Dreaming the Eagle Read Free Page B

and then the forest, which held greater dangers than a boy of eight could handle. He was forbidden, on pain of cursing, to pass through the gate at night without adult company. If the Coritani attacked and he were about to die, or be dragged into slavery, he might flout the rule, but not otherwise.
    So then, where to look? He chewed his lip and turned a slow circle, listening. The sounds of the night rang in his ears: the wet panting of the dogs, the crop and step of mares in the paddock beyond the ditch, the whicker of a nursing foal, and far out and once only the call of an owl to its young and a single high squeak in return. All he could hear of people was his father’s breathing, the roll of it dulled only slightly by the wall between them.
    He had decided to walk in a circle, following the path of the moon, when he heard a sound that was not of the night: the single yelping cry of a hound in pain and a cushioning murmur of voices, his mother’s among them. It was what he was waiting for. He ran as fast as he could, taking care for the mess of the midden, and came up, panting, at the door to the women’s place on the far western edge of the enclosure, opposite the entrance. There he stopped. When he was very small, his mother had taken him inside with her to lie in the moss, while the rise and fall of her voice kept him peaceful. Then he had passed through childhood to boyhood and the visits had slowed and ceased altogether. Twelve months more and he would be forbidden so much as to stand in front of the entrance. He stood in front of it now and heard the bitch cry out a second time; a sharp, wheedling cry of pain. The brindle dog paced at his side, whining. It was not a patient hound and had no idea that the male was not welcome inside. It clawed at the door-skin, pulling it sideways, and the boy found himself standing in an open doorway, with his eyes screwed against the sudden glare of the fire, withering under the combined stare of every woman he knew.
    ‘Ban?’ His mother’s voice carried over the sucked-in breaths of the others. Her shape moved on the far side of the fire. Beside her, he saw a flash of hair the colour of a fox in autumn, bending over a single, still form on the floor. His dream came back to him, suddenly, cripplingly. He had forgotten it in the search for the bitch. Now it swamped his senses. He stumbled forward against the carved post of the doorway. The marks of the horse and the wren untwined themselves from the rest and whirled over his head.
    ‘Ban!’
    He was too near the fire. He could feel the heat of it through his shins. It was very hot. They had been burning birch, well aged, to give off the most light and the least smoke. Somewhere else, sage smoked thickly. His mother caught him and spun him round, turning him away from the fire. She was kneeling, her face close to his. He blinked through tears that were only partly the sage. ‘I had a dream,’ he said, and his voice was a child’s. ‘I was riding a mare with hair like Breaca’s.’
    ‘That’s good.’ Her voice was gentle. Her hands were less so. ‘The hawthorn speaks to you. I thought that it might. Come back with me now and you can tell me your dream.’
    He strained to turn round. The dream had not been of a mare alone. ‘The hound?’ he asked. ‘Is she well?’
    ‘She’s very tired. It’s been a long night. She will be better by dawn.’
    ‘And the whelp? The black one with the white head?’
    He heard the grandmothers hiss behind him. It was not a good sound. The fingers on his shoulders dug in tighter. ‘Home,’ said his mother. ‘Now.’ And then, coming back to herself, ‘We can talk of it there.’
    ‘Why so, Macha?’ The voice was an old one, smoked dry by the years. ‘There is no need for haste now. The child has seen as much as he is ever going to. If the smoke has brought him, perhaps it is up to the smoke to choose when to let him go.’
    The grip on his shoulders relaxed. He took his chance