Gormglaith | Page 7

throbbing across her face.
Gormglaith watched a goblin made of two fluttering green blobs.
"This one's a bit scrozzy," she said.
"Yeah," sighed Giorsal, fingers reeling with the bee. "It says it's ok about being a spot heater for now but'll shut down in a few hours anyway to keep from blowing up. How boring."
"It's not like the wonted plight, is it?" Gormglaith blurted out. "I mean a girl's kynn can't say 'Th'art green, th'ast time,' can they, when she'd be a banshee..."
Giorsal, right hand now held over a swirling orange whorl, stared at her.
"Flattery's a craft, Gormglaith and they've got it... with the heed of a burrowing mote scanner."
"Oh Giorsal..."
Enid looked up, bangs sweeping in front of her face.
"What we braid," she put softly singsong, "is what we'll be and wherever the wyrd wends, thou'lt always be our Gormglaith. Although," she said, winking and opening her arms, "if thou dostn't heed Giorsal and happenst to run off with them, maybe thou canst do something about those ghastly grain plaits."
They gathered in a tight, clanniny hug and Gormglaith loped out the door into a windswept, moonlit night on the West Meads.
Flann stared at a goblin with skeins of bobbing runes and numbers, red hair tumbling upon freckled shoulders, the nose ring between her nostrils catching a glint of pink light as she looked up with doeish, wintergreen eyes.
"Tollin' the watch, eh Gormglaith?" she asked, smiling like a maedchen.
"Yep, seein' to it my clannin's givin' fylgjic meed of milk and muffins!"
Gormglaith stood smirking.
"I guess we can squeeze something out tomorrow, if thou dostn't ask for too much milk."
"Hast thou heard?"
"Oh yeah."
"So Flann when thou wast a scollagyn at Blairie thou knewst maegden who pledged the Wrath..."
"I think I can stir up the hazy ghost."
"Why didstn't thou go?"
"For one thing I was never asked."
"What if?"
"Not."
"Why?"
"My friends were at Blairie. Besides, all I wanted was to get into KD pailt so I could grok how to be a hardcore, spell sucking freayller witch."
"So when y'all met, I mean, what'dst thou think of the Meryl and Meredith thing?"
"Ok, I thought it was selfish. I told 'em, 'Twins are cool. I'm eighth in a string by the wombs but if you tell her, if you lay nettles on her back, if I ever see you grooming any moppet of ours for Wrath Ness, I'm out the door.' As it happened Enid had said rather much the same thing to them."
"Y'all saw to it I got a stiff fix of Eachdraidh, though."
"So split for tongue craft, if that's what thou still wantst."
"I've always liked thy nose ring," said Gormglaith, warding a finger and grinning.
"When thou wast on my hip thou never stopped trying to yank it."
They giggled.
"A banshee's got to be a shee first though, or else pledge a teach," said Gormglaith.
"I thought we might be leading up to that."
"Which means I'd be a scollagyn."
"That's how most do it!"
"The scollagyn I've met are lekker, but they wontedly swot up keener and have less time to themselves."
"They've more boards is all."
"Thou always sayest thou liked it..."
"Blairie bairn..." said Flann, smirking.
"...bred, born 'n beaming!" they sang together.
"If thou goest with them, 'glaithen girl, they'll frickin' henge thee."
"Not Geileis."
"Don't forget Giorsal. Some are wont."
"I can grip."
"Look," sighed Flann, "bein' a banshee's no frolic at the feish, ok? Wraithen's one thing, sly's another and twined it's the hackle."
"What'rt tha tuggin' now?" asked Gormglaith, nodding at the goblin.
"Oh, that... the dreaded plait, durham grian wheats. I'm looking for ways to get by it as ever, as if, bane of my life. At least they say it won't quicken again. That would be leeg."
"Is that what I heard Enid and thee talking about today?"
"Bloody likely," she said, eyes flicking to shuffle bobbing numbers.
Gormglaith hugged Flann so tightly her chair spun.
On a nearby hill the sprawling fieldstone house known as Lea Cairn cast a warm blush across moonlit mead grass and elm trunks, its dozens of windows puzzled with corundum panes sparkling in blues, reds, greens, yellows and sheers beneath low overhanging eaves. Gormglaith, back in her wonted short ash cutty sark and grey longstockings with clunky black wooden klompen, walked across the mossy northern stoep by a flock of fluttering bats towards the glow of colourful sweeping lights. She put face and hands against a window which slid open to a swirl of throbbing yodels and gabbing girls, then leapt over the low sill as it shut to the sound of rustling leaves.
Hours later Gormglaith walked through Bryn Larach's back door, stepped out of black klompen, dipped into yellow ones and clopped rather too noisily to the ghost den. She found Geileis listening to clarsach songs, bamfing into some spot on earth she'd found to wander through before sleep. Gormglaith plopped down hip to hip beside her womb kynn on the low, cotton bolstered bench.