Silver's Lure

White Birch Druid Grove, Garda Vale The trixies were restless and the butter wouldn't churn. Meeve's messenger, one of her elite corps of warriors called the Fiachna, and sorely afflicted with arrogance, had come and gone and Catrione had been glad to see him go. Since dawn, rain had been sluicing off the thatched roofs like water from an overturned bucket, and while at one time, the thought of his wet, uncomfortable journey might've quietly pleased her, this was the first quarter Catrione had ever served as Ard-Cailleach, the head sister of the Grove, and she was too caught up in the turmoil spiraling all around her to give him another thought. She dodged the widest puddles as she hurried across the chilly yard toward the low stone still-house, but her feet were soon soaking wet, her hems sodden. The oldest cailleachs, on whom she might've relied for support and advice, had all left for the MidSummer rites at Ardagh, summoned there early to a special conclave by the ArchDruid, Connla. Catrione, being one of the younger sisters and head of the Grove for the quarter was left with the few druids either too old to travel or too young to be called. There were reports of blight spreading across the land, of increasing numbers of unnatural births--two-mouthed fish and six-legged calves--and rumors that goblins were stirring. The queen's messenger didn't say why Meeve wanted her daughter, Deirdre, home. He had not once looked directly at Catrione, nor any of the other druids, and after he left, the serving maid who'd warmed his bed spoke of trouble between the ArchDruid, Connla, and the Queen. But nothing seemed to account for the fact that knots wouldn't stay tied, fires wouldn't stay lit, water wouldn't boil and bread was slow to rise. Not to mention the trixies, who spilled and spat and quarreled and caused so much aggravation that that very afternoon, she'd banished them to their dens below the Tor shortly after discovering that an entire batch of starter had to be scrapped, leaving the entire Grove with no means of making bread unless the still-wives had more. Catrione paused under the eave as a huge black raven shrieked at her, then rose and flapped off. Startled, she put her hand on the still-house latch as the old rhyme ran through her mind: One for sorrow. The door swung open, seemingly of its own accord. Catrione gasped as three anxious faces materialized out of the stillroom's gloom the moment she put her foot across the threshold, and she wondered if they'd been watching for her. "Catrione, you have to let us take the child." Bride, the chief still-wife, broad-breasted as a turtledove but sharp-eyed as a hawk, closed one hand on Catrione's wrist and pulled her inside. "Deirdre's child--it's gone too long past its time." "Sisters," Catrione managed, feeling weak in the knees. Deirdre the High Queen's daughter, once Catrione's best friend among the sisters, had doubly disgraced herself and the Grove. Not only had she lain with a brother outside the sacred rituals, but a few months after he'd been banished, she'd admitted to carrying his child. Druids lay with each other only as part of sacred ritual, and then only after preparation and precautions against the conception of a child, for such couplings produced dangerous rogues and other anomalies. This pregnancy had gone long beyond anything normal, and now, having resisted the sisters' arguments that the child should be aborted, Deirdre was approaching three months, at least, past term. The child was still alive and squirming, and Deirdre refused to do anything more to hasten her labor than to drink the mildest of tonics. Catrione felt as if her legs might give way beneath her, but Bride's clasp seemed to communicate a subtle strength, allowing her to sink onto a long wooden bench. "You know we must," Bride was repeating. "You must allow it." Baeve, tall and thin as a wraith, spoke frKelleher, Anne is the author of 'Silver's Lure', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373802371 and ISBN 0373802374.