Page 28 of The Winter Goddess

The Seventh Life

“You are dying.” Danu’s voice was soft.

I nodded.

She loomed over me for a long moment, then, to my surprise, she lay down beside me and took my hand.

“I will stay with you. Until the end.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking about their faces. Then I turned my head and looked at my mother. “I understand now, why you did it.” It was not quite forgiveness—I could not forgive the death, destruction, the pain—but I could offer her understanding, at least. “You didn’t want to be alone.”

Danu’s lip trembled. “I did not want to hurt them.” Her voice was hoarse. “But if they discovered my secret…”

“You want to be needed. You want them to call on you and praise you and speak to you, to remind you that you are wanted.” Her eyes were huge, brimming with tears, and in that moment, she seemed like a child to me. A child who did not have a mother and who had been frightened in the dark and so had come up with a story to protect herself. “It is dangerous,” I said slowly. “To be a god afraid.”

Her breath was a gasp. “You were not there, in the world that was. Before the other gods. Endless quiet. And only me.”

“You are no longer alone, Danu,” I said. “And this cannot go on.”

We lay in silence.

“I was not born a god, as you were. You are the only one among us who wasn’t fashioned by some unseen…creator, or force. Or accident.” A tear fell down her cheek. “The more they call our names, the more I know we are not forgotten. If they keep calling on us, surely we will be allowed to stay.”

“I do not want to stay.” My voice trembled with the force of my desire. “I want to hold my daughter again. Don’t you, Danu? Don’t you want to hold Mór again?”

“What if it all ends?” Danu’s voice was so quiet I would not have heard it if she hadn’t been right beside me. “If they…they do not call on us. What if we fade?”

“Perhaps one day we will. Perhaps not. But do you truly want to continue as it has been? Bearing this cost? Do you think that is right?”

Danu’s eyes were wide, frightened, but she did not answer me. Finally, I said, “I do not think you should have control over all the turnings of the world.” I stood, and she followed me. “Give winter back to me.”

She looked at me, uncertain. “But you said you didn’t want it. You said you wanted to die as a mortal, to be—to be with your family.”

The ache in my throat was sharp. Snow fell on our shoulders, settling on mine, but melting the moment it touched Danu’s golden head. I swallowed the hurt again as I had so long ago in a clearing very like this one. “You will forget your sadness, eventually. You will do all you can to protect your secret.” Danu opened her mouth but didn’t protest. “And even I…” I looked for a moment into the woods. “If I take back winter I will forget too. The days are so long as a god. So unending. If I take back winter…” I looked into her spring-green eyes. “I would need the power over spring too, so that I could never send an unending winter again, so that I cannot lose myself. I would become two. Cailleach, the crone of winter. Brigid, the goddess of spring.”

“Spring,” Danu whispered. “In spring they love me with their all. In spring I feel…I feel as though I was given godhood because I truly was good. The best among them.”

“Perhaps that is why you should give it up.”

A tear fell down Danu’s cheek, then landed on the cold ground. Where it fell, a violet blossomed.

Finally, she looked back up at me. “To make this so, I would have to take from your winter self. From you , Cailleach. You won’t be able to endlessly walk the deep blue places of the world. You won’t be able to stand against an avalanche of snow or sleep in a lake encased in ice. It would not be the same.”

“I know.” I took her hand. “But if I do this—if you do this—perhaps eventually, we will atone. Perhaps, when this world does end, we will be able to greet those we loved with pride. Knowing that we did all we could for them. And for the other mortals under our care.”

Danu stared into my green eyes, so like her own. She traced the contours of my face. She did not say that she loved me or that she was sorry or that she wished she had been different. Instead, she reached out a hand.

I reached back.