Dies the Fire (55 page)

She turned back to Judy: “As my Maiden, I expect you to run a turbocharged Training Circle to the max—fast but nothing skipped; I don't care how tired people are in the evenings. Let them show whether they're committed or not. That includes you, Dennie.”

She paused to glare at Dennis and Sally. “We'll have a bunch of Giant Monster Combined Sabbats, OK? Initiations, handfastings, square dancing, bobbing for bloody apples. There. Is everyone satisfied?”

It was good to laugh with friends; good to have
some
problems that looked solvable, as well. And sometimes the Goddess just gave you a bonus. Keening over the Smiths wouldn't bring them back before their next rebirth—that was between them and the Guardians. And in the meantime . . .

She looked at Chuck: “I presume we're taking over the Smith place?”

The Carson farm went without saying, and the others who were coming in; if you joined the clan, you pooled everything but your most personal belongings and you pitched in as the clan decided. Life alone post-Change was nasty and brutish and for most, short; particularly for a single household isolated in a violence-ridden countryside where once again a mile was a long way to call for help.

Chuck shrugged and raised his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture he'd picked up from Judy. The Smith farm and the others were good alluvial terrace land as well, much of it planted before the Change and needing only tending and harvest this year.

She went on, musing aloud: “On the one hand, I hate to profit from the misfortunes of neighbors; on the other, the Smiths were a bunch of paranoid bigots, and the Carsons and the others will be a real asset; on the third hand, that land is going to be a gift of the Goddess . . .
if
we can hang on to it, and work it properly.”

“Hell, the Smiths even had beehives,” Dennis said, smacking his lips. “Which means
we
now have beehives. Mead . . . And the Georges planted a vineyard three years back.”

“We can work all those farms from here, with bicycles, or sending people out in a wagon,” Chuck said, giving him a quelling glance. “Thank the Lord and Lady you can't run off with a field of wheat!”

“But,” Juniper said.

“But,” Chuck answered. “
Guarding
that land's going to be the hard part. If we pull everyone back here every night . . . and you thought we were shorthanded before? Get ready for everyone to make like an electron—we'll all have to be in two places at once from now to Samhain! Not to mention housing; Dennie's crew are running up bunk beds for here and the Fairfax place.”

Juniper made a mental tally: “With the Carsons and the others that gives us . . . what, sixty adults sworn to the clan, now? Blessed be, but we've been growing!”

“Fifty-nine, counting Cynthia Carson but not her brother Ray—he's seventeen come Lughnassadh. Forty-two children, half of them old enough to do useful chores or mind the toddlers. We've got more people, but a
lot
more land to work. It wouldn't be so bad, if we didn't have to spend so much time on guarding and sentry-go and battle training, but we
do.
”

“Truly, by the Morrigu Herself,” Juniper said, closing her eyes and juggling factors. They'd taken in as many as they could, from the beginning . . .

Just one year,
she thought, and prayed at the same time.
Just one year and one good harvest and enough seed corn, Lady Gaia, Mother-of-All. Then we can start the spiral of energy going up instead of down.

Chuck went on, as if echoing her thought: “But the food we got from the Smith place put us ahead of the game in reserves; they had a lot of oats and root vegetables in store, and all the farms had quite a bit of truck planted and some just coming ripe, besides the fruit. John Carson's a first-rate livestock man, too, which is something I'm no expert at and Sam doesn't have the time for. John was wasted without a herd to look after, I've been working off his advice since the start.”

“How much grain?”

“Between the new farms and what we planted in spring, counting wheat and barley and oats together—call it eight thousand bushels all up, less fifteen percent for wastage and seed if we want to double the acreage for the fall planting, yields will be way down next year without brought-in seed. . . . We were counting on exchanging the labor of our people and the use of our hauling teams for some of the crops anyway, but this way we get it all.”

Juniper nodded. “Enough to put our diet this winter from ‘just barely' to ‘rude plenty,' with more to come next year, despite the way we've grown.”

She did a piece of quick mental arithmetic: sixty pounds to a bushel, so . . . “That's multiple
tons
of grain; we'll need to start thinking bulk storage.”

“If we can harvest it all,” Dennis said. “The grain's going to come ripe real soon now—the first oats in a month, the rest from mid-July on.”

“Maybe we could take in a few more refugees, then,” Juniper said. “Since we're going to have a surplus. That group at the schoolhouse near Tallmar? We know they're healthy, they were grateful enough for the rose hips”—which had halted a nasty case of scurvy. “A couple of them know useful stuff like cooperage, and they'll not make it through till winter by themselves. And we could loan some seed-grain later to . . . Hmmm. Maybe we could throw up a mound and palisade around one of the farmhouses too, and settle some of our people there at least part-time? That way—”

The water had cooled from hot to lukewarm before they thrashed out the details to put to the clan as a whole, and it was nearly sunset outside; they all heaved themselves out, pulled the plug and began to towel down. Diana and Andy Trethar stuck their heads in.

“That pig is incredibly ready, and we're putting the sausages on, so anyone who feels like dinner had better come,” she said. “The only leftovers are going to be bones for the Eternal Soup Stock.”

“Yum,” Juniper said, pulling a robe over her head from the stock kept ready for bathers. “Yummy yum—”

Then a disquieting thought struck her, and she turned to the others as she knotted her belt.

“Wait a minute, though—I suppose all the cowan within a day's walk of the Smiths are hopping around frothing about our taking over their land? Not to mention the sheriff! And the Reverend Dixon . . . The Wicked Witches strike again? It's all a Satanic plot?”

“Right,” Chuck and Dennis said, in chorus, as they sidled towards the door.

Dennis went on in a reasonable tone: “But we told them Lady Juniper could explain it all when she got back.”

Juniper gave a wordless howl of wrath as they both ducked out—you had to be careful about spoken curses, when you knew they could stick.

She dashed after them with the skirts of the robe hiked up in her hands so she could kick both backsides; symbolically, but with feeling.

A cheer went up as she appeared in the door, and she dropped the fabric hastily; flashing the crowd wasn't exactly appropriate behavior for the head of the clan. Nearly everyone was gathered, minus the first watch of the night guard and some of those doing kitchen duty—and those were loading the trestle tables in the Hall and on the veranda and the scrap of lawn preserved before it.

Someone came up and put a wreath of wildflowers on her head, red and yellow columbine laced with lavender vetch and white daisies; everyone else was wearing one too.

I'm home,
she thought.
And I'm going to see my people safe; I can't save the world, but what I can save, I will.

She set her hands on her hips. “All right, then—let's eat!”

That
could always be relied on to get a positive reaction, these days.

The voices and the strings of the small harp went plangent through the soft cool spring night, full of the green sap-scent of trees, and of the flowers along the way; there was a hint of woodsmoke and cooking from the Hall below, a breath of cooler air from the great forests of the mountains whose snowpeaks were lit by moonlight far above. The quiet rustle of many feet and the hems of their robes through the grass blended with the creaking of the forest and the night sounds of its dwellers.

Juniper had always loved this part of her great-uncle's land, even on brief visits as a little girl, frightened of the intimidating, solitary old man but bewitched by the place. Having it for her own had brought incredulous joy, and so had sharing it. The path wound up eastward from the cabin, through stands of huge Douglas firs and groves of pine and big-leaf maple, past openings and glades; sometimes the candles and lanterns of the coveners caught the eyes of an animal for a fleeting moment of green-yellow communion.

She led the procession, the hood of her robe thrown back, the silver moon on her brows, her belt woven from cords white and red and black and carrying her scabbarded athame. Behind her walked Chuck—Dragonstar in the Craft—with the elk mask and horns of the High Priest on his head, and Judy—Evenstar, the coven's Maiden—at his side; then the rest, two by two, cradling their candles and the tools of the ceremony.

The dew-wet stems of the grass seemed to caress her ankles. At last they came to the place, high on the mountain's slope, where a knee of its bones made a level space jutting out into emptiness.

Why her great-uncle had planted a circle of trees here she'd never known; but that had been nearly ninety years ago, and the oaks rose straight and tall all about it. Their boughs creaked over her, a patient sound, waiting as they had through all those decades for their destined use.

Just outside the circle to the west was the spring that was the source of Artemis Creek—how fitting the name! It flowed clear and pure among rocks and reeds, trickling away down the slope and making a constant plashing murmur between banks glowing with the pale golds of glacier lilies and stream violets. She could feel the care and trouble melting away as they approached, the gentle familiarity of the ritual and the place soothing like cool fingers on a hot brow.

Within the enclosure was close-cropped grass, soft as a lawn but shot through with the small purple flowers of wild ginger; in its very center a shallow fire pit lined with stones. At the four quarters, brackets of wrought iron reached out from the trees. Against the northern side of the ring was a roughly shaped altar, made from a single boulder.

They halted at the northeast quadrant of the great circle. With the sword in her hand she traced the perimeter deosil, sunwise, past the great candles flickering at the quarters in their iron-and-glass holders:

Stars arched above, like the glowing hearths of an endless village; the moon hung over the mountaintops, white splendor, bright enough to dazzle her eyes. When she was finished she admitted the coven and sealed the circle behind them; the Maiden lit the censer and took it up, casting a blue trail of incense and sweetness behind her to mingle with the spicy smell of the wild-ginger leaves bruised beneath their feet. Two more followed with their bowls of salt and water. . . .

The words and movements flowed on:

Her athame's blade traced the Invoking pentagram in the air; in the eye of the mind it hung there, blue and glowing against the yellow flicker of candle flame.

Facing the altar at last:

At last all had been cleansed and purified: with Water and Earth, Air and Fire. She stood with the Wand and Scourge in her hands, facing the coven as the High Priest called:

Juniper's eyes rose, beyond the heads of the coven and the rustling dark secrecy of the trees, to where the stars made the Belt of the Goddess across the night sky, frosted silver against velvet black. Her lips moved, but she was hardly conscious of the words that rang out:

Her voice rose triumphantly:

The stars seemed to open above Juniper, rushing towards her as if she were falling upward or they into her, through galaxies and the veils of nebulae whose cloak was worlds beyond counting. But that infinity was not cold or black, not empty or indifferent. Instead it was filled from edge to edge with a singing light, from unknown Beginning to unimaginable End radiant with an awareness vast beyond all understanding. So great, yet that greatness looked on her, at her, into her, the atom of being that was Juniper Mackenzie.