by Jan Surasky
"Go, Valeda," said Venutius. "I will pull the milk from Dania and separate the curd from the whey. Then, when it is ready, I will stir the curd and coax it into cheese."
"Oh, please go," echoed Alaina. "We will take Galyth, and he will find lads as he to spin the ball and chase across fields to tag."
As Valeda happily consented, Alaina's and Valeda's giggly chatter filled the room. What costumes to take. What blossoms to gather to dress their tresses. An offer from Alaina to share the leather strand of many-hued stones Venutius had fashioned for her day of joining.
Then, Valeda turned to Galyth. "If we are to go, I must begin weaving your costume for Sanheim," she said. "What shall you be?"
"I shall be a warrior," he answered, "like Venutius. I must have the fiercest gods about my costume, then I will scare the evil spirits."
"We will pick the gods together," she answered, gently wiping the traces of Dania's milk with a linen cloth from about his lips. "Then, we will make up the tales we will tell beneath the moonlight."
Alaina pushed back her stool. "We must return to the fields," she said, as she rose. "The sunlight seems never as long as the work to plow."
She flung open the door, Morgaan right behind her. They laughed as they chased each other across the grasses of the meadow.
Galyth rose and burst through the open doorway. Perhaps he would catch a fish for the evening meal. A speckled trout or a plump, pink salmon.
He raced across the meadow, toward the valley below, where the rushing waters of a small, clear stream wound around a dale of the lush, green grasses of spring, filled with the newly-risen pale blue blossoms of the milkwort, and the bright, golden yellow of the buttercup. As he ran, his sturdy, chubby legs carrying him swiftly down the hillside, his red locks flowing in the breeze, his tinkling laughter echoed amongst the hills.
Author's Endnote
Boudicca's uprising was the last of many undertaken by the Celts against their Roman conquerors both on the European continent and in the British Isles. After building a structure called Hadrian's Wall, a feat of engineering with checkpoints every quarter mile named for the Roman emperor, to contain the conquered tribes against the fierce, unconquered tribes of the north, the Romans left the British Isles four hundred years later to answer problems at home. The Angles and the Saxons rode into the vacuum, unchallenged by the Celts, now placated by centuries of "Romanization".
Their spirit survives in the tales of the Welsh and the Irish, in the maypole dances of children throughout the world, and in the witches and goblins of All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. But, the Celts as a civilization never rose again.