The Sky-Blue Wolves

by S. M. Stirling

  “No, Norman, don’t kill them just yet, not on the rug anyway, the stains never come out,” Sandra Arminger’s voice came, amused and intrigued. “They could have shot one of us with that crossbow if that was what they came for. I want to get a story out of them first. And yes, if it’s satisfactory, I think they might be amusing . . . and quite, quite useful.”

  “Useful murderous ninja moppets?” Arminger said, lowering the blade.

  His own grim thin-lipped mouth relaxed; he was probably realizing he looked a little odd flourishing a broadsword over the heads of two unresisting near-children on their knees.

  “Those are the best kind, darling! Nobody expects the golden-haired teenage ninja moppet!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LOST LAKE

  CROWN FOREST DEMESNE

  (FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  JUNE 20TH

  CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD

  (PLACES OUT OF SPACE, AND TIME)

  “Cernunnos bless,” Órlaith murmured as she looked around her. “Sure and this is the Cascades, and familiar as my own face in a mirror.”

  It was a soft summer’s afternoon in a bee-murmurous meadow, the long light slanting through the tall western hemlock, Douglas fir and red cedar that surrounded it, the shade of small white clouds floating above, and the green slopes that drew vision up to the eternal snows at their peaks. She took a deep breath; mild warmth breathed with cedar resin and fir-sap and flower-scent. The meadow was flowers as much as it was grass, thick drifts of white Valerian, blue lupine, bright-red pokers of Indian paintbrush, purple elephant’s ear and white-and-yellow pearly everlasting.

  This was what a Persian carpet tried to imitate. But alive; Rufous hummingbirds and butterflies—monarchs and fritillaries and ruby tiger moths and more—were thick around the blossoms. Birds flew overhead, though less than she was accustomed to. That gave her an idea. She shut her eyes and felt.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Like it was in Portland; the world feels closed, a bit, and . . . flat. But even more so.”

  She looked up again, and her eyes went wide. That ruler-straight cloud, with a metallic dot speeding at the front of it as it grew, like the arrow of a God.

  “A contrail,” she said; she knew the concept, and she’d seen pictures.

  “But never the thing itself,” she added. “And yes, there were wonders in this time too.”

  Looking down she saw she was in a Mackenzie kilt and knee-hose, and a loose green-dyed linen shirt, a léine. A sporran was slung from her belt, and a hunting knife, and a little sgian dubh with a hilt of black horn carved in knotwork was tucked into her right stocking. A six-foot yew longbow and quiver leaned against a nearby tree, and she slung the quiver and took up the weapon.

  Then she heard a voice, a child’s voice, a girl’s, talking to herself . . . or perhaps praying, in the unguarded way of a youngster who thought herself alone.

  Órlaith sank down in the shadow of a hemlock, sitting cross-legged, and listened:

  “Gods of the Wild Ones, help me find my way home. I’m not scared but Gran’-Unc’ will have to come and find me and he gets tired sometimes. I promised him I would be good, and Mom, and Dad, while I’m staying with him. And . . . I think I am a little scared. . . .”

  Órlaith thought for a moment and reached into her sporran. The rest of her gear was what she took with her on a stroll in the woods near Dun Juniper, so there should be . . .

  Wrapped in a dock leaf were two scones the size of her fist, honey-glazed and rich with hazelnuts and dried blueberries. It was just like what they made in the kitchens at the Dun, and left by the door in a basket each morning for travelers and hunters to take. The canteen at her belt was full of cold spring water cut with berry-juice and mint, and it included a cup of salvaged aluminum. She set both out on a coarse brown linen napkin also folded there, then took up another part of the contents. That was a set of panpipes, of the type Mackenzie shepherds kept to play to their flocks . . . and warn predators that their beasts were under human protection.

  She began to play softly, letting the notes trickle through the meadow and the woods. The girl fell silent when she saw the source of the piping, then came into the clearing and looked around. There was relief and wariness both in her expression, and Órlaith stayed seated, so as not to loom above her. In the tight-knit world of the Clan Mackenzie’s dúthchas where households lived in one another’s pockets and youngsters were in and out of one another’s houses all their growing years, a child would assume any adult to be helpful, but things were otherwise in other lands . . . and this was not exactly the dúthchas, not yet.

  She was an eight-year-old, with a mane of flaming red hair the color of polished raw copper in braids starting to unravel from where a ribbon was missing, dressed in trousers of blue and a leaf-stained white shirt, with odd and rather grubby white-and-green shoes on her feet. A little knapsack was marked with a strangely manlike—or puppet-like—frog in a dagged collar like a jester, as if from a story. And there was the startling luxury of a watch on her wrist, its hands the limbs of a manlike mouse.

  A watch made to measure for a child would be a rare thing and sign of great wealth. . . .

  Though not in this time of marvels, perhaps. No, they were very common here.

  Freckles marked a milk-white skin slightly sun-flushed and the eyes were leaf-green beneath a billed cap of the type still worn to play baseball.

  “Oh!” she said, as Órlaith put the panpipes down and smiled. “I thought . . .”

  Órlaith made a polite enquiring sound, and the child went on: “I thought you were the Piper . . . you know, the one at the Gates of Dawn, in the story.”

  “And would that be The Wind in the Willows you mean?” Órlaith asked.

  And thought to herself, as the coloring and cast of features sank home:

  I think I know who this is! Greetings, Grandmother!

  A broad white smile with a gap in the upper row greeted that remark.

  “Yeah! I’ve got that here!” and swung the little haversack down.

  The book she flourished was a little battered with use and from the library markings originally bought secondhand, but obviously much-loved.

  Órlaith nodded. “Ah, now I have that book as well, and my Da read from it to me when I was younger than you, and when I was younger still my grandma would tell me the stories in her own words. It’s a fine tale, and I would go looking in the woods for Ratty and Mole and Toad of Toad Hall!”

  And I tried to find the Super Man once, but let’s leave that aside.

  The girl flushed crimson. “I . . . well, I sort of did that. Went looking for Toad Hall. Just playing, you know? And I marked my trail, I really did! But then I couldn’t find the marks. Mom and Dad made me promise I wouldn’t be any trouble for Great Uncle Frank if I came to stay with him all by myself, but he’ll be really worried.”

  “No need for worriment,” Órlaith said. “I know these woods well, and I can put you on the path to . . . it would be a big cabin, no, of squared logs? On a stretch of open land farther down the slope, facing southward, and itself a little way above a small valley with farms in it, opening to the west towards Sutterdown. A cabin used by an older gentleman as his country place?”

  She saw the girl’s tension melt into relief at this proof she was someone who knew the neighborhood.

  Órlaith felt a prickle of eeriness up her spine; she knew how things had been here in her grandmother’s time because Juniper Mackenzie had told her the way of it herself, and how she’d been left the land and house years later in a totally unexpected gesture by the old man. The world-serpent was biting its tail with a vengeance.

  What am I to do here, then? Just set you on the road to home? Is that why the Sword brought me here? Surely your kinsman would
come find you sooner or later—you’re not fifteen minutes’ walk from the nemed of Dun Juniper, and only another ten from home. A bit more for a child, but not much more.

  The girl nodded, happier now, the more so when Órlaith went on:

  “And so your name would be Mackenzie?”

  “Yeah! You know Great-Unc’ Frank?”

  “Know of him, at least.”

  A broad smile rewarded her. “My name’s Mackenzie, yes, miss.”

  “And your given name, would that be Juniper? For you have the look of one who is kin to the spirit of the Junipers.”

  The girl laughed. “That’s like the book! Juniper . . . that’s a good name!”

  She cocked her head, taking in Órlaith’s garb. “What’s your name? Does my Great-Unc’ know you’re on his land? You look sorta like a book I have about Scotland.”

  “Órlaith is my name,” she said. “And as chance would have it, in full it’s Órlaith Arminger Mackenzie. And yes, my people were Scots in my father’s mother’s line, far back; as yours would be, from the name.”

  “Yup, my dad’s folks too! Ooor-la,” the girl echoed, getting the sound perfect the first time. “That means . . . Golden One, doesn’t it?”

  Órlaith laughed. “Or Golden Princess. There’s no hiding anything from you!”

  She poured the canteen’s cup full. “I was just about to have a bit of a snack and a drink of water.”

  Órlaith signed the food with the pentagram of the Old Faith, pressed her palms together and murmured:

  “Harvest Lord who dies for the ripened grain—

  Corn Mother who births the fertile field—

  Blessed be those who share this bounty;

  And blessed be the mortals who toiled with You

  Their hands helping Earth to bring forth life.”

  “Is that like saying Grace?” the girl asked. “It sounds pretty.”

  “It is much like saying Grace, yes,” Órlaith said, remembering her grandmother’s own hands holding hers, showing her the way of it.

  She broke open one of the scones. It was fresh enough to steam very faintly, and the smell was tantalizing.

  “Walking is hard work when you don’t know your path. Share this with me, then, eh? And perhaps you’ve a bit of a thirst upon you as well. Travelers should help each other.”

  Young Juniper hesitated for a second, then:

  “Thank you!”

  That was said in mannerly wise, but she was obviously dry and hungry too. She gulped down the cup of water, and made an inarticulate sound as she bit into the other scone. Órlaith refilled the cup, touched a crumb to it and set it aside.

  “And as for your kinsman Frank Mackenzie, he’ll know I’m here when I bring you back to him, eh?”

  “Thanks, Ooor-la!”

  Then after inarticulate sounds of enjoyment: “This is good!”

  After courteously swallowing first, and drinking from the cup again with obvious relief:

  “Why did you do that? With the crumb.”

  “Why, that’s a thank offering, part of saying Grace, you might say. To Lord Cernunnos and Lady Flidais.”

  “Who are they? Saints? Or like the Virgin Mary?”

  “No, not saints, nor yet the Queen of Heaven in her blue mantle, though something like. You see, the Lord and the Lady . . . the great ones whose joining makes all that is . . . have many faces. And in the wild places of the earth, here in the forests, They are Cernunnos and Flidais. She of the white deer, and He the Horned Man, the Piper at dawn and twilight, that speaks the wildness in our souls and draws us beyond the fields we know.”

  Juniper’s eyes went wide. “The . . . the Piper . . . like in The Wind in the Willows? It’s not just a story? It felt like . . . well, that part felt like . . . I always wished . . .”

  “Just a story?” Órlaith said. “Why, girl, the world of human-kind is made of stories!”

  “But . . .”

  Her brows knotted, and Órlaith nodded. Children appreciated it when you took them seriously, and that was a weighty matter.

  “I know what you mean. Yes, part of that story is what the man Grahame made from the stuff of his mind and heart; it’s true, but not in the way your shoes are true.”

  Juniper giggled, and nodded and wiggled her feet to show she understood.

  Clever, this one . . . sharp . . . but I knew that, Órlaith thought, and went on:

  “But the Piper at the Gates of Dawn . . . when he spoke of that he touched something from outside his fancy, something deeper and truer. Something that is more true than shoes or scones. Do you see?”

  “I . . . yeah, I think so. So there’s the Lord and Lady, but they have many faces? Like masks?”

  “Not quite. For the faces are true and real, not a false seeming like a mask. But behind them is another truth.”

  She dropped into Gaelic: “And would you be having this tongue, then?”

  “I do! I do that! I talk it with my mother!” the youngster replied in Erse, abandoning what remained of her reserve as she chatted in what was obviously the tongue of home and love to her:

  “Are you Irish yourself like her, then? It’s from Oileán Acla she is, off the west coast of Ireland, where they speak the old tongue yet. I talked with her mom last Christmas, my grandma. I’ve never seen her, but we talked on the telephone, and she was so happy I could talk to her in Irish.”

  “No, I’m not from Erin myself, though full a many of my ancestors were. It’s a beautiful language, a tongue of brave warriors and great poets and sweet song, and my father and his mother spoke it often with me. Yes, and sang the old songs to me too.”

  Juniper nodded, and then sang herself, the child’s voice light but holding more than a hint of the purity and power it would as an adult:

  “A bhean úd thíos,

  Air bhruach an tsrutháin

  Seothu leo, seothu leo . . .”

  Órlaith laughed and took up the ancient lullaby:

  “Do you understand my complaint?

  Seothu leo, seothu leo

  It’s a year today since I was abducted from my horse

  Seothu leo, seothu leo

  It is I who was brought to the fort in the grassy hill . . .”

  Then they joined in the chorus:

  “Seoithin, seoithin, seoithin, seoithin,

  Seo ul leo, seo ul leo.

  Seoithin, seoithin, seoithin, seoithin,

  Seo ul leo, seo ul leo.”

  Juniper looked at the bow beside Órlaith and reached out a hand and then looked for permission before picking it up and looking closely at it.

  “Gosh, this is heavy! And it’s so pretty!”

  “It’s a longbow of yew from these very mountains, and black walnut for the riser, and from the hand of a master-bowyer. It’s just exactly what it is, and that makes for beauty.”

  In fact I’d swear it’s Edain Aylward Mackenzie’s work.

  The girl’s brows clouded. “Are you a hunter? I don’t like hurting things.”

  “Nor do I, nor would I hunt on another’s land without their leave and without need. But look you, child.”

  She pointed out into the meadow. “Our Lord the Sun pours down His power and His love to Earth the Mother, and from that joining the grass and the flowers arise, giving of themselves that those butterflies may live, and . . . yes!”

  A dark-blue and orange bird swooped past, a moth in its beak, and vanished into the trees.

  “So the bird takes what is needful to it. And the deer feed on the grass, and we upon the deer, and when the Huntsman comes for us in our turn we give back of our bodies to the Dark Mother, for Earth but lends them to us for a while.”

  Juniper was listening intently, her bright brows drawn down over slitted eyes. Órlaith felt her breath catch: this was what her grandmoth
er had told her, the same words and not far from this very place.

  What did the Wanderer say to Da? That Time is not an arrow; Time is a serpent. Fact becomes history, history becomes legend, legend becomes myth . . . and myth turns again to its beginning to create itself.

  “And we too are part of the great turning of the Wheel. So if we take from need, and without wantonness we are like the wolf and the bobcat. With due respect to the creatures who give their life for us, and give honor to Cernunnos and Flidais who grant us of Their bounty, then this is right and fitting. Also, roast venison with onions and apples is a fine dish on a cold winter’s night!”

  Juniper’s smile returned. “That sounds like a story!”

  “It is, and a true story too,” Órlaith said, which was true itself. “Shall I tell you a story?”

  Juniper gave her gap-toothed grin. “Oh, yeah! I love ’em.”

  “Well, this is a story of the Lady Flidais, one of whose names was Sadhbh, when she was the deer maiden.”

  Órlaith sounded a few notes on the pipe and then sang:

  “Ní iarrfainn bó spré le Sadhbh Ní Bhruinnealla,

  Ach Baile Inis Gé is cead éalú ar choinníní.

  Óra a Shadhbh, a Shadhbh Ní Bhruinnealla,

  A chuisle is a stóirín, éalaigh is imigh liom.”

  “Now, there was a fair maiden named Sadhba, who was beloved of Fer Doiro, who was a Druid and a powerful magician of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Men of the Green Mounds; but she would have none of him. In his anger at her scorn he by enchantment turned her into a deer—”

  “What a jerk!” Juniper exclaimed.

  “True, a jerk of the jerkiest jerking jerkdom. Now, when she had been a deer for three years—”

  When she finished Juniper clapped and cheered, and then suddenly threw her arms around Órlaith and hugged her. Órlaith returned it, kissed her on the forehead, and said:

  “Now come, and let’s get you home to your kinsman, who’ll be worried. Give me your hand, for it’s steep just over here.”