A Fire for the Little Gods

A Fire for the Little Gods

Postby Niabh » Sun Nov 01, 2015 9:52 am

This was certainly the most childish she'd felt since coming to the new place.

With a flat, triangular stone, she carved a deep circular trench in the earth. The weather was damp, but windy, and her scarcely secret place at the far end of the lake was full of dead leaves and dry grassroots tangled in nets across the ground, never mind that she'd made an allowance to clear a spot. In any case the last thing she wanted was for a spark to jump, particularly this close to the woods. The lake was some reassurance, but the best safeguard of all was simple caution, and Niabh had been lighting fires almost since she was big enough to carry wood. But her tinder tonight was, as it should be, dead bramble, fallen leaves, yellowed and broken reeds culled from the lake, a handful of oatstraw from a shorn field. The old year’s brown bounty. And a handful of mint, just to make it all smell a bit nicer.

She’d borrowed a tin tinderbox. Someone had left it for just a moment on the corner of the fireplace, and up her sleeve it had gone. She hadn’t known until she’d taken a peek that part of a tinderbox was clochgorma because of course it was, because of course these idiots couldn’t manage something as simple as a fire without that, and she’d instantly regretted the borrowing. She’d resisted her first instinct to toss it into the lake and instead set it on the Dagger’s front steps. Either someone would find and return it, or someone would take it, or someone would trip on it and break their fool necks which was no more than they deserved. So instead, she’d crouched over her kindling and whispered to it until it caught. It wasn’t that hard, although strictly speaking, it was cheating. Rite-fires should be borrowed.

Now she had a cozy little blaze that smelled sweetly of mint for all of ten or twenty heartbeats before the green leaves scorched and shrank. With her point of her knife, she made a quick nick at the crook of her elbow. A dark blue bubble of blood welled up against the soft brown skin. Quickly she scooped it up with her hand and squeezed her fist around it. She had neither a chalice, nor a large enough group of volunteers that would make a draught substantial enough to be worth something, but you did what you could on your own. Her fist passed in a circle above the little fire before she flicked her fingers to knock a few drops into the flames.

Wend ye lightly roundamore
Wend ye lightly roundamore
Wend ye lightly roundamore
Three times three


The fire-song, a sweet, mocking, rollicking reel, sounded exactly as it was: a brave little tease, a dare to the darkness, like a child's taunting. But it was a round. Rounds were company songs. Trying to sing alone made her realize exactly how far away she was, and how small.

Her lips ceased moving, yet the verse carried on in the air, her own voice sounding thin and childish outside the resonating chamber of her skull; gods, do I sound like that to other people? she wondered.

She rubbed her hand again over the small triangular wound, and again, but by the third go-round, the cut was already starting to seal shut. This time she nicked deeper--enough to really sting, this time, the pain a hiss between her teeth. The blood dripped all the way down to her thumbnail by the time she was finished, with a track like a mossy-blue river tracing the line of the vein under the skin. Alarmed, she pressed her sleeve to the cut and bent her arm tight, her fist against her shoulder, to staunch the flow.

So much for that.

She mopped up the blood on her hand with a clump of leaves, then tossed them into the flames. The only way to get at the rest was by licking her arm, then spitting into the fire. Hopefully the gods were more charmed by the sentiment than the sacrifice.

While her own thin, disembodied voice carried on the first round, she licked her lips and, raising her eyes upward to the sky, sang the second:

Come or gae ye as ye are
Come or gae ye as ye are
Come or gae ye as ye are
Come or gae free


Not that she expected anything to turn up, but there was always a chance some queer tultharian god or a wildling she didn't know might heed the invitation and they would have nothing whatsoever to talk about. Two dumb stumps to either side of the fire for the rest of the evening, and only she to play the good hostess. Awkward.

She tried to force the idea out of her mind--half because it was rude to call on company you didn't really want to keep, and half because it spoiled the mood--and instead cut free the second verse to join the first, like kits chasing one another's tails, so that she could stand. All of four steps took her round the fire, small as it was. It felt silly where it should have felt solemn. She had to close her eyes to force herself through the measure—arms swaying, turning lightly on the balls of her bare feet, the ghosts of her own voice rising around her.

For the first time in her life, there was a pang of doubt that there was anyone listening at all.

An ye will nae gae before
An ye will nae gae before
An ye will nae gae before
Gae behind me


And now, in the only good part of performing the rites alone, she pulled from her satchel a stubby horn flask and knocked back a sip of poitin. Though she'd been on strict rations since she landed, the little remaining sloshed hollow at the bottom of the horn, in part due to an accident where she hadn't noticed it was leaking until she changed shirts one morning and realized that her clothes smelled like a still in springtime. But a few token swallows remained for company, should company appear this night...which she rather hoped it wouldn't.

Bad luck, bad luck to court company when you wished it ill. Bad luck, and bad manners.

Paugh. On this night, all the company would be drawn to better fires than hers. Sure and she'd be at a better party if one presented itself.

Brave thoughts, careless arrogant thoughts, to stave off the loneliness of the first new year she’d ever spent away from home and family, the way a very little fire strives to beat back the greater dark.

She flopped back to her seat beside the fire in a disappointed hrumph, checked her arm to see if it had mostly stopped bleeding. Her knees curled up to her chest. The singing unspun itself, fading away.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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Niabh
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