Midway between the earthen gates and the stone loom, where the westering sun could draw its last light across the threshold, Adica had erected a shelter out of hides and poles. In such primitive shelter all humankind had lived long ago before the days when the great queens and their hallowed women had stolen the magic of seed, clay, and bronze from the southerners, before the Cursed Ones had come to take them as slaves and as sacrifices.
She made her prayers, so familiar that she could speak them without thinking, and sprinkled the last of her ale to the four directions: north, east, south, and west. After leaning her staff against the lintel of slender birch poles, she clapped her wrists together three times. The copper bracelets that marked her status as a Hallowed One chimed softly, the final ring of prayer, calling down the night. The sun slid below the horizon. She crawled in across the threshold. Inside the tent she untied her string skirt, slipped off her bodice, and laid them inside the stout cedar chest where she stored all her belongings. Finally, she wrapped herself in the furs that were now her only company at night.
Once she had lived like the rest of her people, in a house in the village, breathing in the community of a life lived together. Of course, her house in the village had been ringed with charms, and no one but her mate or those of her womb kin might enter it for fear of the powers that lay coiled in the shadows and in the eaves, but she had still been able to hear the cattle lowing in their byres in the evening and the delighted cries of the children leaping up to play at dawn. Any village where a Hallowed One lived always had good luck and good harvests.
But ever since the Holy One’s proclamation, she could no longer sleep in the village for fear her dreaming self might entice reckless or evil spirits in among the houses. Spirits could smell death; everyone knew that. They could smell death on her. They swarmed where fate lay heaviest.
Death’s shadow had touched her, so the villagers feared that any person she touched might be poisoned by death’s kiss as well.
She said the night prayer to the Pale Hunter and lay still until sleep called her, but sleep brought no respite. Tossing and turning, she dreamed of standing alone and small in a blinding wind as death came for her.
Could the great weaving possibly succeed? Or would it all be for naught, despite everything?