Ellia's voice. 'Oh,' she said. 'I didn't expect to see you out here, Jenna. Coelin, Mam says to get your arse inside; they want music.' The door shut again, more vehemently than necessary.
'Ellia sounds. .' Jenna hesitated, tilting her head at Coelin. 'Upset,' she finished.
'It's been a busy night, that's all,' Coelin answered.
'I'm sure.'
'I'd better get in.'
'Ellia would like that, I'm certain.'
The door opened again. This time Jenna's mam stood there. Coelin shrugged at Jenna. 'I should go tune up,' he said.
'Aye, you should.'
Coelin smiled at her, winked, and walked past her to the door. '’Evenin’, Widow Aoire,' he said as Jenna’s mam stepped aside.
'Coelin.' She let the door shut behind him, and crossed her arms.
'We were talking, Mam,' Jenna said. 'That’s all.'
Maeve sniffed. Frown lines creased her forehead. 'From what I saw, your eyes were saying different things than your mouth.'
'And neither my eyes nor my mouth made any promises, Mam.'
Inside the tavern, a rosined bow scraped against strings. Maeve shook her head, revealing the silvery gray that touched her temples. 'I don’t trust the young man. You know that. He’d be no good for you, Jenna- wouldn’t know a ewe from a ram, a bull from a milch cow, or potato from turnip. Songmaster Curragh got him from the Taisteal; the boy himself doesn’t know who his parents are or where he came from. All he knows is his singing, and he’ll get tired of Ballintubber soon enough and want to find a bigger place with more people to listen to him and brighter coins to toss in his hat. He’d leave you, or you’d be tagging along keeping the pretty young things away from him, all the while with children tugging at your skirts.'
'So you’ve already got me married and your grandchildren born. What are their names, so I’ll know?' Jenna smiled at her mam, hands on her hips. Slowly, the frown lines smoothed out, and Maeve smiled back, her brown- gold eyes an echo of Jenna’s own.
'You want to go in and listen, darling?'
'I’ll go in if you’re going, Mam. Otherwise, I’ll go home with you. I’ve had enough excitement for a night. Coelin’s voice might be too much for me.'
Maeve laughed. 'Come on. We’ll listen for a while, then go home.' She opened the door as Coelin’s baritone lifted in the first notes of a song. 'Besides,' Maeve whispered as Jenna slipped past her, 'it’ll be fun to watch Ellia’s face when she sees Coelin looking at you.'
Chapter 2: A Visitor
IN the morning, it was easy to believe that nothing magical had hap-pened at all. There were the morning chores: settling the sheep in the back pasture, cleaning out the barn, feeding the chicks and gathering the eggs, going over to Matron Kelly's to trade a half dozen eggs for a jug of milk from her cows, doing the same with Thomas the Miller for a sack of flour for bread. By the time Jenna finished, with the sun now peering over the summit of Knobtop, it seemed that life had lurched back into its familiar ruts, never to be dislodged again. In the daylight, it was difficult to imagine curtains of light flowing through the sky.
Jenna could smell Maeve frying bacon over the cook fire inside their cottage, and her stomach rumbled. Kesh was barking at her feet. She opened the door, ducking her head under the low, roughly-carved lintel, and into the warm air scented with the smell of burning peat. The cottage was divided into two rooms-the larger space crowded with a single table and chairs and the kitchen area, and a small bedroom in the rear where Jenna and her mam slept. Maeve had helped Jenna's father-Niall-build the wattle and daub house, but that was before Jenna had been born. She often wondered what he looked like, her da. Maeve had told her that Niall's hair was red, not coal black like Jenna's and Maeve's, and his eyes were as blue as the deep waters of Lough Lar, and that his smile could light up a dark night. She knew little about him, only that he wasn't from Ballintubber, but Inish Thuaidh, the fog- wrapped and cold island to the north and west. Jenna tried to imagine that face, and sometimes it looked like one person and sometimes another, and sometimes even an older Coelin. She wished she could see the memories that her mam saw, when she rocked in the chair and talked about him, her eyes closed and smiling.
Jenna had no memory of Niall at all. 'He was killed, my love,' Maeve had told her years ago when Jenna had asked, curious as to why she didn't have a da when others did, 'slain by bandits on his way to Bacathair. He was going there to see if he could gain a berth on one of the fishing ships, and maybe move you and me there. He always loved the sea, your da.'
When Jenna grew older, she heard the other rumors as well, from the older children. 'Your da
was fey and strange, and he just left you and your mam,' Chamis Redface told her once, after he pushed her into a thicket of bramble. 'That’s what my da says: your da was a crazy In-ishlander, and everyone’s glad he’s gone. You go to Bacathair, and you’ll find him, sitting in the tavern and drinking, probably married to someone else and talking nonsense.' Jenna had flown at Chamis in a rage, bloody-ing his nose before he threw her off and Matron Kelly came by to pull them apart. When Maeve asked Jenna why she’d been fighting with Chamis, she just sniffed. 'He tells lies,' she said, and would say nothing else.
But she wondered about what Chamis had said. There were times when she imagined herself going to Bacathair and looking for him, and in those fantasies, sometimes, she found him. But when she did, invariably, she woke up before she could talk with him.
The man you thought you saw, after you jell… He had red hair, and his eyes, they might have been blue. . Jenna tried to shake the thought away, but she couldn’t. She saw his face again and found herself smiling.
'I’m glad to see you’re so pleased with yourself,' her mam said as she came into the tiny house. 'Here’s your breakfast. Give me the milk and the flour, and sit yourself down.' Maeve slid the wooden plate in front of Jenna, along with one of the four worn and bent forks they owned: eggs sizzling brown with bacon grease, a slab of brown bread with a pat of butter, a mug of tea and milk. 'This afternoon I have to give Rafea two of the hens for the bolt of cloth she gave me last week.'
'Give her the brown one and the white neck,' Jenna said. 'They’re both fat enough, and neither one lays well.' Jenna slid her fork under a piece of bacon. 'Mam, I think I’ll take the flock back up to Knobtop this afternoon.'
Maeve’s back was to her as she cut a slice of bread for herself. 'Up to Knobtop?' she asked. Her voice sounded strained. 'After last night?'
'It’s a nice day, the grass was good up there yesterday, and this time I’ll be sure I’m back earlier. Besides, Mam, in all the old stories, the mage-lights only come at night never during the day.'
Her mam hadn't moved. The knife was still in her hand, the bread half cut 'I thought you might help me with the hens.' When Jenna didn't answer, she heard Maeve sigh. 'All right. I suppose I shouldn't be sur-prised. Aldwoman Pearce'll be talking about it, though.'
'Why should Aldwoman Pearce care if I go to Knobtop? Because I was there last night?'
'Aye,' Maeve said. She set the knife down and turned, brushing at the front of her skirt. 'Because of that, and. .' She stopped. 'Ah, it doesn't matter. Go on with you. Take Kesh, and keep Old Stubborn out of trouble this time. I'll expect you back before sundown. Do you understand?'
'I understand, Mam.' Jenna hastily finished her breakfast, gave Kesh the plate on the floor while she put her coat and gloves back on, and took the half loaf of brown bread her mother gave her, stuffing it into a pocket of the coat. 'Come on, Kesh. Let's get the sheep…' With a kiss for her mam, she was gone.
By the time they reached the green-brown flanks of Knobtop, the sun had warmed Jenna and her coat was open. The sky was deep blue over-head and dotted with clouds, sailing in a stately fleet across the zenith. The sheep moved along with Kesh circling and nipping at their heels, their black-faced heads lowering to nibble at the heather. As they rose higher, Jenna could look back north and west and see the thatched roofs of Ballintubber in its clearing beyond the trees lining the path of the Mill Creek, and looking eastward, glimpse the bright thread of the River Duan winding its way through the rolling landscape toward Lough Lar. By noon, they were in the field where Jenna had seen the lights.
She didn't know what she had expected to see, but she found herself disappointed. There was no sign that anything unusual had happened here at all. Kesh herded the sheep into the largest grassy slope, and the flock set themselves to grazing-they paid no more attention to the area than they did to the pastures down in the valley.
