the oil of raw fleece, all blended into a pungent musk. But ^Jthe view from the hillside was breathtaking at early morn- Hng, the heath and its swaths of color-red, yellow, blue, E^and lavender against the azure of the sky and its always ^"Stately procession of many-mooded clouds. Sky was im- j portant to fhain. Sky was male. Lugh's domain, and changed El, moods as their Father did, so that from the hillside, Padrec :could see many different moods at once, much as in ire- ' land. The beauty was sudden and stark. The unreal bril- ;Bance of the colors hurt his eyes, a scene removed from idme. Presently time would start up again with a jerk and '4he mundane world move on. But the moment and the fttillness were a treasure.

I* Knowing sheep, Padrec found the Prydn variety a queer breed, the wool growing in shaggy twisted strands ^intermixed with rough hair that had to be separated out H after shearing. Ewes and rams alike bore horns, and their Hineat had little more fat than wild game. The fatter breeds ^on the downs oi southern Britain were stupid, vapid ani- p mals, but these had a feral wariness and a will of their Hewn. The dog Rof had to control them constantly, which H,he did through a precise communication with the herder- ^Sounds and hand signals would stop Rof short and send ^him wheeling off on a tangent to execute the new order, ^'shouldering or nipping the strays back into the group, I'always alert for weasel or wolf or the occasional hawk.

[^ "Rof looks like a wolf," Padrec said to Bredei one , afternoon while keeping him company on herd watch.

; "Father be wolf." Bredei raised his eyes. "Mother be i hound. Like Mother and Lugh. Earth and sky."

"He might have more wolf in him and turn on the icep. I've seen thai."

"Nae." Bredei was positive. "More dog. Heart be dog."

"Not by the look. How dost know?"

"Told me."

"Who did?"

"Rof. Who dost speak of, Padrec?"

"Dogs can't speak- You joke on me."

Bredei only smiled in patience. "Many things speak.

lust have ears. Rof! Rof! Rof! Come!"

As the great dog loped up the hillside, yards at a Stride, Bredei poured his porridge bowl to the brim with

56 water and set it down for the dog. "Aye, good dog, Rof.

Thee's a-thirst? Here."

Rof ducked his great iron-gray snout to the bowl and began to lap gratefully. A dog would always lap water, Bredei explained, while a wolf thrust his whole snout into the water and sucked it up.

"A knows what a be. And thee, Padrec?" Bredei stud- ied the priest leaning on his crutches. "Be more tallfolk?

Or human like fhain?"

Rof had a wolf's grayish-btack pelt and many of the lines. His normal gait about his rounds had the unique wolf's trot, but when he broke into a run his longer legs thrust him forward in great airborne bounds of fifteen feet or more without touching turf. He looked a night- mare: taller than a woif at the shoulder, head and jaws much larger and stronger. He caught a fox stalking near the Hock. Padrec saw the reddish neck go instandy limp in those jaws as they bit down. Then a vicious shake and toss, and poor Tod-Lowery turned twice, head over tail, and lay without a twitch where he landed. Neniane made mittens from the fur and a carrying pouch from the stomach lining, and her husbands haggled over the luxurious red tail as an ornament.

Padrec knew their speech more surely now. If these were the reincarnated spirits of the dead as legend told, they were reborn wily bargainers with a sly sense of hu- mor. Artcois indicated the tail, his expression and lone pained with noble sacrifice. "Be smalf and mangy. Not worthy of my brother's fine head. Will spare thee that and take it."

"No," said Bredei in the same selfless mode. "Will hide it from thy sight and promise thee better when Tod- Lowery comes again."

"Ah, no. Would pain me to see thee go with only the hind end of so poor Lowery to proclaim thee."

Bredei began to cloud over. "Dost say thy love's greater than mine? Will shoot for it."

"Oh, well." Artcois sighed like a martyr and reached for his short bow. "But in kindness, brother and second husband to most fair among women, thee would lose."

"Dost say so? Thee's more mouth than bow. Shoot."

"Thee will lose, Bredei."

57.

"Shoot."

"Mother and Lugh will it. Do thee fetch a lamb."

It was in the late afternoon, when their tasks granted them time, that the lamb was tethered on the hillside and the husbands paused by Padrec's resting place to set their rules. When Hawk stooped at the lamb, they would shoot together but with different arrowheads of bronze and Hint. Since neither would miss (unthinkable), the tail would go to the first strike.

All very well, as Padrec watched, but then they botched the lot by sitting in the open twenty paces to either side of the tethered bait. Hawks could be single-minded but not stupid, and no Faerie under a wolf hide was going to fool them.

The lamb lurched about, helpless and inviting. A num- ber of starlings whirred close in curiosity and Hew on.

Padrec wondered how long the men would wait before realizing . . .

Before . . .

He blinked and looked again, had to look twice to see them. The grayish hides were two rocks, part of the moor.

Even Padrec might believe they'd been so forever.

When the hawk appeared, it was far and high, a black line floating on blue void-slow, lazy, barely moving as it fell off into the wind and let the current pull it into a long, spiraling turn. The hawk spirated steeper and faster, am- ber eyes reading every clue to food and danger: the lamb between two humps like any other hump in the earth, the human watching but too far to be a threat. Hawk came out of the descent, wings barely moving, and glided di- rectly over the lamb. Then dark wings folded into dark body. Hawk dropped down the sky like a stone, beautiful and merciless.

The two stones moved.

Hawk seemed to stumble over something solid in the sky rushing up around him. The dive became a pell-mell 'tumble, and Hawk smashed into the ground a few paces from the startled lamb. A midge of feather floated down I after him. Two shafts protruded from his black breast like a pair of absurd forelegs.

"Bredei."

Padrec jumped at the throaty whisper close to his ear.

58 Dorelei squatted there, might have grown out of the earth there, so still she was. "Bredei."

The arrows were very close in the breast. Ancois and Bredei appealed to Gem-y-fhain for the prize. She awarded it to Bredei with no argument from his brother.

Padrec couldn't see it. "How could you tell? The ar- rows struck home as one."

"But must decide." Dorelei swept her gray eyes over him with a nuance of humor and appreciation at the sight of Padrec. "Watch. Learn. Will need thee as well."

Dorelei was right; Bredei wanted it most, but in the fhain way he had no notion of "mine." He wore Tod- Lowery's tail a few days, then left it for Artcois. Within a week both forgot it.

To Padrec they were all alike as pebbles at first, but as he worked into the ancient rhythm of their lives and speech, fhain emerged as individuals to his eye if not his stringent morality. Holy Church would turn in horror from their marriage customs, it the term was even applica- ble. They were inbred as royal Egyptian housecats. To say Dorelei and Cru were cousins said nothing; none of them were farther apart in blood than that. In the involuted manner of their coupling, age after age, they were closer than siblings.

They said it brought them closer together in love.

The natural piayfulness of the others was restrained in Dorelei and Cru. They were more cautious and reserved, spoke less at gatherings but with authority when they must. Padrec was not unacquainted with the fine art of the pagan world. Doreiei reminded him of certain sculptures- not the meaty, sensual Figures of Greece and Rome but the delicate work from Alexandria or Minos. Her tiny form was beautifully proportioned, as if God first carved perfection in miniature before turning to larger humans, and Dorelei was distressingly careless in displaying it. She nudged somnolent urges he'd taken pride in conquering long past. In these warm days as summer declined, Dorelei sometimes went bare from the waist up with only a clout of linen about her loins or a skirt of wool fringes that covered very little. Padrec spent much time in earnest prayer for himself as well as Dorelei.

Cru's proportion was as perfect if one excepted the 59.

-adth of his shoulders, a peculiarity of fhain men. Truly lildren of Eden, they had every grace except a knowl- ee of God. And these were the "little people" of whom Ipurnius' peasants told such dark stories.

Where Dorelei was beautiful in a clean, carven way, Eeniane was sweeter and softer. That peculiar set to their fes, slanting as if to follow the high cheekbones, was ore pronounced in Neniane. With the rounded softness her face it gave her a feline look like a puzzled kitten.

er gracefulness rested in her small brown hands. Her igers at any task flashed precisely as Minoan dancers, a )rid of tactile experience in their economy of movement.

task was too precise for Neniane's hands, no object too ill to work well, cutting, carving a bone hook or sewing h a bronze needle. Padrec saw why there were so many ries about Faerie cobblers and workers of tiny metals.

nail hands and superb eyesight were Faerie characteris- s. The clumsiest of them, Drust, could bore and thread he smallest beads for a necklace for Guenloie or groove a Uow shaft straight as a rule to receive an arrowhead.

Neniane's husbands were childlike men. Sometimes

*niane was more scolding sister than wife, although she ide no distinction between them in her generous affec- ions. Ancois and Bredei could not remain serious for cry long. They were quite friendly toward Padrec, also is watchdogs. His legs were almost healed; he thanked em and wished to be free to go. Go? Ah, no, Padrec.