The Wakening Fire

by Erin O'Quinn

  Torin grinned. “An’ sure he has not an idea when his feast day is, Cate. We all grew up driving cattle from one pretty spot to the next, an’ not a one of us ever celebrated a birthday once we left the apron of our mother.”

  “Do you never miss the celebration?”

  “How can we miss what we never had? ’Tis best to leave it alone. Find another day to celebrate—your wedding, your own feast day. Liam will enjoy that very much.”

  “How old is Liam?”

  “I think he is about five years me junior. B’fhéidir…Now perhaps a score of years…Yes, I will say twenty. I date me own birth starting each new year. That makes it easy to reckon the years.”

  I was amazed at the lack of concern for age, for feast days, for other hallmarks of civilization that Liam and his family seemed to ignore. When I was growing up, one’s feast day was a day—indeed a whole week—of celebration, of festive gatherings, of new clothing, of special food. As I thought about it now, I realized that the importance of my feast day was the significance that my mother had brought to it. I could not remember ever celebrating Brindl’s birthday, or even my mother’s, for she thought them unimportant compared to my own.

  I shook my head, wondering at my own self-absorption. Until this very minute, I had never questioned the fact that everyone in the world celebrated their own day of birth, and that my own would be recognized by one and all. One fact was certain. My feast day was the same day as Father Patrick’s. Thus March seventeenth was a very special day outside of my own selfish life and a very good reason to celebrate.

  “Cate,” said Torin. His voice sounded more serious than usual, and it diverted my attention from the greens I was cutting.

  “I have, ah, led a soldier’s life for a long time, as ye know. And before that, the life of a cattle drover. Not much to offer another person if, um…if—”

  “If you wanted to become more settled?”

  “Exactly! How did ye know? So I was wondering if there be a place for me in this fair bally. A way of life that might suit me temper.”

  “Torin, we need soldiers. We need bally defense workers. We need home builders. The dwarves need help with their enclaves. There is not much we do not need.”

  His eyes were alight with an inner fire. “Then ye would welcome a misfit such as meself?”

  I stopped cutting the vegetables and walked close to him, hugging him warmly. “Torin, your brother Liam thinks you are the sun and the moon, and I think you are the very stars. I would have asked you to stay, but I did not want to stir my fire poker into your life.”

  His smooth face was crimson, and he tried to free himself. “Easy, lass, do not spoil me with honeyed words. I was merely wondering.”

  I released him and asked in a mock scold, “An’ have ye burned the chicken? Let me check on the food while ye finish your wine. Shoo! Back to your slouching relatives.”

  Now I knew why Torin had hung back, why he wanted to speak with me alone. He was telling me all about his love for Swallow, his aim to settle down. Now I could stop wondering about Liam’s feast day. Just give it time, Caylith, and we will have another wedding to celebrate.

  That evening was every bit as exuberant and amusing as the evening before. I wondered, not for the first time, how I ever managed a really good laugh before I met the sons of Éire. Their brand of humor was a mix of self-deprecation, bawdiness, and wry observation of life itself.

  It was good for Liam to have this relief, I knew. Our time alone was precious. But I could never take the place of his droll, rough family, and I did not want to.

  “Ryan,” I asked him after supper, “will you change your mind and live in Derry with us?”

  “An’ give up me love affair with me cows? Just when the bunions on me bum are callused just right? Not a chance, cailín. Not if Maeve herself were to pin me to her soft pillow.”

  I stole a glance at Torin, and he was predictably the color of the beets in my root cellar.

  “In fact, lass, I was going to tell you and Liam. It is time to join me brothers. I hear the lowing of cattle in my sleep at night. ’Tis time to move on for a while.”

  ‘“Are ye sure ’tis not the snoring of your cousin?” asked Liam. Torin had been translating for me the whole evening, and at those words he could hardly talk for laughing. Torin and his cousin Ryan had been living together in the same small teach for more than three months, since before our wedding, and I imagined the close quarters were beginning to wear on both of them.

  Then Torin remarked shrewdly, “There be no cows roaming about until Beltane. Why are ye leaving, really?”

  I was amazed at Ryan’s sudden coloring. I had not thought that anything could embarrass him. And then I wondered if his departure may be related to Torin’s need for privacy, now that he was courting Swallow. “Ryan, bring out your bone whistle and blow us a happy tune,” I said fondly. “We may be a long time missing your merry talent.”

  He obligingly brought his whistle from his belt. Liam, sitting against my bench, set his feet to tapping and soon raised his voice to join the chorus.

  So kittle me kit an’ fiddle me bit

  I’m off to the fair tomorrow.

  An’ frolic me mare

  an’ diddle me dare

  I’m bound for the fair in the mornin’.

  Ryan was not just a competent player—he was extremely good. I imagined that he probably played at night under the stars, entertaining both his kinsmen and the milling, moon-faced cattle. His fingers rose and fell on the openings, and every note was sweetly augmented by Liam’s pure tenor voice. To me, his whistle had come to stand for the joy of being together, family and friends alike, and for the deep contentment and love I felt for Liam.

  Even Torin, an indifferent tenor, sang along as Ryan’s fingers moved. I slid down to the floor next to Liam and hummed and sang along as best I could for the next hour or so while Ryan and Liam gave us one tune after another. I noticed that the wine cups were hardly touched, and I was glad. One drunken night on the floor was quite enough for awhile.

  After his kinsfolk had finally gone, Liam stood with his back to the door, smiling. “Miss…Ryan,” he said.

  “I will miss him, too, Liam. But I think Torin may stay behind.”

  “Ye think?”

  “Yes,” I told him firmly. “Wait and see.” I walked to him and put my arms around his waist. He lifted my chin and put his mouth over mine, first tenderly, then more and more urgently. His earlier hunger had not been appeased, I knew, for his mouth would not stop moving even after he lifted me into his arms, exactly as he had done when we had been interrupted hours ago, and he carried me to the bed.

  I was still wearing my trousers. He stood me on the high bed and backed off a bit, as though I were once more facing him across the bata ring.

  I slowly removed my shirt-tunic, and then the triús, and I stood on the bed naked. All the while, I kept my eyes on his, sloughing off my modesty like old skin. I used the only words I knew for “kitten”—little cat.

  “Suck it,” I demanded. “Mo chat beag.”

  He walked to me very, very slowly, his mouth at just the right level, and he enveloped my downy groin in his mouth. As though he were starving, he seemed to eat at me, very loudly, groaning his mounting desire. Then his hands were both at my bum, his fingers finding each entrance inside, as he licked and sucked and feasted on me.

  “Suck me, suck me,” I moaned to his mouth and “Deeper, yes, more,” to his thrusting fingers. I moved his head with my hands, setting up the right rhythm. After a few minutes, at first putting it off, my body exploded in fierce delight. I held his head hard against my groin until the throbbing ended. Oh, it lasted a very long time.

  After a while, Liam stepped back and pulled down his leather bríste, discarding them on the floor. He stood in front of me like my idea of a Greek statue, his legs slightly apart, his erection unyielding. “Teacht,” I said. “Come.”

  I, too, was hungry for him, in spite of, or because of
, his lovemaking a few minutes ago. Looking at his stunning body, imagining the feel of his silky groin and smooth buttocks, was all I needed to feel the desire again welling up from my groin into my stomach. I knelt on the bed. “Come. Come here close to my mouth.” I looked at him with a tease in my eyes. “Tell me what you want.”

  He walked closer, closer. His voice very husky and low, he said, “Suck me hard.”

  His gruff words made me flare with intense heat. I reached out and drew his groin into my mouth, and my fingers stroked his smooth testicles, hanging warm and inviting. From there, my fingers found the opening in his butt. I paused, fingering it lightly, as if asking him what to do.

  “Yes, inside me,” he said roughly.

  I inserted three fingers at once, in and out, in rhythm with my sucking, very hard. I was still stroking his sac, and my fingers on both hands seemed to find just the right way to play. It seemed too soon before I heard him cry out and seize my shoulders, thrusting himself against me. I tasted his sweet-savory honey, loving it, loving him. He drew my head hard against himself as I had done to him, and I waited until his own tremors ceased. Then I drew him against me, my hands on his bum, and he knelt with me, then pressed me down onto the bed.

  We lay facing each other, both breathing hard. He stroked my shoulder and arm, then my long hair. He drew me against his chest. “A ghrá mo chroí.”

  “My heart’s beloved,” I repeated sleepily. And then we slept.

  Chapter 7:

  Mockingbird

  NimbleFoot and I fit together like a sword in a scabbard. The young palomino was spirited and frisky, and he seemed to delight in swinging and rearing his handsome head so that his white mane flew in the wind, giving substance to his rather short stature. In horseman’s language, the mountain pony stood just over eleven hands high. That was perfect for me, yet about a foot and a half shorter than a horse of the same age.

  NimbleFoot was the reason I was no longer afraid of horses. I had ridden a horse once before, a few years back when I was on the great Salisbury Plain, but I rode in great fear. I hated the pitch and roll of the great willful beast under my tender bottom, and I had no idea how to start him, stop him, or make him perform any movement in between.

  NimbleFoot was one of the forty or so mountain ponies owned by my great-aunt Marrie. She had saved the horses from the fate of many of his brethren. The ponies were being systematically killed by horse fanciers loath to see the wild ponies “spoil” the bloodline of their cultivated stock. When I left Lindum, my stubborn old aunt had refused to come with me to the safety of the currachs sailing for Éire. But in an astonishing gesture of love and understanding, she had given me NimbleFoot, along with the remaining forty ponies, to take back to the safety of our new homeland.

  It had just so happened that the trainer Wynn, the victim of my recent weapons practice, was the one who had transported the ponies and who much later left NimbleFoot tethered outside my teach for me to find. It also just so happened that he was the second—no, the third—young man I had ever kissed, and our blooming love affair had been blighted, then destroyed, by his twisted jealousies.

  Thus two of my three horses were potent reminders of two entirely different men. There was Wynn, petulant and selfish, still festering over our lost love. And then there was Liam, himself restive and spirited like his gift of Macha, an unspoiled offspring of Éire.

  Only yesterday, in Gristle’s combat circle, did I finally release the last of my hostile feelings for Wynn. Starting today, I could ride my mountain pony without any black thoughts of the trainer who first showed me how to ride him. I always felt wild and free when I was astride my pony. Now, this morning, I was almost one with the wind and sky as we galloped to the enclaves of the little people far upriver.

  Jay Feather’s clan were building their vast underground network of tunnels and homes rather far from the other dwellings of Derry. They stayed apart not out of any desire for separateness but because the enclaves needed to be dug under special conditions. Tree roots were an integral part of their underground homes, but the trees needed to be somewhat sparse, not in a forest setting. The dwarves would dig down then around the roots, allowing them to continue plunging into the earth below. The result was an underground labyrinth of ingenious dwellings with tree roots growing and twisting from ceiling to floor and deeply beyond.

  It was almost half an hour’s ride from our house to the dwarf enclaves, and the terrain gradually evened out somewhat as I rode. Thick stands of trees slowly became smaller and smaller knots of small copses and, finally, individual aged oaks and pines, fir and larch.

  I reined in NimbleFoot when I saw a score of workers in a clearing that held one aged oak tree. They had evidently just transported a large stone, which lay near the center of the clearing. The stone, I knew, was to become the portal to the Feather clan enclaves. When I dismounted and drew closer, it was evident that the dwarves had laboriously rolled the large stone on a series of tree trunks, their protruding branches hewn off. Jay had explained to me once that he thought this was the way the giant stones had been carried to the plains of Salisbury. I wished I had seen the operation, for I had once fancied that children of giants had left the Great Standing Stones like abandoned playthings. It was hard to believe that mere mortals could roll and stack enormous stones as though they were pebbles.

  Right away I recognized Crowe Feather, Jay’s handsome younger brother. The words “ young” and “old” were relative among the dwarves, for their life spans were much longer than that of other folks. At least, Jay had led me to believe that. By his features, Crowe looked to be in his early forties. His hair was not just jet black but black on black like his very name. Just now it seemed almost iridescent as the morning sun gave it shimmers and highlights.

  We clasped hands, then we drew closer and hugged. Crowe was the man who had helped me save the life of my friend Andreas the scribe back in Faerie, when the young man was lying near death on the floor of Crowe’s tavern. He was the man to go to when we needed barley beer, for not only had Crowe been the proprietor of The Crowe’s Nest. He knew the formula for the most potent beer in all of Faerie, and he still brewed his own.

  “I have not seen you since our wedding,” I told him.

  “Yes, and whose fault is that?” he asked evenly, his dark eyes, like jet, boring their brightness into my own.

  “I admit blame, Crowe Feather, but do not berate me too much. Liam and I are still getting used to the routine of married life.” I felt myself flushing, for I knew exactly how most people would interpret the word “routine.”

  “If you are seeking Jay, my friend, he is with our sister.”

  “Your sister? Mockingbird is here?” I was surprised. I had never met their sister, but Jay had hinted in the past that Mockingbird held a certain disapproval of both her brothers and had elected to stay behind in Newport.

  “Yes, her daughter Swallow has been here from the beginning, as I think you know. Now her darling mother has decided to join her.”

  I was thunderstruck. I knew that my friend Swallow was related to Jay. But I had no idea that the kinship was so close. I thought he was perhaps a distant uncle. Again, I took the blame. I should have asked Swallow more closely about her family instead of making bland assumptions. And again, as on the subject of my feast day, I recognized and reviled my own self-absorption.

  “Um, thank you, Crowe. I will find him. Tell me,” I said, gazing at the large stone. “How long did it take to transport your new portal stone?”

  “Most of a month, lass. We had to solve several problems along the way. But here it is at last, and now we are back to a full work crew. Please do not take it wrong, my friend, but if you will excuse me—?”

  And Crowe led his crew of workers to a place where fresh earth had been brought up from below and obviously needed to be sorted, put into handbarrows, and carted off. I walked to the opening of the enclaves, where eventually the portal stone would be rolled as disguise and protection. I ent
ered the underground dwelling by means of a series of carved wooden stairs.

  I had last been in this great room on the day of my wedding, for Jay’s large family had hosted our celebration. The more than twenty wall sconces held long, tapered candles that cast a merry dancing light over the large room. The floors were strewn with “dwarf dust,” a glittering, sand-like substance that everyone had brought with them in their emigration from Faerie, and the candlelight moving over the little gems made the entire room twinkle like a jewel.

  The room, actually a cavern, was dominated by the roots of the enormous oak, twining sinuously from above, sending them into the mysterious earth below. The entire trunk had been decorated by faceted, sparkling stones. They were mere “trinkets” to the little people, found by the crews as they worked then fastened to the roots by the impish Magpie, Jay’s delightful daughter.

  From this cavernous room were several side tunnels, each containing the home, or the embryonic home, of one of the Feather clans. It was still a work in progress, for I heard the sound of digging and the singing of work crews though the tunnel doors. I saw that the dwarves had rigged up a pulley-like contraption to draw the excavated earth from the tunnels below to the world above.

  I knew which door led to Jay’s home, and I stepped through the entrance. The tunnel took a sharp turn, and I found myself in a large, bright cook room, exactly like the one in Jay’s former home.

  “Caylith!” said a familiar voice. “Darling girl, welcome!” The warm, melodious voice belonged to GoldenFinch, Jay’s wife. She had been standing at the large stone fireplace, and she walked quickly to me, holding out her arms.

  We embraced fondly, each expressing how much we had missed the other. I held Finch at arm’s length. “Your beauty grows with every day,” I told her admiringly. Her undulating, blonde hair was as fair and shining as Brigid’s. And, like my friend, her eyes were a luminous blue. By her appearance, she might be in her middle thirties. But the beautiful Finch did not at all look like the mother of eight daughters and a grandmother thirty times over.