Page 19 of The Winter Goddess

The Sixth Life

It was hot when I opened my eyes, and the sun shone on me with vengeance. As I staggered to my feet, I saw that Danu had sent me back not in spring as she usually did, but in summer. High, hot summer. The grass around me was yellow green, as though it hadn’t rained in some weeks. My skin was red like I’d lain in the sun for a long time before waking, and I was surprised at the malice in that. Malice was not something I usually associated with Danu, but I knew that she had done this on purpose, had wanted my skin to be hot and red and burning as punishment for my slap, for my fury.

I staggered to my feet and saw that I was in the meadow. When I’d lived here with Mór it had been small, but now it stretched far around me. I could see a smudge of trees in one direction and in the other, my hut. I walked toward the hut slowly; my body, which usually was strong and bright with each new life, was tired and aching, my muscles sore. I ignored the pain and moved toward my hill as quickly as I could, not wanting to let Danu know how I hurt. I would feel neither guilt nor sorrow. She had deserved my slap, and more, a thousand times more. Anger and despair curdled within me: she had not made Mór a goddess; she had let Mór die without me.

When I finally reached my hill, I went to the stream and took off my clothes, lying in the shallow depths so that it covered my body entirely, but the water in the stream, usually so cold, was warm as bathwater. Another trick of Danu’s—sending me back in a summer too hot for any solace to be found. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the stream around me. This life, I would live as I had in my first. I would take care of no dogs and I would adopt no orphans and I would never be a mother again.

The summer was long and burning. I woke each morning soaked in sweat and went to bed the same. Everywhere I looked, I saw heat rippling from the land.

I felt Danu’s eye on me every moment. She did not come down, but I could tell she was watching me, that she was as angry with me as I was with her. The vegetables that usually grew so well were small and yellowed before I even managed to pick them. The only thing that grew well, abundantly well, were her roses. They still covered the croft, and their scent was so strong that I could not escape them no matter where I went. One day I even tried to tear them down, yanking at their roots, but when I woke the next morning they were back, brighter and larger than they’d been before.

We were well past harvest when the heat finally broke, and I woke to a cool breeze on my face. By then, I had finally run out of food and was forced to go down to the village to trade for fish; then I went and sat in the corner of the tavern, watching the foam in my cup and paying no mind to anyone else until a voice rose above the crowd.

“Listen,” it said. “Listen, and I will tell you a story. The story of a girl who stood against the gods, and from them gained her heart’s desire.”

I looked up and saw a man I didn’t know sitting in the corner opposite mine. His hair was unusual, a tangle of gold and silver, and his skin was tanned as though he was always out in the sun. Beside him sat a mottled brown and yellow cat with a bushy tail and a sneering face. The man did not look at any one person in particular but seemed to sweep the whole listening crowd with his gaze as he spoke. His eyes were blue—not as Mór’s had been, bright and dancing—but a grey blue the color of stone.

I looked back at my drink as he continued. I had little interest in the story of a hungry mortal child. Who among them wasn’t hungry? Who among them didn’t want? But then—then, he began to describe a place he called Síd in Broga, and I flung my head up, watching him closely as he described my grove—or the place where my grove had once stood.

After that, I listened as intently as anyone else as he spoke about the child, a girl called Fia. The man told the story with wide eyes, a broad, honest face, and I could see that the crowd around him believed every word. Believed that the girl had gained godhood.

I hated him for it. It could not be true. How dare this man claim that this girl was more worthy of godhood than Mór?

When he finished the tale, there was a long moment of silence, then someone began to clap, and soon the whole tavern was cheering and burbling, their voices tumbling over each other as they repeated the girl’s name as though it were sacred. Fia, the best of mortals , they said. Fia, the goddess .

“Liar.” I had meant to whisper the word, but it came out loud, and the storyteller looked at me from across the crowded room. He met my gaze, and his jaw tightened even though his smile did not diminish.

“Many have said the same.” His voice was easy, careless. “But I was there. And I tell what I saw with my own eyes. I saw my sister become a god.” The crowd gasped as he revealed that the girl was his sister, talking all at once, but he did not take his eyes off me.

I scoffed. I would not be taken in by the cheap trick of kinship. “And so you hold to your falsehoods? A liar and a fool.”

“Why do you question my honesty?”

I thought of Mór. “Danu does not turn mortals into gods.”

The man laughed, but I thought I saw a flicker of dark anger in his eyes. “You are the liar, then. Danu told us the stories herself. She was lonely and made the best of mortals into gods to rule at her side. Are you saying my Fia wasn’t the best of us?”

“There are no best among mortals.” Mór’s face flashed into my mind. “Not anymore.” I looked away from the man and back down at my drink. I was done fighting.

I drank for the rest of the night until the tavern was quiet and empty. Finally I was chivvied out the door and was about to make my lonely way up the hill when a spark flared, and the storyteller’s face was outlined in red as he lit a pipe. There was something weary and sad about him now that he wasn’t smiling. “You spoke of Danu as if you knew her.” He blew out a breath of blue smoke. I would have walked past him, but he snaked out a hand and grabbed my wrist. His grip wasn’t painful, but it was desperate. What pulled me to a halt was not his strength but that desperation, such a mirror of my own. “Do you?”

I looked into his face as I considered what to say. I had spent many long years lying—to strangers and to friends. To family, too. I could have easily lied to him as well. But when I looked at him, I saw…emptiness. The same emptiness that filled me every time I thought of Mór. He was grieving, like I was; I could almost taste it in the air between us—bitter and hollow and endless.

“Yes,” I said. “I know Danu.”

“And why do you think I lie?”

Why should I lie? Who would I be protecting? What was the point anymore? “Because she would not give immortality even to her own granddaughter.”

The man blinked once. “You are Danu’s granddaughter?”

“No.” My voice was flat. “I am her daughter, the goddess of winter, Cailleach.”

The man blew out another ring of smoke. “You do not look like a goddess.”

“That is because my mother—Danu—took my godhead from me,” I spat.

He blew out another ring of smoke. “That is quite a story,” he said. “I almost believe you.”

I laughed shortly at his insolence. “Unlike the tales you tell, this one is true.”

He searched my eyes, my face. “Will you tell me the rest of it then?”

I cocked my head, considering. It would anger Danu if I told the story. Indeed, if she was watching now, she might stop me, or even kill me. But I no longer cared about Danu’s anger. And if I told him, perhaps…perhaps he would speak Mór’s name too. Perhaps he would tell her story as he told his sister’s, and so others would know her, would mourn her. She would be remembered, and in that small way, never truly be gone. “If I share my story, you will tell it on the road. And you will tell it true, straight and even as a knife.”

The man looked at me steadily, then nodded. “I will,” he said simply, and I believed him, so I bade him follow me up the hill.

The moon had risen by the time we reached the top and it made everything look more beautiful than it was. It shone on the stream, even danced on the sea far below, and—I frowned—lit up the roses that still covered the hut. “I’ve never liked roses,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

“Then why are they covering your croft?”

“It’s all part of the same tale.” I opened the door, beckoning him in. Behind him, the cat, which I hadn’t realized was following, whisked in too, giving me a hiss as it passed by.

“Yours?” I asked, moving out of the way of its claws and stoking the fire.

The man sighed. “Kiri. I found her on the road when she was a kitten. She doesn’t like most people. Even me, sometimes. She’ll go off for days and I’ll think she’s left me, but eventually she always finds me again.”

“I had a dog once,” I said, and I found it did not cause me any pain to say—as if with all my wounds open and bleeding, there were none left to feel. Or perhaps I had gone entirely numb. “Failinis. He wouldn’t leave me alone for a moment. Not even when the wolves began to howl…” I trailed off, looking down at my braided hands, feeling as though all my lives were tangled up together. How could I ever hope to begin my story?

“Perhaps, before you start your story, we should learn each other’s names,” the man said. “I’m Fionn.”

“I have told you my name already,” I said. “Cailleach.” And with that, I knew how to begin. “I was once a goddess. This body”—I stretched out my fingers, my hands red and rough from work—“never used to hold even the barest mark. I did not know pain, I never bled. I could do— did do—anything I wished. I could hold starlight in my cupped palm and let it trickle down my wrists. I could weave the light of the moon into cloth and wear it as a gown. I did not know about pain, death. Loss.” I closed my eyes. “Then Danu brought me among the mortals. I met Enya.”

I told him about her, my friend. Holding hands, lying on the ice together. Laughing, singing, howling. Her father’s betrayal…her death.

Then I shared with him something that no one else knew.

What I had done after Enya had died.

I’d gone down to the stream where we used to play together and, though it had been high summer, I dove to the deepest part of the water, filled my skirts with stones. I let myself sink down and down into it. I wanted to go where Enya had gone, but I knew that as a goddess I could not follow her.

Instead, I closed my eyes, and I slept.

When next I woke, all I saw was blue.

Not the sky, but the water. Ice.

It crusted on my eyelashes, in between my fingers and toes. A hard cocoon of it encased me, and even when I woke, I stayed there a long, long time. The world under the ice was silent. I could not hear the screams of birds or the wind through the trees. I could not hear the sound of the other gods chattering together in Tara, and I could not smell the mortals.

“I don’t know how long I was under that ice,” I said. “But eventually I left and began to walk the world again.”

I described my years wandering the earth, how Danu had created the druids, the feast she had commanded me to attend. Then I told him about my sacred grove, about how the mortals had destroyed it, had built the mound he called Síd in Broga.

“I lay on top of the mound, and I let the snow fall around me until I could no longer smell them,” I said.

Then I told him about my punishment. About my lives. My deaths. I talked until my voice grew hoarse, until finally I had nothing left to tell. Until I’d even given him my daughter’s story, her name.

“Mór.” His rich voice made her name ring through the hut. Then he looked directly at me. “I will say her name. I will say it over and over until the whole land sings it. I swear I will keep telling her story, as I will keep telling my sister’s.” His eyes never left my face as his fingers grazed my cheek. They were long and graceful. “I am sorry,” he said softly. “That the gods are so cruel. Even to their own.”

I swallowed, his fingers tracing a line of fire down my throat. I had not realized how much I ached to be touched. But—“Your sister,” I began. “That is not her true story. Is it?”

He stopped. He was silent for a moment, dropping his gaze to his hands before looking up once more to meet mine. “I think we’ve had enough stories for the night.” His voice was quiet.

I leaned my cheek into his palm and acquiesced. Forcing the grief back down my throat, I closed the distance between us.

I had felt Danu’s eyes on me that whole summer, but once I met Fionn, I forgot about her entirely until one day near winter.

I’d been asleep, my head on Fionn’s chest, when I was jolted awake by the smell of rotting roses. It was just before dawn, and Danu was standing in my little room, blinding me with her golden light. Fionn shifted and swore as he too sat up, rubbing at his eyes.

“Danu? Why are you here? Couldn’t you at least knock before—”

Danu raised an eyebrow. “This is my house. I created it. I’m the one who keeps it from falling down on your head.” She sounded mild, but not as angry as I’d expected after the violence of our last altercation. It was like her, though, to flit from one emotion to the next.

She might have forgotten, or let go, but I had not. “Leave,” I snapped, pointing toward the door, but she ignored me, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“Look!” She pointed up to the roof. “I know you don’t like the roses so I removed them.”

“They’re…foul.” I looked up at the ceiling where the flowers were putrefying.

“Well I didn’t think you’d want me to just whisk them away. It will confuse the mortals less, if they thought some blight had just gotten to them.” Danu began to hum, seeming well pleased with herself.

I fell back on my pillow. Why was she here? “It’s nearly winter, the roses were already dead,” I finally said, and Danu threw up her hands.

“I was trying to do something kind for you, daughter.”

“You can do nothing kind for me, Danu, not anymore.” I thought of my daughter’s young, perfect face. Fionn, who’d been quiet the whole time, wrapped an arm around my waist.

Danu’s face crumpled, but I did not accept her sadness, her tears. She had chosen this path. This path for both of us. All I wanted was for her to go.

“Perhaps I should see what you’ve done,” I said, hoping if I took her outdoors, she would leave us alone.

It was an unusually warm morning for how late it was in the year. My bare feet weren’t even cold as I walked out to look at my house. The green vines that had covered the roof like a little cap had turned black and slimy. Some of the vines had fallen to the ground, looking almost like carrion. The air smelled of salt and decay.

“How is this kind?” I waved a hand at the destruction Danu had wrought.

“I thought—” Danu’s throat caught, as though she couldn’t get the words out. She looked so beautiful, standing there in the rising sun, even though her eyes were bright with tears, and I hated her for it, for her loveliness, when my lovely daughter was dead and buried in the ground. “I wanted—to make amends.”

For Mór? The anger rose within me again. “You can never make amends.”

“You don’t understand,” she reached her hands out to me, pleading. “She would not have remembered you. It would have been too much, Cailleach. For you to have been with her, but for her not to know you. To have her reject you as her mother.”

“You do not know what would have been too much for me,” I hissed, the words low in my throat. “I wanted to be with her no matter the cost. You do not understand how much pain a mortal can handle.”

“I’m your mother, Cailleach. I know you. Down to your very marrow.” Danu’s eyes were wide, almost wild. “I’ve known every moment of your life. From the second you began to grow in my belly to this very moment. Every time you have felt pain, so have I. Each death you have died, I have died with you. For each tear you’ve wept, I’ve cried an ocean more. And I tell you, having Mór look at you with blankness on her face would have destroyed you.”

I shook my head in disgust and turned to leave her, but she grabbed my wrist.

“Did you never think about what your punishment entailed? How could she forget you, and not me? She did not know me, Cailleach. She did not look at me and know comfort or love. She saw only a goddess. Someone to fear.” Tears slid down her cheeks, but I had no sympathy for her. She had still taken my choice away from me. I would have wanted it, even through the pain. I would have had her look at me blankly a thousand times if I could have been with her.

“I held her hand,” Danu continued. “Domhnall had died just weeks before, and I knew…I knew she would not last without him. I held her hand and I told her that she was safe. That where she was going, she would see Domhnall again. But I lied, I don’t know if—” Her lip trembled. She didn’t know if it was true. She knew nothing of death. And she never would.

“Please leave,” I said quietly.

I could not talk about Mór any longer. I did not want to picture her dying, I did not want to think about her being frightened even with Danu by her side, and I did not want to wonder if she’d called out for me, or thought that she would see me again, at the end.

Fionn was full of contradictions. When he was not telling a story, he rarely spoke. He wanted to sit in the tavern late into the night but did not want to talk to the villagers who often gathered around him. He smiled often, but no matter how broad his smile stretched, there was a heavy weight in his eyes, a deep sorrow that I recognized but could not get him to name.

Nearly every night that winter, Fionn slept in my hut, but he did not come and live with me as áine had. In some ways, being with áine had been easier. She had been so cheerful, so full of common sense. We had never actually discussed her coming to live with me; after Dagda’s death, she simply didn’t leave, and that had satisfied both of us. With Fionn, though, things were different. Sometimes he just…drifted away. He would be in the same room with me, looking at me, sometimes even talking, when I would suddenly realize that he was not truly there anymore. I tried to understand what was happening, to ask him what was wrong, but he always said that everything was fine and he was just weary or thinking up a new story. But I knew something was amiss.

When spring came, he began to pace about the hut, as restless as the green buds uncurling on the trees. I had been showing him how I introduced new swarms to my beehives when he carelessly swatted at a bee that had landed on him while he looked out over the harbor. “Fionn,” I said sharply. “You just killed that bee.”

Rather than apologize, Fionn just said, “It’s time for me to go.”

I started, staring at him. “Go? Go where?”

“I came to Daingean Uí Chúis just for a season,” he said. “But I am a seanchaidhe. I walk the road and tell stories. Sometimes I stay in one place for a time, but…” He spread his hands and waved them in the air. “It has been too long. Daingean Uí Chúis is lovely. And you are lovely. But I cannot stay.”

The thought of him leaving made my eyes fill with tears, and those tears made me angry—I had planned on having no attachments in this life, no one to lose, to grieve. Why had I allowed him into my life? When had he become so important to me? “Then leave.” I turned from him. “I’m not keeping you tied to my apron string. You can go this very moment if you wish.”

“Cailleach.” He tried to lift my chin toward him, but I stepped out of his grasp and began to viciously tear weeds from my garden. He sighed, then ran his fingers through his hair. “On the day we met, you called me a liar,” he said softly. “You were right, of course. But I would like to tell you the truth now. The truth about what happened to her. To Fia.”