The Wrong Rite

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Authors: Charlotte MacLeod
roadsides, on the lawn of the town hall. She’d been startled one morning in Bangor, where they were staying at a rather classy hotel, to see a sheep with its nose pressed against the bathroom window, watching her brush her teeth. She didn’t see much point in trying to shoo this one over into the meadow, it would only wander back again if it took the notion. Drivers in rural areas were used to keeping a lookout for sheep; if they weren’t, they soon learned.
    “Good thing they’re such docile creatures,” she remarked.
    “Not always.” Madoc wished the subject hadn’t come up. “A ram can be as mean as a billy goat. Worse, because they look so sheepish you don’t think anything’s going to happen. One of Uncle Caradoc’s rams got me in the seat of the pants when I was a kid. I flew about six feet and landed in a mudhole. Mother was not pleased. She’d have thought I knew better than to go around teasing a poor, innocent sheep.”
    “You must have been a sore trial.” Janet slipped her arm through his and rubbed her cheek on his sleeve.
    “Oh, I was. You’re not planning to leap the balefire, are you?”
    “Perish the thought. I’ve got nothing against witches. I wouldn’t mind watching Mary, though. It’ll be tomorrow, won’t it? How late will they start?”
    “Not late. Shortly after the sun goes down, I expect. Perhaps the idea is to bring back the light. I’m not much up on folklore myself, I hear enough of it from crooks. Anyway, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go and watch, if you want to. We could take Dorothy, for that matter. At least in later years she can say she’s been.”
    “You’re thinking this might be the last time, aren’t you?”
    “I suppose so, Jenny. How could I help it?”
    “Uncle Caradoc looks fairly spry to me, dear. Of course we never know what’s going to happen.” Janet could hardly help thinking of her own parents and that logging truck her father hadn’t happened to notice quite soon enough. “Uncle Huw wouldn’t want to keep up the Beltane fires?”
    “I shouldn’t think so, he’s not too big on pagan rites. I suspect the main reason he and Aunt Elen stayed away from dinner last night is that Uncle Huw finds Bob’s gassing about folklore something of a pain, and particularly can’t stand Mary when she gets on about her leaping.”
    “Which shows his good taste, in my opinion. I expect I could work up a fairly healthy scunner to that pair myself, if I had to be around them long. How long are they planning to stay, do you know?”
    “Just through tomorrow night, I hope. Mother said something at dinner about their having an urgent appointment to haunt a house. I think she was being facetious, but I’m not quite sure. Well, well, look who’s coming. What’s the matter, Dafydd, did Aunt Elen throw you out for singing bawdy ballads? Where’s Tom?”
    “Peering interestedly down the front of Iseult’s blouse, the last I saw of him,” the elder brother replied. “Where did you park the kid?”
    “She’s taking a nap. Tad and Uncle Caradoc are baby-sitting.”
    “Chacun à son goût. Where are you off to?”
    “We thought we might pop in and say hello to Lisa, if she’s not too busy baking brown and white cakes.”
    “Why brown and white?”
    “That’s Bob’s latest crotchet. He was nagging Betty to bake a batch for some extra bit of hocus-pocus he wanted to tack on tomorrow night at the bonfire. She wasn’t interested.”
    “I’m sure Lisa wouldn’t be, either. Bob does tend to make one feel there’s something to be said for human sacrifice, don’t you think? Jenny, if you were delegated to hurl somebody into the fire tomorrow night, which would you pick: Bob or Mary?”
    “Well, I shouldn’t pick Bob because he has a nice singing voice even if he is a bore. And there’d be no point in my picking Mary because, from the way she’s been talking, she’d already be in it. Besides, it’s not polite to shove people into

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