"Truly. And this my first bairn, Crulegh."

"Did hear Dorelei Mabh was cast out by Prydn."

Dorelei's smite faded. She did not want to talk about that. "And thee?"

The fisherwoman shook her head. "Life be too short for that. Be too much to learn. Like Rainbow. Does Doreiei Mabh truly know the rainbow and where it goes?"

Queer question. Doretei swept her arm up to the bright daub across the blue. "Down to sea."

"Or from sea down to us." The woman plunged both hands into her catch and held up two large wriggling plaice by their tails. "Help me cast, and thee can share."

A generous thing to do, but a strange thing to say, that Rainbow led depending where one viewed it from.

True enough, but Dorelei never thought much on it.

She wrapped Crulegh in her cloak and helped the Atecotti woman with the net. The sunlight, rare for this time of year, turned their brown skin to gold as they worked. It was good to have the woman's company.

That evening's meal was ample but chaotic. Dorelei stowed her share of the catch in Crulegh's blanket, so that her son rode home sheathed in fish. As always, the chil- dren roamed free during the meal, eating from dishes here and there, Prydn-fashion as they pleased. The cus- tom reinforced a child's feeling of security within fhain but didn't do much for serenity.

The fish were wrapped in seaweed to cook and sprin- kled with Neniane's hoarded sweet basil and rosemary:

delicious and plenty of it. The children could disrupt supper for a time, but when Dorelei nodded to their mothers, they were whisked away to bed-another tedious process. Growing faster than tallfolk children, they were already learning, and reveled in, the beautiful concept of 323.

no. No, they weren't finished, no, they weren't tired, and no! they didn't want to go to bed.

"Think again," Padrec advised Crulegh. "Bed."

"Bed," Malgon ordered his daughter and turned back to his meal.

"Just like men," Neniane muttered to Guenloie as they dragged the children off. "One grand judgment and leave the work to us."

But the supper fire was warm, and when the children were finally subdued, the three women came back to sit with the taciturn men, stir their tea, and meditate over the fire. Dorelei was more thoughtful than usual, but not depressed for once. With the men home, there was that at least to help them feel human, not alone, and she was careful to include Neniane in any cheer they found. The thick stone walls had become a world for them-gloomy, but at least they would not be reminded of their shame by vindictive Prydn.

"Padrec," she asked, "sing Rainbow-song."

"Again?"

"Would think on words."

Padrec sang the verse to her, Malgon joining in toward the end.

Beneath the greening, hollow sods, The Prvdn hoard be seen again.

The hoard be pointed by the gods, So be not where, but only when.

Neniane spooned the last of the basil and rosemary from her wooden platter and licked the spoon. "Most queer. Not green, but green-ing."

"So did think, sister. Green be green all summer.

Green-ing be only in spring."

They considered that. Padrec admitted he'd never thought on it much before. None of them had, but it made excellent sense.

"And hollow?" Dorelei's narrow brow furrowed with the puzzle. "Why hollow?"

Ai, did think Gern-y-fhain would know that," Guenloie offered.

"As all have seen, cousin, be manv things thygern does nae know," Dorelei replied with gentle irony. ieil."

324 "Rath or crannog." Guenloie stroked her husband's bare thigh. "Malgon be the silent thinker nowanights. Be nae so, husband?"

His round head moved up and down in slow affirma- tion: a sodded-over rath or crannog would be the only hollow sods he could name.

"And the treasure," Padrec Finished the thought, "be that hoard every gern keeps."

"Kept," Malgon commented dryly. "Did give't away as Jesu bade, remember?"

That wasn't the best subject for peaceful supper talk, and Dorelei deflected it. "But why green-ing then? Why only in spring? And pointed by the gods. Do think . . ."

She broke off, small fists rapping excitedly on her knees with the insight, frustrated for lack of words. "Be a road somewhere, a . . a picture of roads. Tallfolk word for picture of land and roads, as Ambrose had. Padrec, help me."

"Picture of roads. You mean a map?"

"Map!" she clapped her hands in triumph. "Could be so, a map. A picture of land."

"Land where, wife?"

"Do nae know." And she didn't, but all the same . . .

"Nae where, but only when?" Guenloie wondered.

"Can be picture of when?"

Padrec warmed his tea with more from the pot. in- trigued with the odd logic of the doggerel that fell into place more neatly than one would expect, once scruti- nized. He tried to order the thoughts; after all, Prydn riches were no mere song. They might-must have-come from a larger hoard. And suppose-

Everyone knows . . .

Lifting to his mouth, the cup paused. Everyone knows.

Marchudd made a cruel joke of it, referring to the nur- sery tale so old Padrec wouldn't have thought twice about it. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Every Parisi or Brigame child knew the tale from the cradle, and that it was impossible to find, truly in Faerie-land, because the rainbow began and ended nowhere. Was that what the song described? The road of the gods pointing to a fabu- lous hoard somewhere in place and/or time? The more he considered, the more it made a tantalizing kind of sense.

325.

^An interesting puzzle, and fhain had so little to keep their '' spirits up now.

"Among my father's people, there is a story," he be- gan. "A great hoard of treasure at Rainbow's end. Now,

mst suppose . . ."

It began as an intriguing riddle to divert them from ^ matters loo hopeless or painful to dwell on. Padrec dreamed too often of Churnet Head and a place like Golgotha but with more familiar faces. He turned to the riddle as an ' escape, paraphrasing its lines into plain statements for consideration.

*s In rath or crannog, in spring/ the Prydn hoard may be found again/ this rath or crannog is pointed by the

c rainbow/ at a certain time in the spring.