teeth. The old woman looked at her....if she birthed the bairn before dawn rose, there was hope...hope she would live, hope the bairn would live...she looked at the sweat soaked face and limbs, saw the deepening lines of strain set upon the woman, still almost only a child herself, saw the fatigue and weariness in every set of her...,
The younger women looked among themselves and quickly lowered their eyes...they thought they waited only for death to visit her, for the Helhag to take her portion this night. But, they went through the motions...hot, pine scented water was carried in from the hearth. Rags were soaked in it and placed gently upon the writhing woman. Bells were continuously, quietly, rattled to keep evil wights at bay. All was as it should be.
Except the length of time this bairn was taking to be born.

Out in the hall, a murmur arose. The men looked towards the door, which closed in a whirry of snow and sleet and bone chilling wind. As the snow settled, a man walked forward to the hearth.
Hush fell upon the men of the longhouse. The stranger, given shelter by the laws of their kind from the storm, was known to them.
Big he was, a giant of a man even by northmen standards. Fierce he was, a fighter of a man, even by northmen standards. In his walk the thunder of an army rumbled forward. In his sudden laughter at their silence, the thunder of the skies rumbled forth.

From his honoured place in the only armed seat beside the long hearth, the chief rose and stepped aside. Indicated for the stranger to take his place, and with a curt gesture, saw that a horn of warmed and spiced mead was pressed into the visitors hand.
The murmuring of the men began again. It is not for us here to say what they said.
This is the bairns story.

Outside the longhouse, an army camped. No ordinary army this, but one of chancy steeds and dangerous wights, no ordinary army this, but one that rode the winds and hidden tracks of the barrow mounds. Draugr and elvenfolk sat around campfires untouched by the storm, eating and sharing talk.
It is not for us here to say what they said.
This is the bairns story.

In the small tented off area, the woman spat out the rag wrapped stick and began to scream. The old woman bade the younger ones to hold down her limbs, for she tried to rise from the sweat soaked bedding and run from her pain and fear.
All grew quiet around the longhouse, the screams taking an unearthly quality in their ferocity, like to the whelping cries of the Helhounds they were. Breath was held now, and all listened as in harsh guttural tones the old woman began the birthing chant.
Too late now, she thought, if it all went wrong. Too late now, she thought, if Hel had chosen this one for her own.
It would be as it must.
The birthing womans face turned of a sudden pale and the old womans heart juddered in her bony chest as she thought the womans shade might leave this scene yet...but with a great and shuddering breath she bore down, and in that moment all of her young life`s force was brought into play in birthing her bairn.
For the first time in her life, the old woman attended the birth with her eyes tight shut....her ears alone listened to the slithering of the bairn leave the womb, to the exhausted bone deep sigh of the woman, to the quick and practiced movements of the young attendants as they bore up the bairn to see if it lived, to tie the cord, to clean blood and snot from the bairns nose.....
opening her eyes she saw their own shining eyes look at her. The form they held was lifeless, blue skinned and foreign to this world. Thankfully exhuasted and unaware, the woman who had birthed a dead bairn lay deeply asleep, and the old woman thanked the gods for that small mercy, not wanting to hear the mourning cries so soon.
But this is the bairns story.

The skin curtain was pulled back and in before the visitor came a gust of chill winter wind, with the scent of lightning with it, the scent of the mountain peak and the rock that holds the elflight in its bones. He walked in and the old woman strengthened her back to meet his gaze as the young attendants ran out to the waiting men in fear.
He regarded her closely, this mortal woman who had no fear in her eyes of him. Bright blue eyes that told of sparking fires from cloven hooves across the darkening skies met faded, grey ones and held.
Silently she held the bairn to him, a pathetic blue piece of flesh, already stiffening in the cold winter air.
Steam rose gently from the corpse as blood dried. They had not cut the cord yet...it hung loosely, not pulsing, from the bairn to the mother lying limply across damp and crumpled blankets.
But this is the bairns story.
As his breath misted the air before her, she watched his arm sweep a cloak of furs across the body of the bairn. Watched a large, gentle hand lay across the belly of the bairn. Watched his bright eyed face lean closer to the bairn. Watched his breath mist over the tiny body of the bairn.

Watched the bairn come to squalling, mewling life, watched the skin lighten to a healthy, ruddy hue, watched the legs twitch and kick, the arms reach out clutchingly for something to grab hold of.
With a laugh that rocked the house tree, he turned and strode from the longhouse, taking with him a scent of northern forests, the musky, deep scent of rutting stag, the ozone sharp odour of lightning....

But this is the bairns story.

The woman on the bed awoke and reached for her bairn. Tenderly the old woman placed him on her breast, and as the mother touched every part of him to make sure he was whole, hail, and right, the old woman sank onto a stool beside the bed, exhausted.
Smiling now, she watched the mother acknowledge her own son, watched as she guided him to breast to drink, watched as he suckled greedily, nothing of death marking him now, a lusty, hearty son for the folks.

After a while the mother handed the bairn to the old wife and sank back into the blankets, to sleep a more natural sleep.
With the bairn wrapped in a richly woven piece of cloth, the old woman threw back the skins and walked to the hearth space. All were here who needed to be...the chief and his sons, their wives and daughters, all the folk who made up the importance of this clan, gathered to see the bairn, gathered to see the future of their folk.

With old and aching arms she lifted the bairn aloft for all to see. They laughed delightedly as he yelled in objection.
She spoke one word. "Thorsson".

And the bairns story begins.

[Oresai]

The Jacobite Glass.


The old man watched his grandson playing the games console...quick nimble fingers pressed buttons and on screen, the hero fought a dragon and won. With an exultant punch in the air, the lad turned off the console and got up, went into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of coke.

With the noise of the game over, it was quiet in the crofthouse. The lad settled himself on the old, oversprung couch, soft with cushions his granny had made before she had died. Soft with memories.

In the hearth the fire burned, glowing in the encroaching twilight. The heady scent of burning peat always made the lad happy to be here. Of course, when he`d been a wee bairn, visiting for the summer holidays, the croft had been a larger, more exciting place, with grandad always out at the kye or tending the runrigs and granny concocting treats and hearty fare over the range fire in the scullery.

But now he was older, wiser, and the croft, well, it was just a wee house in the hills, nothing special was it? Miles from anywhere and empty seeming now that granny was gone...and truth be told, he wouldn`t be here at all if mam and dad hadn`t put the pressure on him to visit grandad, emphasising how alone he was now, how he needed to see family every now and again, how the croft was becoming too much hard work for him, the few cows a burden, the strips of barley and oats more cumbersome each year.

So this then, was his `good deed`....

In the gathering twilight they sat in comfortable silence in front of the peat fire. With a sigh, the old man got up and went to the dresser, once a well loved and waxed and shining creature his wife had polished and dressed with best china and the ugly but cherished wee ornaments the children had brought home for gifts...now it was not so shined, and the debris of an old mans life littered the shelves among the dusty china. Opening a drawer he took out his small bottle of whisky, and poured himself a dram in an old Jacobite glass.

About to put the bottle back, he paused...turning to the boy, he said "Well, I suppose you`re auld enough now, chust, for the one?"

The lad, startled, but proud to think his grandad realised he was a man grown now, said "Aye, I`ll have one if you`re offering", with a shy grin.

Taking the glasses to the fireside, the auld man sat and raised his to the lad...."slainte mhath, laddie"...

the boy raised his in like salute, and knocked the ancient whisky back...the auld man winced a little to see such a fine, golden liquid barely touch the boys throat...but said nothing.

The old clock on the mantelpiece ticked the evening away and the boy grew drowsy. He would never have said, but that had been his first taste of the whisky...and oh, but he liked it fine, even if it did burn his throat on the way down...now a warm, drowsy feeling filled him and he relaxed into it, pleased, after all, that he had humoured his old folks and came to see grandad. He missed granny fiercely, and supposed the auld man did, though he never spoke of it if he did, and truth to tell, the lad would be uncomfortable should he do so.



"Did you ever see the Quiet Folks, when you were wee, in the hollow behind the byres?"

The lad, startled out of comfortable thoughts, blinked..."Quiet Folks? You mean the wee poeple?" he answered, with a faint snort of laughter.
"Aye, I suppose I do, though, they`re not so wee, know you..."

The lad shook his head..."No, I never did Grandad. Why do you ask?"

The auld man looked at his grandson, and the laddie was startled to see tears in his eyes, and a little uncomfortable....

"Because for this past winter, I have seen them with my own eyes, and I have seen your Grandmother with them too!" and at this he slapped his knee for emphasis.

The lad was aghast...didn`t know quite what to say.

"Grandad, are ye sure? I...I mean...ye havenae been having too much of this stuff have ye? Mebbe made a wee mistake, or a trick of the light! Aye, that`ll be it, a trick of the light!"

The auld man snorted in derision.

"Do you not think I know my own eyes? And since when did a drop of whisky make me stupid?"

"But there`s no such thing! The Quiet Folks are only fairy tales Grandad, we all know that!"

The auld man said nothing for a moment, but looked at the empty Jacobite glass in his hand...it was a rare and precious thing that glass, and had been in his family for generations.

As if coming to a decision, he stood and beckoned to the lad. "Follow me then. I`ll let you see something for your own self" and without a backward glance, still holding the glass, he opened the croft door onto the night and strode out, leaving his coat and bonnet hanging still on the peg behind the door.

The laddie followed his grandad, shaking his head, wondering if the auld man was losing it finally, getting a wee bit saft in the head maybe.....

Around the side of the crofthouse the auld man strode, the laddie at his heels, and they were joined by a collie come out of the byre, a shadowy streak in the gloom, bright eyes on his master as he ran to heel.

Beyond the house was a rising slope, a hillock perfumed with heather and bracken and the soft, springy grass of the Highlands. And atop the hill was a hollow, like a giant had fashioned a great basin out of the ground for to house his porridge.

The auld man motioned the lad to sit and put a finger to his lips, for to be quiet. Shrugging, the laddie sat beside him on the lip of the hollow, and the collie lay flat and still beside them both, eyes on the space beneath them.

Some twenty yards across this hollow was, and in it grew rare wild flowers and a fairy ring, dark against the grass. Boulders were scattered across it, some growing moss, and the whole place was like something caught in time, so quiet it was, so secret seeming. The wind never seemed to scour this place, and snow never touched it but skimmed the rim of the hill and let it be.

The auld man knew the magic of this place, for his own wife had known it before him, she had always had the way of the Fey about her, and to him, this place was hers.

In scant moments the lad was hushed with fear...ahead of them a soft light began to grow, and as if from a great distance music was heard, quiet and low at first but growing in sound, the music of pipe and tambour and stamping feet and thumping hands, the music of a wild dance that belonged rightly in the far past.

And out of the misted light forms took shape and the boy and man watched in silence as the people came into being, and both gasped for such people they had never seen, not in the books the auld man had nor the films the young lad favoured. Bright creatures these were, garbed in fashions that had never walked the earth in their memories. With fluid and fantastic grace they moved in a secret dance of their own about the hollow, and the music grew apace with each step. And laughter was heard there, and speech that could not be understood by the boy or the man.

And in the dancing group the laddie saw a familiar figure...and a choked cry broke from his throat...there within them was his granny, not the grandmother he knew most of his life, a frail and couthy wee figure of a woman, grey haired for most of that life and with a wrinkled but bright face, this was his granny as she would have been in the prime of her life, afore she was married maybe, and he looked to his grandad and was about to say something, but the words died in his throat.

For grandad was weeping, quietly, tears of longing and loss. He saw her too, and naked need and want was so plain upon his face it hurt the lad to see it there.

So he lowered his pointing hand and sat speech less, and just looked.

For what seemed like an age they were caught up in the dance, those Quiet Folks, a dance so beautiful to see but frightening too, for was there not a faint desperation upon their faces, and a look of old weariness in their eyes?



And so they sat, and they watched, and the lad watched his granny as she stepped lightly like a young lass and wove a dance among the fair Sidhe folks.



Neither of them remembered walking back around the byre and into the crofthouse. But they sat beside the fire and let the burning peat warm their cold bones and let the scent of it bring them back, all the way back, to now.

"What was that, Grandad? Did I just dream it? Was it something in the whisky you gave me?"...the last said almost with accusation....

"I`ll tell you something my lad...all winter have I been out there, watching your Grandmother dance with the Sidhe...and if she truly wants to be dancing there, I do not know. There are few enough place the Old Folks gather in this land now, so hostile to them it has become. But when I was young, your age even, they were not such strangers to us that we did not know them when we saw them."

His eyes had not quite lost their pain, the pain of loss..." At first it was a good thing, to see her there...so young again, like to when we first met and I fell in love with her, it was. But now...." he looked into the peats and his eyes grew guarded..."now, I think it`s almost a living hel. And I`ll be telling you for why."

He took a deep breath and looked straight at the lad.

" I think, in their own way, the Quiet Folks are as trapped in that place as we are on this earth. I think there are older, stranger things that live here. And they play with us all for their own amusement. And I think that hollow is a space tainted by old and wild magic."

Getting up and going to the dresser, he poured himself another dram, and brought the bottle over to the fireside. Offering it to the lad, he let him pour the amber liquid into the small glass. It was needed, tonight. For all that he was raised on a diet of television with its special effects computor imaging, that out there...that had been REAL and he was scared of it.

"What are we going to do?" the lad whispered.

His grandad thought for a while, and passed a hand over his tired eyes.

"You`re going back home tomorrow"..."But ...." "No buts!", he said. "There`s nothing to be done about it, do you not see that? Think you to be telling other folks about that out there?" he pointed to the door.

"And who do you think you`d be getting to believe you? And if they did, do you think I am wanting strangers all over this place? No! I will not have that, do you hear?"

The boy hung his head.



In the morning, the lad waved goodbye to his grandad at the croft door. It was strange, acting as if nothing had happened, but then, after a nights sleep the whole thing had the air of a dream...for sure, he had no idea there was anything he could do, after all...so he walked to the nearest bus stop and caught the coach back to the town, and told no-one, and when his mam and dad asked how his grandad was, he said, "Oh, he is fine, just fine" and they did not notice his downcast eyes or worried face.



Two weeks later he got off the coach. The year was brightening now with coming summer, and the evening was stretching out before him in golden shadows upon the hills with their grazing sheep and kye, in the softness of the highland air and the blue of each burn and runnel which tumbled down the hills and into the glens.

There was no smoke above the croft lum, and that had him worried, though in his heart he knew it was more. Breaking into a run, he crashed through the croft door. The grate was cold and as he walked toward it he knew, instinctively, that those cold peaty ashes were from the fire that night, two weeks ago. The glass he had used to drink his whisky was there, on the wee table beside the old couch and its soft cushions. But there was no sign of the Jacobite glass.

He looked through the byres, of course...the kye and the few sheep had all been turned out onto the hill to graze and he saw them there in the long twilight. Content enough, they were.

But nowhere did he find Grandad, nor the collie, and with his heart thumping in his chest he took blankets off his grandads bed and wrapped them around himself and took the bottle of whisky from out of the dresser drawer and sat himself upon the rim of the hollow and waited for dark.

And he drank,

And in the darkness the mist came again, and with it came the music, and the Fine Dancers, and among them, yes, there was his Granny, the young woman twining herself around the figure of a young man seen only from the back, with a shock of thick black hair and a straight back and he watched his Grannys eyes as she looked into the mans face and saw the love there...and he knew, oh he knew, now, where his Grandad had gone.

And so it was no surprise to watch the dance unfold and see the dancers twirl and find his Grandad, a young, straight man again, within the dance.

He watched until his eyes ached with the pain of it, watched the dance unfold and saw the faces grow familiar through the watching, such beautiful, unearthly faces, but upon them all, the faint taint of desperation and terror.

He watched until the dawn chased the mist and music away and the dancers began to fade and knew that he could walk among them unnoticed and never be able to touch them....unknown, tears of loss and pain ran down his cheeks.

Drunk, weary, miserable, he stumbled into the hollow as the dancers began to fade, reaching out to the unheeding figures of his grandparents, sobbing.

As the sun breached the rim with light he collapsed to his knees, and watched light chase the Shades away...and the breath caught in his chest as at the last, his grandparents turned and he saw their eyes see him, and cast a look of great pity upon him, and turn away, arms around one another. And as they walked into the fading mist, he watched his Grandad raise his Jacobite glass and sip the honey gold liquor within.



And behind them the shadow of a Border collie trotted to heel.