'You know who Sulis is, of course,' Ossian told the streak-faced tots, and they nodded vigorously. Only Madoc did not nod, but smiled privately to himself. 'Without her we could not live by the river at all. The sea would flood in and drown our crops, the tides would refuse to turn.'
Two of the children were whispering together. Ossian didn't like that: he was affronted.
'You there!' he cried. 'What are you saying?'
'We only want to know, what did you see through the rushes? Did you see the Lady of the Alder? Or the Moon Lady?'
'I will not tell you that,' said Ossian piously. 'My tongue would shrivel inside my mouth if I told it.'
Madoc laughed softly. He did not believe Ossian had seen anything at all.
'Take that back!'
Ossian was on top of him at once. He was only eight, this boy: he did not have the breath to shout, or to take back anything.
'You want me to toss your sniggering liver to the river?'
'I didn't say-'
'Do you?'
'No.' The boy sagged. He was no longer pushing Ossian off: he was as limp as a cut rope.
Ossian rolled off the lad, onto his back. At this angle he could just make out the martin's nest under the roundhouse eave. A bird was twitching out of it, ball-headed, sharp-beaked. Wonderfully quick, then stone-still - it would make you dizzy to watch him. Ossian had already forgotten his anger.
'What did you see?'
It was gentle Seth asking. Seth who wasn't clever, who lived on kindness and milk and spelt bread. She asked softly, as she asked everything. 'Was she very lovely?'
Ossian had to shut his eyes to remember. The rushes had crossed his face with swart shadow. Cinders of light, a gnat-cluster of them, floated through the clack of knuckle bones. His father had been scrying. The others - Halter, Anvil, Potter's Wheel - watched by the spitting flame, but their faces were closed and dumb. Only his father's ancient face moved to the bones' chatter, stirred words into the air, shaped the ash with his finger. On the distant bank the women were keening Cernunnos. His body is blown like thistledown, they cried. His limbs are scattered on the sea. Never again shall we see his bright and handsome face, who was once as generous as the May time…
Each year their grief was green as holly, fresh as the first snowfall, bitter as rue.
'Yes,' said Ossian. His eyes opened in blank tranquillity. 'She was very lovely.'
'They're coming,' said Beli's sister, who had shielded her eyes against the blink of light. And there were the three coracles shimmering back across the water, away from the island. The high trees spilt down sloughs of shadow, and for part of their way the boats were bogged in it. Only Ossian's father was clear, all in white, and he was looking back the way they had come. The rest were busy with paddles or watching for snags on the water. But he sat facing that heap of earth and rush as if he could scarcely bear to leave it, or had abandoned there the thing he loved dearly. The island itself had never lain so grey and still.
By now other people had joined the children on the bank. Men and women, waiting for the coracles. One, with a long pole, paddled into the shallows to help grapple the boats ashore. Ossian's father, at any rate, could no longer do such work himself, not at his age, being who he was. He faced the island, oblivious of the zigzag course of the coracle under him, the cross-stress of the ribbed current.
'The goddess has spoken to him,' Ossian heard someone say. 'He is not in his right mind.'
The men handed him out of the boat and he staggered through the tall grass, his robe catching his foot. His eyes, when they fell on the villagers at last, were blind, callused with hard seeing.
'Where is my son?' he asked the rushes, and they whispered back reedy lies to him. 'Is he here?'
Seth looked at Ossian expectantly. Why didn't he answer? Why didn't he kneel for his father's blessing? Ossian's own eyes were vacant. The reeds had pleated the wind, doubled every sound and sent the old man back to the paddle splash of the river, calling Ossian.
Ossian got to his feet, slowly. He rubbed his hand across Seth's hair, for luck or comfort. Then walked down the green bank where the people - there was a crowd, now - parted to let him pass and find his father ankle-deep in river weed, there calling always for his son Ossian.
No one touched him as he passed.
He knelt in the water and asked for blessing. He placed the blind fingers on his own eyes, let their nails shock his flesh. On the Isle of Rushes the goddess of the river watched from her willow tower.
'Give me your blessing, father.'
The old man quivered like a poplar, and his lips were dewed.
'I -- I can't.'
It was less than half a whisper, and everyone heard. The entire village was gathered behind Ossian now. The other two boats were landed and their oarsmen had set a tinder-fire of rumour. The smith's forge was silent. The people had run from hearths and yards, left fish to burn on the fire, the bucket to fall glittering at the spring. They stood mute as winter, as the leaf in the moment before its fall.
'She has taken my blessing from me. It is no longer mine. You saw her face, Ossian. You are Cernunnos.'
Ossian did not understand, at first. His father must be talking about his initiation, a year from now. He knew something of that ceremony: how antlers were fitted to the novice's brow and the juice of harsh berries pressed to his nose on a sponge of moss. He knew that one day he would be called to follow his father to that dream country. Why else had he been taken to the Isle of Rushes? And he had always been so apt - quick, yes, to see the pattern of the knuckles sprawled in the dust, even to guess the goddess's temper. Not the detail, of course, not the sacred days she set aside to sow and reap, her particular demands for fruit or flesh, fresh or charred; not her sudden, onerous generosities. The priest alone was able to read these. But her mood he could tell keenly. Until this moment he had always felt her goodwill. He had not earned it, any more than the ripe fruit that drips with mist earns its sweetness, but it had been there, and he had lived subtly, half-consciously on her favour. Until now, at the moment of its withdrawal.
He was alone, bolassed in straggles of weed, and his father was a white-beard, fanatic stranger.
'The goddess spoke to me!' the old man was crying aloud, and he waved his staff to the sky and threw out arcs of spray from the river's skin. 'Behold, here is Cernunnos!'
Ossian saw the stick flick overhead against a sky scored with strange runes of cloud. The old man was there, and a plunge of feet, and the slopping water filled his nostrils, for he was lying in the river now, pushed and jostled there. And he could no longer hear what his father was praying for, the water was roaring in his ears, and the words were strange to him - an ecstatic gibber, beautiful and senseless as a lark's trill, hot words, there were no gaps, no breath, and his feet had been seized and there were hands under his shoulders taking him roughly, and he knew the choice had fallen on him.
