Free Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott Page B

ill-feeling between two peoples who should better remain at peace. In evidence of the earnest intent of his words, he showed an armband in gold that was both broader and heavier than the one that had been given Arosted the salt trader when he delivered his message in the other direction. In trading with the warriors of the red kite, he was able to offer a great many brooches of high value but few spearheads or sword blanks, having already shed most of his stock.
    Gunovic passed through the Coritani and on north to the homelands of the Brigantes, fierce-fighting followers of Briga, where he found that he did, in fact, have iron to trade, including several dozen good Eceni spearheads, together with the rumour, provenance unknown, that the Coritani were massing to attack their northern neighbours. He was well rewarded and enjoyed his stay and turned west towards the mountains a rich and happy man.
     
    IV.
    LATE SPRING MOVED INTO SUMMER AND BROUGHT AN EARLY drought. The heat was greater than anyone remembered it. The air sucked moisture from ground and people alike. Horses stood in pairs in the shade of the hawthorns, flicking their tails in each other’s faces. In the roundhouse, the door-flap was raised to its fullest and the fire damped to a bare minimum. The elder grandmother slept naked on top of her furs with her arms stretched out sideways to let off more heat. In the forge, the fires had been cut to a single glowing coal. Nobody moved who did not have to.
    Breaca found Airmid by the sacred pool beneath the waterfall. The older girl lay stretched like a lizard on a scoop of rock. A nine-stemmed hazel grew out of a crack beside her, its leaves throwing oval shadows equally on the rock, her body and the water. The patterns shifted with the lift and stir of the breeze, blurring her outline so that, walking past, it would have been easy to miss her. Even knowing exactly where to look, Breaca still had to stand and wait until her eyes had made the change from sunlight to shadows and could pick out the dark of sunned skin against the lichen-dappled stone. When she was sure, she climbed up on a different rock and sat for a while studying Airmid, watching the pattern of her breathing and trying to see if her eyes were open. In time, when it seemed clear that the girl was awake and not dreaming, Breaca slid down, laid her gift on the ground between them, returned and settled herself to wait.
    And wait. Behind her, a stand of mixed thorns and hornbeams buzzed with life. At the corner of the spinney a small, slate-grey bird caught flies and fastened them with careful intelligence to the spikes of a blackthorn bush. Elsewhere, a wagtail moved from stone to stone across the water, filling its beak with insects, carrying them in relays to a waiting nest. On its third trip, it gave way to a kingfisher, a streak of blue light with the sun-bloom on its belly that flashed down over the water and dived for a fish in the centre. Seventeen heartbeats passed before it surfaced, carrying no fish. Frowning, Breaca watched the water close over the place it had been. It did not seem right that a bird should have gone to the realm of the gods and come back empty-handed. She looked over to Airmid, wanting to talk, but the other girl’s eyes stared blankly out across the water. It was possible, after all, that she was dreaming. Breaca let out the breath she had been holding and went back to waiting. This time, she did not watch the pool.
    Everyone dreams. From before she could walk, from before she could speak more than her own and her mother’s name, Breaca had listened to others talk of their dreams and their dreaming. It had come to her early that while her mother had dreams - colourful, vivid, lively dreams with great bearing on her life and her family - Macha and the elder grandmother spent time alone dreaming and came back to the roundhouse with their eyes fixed on faraway places and the words of the gods on their lips. At much the same time,