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The tall man’s question drew her attention, waking her again as had the song of the three little folk. Old Goody Holtsdottir turned her wrinkled face to where the voice had come from. The one good eye of that ancient crone peered out from between the strands of grey shot hair, focusing on the speaker. It darted down the length of him and up, coming to rest with a look of surprised interest at last on his face. He bore a certain glamour, it seemed to her. And though he wore it easily enough, she thought he was constrained by it.
Guđćlfr, for that was her given name, shifted her old bones on the hard seat of the chair and looked at the man’s companion. Relaxed as a cat might be before the fire, though like a cat, she minded, his senses were not dulled by his enjoyment of the warmth. And at need, she thought, he might spring up, the mask of drowsy contentment thrown off.
‘The wheel of the year turns in this cold land this night,’ she said, leaning out into the light from her dark corner. ‘See,’ she said, nodding toward the hearth. ‘The Green Man gives us one of his great limbs to push back the darkness and holly from his hair with which to keep it lit. That and the good barley for the wassail, the wheat for the bread, and the fruits of the vine and flower for mead and wine. A good ‘un, he is.’ ‘Though he suffers no fools,’ she cackled’ ‘ ‘Pon you, it is, to keep from the darkness.’
She cocked her head listening to the wind as it beat upon the shutters. Her gaze flicked to the sturdy door. ‘Hear that!’ she asked. ‘There’s a voice ‘at moans in the wind. The trees beyond the village have caught it in their limbs and throw it back now. Listen! Listen now! Something hungry comes, I think.’
Goody sat back in her chair, the clarity afforded by the present moment, passing. She mumbled a few indistinct words over the cup of cooling wassail in her hand, peering into it as she swirled the fragrant liquid with a bony finger of her other hand.
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