Gormglaith | Page 5

Gweneth did y'all dirt..."
"...So who's the lucky third!?" asked Giorsal, slicing in.
Gormglaith lowered her head.
"Elowen Ynseyder," she sighed, staring into a tangle of string noodyls,
whirlish and flaxen with spoggens of cheese riddled in blue-green.
"I like Elowen!" said Giorsal.
Nods broke out across the board. Aine's braids swished as her eyes
darted from face to face.
"What is with everyone?!" asked Gormglaith. "This isn't how it's meant
to be! Where's the puzzling? 'Th'ast time! Th'art barely maegden!
Maybe th'artn't bent with Elowen!' What's with all this nodding?!"
She glanced at Geileis who was eating a morsel of sprout.
"So... are those thy feelings," asked Enid, "about Findabair and
Elowen?"
Gormglaith stared at her.

"Yes! I mean no! I mean why is everyone being so mum about this?
You're my kynn! Now's the time to ask all kinds of stirring things and
make me think about it!"
"My bat..." Enid said with freckled dimple, holding up thumb and
forefinger, "seems rather stirred enough."
Gormglaith gaped, speechless. She scanned faces about the board, then
gave Enid a beseeching look.
"Truth be told," the witch put with a wink, "I think Geileis wants to
have a talk with thee after supper."
The hard packed strawberry ice cream with Shenn Buffy's Sandy
Shortbread was fun but they were all more hushed than wonted.
Enid Elm Hafgan Halsen's kin had haunted the hills and dales of West
Meads by the Running Alps for at least six thousand years. The eldest
of four sisters and brought in neuchadjin, braiding all four of her kynn,
she was fifteen when talk of ash at the bone board enthralled her to the
tides, growth and craft of grasses. At nineteen she left Elmthorpe for
Kin Dails pailtfylgjic, first living in its nest mazes, later a sprawling,
wafered house of flats by Coo gardens where at a rooftop flurt one chill
and blustery Saetereve in early Aerra Geola 5471 Giorsal and Geileis
Grendel first laid eyes on her, hanging onto three weary eyed yodelers
in a noisy flock.
They clannined in the Coo gardens flat and on a snowy winter midnight
thirteen moons later met Flann Raine-Blairie, a deft and waifish shee
reading spells and freayll, spending long nights in the same web lair
Giorsal haunted. She somehow pulled them even closer together, to
play, banter, shriek and laugh, cast sidelong glances and do whatever
else girls do when they get stirred up, the whole notion of a fourth,
blown in by the gales. The storm was dished when their ghosts were
shown in the Kin Dails zine Mead Grass. Snapped at Beltane Bannal (a
faddish make out den at the time) a witchy Giorsal loiters with Enid as
Flann walks breezily by.

Seven nights after Midsummer's Eve, 28 Aerra Litha 5477 in a nest at
Bryn Larach, Gormglaith Grendel Hafgan Halsen tumbled head first in
a birth fettle to the hard squeeze through Geileis' hips. She stared wide
eyed at the air witch, then wouldn't breathe. The witch took her by the
feet, smacked her bottom and Gormglaith gasped ("Suckin' air like a
hearth flue on windy nights," as Giorsal put it), then wailed for ten
minutes whilst Geileis held her twin daughter with a bleary kynnish
smile.
"Come on Gormglaith," Geileis put cannily, clannily, as everyone got
up to leave the board, "let's go for a walk."
In the fall night air with a lofted harvest moon waxing high in the sky,
their klompen clopping on slate, Gormglaith took Geileis' arm.
"I was going to tell thee something this afternoon when thou came'st
in... but with the prism from Devon and thy talk about Findabair and
then, Enid and Aine showing up, I didn't have time."
"It's something big, isn't it?"
"I haven't a clue."
The slate stoep was on an edge of the hilltop where Bryn Larach stood
looking upon the fields, woods and far hills of Halsen Downs, lights
sparkling here and there, some blinking and shifting. As moppets,
Gormglaith, Findabair and Gweneth had haunted these slabs, playing
make believe in a tangle lair from where they watched the craft of their
own kynn clannin. More lately as maedchen they'd sat on the low
garden wall in midnights, watching bats come and go, swapping kisses
under the stars.
Lit by a moonbeam Geileis faced her twin daughter and standing but
half an inch taller, took her hands and said,
"In a dale of tales so thrillin', plait kin by flaxen linen."
"Geileis...!?"

"Someone else wants to plight."
"Rhiain and Rhiam! I knew it!"
"Likely so, but I was talking about the Sparkenbanes."
Gormglaith stared back open mouthed.
"...What am I missing here?"
Geileis sucked a long breath.
"Back when Giorsal and I were in our second year at Kin Dails we
went to one of