Lugh jogged a little to catch up to Oatey and stalked along now as annoyed as she seemed to be angry.  “So what did I do?” He began, “I’m used to being treated as a pariah, but at least I usually know my offense.  Commonly it is the same one. . .”

“I don’t want to talk . . .” said Oatey but Lugh cut her off.

“Well, I DO want to talk.  I always want to talk.  If you want to spend time with me in the future you will have to become accustomed to my talk, because that’s what I do, I talk.”  Lugh took a step or two more before adding, “and though I don’t mind carrying a conversation I do like to hear the occasional word. . .”

“I’ve nothing to say.”

“As if that makes any difference,” Lugh mumbled to himself before trying again, “First, perhaps you can tell me what I did.”

“Nothing at all.  I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Nothing AND I don’t want to talk about it.”  Lugh countered, “So there IS something.”

Oatey stopped dead and Lugh stopped a bit beyond her, turning back as she said quietly, “Why are you following me Lugh?”

Her pain was palpable, overwhelming, and it shocked Lugh into silence.  She stared hopelessly into his eyes a moment, but a couple of Norfolk walked up to them in the corridor, and in making way Oatey pushed past him.  She continued on up the corridor without his answer.  Lugh followed silently.

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.

The two sat upon the top of the hill beneath a great spreading oak and looked out across the plain.  The boy and his grandfather shared a bit of flat bread, a bit of cheese and some water from a water skin.  There were birds on the wing, water fowl, a hawk, song birds as well.  The old man enjoyed the quiet for a few moments, but his grandson could not let the moment last.

“Grandfather, what is the Dagda?” Bres asked.

“Not what, but who,” began Dream-Walker, “the Dagda was a giant who lived among the Deer-Riders.  Long ago, before the Gobli ravaged the plain, before we all took to horse, and even before the Deer-Riders rode their herd deer. 

“In fact it was not so much after the first men came down and scattered the grass on the plain and the trees on the hills, planted all that we eat and all that we hunt, this was long and long ago, when Danu’s children moved from the Palace of Glass to Sliebe na Gael down South.  It was the Deer-Rider’s ancestors who were charged with making the world green and it was those same folk who fought the ice wall that threatened to destroy us all.

“Now at this time the goddess Danu made every woman who had borne her first child take a child of Danu’s making.  This was the womb duty and some were good people who just needed to be born, but there were some that were changelings, and some were just evil so that the saying was, “trust a first, a third and a fourth, but never trust a second born nor a seventh.”  That was the womb duty, and that was what they were like, and then some were giants.”

“How could a woman give birth to a giant?”

“Ah, well that shows what you know, a giant isn’t born so.  How big were you when you were born? Not so very, but you ate and you grew.  Isn’t that so?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well that’s how it is with giants too.  They eat and they grow, they eat and they grow, and they eat and eat and eat and they grow grow grow.  A giant is always hungry and if you feed him he grows and he never stops growing until he stops eating.  That’s how it was with a fellow named Eochaid.

“Now this Eochaid was the second child of a man named Calvert Moss and his wife named Mandy.  That is he was a womb duty child, but they treated him as one of their own, and loved him like the rest of their children.  But Eochaid was the hungriest of all their children.  He was always hungry and his loving parents fed him and he grew and grew until he was much taller than an ordinary man even before he was twelve years old.  What made it worse was that none of the other Mosses, not even Calvert or Mandy, was tall.  In fact they were very short.

“The more the Mosses’ fed young Eochaid, the more he grew.  That was clear.  But there were other things that were odd.  Mandy’s eyes and hair were brown, Calvert’s hair was black, and his eyes were green, and so too, all the other Moss children were a mix of one or the other, but not Eochaid.  His hair was firey red, like copper.  His eyes were blue, like ice.  He was tall for his age, but he was born with teeth in his mouth, which went hard on poor Mandy, and too, He had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.  SO, how do you know a giant when he is young?”

Bres pondered, “His fingers and his feet, his hair, and his height?”

“All good clues.  And this too, in his mouth you may see that he has two sets of teeth where you or I have only one.  That you may see when he is young, but you will know him as he is driven by his appetite to eat, and when allowed his way, he will not cease to grow.”

“You say you will know him, grandfather, are there no girl giants then?”

Dream-Walker smiled at his grand-son, ”Well that you have asked, for there are no giant females.  These creatures are the Nephilim reborn and they take there wives from among normal men, if you imagine that a woman who would be the wife of a giant is in any way normal.”

“And Eochaid was one of them?  Giants I mean, not giant wives.”

“He was that, but he was the first of them and he was more influenced by his family who loved him than by others.  The giants grew wicked.  Their hunger made them selfish and a bit mad, I think.  Eochaid grew and grew.  He had six fingers on each hand and six toes to a foot, he had copper hair and cold eyes, but Eochaid had a remarkable father and mother and loving brothers and sisters and that made all the difference.

“So, though he grew to be twice the size of a man, and more, he used his great strength and size to help the people who loved him and who he loved.  I’ve told you about the great underground raths of the Deer-Riders.  When the Norfolk fought to save the plains and stood against the advancing ice it was the raths that Eochaid built that made it possible, that kept them safe, that kept them warm.

The Gaels had a legend of a man who used his strength to benefit his people and this “good god” or “the Dagda” had a great appetite and used his strength to make great ring forts.  They called him the Dagda but the legend says that he was first called Eochaid.  Strange to think them both named the same, but the new Eochaid came to be called after the old, a rath builder, enormously strong, good, they called him the Dagda.”

Bres eyed his grandfather skeptically, “Really Grandfather, do you think that story is true?”

Dream-Walker carefully got to his feet, “I do, I believe that and more.  But right now I believe that we have a fish to catch.”

“The Bass of Knowledge?”

“The same.”  And hand in hand they walked down to the pond.

“It is not my custom to let it be known who I might be,” said Lugh, “or who I might not be.  You seem quite certain of yourself.  Let’s assume you are correct and, assuming it, go forward quietly.”

“So you admit. . .”

“If asked, I am Finn, as you can see.  But I will not have it said that Oatey is a liar.  She is guiltless.”

“She is NOT guiltless, nor is she guiless.” Huffed the Norfolk, “What that girl is, beyond doubt, is trouble.”

Lugh laughed at that, and then laughed the louder when the man turned purple with pent anger, “Indeed, it’s good to know that on at least that we agree.”

The man glanced around conspiratorially, “So you see our dilemma.  There is no doubting her power, or her popularity among the young and, might I add, the foolish.  This can only lead to trouble.  Trouble bigger than one fourteen foot giant I should think as well.”

“Are you the girl’s father?” asked Lugh.

“NO!” barked the man, then quieter, “No, her parents are gone, both of them.”

“. . . and you want me to steer the girl.  Away from giants?  Away from here?”

The man seemed to ooze slime as he smiled at Lugh, “You and I are men of the world, Finn, if you like.  Surely one so experienced can guide her away from these troubling matters and leave our folk in peace.”

“What of these giants?  Isn’t this a service she supplies?  I can only imagine what a creature like that monster would have done if she had not lured it to its death.  She claims that these giants can be shrewd, that they have allies.”

“Aye, that she pretends to be one of these Giant wives to lure them, she says.  You know a woman is the wife to one man, but what if this giant was not her mate?  Fine, she lures him to his death.  What if she is the wife of a far worse giant?  Maybe she has roused him already and uses us to kill off his rivals.  What if she betrays us?  The giants sleep until she rouses them.  Let them sleep I say.  Let them sleep and we will all live a more peaceful life.

“I see, I will think on this, but how much I will not say.  Can I take seriously this, whispered in my ear by a man I’ve never before met, nor even know his name?”

“As you say, Finn.” said the Norfolk, ”Then I will tell you, my name is Martel Jones, Chief of the Oakwood Sidhe, and First Speaker of the Conclave of Elders.”

The man watched as his young friends fled.  Lugh found a drink un-spilled in his hand and decided that a sign.  He drank, draining the rest of it in one long pull.  Even that time was not enough for the man, he stood, back toward Lugh, watching as the young men fled.  Lugh began to grow concerned, was this the girl’s father?

“Are you the one we call the Youth?”

“Well, how would I know. . .”

“Do not toy with me.  Are you one of the unatural children of the goddess Dana?  Lugh of the long journeys some call you.”  The man turned, his eyes bore into Lugh’s, “But when you came to us before, some 300 years gone, we called you the Youth.  At least that is what we called you after you left us.”

“I am called Finn . . .”

“You call yourself that, Oatey calls you Lugh, Lugh Lamfada, the far reacher, the one of the long journeys.  You have white hair, so you are Finn, well and good.  Anyone can see that.  Do you deny you are the creature Lugh Lamfada then?  Is that how you came to the Norfolk when we sheltered you from your brother?”

“. . . the creature. . .”

The Norfolk barked a humorless laugh.  “Really, you would bridle at being called creature, when you are hundreds of years old, when you look no older now then when you left us and brought on us the wrath of Baelor and all this of the giants.  Really, creature is not to your liking?  How about demon then, how about monster?”

“How about man?”

“How can that be, Finn?  Man?  I don’t know what you are, but man does not describe you.”

“Did I say I was this Lugh creature?”

“No, you deny it.  You call yourself Finn and doing so you call Oatey Moss a liar.”  The Norfolk grinned, but there was nothing of laughter in it.

Lugh ground his teeth.  Who was this pompous prosecutor?  Lugh regretted the beer and the evening.  He might even have regretted Oatey and the giant hunt, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to that.  “You have me at a disadvantage, you accuse me, but I don’t even know your name or by what rite you question.  You seem ready to hang me for this thing of Baelor of which I know nothing.  And I thought the Norfolk a civil folk, but is this how you treat a guest?  This is what passes for hospitality in the North?