"We were lucky-the ranching country over the mountains had stock we could trade for, though getting the working equipment was another story."
She patted the reaper affectionately. "We were certainly glad to buy these and retire the cradle scythes! Change Year Three it was; a stiff price, but worth it."
"They're not local?"
"No, from Corvallis," she said. "We could make them"-there was nothing in the simple machine that couldn't be duplicated by any good carpenter and a smith-"but they have machines worked by waterwheels for their little factories, so it's cheaper. Most of the Valley buys from them."
Loring nodded. Just then the others came up in what would have been a procession if it weren't so casual and hadn't included so many children and dogs running around; Miguel Lopez and his family stood a little aside, looking awkward, although his friend Jeff Dawson was an enthusiastic Dedicant now.
Melissa Aylward led, walking before the corn dolly she'd just plaited, impressively solemn. Sam Aylward and Chuck Barstow carried it behind her, held high on crossed spears. This Queen Sheaf would belong to Clan Mackenzie as a whole, as well as Dun Fairfax, which was an honor for the smaller settlement. The wheat-straw figure she'd plaited was four feet from splayed feet past swelling belly to rough-featured head, and crowned with poppies. Melissa herself had shed most of the extra weight she'd put on before the birth of her new daughter, but hadn't gone back to full fieldwork yet and looked solidly matronly and deep-bosomed in her airsaid, a fit vessel for the Mother. The more so as she held a handful of wheat as a scepter in her right hand and red-haired little Fand in the crook of her left arm.
Juniper bent her head and Melissa touched it with the stalks; then both High Priestesses fell in behind the Queen Sheaf, leading the harvesters walking two and two to the north end of the field where a great oak stood beside the laneway and the field gate and a young hawthorn hedge. Most of the rest of the settlement's people waited there, the ones who hadn't been in the fields today by reason of age or infirmity or very pressing business.
The two men knelt and lowered the plaited figure before Juniper; she made the Invoking pentagram above it. "All hail to Brigid, Goddess of the Ripened Corn, who accepts the given sacrifice!" she called aloud, smiling. "And to the Corn King, Lugh of the Sun, who dies in this season so that the harvest may be reaped!"
Her voice became a little more solemn for a moment as she turned to her people: "With the work of our hands we help the Lord and Lady make this place the fruitful garden that it is-not wilderness nor iron desert paved and bound, but instead our rightful home. For though we here shall die, as die men and trees and beasts and ripened corn each in their appointed season, yet the blood, the house, the field, the woods endure; and every babe and lamb and new-sprouted leaf proves the immortality we share."
Chuck and Sam braced their spears against the gnarled trunk of the oak, so that the Corn Mother could oversee the festivities; the spears stood for the Lord of the Harvest as well. Melissa broke the loaf made from the first sheaf they'd cut and set it before Her, standing for an instant with a fold of her airsaid drawn over her head.
"And She says: eat!" she said, turning and dropping the shawl back on her shoulders.
The harvest workers stood in a circle around her; they gave three cheers, flinging up their joined hands. After that everyone pitched in, helping set the trestle tables and benches and unload the harvest supper, taking turns to run down to the pond in the lower corner of the field and shed their kilts and dive in to slough off the dust and sweat. One of the wagons carried soap and towels, clothes for the Dun Fairfax folk and robes for the guests who'd be walking back to Dun Juniper later. This wasn't the harvest feast proper-that would come on Lughnassadh, next week, when everyone had had a chance to rest a bit, and be a lot more elaborate-but it was the beginning of it. In most duns there was considerable good-natured rivalry between households to outdo each other at a harvest potluck.
Juniper shook out her water-darkened hair, then pinned her plaid with a jeweled brooch done in swirling knotwork of sinuous gripping beasts; she'd brought along a clean set of gear that included silver-buckled shoes and an embroidered shirt with a ruffled front as well as clean kilt and plaid. Someone handed her a wreath of poppies and oxeye daisies, and she set that on her head as well.
Since the Chief must look spiffy where possible, she thought, with a wry inward shrug. Well, I was used to dressing up in costume like this for a performance before the Change! Now it's different, though. Now these are my clothes and the performance is my life.
Sir Nigel, on the other hand, wore one of the coarse, gray, hooded guest robes with casually regal authority, as if it were his everyday garb, despite the way the hem trailed on the ground. He bowed slightly as she reappeared.
"My word, but you look dramatic," he said. "And quite authentically Celtic, if not quite Scottish."
Juniper turned up her hands. "What can I say? I was just now thinking that I wore stuff like this before the Change to look exotic-and today, it's just what I wear."
"Quite. I felt: a proper burke wearing plate armor, as Sam would say, for the longest time after I'd learned to use it well. As if I were trapped in one of Alleyne's tourneys and couldn't get out, or in one of my childhood daydreams. Now it's quite natural, except when I think about it."
He offered her an arm with a courtly gesture, and she tucked a hand through it; the forearm under her hand felt as if it had been molded out of hard living rubber.
"Ahhh!" Sam Aylward said, seating himself and taking a first swallow of beer from a crock kept cool in an old plastic trash barrel full of cold springwater. "Dennis Martin Mackenzie, my thanks!"
The big bearded man doffed his bonnet and showed his bald spot in a bow. "Hell, they're your hops and barley, Samuel Aylward Mackenzie. Plus the mountains contributed the water free of charge."
"But you did the brewing, mate."
"Pity we don't have any ice, to get it really cold," Dennis replied, with a malicious twinkle.
Aylward shuddered dramatically. "Bite your tongue, Yank! If I didn't like to taste the beer, I could drink ice water cut with vodka."
Then he looked out at the field of stooked sheaves. "Well, that's done and now we can all relax and lie about eating chockies till next spring."
He was smiling as he said it, and there were groans from most within earshot; the work of the harvest wouldn't really be over until Mabon, still months away-at which time the fall plowing started anyway. Late-planted winter gardens under mulch would yield a bit through most of the cold season. But at least the main crop was in, the breadstuff that was the literal staff of life. Plenty of it was on the long plank tables, in the form of biscuits tapped still hot out of thick clay traveling ovens, and of baskets full of warm round loaves marked with the eight-spoked Wheel of the Year on their crusts.
They went with butter, cheese, fresh salads-everyone gorged on greens this time of year-glazed hams, a great cold roast beef, fried chicken, a noble dish of Sam's apple-cured bacon with wild chanterelle mushrooms, steamed vegetables, a huge pot of baked beans with bits of fat pork standing amid the crumbling brown crust, and for dessert, cream with the first peaches and berries and bowls of dark red Mona cherries, and honey for dipping. Jugs of cold water, milk, Dennie's home brew, cider and wine and chilled herbal tea went down on the planks.
Juniper was suddenly conscious of how ravenous she was, and how good the salty brown smell of the ham was, and that the first new potatoes were waiting, steaming gently as the lids of the pots were removed, beside deep royal purple baby beets: