Page 1 of The Winter Goddess

Before

In the beginning, there was darkness.

Then, Danu.

Not Danu the goddess, but Danu the mother. My mother.

Her green eyes always watched me—thoughtful, curious, and questioning , always questioning, as though she were waiting for me to become something—more, less. Different. Different than I was.

I had never felt this so much as I did on the day the snow fell.

I don’t know how old I was, but a child still, and Danu and I had been walking through the deep parts of the forest, heading back to Tara. I was holding her hand and she was talking of this and that—Danu was always talking—when we crested the slope of a small hill, entering a clearing ringed with huge fir trees. I tilted my face up to see where they seemed to graze the sky and watched as something brushed the very tops of the branches—something white and gentle and mesmerizing. Snow , I somehow understood, though I had never seen it before.

I released Danu’s hand as the snow began to fall faster and faster, whirling around me, clinging to my eyelashes and alighting on my outstretched arms. At first my skin stayed as it had always been—gently gold like Danu’s—but as the snowflakes continued to fall, my body began to change. The blue started at the tips of my fingers, my nails turning dark as a winter’s night, rivers of indigo snaking up my arms and twisting around my body until I was dappled with shades of blue from cerulean to sapphire. I was no longer simply standing in the landscape, I had somehow become the landscape, and when I waved my arms, my body swirled and shifted to match the striations of light and shadow around me.

I giggled, a joyous gurgle that erupted straight from my belly and whirled around to show my mother what had happened, but when I turned, I saw that Danu was not smiling as I expected, but was instead looking on me with despair, tears in her eyes. It was the first time I had ever seen my mother look so anguished.

“Don’t you like it?” My voice was soft. It caught on the wind and suddenly it was everywhere; in the rustling trees, the blue shadows, the silver flakes that fell and fell, settling on my arms and shoulders, frosting my hair and eyelashes—but they shrank away from Danu’s golden glow. I took a step toward her, hoping to comfort her, show her how glorious it was, but as soon as I drew near, the snow that had settled on my head began to melt, running down my face like tears, and I hesitated, taking a step back. What if her golden light melted the blue from my skin too? What if it leached away from me until I stood golden again? I knew I didn’t want that, even if I wasn’t exactly sure why.

There was reproach in Danu’s eyes even as she said, “The blue will stay. All the gods have an…affinity for something. Some part of the world that calls to them. Manannán has the sea and I have the bounty of life and—” She shook her head, cutting herself off. “You will be the goddess of winter.” She took a careful step toward me. “I shall give it to you, if you want it. I shall give you dominion over the ice and cold and the biting winds and soft white snow.”

I felt as though my body would explode with the wanting of it, so I didn’t speak, merely nodded. Danu had a strange look in her eyes—sadness, perhaps, or regret? But still, she reached out and brushed a gentle finger down my cheek. The moment she touched me I became winter: ice knit itself into my bones, cold north winds filled up the hollow places in my chest, and somewhere, I could feel snow begin to fall.

For a moment, I held that feeling of winter close—and then I sent it out, stretching my hands and frosting the ground at our feet, covering the trees around us with the same ice that covered my bones. I closed my eyes and called the heavy grey clouds to come close to the earth. I whispered to the cold winds in my chest, drawing them out and in, their names, mistral, bora, levanter, buran, pampero, like a song in my head. I laughed at their voices, at their touch, as they twined around my fingers, blowing through my hair.

Danu, though, still stood in a pool of golden light. The cold and snow did not reach her, and it did not feel right, that I should have this gift and not she. I wanted her to understand the joy of what she had given me, so I closed my eyes and called the winter, and when I opened them again, Danu was surrounded by snow. I beamed, expecting her to smile back, to glory in my gift, but instead she shouted my name, “Cailleach!” her voice so loud, so bright and hot with anger and indignation that the snow in the clearing vanished, turning into pools of water at my feet.

I stumbled back at the fury on her face, at the clearing suddenly bristling with hard green vines and thorns, some even snaking toward me as though they would eat me whole if they could. She had never looked at me like this before, green eyes glowing hot as fire, standing tall and straight as though she were made of stone, not soft flesh, and I realized that I was looking not at my mother but at a goddess, at the goddess, the first and the last, the one who had created us all, and I fell to my knees, a dog waiting for punishment.

I shivered when her hand pulled my chin up to look at her, but when I finally met her gaze I saw that the fire in her eyes was gone, her face soft. “My love. I did not mean to be—I just did not think it would be the cold that would draw you. It is so different from what I…” She trailed off, looked at the now-green clearing and shook her head. “It does not matter. You are my daughter, still. Now, shall we go back to Tara?”

I didn’t want to leave the clearing, I wanted to stay and draw winter close again, but I did not want to make her angry either, so I took the hand she held out to me, even though it was strange now, too hot and soft. As we walked, we kept shifting and twisting our clasped hands uncomfortably, even though it had never been strange before.

The next morning when I woke, I thought only of getting back to my clearing—to the snow, the cold. I jumped from my bed and was halfway to Danu’s door when I stopped. Perhaps it might be better to go on my own. Danu did not understand the cold and the cold did not understand her. If I went on my own, I could sit down in the middle of the clearing and let the white flakes fall soft around me. I could close my eyes and listen to the wind and the trees, and when I opened them, I could watch my skin shift and swirl. But I had never gone anywhere without my mother before, and the thought made my stomach twist and writhe with uncertainty, and a touch of fear. I knew who I was with her. But who was I if I walked alone?

Before I could make my decision, Danu walked out of her room. She wore her mortal face as she often did: broad cheeked, square jawed, a long brown braid. Only her green eyes remained the same. When she saw me, she smiled as she always did, though her gaze flicked to my blue skin. “Come.” She held out her hand, and because I had always reached back for her before— always , until that night in the woods—I took it.

Tara stood on the top of a gently rising hill that was carpeted in grass and wildflowers no matter the season. Usually when we left, we went east toward the coast, but today Danu turned west, down the path that led inland.

“I want to go back to the clearing.” I pointed to the north, where I could see white hills in the far distance.

Danu tugged me down the other side of the hill, her palm hot. “We have other plans today.”

“But that’s where the mortals live.” I said the word “mortal” as she did even though I did not really understand it. I knew about them of course—I’d heard the other gods sigh and reminisce about the lives they’d had before Danu had given them divinity, but I had never met one for myself, had never caught more than a far-flung glimpse of them when I was out walking with Danu.

“I know.” Danu’s voice was light but her grip on my hand rather hard. “And it’s time you walk among them.”

“But why?” I whined, wishing I’d gotten up earlier and escaped to the cold blue clearing even if it would have upset my mother. “I don’t want to.”

Danu laughed. “We live in this world, among them. You should meet them, see how they live.” Her voice grew excited in fascination, her pace quickening until I had to trot to keep up. “Mortals are not as we are. If they wave their hands, a feast won’t simply appear. They must find seeds, then fashion tools for working with the earth, then dig into the soil at the right time, carefully water their plants, and hope they grow.” Her voice overflowed with enthusiasm, brimming over until the words nearly ran together. “But it could rain too much or not enough, or a storm could come, or a thief might steal what they have wrought. And all for grain that they have to then harvest and pound down and bake into bread!” Danu’s eyes were wide and yearning. “I still remember the taste of bread made from my own hands. It was sweeter than any feast I’ve ever conjured from the air.”

She told me we were going to Mooghaun, a hill fort where many mortals lived. The people there knew her as a wise woman who brought healing potions and herbs; she’d promised them that the next time she came, she would bring her daughter.

“Why don’t you tell them that you’re a goddess?” I asked, looking up at her mortal face.

“They are frightened of gods,” Danu said. “They know little of us, only that we are different from them, undying, and powerful—but it is enough to cause them fear. If I walked among them as a goddess, I worry that they would treat me as a stranger, as though I was not once one of them. I would rather walk among them as I once was.” Danu’s face grew soft, and she ran a finger over her brow. “This is what I looked like before I became a goddess.”

“Won’t they know that I am a god?” I ignored Danu’s reminiscing as I looked down at my blue skin.

“I will make it so they will see you as a mortal,” Danu said, and I frowned.

“But I don’t want—”

“It is important, Cailleach.” Danu talked over me. “You will understand why one day. You must trust me, love.”

I was not satisfied, but I did not know what else to say, how to explain that even though I had only had it for one day, my blue skin was indelible, precious. A thing that should not be hidden away, not even for a moment.

Danu told me that the fort was considered a marvel by the mortals, a place of great strength and power, but as I looked up at it now, I did not think it looked mighty or marvelous. Like Tara, Mooghaun sat on top of a hill and it was surrounded by a large wooden wall. I could see mounded earth around the hill rising in concentric circles like waves. As we approached, the air filled with the noise of goats bleating and dogs barking and a murmuring of voices that echoed over and over. Painfully and suddenly, I wanted to leave, to rush back to that quiet clearing in the woods, but Danu gripped my hand firmly in her own and drew us both closer.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said as we approached the gates.

I wasn’t afraid, I was uncomfortable; I disliked the noise and the scents that barraged my nose. The dull mortal skin Danu had forced upon me was unsettling, itchy and heavy, as though I carried a weight on my back. But before I could protest, we had reached the gates.

Danu was normally tall. She could loom dangerously over any of the other gods if she wished—reach greater heights than the trees, greater still than the mountains—but when I looked at her now, she was small, smaller than the wall, smaller even than the hard-faced men who guarded the gate.

The men—the first mortals I had ever seen—were a disappointment to my child’s eyes. From the way Danu and the other gods had spoken of them, I had expected both more and less: I had thought their ruddy skin would shine with the exertion of living, that their bodies would labor under the heartbeats their mortality demanded, but I’d also pictured them wild-eyed, with leaves in their hair and blood on their teeth, carousing with the life that Danu said made them so different from us.

Instead, the men before us looked tired, dirty, their faces as creased and hardened as the ill-fitting leather they wore. And they looked like us. Or rather, we looked like them. I grimaced at the thought of them not seeing me as I truly was and moved to yank at Danu’s arm, to demand that she remove the mist from their eyes, when suddenly they saw her, and their weary faces changed. All they did was smile at her approach, but it made them look entirely different. Their cheeks plumped, their eyes crinkled, filling with joy—a bright, shining thing that made me think of standing in that clearing, snow in my hair, and I smiled back, almost reflexively, as Danu looked down and squeezed my hand.

“Danu, it has been too long since we have seen your comely face.” The man who spoke had a face that looked sweet and young, teeth flashing white.

“Ronan.” Danu smiled back at the young one and patted him on the arm. “And Cormac.” She turned toward the older man and there was a gentle warmth in her face as though she knew him well. “I am glad to see you safely returned.” She leaned forward, as though she would reach for him, but then she seemed to remember me, pushing me in front of her. “My daughter,” she said, as I stared up at the men.

“Ah, little Cailleach!” The older man kneeled in the dirt so that his face was in line with mine, and the gesture was welcoming and kind, so I nodded at him, though a small part of me was afraid to be so close to a mortal man. He glanced up at Danu quickly, as if for permission, before his gaze settled on mine again and he took my hand. “We’ve heard much about you, lass.” I could smell his scent sharply, a mix of earth and roasted meat and leather, and this close I could see that one of his teeth was rotten, and his beard was flecked through with red. I was about to reach out, to see if it felt the same as my own hair, when he said, “I’ve a girl myself. Enya. Only a few years older than you. Perhaps you’ll meet her today, as I think your mother is going up to see my wife.” He rose, and his eyes, which had been soft when he said his daughter’s name, became frightened, like a rabbit that had just heard a hawk scream. “Sorcha won’t tell you herself, but the babe has been giving her trouble. She’s in pain nearly all the time now and I’m…” The man trailed off, a flush on his face, but Danu just nodded, voice gentle.

“I’ll visit her first, I’m sure I have something in my bag that will help.”

Cormac’s face softened again, and he pressed his hand against Danu’s for a moment before opening the gate and ushering us inside the fort.

“Is that man, Cormac, a friend of yours?” I hadn’t known that Danu had mortal friends. It was strange to consider.

Danu glanced back. “I’ve known him since he was a youth.” Her face softened. “Before he became Sorcha’s husband. He is among the best of any mortals I’ve ever met.” She clapped her hands together. “But I’ve brought you to see more than just one. Look—look around us!”

I looked as Danu said, and saw an overwhelming variety of them. Even when we were all gathered together in Tara there were only six of us, but here everywhere I looked there was another mortal breathing and spitting and moving. A thousand scents filled my nose: piss and beer, roasted lamb, and animal dung. And one other specific smell I could not understand until I asked Danu. She laughed. “That is mortals themselves.”

“They stink?” I made a face of disgust.

“Their bodies give off a scent,” Danu said. “Like all animals. Besides, we smell too.”

“No,” I said. “You smell like grass because you want to, you like the way grass smells.” I screwed up my nose. “I don’t think they want to smell this way.”

“This is why I wanted you to meet them.” Danu’s eyes were bright, excited. “They are so similar yet so different from us. Watch them.” She pointed to the feet of the people we passed, and I saw that as they walked dust clung to their skirts, flecks of mud fell on their legs, and bits of straw blew into their hair. By contrast, Danu and I disturbed nothing with our feet, as clean and unspoiled as we’d always been.

“Here,” Danu said after we’d walked up the hill, turning to a little round house that sat snugly against one of the mounded earthen walls. I followed Danu as she ducked into the dark interior. The floor was made of earth and a fire smoldered in the middle of the room, a hole in the roof letting out the smoke. It was cramped and smelly, but Danu didn’t wrinkle her nose, instead exclaiming, “Sorcha! I told you to stop lifting that cauldron.”

The woman lifting a black pot out of the fire turned toward us, cheeks red with heat. “Danu.” The woman’s smile was pinched, and I wondered if she was feeling pain , another thing that the gods talked about—they said it came from harming a mortal body—though I didn’t understand what that meant. “I cannot let the dinner burn, and Enya has run off again to play in the forest.”

Danu sighed. “That’s what my girl would be doing as well if I hadn’t brought her with me today,” she said, prodding me forward.

The woman, Sorcha, studied me quietly. “I’d never know she was yours”—she looked at Danu then back at me—“if not for those green eyes. I’ve never seen eyes like yours before, but she has them too.”

“She is mine, no matter how she looks.” Danu’s voice was firm, almost hot, as though Sorcha’s words had made her angry, but before anyone could say anything else, a girl came running into the house, all out of breath and with a rosy glow on her cheeks and nose.

“I’m sorry, Ma.” Her voice was fast. “I didn’t mean to be gone for so long, but there was ice on the bank, and it was so—” The girl cut herself off when she saw us and blinked in confusion. She had a long black braid down her back and soft brown eyes like the guard below, Cormac. She looked a few years older than me, halfway between a child and a woman, but when she saw me, her eyes lit up.

“Cailleach, at last,” she cried, as though she’d known me all her life, and she ran over to me, tugged on my hand. “You must come, before the ice melts.”

I had never touched a mortal before and in that brief contact, I felt… everything : the thump of the girl’s heartbeat, rushing blood under her blue-veined wrist, a constellation of lines on the tips of her fingers. Excitement rushed through me, making my head spin. Was this what it was like, to be a goddess in a mortal world? Was this why the gods sighed over their old mortality, because they missed the heat under their skin, the thumping of hearts, the rise and fall of lungs? Was this what they longed for?

I followed Enya out the door, as dazzled by her as I had been by my blue-tinged skin the day before. We ran down and out of the fort, passing her father still standing guard as we went. He gave a little laugh as he saw us run by, calling out something that was lost on the wind.

“Your ma’s been talking about you for ages,” Enya said as she led me west of the fort, toward a wide, dark wood. Her feet were bare, but she didn’t seem to mind, even as she went crunching over twigs and kicking up swaths of leaves. “I’ve been hoping you’d come soon. I’ve no little sisters of my own anymore, not since the last three were buried, and so I’ve no one to show my favorite spots to. The others don’t like to go out in the winter, they say the wolves’ll get them. But I’ve never seen a wolf yet. Only heard them.” Enya grinned at me and then threw up her head, howling at the sky.

Her voice, high and loose in the air, made me think of winter, of the wildness of whipping winds, and the thought made me flush with delight. Before I knew it, I too had thrown up my head and let loose a howl, and we nearly collapsed in laughter, my stomach hurting from the force of it.

After walking for a few minutes, we arrived at a frozen stream. The ice crystals had piled on top of each other, feathering over and over until the water looked like one of the cloaks I’d seen the women wearing in the fort. I reached out a finger and touched it—knew that if I wanted to, I could have gathered it up and spread it over myself. I wished I could show Enya, wished she could see the marvel of my gift, but I did not know how to undo Danu’s glamour, so instead I said, “I love winter.”

“I do too.” Enya grinned. “My ma thinks I’m mad.”

“So does mine.” My fingers tingled at the similarities between us. “She prefers the spring. The warmth of the sun in summer.” I lay on the cold, thick ice and looked up at the grey-clouded sky. “I like to feel cold.” I rubbed my wrist against the ice. “It makes my head spin…”

Enya lay down on beside me. “When the snow comes and I can feel my blood pumping and heart racing and the wind howling it’s like—it’s like I’m the winter itself.”

The sky above me blurred as my eyes filled with tears. What Enya had said was exactly how I’d felt in the clearing. Danu had not understood, but this mortal girl, Enya, did. Perhaps mortals were as special as Danu thought.

“I knew we’d be friends.” Enya’s voice was so assured that I nodded, though I’d never had a friend before. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard the word, but I knew as soon as it left Enya’s lips that she was right, we were friends. We always would be.

The first time I saw Danu afraid was the day that Sorcha gave birth to her child.

It had been my fault that we were there at all. A blizzard blew outside, and Danu had been reluctant to leave Tara, where it was unfailingly warm, with flowers blooming out of season as they always did. But since the moment the storm had started at the bottom of the hill early that morning, I’d had an itching, overwhelming desire to be out in it.

“We can go see Enya and Sorcha.” My voice was wheedling, knowing that the moment we arrived, Enya and I could escape out to the forest. “It has been so long.”

“Has it?” Danu blinked up at me languidly from where she sprawled in a hammock. Though I didn’t actually know how long it had been since we’d last seen them, I nodded.

“Alright then my love,” Danu sighed, reaching out for my hand. At the warmth of her touch I felt a shiver, as though she’d melted away a bit of the storm outside, a bit of the winter inside me, but I ignored the feeling and kept her hand in mine, and suddenly we stood outside Sorcha’s front door.

I frowned because I had wanted to walk to the fort, had wanted to walk through the howling winds, but before I could object, something hit me hard in the shoulder. I spun around and was surprised to see Danu laughing, dusting snow from her hands. It was so lovely to see snow clinging to her that I laughed too, clambering to make my own ball. I threw it at her, and it broke over her long brown braid, and before she could retaliate, I danced away, calling to the flurries to hide me. My plan worked, but only for a moment. After all, I was still a child, and Danu, though she’d given me control over winter, could command me still, so she called me into her arms only too easily. She laughed, pulling me close. “I think that’s enough of that. Let’s go find Sorcha.”

The door flew open, revealing Enya, and my heart surged with joy. Only, she looked strange, her face pinched and pale. “Danu.” Her voice was heavy with relief, but it was me she looked at, who she put her hand out to. “Ma’s having the baby.”

The little house was crowded with women—some by the fire, some sitting at the table, and two standing at Sorcha’s side. I recognized one as her sister, and the other as the village midwife. I looked at Danu, waiting for her to push her way toward Sorcha, but instead she drew back as she looked at her, sitting on a birthing stool in the middle of the room. Her face was puffy and red, her hands clenching a rope that hung from the ceiling. She cried out, but her voice, low and rough, did not sound like her own. At the animal noise of it, I shrank back toward Danu, expecting her to hold me and tell me that all would be well, but I did not find her where I thought she’d be. She had retreated to the door. I looked from Danu to Sorcha, eyes wide and confused, so afraid I did not know what to do.

Thankfully, Enya had stayed at my side. She squeezed my hand, though her voice sounded wobbly. “Ma will be fine. She’s birthed many children.”

“Dead children,” Danu whispered quietly, so quietly that only a god—only I—could hear, and I thought of the sisters Enya had mentioned, the dead girls. I didn’t really understand what that meant, what death meant, but I knew it could mean an end to Sorcha, and perhaps that would mean an end to our visits here, and I surged forward, my hands outstretched. I was a goddess. I would fix Sorcha, make sure she did not end .

“No, child.” The midwife pushed me away gently. “No need to fear,” she said, but she was lying because Enya had told me only the other day of the three women who had died that spring during childbirth. “It’s natural,” she continued. “The pain, the blood.” I had not noticed the blood, but as soon as she said the word, it was all I could see, scattered over the straw on the floor—all I could smell, the scent of it rich and metallic in the air—and I was suddenly terrified, terrified of Sorcha dying like the other women had. I looked at Danu, who caught my pleading gaze and moved hesitantly forward.

“I have things, they might help.” I watched as Danu pulled bottles and herbs from her bag, approaching Sorcha’s side and squeezing her shoulder for a moment. I had never seen my mother’s hands shake before.

Enya and I were shunted to the corner as Sorcha’s labor progressed, while Danu stayed by her side. I thought as I watched her that perhaps Danu did not like blood, that perhaps it was one thing about mortality that she did not rejoice in, but though she paled when she looked at it, she did not turn away, even when it spattered on her hands, her clothes.

After hours of watching, eventually Enya and I fell asleep, curled up against each other by the fire. Our hands were clasped together, and even in sleep her hand tensed whenever her mother cried. I don’t know how long we slept, but we both jumped awake at a shriek that seemed to pull all the air from the room. Sorcha was screaming, her head rolled back in pain, her body arched. Enya’s hand trembled and she began to cry, not moving her eyes from her mother. “It’s never taken this long before, not even with the biggest ones.” She looked to Danu beseechingly, willing her to help Sorcha, but she had stepped back. I could tell Danu was doing nothing more than the other women, was not moving to heal her friend though she had the power, and I did not understand why. But she did not meet Enya’s gaze, nor mine, her eyes steady on Sorcha.

Finally, Sorcha gave a gasp and something red and rotten slid from between her legs. There was a brief silence, and then the red rotten thing began to cry, and Sorcha was laughing, and Enya was running forward, flinging her arms around her mother and new brother, and a moment later Cormac came rushing into the house, his eyes bright, tears running down his cheeks as he reached for his son.

Danu and I left soon after the babe was born, walking through the village and out into the howling storm. She took a long, deep breath. I did too, letting the cold snow smell replace the blood and sweat and straw, but Danu stood for some time in the tempest before reaching for my hand. We were halfway back to Tara, walking silently side by side, when I asked, “Why didn’t you help her?”

“It is not for us to interfere.” Danu shook her head. “They live so briefly. Even the longest-lived ones are like a breath for us.”

“But she’s your friend. She’s Enya’s ma.” My voice trembled. “And she could have died .”

“Cailleach, my love.” Danu dropped to her knees. “You have witnessed only tiny moments of mortality and all of those have been colored by your love for Enya and Sorcha. As you grow, you will understand that while mortal lives can be as beautiful as a rose, they are also as short. We cannot save them all. Not even the ones we love.”

“But if she’d asked,” I said. “If she’d begged you to save her, you would have?”

Danu shook her head, looking back toward the hill fort. “She is good and kind, but many of them are good and kind. How can I put her above any other? Should I heal her and let a woman in the east die?”

“Heal them both!”

Her smile was pained. “That is not what it means to be a goddess, Cailleach. You’ll learn that someday.”

“You could make her a goddess.” I thought not only about Sorcha, but also of Enya. Danu could give them both godhood like she’d given Dagda and Morrígan and Lug, Manannán. If she could do it for them, why would she not for our friends?

Danu shook her head. “No,” she said. “No.”

“But why—”

“Everyone cannot be saved, Cailleach!” Danu’s voice was suddenly hot and golden as a forge fire. “Would you have me make every mortal into a god, so as to avoid death? And how would you have me choose? If I gave Sorcha godhood and not her husband, her village, and the next—what then?”

She seemed once more like she had in the clearing when she’d given me winter, dangerous and frightening, and though a part of me wanted to shrink away from her I thought of Enya and lifted my chin bravely. “But why not? What do you think would happen?”

I expected Danu would be angry at the question but instead she sighed. “Changing a mortal into a god—it is not like changing a vine into a rose. Every time I give something—godhood, food, rain—a part of me is weakened. What if I kept giving and giving until I was all used up?” Her voice dropped to a whisper and she grew quiet, as if lost in thought. After a moment, she placed a hand on my cheek. “Understand, Cailleach. Even if I had healed Sorcha, she would still eventually die. And if others heard of what I’d done for her they would want the same for their mothers and husbands and sons. I would spend all my days hearing their calls.”

I didn’t understand. “Would that be bad?”

Her face became thoughtful. “Perhaps not. Perhaps if they offered something in exchange, something that would give some measure of power in return, perhaps then…” She trailed off. I did not understand her reasoning, but that did not matter because by the time we returned home she had a plan set in her mind.

She brought mortals to Tara and told them her story, how she had made other gods. She told the mortals before her that she’d chosen them to spread our stories, that they would call themselves druids and they would teach the people how to worship us. They would offer us their prayers and their voices, they would set up altars to us in their woods and fields and houses, and they would give us the choice bits of their harvest, animals, gold, and in exchange, we would listen. We would guide them and protect them and heal them.

Soon, the mortals began to call.

They asked Lug for riches and Manannán for safety on the seas, for nets full of fish. They asked Dagda for children who were hale and hearty, and Morrígan to turn the tide of battle, to make their spears sharper than their enemies’.

And they asked Danu for everything. For harvest that grew tall and golden, for the soft rains of spring, for flowers and health and safety and love. Love us , they said to Danu. Great mother goddess, love us, for we love you.

They did not often call my name, though. What did mortals want with howling winds and ice and snow? They did not long for the cold blue places as I did. But I did not mind.

I had Enya, and Sorcha and Danu. I had enough.