Page 15 of The Winter Goddess

The Fourth Life

Three winters passed just like that; Mór never fell in love with the cold as I had, but I never stopped trying. One early spring day when Mór was about six, I was walking back to the hut with Mór and Domhnall, when I heard them talking behind me, their voices carrying on the wind.

“She was my friend. I don’t know why they burned her.”

I slowed down, listening intently.

“I don’t remember what she looked like or what her name was, but she lived on the hill before you and Cailleach. She was the one who started keeping the bees there. And she taught me many things. That I did not have to fear them. That I should never try to make them afraid or angry, because once they sting you, they die.”

“Was she very frightening?”

“No.” Domhnall considered her question. “She was…quiet and kind. She liked the cold and the sound of the wolves howling at night.”

“Like Mama,” Mór said. “Mama loves the cold.” They were silent for a moment. “Why did they burn her?” Mór sounded on the verge of tears, and I knew the story was probably too much for Mór’s tender heart, but I did not interrupt. I needed to know what Domhnall remembered. I had never asked in the village, never heard about the woman they burned, and I’d never known how to bring it up without arousing confusion or suspicion.

Domhnall lowered his voice, and I had to strain to hear him say, “I saw your mother—your first mother, áine—come down from the hill that night. I wasn’t supposed to be out, but I was playing in the snow with Eanna, and we saw her go past. She looked sick. Her eyes were red, and her skin was pale. She went into Bride’s house, then into mine. I heard her talking to Mama. She said that the woman on the hill was not really a woman, but a spirit. And she had done some great evil and must not be allowed to continue living among us.”

“But you said she was kind,” Mór whispered, sounding shocked.

“She was,” Domhnall said. “Though she didn’t want people to see it. I saw her cry once over the bees, when she thought I wasn’t looking. She’d found a dead queen, and she’d known the whole hive would die.”

“Why do we burn spirits?”

“Your mother—áine—said it was the only way to be sure that she couldn’t hurt anyone else. It was the only way to free the spirit and send it back to where it had come. The others in the village agreed.”

And so quickly , I thought. After years of knowing me. I wondered, and not for the first time, if I’d been nicer, smiled more—held their children close as áine had—would they have been so easily swayed? Would they have found pity in their hearts, would they have come without their torches, only to plead or shun?

“I don’t like her,” Mór decided. “áine wasn’t my mother. Mama is. And Mama would never hurt anyone.” She ran up to me, slipping her hand through mine, but I couldn’t look down at her, couldn’t say anything to comfort her, to protect the memory of áine.

All I could think of was how hot the torch had been, burning in my hand.

As the years passed, my lives before became distant and foggy. With all it took to care for a child, keep her warm and healthy and fed, I simply didn’t have time to sit around and think about this life, let alone those others, or my immortal one. Sometimes, I almost wondered if I had dreamt it—my divinity. It felt like I’d always been a mortal woman on this hill, living with her daughter, keeping bees together.

I didn’t know how or when my baby had grown into an eleven-year-old.

Mór had been quiet lately, and sad, missing Domhnall. He was no longer a boy, had grown tall and strong over the past year and now worked with his father on the boat. He still came up the hill when he could, but he seemed less interested in the games that Mór wanted to play, and while he was always kind to her, she could tell that his heart was not in them anymore. Danu still came sometimes, but her arrival was always sudden and unexpected, and she would be gone again as fast as a summer storm; Mór had begun to realize that she could not be relied on. She had also started asking questions about Danu. How did she appear one moment and disappear the next? Why could she float and fly and create magical globes with her hands when no other mortal could? Danu said not to think about it, that she had told Mór to keep such things a secret and that Mór had promised, but I wished…I wished Mór did not have to be tangled up with immortals at all.

We were sitting in the garden one late summer evening, eating bread and honey, when Mór said, “Mama, I want a dog.”

“No—” The breath caught in my throat. I cleared it and tried to sound less stern. “You play with the village dogs most days, isn’t that enough? Besides, a dog would scare the chickens.” I remembered the day I’d found Failinis asleep in the sun, three chickens clucking contentedly on his back. My heart was tight, as though it were being pressed under some great weight. It did not seem possible that I still missed my little dog after so many years. I wished sometimes that I could forget him, that I could make his memory vague and hazy as a dream.

“I would teach him,” Mór said seriously. “He would be friends with the chickens. With the bees. Please , Mama.” She looked up at me, her blue eyes wide, but I shook my head and told her it was time to sleep. She scowled but went inside anyway, and I slumped against the side of the hut. I hated saying no to Mór, but I wanted to protect her. What would she do when her dog eventually died? Dogs had such short lifespans, even for mortal beings. I would not let Mór know such sorrow if I could prevent it.

“I can bring the child a dog.” Danu stepped out of the air. She was in her immortal form, and I raised an eyebrow at her. “We were dancing.” Danu waved her hand. “Mor wanted us to all wear our immortal forms.” I blinked, confused, and Danu laughed. “Morrígan.” She enunciated the words slowly as though I were feebleminded. “The goddess.”

“I know who she is, Danu.” My voice was sharp. But I knew I had not fooled her. I had forgotten Morrígan, had thought only of my own little girl. Morrígan, Lug, Dagda, Manannán…even their names were strange and hollow, half-forgotten.

Danu waved her hands. “I will bring the child a dog,” she said again. “I saw one in the forest that I think she’ll like. Black, with yellow eyes.”

“You cannot bring Mór a wolf.” My voice was firm. “She is a mortal—it would eat her.”

“You loved wolves as a child.” Danu laughed. “Whenever you were missing, I could usually find you playing in the snow with them.”

“I was not a human child. They could not have hurt me. How can you not remember, Danu? When you were mortal, do you think your mother ever brought you a wolf?”

Danu’s face darkened, but she said lightly, “Perhaps she did. I lived so, so long ago.”

“If she was a good mother, she would not have.” My voice was pointed.

Danu sighed. “You were not mortal, Cailleach. You were impossible to mother.”

“Don’t bring her a wolf,” I said, brushing past her to go inside the hut.

Danu did not bring a wolf, but she did bring a giant white dog that was larger than Mór herself. Mór was thrilled, but I refused to let the dog stay. It had pale green eyes that reminded me too much of Danu; I did not like the way they followed me. After that, Danu brought a series of dogs, including a black one with long wiry hair, a sleek grey one with huge, sad eyes, and a white-and-black one that looked so like Failinis I took one look at it and began to weep. I shook my head and ran to the stream where I took deep breaths and splashed the icy water on my face. Mór found me there and threw her arms around me. “I’m sorry, Mama.” She kissed my cheek.

I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “Did I ever tell you about my little dog?” I asked, knowing that I hadn’t. I never talked about Failinis. “He looked exactly like the dog that Danu just brought.” I wondered if she hadn’t remembered—or if she had. “I called him Failinis. He was one of my first friends.” Mór leaned her head against my shoulder as I talked about my little dog. She asked me questions as I spoke—what color had his paws been, and did he bark a lot, and had he ever stolen my dinner?—and for the first time since he’d died, I was able to think of those things gently, tenderly, and even laugh when I told her about Failinis’s penchant for stealing fish.

That night as I lay in bed I allowed myself to remember him in even more detail, to remember the life we’d shared together and how good it had been, how happy we had been together. When I fell asleep that night I dreamed of my little dog again, and I woke up with a smile on my lips.

A few weeks after I told Mór about Failinis, I was standing on the docks talking to Domhnall’s mother, Cara, when I saw a flick of a tail under a table that was holding fish. I watched as one of the large red fish began to slowly slide off the end. The puppy had almost managed to pull it off entirely when a fisherman saw him. He shouted and kicked at the dog, who barely dodged his boot and ran away, tail between his legs, to cower against a wooden crate. He was small and brown, with sleek fur that reminded me of a seal. I reached him just a moment before the fisherman did, a red-faced man called Fachtna who I’d never liked. I held the shaking dog against my chest, and he nuzzled into my neck as I glared at Fachtna.

“Once a dog begins to steal fish, he won’t stop.” Fachtna held out his large hand. “Better to let me drown him now.”

“You’ll not drown him,” I said, thinking that I’d sooner drown Fachtna. I looked down at the dog and remembered Failinis trying to steal a fish the first time I’d brought him to the market, and though I felt a pinch of pain, mostly it was good to remember him. I looked down at the dog in my arms. He needed a home. “I’m taking him to Mór.”

Fachtna’s face changed. The villagers liked me well enough, but they adored my daughter. “Well,” Fachtna grunted. “If he’s for Mór, then.”

I walked back up the hill still holding the puppy to my chest, and when Mór came out of the house and saw him, her eyes grew wide. Another child might have squealed or cried, but Mór just tiptoed toward us and began stroking the puppy’s back. He gave a little grumble in his sleep as I slipped him carefully into Mór’s arms.

“Thank you, Mama,” she whispered.

Mór called the puppy Aengus, and he was as devoted to her as Failinis had been to me. They grew together, and thankfully, he remained hale and hearty, still running after Mór even into his sixth year and Mór’s seventeenth.

I’d never lived so long in a mortal body, which meant I’d never had to contend with growing older as I did now. I hated it. I hated the way my body began to groan and sigh when I rose in the mornings, how the shadows around my eyes and mouth became lines that never left. The strangest thing, though, was when the monthly bleeding stopped. I had not even noticed it at first, but then I began to get hot, and even in the coldest part of winter I could not sleep with a blanket, waking with sweat-soaked clothes and a red face. I didn’t understand what was happening until Cara, Domhnall’s mother, told me.

We’d been friends in my previous life too, back when I’d lived with áine. She didn’t remember me, of course, but it had been easy to fall back into what we’d had, to chat about our growing children and work together. She had asked if Domhnall could work the bees with me, perhaps build even more hives, and I’d readily agreed. I knew it was a wise choice for the boy. The light in his eyes had grown dimmer with each day he returned from a day catching and gutting fish, and so, even though his father had wanted him to take over the boat, Cara had insisted that Domhnall make his own path in life.

Cara and I were walking down the hill to the village when I began to grow hot again. It didn’t make sense because it was a bitterly cold day, too cold even for snow. My fingertips were numb even as my face flushed and my chest tightened with heat. I gave a little gasp and fanned at my face. I wanted to jump into the icy sea, into the little stream that ran beside the road; I would have, if I’d not been walking with Cara.

“Cailleach?” She turned toward me. “Are you alright?”

I shook my head. “I’m terribly hot. I don’t know why…”

“Ah, the change.” Her lips twitched, but I didn’t know what she meant. I pulled my scarf off my head and gasped in relief as the wind blew against my bare skin.

“What change?”

Cara frowned. “When the bleeding stops. It means you can’t have children anymore. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

I shook my head, cheeks heating with embarrassment. It wasn’t often anymore that I stumbled into bits of mortality I didn’t know about. “She didn’t grow old.” Danu looked younger than I did now.

Cara sighed. “I’m sorry. Well. I’m surprised you haven’t heard from another, but I suppose you’ve been so busy with Mór that you’ve not had much time to gossip over the years. It happens to all women. It means we can no longer have children. The heat comes and goes, but eventually it stops, and you’ll no longer bleed.”

But I will bleed again, eventually , I thought. If not in this life, then in the next. I was weary at the thought. I had another life ahead of me, another and another, who knew how many? My Mór only had one , and my heart grew sore at the thought. One, and it didn’t seem fair, wasn’t fair, but what could I do to change that except give her all that I could in this one?

Since I’d come to raise Mór, my days had moved swiftly, but I’d still never learned the mortal trick of looking toward the future. Even as Mór grew, I barely thought more than a season ahead, and only because I had to consider the bees and how to best care for them, how to ensure that Mór and I had the food and wood we’d need to survive no matter the cold. I’d never considered what it meant for Mór to be growing older.

But that spring I caught Mór kissing Domhnall behind the beehives.

I stumbled back when I saw them, shocked, and they broke apart, though Domhnall kept ahold of Mór’s hand. A blush colored her cheeks, and she opened her lips as if to say something to me, but I had already turned away from them and marched to the wood. My head swum as I entered the cool darkness, as the sounds dampened around me. Mór was not a child anymore, I knew that, but I’d never really considered that she might want a lover. I had never thought about Mór leaving me, about whether she’d want to marry and have children of her own. It was a quick stab of betrayal, the way she leaned toward Domhnall, like a flower leaning toward the sun. And when I’d surprised them, she’d reached for him , not for me, and my heart broke a little. Though I loved Domhnall, at that moment I would have happily watched him sail away forever to keep my daughter at my side. But that was not how the world worked, I knew. They were both young and beautiful and had perhaps, I realized, always been a little in love with each other.

Mór was sitting beside the stream with Aengus when I returned from the wood. She had her legs tucked beneath her, but I pulled off my shoes and stockings and let my feet dangle in the water. It was still running with snowmelt from the mountains and so cold that my feet were soon numb.

“Do you love him?” When I asked the question, my voice sounded young. Younger than Mór’s. Innocent as a god’s.

Mór leaned her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mama. We were going to tell you. We just…the air smelled like honeysuckle and…” She trailed off. “He has a scar on his thumb.” She lifted her own lovely hands. “He says it was where a bee stung him when he was very little. He says the woman who lived here first, who started keeping bees here, pulled out the stinger but was angry at him because he’d scared the bees on purpose and so they’d stung him. He hadn’t known till then that they would die when they stung. That’s why he hated working with his father. He hates to kill the fish.” Mór continued to chatter on, telling me all that she loved about Domhnall, and as she spoke I wished that I’d felt the same for someone, had felt the love that she described. I had loved áine in the way I’d known how, but it had not been like Mór’s love for Domhnall, infinite, all-encompassing. How could it have been? She had known only part of me, the mortal woman. She had not known my immortal body, had never seen my skin dappled blue in the winter sunlight, had never seen me drape the forest in frost. She had not known my true self.

Well, not until the end.

I did not realize until close to the wedding that Mór and Domhnall wanted to be married under the sacred oak where they’d burned me.

I’d not been there since that day. I let Mór go under the watchful eye of Cara, but I’d never participated in the druidic ceremonies, the celebrations and vigils that were held there.

I was sitting with them in the tavern in the village when I found out. I rarely went there anymore, but Mór had asked me to come, and so I’d agreed to sit in the corner and listen to the druid-bard sing his lovely song. The melody was sad, and when it ended, I looked toward Mór, who I was sure would be weeping. Only she wasn’t. She was leaning against Domhnall’s shoulder and seemed to have barely paid attention to the music at all, whispering in his ear, and I had to blink away tears, missing her already even though she was not yet gone.

I was wiping my eyes and trying to rid myself of such foolish thinking when I heard someone ask Mór where they would be married. “The sacred oak, of course,” she said before turning back toward the crowd, not once looking my way—but why would she? She had no idea what had happened to me there. The blood drained from my face as Domhnall looked at me. His eyes grew wide, and he came to his feet. “Cailleach?” His voice was low—he knew I hated when anyone paid attention to me—but he must have thought I was going to faint, because he made his way over. “Would you like to get some air?”

I nodded and took his arm, feeling like an old crone as he guided me through the crowd and out the door. I took a great gasping breath of the air, but it was too warm, too full of the summer scents of roses and the tall golden grain, to bring me any peace. I wished there were a snowbank I could jump into, something that would muffle my panicked breathing as I remembered the scent of burning flesh.

“Do you not approve of the oak?” Domhnall asked quietly. I looked at him in surprise. “I’ve never seen you there,” he explained.

I’d known him for so long that sometimes I forgot he was now a man grown, wise and observant. He looked at me steadily, and for a moment I nearly told him—that I was the woman who had burned there. I was the woman who his friends, his family, had set alight. What would he say then? But, of course, I could not.

“I saw a woman burn once,” I said instead. “Before I lived here. It was under a sacred oak.”

I looked around the village as I spoke, not wanting to meet Domhnall’s eyes. The long road had houses divided on either side, farmed fields spreading out beside them. On one end of the road was the sea, and the other end continued deeper into the heart of the country. I’d never gone down that road, never cared to see what lay at the other end. Sometimes I wondered if that was where I would have gone in this life, had I let the village burn.

“She had done something terrible,” I said quietly. “So they decided she needed to be punished.”

“Did you know her?” Domhnall said, and I nodded but didn’t speak. He sighed and looked at my hut in the distance. “They burned a woman I knew here, once, too. She was my friend.” He looked back toward the pub. “I’ll ask Mór if we can get married on the hill instead. Near the bees.”

Danu came the night before the wedding and stood in the garden with her eyes closed. Even I could admit it was beautiful this late in the summer, with all the flowers blooming and the leaves green—but when Danu opened her eyes, the garden changed into one fit for a god. The roses were three times their usual size, petals softer than silk. The grass under my feet was short but thick, like standing on a deep, soft carpet. There were waist-high lilies and an arch of vines that had grown braided together.

“It’s too much, Danu. It’s not natural.”

Danu shook her head. “Nonsense. This is my grandchild. She shall have a wedding fit for Tara.”

I pointed at the glowing golden lights that twirled in the air. “How will you make them all forget those?”

Danu laughed. “Darling, you’ve forgotten, I think, what it is to be a god. Making these villagers forget such a thing is no more difficult for me than a wave of my hand.”

Her words stung, but she was right, of course. Gods could do anything. Well. Danu, at least, could.

“All they will remember is that it was beautiful,” Danu continued. “They will remember Mór’s wedding for generations, I think.”

My heart swelled at the thought that I would be there, over those generations—that I would hear of this day again and again. I was becoming part of the history of this town, I realized.

I barely saw Mór the next day; she was so busy running in and out of the hut laughing with a group of her friends—women who, it seemed to me, had been children only yesterday. Finally, though, when the sun began to lower in the sky, Mór returned to the hut alone so that I might help her dress. She wore a blue dress that matched her eyes, and I put hammered gold bangles around her neck and wrists and twisted her hair up into a crown around her head. “You’re lovely,” I told her when I’d finished the braid. We could hear the noise of the crowd outside and I’d thought she’d run to go out and join them, but she didn’t. Instead, she took my hand in hers. “I love you, Mama.” Her eyes swam with tears. “I don’t want to leave you.”

I blinked away the tears that came into my own eyes. I didn’t want her to leave me either, but the hut was too small. It wasn’t possible for her and Domhnall to stay here with me—and besides, we’d all built them their own little house, halfway between my hill and the village. It had just been completed and still smelled of fresh-cut wood and the beeswax I’d used to polish the floors. I’d filled it with honey and candles, but my offering had been paltry. If I had still been a goddess I could have given Mór a palace, marble halls and endless warm breezes, flowers heaped over every surface. Still, it comforted me that I didn’t think my Mór would have wanted such a thing; she would be happy in her small home, with her loving husband.

“You’ll be near.” I smoothed a hand over her hair. “You’ll see me every day. I’ll need you and Domhnall to help with the bees still.” I knew, though, that eventually a day—then two or three—would pass without me seeing her sweet face. She would be busy keeping house, making dinner for her husband, and she would forget to walk up the hill. One day, she would have children hanging on her skirts who needed her more than I did—and she would simply not have the time to visit.

I shook my head trying to force the thought away and smiled at her. “Come.” I held my hand out to her. “It’s time to go.”

I stood beside my daughter as she married Domhnall, Danu just behind me. I could hear her weeping, but I saved my tears for later. I did not want to miss even one moment of looking at Mór’s bright face.

After the ceremony, I kissed her and Domhnall, and then I danced with them as I had not danced since Enya’s time. The music was so bright, so joyful, that I could not stop moving. I danced with Cara and Ruaidhrí, Nora, even Fachtna. We ate and laughed and the hill—my hill—glowed with light.

The guests began to trickle away only when the moon was high in the sky. Mór and Domhnall kissed me goodbye, and Mór and I held each other for a long, long time, but eventually I had to let her go, and I did, smiling, refusing to make it harder for her, as she walked down the hill with her new husband, as they went into their house and shut the door. Only then did I let my smile drop, placing a cold hand against my collarbone. I felt as though my body was going to break apart, and the only way I could keep the pieces together was by pressing down hard on my own bones, trying to remind myself that I was still whole, still there, even if my girl was gone.

I looked back over my hill. Food had been dropped and crushed underfoot, and someone had knocked over half a barrel of wine, making a muddy pool. Even Danu’s garden had been damaged—petals knocked off stems, roses fallen, lilies crushed. It looked as I felt, empty and lonely, and I didn’t want to have to fix it. I looked around for Danu—perhaps she might just wave her hand and make it all disappear? But at some point she had gone, and I realized that I would have to do it. Alone. Alone again. I bit my cheek but did not let myself weep.

Finally, I was so weary I had no choice but to return to the darkness and solitude of my hut. I poked at the kindling to start a fire, something I’d hated doing since I’d been burned; Mór or Domhnall usually kept the flames going, but now it would be my task alone: to blow out the candles, to bank the coals, to put the heavy latch over the door. All without Mór’s chatter, her soft laughter, her quiet humming.

At last, when the fire was made, I went to feed the chickens and sit on my bench, to find what peace I could. I was about to walk back into the hut and try to go to sleep when I saw a light bobbing up the road. My heart soared—Mór. Mór had come home. But when the figure turned the corner, I saw it was Cara. Her face was pale and she looked tired. When she saw me, she began to weep. “I miss my boy.” She clutched at her shawl. “My husband didn’t understand. I thought you would.”

I nodded, tears finally filling my own eyes, and together we walked to my door. I lit some candles and we sat together drinking wine and talked. About how the sun had bounced off Mór’s bangles and blinded Fachtna, about Domhnall spilling a whole cup of wine down the white shirt that Cara had just made, and Aengus sneaking a whole fish off the table and eating it in a couple of quick bites.

We talked of small, sweet things until the sun came up and we both could go to bed without weeping.

By that fall, I knew that I would not live until the next spring.

I did not know what was wrong exactly, only knew that no matter how long I slept, I woke up each day wearier than the day before, some vital part of me draining away each time I closed my eyes. I didn’t have pain, but there was a tightness in my chest, and I could not seem to get a full breath no matter how deeply I breathed in.

But this time I did not want to die.

I wanted to live.

I wanted to stay on the hill, to work with Domhnall in the hives. I wanted to talk to Cara and pet Aengus. I wanted with every beat of my heart to be with Mór, my darling girl, to laugh with her and brush her hair and bind her wounds and hold her close—to be her mother for as long as I could. I wanted, oh I wanted, to live as I never had before.

As the days passed and my health worsened, I became desperate. I went to see a druid, but he shook his head and said there was nothing to be done. I asked wise women in the town to give me their tonics and brews, but they didn’t help. Finally, I understood that I could not stop what was coming. I knew there was only one thing left to try.

I called for Danu.

It had been a silvery-grey day, the sun veiled in gauzy clouds, but it was still warm, and the air was so heavy I found it took a great deal of effort to move. Domhnall had gone home for the evening, and I’d told him I was going in soon, but instead I’d kept working—that had been a mistake. My breath was ragged as though I’d been running, and when I could not ease it, I half collapsed onto the soft grass, feeling as breathless as a rabbit caught in a trap. A few bees flew above my head, and I watched them before calling finally for my mother.

I lay there gasping for a long, long time before she answered. She helped me sit up, and at her touch, my chest relaxed and my breath came easier. The moment she removed her hand from my arm, though, I began to struggle once more.

“Danu,” I rasped.

“We promised not to interfere,” Danu said slowly.

“I am not asking you to interfere with mortals.” My voice was pleading. “I will not even ask you to heal me. That’s not why I called you. I understand the terms of your punishment. I know that I will die soon.” I began to cough, my whole body shaking, a metallic taste in the back of my throat. Finally, I managed to say, “Mór.” Danu’s whole face softened at her name, and a small, hard hope grew in my chest. She would do it for my daughter, if not for me. “You have watched her grow up. You have seen her kindness, her love for all. She is—”

“She reminds me of Enya,” Danu interrupted me. “Some few mortals have what Enya had—what Mór has. Where other mortals are embers burning low and quiet, they are like great bonfires, turning darkness into light.”

I nodded, my eyes filling, and my heart surged. I had hoped Danu would see her thus.

“That is why we must do something, Danu,” I said, eager. “I have lived four lives now. More than you ever did. I have seen the worst of them—but Mór is the best.” I swallowed, steeling myself. “Make her a goddess, Danu. She deserves to join us in immortality. Then we will have her with us forever. Forever and ever.” I coughed then, so violently that my whole body convulsed, but even as I coughed, I dared to hope. For it would not matter if I died tomorrow or if I died a thousand more times if Danu agreed. Mór would always be there at the end, waiting for me. And Danu loved her as I did. How could she refuse?

Then I looked up into Danu’s face and saw how she would answer me. My heart sank in grief; I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I was standing once more at the tree line, looking upon the destruction that mortals had wrought on my sacred grove—only it was not the humans that had caused this suffering. “Danu.” My voice was a scrape of pain.

“I see you have learned nothing,” she said, her voice flat and angry. My cheeks flushed as though I were a child.

“What do you—”

“You misunderstand, Cailleach, as you always do. I did not send you here so that you could play with death as you once played with life. Death is a part of mortality, as is loss, suffering. We should not cause mortal death just as we should not cause immortal life.” Her eyes were hard. “You must stop trying to impose your will on others.”

“But Mór would want—”

Danu laughed coldly. “You do not know what Mór would want. Did you ask her?”

“I am her mother; I know what is best for her.”

“You are still as selfish as you ever were,” Danu said. “To deny her such a choice shows that.” Danu’s face was twisted, ugly, and as I looked at her I wondered how long it had been since I’d seen a true emotion from her. “We do not interfere, Cailleach—how many times must I tell you? I would have thought you learned that lesson as a child.”

I ground my teeth, trying to keep my tone even, trying to keep Danu from getting angrier and disappearing in a flood of light. “I understand why changing Enya’s path was not possible.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but I would say it anyway. I would say anything, for Mór. “But you know, we both know, Mór is different. And you have done it before. With each of the mortals you gave godhood to, you interfered.” As soon as I said the words, Danu’s face changed, becoming smooth as glass, all emotion gone, and though I did not know why, I realized my words had been a mistake.

“She shall remain as she is,” Danu said. And then she was gone as though she had never been, leaving me alone on the ground, unable to breathe, tears running down my cheeks because I knew then that there was nothing I could do. Knew that one day my daughter, my darling girl, would die. And perhaps Danu was right, perhaps I had learned nothing, because if I were still a goddess, I would have killed thousands again, I would have burnt down cities, would have held the entire world hostage in winter, until Danu acceded to my wishes to save my girl.

But I was not a goddess and I had no power. I was only a mortal woman who could not breathe.

Since that day with Danu I had not seen her or even felt a glimmer of her in the air. I had called her many times, begging, screaming, whispering, asking her over and over to grant Mór godhood. But she never responded, gave me no indication that she’d heard—and after a month of pleading, I finally stopped. I was no different than any of the thousands who called on the gods and heard nothing but silence.

On the first cold day of the year, I stood alone in my garden, looking toward the forest. The cold air had helped me breathe better, but it had not cured me. The tightness in my chest was still there, and though I was desperate to go walk under the trees, I wasn’t sure that I could make it by myself. I hadn’t been expecting Mór that day—she’d told me the day before that she was helping Cara salt fish before the first snow fell—so I was surprised when I saw her crest the hill.

“Why are you just standing here, Mama?” Mór’s face was creased with worry. “I was going to Cara’s when I saw you. I would have thought you’d be deep in the forest already on a day like today.”

I tried to smile at her, but it was weak. “I was going to walk, but I am so tired.”

Mór glanced at the trees then back to me. “Shall I walk with you?” she said. “I can help Cara with the fish tomorrow.” She offered me her arm, and I took it gratefully. We walked slowly though the wood, and as I shuffled along, I thought about how not so long ago I had strode through this same forest, head held high. And that had only been in my mortal body. In my immortal form, I had run through the trees faster than a deer, the world a blur of blue shadows and white snow and green fir boughs. I longed for the strength of that body even as I wanted never to stop holding my daughter’s arm.

“Mama,” Mór said suddenly. “Mama, I’m going to come back. I’m going to take care of you, at home.”

I tried to speak, tried to protest, but I began to cough. Mór wrapped her arms around me, and as I leaned into her, I knew that I would not be the selfless mother I ought to be. I would not tell her to go home to her young husband. I wanted Mór home. I wanted to sit with her in our warm, little hut and hear her hum, to wake in the dark and hear her soft breaths and know I was not alone. So I just nodded and squeezed her hand as we turned back to the hill.

As the days passed and the first snow fell, I became weaker; soon, I could not even rise from my bed without help. Mór never left my side, and though I was dying, those last days were lovely. Domhnall and Cara and my few other friends visited as often as they could, but at night I had just Mór. Aengus sat between us, thumping his tail as we talked, as Mór sang for me and brought me food and drink. She stoked the fire and latched the door and blew out the candles, sleeping so close to me that I could clutch her hand for comfort when I woke gasping in the dark. As the cold grew stronger, she even left the door open to let the snow drift in, as though hoping it would revive me. It became a habit to sit by the fire with her in the evenings and stare out at the gathering darkness, at the white ground and blue ice that formed a melting border at our doorway, where it met the heat of the fire.

At first, we talked of little things, about village gossip and her life with Domhnall, but as the days passed, Mór began to ask me more difficult questions. One day, she said quietly, “Why won’t Danu heal you?”

I turned toward her, and her gaze was steady on mine. With anyone else I would have laughed, would have tried to evade the question, but something in her face told me that she knew that Danu was not mortal.

“She can’t,” I said.

“But she’s—” Mór swallowed and then she said quietly, “She’s a goddess. Danu is a goddess, isn’t she? And—and your mother.”

I closed my eyes—my daughter was so wise, but so young. “It’s part of my punishment.” I hadn’t meant to say the words, and I saw the way Mór’s eyes widen.

“What punishment?” Mór said. “I don’t understand.”

I was quiet for a long time. But I did not want to die and have my own daughter know so little of me and my true life—so I began to speak.

“I was a goddess, once.”

I told her what it was like to run through the woods faster than a breeze. Painted a picture of the walls of Tara reflecting the sunset: pink and green and blue and fiery red. I talked of Danu’s huge cats and Lug’s harp and Dagda’s green beard. And I held out my arm and described my dappled skin, the streaks of indigo and periwinkle and slate and every shade of blue that shifted as I walked through the shadows of a winter night.

Enya, and what had happened in my sacred grove.

Then, who they had burned under the sacred oak.

Mór shook her head at this part. “I don’t—Why would she—áine—Why would she do that to you?”

Finally, I told her about the eternal winter.

She listened quietly, her face pale, as pale as I’d ever seen it. But it was not until I reached the part where I had returned in my fourth life, walking toward the village with a burning torch in my hand, that she backed away from me in horror. “But Mama—” Her lip trembled. “Domhnall has scars on his shoulders from that night, when a falling beam hit him. Fiadh’s eyes were ruined from the smoke. Fachtna has a limp. You did that? You were going to…to kill them? Kill us?”

Her voice was high, thin as a child’s, and the look in her eyes…she had never been afraid of me before. It made my hands shake. “áine betrayed me.” My voice was hoarse, too fast with panic. “I was hurt—and angry, so angry that I couldn’t see past it. Until I saw you.” I did not say that I was sorry. Those words were paltry, inadequate, in light of all that I’d told her. In light of all that I’d done. I raised a hand to my mouth, swallowed away the pain. “I love you.” My voice was raspy, and I was barely able to get the words out for the tightness in my chest. Her eyes flicked to mine, then out into the snow, and I knew , knew before she rushed from the hut, that she was leaving.

I closed my eyes to force back my tears. I could see the scene as clearly as if I were beside her: my girl running down the hill to her husband, her tears as she told my story, Domhnall’s shock—then their knowledge, hard as a stone, that áine had been right.

I was a woman who deserved to be burned.

They would come back up the hill again. And this time, my own daughter would set the torch against my flesh.

I knew I should flee, but I was so tired, so weak, and my heart was shattered. Because Mór, my Mór—the girl I loved most in the world—hated me, was afraid of me, and that— that —was worse than the pain that awaited me, worse than the scent of my own flesh alight.

My eyes were closed when the door opened, and I did not bother to look up.

But the room stayed silent.

A hand touched my arm, and I flinched, expecting to be thrown from my pallet, for my hands and legs to be tied together.

Instead, Mór crawled into the bed and wrapped her arms around me. She’d left the door open, and when the first rays of dawn fell into the hut, they lit my daughter’s face, illuminating it so that she shone brighter than Danu under the brightest sun. Only then did I begin to weep.

“I will come back for you,” I said softly. “Wait for me. I will come back.” Then I looked at her and looked at her and looked at her. I would have looked at her until the moon crashed into the earth, until each star fell from the sky, but eventually, my breath caught, my eyelids fluttered, and darkness fell.