A Meeting At Corvallis

And there's the religious aspect, of course."
"Yeah, but I was always teasing her about the Celtic stuff she put on to go with her music before the
Change," Dennis said. "Sort of a running joke, you know? And the way her coveners—I was a cowan
back then, didn't believe in anything much—were always making like Cuchulain or Deirdre of the
Sorrows or whatever and raiding the Irish myths for symbols the way the old Erse stole each other's
cows. So when the first bunch of us got here right after the Change, and she said we'd have to live like a
clan to survive, I was the one who pushed for all this stuff 'cause I knew she hadn't meant that literally.
There wasn't much to laugh at back then, and it was fun."
He looked around. "I didn't expect it to catch on this … emphatically."
"It certainly has," Nigel observed, matching his glance.
The Englishman had heard the building's story from Juniper. Her great-uncle the banker had been the
single wealthy exception to the modest middle-class rule of the Mackenzies, and he'd bought the site of
the ancestral homestead and the forest around it as a country hunting-lodge; her parents had visited every
July as far back as she could remember and, later, more than once she'd spent a whole summer here, just
she and the old man, walking the woods and learning the plants and the beasts. It had been the last of the
childless bachelor's many eccentricities to leave the house and land to the teenage single mother she'd
been, more than a decade before the Change.
The lodge had been built in the 1920s of immense Douglas fir logs on a knee-high foundation of
mortared fieldstone; originally it had been plain on the interior, and divided into several rooms as well.
The budding Clan Mackenzie had ripped out the partitions when they put on a second story late in the
first Change Year, leaving a great wooden box a hundred feet by forty; on the north side a huge stone
hearth was flanked by two doors leading to the new lean-to kitchens, and on the other three walls
windows looked out onto verandas roofed by the second-story balconies.
And it certainly isn't plain anymore, he thought.
Over the years since, the great logs that made up the walls had been smoothed and carved, stained
and inlaid and painted, until they were a sinuous riot of colored running knot-work that reminded him of
the Book of Kells, crossed with Viking-era animal-style and a strong dash of Art Nouveau. Faces
peered out of that foliage, the multitude of Aspects borne by the twin deities of Juniper Mackenzie's faith;
the Green Man, stag-antlered Cernunnos, goat-horned Pan; flame-crowned Brigid with her sheaf of
wheat and Lugh of the Long Hand with his spear, Cerridwen, Arianrhod and silver-tongued Ogma,
Apollo and Athena, Zeus and Hera, Freya and one-eyed Odin, blond Sif and almighty red-bearded
Thor.
Beneath the high ceiling were carved the symbols of the Quarters; over the hearth comfrey and ivy
and sheaves of grain for North and the Earth; vervain and yarrow for Air and the East; red poppies and
nettles for the South and Fire; ferns and rushes and water lilies for West and the Waters.
A few people were doing touch-up work on it all, on ladders propped against the wall. Winter was
the slack season for farmers, and so time for maintenance work, and for leisure and crafts and ceremony.
There were others here, reading or playing at board games, three in animated discussion over the plans
for a new sawmill at another dun and a circle of younger children listening raptly to a storyteller in a
corner.
"I'm off," Dennis said to the Englishman as the practice group around the dais broke up, rising and
giving a nod to Juniper Mackenzie as she approached—and a wink to Nigel. "I've got apprentices doing
practice-pieces to check on and then Sally'll have dinner ready. 'Night, Juney."
"Tell Sally we need to talk about the Moon School schedule tomorrow, Den-nie," Juniper said, then:
"And how are you today, Nigel?" She sat and stretched out in a leather armchair, feet towards the fire on
a settee.
Sir Nigel Loring picked up his thick, white ceramic mug with his left hand. His fingers tightened on it
until the knuckles whitened and cords stood out in his forearm, and then relaxed.
"Your healer seems to be correct," he said. "Full function is returning."
Slowly and painjully, he added silently to himself; he'd never been a whiner. Old bones didn't mend
as fast as young, and that was all there was to it. And he was fifty-three now, even if a very fit fifty-three.