The Forest Path

It is considered ill fortune to slay a changeling outright, so the common practice is to leave such children on the forest path for the sidhe to reclaim. If the child dies, well, it is the fault of the faery folk and not the mortals. They carried me to a spot not far from where I'd been born, wrapped once more in the now fouled and ragged red scarf and prepared to leave me to my fate.

But before my father and his henchmen could ride away an old priestess appeared as if from thin air and halted them. She demanded to know what they were doing, leaving a newborn child alone in the forest. One of the men told her I was the changeling babe from the keep and they were simply returning it to its own.

The priestess picked me up and unwrapped me. She then asked my father why I was not wrapped in his colors, azure and silver, as was my right. "And why, lord," she asked, "Do you leave your own flesh to be devoured by wolves? This is ill done."

But my father denied me as his get and cursed me, saying the belly of a wolf was a more fitting place than the cradle I'd stolen from his seventh son and that his colors would never be profaned by the likes of me. Better, he said, that I should wear the color of blood since I'd already shed so much of it.

The priestess rebuked him and called him a fool blinded by his own pride. The words she uttered next have been called a curse and repeated a thousand times since:

"Give me the little ruadh then lord, if you will not claim her. For it may indeed be her fate to be devoured by a wolf but not on this night. Go back to your six sons and your fine keep; the forest path is no place for such as you. And know, Lord that no matter how much seed you scatter a seventh son will never be yours. The gods do not smile on kin slayers even when they are prevented from doing the deed."

My father, it is reported, whitened with anger but for a wonder held himself back. To strike a priestess is to spit in the face of the gods and even he is not that great a fool, despite his justly deserved reputation for temper. It was then that I at last received a name.

"Call the whelp Deirdre," my father is supposed to have said. "For she is the child of Sorrow, begotten by Woe, and she is none of mine."

From then on, I was raised by the priestess Brighid in her little grove at the edge of the forest. Brighid is a small, neat woman who radiates stillness. I have never been able to determine with any success how old she might be, but I do know it is far older than she seems. In all the now twenty summers of my life, I have not seen her change at all. Her hair is the exact same mix of sable and silver as when I was a child, the lines around her eyes and mouth have not deepened or changed. When I ask her about it, she simply smiles and asks if I am ready to be initiated as a priestess. So I suppose it is some mystery of the Goddess, that her priestesses are not touched by the years in the same way as other women. Oddly, the priests of the White Christ claim our Goddess is false and yet their Christ seems to have no such power to prevent his servants from becoming dotards. Doubtless, they have some clever answer for that.