S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

Sean talked as poorly as a three-year-old and babbled constantly to creatures only he could see. No, better to say nothing.

Jenna plunged her hand into her coat pocket, letting her fingertips roam over the pebble there. The stone felt perfectly normal now, like any

other stone, not even a hint of the coldness. Jenna smiled at her mam.

"I’m fine," she said. "A flash? Thunder? I really didn’t notice anything." Jenna wasn’t used to lying to her mam-at least no more than any adoles-cent might be-and she was surprised at how easily the words came, at how casual and natural they sounded. "I didn’t see anything, Mam. I thought I might, after last night, but everything was just. ." She shrugged, and brought her hand out of her pocket.". . normal."

Maeve’s head was cocked slightly to one side, and her eyes were nar-rowed. But she nodded. "Then get the sheep in, and come inside. I have some stirabout ready to eat." She continued to regard Jenna for a long breath, then turned and entered the cottage.

That was all Jenna heard on the subject. She took the stone out of her Pocket that night after her Mam was asleep, hiding it in a chink in the wall next to her side of the bed and covering it with mud. It was dangerous, she told herself, and shouldn’t be handled. But every morning, when she woke up, she looked at the spot, brushing her fingers over the dried mud. She found the touch comforting.

That night, she dreamed of the red-haired man, so real that it seemed she could touch him. "Who are you?" she asked him, but instead of an-swering her, he shook his head and wandered off toward Knobtop. She followed, calling to him, but she was caught in the slow motion of a dream and could never catch up. When she woke, she found that she couldn’t remember his features at all; they were simply a blur, unreal.

She looked at the mud-covered spot where the stone lay, and that, too, seemed unreal. She could almost believe there was nothing there. Nothing there at all.

Over the next few days, the excitement in Ballintubber about the lights over Knobtop

gradually died, even though the stories about that night grew with each telling, until someone listening might have thought that entire armies of magical creatures had been seen swirling in the air above the mount, wailing and crying. A good quarter of the village of Ballintub-ber had been up on Knobtop that night, too, if the tales that were told in Tara's were to be believed. But though the tales grew more elaborate, the night sky over Knobtop remained dark for the next three nights, and life returned to normal.

Until the fourth day.

The day was gloomy and overcast, with the lowering clouds dropping a persistent cold rain that permeated through clothing and settled into sinew and bone. The world was swathed in gray and fog, with Knobtop lost in the haze. Ballintubber's single cobbled lane was a morass of pud-dles and mud with occasional islands of wet stone. The smoke of turf fires rose from the chimneys of Ballintubber, gray smoke fading into gray skies, and the rain pattered from the edges of thatch into brown pools.

Rain couldn't alter the pace of life in Ballintubber, nor in fact anywhere in Talamh an Ghlas. It rained three or four days out of seven, after all, the year around. Rain in its infinite variety kept the land lush and green: startlingly bright and refreshing drizzles in the midst of sunshine; foggy rains where the clouds seemed to sink into the very earth and the air was simply wet; soaking, hard spring downpours that awakened the seeds in the ground; summer rains as warm and soft as bathwater; rare winter storms of snow and sleet to blanket the world in white and vanish in the next day's sun; howling and shrieking hurricanes from off the sea that lashed and whipped the land. Rain was simply a fact of life. If it rained, you got wet; if the sun was out or it was cloudy, you didn't-that was all. The chores still needed to be done, the work still went on. A little rain couldn't bring the activity in Ballintubber to a halt.

But the appearance of the rider did.

Through the open doors of the small barn behind Tara's Tavern, Jenna saw Eliath, Tara's son and youngest at twelve years of age, currying down the steaming body of a huge brown stallion. Jenna was pushing a barrow of new-cut turf toward home; she detoured to see the horse, which looked far too large and healthy to be one of the local work animals.

"Hey, Eli," she said, setting down the barrow just inside the door where it was out of the rain.

Eli glanced up from his work. The horse turned his great neck to glance at Jenna and nickered. She went over and rubbed his long muzzle. Eli grinned. "Hey, Jenna. That’s some animal, isn’t it?"

"It certainly is," she said. "Who does it belong to?"

"A man from the east, that’s all I know. He rode in a while ago, stopped at the tavern, and asked Mam to send me to get the Ald. I think he’s Riocha; at least he’s dressed like a tiarna-fine leather boots and gloves, a jacket of velvet and silk, and under that a leine shirt as white as new snow, and a cloca over it all that’s as thick as your finger and embroidered all around the edges with gold-the colors of the cloca are green and brown, so he’s of Tuath Gabair." Eli plucked at his own bedraggled woolen coat and unbleached muslin shirt. He plunged a hand into a pocket and pulled out a large coin. "Gave me this, too, for getting Aldwoman Pearce and taking care of the horse."

"Where is he now?"

"Inside. Lots of other people there now, too. You can go in if you want."

Jenna glanced at the tavern, where yellow light shone through the streaks of gray rain. "I might. Can I leave the barrow here?"

"Sure."

There were at least a dozen people in the dim, smoky interior of the tavern, unusual in mid-afternoon. The stranger sat at a table near the rear, talking with Aldwoman Pearce. Jenna caught sight of a narrow face with a long nose, brown eyes dark enough to be nearly black, and a well-trimmed beard, a slight body clad in rich clothing, a delicate hand wrapped around a mug of stout. His hair was long and oiled, and the line of a scar interrupted the beard halfway to the left ear. Jenna could hear his voice as he spoke with Aldwoman Pearce, and it was as smooth and polished as his clothing, bright with the accent of the upper class and permeated with a faint haughtiness. The others in the tavern were pretending not to watch the stranger’s table, which made it all the more obvious that they were.

Coelin was there, also, sitting at the bar with a mug of tea and a plate of scones in front of him,

talking with Ellia. Tara was in the rear of the tavern, hanging the pot over the cook fire. Jenna went over and stood next to Coelin, ignoring the barbed glance from Ellia, behind the bar.

"Who is he?" Jenna asked.

Coelin shrugged. "Riocha. A tiarna from Lar Bhaile, if he's to be be-lieved. The Tiarna Padraic Mac Ard, he says."

"What's he talking to Aldwoman Pearce about?"

Coelin shrugged, but Ellia leaned forward. "Mam says he asked about the lights-didn't Aldwoman Pearce foretell that the other night? Says he saw them in Lar Bhaile from across the lough. When Mam told him how they were flickering around Knobtop, he asked to speak to the Ald."

"Maybe he'll want to speak with you, Jenna," Coelin said. "You were up there that night."

Jenna shivered, remembering, and shook her head vigorously. She thought of those dark eyes on her, of those thin lips asking questions. She thought of the stone in its hole in the wall of her cottage.

"No. I didn't see anything that you didn't see here. Let him talk to the Ald. Or some of the others here who say they saw all sorts of things with the lights."

Coelin snorted through his nose at that. "They saw things with the ale and whiskey they drank that night and their own imaginations. I doubt Tiarna Mac Ard will be much interested in that."