Page 4 of The Winter Goddess

The First Life

I blinked, looking up into the sky. A moment before, I’d been standing in front of Danu, her finger pointed at me, the walls of the palace glowing with the dawn.

Now I was standing on earth, but not as I usually stood, shielded from human muck and squalor. Instead, mud covered my toes and had even spattered onto the white shift I wore. Worse still, my skin prickled and shivered from the rain falling from the sky. I looked up and began to swear. I screamed curses up at them, throwing my arms out wide in challenge. In warning. I was a god like they were, I had power, strength. I took a deep breath and grounded my feet in the earth, closed my eyes and waited—for the howling winds to sweep me up among them, for the weight of snow on my arms, for the cold to settle my breaths. For winter.

For the first time in centuries, it did not come.

A shudder ran down my body. I felt as I had the moment Enya died, as I had when I saw what the mortals had done to my clearing: grief, deep and endless, the weight of an avalanche rolling over my body. I wanted to despair, to collapse to my knees, was desperate for the comfort of snow. Instead, the rain pelted me, blowing into my eyes, nearly blinding me. The discomfort—something I’d never known before—drove me to look for shelter.

For the first time, I saw where they had exiled me. A round, decrepit hut, wide holes blooming in the thatched roof. As I stared at it, I knew they meant it to be my home. Perhaps it would at least be warm. I took a step toward it, only I was not used to mud, which had never truly touched me before, and so I slipped, landing on my back. The breath left my body, and for a long moment I thought this life was already over, that I had not made it one step before meeting death.

Except I did not die. I merely became drenched, staring up as the water continued to fall on me. I began to cough and first propped myself up on my elbow, then finally made my way to my knees. I feared that if I stood, I would fall again, so instead I crawled to the hut—only to find it had no door. Just a length of tattered cloth that would keep out nothing, not cold, animals, or mortals. In a fit of fury, I stood and wrenched the cloth down, throwing it aside and leaving the shelter open to the sheeting silver rain.

There were few things in the shelter: a hearth, a black cauldron, a pallet with a blanket, and a round table with no chair, only a broken, three-legged stool. On the table sat a loaf of bread, brown and hard, and a large, yellow candle. It looked like one of Danu’s, made from her honeyed golden hives. I flicked a hand at it as I normally would, but of course it did not light. Mortals did not keep fire in their fingertips as gods did. I pictured Sorcha bending over her fire and doing…what had she done? Shifted the coals around with a stick? Added logs? It was so long ago now, and since Enya’s death, I had barely allowed myself to remember them at all. Did Danu truly think that I could survive as a mortal because I had spent a few short years among them? I curled my hands into fists and stared at the hearth. How could Danu be so cruel? I found myself wishing that Sorcha were here, that some mortal were here to show me what to do, and resented the thought. So what if I had a mortal body? I was still a god. If a mortal could create fire so could I.

There was some kindling nearby, and I threw it on the coals, but the fire did not flare. I recalled suddenly Sorcha blowing on them before they turned to flame, and so I did the same, but still no flame grew. In anger, I shoved another stick into the mess, and finally, finally, saw a gleam of red. I moved closer, prodding the coals again, and they all began to gleam. I blew on them gently, foreign heart thumping in my foreign chest, and a tiny lick of flame burst up from the coals. I held my breath as it wavered, worried it would go out, but then it caught on the kindling and grew until I could feel the warmth of it. I sat back on my heels, triumphant, a small smile on my face.

The triumph died, though, as I thought of how Danu’s face would shine if she saw me smile over the small flame. This was what she’d always wanted. Ever since Enya’s death she had tried to entice me back to the mortal world, and when that had not worked, she had simply used her power to send me back anyway, this time in the humiliation of a mortal body. But why? What did she think I would learn from this? I had spent time among mortals. I knew what they were like, understood how they thought, without needing to become one of them. I had watched Sorcha give birth to Cathal, still remembered her pain; had seen Enya dream and bleed and die; had heard Cormac struggle, fight, and laugh, even as he betrayed her; had walked through their markets; had learned their habits; had eaten their food. What more could she expect me to learn from them?

But, I thought suddenly, Danu’s mind is as changeable as the wind. If I pretended to go along with her punishment, if I practiced mortality as she wished, there was a chance she would release me from this mortal body in a few days. The fire popped as I considered this, and I jumped when an ember bit at my hands.

My hands, pale and white instead of blue.

It had been centuries since my skin had first turned in that glade, and my chest ached as I looked at those hands. Since the moment I had gained that glorious blue, I had become winter. Cold and hard and howling as the wind and soft and quiet and gentle as the snow. Who was I without it? What would I do now?

Tears gathered in my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. If Danu was watching me, I didn’t want her to gain the satisfaction of my grief. I lifted my head and looked around the hut. If I was going to practice mortality I might as well begin now.

Night was drawing closer as I went out into the rain to try to find some more kindling. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far because the forest was nearly at my door. I tripped several times, falling in the mud, but finally managed to strip a branch from a squat tree. I dragged the kindling into the hut and swore, seeing that the fire had burned down to coals again. I rushed to stir it with one of the branches I’d gathered, thrusting it into the fire. Nothing happened. It had been long ago, but I knew this was how Sorcha had always brought her family’s fire to life. Why was it not working for me now? I held the branch closer, closer, until my fingers began to scorch, but the wet wood would not light. I did not know what else to do but wait and was relieved when it finally caught. But then so did my sleeve. I dropped the twig and frantically patted my arm until the sparks fell away, leaving the scent of char in my nostrils and blisters on my wrist. I touched one and felt a spike of something —like ice cracking sudden and sharp under your feet.

Pain , I thought. I had just felt pain for the first time.

I had seen pain before, in the set of Sorcha’s jaw when she’d lifted a heavy pot off the fire, in the sweat on Cormac’s creased brow when he’d broken a leg, and in the blood that covered the floor after Enya died. But I had never known it myself. Not until this moment.

Were the gods laughing or sympathetic? Were they arguing over whether to help me, to light my candle, heal my wrist? The thought of them watching made me clench my teeth in anger. I stood, yanked the candle off the table, and held it over the fire even as golden wax began to drip down my fingers. I did not move, until the wick was finally alight. I placed it back on the table, but the scent of it, of bees and clover and syrupy-sweet drops of honeysuckle did not make me feel better. It just made me think of Tara and my immortal body, a place with no pain.

Even lit, the candle barely gave light, only enough to fill the corners with shadows and make the darkness seem closer, so I took the loaf of bread from the table and crawled onto the pallet, pulling the blanket around me. For the first time in my life, I fell asleep not from the pleasure of drink or food, but from a deep weariness that filled my bones and pulled me quickly down into darkness.

When I woke the next morning, the first thing I noticed was that even more pain filled my body. In my blistered wrist, and the place between my shoulders where they met my spine, and even the balls of my feet—feet that had so recently run with ease and swiftness over any surface, stone or grass or broken shells, and never once grown weary or ached.

At least it had stopped raining. From the open door I could see a pale blue sky. Nothing like the sky that soared above Tara, but at least it would not make me damp if I had to go out in it. Slowly, I clambered to my feet and surveyed what the gods had given me in the pale morning light. It looked worse. At least with the rain and cold I’d been grateful for a roof to cover me, coals to light my candle. My one candle. I was suddenly sure that it was not a gift, but a cruel prod. One thing of beauty in the heart of such squalor, to remind me of what I’d lost.

I limped to the door because of the stiffness in my limbs and tried not to think of my immortal self, lithe and supple. The hut was set on the crest of a hill with a valley spread out beneath it, the sea to the right and a stream to the left. I could see other similar structures in the valley and realized they’d placed me so I was never far from mortals. This too was a punishment: no matter where I went, I would be able to see and hear them, even if it was at a distance.

I managed to gather an egg from where a chicken had laid it in the nearby meadow and brought it back to the hut, but I hesitated before placing it in the black cauldron that swung over the coals. I stirred it and waited for something to happen to the egg. I wished again that I had paid more attention to Sorcha’s cooking, but my time with her family had been so long ago…and when I’d been there, I’d been consumed with Enya, not with watching Sorcha sweep or cook or feed her baby. Why should I have cared, when food could appear at the flick of my wrist?

The egg’s shell was a lovely color, blue speckled; it reminded me of my own changeable skin. Well. The skin I used to have. My hands were now dull and pale and clumsy besides, because when I picked up the egg I held it too tightly and crushed it. Slime ran down my hands. It had not cooked at all, not like the eggs I had seen when Sorcha served her eggs, had merely been scorched in its shell. Still, I was desperate for food, so I crouched, sucking what was left from the smashed shell, licking yellow remnants of yolk from my hand.

That was how they found me.

I grew aware of them only because someone cursed, making me jump. I’d never once been startled by a mortal before, but now I leapt to standing even though the ones in the doorway had not made a move toward me. There were four of them, two men and two women. I rolled my shoulders back, trying to lengthen my spine and appear lethal and graceful as I had been, like a cat before it strikes. Rather than intimidating them, my movements seemed to make them think I was frightened.

“We’re not going to harm you.” The woman who spoke had a young face and thick, red hair. “We saw smoke in the air this morning and realized that you must be Fianna’s niece, come to work the land.”

I huffed out a breath. Apparently Danu had meddled with these people, made them think I belonged when I did not.

“You’re hungry?” Their eyes were wide, and it was obvious they thought I was mad as they took in my yolk-stained hands, the ring of yellow around my mouth. One of the men backed away a pace, but the woman who had spoken took a step toward me, pity in her eyes. “Fianna was in a bad way before she died. She didn’t leave much.” The woman proffered a basket covered in a cloth. I did not take it from her, so she set it on the table. “We’ll gladly help you get things in better order.” Her eyes swept the room. “The garden looks fallow, but the land up here will reward your hard work. You’d not believe the size of the strawberries she used to grow.”

Strawberries. That was why they’d sent me to this horrifying place. To grow strawberries. The thought made me angry, so angry that I seethed, “I do not need your help. Leave me.” I held the gaze of the mortals until they began to move uneasily, to twist their hands and twitch their feet. They whispered to each other, and for a moment I was afraid they might try to restrain me or drag me to one of their druids. “I’ve not got time to worry about a mad woman,” I heard one of the men whisper to his companion. “I came only because of Fianna. If she doesn’t want our help, we’ll leave her.” The others nodded and backed out of the room. The woman who had looked on me with pity lingered only for a moment longer before sighing and leaving too.

That was fine; I preferred it. I did not want their help, nor to accept anything from them—but I could smell something, and my stomach twisted in hunger. I tore the cloth off the basket to find bread, glorious and golden. I ate the loaf so quickly I began to cough, and my mouth felt suddenly hot and burnt like my blistered wrist. I spat out the half-chewed piece on the ground, gasping. How did mortals live as long as they did? How did they survive with throats that could be choked so easily by bread , with mouths that could be burned so quickly?

After I ate, I did not know what to do. As a god, I had done whatever I wanted at the very moment I thought of it. If I wanted to eat, I waved my hand and a feast appeared. If I was thirsty, I would summon whatever it was I wanted to drink: icy water from a mountain stream, wine in a golden goblet, morning dew from the petals of violets. If I wanted to run, I ran. If I wanted to sleep, I slept. Nothing could bore me; time was meaningless. And now that life had been taken from me.

I could have stood there a long time, mourning what I had lost, but I was too restless to stay indoors, so I went back outside. Danu had sent me here in early spring, and while the air smelled of it, of wet earth and new green buds, it was still cold. I shivered and shivered, but I managed to find my way to the nearby stream. It was large, nearly as large as a river, and I could tell the current was swift, but I wanted more than anything to be clean—to wipe away the mud that had dried on my feet from the night before, to clean the remains of the egg from my hands and mouth—and so I dove into the stream, just as I had a thousand others before.

The river was wide but deeper than I’d thought, and when I tried to push off the bottom, I couldn’t find it: the current was too strong, tumbling me over and over until I no longer knew which way was up and down. I knew how to swim of course, but had only done it lazily, easily, all water parting before me as though I were a sleek seal. This river paid no attention to me, no matter how much my legs and arms tried to push me to the surface, and I inhaled water and began to choke. I would have drowned there and then if I had not managed to grab onto a sapling that grew there in stubborn defiance of the stream’s might. I clung to it, choking, sobbing, coughing up the river, my heart still racing.

I had nearly died.

I had never been so frightened before. Had perhaps never been truly afraid, if this was what fear was. Had Enya felt this way? The same overwhelming… eternity of fear. I clung to that sapling and wondered if I should have held her hand tighter, if I should have whispered—

I shook my head violently. I could not obsess over Enya again. She had been gone for centuries.

I finally climbed up the bank and made my way to my hut, grateful to find dry, clean clothes in a chest at the bottom of the pallet. They were simple and scratched at my skin, but the skirt was warm and thick, and I even managed to knot a yellow shawl around my shoulders. I had a sense of satisfaction when I tied it, just as I had when I’d finally made the hearth flame, but even as I felt it, I pictured the gods watching me and laughing. Had Danu seen everything too? Had she looked on with delight as I nearly drowned, as I slipped in muck the night before?

I walked out of the hut to try to find another egg, and I was not surprised to see the hill was now covered in bluebells. They had not been there the day before, and I did not know if they had opened simply because it was spring or because Danu had sent them. I wanted to cover them in frost, but I had no power left in my veins, nothing but weary resignation as I crushed them underfoot, their sweet scent unable to mask the stench of the birds, of my rough-wool clothes, of my own foolish mortal body.