Free Only the Stones Survive: A Novel by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

protested my mother.
    “You yourself pointed out how much he has grown, Lerys. Our boy needs the sort of exercise that builds men.”
    My father took me to a distant meadow where my mother would not have to watch. He carved a serviceable sword for me out of an ash branch, with leaves curling around the hilt, and showed me how to place my feet … just so … and how to bend and weave with my body as I swung the weapon.
    At first I was clumsy, but I soon became agile and enjoyed every moment as my father and I circled each other, feinting and attacking. I could see how much fun a real battle would be.
    My father remarked, “You should have some brothers to practice with. I cannot bring myself to strike you, but obviously you need to take a few knocks. A few hard knocks,” he stressed. “We must invite your male cousins to visit us. Perhaps they are big enough by now.” He seemed preoccupied, however, and forgot to summon them.
    When I boasted to the Dagda of my improving battle skills, he said, “Do not mistake warriors for heroes.”
    “But they are heroic!”
    “Only if you consider killing to be heroic. Death is not the purpose of life, Joss. Life is the purpose of life.”
    “Then who are the heroes?”
    “Those who master the mind.” He tapped his skull with his knuckles. “Theirs is the victory. No sword lasts forever.”
    I could not resist arguing, and he knew it. “Minds die too,” I countered. “When a person dies, his head dies and his brain and…”
    “Thought does not die,” the old man interrupted. “Thought has no body to be killed.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Now you display the beginning of wisdom.”
    As the tiny new leaves began to spring out on the trees, we dug into the soft earth with our fingers and planted seeds. Once again I worked beside my parents. “This autumn you and I are going to make flour from the grain we’ve planted,” my mother promised. “The bread we bake will be almost as good as Melitt’s.”
    Then Mongan began going away again.
    Goddess weather, my mother called it. The season of the sun. She never said battle season.
    But that is what it was.
    I have a very clear memory of the Day of Triumph. For a number of nights my father had not come home at all, and my mother could not hide her anxiety. At last Mongan returned to announce that the enemy had withdrawn without doing any harm to our people. He lifted Lerys into his arms and swung her around and around while she laughed with glee. She was a laughing woman, my mother. In their joy the two of them were like children themselves.
    I danced about them, asking questions. “Which enemy? The Iverni? Or the Fír Bolga?”
    “The invaders from the south,” my father replied in an unguarded moment. Only then did I realize something important had been kept from me. “We tried a new defensive technique against the men with blue swords. They saw monsters form from shadows and giants take shape from trees. The illusions in their own minds frightened them so badly they will never bother us again.”
    Try as I might, I cannot remember my parents’ faces at that happy moment. I only recall the glowing tapestries on the walls of our home. In Goddess weather my mother wove them from fresh flowers every morning.
    Scenes from the long and joyful lives of the Túatha Dé Danann.
    All of the Danann clans celebrated the Day of Triumph. We did not journey to the Gathering Place but traveled from one clan’s territory to another, a colorful parade of men and women and children too. New songs were sung and new dances created to commemorate the event. People assured each other that the invaders would leave our shores before the next change of the moon, for who would face a repeat of such a terrifying experience?
    They were mistaken in their optimism. Although the moon changed the invaders remained. Stubbornly, the foreigners built shelters and hunted game and foraged for edibles and stayed on Ierne through another