Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

In fact, it bore more in common with a religious gathering, or a mustering of clans. Midsummer Meeting was where marriages were celebrated, babies acknowledged, and those who had died in the previous twelvemonth named. Trading went on as well, and music, dancing, and fine eating, but the true purpose of Midsummer Meeting was the exchange of information among the hill households, and a chance for a young hill son or hill daughter to meet someone from several valleys away.

But outsiders were not forbidden to attend.

Meramay was a young widow, plump and blonde, who had taken a shine (as the saying there went) to me. I had stayed with her ten days together, walking out each day in search of work, and returning at nightfall, adding my day’s payment, in eggs or honeycomb or fresh-killed rabbit, to Meramay’s larder. In truth, she could use all that I brought, for she lived entirely alone, and to take a living from the hills was a constant round of hard work, best shared by many strong backs.

I dealt with her honestly, telling her that I was lowland bred and born and would be moving on before the seasons turned. Still, there was comfort to be given and taken. She told me flatly the first night I stayed with her that she hoped to get a child with me, as she was seeking a new husband at Midsummer Meeting, and, as in many places, a woman’s fertility was a far more attractive quality than her chastity.

It was she who invited me to accompany her to Midsummer Meeting; she wished to show off her current bedmate to her prospective suitors, much as a farmer would show the bull when selling the calf. I had long since outlived false pride, and so I was happy to say I would go with her.

“I only hope Moonwoman doesn’t take against me,” Meramay told me matter-of-factly. “She doesn’t like a light-haired girl, and no man’s going to cross her.”

“You might darken your hair,” I said casually, though my heart was beating fast; this was the first time anyone had spoken of Moonwoman directly to me. “The herbs are easy to find, after all.”

Meramay shook her head decisively. “That’d be the same as lying, and they say she hates a liar worse than death and poison. She can see right into a body’s heart, too.”

There was no changing Meramay’s mind, though I did wonder why, if she feared Moonwoman so much, why she was taking the risk of bringing an outsider to Midsummer Meeting. She did take the precaution of tying up her hair in a brightly colored scarf before we set out; apparently simply hiding her hair didn’t count as lying.

And so we began.

Meramay carried a pack heavier than my own, and traveled, besides, with a cart drawn by one of the enormous brown-and-black dogs which are the usual beasts of burden in these hills, pulling carts and sometimes carrying packs themselves.

It took us three days to reach the place where Midsummer Meeting was to be held, but I had long since decided for myself that everything in the Armor Hills was three days’ walk from everything else, most of it spent climbing one side of a hill and falling down the other. As we walked, I did my best to gain more information from Meramay about the mysterious Moonwoman.

Meramay said she had been here “for always,” but Moonwoman had not been at last year’s Midsummer Meeting, nor had word reached Haven of her before the spring, so I did not think that could be so. I was growing increasingly uneasy with what I heard of her; Meramay had never seen her, but she certainly feared her.

On the third day, just as we reached the meeting grounds, I found out why.

“Was her took my man,” Meramay said, as simply as if she were remarking on the fine summer weather, or the flowers growing by the side of the trace. “Saw him out walking of an evening and followed him home. Then she Sang him out of my bed, will-he, nill-he, and that was that.”

This was the first time anyone had mentioned music in connection wit the witch I was seeking. Did Moonwoman have Bardic Gifts? No proper Bard would use his or her powers so; I was not even certain that Bardic Empathy could so thoroughly compel someone against their will, certainly not the Gift of an untrained Bard.

I would have questioned Meramay further, though it was a chancy thing to do, save for the fact that we had arrived at Meeting Home.

It was the closest thing to a proper town that I had yet seen in the Armor Hills, though it must lie deserted most of the year. There were dance floors, open to the air; platforms of raised wood planks, where even now groups of dancers whirled, stamped, and spun to the sounds of drums and dulcimers, and even a few roofs without walls, where groups of hill women clustered together, talking and sewing and keeping a weather eye on the youngest children. Meeting Home filled an entire valley, and its floor was surely the largest flat space I’d seen since I’d arrived here. At one end of the valley there were a row of hearths, a great openair kitchen flanked by tables enough to fill the dining hall at the Herald’s Collegium.