Page 12 of The Winter Goddess

The Third Life

No one asked why áine moved into my hut.

I don’t know if they thought we were living as lovers or as sisters, but the villagers did not seem to care; if anything, they seemed pleased, glad to see that áine would not have to suffer alone in the house where Dagda had died.

We had lived together for a few months before I learned about áine’s nightmares. Spring had turned to a long, hot summer, and that night I had not been able to fall asleep, tossing and turning. I lay there in the dark, wishing I still had the ability to send ice crackling down my arms. My days were so full that I had not thought of my immortal self in a long time, and my stomach writhed with guilt—as though the desire itself meant I did not want áine anymore.

áine was usually a still, quiet sleeper, but that night her body began to shake, and when I bent over her, I could see her eyes fluttering wildly behind her closed eyelids. She cried out then, so loudly that my heart jumped—still she didn’t wake up, just continued screaming. I wrapped my arms around her as her hands grasped for something invisible in the air. I called her name over and over, trying to soothe her, until finally her eyes flew open. She looked at me, but it was obvious she didn’t truly see me because she pushed me away and hunched over, hands in front of her face as though I would hurt her.

“áine.” She had her knees pulled up to her chest, and I crouched down as one would to a frightened child. “It’s Cailleach. I’m here, áine, I’m here.” After a few gasping breaths, she finally lowered her arms. When she looked at me again, I could tell she knew my face.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was trembling and weak, as though she’d just been ill. She raked her fingers through her hair and looked away from me, but I could see tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know why you call us ‘mortals’ so often,” she said suddenly, breathless, as though she’d been running. “You’re a mortal too, you know.” The look she gave me was almost suspicious, but before I had time to say anything she sighed. “I’m sorry. The dreams,” she whispered. “They’re terrible.” She twisted her braid around and around in her hands. “I dreamt about Dagda—that he was alive again, reaching out to me, but…but then his face…it changed.” She shuddered.

“Changed into what?”

áine didn’t answer me immediately, instead moving to stand by the cold hearth. “You know that Dagda and Niamh raised me. I adored Dagda, but he was often away, sometimes on the road with other druids, sometimes worshipping on his own, so most often I was with Niamh. She taught me how to heal, how to bring babies into the world. I loved being with her, but she had…moods. One day she would be so happy she would tell me to forget our chores and would instead take me for a swim. On other days…well, she did not get out of bed, and I would have to take care of everything on my own. On the good days she told me stories about her own grandmother, Siobhan.”

I forgot sometimes that áine was related to Siobhan. They looked nothing alike; áine had a light, laughing quality about her that I had never seen on Siobhan’s face. I was glad that áine had never known her troubles, that the hard lines that had been on Siobhan’s face had not marked her own in the same way.

“Niamh would tell me that we must be kind to all strangers, because they might be gods in disguise.”

She told me the same story Siobhan had once relayed to me, of when Manannán saved her from drowning, and though it had been many long years, I could still hear the echo of her voice in the words that áine spoke.

“I loved that story.” áine gave a small smile. “To me, the gods Dagda worshipped were always…distant. But Niamh made them seem real, as though I might meet them at any time. But on the bad days…” Her smiled dropped. “On the bad days, Niamh told me much darker stories. Things that used to terrify me, about demons, evil spirits. About things that watched from the forest. And I began to wonder, if a god could inhabit the body of a mortal…could those… things do the same?” áine stirred the hearth with the iron poker as though expecting a shower of sparks, but it remained as dead as it had been a moment before. “I began to have nightmares. About Niamh and Dagda, about my mother. They would reach for me, but their eyes would be empty and their smiles…their lips would twist, their teeth would begin to rot, and their faces—” áine cut herself off, shuddering. “Dagda said that I had nothing to fear, that only gods could walk among mortals. That they would protect us. But Niamh never did. She would hold me tight when I woke screaming, she would kiss my forehead, but she never told me that I was wrong.”

Her gaze moved to the open window. “Any time I meet strangers, I am so…torn. I want to treat them as Siobhan wanted, as gods in disguise, but I’m also frightened of what they might be, what might be hidden behind their face. I wanted to go to the druids as Dagda did, learn to heal with great skill, but when the time came…I couldn’t leave Daingean Uí Chúis. It would have been too much, to be surrounded by strangers all the time.”

áine turned toward me then expectantly, as if I could offer her reassurance, perhaps, or comfort, but I did not know what to say. I was ashamed, as though she had seen the truth of me. But I knew that to be foolish—I wasn’t an evil spirit, a demon. I could tell her who I truly was—but was what I had been as a god so different from what she feared? So though I wanted to reassure her, had opened my lips with that very intention, I held back. Instead, I asked, “Why did you talk to me, then? In the tavern that first night we met?”

áine sat on the floor, put her head on my knee. “I don’t know. You were sitting there all alone. And when I looked at you, I felt as though somehow I knew you. As though I’d always known you.” She blushed and reached out, caressing the side of my face. “Besides, you’re not really a stranger. You’re Fianna’s kin. You knew Dagda as a child.” She smiled at me, so widely and so sweetly that I put away all thoughts of telling her the truth about what I was. We were together now, in this life. That was what mattered. I was no longer the goddess Cailleach, no longer blue-skinned and powerful. Now, I was the same as áine. Mortal.

With only the memory of once having been more.

I liked having áine in my bed at night, liked that I no longer woke up cold and alone in the dark, but I did not care for the number of people who now flooded my house. Before the sun had even risen, they would come trickling up the hill, wanting her prayers, her touch, her thoughts. They lingered even after she’d eased whatever worry they had: they liked to stay and have a drink with her, and while they chatted, the villagers would let their children wander in my garden and splash in my stream. áine never seemed to mind or to long for quiet. Indeed, in the few moments she would have been alone, like when I had to go trade for fish or wanted a walk, she would twitch and fidget and usually accompany me anyway.

At first I did not mind because when we were together I did not think about Failinis as much. Did not listen for his feet padding across the floor or look up to see if he was asleep by the fire. We passed our first winter together like this, and it wasn’t until late spring that I began to wake with a tightness in my chest, craning my neck as I listened to the sounds of people in my house, longing for their absence.

I woke one morning later than usual, and when I stumbled from our small sleeping chamber, I found that we were, once more, not alone. áine sat at the table, a fat baby bouncing on her knee, chattering away with Saoirse, a woman from the village who had always rankled me; being around her was like having the sun constantly shining in my eyes. No matter where I went I could hear her laughter, her jests, her voice—always pitched too loud.

“You must have been sleeping like the dead.” Saoirse clucked her tongue at me when I entered the room. “We’ve not been able to keep the children quiet.” She pointed out the door to where three children were playing a game that seemed to involve shrieking at the top of their lungs. I winced and went back to the little room, dressing quickly and yanking my hair into a long braid. áine usually brushed it for me each morning, twisting it into a pretty knot that kept it out of my face, but I’d never allow her to do something so intimate with so many people around. “There’s porridge in the pot.”

I stiffened with annoyance as Saoirse addressed me so casually, as though she had some claim over my hut, over the food in my old black pot.

áine flicked a glance at me, frowning in warning, so I grit my teeth and held my tongue, walking outside without any breakfast. It was a cool, breezy spring day where the air smelled of wet earth and green, growing things. The scent irritated me; it smelled like Danu.

I walked to the hives and peered in at the bees. The smallest hive had been troubling me lately, and I was worried that the queen was ill, but I found her easily, and she was alive still, surrounded by a clutch of followers. She looked like áine, I thought—always surrounded by a buzzing, clamoring crowd.

I walked to the stream to dangle my feet in, trying to cool my irritation, but Saoirse’s noisy children followed me and began splashing each other, shrieking. I moved upstream and out of their splashing, commanding them to be quiet, but they paid me no mind and continued to play noisily. I closed my eyes, trying to block them out, to make myself still and unmoving as a stone. But their shrieks only increased until their cries changed to frightened screams. I looked upstream and saw the little girl had fallen in. I rushed forward without thought and grabbed her, gathering her up to my chest, patting her back vigorously. She gasped and coughed against me for a moment, her limbs shaking, and I began to shake too. She could have drowned as I had in my second life, dying in a choking swirl of cold water.

I saved her , I realized. I saved this mortal child. And I had done it instinctively, as any other mortal would have. As though I were one of them. My head spun at the thought, with the knowledge that my body’s instincts had become those of a mortal. I thought so rarely of my life as a goddess, had pushed my memories away so thoroughly in deference to áine, thinking I could wear mortality as a disguise—but I had never expected to truly become one. To feel and act they did.

I pushed the girl roughly away from me and into the embrace of her siblings, who had come crowding over just as Saoirse and áine came running, then took the girl up in their arms, holding her close as she wept in fright. The girl’s teeth chattered, and her lips were tinged blue with cold. I was glad I’d saved her, of course I was, but I was angry too, that my body had acted without my leave. My punishment, which I had not thought about in so long, seemed to rise once more to the forefront of my mind and clamp chains around my wrists. I was not a god, no matter how I wished it—but I was not a mortal either, no matter how I acted. I was both and nothing, and my head and heart ached—and somehow Saoirse was still talking.

“Oh love.” She held the girl close before scolding her, swatting her head and making the girl howl. “I’ve told you the current is too strong here for you. But you never listen to your mother, do you? And now you’ve interrupted our—”

I turned from away from them and began to stride toward the wood. I heard áine call my name but I ignored her, quickening my pace in the hopes that she would not follow me. She didn’t, and when I finally reached the cool, dark light of the wood I found I could relax enough to breathe.

“It was good,” a voice said. “That you saved the child.”

I jumped at Danu appearing by my side. I did not stop for her, indeed only strode faster, but she kept pace with me easily and was truly silent, making every small noise that much louder: the twigs I broke underfoot, the branches that scratched at my dress while her footsteps did nothing and her clothes remained untouched. Her graceful, quiet movements against the noise of my mortal body made the gorge rise in my throat, and suddenly my panic shifted sharply to tears. All I wanted was to walk alone through the woods. Why could no one let me be anymore? I didn’t say anything, though, just continued to walk, hoping that Danu would leave if I didn’t respond to her, but she stayed.

“There was a time when you wouldn’t have,” Danu continued patiently, voice conversational as though she had all the time in the world. Which, of course, she did.

“But not anymore,” I said. “I have done as you wanted, learned their mortal instincts. I saved the child when once I would have let her drown.” I gave her a bow, meaning to mock her, but slipped in the muddy ground to fall hard on my face in the mud. When I looked up, Danu was bending over me, amusement on her face, her robe spotless.

She did not move to help me even when I slipped again trying to rise to my feet. When I finally managed it, I wiped mud off my face. “I cannot abide spring. It is neither cold nor hot, neither hard nor soft. It is everything and nothing.”

“When I found out that I was going to have a child, I was sure that they would be like me, that they would rejoice in the warm spring air.” Danu extended her arms out as she crossed a rivulet of water on a vine that had stretched out obligingly. Several bluebirds had flown down onto her shoulders as she spoke, and a ring of yellow moths circled her head like a quick-moving crown. She should have looked ridiculous, but instead she was graceful and elegant; a queen surrounded by worshipful attendants. “Instead, that first spring, when you felt the warmth of sunlight on your face, you shrieked . Just once , one loud shriek that sounded like ice splintering. You hated it. Even then, I wasn’t certain until…” She looked away, disappointment shining on her face as she remembered the happiest day of my life. “I wasn’t disappointed in you,” she said, reading my thoughts. “I was…surprised. You were the first child born of the gods. We had no real idea what you would be like. But when I saw you in that clearing…when your skin turned blue.” She sighed. “I gave you winter then because I knew it would make you happy. I would do anything, Cailleach”—her eyes were glassy—“to make you happy.”

“Then why won’t you end my—” The words were on the tip of my tongue, but when I thought of returning home, I did not picture Tara’s marble halls or even my sacred grove, but my little hut on the hill. I thought of my life as a god, going back to the days of endless pleasure, easy power—and found I didn’t want it. I only wanted áine.

I almost stumbled, as though I’d been struck. Home, now, was wherever áine was. The realization set my heart ablaze, cleared my pounding head, and I began to run back to the hut to tell her. I was going to throw my arms around her and hold her close. I was going to tell her that I had chosen her, over the gods, over my blue skin, over winter . Over everything.

I didn’t even notice that Danu watched me go—that I had, for once, been the one to leave.

I had wandered far and it took me some time to return to the hut: the sun had set but it had not yet grown fully dark. I was pleased to see no one around the hill and to find áine sitting alone at the table.

“Where have you been , Cailleach,” she demanded before I could speak, pushing her stool away so roughly it clattered to the floor.

“I-I went on a walk—” I said, startled by her anger.

“All day? ” áine interrupted me. “And after what happened?”

I blinked. I’d entirely forgotten the child nearly drowning. “I couldn’t be around them anymore,” I stuttered. “You know I hate Saoirse and her children. I had to rescue that little one from the stream when she fell in, even after I told them to go away. They were shrieking and shrieking. I couldn’t bear it anymore.” My words were coming out wrong, jumbled, and too fast. It wasn’t what I wanted to say at all. I didn’t care about any of that anymore, I cared only about her , about áine, but she was looking at me with such anger that a prickle of ire rose in response. I should not have to account for all my comings and goings to anyone, not even her.

“You can’t just leave!” áine’s voice grew loud. “I didn’t know what had happened. I was worried you’d met some accident, run into a wolf or a bear with how far you go into those woods. Besides, you should have stayed, even if you were annoyed. Those children were frightened, and you didn’t comfort them.”

“I saved them,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Why should I have to comfort them too? They should have listened to me, to you and Saoirse. We told them not to play in the stream.”

“I don’t understand how you can be so unfeeling, Cailleach,” áine said. “You don’t even seem to care that the child nearly died. And you just left. You left me.” Her voice seemed to choke at the words.

I frowned. “I didn’t leave you . I needed some time. Just the day. That’s all.”

“I was scared .” áine’s voice dropped. “I didn’t know if you were hurt or needed me or if you would even come back—”

She did truly look scared, and I should have comforted her, but the guilt her expression incited in me made me upset again. I was not used to being beholden to anyone in such a way; it made me feel chained. And the truth in her words scared me—what would have happened if a bear or a wolf had found me? Once, nothing could have hurt me, and now everything could. It reminded me, sharply, of that torn feeling—of being neither god nor mortal—and it was with that hurt and fear that I spoke, my voice cold.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with me.”

áine stared at me for a long moment before leaving the hut, slamming the door so hard that a jar of honey that had been on the edge of a shelf fell, shattering on the ground. Its contents spread across the floor, forming a sticky, golden pool covered in shards of glass. I bent to pick it up and shouted when I sliced my finger, flinging the glass at the wall and peppering the honey with drops of my own red blood. I had come to tell her how much I wanted her, needed her. How had everything gone so wrong?

I wrapped my finger in a piece of white cloth, one that áine had just woven, heart in my throat. I was ashamed of what I’d said. I wanted to go after her, but I was afraid that I would not be able to say what I wanted to again, that my words would get jumbled up as they just had, as they so often did, and so instead I stayed and tried to go about my evening tasks, hoping she would return.

I ground wheat into flour and then cleaned and skinned a rabbit I’d caught earlier, even though I was clumsy with my cut finger. I stood over the well for a long time, trying to winch up the bucket with just one hand. After letting yet another bucket fall to the bottom, I hissed in frustration and kicked out at the stone, doing nothing more than stubbing my toe. I had gotten too comfortable with áine, too comfortable having another pair of hands to help with the daily tasks that made up so much of mortal life.

Finally I gave up and collapsed on the little stone bench that overlooked the sea, wrapping my arms around my knees. I watched the lights for a long time, didn’t realize I was crying until they began to blur. For the first time, I thought I understood what it was to be lonely. I had not wanted company as a goddess; I had been content. Even as a mortal, I had never felt this so intensely before, a need for someone else—a person I belonged to, with. I had had desires as a god, yes, but how could need exist when every desire could be met instantly? I had rarely ever even wanted . I ate because the taste of food was pleasant, not because I was hungry. I drank because spring water was cold, not because I was thirsty. Now, my need for Aíne, the lack of her, was making something crack inside me.

I had long buried my head in my knees when someone touched my shoulder. I shuddered with relief; I knew by the soft graze of her fingers that it was áine sitting beside me, touching my hair, leaning her cheek against mine. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed.

“I love you, Cailleach,” she replied, keeping her head pressed against mine. We looked down at the lights of the village together, and I tried to say that I loved her too, tried to tell her the truth, but I could not get the words out past the fullness in my throat, so instead I just pressed myself close to her until we both fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later, curled around her body in the soft grass. I looked up at the stars that shone above us, so many that they almost seemed to move as I watched them. I thought about what áine had said, how she’d told me she loved me, and I was sure she did—but could that love be true when she did not truly know me? I thought of her nightmares, how she woke up screaming, afraid of demons and evil spirits. Would she love me if she knew about my mottled blue skin, the ice in my veins, my endless, immortal body?

Would she love me, knowing what I’d done? The people I’d killed?

And was it honest and fair to tell her I loved her, when I held on to such a lie?

I did not think so. And so I did not tell her that I loved her, and I did not tell her that I was what she most feared: a great power capable of darkness, wearing the skin of a mortal.

The closer áine and I grew, the more I forgot my immortal self. Through her I learned about the villagers—not only their names and faces but about them, like the fact that Ardgal could not bear to kill any living thing, even though his father was the town’s butcher; and that Eithne could tell how old a catch was just by a whiff of it and had not yet been cheated even by the most wily of fisherman.

I still preferred my solitude or the company of just áine, but with her by my side, I was at least better known throughout the village. A few of the villagers even seemed to like me, like Nora, the oldest woman in the village, and Domhnall, a little boy who was always escaping his mother and running up the hill to talk to me and “help” with the bees.

In this way, several years passed, and I began to settle more and more into the grooves of village life. I had not seen Danu since our last talk in the wood, and I wondered if this was because she had not noticed the passing of time or because she just did not care anymore. Whatever the reason, I was glad.

áine even occasionally walked through the woods with me in deep winter, though I knew she would rather be sitting by our warm fire, hands busy with a quilt she was making for some expectant mother or creating the herbs and oils she used for her midwifery. While those walks with her by my side were not quiet—áine was incapable of silence—it was comforting to stroll hand in hand under the trees.

I had just returned from the forest one evening to find the fire out and the house dark. I was surprised: I’d expected áine to be home by now—the croft she’d gone to had only been a little way out of town. A twinge of worry pulsed through me. It had been a long, hard winter, and I’d seen the prints that the wolves had made, closer to our hut than they usually got. I’d not heard of any in the village, but perhaps on that empty road at night…

I twitched around the hut nervously, lighting the fire, sweeping the floor, cutting up the mushrooms I’d found in the wood. They were áine’s favorite, with brown-grey tops that were carved into little mazes and lines. I set them on the fire to cook with a large pat of butter, turning to the door again and again in hopes I’d see her. Soon, the mushrooms hissed and crackled, becoming golden and crisp, and still she had not come.

I had just set the table, pouring glasses of wine for us both, when the door flew open and there, finally, was áine, outlined in falling snow, face smeared with mud.

“Where’ve you been?” I drew out a chair for her and pulled her wet shawl from her neck. I dipped a rag in water and cleaned mud from her face—had she fallen? There was dirt smeared all the way up her dress and her eyes were red and face puffy with crying.

“What happened?” I asked gently, and she began to sob again, a thin, sad wail. I put my arms around her and pulled her close until her shoulders stopped shaking. Finally she looked up. “Sheelin, the little girl I went to help? She couldn’t breathe in the cold. I gave her all I had; tried to use steam, smoke, honey, but nothing worked. I couldn’t do anything for her, Cailleach. It was horrible, to see her suffer, to see her face turn pale and blue. She died in her mother’s arms.” áine gasped out the last words, and tears sprang into my own eyes as I thought of the lovely little girl, shy and quiet with a shock of red hair so bright it was like looking at the sunset. I thought of her dead and cold in her mother’s arms, and then thought of Siobhan, whose child had died from the winter I’d sent. The one that had killed so many, adults and children alike.

“I’m sorry.” My voice trembled. “I’m so sorry.” I closed my eyes as a wave of nausea swept over me, and I thought of those I’d killed that winter so long ago. Of how their families must have wept. I suddenly sprang to my feet and ran out of the hut, barely making it outdoors before vomiting in the snow. I was kneeling on the cold ground, gasping, when áine came outside. She held back my hair, pulling it away from my face until I’d stopped vomiting, and when I turned to her, I knew I could not keep my secrets anymore. I had to tell her what I was, or she would never truly know me. Never truly love me. I did not want her to know only parts of me, such small parts compared to my long, long life before.

She must have seen something in my face, because her forehead—still streaked with mud—creased. She rested a gentle hand on my face, stroking. “What is it, Cailleach?” she whispered.

Cold seeped into my bones but I did not get up, keeping my eyes on hers. My confession poured itself out of me, as if now that I had made the decision, nothing could stop me. “Do you remember the stories that Niamh told you about that long, cold winter? The one her grandmother Siobhan lived through? Not like this.” I gestured at the snow that had piled up on the roof of our house, at the white harbor. “This is nothing compared to that winter. I remember the drifts were so high that year they could bury a man. And no matter how the people waited and hoped, spring did not come. The sun could not shine its warmth through the white clouds. The rivers froze, and the sea. Even the people.”

áine nodded slowly and flakes of snow fell from her hair, glittering for a moment before drifting to the ground. “But Cailleach, that was so long ago. In my grandmother’s grandmother’s time. How—how can you remember it?”

I hesitated. “Did Dagda ever tell you about a goddess of winter? Of cold? A goddess whose skin turned blue as she walked through the cold world she’d created? Once, people knew her name. They called her Cailleach.” I looked up at áine. She looked so lovely, standing there in the blowing storm, hair so dark against the white of her face. “I am she. I am the goddess Cailleach.”

áine shook her head. “No.” Her voice was steady, almost flat. “No, that’s not true. It cannot be true. I know you. You knew Dagda. You were a child here.”

“I was not a child,” I said slowly. “I was the woman that he knew on the hill. The one with the little dog who he loved so much, Failinis. I had bees, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Dagda helped me. He was my friend, he taught me how to collect the honey and wax…” I trailed off when I saw her face, then tried to continue. “I didn’t know how to be a mortal. I had never been one—the other gods, they—they were once mortals. But I was not. And now I am. And I understand.” I got to my feet and áine flinched, stepping away from me. I reached toward her. “I would never hurt you. I was given this body by the gods as punishment, so that I would learn what it was to be one of you, what harm I had caused. I understand now, why I should not have sent the winter. I understand. And I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I can’t, because…because I love you.”

A tremor crossed áine’s face, but her eyes were wide and clear. She believed me. I felt a little calmer. She believed what I was saying. I would be able to explain. I reached for her once more, but she shrank away from me.

Her next words were hard and pained.

“ You sent the winter?” she asked. “The one that killed—so many?”

I swallowed. “I didn’t realize—I didn’t…” I tried to explain. “I had a grove. A sacred grove. It was the first place I knew the true touch of the cold. It was where Danu gave me dominion over winter, the first place I considered—considered home, safe. And they—” My voice trembled. “They destroyed it. They razed it to the ground and carved the earth and filled it with their gold and their dead. And the scent…” I gagged as I remembered it. “All I could smell was them . Their hands and bodies, their sweat and blood and greed as they—they took without thought. Without care. And before that, the mortals, they killed my friend, Enya. They forced her to marry against her will, to have children she didn’t want, and she died—” I cut myself off, my words sounding foolish, thin. So many women married men they did not want, bore children that killed them. I could see it in áine’s eyes. How was Enya any different from them? I hadn’t known then—and still, even if I had, it didn’t make it right , what had happened to her. But I also knew that what I had done, what I had wrought upon the mortals, upon Siobhan …that too had not been right . I didn’t know what else to say, how to explain myself her, so I stumbled on, my words coming faster and faster. “I saw how all they knew was to take . They broke my heart and so I lay down on top of their mound and I brought the snow. I let it fall and fall until I could no longer smell them, no longer see what they had done. And spring—I did not let spring come.” My voice faltered; I was terrified by the look on áine’s face.

“You are a god —” áine’s voice was hard, brittle. “And you killed—you killed thousands—because they took from you? From a god who had…everything?”

“I—I didn’t understand, then. I did not mean to—” I did not know how to explain it, and I reached out once more for áine’s hand, but she took another step away from me.

“You cannot kill with intention and claim no malice, Cailleach. It is not possible.” Her voice was low. “You cannot do good, true good, if you’re not actually kind, and you cannot murder thousands of us—mortals”—she spat the word out as though I were not one myself, standing before her—“and claim that you acted without thought.” áine’s mouth twisted. “You have no right to walk among us. No right to love.” She blinked and I watched a snowflake fall from her eyelash and onto the ground. When I looked back up she was running down the hill to the village.

My heart was broken, but I was not afraid that áine would not return when I went to bed that night. I understood her capacity for love, for forgiveness. She just needed some time. She would come back.

I should have known better.

When the door opened in the middle of the night, I was relieved. I believed áine had returned as she had before. I thought we could talk again. I had worried over my words; I could explain better this time, I knew it.

When I stepped out into the kitchen, I saw that my home was filled with the people of the village.

Nora. Ruaidhrí. Bride. Saoirse.

And áine.

She stood with them with her mouth set in hatred, holding a burning torch. I did not have time to move, to scream, or even beg. Ruaidhrí, my first lover, whose hands had been so clumsy, was not clumsy when he smashed his fist into my face. I fell to the ground, dazed and bleeding. Then Bride, who had watched the sun rise with me that night we spent together, bound my feet—and Sean, who always saved fresh fish for me, tied my hands roughly behind my back—and Saoirse—Saoirse, whose child I had saved from the river, shoved a gag in my mouth. I saw the faces of people I had danced with and broken bread with and traded with—all of them, my friends and my village—I watched them turn their backs on me at the drop of a coin.

They carried me through the village and into the wood, to the clearing where the sacred oak stood. I still did not understand what they had planned until I saw the wood piled high over the stone altar that Dagda had used for animal sacrifice. I let out a sob of panic, searching their familiar faces to find áine’s in the crowd. We locked eyes, mine wide with fear, and though her face paled her unforgiving gaze did not falter as she approached the pyre.

“This woman that we have cared for and welcomed into our homes is not who we thought she was.” She stared at me without remorse, even as I began to weep. “She is a demon. A wraith in a mortal’s body. She has confessed to me the great crimes she has committed against us. Against all mortals. And she must be punished for those crimes.”

And then she set the torch against the wooden pyre.

I thought I’d known pain before—when I’d stubbed a toe, bruised my ankle. But this—flames crawling over me, blackening my skin—was different. New. Terrible.

I screamed as I burned.

And burned.

For what felt like centuries.

And the darkness that came then wasn’t sweet or cold or gentle.

It was red and hot and endless.

Endless.