beneath the hollow sods of a barrow, a secret, sacred place, at a certain time in the spring, Rainbow will point to the Prydn hoard.

"And how dost know this be truth and nae only song?"

Neniane objected.

Before Dorelei could lay out her reasons, Guenloie spilled the porridge she was spooning to Bruidda, and it

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splattered over the child's chin, making her howl. Reasons were forgotten in the ensuing clamor that bounced otf the walls as Crulegh set up his own wail, joined by Morgana Mary. Clearly a problem for the women. Malgon just poured more tea, and Padrec growled, "Can't those bloody children be quiet one moment in a long day?"

So it was a while, with quieting the wealth, and coax- ing them to bed, before the women got back to the fire and Dorelei's point.

"Nae, then," Mdlgon challenged, "an a day in spring, what day?"

"Think on't," Dorelei teased him with a coo! smile.

"What great, unchanging day would be the choice of Malgon first husband?"

His lower lip jutted in concentration: nothing.

"Bet-tein," said Neniane, and Dorelei rewarded her with a kiss.

"Truly. Bel-tein."

"But only an be Rainbow," Malgon argued.

"But should be Rainbow then," Padrec said. "Be most common then. Will rain at Bel-tein often as't will not.

Oftener."

"Should open our eyes and see this Pictland have lived all our lives in," Dorelei judged. "Spring and autumn can give three and four kinds of weather to any day's sky."

Still, Matgon was not convinced. "But why only Bel- tein, Gern-y-fhain?"

"Why not? Can think of better day to mark from?"

She was sure of her reasoning, but each thought was hard-won. She wasn't used to thinking in what Padrec called "logic," or even in words most of the time, He called her thoughts an "assumption," and she paraded it over and over through her mind: on Bel-tein in a certain place, the rainbow would point to a barrow that held the Prydn hoard. But Rainbow fled before the watcher, faded even as one tried to see it all. . . .

The answer came when they were all on the beach with the mended net, casting and hauling in fresh fish.

Padrec and Dorelei worked apart, scraping fresh salt off the rocks. Dorelei looked up at her people working on the same rock where the Atecotti cast her net.

"Do remember, Padrec."

331.

"Eh?"

"Atecotti woman. She said . , . about Rainbow."

"Said what?"

"Where a goes."

"And?"

Dorelei bit her lip, picturing the woman on the rock.

"A did ask me where Rainbow went." She lifted her arm over the water. "Down to sea, I said. And a made answer:

'Or from sea down to us.' "

Just then a wave higher than the rest broke itself against the rocks and they had to dash up the beach to avoid being drenched. But Dorelei's insight was clear in her mind, although she had no words for it.

"Must be one place thee must stand. Nae, more. What is't do try to say, husband?-See."

Not at all sure what she tried to express, Dorelei took up a driftwood stick and smoothed a patch of sand, scratch- ing indecisive figures with the point of the stick: the curve of Rainbow, a figure with breasts for herself, lines con- necting them. "Help me, Padrec."

He didn't quite know how at first. She groped for something, not even sure of its shape, only that it was there.

"Do stand here," she poked at the woman-figure.

"Rainbow there. An Rainbow point. . ." Dorelei ransacked her small tallfolk vocabulary for the word. "De-pend-ing on where do stand, then-ai, Padrec, what is't do try to say?"

He concentrated on the drawing. Not much for clar- ity, more like the stylized conceits on stone slabs. "About what?"

"What be atwixt me and Rainbow?"

"Oh. Well. Space. Distance."

He thought he knew a piece of what Dorelei was fumbling at through pure intuition. Geometry. Angles.

Stand in a fixed place . . .

"A ring of stones! It's the only place that makes sense.

Fixed. Unchanging."

"Yah!" She yipped her excitement and pulled his head down to be kissed. "Do have the wisest of husbands. Circle!"

Where else? The very center of all Prydn life, like Jerusalem for Christians. Padrec smoothed over the sand

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and began afresh. A mere vertical digit for the watcher. A circle about it for the ring of stones. Then the rainbow and two lines radiating from it, one to the digit, the other from the downward end of the rainbow to earth. Dorelei hung over his shoulder, wide-eyed.

"What be that?"

"An attempt at mathematics, and don't I wish I'd listened more carefully to my tutors. Was never shrewd at it."

Yet Dorelei's people must have been using some of the principle for ages. The stones in the circle were pre- cisely arranged so that at Bel-tein the sun rose over a certain one, at Midsummer another, and so on through Lughnassadh and Brigid-feast in order to know the pre- cise times for moving with the flocks. With his stick he could give Dorelei some sense of her own insight.

"On Bel-tein, Lugh rises over a certain stone. Now, watch." Padrec jammed the stick upright in the ground to show the position of its shadow. "All day on the first of May, a stick placed in the center of the circle will have a certain relationship .. . well, let me put it so: an thee stand all day in the center, will see Rainbow in certain places."

"De-pend-ing?"