Naamah's Blessing

I like them.” Her laughter gave way to a rattling cough.
    Leaning down, the young woman dabbed at her lips with a length of cloth, and I realized I recognized her from the previous time, too.
    Old Nemed waved her away impatiently. “Wish I could get a better look at you, lad,” she said in a wistful voice. “Reminds me of my younger days. You understand what we’re about here today?”
    “I think so,” Bao said, concentrating hard on comprehending her words.
    Nemed turned her head. “What do you say, daughter of Eithne?”
    My mother made her way across the floor, Oengus and Mabon following her. “He understands, Nemed. Both the children know what is at stake.”
    “I am…” Bao hesitated. “Forgive me,” he said, picking his words with care. “But how is it that all of
you
know?” He glanced at me. “I’m sorry, but I do not remember you putting all this in a letter, Moirin.”
    I shook my head. “I didn’t. Did my father tell you?” I asked my mother.
    “Not this, no.” She said no more.
    “There are more mysteries in the world than you know, child,” Nemed said. “The Maghuin Dhonn Herself grant it, you may learn them yet.” Her wrinkled eyelids flickered closed, then snapped open. “But we will speak of this later, if there is a later. Leave me in peace for now.”
    For the rest of the day, Old Nemed dozed, attended by the young woman I had recognized—Camlan was her name. The young man Breidh returned, assuring us in a soft murmur that the horses were fine.
    There were a dozen questions crowding my thoughts, but I understood without being told that now was not the time to voice them.
    Later… if there was a later.
    Bao sat cross-legged in the cavern opening, gazing out at the stone doorway looming in the glade below us. It was as I remembered, two standing stones twice a man’s height, a single slab laid across them. Its shadow moved across the glade, marking the hours like a vast sundial.
    “It’s as I’ve seen in my dreams,” Bao said in a hushed voice. “And yet it seems such a simple thing.”
    I nodded. “It is and it isn’t.”
    When the shadow began stretching eastward toward the cavern, Old Nemed roused herself. Reaching for a cooking-pot on the fire, she dipped a finger into it and stuck it in her mouth, tasting it with a slurp. “It’s time,” she announced in a surprisingly strong voice. “Let us begin.”
    All at once, it seemed all too soon.
    I wanted… ah, gods! I wanted to slow the progress of the sun, I wanted another day with my mother—another week, a month.
    I wanted to ask Oengus how exactly we were related, and what magic Mabon had imparted to my yew-wood bow, and how he would know I would need it one day. I wanted to know why Camlan and Breidh were attending the rite when tradition held it should be the last two to have passed through the stone doorway, and I wanted to know how many of the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn had done so since last I did seven years ago.
    I wanted to tell Bao one last time that I was sorry for binding him to me without his knowledge or permission, sorry for forcing on him a fate in which his very existence was dependent on the acceptance of a foreign god.
    But when I glanced at him, his face was calm with resolve. Bao had made his peace with this. He had told me he had no regrets. He had died once, and he did not fear the prospect.
    And so I held my tongue and said nothing, and the rite began. Together, Camlan and Breidh dipped their fingers in a jar of salve, anointing first my eyelids, and then Bao’s.
    “May you see Her true,” they chorused in unison.
    Old Nemed ladled out two bowls of mushroom tea from the pot that had been simmering on the fire. We drank it down, both of us refraining from wincing at the bitter, acrid taste of it.
    The slanting sunlight seemed to thicken like honey in the cavern as Camlan and Breidh helped us to the far opening where my mother and Mabon and Oengus stood waiting. Beyond them, the rocky slope fell away at a steep angle. Below was the verdant bowl of the glade, an immense cupped hand holding a sparkling lake, a scattering of pine-trees and the stone doorway, its shadow long and stark on the green grass.
    “Do you remember what I said to you the first time, Moirin mine?” my mother murmured to me.
    I nodded. “It gave me courage more times than I can count,” I whispered. “I have never, ever doubted your love.”
    She gave me a hard, fierce embrace, then turned away, averting her