Dies The Fire

I?"

That was the spring quarter-day festival, not long off now, a time of new beginnings.

And my, things have been happening here, too!

There was more than one face she didn't recognize; evidently her lectures about sharing when you could had born fruit. She did know Dorothy Rose, who was not only in a kilt but wore a plaid improvised out of one of the same batch of blankets and a flat Scots bonnet with a feather on the side.

She pumped up the bellows of her bagpipes and then lead off the procession, stepping out with a fine swirl and squeal, not spoiled in the least by half a dozen dogs going into hysterics around her-Cuchulain was throwing himself into the air like a hairy porpoise breaching, wiggling in ecstasy. The rest of the people crowded around her and her companions, taking their baggage. and then suddenly seizing her and carrying her along behind the pipes, whooping and laughing as they tossed her overhead on a sea of hands.

"Put me down!" she cried, laughing herself. "Is this how you treat your Chief, returned from a quest?"

"Damn right it is!" Dennis bellowed.

She felt a huge load lift from her chest at the cheerful expressions; obviously nothing too dreadful could have happened while she was gone-dreadful by the standards of the first year of the Change, that was. Dennis was looking good himself; the kilt flattered him, and it was perfectly practical in this climate, and he had the additional excuse that none of his old clothes came close to fitting anymore.

But mostly it's playacting. Well, people need play and dreams. In bad times more than good, and there are no bad-der times than these, surely?

Jack and Muriel and Carmen were weeping openly as their fellow coveners danced them around in circles; Juniper finally struggled back to her feet and called Diana aside and gave instructions; the three were still too weak for her taste, and it would be better to get them fed and rested before the stress of meetings and explanations.

Dennis was tanned dark and wet with sweat from whatever work he'd been at; carpentry, going by the sawdust and wood shavings in the curly, grizzled brown hair on his barrel chest. With just barely enough food and more hard work than they'd ever dreamed of doing every adult in the clan had lost weight, but it looked much better on him than most. The sagging paunch had shrunk away, and the heavy muscle stood out on his tanned arms and shoulders like cables. He'd gone for a close-trimmed beard rather than the distinctly unflattering muttonchops, and overall he looked ten years younger than he had that night in Corvallis.

Sally Quinn evidently thought he was good enough to eat; she was beside him, hanging on to one arm, unconsciously curving towards him as they walked despite her mud-stained working clothes. Her delicate amber-skinned looks made a vivid contrast to his hairy massiveness; her son, Terry, walked on the other side, with Dennis's arm around his shoulders.

Now, that's only a surprise in that it took so long, Juniper thought happily. I saw that coming the day they met, I did.

She finally persuaded the mob to set her down, and even reclaimed her bicycle.

"Good thing we cleaned up yesterday," Judy grumbled. "This bunch have no idea what it's like out there."

"That's why we went on our journey," Juniper said. "To find out. But I would like a hot-water bath very, very much."

She raised her voice: "Is the bathhouse finished? And if something to eat could be arranged, that would be very welcome. We're tired and dirty and hungry, Mackenzies."

Most of the crowd went back to their work, save for Dorothy marching before; everyone had gotten used to the fact that there were never enough hours in the day to get everything done that needed doing.

And everyone's been very busy, Juniper thought, as she pushed her bicycle back westward along the dirt track that led to the Hall; the dust and ruts were worse than they'd been, with the wagon and sledge traffic.

Mental note three thousand and sixty-three: Get someone to run a scraper over the bumps and maybe pitch gravel in the holes, in our copious spare time. Or this will turn to a river of mud come autumn.

She'd left on the meet-and-survey trip because the main crop was planted. It all looked much neater now, turned earth showing green shoots and tips in orderly rows. Adults and children were at work, hoeing or kneeling to weed with trowels; Juniper almost drooled at the thought of harvest.

I crave fresh greens in an astonishing way, she thought. Not to mention food in general.

Others were laboring with pick and shovel, horse-drawn cart and wheelbarrow on the contour ditch that Chuck Barstow had laid out from the pool below the waterfall to water the garden. It was another blessing that they had a year-round stream tumbling down from the steeper hills northeastward.

Which reminds me:

She craned her head over her right shoulder for a second. The twenty-foot wheel of the mill was actually turning now; they'd been arguing over how to mount it when she departed. Dennis deserved a lot of credit for it, even if they had simply carried off most of the works from a tourist trap near Lebanon.

Nobody had been around to object-another opportunity that had been worth the risk and effort to get done before someone else had the same idea.

Ahead to westward the open land had been left in grass, a rippling green expanse starred with hyacinth-blue cam-mas flowers, better than knee-high already; grass never really stopped growing in the Willamette, and in spring it took off as if someone was pushing hard from below. Some of it was being mown by a team swinging their scythes together in a staggered row, followed by another with rakes gathering it into rows. The wild sweet smell lifted her spirits further as they passed the swaths of drying hay.

Not to mention the fact that nobody's digging the point into the ground every second stroke, or the blade into their neighbors' ankles. I nearly cut off my own foot on my first try, she remembered. Chuck's lessons have sunk in, at last.

The haymakers stopped to wave and shout greetings, and the travelers replied in kind; so did a brace of archers practicing at the butts. Improvised rail-and-wire fences made corrals for the precious horses and the livestock on the rest of the open land; there were moveable pens for the poultry and pigs. They had about twenty sheep now, with a ram among them, along with half a dozen lambs; and as many cattle.

Or more, she thought with keen interest; there were white-faced, red-coated Herefords among the cows that she didn't recognize, skinny yearling beasts that grazed with concentrated zeal as if they'd been on short rations. New horses, too:

Aha! The other emissaries' trip bore fruit as well.

The higher plateau that held the old cabin stuck out into the benchland like a steep-sided U; she was surprised at the amount the clan had gotten done there while she was away. The roof was off the main cabin, and poles stretched down to ground level to make ramps for the logs of the second story. What was really surprising was the progress on the palisade; the first log hadn't yet gone in when she left. Now a hundred feet of the defensive wall was complete.

Thank You, Goddess Mother-of-All, and You, Lord Cer-nunnos of the Forest, she thought. We take these trees from Your woods that our clan may live.

The better her group did at feeding itself, the more likely it was that some gang of killers would come and try to take it all away.

She puffed a bit as they went up the last section. The area around her half-dismantled cabin was nearly unrecognizable; half a dozen other structures in stages of construction ranging from sticks and string outlining their foundations to cellars nearly complete; dirt and rocks and ruts and horse dung in the open spaces between, sawhorses and frames and people cutting with everything from hatchets to two-man whipsaws, the clatter of hammers:

Nothing of the serenity she'd known here before the Change when it was her refuge from the world, a well of deep peace broken only when her coven arrived for the Sabbats and Esbats or by a rare guest. And yet And yet I don't feel the least saddened at how it's changed, she thought, waving and shouting greetings as Eilir came out of the cabin door with a book in one hand-she was helping teach school, with younger children crowding behind her.

Perhaps because now it's my home – a refuge from horror and death. Home isn't a place. Home is people.

From the rear of the cabin there came an intoxicating odor along with the woodsmoke. Juniper's nose twitched involuntarily at the unmistakable smell of barbecue; if they had meat enough to actually roast and grill, rather than throwing it into the Eternal Soup cauldrons, then things were looking up. She felt slightly guilty at the waste, but her stomach rumbled disagreement. Soup got boring.

"Now give me some peace!" she called, putting her hands on her hips and facing those who'd followed her all the way to the bathhouse door, grinning. "Let me wash, at least, and put on some clean clothes!"

They stripped to the skin before the door of the bathhouse; smoke was pouring out of its sheet-metal chimney, and Juniper's skin itched in pleased anticipation. Stripping took a little doing, when you were wearing a mail shirt; first taking off the sword belt, then bunching up the skirts as much as you could, then bending over with your hands on the ground and wriggling until it fell in a rustling, clinking heap.

"What a relief!" she wheezed-the contortions required were rather active. Like a rich armor worn in the heat of day, that scalds with safety.

The padded tunic underneath came off more easily, and soon the clean wind was telling her exactly how much rancid sweat had stuck to her skin.

It's like wearing winter clothes in summer, and then lifting weights, and not being able to change into clean. How Mike and his friends bore those hauberks, I can't imagine.

She hopped on one foot and then the other to get the hiking boots off, and scrambled out of jeans and T-shirt and underwear even faster.

"Take all the cloth and boil it in the laundry," Judy said, dumping the party's clothing in a hamper. "Boil it for fifteen minutes at least, with the special soap. Move!"

The helpers moved. Despite being tired to the bone, Juniper practically skipped up the steps and into the washing room with its flagstone floor. They'd set things up Japanese-style, that being simplest. The boiler they'd made from a big propane tank was hissing; water from that and the cold taps got splashed everywhere in glorious abandon, as the returned travelers sluiced each other down with bucketsful, soaped, rinsed again, massaged suds into their hair. The gray water ran out a drain and down a pipe into the orchard and herb garden below the plateau, so nothing was wasted.

Juniper groaned with pleasure even when her loofa hit spots that had chafed raw and the strong soap stung her eyes and the blistered bits. Eventually Judy was satisfied, and they trooped through into the next room to sink into the tub- that was a big sheet-steel grain bin, one of a series lined with planks and sunk halfway into the ground, separated by board partitions. They settled into the water, scented by herbs and the sauna smell of hot damp pinewood.

"Hey, you folks noninfectious now?" came a deep voice from the doorway. "Mind if we join you?"

"Yeah, Dennie," she said. "But don't get between me and the kitchen, or I may trample you!"

He stood dripping in the doorway; Sally was with him, and Eilir, and Chuck Barstow. Everyone tried to speak at once, and Eilir's hands flew, her slim coltish body dancing accompaniment to the signing.

Thanks to the Lady you're back, Mom. I was so worried, I've got pages of new protective spells in my Book of Shadows!

And the same back to you, my child of spring, she replied. I could feel your well-wishes every moment of night and day.

Meanwhile Dennis brought one thick hand out from behind his back. He had a bowl, a huge turned-wood thing; her eyes went wide as she saw it was heaped with vegetables: snow peas, green peas, carrots, deep-green broccoli florets, pieces of snow-white cauliflower:

Her mouth actually cramped in longing for a moment.

"Blessed be the fruits of the Lady's womb, and hand 'em over, Dennie! Don't tell me you've found some way to make veggies grow that fast!",

"Nah, we came across a big winter garden, well-mulched," he said, complying.

You could grow hardy vegetables over the Willamette's mild winters, with luck and a lot of work. Few had bothered, back when you could just drive down to the supermarket.

"Where?" she cried. "Frank Fairfax didn't have one!"

"Believe it or not, it's from the Smiths."

Juniper made a wordless sound as she popped pieces into her mouth, trying to decide whether the carrots really were as sweet as apricots, or if it just felt that way because they were the first fresh food she'd had since the Change.

And here I thought the Smiths disliked us, she thought; they were strong followers of the Evangelical minister in Sutterdown. Maybe Dixon's mellowed!

"You won't believe what dinner is," he said, as the four sank into the tub.

Eilir crowded under her mother's arm and laid her sleek dark head on her shoulder. The bowl was thick wood and floated easily, which let them push it around the circle like a food-bearing boat.

"We're having something besides Eternal Soup, from the blessed smell of it?" Juniper said, lying back with a sigh of contentment. "And fresh veggies: "

He nodded, smiling smugly. "Our hunters must be in right with Herne, or Sam the Silent's finally learning how to teach as well as he stalks. We've been getting a mule deer or whitetail every couple of days for the last ten, and then yesterday I got a young boar. All two hundred pounds of whom is over the coals as we speak. Ribs, loin, crackling, gravy, liver: "

She threw a splash of water at him as her stomach rumbled and saliva spurted into her mouth. There were plenty of feral swine in the Cascades, crossed with European wild boar introduced by hunters; they'd been regarded as pests before the Change. A lot of them hung around this section, because the hardwoods her great-uncle planted left mast for them to eat, and there was camas-root in the mountain meadows. The problem was that they were fierce and wary, and hard for mostly inexperienced hunters to take without guns. Which prompted a thought:

"Wait a minute! You got it, Dennie? As in, actually shot it yourself?"

"I found a much better method than sneaking around in the woods. I just waited up late by the gardens." He smiled smugly. "If you grow it, they will come."

A groan went around the tub.

"There aren't all that many veggies, I'm afraid, but eat, eat-it's a special occasion, after all! Oh, and Di is sacrificing some of her flour to make buns to go with the pork-and-sage sausages: "

The two younger members of the traveling party excused themselves with exquisite good manners, grabbed towels and bolted:

Or perhaps they've just got enough energy to pester the cooks, she thought. She felt her friend's description right in her stomach, but the hot water was soothing away her aches so pleasantly that she could wait. Particularly with each piece of garden truck a sweet explosion of pleasure in her mouth.

Or maybe the youngsters are off to their girlfriends. Certainly Chuck and Judy are devouring each other with their eyes, and perhaps playing touch-toes.

The brief meeting with Mike Havel already seemed like a dream; an ache went through her:

Ah, Rudy, Rudy, I miss you! You'd bless me from the Summerlands if I found a man, but who could take your place?

"So," Chuck Barstow said, tearing his gaze away from his wife's eyes, and other parts of her. "Obviously you did have luck. I couldn't believe you got Jack and the others back!"

"We had help, and until then it was a very sticky situation indeed : " Juniper began, and gave a quick rundown.

A murmur of blessed be ran through the coveners.

"Who says the Lord and Lady don't look after Their folk?" Chuck said.

He was always keen, but we're all turning more to the Goddess and the God, Juniper thought. Perhaps because there's so little else to hold on to.

When she mentioned that Luther Finney had survived, Dennis swore in delight, and Eilir clapped her hands.

"Who says you don't have the Goddess looking out for you, special?" Dennis grinned. "Little stuff and big? There were those yew logs seasoning at the bottom of your woodpile that you never got around to burning, just waiting to be made into bows: "

"That would be the God looking out for me, as Cernunnos Lord of the Forest, Dennie. But I make allowances for the ignorance of a mere cowan."

He splashed water back at her; "cowan" was Wiccaspeak for a non-Witch, and not entirely polite.

"Hey, you're playing confuse-the-unbeliever again. I have never been able to get a straight answer on whether you guys have two deities or dozens, taken from any pantheon you feel like mugging in a theological dark alley. Which is it? Number one or number two?"

"Yes," Juniper said, with all the other coven members joining in to make a ragged chorus; Eilir concurred in Sign.

Dennis groaned, and there was a minute of chaotic water-fighting. Juniper rescued the bowl and held it over her head to keep it from sinking until things quieted down again. That exposed more of her, but if everybody felt like throwing hot water at her aching, overworked, underfed body, she wasn't going to object.

"Or maybe it's just that somebody had to be lucky," he went on. "Anthropic principle-anyone still around to talk about it nowadays has to have had a string of lucky coincidences helping them, and more so every day that passes. If someone's breathing, they're a lottery winner. You, Juney, you're the Powerball grand-prizer."

Juniper's chuckle was a bit harsh; after her trip through the valley that bit a little closer to the bone than she liked. But when gallows humor was the only kind available: well, that was when you needed to laugh more than ever.

"Scoffer," she said, and continued: "Anyway, I spent time with the Committee running things in what's left of Cor-vallis; mostly the aggie and engineering faculties and some other folk-Luther's on it himself. They're talking about a meeting of the honest communities sometime this autumn or early winter to discuss mutual aid-especially about the bandit problem."

"Well, blessed be Moo U," Chuck said. "That could be really useful."

Juniper nodded. "Good people, though a bit suspicious. They can offer a lot of varieties of seeds and grafts, and stud services from their rams and bulls and stallions, and farming and building help in general. They've got real experts there; I've got forty pages of notes, advice they gave me on our problems. The difficulty is that what they want most besides bowstaves is livestock; heifers and mares and ewes particularly, to breed upgrade herds from their pedigree stock."

Chuck Barstow breathed on his nails and polished them on an imaginary lapel; Dennis grinned like a happy bear.

"Those Herefords?" Juniper asked.

"Yup. We got a small party through there about five days after you left. They got back day before yesterday, driving their flocks before them-twenty-five head of cattle, twenty sheep, six horses. Mostly breeding females."

Juniper made a delighted tip-of-the-hat gesture to the two grinning men. That solved their unused-pasture problem, with a vengeance! They could get a good crop of calves, lambs and foals too. And they could slaughter a steer every couple of weeks:

Or if we can trade for more, maybe we can spare some for Corvallis . have to arrange escorts across the valley, though: if only Highway 20 were open:

It wasn't; by all they could tell, it was a gauntlet of horrors, everything from plain old-style robbers to Eaters. Aloud she went on: "What's it like over there in the Bend country?"

Chuck went on: "The Change hit them about like us, just not so much. Bend and Madras and the other bigger towns have pretty well collapsed, but a lot of their people got out to the farms and ranches, since there weren't millions of them to start with; if anything, they're short of working hands."

That sounded familiar. It just took so much effort to get anything done without machinery, particularly since nobody really knew how to do a lot of the necessary things by hand. There were descriptions in books, but they always turned out to be maddeningly incomplete and/or no substitute for the knowledge experience built into your muscles and nerves.

"And they've got local governments functioning in a shadowy sort of way-they're calling it the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association. They've got more livestock than they can feed, too, without the irrigated pastures. this year, at least; next year's going to be tighter for them too. We traded them bows and shafts and jacks for the stock, and for jerky and rawhides. They've got bandits of their own and the ranchers who're running things over there want weapons bad. They really miss their rifles."

"Congratulations," Juniper said sincerely.

The night when she'd nearly had a fit over hitting a man in the head seemed a long way away, except when the bad dreams came. She wasn't happy about becoming case-hardened, but it was part of the price of personal sanity and collective survival.

"Congratulations!" she said again. "It sounds like the eastern slope is a lot better off, at least for now."

"What was it like out there in the valley?" Dennis said. "I still say it was a crazy risk, you going out."

"Worth it," Juniper said. "Rumor isn't reliable and we have to know what to expect. The way the world's closed down to walking distance, you don't know until you go there and see or it comes to you. I'm not absolutely indispensable, either."

"The hell you aren't," Dennis and Chuck said together.

"I may be the High Priestess, but I'm not the Lady come in human form, you know, except symbolically and in the Circle."

Chuck snorted; he tended to pessimism, as befitted a gardener-turned-farmer.

"You're here and you're Chief. We're alive where most aren't," he pointed out. "And we're doing much better than most who are still alive. The two things are probably connected. Anyway, to repeat the question: "

Juniper shrugged, stroking her daughter's hair. "As to what it was like: some of it was very bad. Most of it was worse. And a few things like Corvallis were encouraging, which is what I'll make the most of when we have everyone together."

"You're turning into a politician, Juney," Dennis said, grinning.

"Now you're getting nasty," she said.

Then her smile died. "Hope is as essential as food. We have some here, of both. Out there: "

Judy went on grimly: "The bad news there is what broke up those refugee camps around Salem and Albany, apart from plain old-fashioned starvation."

She looked around the circle of faces; Juniper put her hand over Eilir's eyes; the girl stirred restively, and she sighed and removed the fingers. This wasn't a world where you could shelter children much; not anymore.

"Plague."

There were murmured invocations, and some old-fashioned blaspheming of the Christian deity.

"What sort of plague?" Dennis asked.

Judy snorted, and her husband chuckled, being more accustomed to the fact that she said exactly what she meant when medical matters came up. She scowled at him as she replied: "I'm not joking and it's not funny at all."

"Sorry-"

"It's Yersinia pestis. The Plague. The Black Death. Those camps were filthy and swarming with rats, and plague's a species-jumper endemic among ground squirrels here in the West. Then it got into someone's lungs and changed to the pneumonic form-which is standard in a big outbreak-and that spreads from person to person, no fleas needed. Spreads very easily. Plus pneumonic plague'll kill you fast, sometimes in a day. It's been a long time since our ancestors were exposed, much. Mortality rate of over ninety percent, like a virgin-field epidemic, and they ran out of antibiotics quickly."

That shocked Dennis into silence, not something easy to accomplish.

"I identified cholera morbus and typhus, too: and half a dozen other diseases. but the plague's worst of all. They tried to burn the bodies, but that broke down. We could see the smoke from the death-pits still rising around Salem."

"And we could smell it," Juniper said quietly. "We might think of setting out parties to burn down abandoned sections and clear out the rats."

Judy shook her head. "We're going to have to pull in our horns-set up a quarantine. And we shouldn't send anyone into the valley until the first hard frost unless it's life or death for the clan. With the plague and the cholera and typhus piled on top of sheer hunger: this time next year: a hundred thousand left between Eugene and Portland? Fifty thousand? Less?"

A cry from the heart: "If only we had some antibiotics! There probably are some left, but we can't find or ship them."

"Shit," her husband said quietly.

"Yes."

"And you haven't heard about what's happening in Portland," Juniper said. "We met a group that had come through the city-come all the way from Idaho-and: "

When she'd finished the silence went on until Juniper reached out and took the last of the cauliflower.

"Well, we don't have to think about this Protector person for a while. The sickness will shut the valley down until autumn."

There were some things you simply couldn't think about too much, or you'd lose the will to live. She suspected that many had sat down and died for just that reason.

"What did we trade the Smiths for this stuff?" she said in a lighter tone. "I'd have said they wouldn't spit on us if we were dying of thirst, for fear it would give us the strength to crawl to water."

The stay-at-homes looked at each other before turning back to her; she recognized the gesture as one showing more bad news was on the way. There had been an awful lot of that, since the Change.

"Bandits hit the Smith farm," Dennis said. "Took them by surprise. No survivors except for Mark."

That was the Smith's youngest, about seven. She winced; she hadn't liked the family, they'd been rude to her and Eilir before the Change and downright nasty to the Mackenzies since, but: And their children had been just children, and they'd taken in as many relatives from town and plain refugees as they could and not starve right away. And treated them fairly, which was more than you could say for some.

"Mark got out and ran to the Carsons', and they got a message to us; Cynthia galloped up on their horse. We called out everyone and trapped the bandits, there were about a dozen of them-took them by surprise, nobody on our side hurt much. None got away."

"Blessed be," Juniper said sadly. "I wondered what Cynthia Carson was doing, on guard duty here and calling herself a Mackenzie. Her whole family moved in, then?"

"Joined the clan formally the next day, them and all their dependents," Chuck Barstow said. "Not to mention the Georges, the Mercers, and the Brogies. They weren't happy with the way the Sutterdown militia showed up a day late and a dollar short, as usual."

She blinked, a snow pea pod halfway to her lips. That was an awful lot of people. He went on:

"The whole thing scared them all several different shades of green, and I don't blame them; it was damned ugly at the Smith place, and they saw it-the bandits had the whole bunch hung up by their heels and: well, I don't know if they were Eaters or just vicious. The problem is: "

"Oh," Juniper said. "Let me guess. Cynthia wants to join the coven, not just the clan-I remember her asking questions- and her folks aren't enthusiastic about it?"

"Worse. She and her mother and her brother want to join, and her father isn't too enthusiastic. Not that he's a bigot, he just thinks we're weird."

"We're Witches, Chuck," she said reasonably. "We are weird."

"Could be worse, from his point of view," he said. "We could be strict Gardnerians, and do everything nekkid."

"Wait a minute," Sally said, looking down at herself as the Wiccans laughed. "I hadn't noticed you guys got upset about skin, much. For example, right now we are naked."

"Well, yeah," Chuck replied. "But that's because right now we're in a bathtub."

That time everyone laughed; Sally joined in, then went on: "Who's Gardner? I've heard you coveners mention him."

Chuck grinned. He'd always enjoyed the early history of the modern Craft.

"Gardner was this early Wiccan dude over in England, back in the forties, fifties," he said. "In our particular Tradition, we sort of save skyclad work for special ceremonies or solitary rituals and use robes most or the time, but he thought you should do pretty well all the rituals skyclad, which is Wiccaspeak for bare-assed."

Juniper popped another piece of carrot into her mouth, savoring the earthy sweetness.

"There are two schools of thought on that," she said around it. "One is that the Goddess revealed to Gardner that you ought to always be skyclad in the Circle so you could conduct energy better, and it had nothing to do with sex. Then there's the other school, to which I subscribe."

"What's that?" Dennis asked.

"That's the school which says that Gardner was a lecherous, voyeuristic, horny old he-goat who loved to prance through the woods with nekkid women, but since he was also an Englishman born in 1884, he had to come up with a religious justification for it."

She sighed. "Of course, he did do a lot for the Craft; he's one of our modern founders. He just had: problems. And mind you, Gardnerians don't have his problems; they simply end up taking off their clothes an awful lot, even in really cold weather: chilblains, head colds: "

"Purists," Chuck said, and grinned. "Say, how many Gardnerians does it take to change a light bulb? Twelve: consisting of evenly matched male-female pairs to balance the Divine energy with a leader as number thirteen to-"

The Wiccans all chuckled, and then Juniper went on: "Back to business: I'll talk to John Carson and his family. Cynthia's a bit young for such a major decision: "

Older than you were, Mom, Eilir signed. I've talked to her too, she signs a bit, and she's real sincere about it. I think the Goddess has spoken to her heart.

"We can't very well turn clan members away, but all these new candidates, and then the Carsons: "

Dennis and Sally were looking at her with odd smiles. "Oh, no, not you two as well! I thought life was all a dance of atoms, Dennie!"

"Let's say my faithless faith was shaken by the Change, OK?" Dennis said. "I'm not the only one to have that experience. And if I started believing in Jehovah, I'd have to blame Him for all this since there's only one address for complaints in that system."

"And Sally, you're a Buddhist!"

Sally shrugged. "Was a Buddhist," she said quietly. "I already believed in karma-dharma and reincarnation and multiple spiritual guides-the difference is more in the terminology than the theology. Plus Terry wants to go to Moon School with his friends; it's important to belong at that age. Plus Dennie and me want you to handfast us, too. And soon. I'm pregnant, and"-she raised a hand out of the water, all fingers folded except the index, which she trained on Dennis-"guess who's daddy."

Juniper stared at her for a moment. Oh, Lady and Lord, I wish we had more contraceptives. Condoms were already scarce, and pills worth their weight in: not gold, in food, even with the way the low-fat diet cut down on fertility.

"Congratulations," she said weakly.

Then she turned her head to Chuck and Judy: "Do you two feel the truly bizarre irony of someone wanting to become a Witch so they can fit in?"

Judy nodded; then, uncharacteristically, she giggled-it was funny, if you'd spent time in that subculture of misfits.

"When can you swear us in?" Dennis said. "Sooner the better; I've talked with some of the others, and they think so too."

"Now, wait a minute, Dennie," Juniper said warningly. "This isn't something to rush into. You can become a Ded-icant right away, but Initiation isn't like Christian baptism; it's more like finding a vocation to the priesthood. You have to study a year and a day, and you have to really mean it."

Chuck cupped his hand full of steaming water and scrubbed it across his bearded face.

"Well, yeah," he said, hesitation in his voice. "But Juney: there has to be some reason why the Lord and Lady have set things up this way."

She conceded the point with a gesture-there were no coincidences-and turned back to Dennis and Sally: "Look, this is no joke. This is our faith you're talking about. It's a serious commitment; people have died for the Craft."

More soberly they linked hands and nodded. Juniper sighed again, troubled. Covens in her Tradition were quite picky about who they accepted as Dedicants, and how many:

Of course, traditionally we were a self-selected microscopic minority. All of a sudden we're an Established Church in this little hilltop world, with people beating at the door, and I'm not sure I altogether like it.

Things were a little different outside, too: Wiccans were doing a bit better than the general populace, from what Carmen and the others said.

Which means just a large majority of us have died, rather than an overwhelming majority. Still:

After a moment's thought she threw up her hands: "Oh, all right, let's assume the Lady and the Lord are telling us something; we can see what our coveners think over the next couple of days."

She raised a brow at Chuck, who was High Priest; traditionally somewhat secondary to the High Priestess, but to be consulted on any important manner. Rudy had been her High Priest before the Change: she put the thought out of her mind. Chuck was nodding reluctantly; he shared her reservations, but there really didn't seem to be any alternative that wouldn't leave people feeling hurt and excluded.

"I think it'll be good for the clan," he said. "We can't have resentments and factions and quarrels-Goddess spare us!"

Judy nodded in her turn. One thing they'd all learned, living in each other's laps like this, depending on each other in matters of life and death, with no escape-not even any music that they didn't make together-was that you had to keep consensus. Public opinion had a frightening power in a community this small and tight-knit; and divisions were likewise a deadly threat.

Juniper threw up her hands in surrender and went on: "Then we can do the Dedications at Beltane, which is to say, right now; so Dennie and Sally, you can start spinning a white cord, if you're serious-pass the word. The hand-fastings we'll have at Lughnassadh, after the First Harvest, you certainly don't have to be Initiates for that and we'll be able to afford decent feasts then, and the Initiations we'll have at Yule, at the turning of the year."

"Not Samhain?" Dennis asked.

" No! First, it's too soon even if we're going to hurry things; second, that's the festival for the dead, Dennie. We have an awful lot of people to remember, this year. Not appropriate. By then, I expect you to know why it's inappropriate, too."

She turned back to Judy: "As my Maiden, I expect you to run a turbocharged Training Circle to the max-fast but nothing skipped; I don't care how tired people are in the evenings. Let them show whether they're committed or not. That includes you, Dennie."

She paused to glare at Dennis and Sally. "We'll have a bunch of Giant Monster Combined Sabbats, OK? Initiations, handfastings, square dancing, bobbing for bloody apples. There. Is everyone satisfied?"

It was good to laugh with friends; good to have some problems that looked solvable, as well. And sometimes the Goddess just gave you a bonus. Keening over the Smiths wouldn't bring them back before their next rebirth-that was between them and the Guardians. And in the meantime:

She looked at Chuck: "I presume we're taking over the Smith place?"

The Carson farm went without saying, and the others who were coming in; if you joined the clan, you pooled everything but your most personal belongings and you pitched in as the clan decided. Life alone post-Change was nasty and brutish and for most, short; particularly for a single household isolated in a violence-ridden countryside where once again a mile was a long way to call for help.

Chuck shrugged and raised his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture he'd picked up from Judy. The Smith farm and the others were good alluvial terrace land as well, much of it planted before the Change and needing only tending and harvest this year.

She went on, musing aloud: "On the one hand, I hate to profit from the misfortunes of neighbors; on the other, the Smiths were a bunch of paranoid bigots, and the Carsons and the others will be a real asset; on the third hand, that land is going to be a gift of the Goddess: if we can hang on to it, and work it properly."

"Hell, the Smiths even had beehives," Dennis said, smacking his lips. "Which means we now have beehives. Mead: And the Georges planted a vineyard three years back."

"We can work all those farms from here, with bicycles, or sending people out in a wagon," Chuck said, giving him a quelling glance. "Thank the Lord and Lady you can't run off with a field of wheat!"

"But," Juniper said.

"But," Chuck answered. "Guarding that land's going to be the hard part. If we pull everyone back here every night. and you thought we were shorthanded before? Get ready for everyone to make like an electron-we'll all have to be in two places at once from now to Samhain! Not to mention housing; Dennie's crew are running up bunk beds for here and the Fairfax place."

Juniper made a mental tally: "With the Carsons and the others that gives us: what, sixty adults sworn to the clan, now? Blessed be, but we've been growing!"

"Fifty-nine, counting Cynthia Carson but not her brother Ray-he's seventeen come Lughnassadh. Forty-two children, half of them old enough to do useful chores or mind the toddlers. We've got more people, but a lot more land to work. It wouldn't be so bad, if we didn't have to spend so much time on guarding and sentry-go and battle training, but we do."

"Truly, by the Morrigu Herself," Juniper said, closing her eyes and juggling factors. They'd taken in as many as they could, from the beginning:

Just one year, she thought, and prayed at the same time. Just one year and one good harvest and enough seed corn, Lady Gaia, Mother-of-All. Then we can start the spiral of energy going up instead of down.

Chuck went on, as if echoing her thought: "But the food we got from the Smith place put us ahead of the game in reserves; they had a lot of oats and root vegetables in store, and all the farms had quite a bit of truck planted and some just coming ripe, besides the fruit. John Carson's a first-rate livestock man, too, which is something I'm no expert at and Sam doesn't have the time for. John was wasted without a herd to look after, I've been working off his advice since the start."

"How much grain?"

"Between the new farms and what we planted in spring, counting wheat and barley and oats together-call it eight thousand bushels all up, less fifteen percent for wastage and seed if we want to double the acreage for the fall planting, yields will be way down next year without brought-in seed.. We were counting on exchanging the labor of our people and the use of our hauling teams for some of the crops anyway, but this way we get it all."

Juniper nodded. "Enough to put our diet this winter from 'just barely' to 'rude plenty,' with more to come next year, despite the way we've grown."

She did a piece of quick mental arithmetic: sixty pounds to a bushel, so: "That's multiple tons of grain; we'll need to start thinking bulk storage."

"If we can harvest it all," Dennis said. "The grain's going to come ripe real soon now-the first oats in a month, the rest from mid-July on."

"Maybe we could take in a few more refugees, then," Juniper said. "Since we're going to have a surplus. That group at the schoolhouse near Tallmar? We know they're healthy, they were grateful enough for the rose hips"-which had halted a nasty case of scurvy. "A couple of them know useful stuff like cooperage, and they'll not make it through till winter by themselves. And we could loan some seed-grain later to : Hmmm. Maybe we could throw up a mound and palisade around one of the farmhouses too, and settle some of our people there at least part-time? That way-"

The water had cooled from hot to lukewarm before they thrashed out the details to put to the clan as a whole, and it was nearly sunset outside; they all heaved themselves out, pulled the plug and began to towel down. Diana and Andy Trethar stuck their heads in.

"That pig is incredibly ready, and we're putting the sausages on, so anyone who feels like dinner had better come," she said. "The only leftovers are going to be bones for the Eternal Soup Stock."

"Yum," Juniper said, pulling a robe over her head from the stock kept ready for bathers. "Yummy yum-"

Then a disquieting thought struck her, and she turned to the others as she knotted her belt.

"Wait a minute, though-I suppose all the cowan within a day's walk of the Smiths are hopping around frothing about our taking over their land? Not to mention the sheriff! And Reverend Dixon. The Wicked Witches strike again? It's all a Satanic plot?"

"Right," Chuck and Dennis said, in chorus, as they sidled towards the door.

Dennis went on in a reasonable tone: "But we told them Lady Juniper could explain it all when she got back."

Juniper gave a wordless howl of wrath as they both ducked out-you had to be careful about spoken curses, when you knew they could stick.

She dashed after them with the skirts of the robe hiked up in her hands so she could kick both backsides; symbolically, but with feeling.

A cheer went up as she appeared in the door, and she dropped the fabric hastily; flashing the crowd wasn't exactly appropriate behavior for the head of the clan. Nearly everyone was gathered, minus the first watch of the night guard and some of those doing kitchen duty-and those were loading the trestle tables in the Hall and on the veranda and the scrap of lawn preserved before it.

Someone came up and put a wreath of wildflowers on her head, red and yellow columbine laced with lavender vetch and white daisies; everyone else was wearing one too.

I'm home, she thought. And I'm going to see my people safe; I can't save the world, but what I can save, I will.

She set her hands on her hips. "All right, then-let's eat!"

That could always be relied on to get a positive reaction, these days.

"Come away, human child

To the woods and waters wild

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the Moon has taken flight: "

The voices and the strings of the small harp went plangent through the soft cool spring night, full of the green sap-scent of trees, and of the flowers along the way; there was a hint of woodsmoke and cooking from the Hall below, a breath of cooler air from the great forests of the mountains whose snowpeaks were lit by moonlight far above. The quiet rustle of many feet and the hems of their robes through the grass blended with the creaking of the forest and the night sounds of its dwellers.

Juniper had always loved this part of her great-uncle's land, even on brief visits as a little girl, frightened of the intimidating, solitary old man but bewitched by the place. Having it for her own had brought incredulous joy, and so had sharing it. The path wound up eastward from the cabin, through stands of huge Douglas firs and groves of pine and big-leaf maple, past openings and glades; sometimes the candles and lanterns of the coveners caught the eyes of an animal for a fleeting moment of green-yellow communion.

She led the procession, the hood of her robe thrown back, the silver moon on her brows, her belt woven from cords white and red and black and carrying her scabbarded athame. Behind her walked Chuck-Dragonstar in the Craft-with the elk mask and horns of the High Priest on his head, and Judy-Evenstar, the coven's Maiden-at his side; then the rest, two by two, cradling their candles and the tools of the ceremony.

The dew-wet stems of the grass seemed to caress her ankles. At last they came to the place, high on the mountain's slope, where a knee of its bones made a level space jutting. out into emptiness.

Why her great-uncle had planted a circle of trees here she'd never known; but that had been nearly ninety years ago, and the oaks rose straight and tall all about it. Their boughs creaked over her, a patient sound, waiting as they had through all those decades for their destined use.

Just outside the circle to the west was the spring that was the source of Artemis Creek-how fitting the name! It flowed clear and pure among rocks and reeds, trickling away down the slope and making a constant plashing murmur between banks glowing with the pale golds of glacier lilies and stream violets. She could feel the care and trouble melting away as they approached, the gentle familiarity of the ritual and the place soothing like cool fingers on a hot brow.

Within the enclosure was close-cropped grass, soft as a lawn but shot through with the small purple flowers of wild ginger; in its very center a shallow fire pit lined with stones. At the four quarters, brackets of wrought iron reached out from the trees. Against the northern side of the ring was a roughly shaped altar, made from a single boulder.

They halted at the northeast quadrant of the great circle. With the sword in her hand she traced the perimeter de-osil, sunwise, past the great candles flickering at the quarters in their iron-and-glass holders:

"I conjure you, O Circle of Power, that you may be a meeting-place of love and joy and truth; a shield against all wickedness and evil; a boundary between the world of humankind and the realms of the Mighty Ones: "

Stars arched above, like the glowing hearths of an endless village; the moon hung over the mountaintops, white splendor, bright enough to dazzle her eyes. When she was finished she admitted the coven and sealed the circle behind them; the Maiden lit the censer and took it up, casting a blue trail of incense and sweetness behind her to mingle with the spicy smell of the wild-ginger leaves bruised beneath their feet. Two more followed with their bowls of salt and water:

"I bless you, oh creature of Water; I bless you, oh creature of Earth; come together you power of Water, power of Earth. Cleanse all that must be clean, that this space be made sacred for our rites."

The words and movements flowed on:

"Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East, ye Lords of Air: "

Her athame's blade traced the Invoking pentagram in the air; in the eye of the mind it hung there, blue and glowing against the yellow flicker of candle flame.

"Guardians of the Watchtowers of the South, ye Lords of Fire: "

"Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West, ye Lords of Water and of Sunset: "

Facing the altar at last:

"Ye Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North! Oh, Lady of Earth, Gaia! Boreas, North Wind and Khione of the Snows, Guardians of the Northern Portals, you powerful God, you strong and gentle Goddess: "

At last all had been cleansed and purified: with Water and Earth, Air and Fire. She stood with the Wand and Scourge in her hands, facing the coven as the High Priest called:

"Hear you the words of the Star Goddess, the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven, and whose body encircles the universe!"

Juniper's eyes rose, beyond the heads of the coven and the rustling dark secrecy of the trees, to where the stars made the Belt of the Goddess across the night sky, frosted silver against velvet black. Her lips moved, but she was hardly conscious of the words that rang out:

"I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto Me. From Me all things come and unto Me all must return Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without."

Her voice rose triumphantly:

"For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire!"

The stars seemed to open above Juniper, rushing towards her as if she were falling upward or they into her, through galaxies and the veils of nebulae whose cloak was worlds beyond counting. But that infinity was not cold or black, not empty or indifferent. Instead it was filled from edge to edge with a singing light, from unknown Beginning to unimaginable End radiant with an awareness vast beyond all understanding. So great, yet that greatness looked on her, at her, into her, the atom of being that was Juniper Mackenzie.

As if all that was lifted her in warm strong arms, and smiled down at her with an infinite tenderness.

Sight and sound returned; she was conscious of tears streaming down her cheeks, and of the High Priest's tenor singing:

"We all come from the Dark Lord

And to Him we shall return

Like a leaf unfolding

Opening to new life: "

And the Maiden's alto weaving through it, the words mingling without clashing:

"We all come from the Goddess

And to Her we shall return

Like a drop of rain

Flowing to the ocean: "

Higher and higher until the song became one note and broke on the last great shout of power like a wave thundering on a beach:

With that she was herself once more, among her own in the Circle; yet still glowing with thankfulness. Only a handful of times had she felt this so utterly, but that too was good-some joys could only be had rarely, or you would break beneath them:

When the working was done and the Circle unmade, the coven making its way down the nighted trace, Chuck drew her aside.

"Something special happened, didn't it? I could feel it. I think most of us did."

She nodded solemnly. "I think: I think the Goddess promised me something, Chuck. I just don't know what."