Page 22 of The Winter Goddess
The Sixth Life
When I called Danu’s name now, I knew that she would come, just as Fia had known.
She stepped out of the whirling snow, and when she saw where we were, she paled. She had thought that I had called her to my house on the hill. She obviously had not been watching me, had not seen me make the journey to Síd in Broga.
“Why are you—” she said, but I cut her off.
“Did you kill her? Did you kill that mortal girl, Fia?”
Danu pursed her lips. She was in her usual mortal form, but when I asked the question, I saw a glimpse of the goddess she was: long, golden hair, eyes so green and sharp that a glance could tear my skin to ribbons. “No.”
I stared at her in disbelief; the lie was glaring. “Why would you kill a young girl? One you gave a feast to? One you talked to?”
“ I didn’t kill her.” Danu looked directly at me. “You did.”
I gaped at her. “How can you possibly put her death on me?”
“You told her secrets. Secrets not meant for their ears. As soon as you told the girl, her life was in your hands.”
“What secret?” I cried. “I was…crazed! I barely remember what I said. To be a secret, I would have needed to know it was—” And I realized, then, what she had admitted. What she had meant. I swallowed. “It was a lie. ”
I thought of the tapestry Dagda had woven depicting all the stories I’d heard, all the stories the mortals had been told.
The ones that Danu had told us.
About how she had found some secret magic that had given her godhood. About how she had used that secret magic to turn other mortals into gods like she was. It was her greatest feat. It was one of the stories the mortals loved the most. I stared at her, and I realized the truth with total, gripping clarity. “You don’t know how the gods came to be,” I said slowly.
Danu did not say anything, not yet. She only looked at me. And there was anger in her eyes, dark and deep, but I saw something else too— relief . And as I watched, her body seemed to release, to loosen. And then she began. “You’ve heard how the great goddess Danu brought spring to the world. How she cared for the mortals under her charge. You’ve heard how lonely she was.” Danu’s eyes filled with tears. “Let me tell you the rest.”
After Danu built her palace in Tara, she showed it to the mortals. Not all of them, only a few men and women, the best: kind, curious, brave storytellers and believers. The women she would send away with gifts: flowers and furs and richly dyed cloth. The men she would ask to stay. For a day, a week, a year. Eventually, though, all of them grew tired of the splendor of her halls. Eventually, they all wanted to return to their mortal lives and comforts. Their families. Danu did not object; she knew what it was to be lonely—and besides, she was sure that one day, one of those men would leave her with the one thing she wanted most: a child. She never lost hope. Even as the years passed and the men she’d once been with grew grey and withered, she believed that each new mortal would be the one.
Yet even though her name spread across the world, even though the voices of mortals were always with her, she was still a god alone. Apart. And Danu began to wonder if perhaps gods did not have children in the way that mortals did. Perhaps she was meant to create gods from mortals, as she herself had been created.
So she turned again to mortals. First, she sought out the gentlest, those who would pause their labors to lift a baby bird back into a nest, who avoided treading on green shoots in spring and called her name not for themselves but for others. She called them to Tara. She convinced herself these mortals would become her children, her godkin.
The first was a soft, elderly man called Cairbre who had no family of his own but rocked the babes in his village as tenderly as any mother, weeping when they wept. The second was a tall woman called Gráinne whose face was always set and stern but who shared her pot with any who were hungry, friends and enemies alike. The last was a woman called Bláth, who was short and slight and had a round face covered in golden freckles. She was gentle with all, with children and madmen and bees and the flowers, and so the goddess loved her best.
She told each of them why she’d called them, and they smiled—even Gráinne—so brightly it was as though they’d been touched by the setting sun. Yes , they said. Yes, make us like you. Make us gods.
So, Danu reached a hand toward Cairbre, palm open, and beckoned. She thought that, as with the rest of what she did, she only had to want it. Come , she invited. Come, and be made new.
He stepped forward, basking in her light. He was still smiling, even as his skin began to turn grey, even as he took another step, when his body began to disintegrate. He reached for Danu, his outstretched hand meeting hers, and at that slight graze the mortal Cairbre blew away in the breeze. Danu gasped and turned toward the other two. Their eyes were still filled with awe even as their mouths stretched open in screams. Danu rushed toward them, arms out. “No,” she cried. “No, please, do not run. Cairbre must not have been worthy. But you are, my friends. You are.” Gráinne stumbled back, but Bláth, lovely Bláth, stood her ground, her eyes wide, but trusting as a child’s. She looked at Danu thus until her skin, too, paled to dust and fell away.
Danu spent that night and many after it weeping. What had she done wrong? She had gathered the gentlest mortals, those most like her.
But perhaps she had not understood, exactly, what made a person worthy.
So she would try again. She would learn. She would find better mortals, the best.
And she did.
She found the kindest, those who fed the poor their own dinner and refused to lift a sword against another.
She found the bravest, those who jumped into battle ready to defend their king, their kin—those who stared down a snarling wolf about to attack a child.
She found the curious, those who wanted to unlock the inner workings of the world, who bound up wounds and worked long hours to create potions that would heal those around them.
She found the believers, those who spent their hours praying to the stars, to the moon, to her.
She found the storytellers, those who looked at a cloud and saw a bird, a flower, a tree, those who gathered the village around them and told them about great and terrible deeds that had been done before.
But no matter which mortals she gathered, no matter which ones she reached toward, they all met the same fate. Their flesh could not contain the power of her godhood. She tried to hold them, to save them by pressing them against her own immortal flesh, but they crumbled to dust in her arms.
Each and every one.
Until Tara was covered in a film of grey ash.
“Finally, she stopped trying.” Danu took in a deep, shuddering breath. She held her hands up to me, as if in penance. “The other gods, they thought I created them. But they just came to Tara one day. Remembering, as I did, some kind of mortality. They were confused. Afraid. I did not want them to fear me; I did not want to be left alone again. And they were thanking me. So I told them…I told them only what they seemed to think themselves. That I had brought them to Tara. That I had given them godhood. It was a small lie. I didn’t think it would matter. I just—it was good to be needed, to be turned to, to be loved, again. And then”—Danu looked down—“too much time had passed, for the truth.”
I didn’t think it would matter. Of course she had not. I’d always known—nothing mattered to Danu, not truly, unless it somehow served her. Unless she mattered. I thought of the bodies, so many of them, turned to ash; it was clear she did not mourn them. They would only have mattered if she’d succeeded. As it was, they were only playthings. Experiments gone wrong. Less than her, insects, nothing more.
“Why did you kill the girl?” I finally asked.
Danu’s eyes were wild. “She was trying to hunt down the old stories. She was desperate to become a god. And when you told her…no matter why or what you believed…well. She could have discovered the limits of my powers. My greatest secret. So I couldn’t let her live.”
“But you punished me.” My teeth were gritted, though my voice remained steady. “You sent me to live among them because I killed them, because you wanted me to learn a lesson—but you have done worse, for eons. Tara is built on their bodies. Even now, Fia had to pay for your lies. How could you punish me? And you were mortal once, you did know better. You are nothing more than—”
Danu’s voice crashed against mine, a wave battering at the shore. “I was chosen . I was righteous among them. I was kind, good. They—whoever it was who chose me—knew I would protect mortals.”
Sharp fury crackled along my spine, and finally the rage in me snapped. “You don’t remember!” I shouted. “You have no idea how you became immortal. How you became a god. You could have drunk from a stream and been transformed. You could have been attacked by a wild animal or fallen down a dark well, or—”
“How dare you question me!” Danu’s eyes began to glow with anger. “I loved my neighbors. I cared for the poor. I gave all. And I was given all as a reward.”
“You don’t remember your own mother’s name,” I scoffed. “You do not know why you were chosen and not others. It could have been a mistake. All of you could have been a mistake. I am the only one among you who was born a god. All of you were made .”
Danu laughed, a wrenching, horrifying sound. “Oh, Cailleach, my love. You were made too. You might have a goddess for a mother, but your father was as mortal as any.”
I froze, my hands trembling. “What did you say?” The world was spinning under my feet. I had a father? A mortal ?
“He stayed with me only one night, leaving me with a child growing in my belly. I do not know why it worked with him, and not with the others.” She placed her hand on her stomach, her face both tender and angry. “I thought for a while that you might be a mortal too. That you might experience the life that I never did. One that ended in death.” She looked around at the bare mound we stood on. “It was here that your skin first turned blue. Here that I realized that you were one of us, a god who would never die, never know true pain or fear—and I could not explain your presence, your powers, any more than I could the others.”
I could not breathe. “Why would you not tell me that I had a mortal father?” My voice rasped. “What if—what if I’d wanted to meet him?”
Danu met my gaze with her own, sharp and defiant. “Why do you think I brought you to Mooghaun?”
“But I didn’t know any men there, only Sorcha and Enya and—and—” Cormac. Danu looked away from me, and suddenly I knew with a sickening twist in my stomach. “Cormac was my father?” I whispered. “But Sorcha—you were friends—”
Danu waved her hand. “Don’t be foolish. He was a man. He only wanted what all men wanted. And Sorcha never knew.”
“But you told me that he was good, that he was the best among mortals—and he was with you—all while he had a wife living. And then he married off Enya when he knew that she didn’t—and Enya. Enya.” I whispered the words. “Enya was my sister.”
Danu looked at me then with pity. “She was a mortal. She wasn’t your sister. Not truly.”
I began to cry, the broken, choking sob of a child. “I begged you to stop the marriage, to take the babe away. But you refused, you said we could not interfere with mortal lives. You let her die. She was my sister . You could have swayed Cormac. You knew I loved her, and still you let her die. Do you not even have so little power as that? To stop the death of a mortal? Are you truly so weak?”
Vines exploded around me, yanking and twisting me so that I hung suspended in the sky like a star, the wind howling in my ears, hail slashing at my face. Danu had torn away her mortal skin in a flash of light. The goddess before me could have drowned the world in a deep green pool with flick of her hand, an idle thought. In the face of her naked power, I could do nothing. The vines tightened around my throat, and I began to choke. “I am the world!” Danu’s voice was the howl of the winds, the fall of an avalanche, an echo from the depths of the earth. “I created the waters and the lands, and I give the mortals food and rest and succor. I have the power to end and to begin, and I ask for nothing in return.”
“Worship,” I managed to choke out. “You ask for worship.”
“They want to worship.” Danu’s voice was high, pleading. “They want to believe that I am all-powerful. And what is the harm in that? And it gives me power, it ensures that I can continue to give. I have given them something to live for, to strive for.” Her hands dropped to her sides and the vines at my throat loosened.
“Their worship is for you ,” I said, my voice hoarse. “For you , so that you can feel as though you are chosen . Even though you aren’t. Even though none of you are. You twist their desires, their needs, so that they are always on the brink—of starvation, plague, war, hardship. You need them starving so that they turn to you. Why? Isn’t the power you have enough? The wind comes at your bidding, and the sun, and the flowers. The lights in the sky dance at your wish. You can call feasts from the air and bring butterflies to your shoulder in the midst of a blizzard. You live a life of endless pleasure. Why is that not enough?”
As Danu looked at me, her face changed. Half became the broad, red-cheeked woman I recognized as my mother, the one who had sent light through the air for Mór to chase. The other half was the goddess—endless, immutable—the one who had killed a girl who caught her in a lie.
“The gods do not explain themselves to mortals,” she said finally, voice ringing through the air before I was thrown to the ground, left alone in the cold winter night.