Wisdom of serpent be thine,

Wisdom of raven be thine,

Wisdom of valiant eagle.

Voice of swan be thine,

Voice of honey be thine,

Voice of the Son of the stars.

Sain of the fairy-woman be thine,

Sain of the elf-dart be thine,

Sain of the red dog be thine.

Bounty of sea be thine,

Bounty of land be thine,

Bounty of the Father of Heaven.

Be each day glad for thee,

No day ill for thee,

A life joyful, satisfied.

It was only as he left the mountaintop and started the slippery, rocky, awkward descent through the fluttering new leaves of the sugar maples that it occurred to him how much of that blessing had in fact been his. Had one of his parents said this charm for him when he was small?

“A life joyful, satisfied,” he murmured to himself, and let peace fill him.

It wasn’t until he’d reached the bottom of the mountain that he wondered whether, when he came to die, Da or his mother might be there to greet him.

“Or maybe Murtagh,” he said, and smiled at the thought.

Part Five

FLY AWAY HOME

107

Away in a Manger

Fraser’s Ridge

WE HAD ACQUIRED TWO yearling heifers in the summer, one mostly white with black splotches and the other mostly red with white splotches. Their names, according to Mandy, were Moo-Moo and Pinky, but Jemmy had been browsing my Merck Manual and had nicknamed them Leprosy and Rosacea. Jamie said practically that it scarcely mattered what they were called, as he’d never met a cow that would answer to its name, in any case; he called them Ruaidh and Ban—“Red” and “White,” in Gaelic.

At the moment, he was calling the red one something in Gaelic that I translated roughly as “Misbegotten daughter of a venomous caterpillar,” but I supposed that I might be missing the finer shades.

“It’s not her fault,” I said reprovingly.

He made a Scottish noise like a cement mixer, and gritted his teeth. He had one arm inserted into Rosacea’s backside up to the elbow, and his face in the flickering lanternlight was as red as her hide.

It truly wasn’t the poor cow’s fault—she’d been bred too young, and was having a lot of trouble delivering her first calf—but I didn’t blame him, either. He’d been trying for a quarter of an hour to get hold of both feet so he could pull the calf out, but Rosy was skittish and kept swinging her rear end away. The calf’s nose poked out now and then, nostrils flaring in what I thought must be panic. I felt much the same way, but was fighting it down.