Lugh stalked off into the night.  His mind was a-whirl with thoughts, with memories that he’d shaded with pleasantness only days ago, the pleasure of Von, hopes that she might at least remember him well.  But all such thoughts were ashes.  “They killed her.” Oatie had said and he had seen in her eyes that she even feared the same from him. 

Lugh didn’t even know for sure who “They” might be, but he felt guilt for it.  Guilt for his carelessness if nothing else.  Guilt for not knowing what had become of Von and for what had come of his good intention toward her.  I didn’t think you might be in danger, I only knew that I was.

Lugh heard movement behind him.  He had no desire to talk of it, only to think and be alone with this revelation.  He had long experience with running away, he realized, and so it was no hard thing for him to slip away from Oatie. 

I needed to remember, to sort out my life.  His hand went to the bones on the thong around his neck.  I only wanted good for you, but I did nothing to make it so.  Oh bones of Von, were you ever my friend or only a curse for what I’d done?

The night among the trees was dark, but the sky was full of stars.  Lugh looked to the heavens for answers, but the stars had none.  He walked silently in the night seeking a place to think and await the dawn.  What had he done with the life that Von had given him, it seemed, at the cost of her’s?  Not much to tell.

There had been things to do.  Weyland’s kingdom under the Western Mountains had been endlessly fascinating.  Well, as endlessly fascinating as things got for a god with a short attention span.  I’d quite forgotten that when I fled the Norfolk by the Saffron River, I didn’t stop my running until I reached the Western Mountains and hid myself there.  Weyland had no more love for Lyr than did I, though Lyr wasn’t trying to kill the lord under the mountain.

I’d planned to return to Von, wanted to, expected it, planned that return, but always I put it off until there was no more reason, until Von would have looked more like my mother than a girl like Oatie.  And then, after leaving the mountain halls of Loki, after living among the tribes above the desert south, there was then no chance that she would even be alive at all. 

It wasn’t Lyr that tried to kill me then, no, a daliance in the Gallic south had nearly done for me.  The Cult of the Virgin turned those refugees of the Tuath wars into murderous monsters.  I blame the endless red day and I did not mind leaving all that behind. 

Why am I always blown from one place to another?  Weyland has his mines.  Lyr has claimed the East.  Most of my brothers and sisters live in the misty Islands of the Inner Sea.  Even Bridgit seems to have gone to ground somewhere.  I don’t hear about her moving around like I hear about my old travels.  Strange to hear the tales of your own wandering.

They, whoever They might have been, probably shieldmen of his brother, Lyr, but that was only a guess, They had killed her.  Small comfort, he was not there to defend her, he never went back even to learn that she’d died.  If not for him Von would have lived.  What to do with that realization?

Should he not simply run?  Lugh thought, turning the idea over in his mind much more than he would normally, it was a night for thinking.  Who knew if Lyr would kill him now?  And yet he ran, or at least it seemed for one reason or another, often the same one, he ran and kept running though a trail that Lyr might have followed was now hundreds of years old.  The running began with Lyr, but the habit of it was just that, a habit that had become him, not an action taken for any real reason.

Lugh drifted through a young forest that rose above their camp-site, feeling his way with his feet, arms out to tough the young trees, and eyes that grew ever more accustomed to the starry night. 

This of the Norfolk is good work, he thought, making of a barren land a garden.  Sadness washed over him, If only I had shared this with Von, seen this with her, would she even have come with me?  I wonder.

Lugh came to a prominence, a rocky projection where the land fell away all around him.  He looked up at the blaze of starlight.  Look there is the Stranger, down on the horizon the great dark moon hung.  He gazed at that great hole in the starry host.  Suddenly, Traveller set a glow on the horizon before leaping into the sky, shining in colors of blue and gold and red, as it tumbled into the starry night.  How many times have I seen you, and this time the most surprising of all?  Lugh laughed, where are you going old friend?  Why shouldn’t I come with you?  Oh, that’s right, I can’t fly.

Oatie was moving quickly up the hill.  The exuberance of youth.  No respect for elders, thought Lugh.  He was about to ask her what the rush was when she stopped, looking out from where she stood.  Lugh saw that it was the top of the ridge and he saw that she was gazing out over the landscape below.

“I love this view,” Oatie said.

It was beautiful, the land laid out in green and blue, a patchwork of wilderness.  Perhaps more to a Norfolk like Oatie who might think, there’s where I planted those trees, hey look there is my field of wildflowers.  “I see what you mean.  You can see for miles up here.”

She looked at him and smiled, “Know what you don’t see?”

He scanned the land laid out before him.  It was beautiful, there were lakes, hills crowned with trees, swaths of color, but it was a puzzle to him what she meant.  He looked back the way they came, searching for some idea.  Strangely, but not really, the Norfolk intended, but still, it was surprising that the world seemed as empty behind them as before, “I can’t even see the sidhe from here.”

She laughed again, “That’s it!” Without another word Oatie Moss began to march down the path, whistling as she went.

Lugh paused to look around a bit more and to ponder.  He hadn’t pegged Oatie as being anti-social.  Perhaps she had her reasons.  Lugh, for his part, was accustomed to solitary periods.  Fleeing for one’s life makes it preferable, but Lugh thought he mostly liked to be around people.  Whatever, his current company had improved.  He thought, It seems that Oatie might not actually hate me at all, but rather she might have suffered the oppression of the thick human soup that was life in the sidhe. 

Lugh started after Oatie.  Not for the first time, he wondered why he found her so intriguing.  Then she turned and smiled at him and there was no more reason to think.

What she was, Lugh thought, was socially awkward.  She was precocious in her understanding of giants and in mobilizing her folk to fight them.  She was sweet and, it seemed at times, flirtatious by turns with him.  She knew him, knew of his extremely long life, understood to some extent what that meant, could hold her own despite his experience, and yet Oatey seemed totally awkward in the rest of her life.

He found her fascinating.  He found her frightening.

Lugh rubbed the tethered divination bones around his neck.  Again he wondered about those bones.  Did the Norfolk woman, Von, protect her kin with their guidance and not him primarily?  Could bits of bone be more than their substance?  Of course, he used them for guidance. 

With a jolt Lugh realised that in truth he did depend on them.  What madness?  He trusted their directed randomness when he was unsure, likely when decisions were the most critical.  What could he do but shake his head, was his life no more than a string of accidents and this of Oatey Moss just the latest of centuries worth.

Lugh sighed, she had been inconsolable, weeping from embarrassment for leaving him, at least she had represented that as her reason for her tears.  He had held her while her tears drenched him, stroked her hair through wracking sobs, and layed beside her in confusion when she drifted off to sleep.

Finally, he too had slept.  He hadn’t sensed her leaving, so it was alone again that he woke in her room full of books, abandoned, still not knowing her or even the way out of this infernal warren.  Oatey Moss was frustrating like Von had never been.

He drew off his bones and unstrung them from their cord.  They were old, yellowed, and polished by his chest where they rode, and the by the years.  He knew the marks well, but their original intent he could not guess, had never even thought to imagine.  Perhaps Von had her revenge after all. 

Perhaps by these she knew him, after he had fled, reading his heart where they lay, and then she must have hated what she saw there.  “Oh bones of Von. . .”  He caressed them with familiarity, like a talisman of self, though they were no such thing.  These had been given him and they had shaped him by accident or by intent, for twice a hundred years and more.  The urge came to throw them away, but it was the feeling of a moment only and he pressed them between his palms and whispered them,  “Tell me true, do you serve me?” 

Lugh breathed his life on them like an incantation and released them upon the bed.  They fell, he read, one mark first, and three marks. . .” His stomach lurched, he felt a moment of sickness, but then he saw, and with a rush was relieved, “. . . gods be good, two marked, so yes.”

How important was it to know if he could trust his most trusted councilors, these bones?  He was alarmed when a mad titter slipped out unbidden.  Was he mad?  No, he meant to wonder if he was mad to trust the bones, surely, “Oh bones. . .”  He cursed himself for weak foolishness.  “One and Two and Three can’t tell me what I don’t know to ask.” 

Lugh pressed bones and cupped hands against his forehead, though his mind was empty, but fearful.  Tension built in him.  He should throw, how else to know?  But what to know? He felt himself casting without a question, his body doing without thought.  Can I trust her? It came to his mind as the bones spilled.  There was rustling he heard, someone coming. 

“I thought we might need some breakfast.  I hope I found things you like.” Oatey said in a bright happy voice as she swept back into his world.

Lugh glanced and thought he saw a three and maybe another before he scooped up his divination bones.  “I wondered where you’d got to.”  He said with casualness that he knew for a lie.

Lugh went looking for Oatey after the not so honorable Martel Jones had left.  The party was over, but there were still folk cleaning and straightening.  Polite directions and sly smiles followed him as he wandered from server to cook to reveler to chambermaid and at last through passages, dark and narrow, to a low doorway, curtained, and beyond it, a dark chamber.

“Oatey?” He called softly, not wishing to disturb folk behind other curtains in the nearby rooms.  He glanced about for another helpful source of direction, but finding none he pulled aside the curtain and called into the room, “Oatey? Might I speak to you?” There was no answer from the small chamber and no light to reveal it.

A fine fix, he had little enough confidence that he could find his way back out and none that he could find the girl, thought Lugh.  He hovered in the doorway wondering if he should feel around in the dark for a place to sit or a light or just go.  This is my chance to be rid of her and her giant killing.  Martel Jones does have a point about Oatey Moss and Peace being mutually exclusive.

“Its considered rude to hover in doorways, Lugh,” said Oatey Moss. 

He might have jumped, but Oatey didn’t seem to notice.  She slipped past him and reached up inside the doorway for a candle and a chemical match which she struck against stone and brought to the taper.  “Welcome to my home, such as it is.  I went looking for you and heard from a few that the blond youth was asking for me.”  She slipped inside, drawing aside the curtain so he could pass into the cramped space beyond.

The place was small, there was room for a bed and not much else.  The tight quarters were made tighter by stacks and stacks of books that covered nearly everything but the bed and a narrow path that led to it.  “It’s cluttered,” said Oatey, suddenly embarrassed, “here, sit on the bed.”  She slipped by him on the path and found a book stack to perch on.

Lugh sat on the bed and looked at the girl, she was flustered, here in her home, when before leaders, warriors, and giants she was supremely confident.  Lugh wondered how both of those women could be Oatey or indeed which was the real one.  “I didn’t know where you were.  I really don’t know anyone here either, except you.”

She looked up at him in dismay, “Oh my, I didn’t think about that.” 

Before Lugh could recover from the shock of her clear innocent embarrassment Oatey Moss, giant killer, burst into tears. 

She was always doing that, surprising him.