A Meeting at Corvallis (85 page)

“Lord Bear,” a man said near the front, in an almost conversational tone. Others took it up: “Lord Bear. Lord Bear.
Lord Bear!
”

Now it was a thunder, echoing off the walls behind them and the great house behind her. The house that had been owned by her blood for more than a hundred years, and that looked out over the land that fed her children, its wheat and fruit and meat the stuff of their bones and blood. She raised a hand again.

“Who was it brought you to this good earth? Who was it found you seed grain and tools and stock? Who gave every family their land, and made fair laws, and kept them, and saw that others kept them too? Who made the Brotherhood of the A-list, so that we'd have guardians always ready and you could plow and reap in peace, knowing you'd keep what you grew and made? Who was always ready to hear a grievance, and give those who needed it a helping hand…or a kick in the ass, if they needed that?
Who?
”

“Lord Bear! Lord Bear! Lord Bear!”
Fists were in the air, and drawn blades, men shouting it like a war cry even as the tears ran down their faces.

“I'm not the only one who lost a husband in this war,” she went on more quietly, when the sound had died down to a rumble.

The tone brought that to a new hush, and now they were straining to hear what she said. At the rear there was a mumbling as her words were repeated and passed backward.

“I'm not the only one who has children who will grow up without a father. My daughters, my son, the child I'm carrying beneath my heart right now, they've lost the man who loved them, who held them and told them stories. They're crying for him, like all the other children who lost someone dear to them.”

Several of her family looked at each other, startled.
Well, I wasn't sure I was pregnant again until about last week.

A long sigh went across the crowd, and she spoke into it: “But Mike Havel was special. It isn't just my children who've lost a father. My husband was father to this land, to all the people of the Outfit…landfather, they said in the old days. He was our landfather. When the enemy came from the north with all their numbers to take our homes and make slaves of our children, who led us out to fight them? Who made our plans? Who was in the front of every battle? Who killed the tyrant Arminger with his own hand, and preserved our freedom and our lives?”

She bent and then raised the helmet and its snarling covering over her head in both hands. “When this wild thing came to kill, who stood fearless between the beast and his folk, though its claws tore his face and his own blood poured out on the earth?
Who killed the Bear, Bearkillers? Who was the lord who died for his people?
”

“LORD BEAR! LORD BEAR! LORD BEAR!”

This time she let the thunder build until her ears rang with it and it pounded at her chest like huge soft hammers, and then let it die away until she replaced the helm on the coffin with gentle reverence.

They're mine,
she realized, when she looked at them again.
And I'm theirs. I've never felt like this before…did Mike?

She motioned Mary and Ritva up into the cart; Will handed her the boy. The girls stood straight on either side of her; Mike Jr. rode her hip, knuckled an eye and then looked out over the crowd fearlessly. He'd never been a timid boy.

“The Bear Lord is dead. Will you keep faith with the one who gave his life for you? Will you keep faith with the blood that he spilled out for you, the blood that runs in his children? When the time comes they can take up his work. Will you choose one of them to wear the Helm of the Bear Lord in his place?”

The noise wasn't words, not this time, but it was certainly agreement. There was a roaring guttural undertone to it, as well:
Let anyone who wants to say
no I won't
run far and fast!
She noticed even then that her brother and
his
wife had their swords drawn, and were shouting as loud as anyone.

Is this what Juniper feels, when she makes magic?
Signe let herself smile a little before she continued.

“Bearkillers, with his dying breath the Bear Lord named Will Hutton as his deputy, to rule in his stead until his children came of age and a new Bear Lord could be chosen by you, the free people of the Outfit. You know Will Hutton; a fighting man our enemies and the wild folk fear, and a wise and honest one as well. He was always Mike Havel's strong right hand and close councilor. The Bear Lord put the authority in his hands, and to advise him Mike set me, and my brother Eric, Will's son-in-law, and Luanne his daughter and my sister-in-law, and his wife Angelica, and my father Ken and his wife Pamela. People of the Bearkiller Outfit, is it your will that this be so?”

Will stepped up to stand by her side before the sound of acclamation died. He turned his head slightly to whisper into her ear; they were about the same height. “You might have told me about this first, honeypie.”

“And then you might have said no to the arrangements,” she said back with a wintry smile. “And this is what Mike wanted…or at least, it's what I think Mike would have wanted.”

“And now I can't do otherwise without it lookin' as if I was out to trample down his memory and his kids'. Folk'll remember
this
day for a good long time, that's certain-sure. What your daddy calls makin' myths. Mike, he did marry him up a smart one, didn't he?”

“Hey, Unc' Will, you don't believe those stories about dumb blonds, do you?”

“I used to, truth to tell, but now I got me a tow-haired Swedish grandson and he's as smart as a whip,” he snorted. “I won't say which side of the family he got it from.”

She blinked then, shocked that the tears she'd fought back were still waiting.
I can't cry now. Later, but not now.
“Oh, God, Unc' Will, I miss him!”

He nodded, gave her shoulders a brief squeeze, then stood straight beside her and waited for the noise to die, blocky and strong and looking out at their people with shrewd eyes dark in his weathered, coffee-colored face. The crowd fell quiet bit by bit.

“Mike Havel was like a son to me,” he told them shortly. “I'm grieving with you.”

He crossed himself. “I hope he's with God now…or that he doesn't have too long a spell in Purgatory. God knows and we all know he wasn't a perfect man; he wasn't the prayin' sort, and he had him quite a temper, and he was a bad man to cross, a hard man to his enemies. Hell, folks, if y'all find a perfect man, come runnin' and tell me—I ain't going to nohow waste my time looking around for one, except Jesus his own self.”

A burst of startled laughter cut across the crowd's mood; when he went on they were coming back to the light of common day, from that other place where Signe had led them, even as sun and winds and shadows fell towards the west.

But that's OK,
she thought.
They'll remember it the more strongly because it wasn't long. I don't think it
could
be long, or we'd burn out. Common day is where we live. That other place…it's for visiting and coming back.

Hutton went on: “But Mike Havel was a
good
man, as good as any I ever met. He stood by his friends and his kin and his given word, and he wasn't never afraid of nothing in all the world. There was no give in that man, and no steppin' back.
Sisu,
his old-country folks called it, and Mike had all there was to have. Everything around us here today is his work. Now he's gone.”

He put his hand on the head of the boy Signe carried for a moment.

“But like Signe said, his kids are still with us. They say our children
are
the future, and that's God's truth; I've got grandkids and I hope to see
their
kids before I go. Mike Havel wasn't afraid to die, for his kids, or for yours, for our future. That's right and fitting; it's a man's work to fight and die for his fam'ly, and it's his pride. But it's also a man's pride—or a woman's—to
work
for his kids and their future. You know that; you work every day to grow the food they eat and make the clothes they wear. We've got work ahead of us, Bearkillers. The Outfit has to fix up what this war tore down, and we're going to have lots of people moving south. Some'll be honest and hard-workin' folks who'll want to join up with us. They won't have much, but they'll have their hands and their backs and the guts to use them—and remember how we got our start, from people just like them. Others won't be honest, and likely we'll have to fight again.

“So today we bury Mike Havel, and we'll remember him the way he'd have wanted—what he did for us, and what we did with him leadin' us. Then tomorrow, we get to
work
.”

Signe Havel nodded as she stepped down from the cart, and the coffin-bearers came forward. Her eyes flicked eastward for a moment.

All right,
she thought.
Your son is his too, and you've got an inheritance for
him.
But this is for
mine,
and the children of their children.

Dun Juniper, Willamette Valley, Oregon
September 22nd, 2008/Change Year 10

“N
ot much longer,” Nigel Loring muttered to himself. “You can do it, Nigel—not much longer!”

Juniper Mackenzie laughed aloud as the crowd filed up the mountainside towards the
nemed,
the Sacred Wood, and felt her feet trying to skip a dance beneath the steady pace. She'd made the trip so many times; alone sometimes to speak with the Mighty Ones and the landwights, with her Coven before the Change, and even more since—in sunlight and dark clouded night, by moons that shone on spring flowers or white as salt on winter snow, but seldom with a crowd as joyous as this, as the couples went up two by two. The path wound back and forth up steepness, through towering Douglas fir where summer's last heat baked out the resin scent like strong incense, past hardwoods whose yellowing leaves glowed even as the sky began to darken ahead over the snowpeaks eastward that made a wall to the world. Squirrels streaked chattering along branches, wings were thick overhead as the flocks went south ahead of oncoming winter, and somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.

“Nigel, you're going up this path to be married, not executed,” she chided gently, squeezing his sword-hardened hand in hers. “You're supposed to
enjoy
this, you know! And you're looking so indecently handsome I could ravish you on the spot, sure.”

He did, erect and slim, trim and graceful in kilt and ruffled shirt, the plaid belted and pinned at his shoulder with silver plaques bearing the five roses of the House of Loring, gifts from Major Jones over in Corvallis.

Rudi went by, skipping nimble as a goat on the rough verge of the trail, at the head of a pack of boys his age doing their best to induce maternal despair as they plunged on heedless of carefully arranged finery. Juniper's eyes followed him for an instant, as the bright red-gold hair shone in the cathedral dimness beneath the flat Scots bonnet.

Thank you, Mike,
she thought.
Thank you for my son, and for the sweet night when we made him, in that time of terror and despair. Thank you for your strength, and your kindness, and for saving us all. Hornéd Lord, he'll be so surprised there beyond the Gate! Guide him home to the lands of Summer beneath the forever trees, and be a friend to him, for here among us he walked in Your forms: the wild Lover, the wise Father, the strong Warrior who wards the folk.

The shade of the great trees gave breaths of cool grace between bursts of sunlit summer warmth, like autumn casting a shadow through time before itself, and the beams of light that slanted through them made a green-gold glow that seemed to explode on bushes of late Cascade azaleas, their last blooms frothing white and filling the air with their sweet-tart citrus perfume. Glimpses westward where the path and the forest allowed showed blue distance and yellow-brown stubblefields, sunset flashing from river and pond, and the thin spires of smoke that marked the hearths of humankind, all nearly lost against the sinking sun. Earth was warm and dry beneath her strong, bare feet, duff and fir needles prickly, the fallen leaves rustling and crunching, even the swirl of her robe across her insteps like a caress. The circlets of silver bells she'd strapped about her ankles chimed in chorus with those the other women wore. Her neck felt bare without the torque, but that was for a reason this day.

She and Nigel went with wreaths on their heads as well, pink fireweed and scarlet gaura, daylilies creamy white and lavender, orange rose mallow. Drawn by the nectar, moving flowers—California Sister butterflies, black and orange and silver—fluttered about their heads.

“You look like Silenos the father of fauns dancing with the wood-nymphs,” she whispered into Nigel's ear.

“My dear,
you
look like a dancing wood-nymph. My
son
looks like a young Apollo with Artemis on his arm. Even John Hordle is managing to do a credible imitation of Hercules with your lovely daughter as Hebe.
I
look like a complete middle-aged idiot, or at least I feel like one.”

“You're being
English
again, my darling.”

He grinned at her, the wreath a little askew once more. “Something to that. I felt the same way the first time, you see, even though it was only dress uniform and not this kilt.”

“You could have worn a robe, too,” she said, just to see him shudder theatrically.

The others followed, wreathed as they were for the joining. Eilir and John Hordle were just behind Nigel and Juniper—he'd complained that he felt like a bull at a county fair and bellowed like one when Eilir nodded in calm agreement, stately in her robe and
airsaid
. Alleyne and Astrid followed, both in long robes of fine white linen as well as garlands, looking like the Fair Folk come again in their tall blond handsomeness—though she'd bristled like a great cat with silver-blue eyes blazing at the sight of Tiphaine d'Ath in Mathilda's train, the Protectorate warrior quietly bristling right back. Others followed them in turn; Judy and Chuck's Dan, beside lanky brown-haired Devorgill the huntress, her long bony face transfigured into beauty, and many another. There was nothing like the memory of a war just past to put a hand on shoulder and say:
hurry.

But now we have peace,
she thought.
And new beginnings.

“I'm sorry we were too busy at Beltane,” Nigel murmured.

“Mabon is a good time for handfasting too. It's a season of fruitfulness, isn't it?” she said, and laid a hand on her stomach for an instant. “I wasn't going to tell you just yet, but I want you to be as happy as I this moment, my darling nervous one.”

For a moment his reserve cracked into incredulous joy, and she laughed at the sight; and again at how quickly again a tinge of worry crept in. He would always be concerned for her, and that was like welcoming light burning through a window on a winter's night, when you'd traveled through sleet in darkness.

“My beloved, I'm a mother twice over, remember, and neither birthing gave me the slightest problem, and Judy is the best midwife in all the Willamette country. Have some confidence! Shall we name her Maude?”

His brows went up under the wreath; she reached out and straightened it.

“It…it…” He stuttered for a second, and she basked in the look he gave her. Then he won back to self-mastery, as this man of hers always would. “It, ah, might be a boy.”

“No, somehow I don't think so.” She looked at him slyly, green eyes glinting from under her fox red brows. “And I'm a witch, you know.”

To herself:
And there's power in names. All our loves return to us, my poor, strong, stoic darling. We and they are braided together, the dancers and the Dance.

More flowers starred the sides of the pathway, planted by nature or patient hands. Today there was an arch of roses over the place where the pathway gave onto the flat knee that stood out from the mountainside.

Music played as they emerged from the close hush of the forest into the open wind and the vast blue distances of the mountainside clearing; flutes like that wind given form, the sweet eeriness of the uilleann pipes—the great hoarse war-drones were put aside for this—a harp, a rattle of bodhran-drums, and a choir of girl-children singing:

“Antlered one, belling one, you of the sweet-tongued cry, we love to hear Your song in the glen,” Nigel murmured, surprising her for a moment.

The High Priestesses and High Priests waited for them there, robed, crowned with the Moon or masked with the muzzle and stag antlers of Cernunnos, with opal and silver and tricolored belts, staffs and wands in their hands; Dennis solid and smiling beside his Sally, Judy and Chuck as familiar as they'd been so many years, Melissa Aylward grave and matronly with a twinkle breaking through now and then and Larry Smith the shepherd doing his game best beside her, Tom Brannigan and Mora all the way from Sutterdown.

Behind them scores of friends waited on the meadow and around the pool, Sam Aylward with his arm in its sling, looking on with pride—and relief, she thought, that
he
wasn't wearing the stag-mask…even Eric Larsson and his Luanne and Will Hutton and Angelica from over in the Bearkiller territories, both given special dispensation by Abbot Dmwoski. They grinned and waved; Juniper answered in kind, and even Nigel did as well. Smiles were well-omened on a day like this.

Children raced around, or stood importantly holding their pieces of the ceremony, her own Rudi among them, and his friend Mathilda standing back looking envious. Adults passed canvas
chagals
of wine from hand to hand—it was Mabon, wine-harvest, after all, and there was an occasional shout of “lo, lo, lo,
evoii
!”

She took one and squirted a mouthful in a single stream past her lips, tasting the blood of Earth, wild and strong; then she passed it on and threw her arms around Nigel for a long, lingering kiss, ignoring the whooping and cheers and bawdy good wishes shouted in the background, for those were also luck-bringing.

The great circle of oaks stood ready, rough-barked columns thicker than her body and a hundred feet tall, the tattered late-season lushness of their leaves making an arch around the Circle itself, streaked with old-gold yellow as they caught the setting sun high above. Today they were draped and joined with ropes of garden blossoms and great wreaths at the Quarters as well. The same light glinted on the spring-fed pool beside the
nemed
and the place water tinkled downward over rocks, glowed on the nodding flowers of the alpine laurel that grew thick around it, deep pink bowls above the low matted leaves.

Juniper gave Nigel's hand a final squeeze. Then she caught her daughter's, and she her
anamchara
Astrid's, until all the women were linked. The music grew wilder, and they danced out to the spring, the laughing crowd giving way before them and following in their wake as they coiled around the waters with feet skipping on the soft, dense turf amid a chime of silver bells, their unbound hair tossing beneath the flower-wreaths. Juniper lifted her strong soprano in a high wordless note for an instant, and then they sang together as they danced:

Then solemn quiet fell, as Judy cast the Circle and admitted the celebrants: “I conjure you, O Circle of Power—”

Salt and water and incense smoke and steel, and the crackling of fire in the central hearth of the
nemed
. The other pairs of High Priest and Priestess stood at the Quarters, and the ritual went forward.

“—as in the Beginning, so it is now. As above, so below. The Two are One.”

Juniper took up the torque, and Nigel bowed his head as she spoke and placed it around his neck. “As symbol of my love, I give you this token. I will comfort and honor you in all our days.”

He was smiling as he rose and took the torque he'd made for her in his hands; smiling more deeply with his eyes than his lips.

“As a symbol of my love, I give you this token. I will honor and protect you in all our days.”

They each took a taper and lit the offered candle, and faced the altar as the High Priestess brought the ribbons from the cauldron. Her face was still graven with sadness, but there was happiness there as well when she met her friend's eyes.

I wish Aoife could be here too, and her Liath,
Juniper thought, and knew the thought shared.
They were brave and glorious and full of life and love. But they're together in the Summerlands, and we'll see them again, even if we call them by different names.

Judy bound the ribbons about their crossed wrists.

“Ribbon of white, for the Maiden and the Son; new life and beginnings. Ribbon of red, for the Mother-and the Father-of-All; growth and change. Ribbon of black, for the Wise One and the Keeper-of-Laws; death and the silent rest that comes before renewal. Can you walk this path together; bound by the freedom of your choice; to be as one, yet also Two; your love the fire that warms without destroying?”

“I can,” Juniper murmured softly, and turned her hand within the loose circle of the ribbons.

Nigel's fingers gripped hers, and his voice was firm as he answered: “I can.”

Judy removed the ribbons and placed them on the altar knotted together. Then she lifted the chalice and cried: “By the Lord and the Lady, I call down blessing on these two. As the Lord and Lady join in the Sacred Marriage from which springs all creation, so are they joined. By the power of the Goddess, as Her priestess, I decree it. Blesséd be!”