harvest home


Gormglaith sat with Geileis at the latticed blond elmwood board, Giorsal with Gobnait crosswise when Flann tore by, late from some errand, a bright blear of long red hair and freckles, platinum nose ring gleaming, still smelling like her run and the outdoors. Having swapped longstockings Flann came back and slid onto the bench by Gormglaith. Clothed and shod alike, they talked clanninishly.

"Where's the wicked witch?" asked Gormglaith, looking about.

"On the skate back to Kin Dails," Geileis answered with a shrug. "She said she was thrilled to see thee, though."

Enid and Aine came scrubbed and clad like everyone else to alight on smooth elm benches.

"Aine of Knockaine," Geileis said wistfully, chin in hand. "Have I ever told thee how I flip for thy braids? Someday I'm going to grow my hair and have swank brat braids like thine."

Aine smirked.

"Spog," said Enid raising thumbs up, short braids swishing. "Blue cheese string noodyls!"

They told rundling tales, each put starkly with input from the others, handing chalky dishes back and forth whilst a skeletal house robot of like hue whistly filled in the gaps.

"So I frobbed the new hopper first thing," said Giorsal, taking a sip of bluish milk. "A pink bamfed in for a peek and feeped at me! It was the wabbit," she sighed. "I don't get it. Sometimes I think Maiden lane's not the hex I grew up with."

"Like a kludge," said Flann, "munchin' mung 'n toast."

"It's so leeg," said Enid, heedfully wrapping strands of blue cheese string noodyls onto her fork. "The only grass wabbits anyone shares anymore are dodgy bloat. I hack 'em to bits but they're still geef."

"Spell rags..." Aine put with raised forefinger, thick braids sweeping across the wide pink brims on her figgish chest.

"...and hex hags!" Geileis said brightly as the others laughed.

Aine giggled, shoving a stringy forkful into her mouth as Enid wagged a sandy blond head.

"So there's that stoneware dish over a hearth at Findabair's," said Gormglaith, munching on blueberries, "...the one with all the swatches in shades of green they say is six thousand years old..."

Most nodded.

"From afar it looks sound but if you peer close there're thousands of these teeny twining cracks..."

Gobnait laid a billowing glob of chocolate nut mush on a fat slice of gingerbread, gazed up with forefinger to chin and said,

"So Gormglaith, I hear Findabair wants to plight. How thrilling."

Gormglaith twirled her eyes in a throe.

"...Thought so!" sang Enid, digging her fork into the open top of a baked pumpkin.

"Gobnait," Gormglaith put to her smug little sister, "it so happens Findabair can't plight me alone. It takes at least three."

"I think it's leeg," said Gobnait, taking up the loaded gingerbread with both hands, "how Gweneth did y'all dirt..."

"...So who's the lucky third!?" asked Giorsal, slicing in.

Gormglaith lowered her head.

"Fethnaid 'n Faith Farling," she sighed, staring into a tangle of string noodyls, whirlish and flaxen with spoggens of cheese riddled in blue-green.

"I like those two!" 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 the Farling twins!' 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 Pane Aghadreen of the Greens and the Farling twins?"

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 neach, braiding all four of her kynn like none before her, she was fifteen when talk of ash at the bone board enthralled her to the tides, growth and craft of grasses. At seventeen she left Elmthorpe for five years of school at Rand house in Kin Dails, first living in its nest mazes, later a sprawling, wafered stack 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.

The storm was dished when ghosts of Enid and Giorsal wound up in the Kin Dails spin of a widely gawked-at rag called Yah! A short loop taken at Beltane bannal, a faddish make out den at the time, showed a witchy Giorsal hanging out with Enid and swiping a way keen glance at her (this was more or less only a setup as they were all head over klompen by then). Ever after, when asked why she wasn't in the snaps, Geileis said she was "boning up for the boards" that night.

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.

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 gore 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 slopes of Hafgan 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."

"Fleak Feer! 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 about our fourteenth moon at Rand house we went to one of those crushy Samhain eve flurts at the Ben chee inn and whom should we run into but the sunken eyed henge twins themselves, Morfyd and Morigan Sparkenbane with their rune stern, plighted sister Rathyen, who'd all lately gotten themselves shee at Wrath ness teach, split as witches and done with school. Next thing we knew, the lot of us were up in a hilltop flat where we reeled 'n kissed 'n threw flax blossoms with towards and gabbish shees 'till morning light smote us down... the lane!"

"Night came soon enough and it was stark and starry. We were still living with our kynn on Pine rood. Rathyen and Morfyd showed up at the door like wraiths, grinning scythes, asking us out for walkies by Linden lane henge but we wound up back at the Ben chee inn where they put it straight. Giorsal and I had already let slip we'd only plight together... not too much of a hitch since teach clannin plight eight rather than the wonted three or four. Anyway we all ran off to Glas knoll croft at Blairie north of Kin Dails for flirty flurts, gabs and oddly, a moppety goblin game called fox and goose. It was all fylgjic but I'd tumbled into a gnawsome stitch, thinking I was the only one they truly wanted."

"That'd never haunt the henge. I guess even back then I had a stern streak as long as my legs. Giorsal and I slipped away to loch Blairie's wooded shore by a fleet of swans who'd swum up, where she reminded me we'd still be together, living at Haethwyck by Grasp on the coastal cliffs of Wrath ness at the northwestern evermost of the Highlands. Then she wept and said I might plight alone."

"I thought of that tale in the Eachdraidh, how 2300 years ago the Banning-Trendels of New Zealand were heartbroken when Meryl Melangell nixed over like worries having to do to her sister Meredith. Plighting another clannin nineteen moons after, they brought in Meryl's twin daughter Morwen of Windborn who later lived a meed life among the Banning-Trendels as a banshee."

"So before swans we grew a wild notion. After witch house and plight, I'd grasp and carry my twin daughter, we'd raise her in a snug clannin spilled with Eachdraidh nan fylgjic and when a maegden she and the Sparkenbanes might meet.

"Back inside I sat down at a board of black hornblende and wrote in mine own hand,"

Nix. We're wretches like Meryl and Meredith.

"That's when we left home for the nest mazes at school and five nights later we hooked up with Enid..."

Gormglaith's eyes glowed in the shift of black light thrown from the harvest moon.

"Later we were so enthralled and busy clannining, we forgot about Sparkenbanes. Bryn larach blossomed, way, with Enid braidin' ash and Giorsal spinnin' robots, Flann tuggin' freayll, me gweepin' hex, all of us home schooling thee and now, Gobnait... but as the years spun off we heard of their plights. They'd soon found their fourth and I was flattered. I knew Tegan Nichneven! She was a dozen moons behind me at Rand house. Then by the time thou wast fifteen there was talk of three banshees..."

"Banshees are meant to plight whist, to thwart fads," said Gormglaith. "Together as a flock of four, they rune Wyrd's four stitches, strong, weak, stir 'n trimmid."

Geileis smiled.

"... and with no hint of a fourth we guessed they might be thinking of us after all. Then it came."

"What."

"Thy coorsyn," Geileis answered, laughing, "and thou wast late! But tha bleedst like a maegden now and I got this today," she said, pulling a swatch of cloth from the wrap over her ribs.

"Grainne?"

Geileis quickly shook her head.

It was linen, token of Eachdraidh. The runes shone in bright moonbeams, written by a true hand with stark heed:

In a dale of tales so thrillin'
Plait kin by flaxen linen
Nigh pumpkins on pine needles
Pulling moon to light what's sown
Now fast under elms
Bats beat wings
Whilst dreaming things
Towards fall and Harvest home.

"Hmph. It's from Hackled in Hastings..." said Gormglaith.

"...Tangwen Toreth. They know how to strum the strings, huh? ...Geileis! On the noon after Tangwen wrote this in Rye... two banshees came!"

"I know. I looked it up in thy book."

"What about Findabair?"

"Findabair's like clannin..."

"What'll I do?"

Geileis shook her head as three small bats fluttered nearby.

"Maybe I could hang with them," said Gormglaith, "like for the thrill of it, kind of..."

"There are seven of them now and I glark they'll send the two they think'll thrill the most..."

"...to spill 'n sway for kin and clannin," said Gormglaith.

"I'd say sly's the word," put Geileis, smirking.

"What does our shenn Grainne have to say about all this?"

"She's rather stitched on thee, Gormglaith."

"In other words... I might stop to think of Eachdraidh and plight my bottom over to Wrath ness like a bred 'n born kin Grendel girl."

"She told me this afternoon she knew all along it would happen. She showed up on her own saying, 'Geileis my bat, thy twin daughter Gormglaith can grip. I know her. It's thee I'm worried about!' She knows everybody," Geileis said with a gangly shrug.

Gormglaith grinned when her twin kynn took her face in hands, kissed her on the mouth then twirled to walk off. As Geileis loped towards a door of wefted panes aglow with yellow light the wind gusted, blowing straw thatch across bright eyes staring up and beyond the wych elms at a beaming harvest moon whilst broken, ragged clouds scuttered across it.

Gormglaith wandered into the farm's tangle lair, wind blown and fallain, linens ruffled, knees grass stained. Enid and Giorsal sat among brightly wafting goblins. A cast of the fat, yellow and black striped bee Gobnait had been playing with hovered near Giorsal now, busily spitting runes. It was harvest and sunrise would find them there.

Enid was once more in grey cutty sark and longstockings, Giorsal but in worn dark green ones with scuffed yellow klompen, milksome ponytails cascading over each shoulder and down her chest. They watched a deftly ghosted earth cast of the moonlit farm with reapers and gleaners amid floating runes and numbers.

"Hi! How's harvest?"

"Harvest...?" asked Enid, grey eyes glowing in a blue swath of light throbbing across her face.

Gormglaith watched a goblin made of two fluttering green blobs.

"This one's a bit scrozzy," she said.

"Yeah..." sighed Giorsal, fingers reeling with the bee, "...says it's ok about being a spot heater for now but'll shut down before the birds start singin' anyway to keep from blowing up. How boring."

"It's not like the wonted plight, is it?" Gormglaith blurted out. "I mean a girl's kynn can't say 'Th'art green, th'ast time,' can they, when she'd be a banshee..."

Giorsal, right hand now held over a bright swirling pumpkinish whorl, stared at her.

"Flattery's a craft, Gormglaith and they've got it... with the heed of a burrowing mote scanner."

"Oh Giorsal..."

Enid looked up, bangs sweeping in front of her face.

"What we braid," she put softly singsong, "is what we'll be and wherever Wyrd wends, thou'lt always be our Gormglaith. Although," she said, winking and opening her arms, "if thou dostn't heed Giorsal and happenst to run off with them, maybe thou canst do something about those ghastly grain plaits."

They gathered in a tight, clanniny hug and Gormglaith loped out the door into a windswept, moonlit night on the West meads.

Flann stared at a goblin with skeins of bobbing runes and numbers, red hair tumbling upon freckled shoulders, the nose ring between her nostrils catching a glint of pink light as she looked up with doeish, wintergreen eyes.

"Tollin' the watch, eh Gormglaith?" she asked, smiling like a maedchen.

"Yep, seein' to it my clannin's givin' fylgjic meed of milk and muffins!"

Gormglaith stood smirking.

"I guess we can squeeze something out tomorrow, if thou dostn't ask for too much milk."

"Hast thou heard?"

"Oh yeah."

"So Flann when thou wast a scollagyn at Blairie thou knewst maegden who pledged Wrath ness..."

"I think I can stir up the hazy ghost."

"Why didstn't thou go?"

"For one thing I was never asked."

"What if?"

"Not."

"Why?"

"My friends were at Blairie, my whole puff was there. Besides, all I wanted back then was to get into Rand house so I could grok how to be a hardcore, spell sucking freayller witch."

"So when y'all met, I mean, what'dst thou think of the Meryl and Meredith thing?"

"Ok, I thought it was selfish. I told 'em, 'Twins are cool. I'm eighth in a string by the wombs but if you tell her, if you lay nettles on her back, if I ever see you grooming any moppet of ours for Wrath ness, I'm out the door.' As it happened Enid had said rather much the same thing to them."

"Y'all saw to it I got a stiff hit of Eachdraidh, though."

"So split for tongue craft, if that's what thou still wantst."

"I've always liked thy nose ring," said Gormglaith, warding a finger and grinning.

"When thou wast on my hip thou never stopped trying to yank it."

They giggled.

"...I'd be asked to pledge Wrath ness teach," said Gormglaith.

"Thou'dst be told to pledge Wrath ness teach."

"Which means I'd be a scollagyn, at the teach of teaches."

"That's what they say."

"The scollagyn I've met are lekker, but they wontedly swot up keener and have less time to themselves."

"They've more boards at once than at a witch house, is all."

"Thou always sayest thou liked it..."

"Blairie bairn..." said Flann, smirking.

"...bred, born 'n beaming!" they sang together.

"If thou goest with them, 'glaithen girl, they'll frickin' henge thee."

"Not Geileis."

"Don't forget Giorsal. Some are wont."

"I can grip."

"Look," sighed Flann, "plightin' banshee's no frolic at the feish, ok? Wraithen's one thing, sly's another. Twined it's the hackle."

"What'rt tha tuggin' now?" asked Gormglaith, nodding at the goblin.

"Oh, that... Snotra's dreaded wheat freayll. I'm looking for ways to plait us through it as ever, as if, stitch of my life. Along with the wonted lilies, they're luzzin' hints on Maiden lane it might be quickened again. That would be so leeg."

"Is that what I heard Enid and thee talking about today?"

"Bloody likely," she said, eyes flicking to shuffle bobbing numbers.

Gormglaith hugged Flann so tightly her chair spun.

On a nearby hill the sprawling fieldstone house known as Lea Cairn cast a warm blush across moonlit mead grass and elm trunks, its dozens of windows puzzled with corundum panes sparkling in blues, reds, greens, yellows and sheers beneath low overhanging eaves. Gormglaith, back in her wonted short ash cutty sark and grey longstockings with clunky black wooden klompen, walked across the mossy northern stoep by a flock of fluttering bats towards a glow of sweeping lights in sundry hues. She put face and hands against a window which slid open to a swirl of throbbing yodels and gabbing girls, then leapt over the low sill as it shut to the sound of rustling leaves.

Birds were singing when Gormglaith walked through Bryn larach's warmly lit back door, stepped out of black klompen, dipped into yellow ones and clopped rather too noisily to the ghost den. She found Geileis listening to clarsach songs, bamfing into some spot somewhere on earth she'd found to wander through before sleep. Gormglaith plopped down hip to hip beside her womb kynn on the low, cotton bolstered bench. Geileis put an arm about her and the twins snuggled in the dusky glow of Snotra with its steep, winding wooded lanes, henges and flower drenched greens where blue loch Frigg splits by the edge of the southern Alps.

"Everyone was there," said Gormglaith, nodding as they stared. "We reeled and stuff. Fethnaid and Faith were like, so cool and cheery, as if nothing was happening but they slipped me these looks and canny knew I knew. Meanwhile Glynne was showin' off her new tongue dab, mostly to Keird 'n Keayrt who were their wonted mopey selves by the bye. Anyway I didn't have time to tell anyone a thing and before I knew it, Findabair was folded up asleep on the settle. Fethnaid and I made out, kind of, Faith went into a sulk, the birds were nigh twitterin' so I left."

Geileis gazed at Gormglaith who quickly looked towards the ghost deck at three girls all in black linens, broom witches, skipping, frolicking and lofting sprays of white lily bits at each other among tall, thin cypress trees by the low pink granite walls of old Toreth house on Maiden lane, loch Frigg lapping nigh.

"Yeah, I know."

They fell asleep in each other's arms under the cool glow of a blue light strip.

Through the thatch over her eyes Gormglaith squinted at afternoon light streaming into the den. She popped up, stared, then bounded onto the hard black floor in linen sheathed feet, coming across Geileis in the airy titanium and white clunch kitchen, reading a frosty goblin with a steaming red mug of frothed coffee and a bowl of seeds, grains and milk before her.

"Hi kynnsikins!"

"Hi, my bat!

Gormglaith tasted Geileis' coffee and made a face.

"I still don't know how thou canst drink this stuff."

"Wait a few dozen moons more, thou wilt!"

Gormglaith took a stray, oozing ruddy rowanberry jelly bun from the board and sloppily ate that whilst looking out the window. It had been raining but the sun peeked now and then from billowing puffy clouds over low fog and misty green.

"Where is everybody?"

"Aine came by. She and Enid have run off, somewhere, Flann's gone hopper stitchin' with Blaithen Brent and Giorsal's in the thorpe with Gobnait."

"Bugged out, huh?"

"I'd say fled's the word."

"I'll do my reading, then."

Geileis raised a thatchen head to watch as her twin daughter loped away.

Gormglaith stepped from the shower bay with lank damp hair, shivered, grabbed a towel and gazed through a narrow window at the leaf strewn stoep where she and Geileis had talked the night before. From the wall cupboard she took worn, frayed grey longstockings, yanked them on, skipped out and plopped onto the cozy, steadfast staddle to flip leaves of Eachdraidh with fingers between her legs, twining into tales of wraithen girls by meads and hills and lochs.

Later she glanced up and said evenly, "Haunt Findabair?"

"Hey Gormglaith!" came the choppy greeting of a dozen maegden and maedchen as if they were by the window.

"What happened to thee?!" asked Findabair.

"Thou fellst asleep!"

"So?! Anyway we're going up the hill to gather blue daisies. Come with?"

"I can't."

"What's on?"

"A clannin thing..."

"Ok. Meet at the Soohead later?"

"Uhm, I don't know. This might take awhile."

"Sounds kinda big!"

"It is. Snag a daisy for me, ok?"

The others slipped into giggles.

"Y'all?! Ok... bye Gormglaith!"

"Bye Gormglaith!" everybody else echoed singsong.

"Bye."

She lowered her head, brooded, got up, walked over to the laser cut slab desk of chalk limestone and waved a hand near its edge. A smeary blue and white ball popped up, a yard across. She blinked through sundry casts, stopping at one showing splashes of light scattered mostly across the north and south of a moonlit world.

She went to the window and its misty green landscape, took the gore and beamed true hues into a chalken hand.

"Gormglaith? Gormglaith?"

Geileis leaned over her, hair swept forward, smiling.

"It's nearing noon in Rye. I thought thou mayest've gotten lost."

"Ok. I was only reading."

"Swap the linens at least! I'll answer the door if thou wantst."

"I'll do it. I want to see the looks on their faces."

Geileis cast a braided look.

Gormglaith dragged herself from the staddle, lit to the bath, pulled on tidier greys and stared at the looking glass. She ran fingers through her thatch, shrugged, shook it, came back to the nest, put on black klompen, breezed out to the gather lair and faced her kynn with a grin. Geileis looked her up and down, then up again... and nodded.

"Truth be told," said Gormglaith, "I was thinking the same thing about thee!"

"Uh oh."

Gormglaith's grin swayed into a broad smile.

"So if thou needst me," said Geileis, shoving back a stray bit of straw thatch, "I'm here."

"Don't worry, twinsikins," she put with a shrug. "I can grip."

"I know..."

They heard a low thump outside as Gormglaith waved a bony, blue veined hand at the latch.