swans and magpies


The banshees gaped and stared, then giggled. The taller girl's long freckled face belied a shrewd look with popinjay eyes and a toothy lopsided smile. Thin as a sheaf of wheat, straight red hair tumbled to her bottom whilst narrow braids tied off by sleeves of many hued threads fell with flat locks over a black cutty sark. Each wore a sparkling platinum nose ring grazing the top of her lips. Alikely wraithish in black longstockings they walked in blond wooden klompen.

"Hi Gormglaith, I'm Bairrfhionn Sparkenbane," said the taller one, holding out a hand, her smile an edgy sway. "I'm thrilled to meet thee!"

Bairrfhionn

"Hi!"

"Gwenhwyfer Sparkenbane," the other put shyly with a hint of Frisian lilt, her yellow, chin length hair freaked with white, swaying lank at the sides but combed straight back on top, nose ring glinting as she leaned forward to grasp hands.

Gwenhwyfer

"Hi!" Gormglaith echoed like greeting someone at thorpe school as Bairrfhionn spotted her twin.

"Thou'rt Geileis. I've always wanted to meet thee."

"Morfyd and Morigan often talk about thee," said Gwenhwyfer, taking Geileis' hand

"...and we think of them."

Geileis showed the banshees to a low elmwood bench padded in blue grey cloth and wrapped by a paned window bay looking over the foggy hills and meads beyond Bryn larach.

"Coffee?"

"Please!"

The Sparkenbanes plopped down as Gormglaith sat on an elm block and leaned forward.

"So..." Bairrfhionn said with a toothy grin, "I hope thou dostn't think we're like, wanton or whatever for trampling in on thee like this."

"No way! My friends do it all the time."

"I like the elms on the lane out in front!" said Gwenhwyfer.

"I climb them."

The banshees smiled.

"To hang with the magpies," said Gormglaith, nodding once. "I've fed them since I was little, the bats too, upstairs in the southeast loft. They were there when my kynn came to Bryn larach and nobody had the heart to put them out."

"Bats!" said Gwenhwyfer, her sunken sky blue eyes widening. "Kerfuffle!"

Flighty banter fluttered as Geileis came from the kitchen with three coffees in brightly puzzled mugs along with rowanberry in a heavy tumbler.

"I hear tales of Bryn larach's haunted lofts! How was your trip?"

"We took the skate from Fen Glioon," said Gwenhwyfer. "I told Bairrfhionn I think it's dreamy out here. So gloomy! The afternoon light on the hills is amazing."

Gormglaith sipped ruddy rowanberry whilst watching the banshees from behind a lock of straw blond thatch.

"So... are y'all gonna put it straight or what?"

Gwenhwyfer gasped (with a grin) as Bairrfhionn twirled her eyes.

"We have like, this song."

"Kewl."

The banshees swapped glances, shrugged, then like maegden gone stir behind the fizzy tent on Midsummer's eve, they spoke as rain swept by outside.

Dreams loom
By morning gloom
It's cormid soon

Under mabon we'll walk
On moors of ancheisht
Where swans and magpies lurk

Kin stabbed with rings
Fling in a hush
Their shivering sings

To crush until
They spill and sway
In plighted clannin.

Bairrfhionn and Gwenhwyfer waited wide eyed, abashed.

"...Y'all!? That was so too stern! Ok... what happens now?"

The banshees grinned wraithenly.

"Oh Gormglaith how thrilling!" Gwenhwyfer put with balled, waggling hands. "Come with to Glas knoll! It's on the loch by Blairie in a chilling, way too misty wood!"

"I heard it spins."

"...Are the swans still there?" Geileis asked helpfully whilst casting a broad smile at Bairrfhionn.

"They swim up to you and talk!"

Winsome fleet of shrugs
On water still and black
Abide these weepy hugs
Till we've come braiding back!

The banshees gazed at Gormglaith (as Geileis beamed).

"Why do I know that's Eachdraidh?" asked Gwenhwyfer, smirking.

"Tamsyn to the swans," answered Gormglaith, "when hippies drove her clannin from Siouxie Falls."

"Did they ever come back?" asked Bairrfhionn.

"They did but the swans were gone and the house had been stripped."

"How ghastly. The wretched swans," said Gwenhwyfer.

"Anyway her sisters said Tamsyn wept so many tears into that pond it went to saltwater and no guilbneach ever came again. So the rune is... Tamsyn was selfish for bygone nights. As if the pond went to salt, so too her heart."

"I've heard th'art crack with Eachdraidh," said Bairrfhionn.

"I want to scatter in tongue craft and split on it."

"So when were y'all thinking of leaving for Blairie?" asked Geileis, bright and kynnish.

Gormglaith stared at her as the banshees swapped looks.

"Uhm... now?"

"I wish you'd each tell me you won't stay up after sunrise..." said Geileis.

Bairrfhionn and Gwenhwyfer nodded like moppets.

"We won't, Geileis Grendel Hafgan Halsen."

"Gormglaith?"

"Ok."

"Eat fallainly and be stern!" said Geileis, rising from the bench. "Oh, and have fun!"

"So..." said Gormglaith, "I guess there's some stuff I'd like to take... wanna see where I nest?"

"Way!"

The three rambled there. The earth cast was still on and she showed them Eachdraidh and prism (which they cooed over) along with a few other things. They looked out upon sun smudged gloom through the window then peered in at the bluestone bath. Gormglaith opened the wall cupboard with stacks of neatly folded longstockings and thumbed through them. As if chiding herself for a botch, Bairrfhionn cast up her eyes.

"Thou wilt'nt need a thing," she said, hands on hips. "We'll be stopping in Kin Dails first for shopping and lunch, I mean if that's ok..."

"Tha meanst is it like... ok if I get scammed with linen and spog by a crushy yoke of bodeful swank banshees or what."

They nodded, smirking.

"I can grip!" she said, throwing up her hands.

Back in the gather lair, Gormglaith wore an embroidered dark blue green cutty sark and carried a cloth satchel holding only prism and Eachdraidh as Geileis spun about from the window with a grin.

"By the way Bairrfhionn," she said, "my sisters'll tease me if I don't needle thee and ask about the durham grian plait."

Bairrfhionn matched Geileis' grin.

"...Flat."

"Oh?" she answered, looking back out the window. "Green greens everywhere... so thick and deep, you know fall's near..."

"It's lunch in Kin Dails," said Gormglaith.

"That sounds merry! I hope you won't spoil her too much."

Bairrfhionn and Gwenhwyfer came back with bright stares.

They all gathered in a clump. Gormglaith tilted her head, rushed to Geileis and with banshees gazing in wraithen whist, clasped her in a snugsome hug.

The sled waiting by Bryn larach was a dark steelish green whilst within were bent elmwoods and flaxen cloth. Gormglaith climbed in first, sliding across a tightly padded seat which greeted her deftly as the banshees lankily followed. The front window bulged out before them, spanning to klompen.

"The skate stop," said Gormglaith.

The hatch sealed with a muffled thump, the sled rose a yard and went slowly forward. After many waves Geileis stood alone on the wet flatstones as they whisked by a bend in the lane, trees and hedgerows looming in the mist.

Gormglaith glanced through the sloped window at a sky dappled in white, grey and gold, dark in a rainy east, sunbeams falling in shafts to the west as the sled flowed whist along the lane. It sped up nimbly and they soon came to Elmthorpe, its mead henge of chalk limestone slabs tucked under a stand of tall elms, a trim row of shops on the nearby greens bustling with thrallish clanniners. Gormglaith seemed to flatten herself into the seat as they neared a brimming row of flowering blueberry bushes below a wide, sparkling window aglow with slinky pink runes spelling The Soohead. The sled slid by a black pond where a flock of moppets hovered at its edge with a dozen swans.

"I flip for a thorpe on the West meads," Gwenhwyfer sighed in a Frisian flauting, looking to and fro. "So barrowish and tidy."

At the frosted corundum shelter beneath leafy boughs and gossiping magpies, someone else was waiting for the skate. Hidden by waist length wheatish blond hair and wearing grey linens with a birch hued cutty sark, she looked up from runes streaming out of the ghosted purple goblin which hovered over her lap. Gormglaith told Wynne the banshees' first names and said this was one of Glynne Hafgan's kynn. Wynne looked them over and smiled. The goblin went back to spewing runes.

Meanwhile nearby under a tall and awnish elm four moppets played with a glittering green jump rope, two reeling side by side betwixt the twirlers, singing in loops.

One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for plighting
Four for a birth
Five for freayll
Six forlorn
Seven for a witch
I can tell thee no more

Catching sight of Gormglaith and the banshees, all four ran up onto the dock by the skate lane's narrow, laid groove. They were eight or nine, in rumpled grey longstockings of sundry shades with bright wooden klompen and came to a clattering, skidding halt bringing the hot smells of play. Sly and canny faces peered keenly from behind tousled hair of many lengths and colours.

"Hi y'all!" said Gormglaith. "...Wicked Magpie reeling!"

"Hi Gormglaith!" they came back choppily. "Thanks!"

"What's it all about, then?" pried a skinny bairn with tangled, pinkishly brindled sandy blond hair falling by nebbish ears and raised eyebrows.

"Does Findabair know about thee?" asked another with stringy neck length white hair and grass stained knock knees, warding a finger at Bairrfhionn as the others giggled.

"I don't know," put Bairrfhionn, grinning and shaking her head.

"I see..." said the moppet, crossing her eyes. "How cracking!"

Breaking into more giggles they tore off the dock, clopping, skipping, zooming and shrieking with the boundless birr moppets have.

As Gormglaith watched after them (running straight for the Soohead) a trim and airy skate of scrubbed silver bearing tulip yellow and sea blue runes glid into the stop with little sound. They went through a wide wooshing door and sat crosswise in cloth seats the colour of greywacke and lit by sticks of light. Gormglaith settled by Gwenhwyfer, Bairrfhionn facing them whilst Wynne Hafgan wafted down two seats behind. As they pulled away Gormglaith's eyebrows knitted and she slid into a whist slouch.

Leaving Elmthorpe the skate swept up to blurring speed and rain soon pattered the windows. Gwenhwyfer called up song seventeen and tightly thrown sound waves put forth throbsomely braided reels and yodels with the high shift eight upons Gormglaith and her friends liked, not the wave loop sixteens their kynn mostly listened to.

"Gale in the Dales!" said Gwenhwyfer. "Kewl!"

After a stop at stormy Avalon with its old sunken Snotrian henge the skate skipped loops to a dozen thorpes, streaking through pockets of fog across the dimpled hills and harvest fields of the West meads in Halegmonath. Some were littered with thatchen shocks of wheat sheaves, wontedly durham grian. Wynne waved as she got off under the rowan ash trees of Caorann and for a time they were alone although as Kin Dails neared, many girls boarded.

Durham grian, West meads

"Hast thou been to Slinn's?" asked Gwenhwyfer.

"Twice. I think. They weave bedecked wraps."

"Thine isn't..." said Bairrfhionn, watching a far off, darkly swaying green grove of ash trees slip slowly by beyond tall breck.

"...I like it," she put with her lopsided smile over a shivering reel.

"Enid says a stark chest haunts the henge, even at flurts."

"That's stern."

Gwenhwyfer's yellow, white freaked locks swung across sunken eyes as she grinned like a scythe.

"I've heard that grass witch has a grip!"