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was, how to do it properly and when it should occur, so that I would be able to oversee my own household one day. So far my training had consisted mostly of being sent to help with various chores, but in the years to come I would spend many weeks with our cook, learning how the foods were stored, how to take inventory and calculate how long supplies would last, how to tell what was fresh and succulent, how to prepare dishes, how to plan menus for a feast or great gathering. I would pass as many days following the housekeeper, learning everything from how to bank the peat fire to hold heat through the night, to how to keep moths from the blanket chests and bugs from our mattresses.
    The household tasks I endured and learned, but with little enthusiasm. Riding and horse husbandry I loved better, and better still the lessons I had started in singing and poetry. Likemost of the great families, we had our own poet. It is Lasair, in fact, who is responsible for some of the more outrageous verses about my father. He must have been delighted to have such a man for a patron, for he was never lacking for material or stuck with the task of singing undeserved praises. When he wasn’t traveling after Cuchulainn, he was my teacher, setting me to learn by heart the long histories of Ireland, the stories of our gods and goddesses and kings and champions. He taught me the proper forms of poetry as well as the art of riddles, rhetoric and repartee.
    But a season and more had passed since we had left Dun Dealgan, and I heard Cathbad say to Emer, “It is not good for her to spend so much time alone. And who can say when your life at home will resume? There are many noble families who would gladly foster her.”
    It was common for girls to be fostered at my age, though it was most often boys who were sent to be instructed by uncles or allies. But my mother shook her head, and I knew by the stubborn lift of her chin that not even the chief druid would prevail over her in this matter.
    “No, I’ll not send my only living child away. Not now. We need each other now.”
    The rush of love and pride I felt was ferocious, almost painful. I had felt myself a burden and thought she must begrudge the childish needs that took her from my father’s side. But she would not have it so. I pressed as close beside her as I could and still stand straight, as straight as Emer herself.
    The old druid’s eyes crinkled in unexpected amusement. “I didn’t really suppose you would. Come and speak to me afterthe festival, and we’ll see what can be done here in Emain.” And he strode off in a swirl of colors.
    That evening, for the first time, I saw the serious side of Lughnasadh. I should have realized Cathbad would not don his robe of office to oversee a noisy party. We gathered on the shores of the little lake I had glimpsed from the embankments of Emain, and I watched as Cathbad and two other druids stood in the golden slanting light and chanted a long hypnotic prayer. A young bull was led to the altar, and the sacrificer slipped the knife in so expertly that the calf barely seemed to know he had been hurt, but stood quietly, his blood rushing into the great basin, until his knees folded under him and he sank slowly to the ground. Acrid smoke billowed up from the fire as his blood was sprinkled on the flames: blood carried up to the heavens, blood seeping down to the depths of the earth. Life shared with those who live above, below and beyond our own world. And then, at a word from Cathbad, those with special prayers or messages for the god stepped forward to the very edge of the water.
    My mother went then, with the others. I could not hear what she whispered to the god, but I knew what she asked. And as the last rays of the sun lit up the bronze water, she removed the wide golden band that wrapped her bare arm and cast it far out over the still surface of the lake.
    Of the finest metalwork, my mother’s favorite, that armband was. The great god Lugh was