Page 24 of The Winter Goddess

The Sixth Life

When I finally saw the road that led back to Daingean Uí Chúis, the little village on the shore of the sea, I wept. It was my village, my home. And I would not leave it again.

The storm had come here too, and it took me a long time to pick my way through the ice and drifts back up the hill to my hut. How many times in my six lives I had walked up this hill? How often had I hated seeing the hut sitting there, round and stone and filled with the objects that made up my mortality: the old black cauldron, the jars of honey, the straw-filled pallet.

The snow slowed, becoming lazy and gentle, and before long I could see my hut. Blue smoke blew out of its chimney, light shone from its windows. I slowed. Who was there? Then the door opened, and I saw, outlined against the golden light, Fionn. Fionn, back again.

And my heart leaped with joy and I ran toward him, letting him wrap his arms around me and swing me into the air until we were both laughing and crying.

I lay with him in bed long into the night, not wanting to sleep, only to look at him.

“Where did you go?” he whispered, long after I thought he’d fallen asleep. “I came back, and the hut was dark and dusty. It looked like you had been gone for weeks.”

I looked away from him, pressed my face into the pillow. I wanted to tell him what I had learned about Fia, but I was afraid of what Danu would do if I did. The anger that I’d held against Danu for so long had dissipated with my choice to remain mortal. She had not done what I’d asked, but being certain now that I would see Mór—would see all those I loved—again at the end had eased the hard knot in my heart. I could not predict Danu’s own feelings, though. She had seemed half-mad there on the mound. Angry and desperate and pleading all at once.

I decided it would be better to wait. Danu would forget eventually, as she always did, and then I could tell Fionn the truth.

“Do not ask me. Not yet.” I could tell he wanted to press me, could see it in the taut lines of his body, but he said nothing, and my heart seemed to expand at his silence. He trusted me to tell him what I could, when I could. I was so moved, I grasped his hand, turned his face to mine. “I love you.”

It was the first time I’d said I loved him, but it didn’t feel strange. In some ways I felt as though I’d always known him. Always loved him.

He twined a strand of my silver hair around his finger. “Would you have loved me when you were a god?”

“No,” I responded quickly. Fionn laughed and I did too, blushing a little. “I am sorry. Sometimes I still forget that mortals do not always want the truth to the questions they ask.” I sighed. “I only meant that I did not love anyone . I was not with anyone, before I became a mortal. As a god…I was enough. Sufficient. Unto myself.”

“Then I am glad that I did not meet you as a god.” Fionn traced a finger down the side of my face. “I’m glad that you are a mortal woman.”

“I am too.” The truth of it almost sent me reeling. I thought back to when I had cursed the gods for making me thus. “If your sister had found a way to become a god, would you have done it? Would you have exchanged your life, your death, for godhood?”

“No.” Fionn pushed himself up on one elbow and looked at my face. “No, I would not.” He ran his thumb along my lips again. His skin tasted of dust from the road. “I do not want to go on forever. I do not want to forget the strength in my arms as I cut down a tree, the smell of the fresh-cut wood, the little pains of hands covered in splinters and cuts. I think life as a god would become dull.” He kissed my knuckles and gave me a small smile. “It is strange to say to such things to an actual immortal being. But perhaps if I had been born a god, I would think the same as you.”

“No,” I said. “No, eventually you would realize you are right.”

Fionn continued to walk the roads in spring and summer and came back to me each fall. I worked with my bees, and I got a new dog, a playful puppy I called Blue.

Danu did not visit, and I did not call for her.

I was happy.

I stopped counting the years, but many passed, and with each one, I wished only to continue this life for as long as I could.

Fionn returned before Samhain most years, but I was not alarmed when he missed one. The roads were sometimes dangerous, and I knew that he would be making his way toward me as fast as he could. But one year, after several weeks had passed, I began to grow nervous, always looking toward the road, keeping the door open so that I might hear any movement. I even missed Kiri, who I sometimes thought would outlive us all.

I woke one day to a warm breeze on my face even though it was late in the season, after harvest. The warmth of the day discomfited me, and I was anxious as I went about my work. It was odd to have a day that was like summer, but without any insects humming or green grass blazing over the hill, and it filled me with a sense of foreboding. To ease my anxiety, I tried to think of Mór instead, how she had loved days like these, called them a gift to help ease us into the colder season.

I was still picturing her that evening and made her favorite stew. My hands were flying, chopping onions and carrots as I remembered the first time I’d made it for her, when she was just five—how she’d eaten a whole bowl, then sat back, stroking her rounded stomach as though she were an old man, telling me that her body was “all warm, Mama!” I had laughed and tickled her and—

“Cailleach, my love.”

I spun around, and as I turned, I gouged the knife deeply into the meaty part of my palm, between my thumb and finger. “Fionn!” I was so relieved to see him that my knees went weak.

He was smiling when I turned around, but then his face fell. “Ah, Cailleach, what have you done to yourself?” He pulled my hand to his and looked at the deep gash there.

“It’s your fault,” I said, though the relief at seeing him made me smile. “You startled me! But it’s no matter.” I hurriedly took a spare cloth and wrapped it around my hand, turning to him. “You’re back.”

He put his arms around me, and I leaned into him, inhaling the scents of the road that he always brought back with him: smoke and grass from the fields he sometimes slept in, and a deep, earthy smell, like just-turned soil after rain. I would have stayed there longer had Kiri not jumped up onto Fionn’s shoulder and given me a suspicious look. Fionn laughed and shooed her away before releasing me, looking around the hut for a long moment. He bent over the cooking pot and inhaled. “It’s good to be home.”

In the weeks that passed after Fionn’s return, we were so busy getting ready for winter—gathering the last of the honey and wax, harvesting our garden and filling up holes in the hut’s roof—that I did not pay much attention to the gash on my hand. I knew it was not getting better, noticed red streaks spreading out from it and up my arm, but I didn’t have time to waste worrying about it. I could see, in the way the squirrels were hiding away nuts and how the mice were building their nests, that the winter would be bad.

When we went to bed one night, Fionn kissed my cheek then pulled back. “You’re hot as a fire,” he said. “Are you ill?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just a small thing.”

I do not remember much of the next days except tossing and turning on my pallet, swimming in and out of dark dreams where I burned and burned and burned. Someone forced a bitter brew down my throat, and I choked on it, but they held me firm until I swallowed.

Still, I was so hot.

Finally, one night I woke to find cool air on my face. I managed to open my eyes and I saw a sky full of stars. I sighed in true pleasure, realizing that I lay on the pallet outside, and that Fionn was stretched out beside me. There were tears running down his cheeks.

“Fionn,” I said hoarsely, and he jumped. He raised himself up onto his elbow and smoothed a hand over my hair.

“I didn’t know what else to do.” His voice shook. “You were so hot. I thought you would burn away if you were inside another moment.”

“I forgot that you can die from something as small as a cut on the hand.” I said this lightly, with a weak smile—but I didn’t actually believe I was dying. I wasn’t old. And I needed more time—I hadn’t yet asked Danu to let me remain mortal. I’d meant to, of course, long ago, but I’d been afraid to call her at first, in case she was still angry, and then…then I supposed I’d forgotten. Life had been busy; I’d been needed, by the land and the villagers and Fionn. But I couldn’t hold off any longer. This illness had been a lesson. I felt the fragility of my mortal body as I had not in some time. I knew it was time to tell Fionn the truth. And then I would call on Danu. Tell her that I did not want to return to godhood. Tomorrow, I promised myself. Tomorrow.

I coughed. “Do you remember, years ago? You came home to an empty house and asked where I’d gone.”

He frowned, gently sweeping his hand across my brow. “Yes, Cailleach, but why do you think of it now? It can wait. You should rest, you—”

“No, Fionn.” I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. “It must be now.” I gathered myself. “I went back to Síd in Broga. After you left that first time. I went back because…because I remembered her, Fionn. I remembered Fia.” I looked into his eyes, into his face which I loved so. “She sounded so familiar, when you spoke of her, but I didn’t realize until you had gone—I’d met her in my fifth life. When I went looking for Mór. It was just chance, I was in the tavern in some town to the east, mourning, drunk, and she came looking for food and heard me raving about the gods. I told her…I told her that I thought Danu had lied.” I told him the rest of the story as best I could, about how I’d confronted Danu on the burial mound, why she’d killed Fia. “I am so sorry.” I was weeping by the time I finished the story. “I am so sorry that I met her. I didn’t know what I was saying, didn’t understand what I was doing. The fate that I had pushed her toward. But Fionn, you have to know—it was not your fault. She just…she was too brave. She stood against the gods. And she forgot to be afraid.”

Fionn did not respond at first but wept, his eyes still on the stars. I worried that he would not turn himself to me, but when I reached a tentative hand to him, he took it. He did not reproach me, and he did not leave me. He only held me close, letting the cool night air flow around us as we cried for what we had done. For the sisters we had loved and the sisters we had lost.