Husband

In his first life he had been a soldier of Iylum. Gods of bosk and sacellum were the enemies of the state, and purged to the last. Iylum's justifications for deicide seemed to him, now-since, ambiguous. How many lives after that one? Impossible to frame in the antique concept of years. How true his memory? Impossible to frame in a culture of memory as cyclic and evolving.

But the hetman and the other children knew none of this. Now-since he was Husband of Cær Brae.

The children were drinking salt-lambic by the Torfire when he found them, and bade the hetman:

"Allmother sends a gift of poison to her sister of Cær Droi. I go to bear it to her and her children."

The hetman did not know a Husband could leave and enter the tour, but didn't ask or say.

"We children dream for Allmother while we wait. Will you by later-again?"

"Later-again," he lied, as it was the Husband's holy duty to lie.

"Allmother smiles for none of your dreams," he did not tell the hetman, for it was also the Husband's must to keep Allmother's secrets. Her sleep had lapsed into acedia, and so too had her sister's thought the Husband, so he would go and find out.

And because the children of Cær Brae and their witch-dam were anathema to him, after he walked the tour he sealed it shut. Then for a very long-again stood on the gelid sandveldt transfixed by stars.