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women’s voices that struck through my soothing thoughts and made me want to hide.
    Erta was not among them. She could not have said such things so willingly.
    Let them turn my whole body to ice, and a pox on them.… Finally they were finished, and escorted me into my bed again, and prepared the third and final bath.
    It was of water with scented oil, and it was warm! I saw the steam go up and could scarcely believe it, not even when I stepped into it. Moreover, I was made to sit down in it, and lean back, and my hair was washed with a delicate scented lotion, and the fragrance of the warm oil was heady and most pleasant. And except for a muttered “Mother, comfort now thy daughter,” all chanting had ceased.
    Then the hearth fire was fueled into a crackling blaze which heated the whole room, and I was stationed in front of it so my hair would dry. By then I had realized that there was to be nothing to eat. Fasting was commonplace for them, I surmised. On this morning it would have been necessary for me in any event, for purification. And in truth, I felt different, my whole body faintly tingling in the warmth and somehow insubstantial, as if it did not belong entirely to me. Nothing seemed very real, and even my starving stomach did not tell me when it was noon and time for the nuptial ceremony. I had begun to think the morning would go on forever, and I was hazily surprised when they began to dress me.
    Only a white robe—that was all they put on me. A white robe as simple as theirs, but of a finer stuff that floated like the river mist, and there was no hood, but a sort of trailing cape instead. They combed my hair carefully and fastened it up in loops and wound a garland of evergreen laurel around it like a crown. They tied a green silk sash around my waist, the ends of it fringed and embroidered with gold thread in the circle and spiral emblems of the goddess. Nothing for my feet. Barefoot as before, I walked out into the snow to wed with Arlen.
    Name of the Mother, but he was beautiful! I had seen pageants of royal splendor and I had seen real lords riding out in all their jeweled adornment, but his beauty outshone theirs as the sun outshines the stars, and it was all simplicity: a milk-white tunic and breeches of doeskin and a crown of laurel and himself, glorious. He wore a green sash, like mine, and his feet were bare, like mine. His green eyes shimmered as green as the sash. He waited for me in a crowd of other youths, and I do not remember what any of them looked like; I saw only him, and went to him and took his hand, and he led me to the tree.
    It was a pollarded oak, lopped into a stumpy shape, the very oak that within the day was to be splattered with his blood. We stood at its roots, and around us and the tree a circle formed, all around us the ranks of the Gwyneda and beyond them the youths and boy children who would go to the oak in their turn some day, some season. Lonn came and stood near Arlen’s right hand. And beyond the dwellers of the Sacred Isle stood ranks and ranks of the secular kings and lords and noble ladies who had come that morning across the water to look on us. They would go the next day back to their servants and serfs and tenants, their garrisons and games of war, their vassals and their many strongholdings scattered between the eskers of the Secular Lands. My father stood there somewhere, and my relations, and acquaintances. I did not look at them; I scorned them all for what had been done to me.
    â€œWhite goddess of winter, behold now the winterking.
    Goddess of spring, behold now the bride.”
    More invocations. I did not listen, only stole glances at Arlen as the chanting went on. He held my hand softly and stood still.
    â€œBind them!” A voice said more loudly, and I stiffened. It was one of the Gwyneda, and the others answered.
    â€œPower of the goddess, serpent power, bind them!
    Power of the goddess, glycon power, bind them!”
    The white