S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

She'd always liked the great room; she remembered winter days, with Eilir sprawled on the rug and her school-books before her, Cuchulain curled before the hearth, Juniper strumming at her guitar as she worked on a tune and listened for the whistle of her teakettle, and snow patting feather-paws against the windowpanes.

Now it had rolled-up bedding tied in neat bundles stacked around the walls; the children slept in the loft and her own former bedroom was assigned to the handfasted couples on a roster, so that they could all have a chance at some privacy.

The Hall of the Mackenzies was stuffed to the bursting point. The crowding would have been tolerable for a week or so at a pagan festival, but the prospect of living like this all her life:

She shook her head and got up to throw another log on the fire. Aylward spoke:

"Wait a minute, lass-Lady. That's yew, isn't it? Could I have a look?"

Everyone glanced over at the Englishman; he'd seemed a friendly enough sort, but on short acquaintance not given to inconsequential chat.

"To be sure, it is," Juniper said. "It's an understory weed tree here."

She put the billet in his big spade-shaped hands; it was four inches thick and a little over four feet long, with thin smooth purplish bark scattered with red-brown papery scales.

"Nicely seasoned," Aylward said, running a critical eye over it. "Is there any more like this?"

"A ton or so; the whole bottom half of my woodpile, out in the shed. The loggers cleared out a lot of it last year and I salvaged it for firewood; hadn't worked my way down through the applewood yet. Do you have a use for it?"

Aylward grinned. "We all do! If you let me at a drawknife and spokeshave, and a bit of hardwood for the risers, and a little glue."

Sally Quinn looked at him sharply. "You're a bowyer?"

Aylward nodded. "A hobby; I make and fletch me own shafts, too. Longbows are simple enough, even with a separate riser; I could do two or three a day, and anyone who's handy with wood could learn the trick."

Dennis grinned enormously; he was handy with wood, and loved learning a new way to work it. There was a pleased murmur all around the table. They had the three crossbows, which were irreplaceable once they broke down, and Sally's fiberglass target weapon, but that was it.

"Threefold return indeed!" Juniper said happily, resuming her seat and tapping the pile of figures Andy and Diana had worked up. "Now, people, we have just enough food to get everyone here"- And how we've grown! -"through to harvest. At a minimum diet for people working hard."

There were groans at that. Her own hands itched where the blisters never quite had time to heal. She'd had a big garden every year since she inherited this place, and now knew the difference between that and growing all your own food.

"Over to you, Chuck. Tell us what we can expect to get, for all the sweat we've been investing."

"Chuck, Lord of the Harvest," Judy said, grinning, leaning into his shoulder with her arm around his waist.

A laugh went around the table; it was a title of the High Priest of a coven, and Chuck had been the only candidate for that post, as well as farm manager. It also meant the Great Rite would be symbolic rather than actual from now on, with the High Priest not Juniper's man.

Rudy:

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then forced a smile.

He took up the story, with a pad of his own. "OK, we've got all the acreage we need turned and fitted, and most of the potatoes planted-we'll keep the rest to put in between now and June, to stretch the harvesting season out, same with the veggies. Seven acres so far all up, here and down by the Fairfax place, counting what Frank Fairfax had in before the Change."

He paused to glare at Dorothy and Diana and Andy, who were organic-produce fanatics: or had been, before direct personal experience of hunger, which tended to make one less finicky.

"I presume nobody's going to object to using fungicides if we have to? 'Cause those potatoes are the margin between living and dying, and anyway, they came treated."

"If we have to, Chuck," Juniper said soothingly. "If we have to. We've got them on hand, haven't we?"

He nodded, and the three made unwilling gestures of assent as well.

I'm Chief Soother, that's what I am! Juniper thought. Un-ruffler of Feathers! Dennis should have taken to calling me the Clan Facilitator, not the Chief.

"The Fairfaxes had four and a half acres of fall-planted oats, which should come ripe in June; English hulled variety, good stuff. And I think we got that barley Alex found for us sown in time for some sort of yield. We've got a deal with the Carsons to help harvest some of their wheat on half-shares come summer; enough to really help and for seed grain of our own this autumn too. We might do the same elsewhere, but I'm not counting on it: "

He took a deep breath. "Let's put it this way, Mackenzies; it'll be tight until June, and after that we're going to get awful sick of potatoes boiled and mashed and oatmeal and carrots and turnips and cabbage and beans and barley soup and whatnot, but we'll have enough to last through until the next crop year. More than enough, if we're reasonably lucky. In fact, we may not have enough people to harvest it all!

"Of course," he went on, amid the cheers, "that brings up the question of storage. Potatoes take a lot of space, and we'll be storing by the ton, and we're going to have a fair amount of grain as well. I think more root cellars should be the first priority now that we've got some time to spare-"

"Oh, no you don't," Judy said. "We need a better bathhouse and laundry system for heath reasons-"

"Hey, wait a minute," Dennis cut in. "There's that old gristmill east of Lebanon, we could put it in below the waterfall with only a short sluice gate to build. Nobody's claimed it yet, and we could charge to grind other people's grain come summer-"

"And on second thought," Chuck said, glaring a little, "we ought to do a regular daily training schedule with archery and sword-and-buckler. The bandit gangs are getting-"

Juniper sighed and put her hands to her forehead. The threat of starvation had kept this collection of strong-willed individualists moving in one direction. Now she was going to have to earn her corn.

She looked around the table and caught several pairs of eyes-Dennis, Sally, Alex and his three friends. Let's see, how many votes: Sam wasn't comfortable enough with them to take much part yet, but she had hopes there, which was for the best.

Because some weren't going to like what she would suggest they do now that the most of the potatoes were planted, but the will of the Lady and Lord were plain.

At least to me it is, she thought.

She reached back and picked up her fiddle and bow from a table beside the couch. The first long strong note brought silence.

Then she improvised; a pompous boom for Chuck's voice, a piercing commanding shrill for Judy's, short anxious tremulos for Diana and Andy, a querulous rising inflection for Dennis's Californian accent:

Chuck was the first to snort. After a minute they were all laughing, and she wove the discords into a tune, one they all knew; the rollicking "Stable Boy," and moving on to "Harvest Season" and "Beltane Morning."

People missed music, with a craving almost as strong as that for food; there just wasn't any, in the Changed world, unless you made it yourself or persuaded someone in the room with you to do it. Soon everyone was singing. Eilir's head poked down through the stairs to the loft; she couldn't hear the tunes, but she loved watching the audience. Smaller heads peeked around hers.

"Out in the wood

There's a band of small faeries

If you walk unwary at night;

They're laughing and drinking

And soon you'll be thinking-"