S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

"I think it was a gift from the Mother to allow Tara to sell more ale," Jenna answered, and Coelin laughed again, with a full and rich amuse-ment as musical as his singing voice. "Whatever it was, I also think that there’s nothing I can do about it."

"That," he said, "is the only intelligent answer I’ve heard tonight." He tapped the pipe out against the heel of his boot, and sparks fell and ex-pired on the ground. Coelin blew through the stem and tapped it again, then stuffed the pipe in the pocket of his coat. "They’ll be calling for me to play soon, wanting to hear all the old songs tonight, not the new ones."

"I like the old songs," Jenna said. "It’s like hearing the voices of my ancestors. I close my eyes and imagine I’m one of them: Maghera, maybe, or even that sad spirit on Sliabh Collain, always calling for her lover killed by the cloudmage."

"You have a fine imagination, then," Coelin laughed.

"Your voice has a magic, that’s all," Jenna said, then felt herself blush-ing. She could imagine her mam listening, and telling her: You sound just like one of them. . Jenna was grateful for the dark.

She looked away, to where Knobtop loomed above the trees, a blackness in the sky where no stars shone.

"Ah, ’tis you who has the magic, Jenna," Coelin said. "When you're there listening, I find myself always looking at you."

Jenna felt her cheeks cool, and she stopped the laugh that wanted to escape. "Is that the kind of sweet lie you tell all of them, so they'll come sneaking out to you afterward, Coelin Singer? It won't work with me."

His eyes glittered in the light from the window, and the smile remained. "'Tis the truth, even if you won't believe it. And you can tell your mam that the rumors about me are greatly exaggerated. I've not slept with all the young women hereabouts."

"But with some?"

He might have shrugged, but the grin widened. "Rumors are like songs," he said. He took a step toward her. "There always has to be a bit of truth in them, or they won't have any power."

"You should make up a song about tonight. About the lights."

"I might do that," he answered. "About the lights, and a beautiful young woman they illuminated-"

The door to the tavern opened, throwing light over Jenna and Coelin and silhouetting the figure of Ellia, one of Tara's daughters and Coelin's current favorite. "Coelin! Put out that pipe of yours and…" A sudden frost chilled Ellia's voice. "Oh," she said. "I didn't expect to see you out here, Jenna. Coelin, Mam says to get your arse inside; they want music." The door shut again, more vehemently than necessary.

"Ellia sounds. ." Jenna hesitated, tilting her head at Coelin. "Upset," she finished.

"It's been a busy night, that's all," Coelin answered.

"I'm sure."

"I'd better get in."

"Ellia would like that, I'm certain."

The door opened again. This time Jenna's mam stood there. Coelin shrugged at Jenna. "I should go tune up," he said.

"Aye, you should."

Coelin smiled at her, winked, and walked past her to the door. "’Evenin’, Widow Aoire," he said as Jenna’s mam stepped aside.

"Coelin." She let the door shut behind him, and crossed her arms.

"We were talking, Mam," Jenna said. "That’s all."

Maeve sniffed. Frown lines creased her forehead. "From what I saw, your eyes were saying different things than your mouth."

"And neither my eyes nor my mouth made any promises, Mam."

Inside the tavern, a rosined bow scraped against strings. Maeve shook her head, revealing the silvery gray that touched her temples. "I don’t trust the young man. You know that. He’d be no good for you, Jenna- wouldn’t know a ewe from a ram, a bull from a milch cow, or potato from turnip. Songmaster Curragh got him from the Taisteal; the boy himself doesn’t know who his parents are or where he came from. All he knows is his singing, and he’ll get tired of Ballintubber soon enough and want to find a bigger place with more people to listen to him and brighter coins to toss in his hat. He’d leave you, or you’d be tagging along keeping the pretty young things away from him, all the while with children tugging at your skirts."

"So you’ve already got me married and your grandchildren born. What are their names, so I’ll know?" Jenna smiled at her mam, hands on her hips. Slowly, the frown lines smoothed out, and Maeve smiled back, her brown-gold eyes an echo of Jenna’s own.

"You want to go in and listen, darling?"

"I’ll go in if you’re going, Mam. Otherwise, I’ll go home with you. I’ve had enough excitement for a night. Coelin’s voice might be too much for me."

Maeve laughed. "Come on. We’ll listen for a while, then go home." She opened the door as Coelin’s baritone lifted in the first notes of a song. "Besides," Maeve whispered as Jenna slipped past her, "it’ll be fun to watch Ellia’s face when she sees Coelin looking at you."

Chapter 2: A Visitor

IN the morning, it was easy to believe that nothing magical had hap-pened at all. There were the morning chores: settling the sheep in the back pasture, cleaning out the barn, feeding the chicks and gathering the eggs, going over to Matron Kelly's to trade a half dozen eggs for a jug of milk from her cows, doing the same with Thomas the Miller for a sack of flour for bread. By the time Jenna finished, with the sun now peering over the summit of Knobtop, it seemed that life had lurched back into its familiar ruts, never to be dislodged again. In the daylight, it was difficult to imagine curtains of light flowing through the sky.

Jenna could smell Maeve frying bacon over the cook fire inside their cottage, and her stomach rumbled. Kesh was barking at her feet. She opened the door, ducking her head under the low, roughly-carved lintel, and into the warm air scented with the smell of burning peat. The cottage was divided into two rooms-the larger space crowded with a single table and chairs and the kitchen area, and a small bedroom in the rear where Jenna and her mam slept. Maeve had helped Jenna's father-Niall-build the wattle and daub house, but that was before Jenna had been born. She often wondered what he looked like, her da. Maeve had told her that Niall's hair was red, not coal black like Jenna's and Maeve's, and his eyes were as blue as the deep waters of Lough Lar, and that his smile could light up a dark night. She knew little about him, only that he wasn't from Ballintubber, but Inish Thuaidh, the fog-wrapped and cold island to the north and west. Jenna tried to imagine that face, and sometimes it looked like one person and sometimes another, and sometimes even an older Coelin. She wished she could see the memories that her mam saw, when she rocked in the chair and talked about him, her eyes closed and smiling.

Jenna had no memory of Niall at all. "He was killed, my love," Maeve had told her years ago when Jenna had asked, curious as to why she didn't have a da when others did, "slain by bandits on his way to Bacathair. He was going there to see if he could gain a berth on one of the fishing ships, and maybe move you and me there. He always loved the sea, your da."

When Jenna grew older, she heard the other rumors as well, from the older children. "Your da

was fey and strange, and he just left you and your mam," Chamis Redface told her once, after he pushed her into a thicket of bramble. "That’s what my da says: your da was a crazy In-ishlander, and everyone’s glad he’s gone. You go to Bacathair, and you’ll find him, sitting in the tavern and drinking, probably married to someone else and talking nonsense." Jenna had flown at Chamis in a rage, bloody-ing his nose before he threw her off and Matron Kelly came by to pull them apart. When Maeve asked Jenna why she’d been fighting with Chamis, she just sniffed. "He tells lies," she said, and would say nothing else.