“I should be terrified,” Eilan said somberly.
“I am sure of it; but I am not afraid of my own company. And I can think of my music as much as I wish, without a lesson or a duty interfering. So I shall be quite content,” Caillean assured her. “There is nothing in this punishment – if she will call it so – to trouble me.”
Eilan said no more, and she knew that at least when it came to waiting upon Lhiannon, she and Dieda would willingly share Caillean’s duties between them. Well, that was no hardship; she loved Lhiannon in spite of her flaws, and she knew that her kinswoman loved her too. She would miss Caillean, though.
Now it occurred to her that if Lhiannon had been a different type of person she herself might have been beaten or severely punished. Whatever Caillean made of this penalty, it was Eilan who had brought it upon the older woman. For that she felt guilty, but not enough to regret her meeting with Gaius. She only wished she had been able to say half of what she wanted to, though what that was she could not have named.
When Caillean departed from the Forest House, Eilan realized that the older woman was really not much of a favorite with the other women there. Only Miellyn and Eilidh seemed to be truly her friends — and of course Lhiannon.
The weather changed as summer moved towards autumn. As the equinox approached there was rain, and late one evening, while the women in the House of Maidens were seated around the fire, Eilan found herself thinking of Caillean in her exile. Was the roof of the hut leaky? How did she react to the solitude and the silence of the forest?
The women had been inventing riddles, and at last, tired of this pastime, they asked Dieda to sing or to tell them a story.
Dieda acquiesced. “What would you like me to tell you?”
“Tell us a tale of the Otherworld,” said Miellyn. “Tell us how Bran son of Febal voyaged to the western land. All the bards learn that one.”
And so Dieda half told, half chanted, the tale of Bran and his encounter with the sea god Manannan, Lord of Illusion, who turned the sea into a flowering grove of trees, the fish into birds flying in the air, the waves into flowering bushes, and the sea creatures into sheep; so it seemed as if they sailed through a flowering grove. And when Manannan fell out of the boat, the waves rushed in, so that the sea god was cast upon the shore and all the other men drowned.
When she had finished they called for another tale, like little children sitting spellbound.
“Tell the story of the King and the Three Hags,” suggested one of the women, and Dieda began as all tales were begun.
“A long time ago, times were better than now, and there were more gates between the Otherworld and this, and if I had been there, I should not now be here . . .well then, in a longer time ago than the oldest grandfather can tell, in a house on the borders of the Underworld, there lived a king and his queen . . .
“And it was on the eve of Samaine, when the gates between the world are open, and at the time between times, between the midnight of one year and the dawn of the next, there came to the door three hags. The first had a snout like a pig, and her lower lip hung down to her knees and concealed her garment; the second had lips both on one side of her head and a beard which hung down concealing her breasts; and the third was a hideous creature with one arm and one leg. Under her arm she carried a pig which was so much better looking than she was that it was as if the pig were a princess.”
By this time all the women were laughing. Dieda herself smiled a little and went on. “The three hags came in and took three seats by the fire so that there were no seats by the fire for the King and his queen, who were forced to take seats by the door.