Page 2 of The Winter Goddess
Before
Both our mothers were besotted with the child, but neither Enya nor I cared to spend much time with it. Cathal spent his time screaming or nursing, his lips pursed greedily around Sorcha’s nipple. Since he’d come, everyone was less interested in where we went; even Cormac only asked us how Cathal was doing when we went running past him into the wood.
Harvest had ended and we were laying on the frozen river. Half-asleep, I listened to the burble of the water still moving deep below the ice, until finally I pressed myself up on my elbow, yawning. I didn’t have to yawn of course, but lately Danu and I had begun a game of mimicking different mortal behaviors; sneezes, coughs, yawns, all the things they did without conscious thought. We talked about it as we went back to Tara, laughing together about how curious it was, how peculiar they were.
“Cathal is getting uglier,” Enya said one day when we were in the wood together.
“He is ugly,” I agreed, thinking of his red-faced scream and the drool he’d dripped on Danu’s skirt that morning.
“Ma says his teeth are coming in and that we’ve got to be patient with him. Even Da doesn’t seem angry with him, and Da hates loud noises.” Enya sighed and I made note of it, watching how her shoulders tensed slightly, her belly rounding before her body collapsed around the breath. “I hope my babies cry less.”
“Babies?” I frowned and sat up fully; the ice cracked a little. “You don’t have a baby.”
“No, not yet. But I bled last month, so I will soon.”
I pulled her hand into mine, looked down at the blue veins, but didn’t see any blood.
Enya looked down at her lap. “I’m not bleeding now . But surely your ma’s told you, all women bleed? Once we do, we can have babies.”
Of course Danu had told me no such thing. Gods did not bleed.
“But you don’t want babies.”
“No…” Enya said. “I would have to spend all day in a little croft cooking and feeding them…listening to them scream.” She shivered. “Cathal cries all the time. Ma barely seems to notice.”
“If you have a baby, you could just give it to your ma then,” I declared, feeling that this was a perfect solution. “She could have it.”
“I couldn’t do that!” Enya looked startled.
“Why not?”
“If I had a baby, it would be my baby,” Enya explained. “Mothers can’t just give their children away.”
I frowned again, thinking of how busy Sorcha was with Cathal. Would Enya have time for me if she had a child? “Then you’ll not have children at all.”
Enya sighed. “Da will eventually want me to marry someone, and my husband will want children.”
“But your da loves you. Tell him no.”
Enya’s eyes were sad. “I can’t , Cailleach. You have no da, you don’t understand.”
I thought of Cormac, funny and kind. “He wouldn’t force you. Danu says he is a great man.”
“But everyone has children eventually.”
“Not the midwife.” I thought of the woman who had helped at Sorcha’s birth.
“That’s only because she couldn’t .” Enya half whispered the words as though they were dangerous. “Ma says everyone used to talk about it.”
“You can be like her then.”
“But I don’t know how to…” Enya bit her lip. “Do you know how to stop a baby coming?”
“No…” I trailed off, wondering if Danu would know. “Then you mustn’t get a husband. Not until we can figure out how to prevent babies.”
“I don’t want one.” Enya’s voice was vicious in a way I’d never heard before. “Ma buried all the babies except me and Cathal. I don’t want to bury dead babies in the mud.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “We won’t. We’ll never have babies. We’ll stay together, just us, forever.” Enya didn’t look hopeful. “Talk to your da.” I thought of Cormac’s soft brown eyes. “He’ll listen. He always listens to us.” Enya nodded slowly. I laughed and waved my hands at the woods around us. “Tell him you want to keep coming to the forest with me.”
Enya squeezed my hand and we both looked up at the sky, far away from silly mortal concerns like husbands and babies.
Three years had passed since I’d first met Enya and her family, but this was the first winter solstice we’d ever celebrated with them, and I was dazzled. A huge feast was laid and all those who lived in the hill fort arrived wearing their best clothes: cloaks trimmed in fox fur, scarlet sashes, a gold torc around the neck of their prince. The crowd laughed and smiled, kissing each other’s cheeks and squeezing hands, dancing around a roaring fire twice my height. My stomach twisted with excitement as I watched them, and I ran over to Enya.
We began to dance, our feet stomping and twirling and rushing along with the beating drums, piping flutes, and sweeping fiddles. It was exhilarating to spin as we did, over and over until Enya grew so dizzy that she begged for a break, pulling me to sit by the fire.
I heard a noise beside me and saw Danu looking over us, looking at the musicians, a long tear running down her cheek. “They feel so much ,” Danu whispered to me, her voice ecstatic.
I had noticed as we’d spent time with mortals that while I had grown to love Enya and her family, Danu seemed to look on them—all mortals—as playthings. She talked to them and laughed and even wept with them, but she did so in the same way that she talked to her own great cats at Tara. She might adore them, might sigh over their pain and joy, but she did not truly look on them with gravity or respect. One of Sorcha’s sisters had died the previous summer, and though Danu and I had wept with Sorcha and Enya that day, the next night I’d heard her recount the story back to Dagda, mocking the brevity of their lives, how fragile and tenuous they were. It was clear to me that Danu’s tears with Sorcha had been false, as though she were only pretending to care about her sorrow.
I was glad when Enya reached for me in that moment, glad that I could forget about Danu and turn toward the woods, but before we could leave, Cormac put a hand on Enya’s shoulder and smiled at us. “We are honored that you joined our family tonight.” He bowed at Danu. “You helped save the life of my Sorcha, and for that I will always be grateful.” Cormac gently touched his wife’s cheek, and I saw Danu’s eyes fill with tears. I shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy as I watched her, wondering if, though she cried with the mortals now, she would laugh again later with the gods. “I wanted to be the first to tell you that the arrangements have been completed. Our Enya is to be wed to Aedan this very evening.”
Danu’s mouth dropped open in delight, and she clapped as my own body froze. I looked at Enya, her face pale as ice, and squeezed her hand tightly, showing her I was there. She didn’t seem to notice me at all; she was staring up at her father in horror.
“But Da—” Enya looked across the fire to a grizzled man I’d never seen before. “I told you”—she lowered her voice, but I still heard her—“I do not want to.”
“Don’t be foolish, Enya. You’re grown now. It’s time.”
“But Aedan—he has four children already and three are older than I.”
“He needs a mother for the littlest.” Cormac’s voice was hearty but his eyes didn’t meet Enya’s. “And you’ll have your own babies soon enough.”
Enya turned to me, and I saw the terror in her eyes, remembered her talking about burying dead babies, and I straightened my shoulders, stepping in front of my friend. “She doesn’t want them.” I glared at Cormac.
Cormac looked down on me and gave a gentle laugh. “What a fierce lass you are.”
“No!” I howled, louder than a wolf on a hunt, and the whole clearing suddenly fell silent with the sharp crack of my voice. Cormac’s eyes were wide, and though his mouth opened and closed no noise came out of it. I pointed a finger at Cormac and ice began to slither up his feet. “You can’t, it’s not—She doesn’t want—” My skin swirled and shifted, and I felt as though I were ice itself, as though I were shattering and cracking into pieces with confusion, with anger, because how could Cormac do such a thing? If he would not protect Enya, I would save her, I would save my friend from the life that she did not want, the life that threatened to take her away from me. I was reaching out, about to call down a howling storm, when Danu suddenly scooped me up, holding me against her as she loosened the ice from Cormac’s legs. Then I was screaming, shrieking as she carried me away from the mortals.
Away from Enya.
They wed that night, and she fell pregnant within months.
Then Enya died, along with her cord-choked son.
After that, I no longer concerned myself with the affairs of mortals.