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

darkseason. Their children grew taller and their livestock grew fat on rich green grass that did not die in the cold.
    Like a plague of hornets, the invaders emerged at the beginning of leaf-spring ready to fight again. Small skirmishes became major battles. The Dananns were pitted against a race that carried weapons made of a blue metal harder than bronze and that approached war with ferocious glee.
    We chose not to call the invaders by the name they gave themselves. Because of their behavior, we did not allow them the dignity of tribal identification. To us they were “the New People.” The name was meant as an insult, and bitter on the tongue.
    I asked the Dagda, “Does that mean we are the Old People?”
    “We were the new people here at one time,” he replied. “The incomers, the invaders. We meant no harm to Ierne; we brought our music and medicines and ways of thinking and intended to share them freely. But the earlier inhabitants were afraid of us. Perhaps we were too different. They attacked us while our boats were still coming ashore and made repeated efforts to slaughter our entire colony. When we tried to negotiate, they swept our words aside like the humming of bees. In the end, we were forced to defend ourselves. You know the rest.”
    “I know we used something called the Earthkillers. But what were they?”
    “A mistake,” said the Dagda.
    Time blurred. The faces of the adults blurred too; they looked haggard. Men and women from far-flung clans came to confer with my parents, sitting around our hearth and drinking honey wine and barley beer, making suggestions, planning strategies.
    I recall a conference that included both the Dagda and the Son of the Sun, as well as his wife, Eriu. My mother was visibly delighted to have them under her roof; she glowed that night. It was the last time I ever saw her glow.
    I should have listened more closely, but as usual my mind was wandering. Only one fragment of conversation caught my attention and stayed with me. “We are coming to another fork in the road,” Eriu said. “We must be strong. If we weaken now, we might as well be Unbodied.”
    I had never heard the word before. Afterward I asked the Dagda, “When she said Unbodied, was the great queen talking about dying?”
    “Not exactly,” he replied. Which told me nothing.
    “Then what did she mean?”
    “Being Unbodied is to stand outside oneself as an observer.”
    I felt an icy finger trace along my spine. “How do you get back in?”
    “It is very difficult; the condition is not to be recommended.”
    “Then what is dying?”
    “Dying is not the last thing but the least thing, Joss. Think of it as another way of traveling.”
    And that was all the answer I got.
     
     
    We had one more harvest before leaf-fall, although not the bounty of times past. The heads of grain were more brown than gold; they drooped upon their stalks like the heads of weary children. My mother said the energy that should have gone into stimulating the earth was being redirected elsewhere.
    The men of our clan helped my father cut the grain we had planted. In spite of his age, even the Dagda helped. He looked almost as strong as a young man if you did not get too close. I swung a scythe myself until my entire body ached. As soon as our crop was gathered and stored, the men left to harvest someone else’s field. Mongan went with them, of course.
    Sometimes I heard Lerys crying softly in her bed.
    Then the sun hid his face and the dark came back.
     
     
    Under the pressure of the invaders, battle had not been limited to sunseason but bled over into autumn and then into darkseason, so we had no festivals to celebrate the changes. That was the sort of enemy we fought. Foreigners who had no respect for anything.
    Yet from snatches of adult conversation, I realized that not everyone wanted to fight them. I heard my mother say, “They are refugees just as our ancestors were, Mongan. We do not know what catastrophe drove them