A/N: I wasn't really pleased with my last version of this story—it got to be so negative and depressing—that I had to start over. I think this will probably be my last Cecilia story, and so I want it to be the best I can do, and I hope none of you wonderful readers will mind. Please let me know what you think of the new draft; I hope you enjoy it!

-Ruby

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"Ring around the moon means the fairies will be dancing," said Cecilia Blythe, tipping her head up to observe the starry sky above Rainbow Valley—a mellow, September sky, studded with stars and scarved with will o' the wisps of clouds. It was only just moonrise and the great white orb hung low-down on the horizon, encircled by a thin golden nimbus, cloaking all of the Glen and Four Winds District in an unearthly, otherworldly light. A moon such as that turned the birch trees into marble, the Queen Anne's lace that grew by the brook into a silvered filigree, and the far-off sea, seen only from the valley's highest point, into a smooth, sheeny expanse of black satin. It gave a peculiar ageless quality to those who basked in it, and the five friends who had gathered by the little, babbling brook had never looked sweeter or dreamier or more loved by one another as they did that moonlit night. They were young enough to have eyes that still glowed a-star with dreams, but enough time had elapsed since our last meeting with them that they were wise enough to know that a friendship, a kinship, such as theirs is a thing to be cherished in the world.

There was Cecilia, sweet-faced, gray-eyed, white-skinned and rosy-cheeked and with only a few silvery threads running through her black, black hair, which the moon was forgiving enough to omit. They were, no doubt, the result of the very rigorous years that Cecilia had spent first at Redmond College, earning her B.A., and then at Kingsport Medical School, where she graduated first in her class, and had the added distinction of being only one of two female candidates for M.D. in the whole bunch. Cecilia, when she noticed these gray strands, told herself they were badges of honor, and stood for wisdom, and not to mind them.

Did Dr. Cecilia Blythe believe herself to be wise? No-o-o—not exactly—but there were times when she looked wonderingly at her hands, awed by the power to intervene between life and death that was held in them, and there were times when she could behave as sensibly as any lass of nearly thirty should. But oh—at other times—she whirled up and down the sandshore, singing, or climbed far up into an orchard tree at Red Apple Farm and wrapped her arms around its trunk and felt the wind buffet her. By spells she felt positively grown up—at other times she wondered how she had managed to fool so many people into thinking she was. If she was not entirely pleased with every aspect of her character, she at least knew her good points and had learned to celebrate them; and she was not unaware of the little cracks and rifts that needed to be smoothed over.

Her head was pillowed, gray threads and all, in the lap of a handsome young man with dark curls of his own, impish green eyes, which were beginning to be crinkled at the corners with repeated laughter, and a mouth that was as jolly and clean-cut as a violin. He, too, was five years older than he last appeared, but it was clear that he was still the laughy, jolly Marshall Douglas of the Ingleside and Red Apple Farm days. If there was sometimes a somber note in his laughter—if his eyes were sometimes clouded and far away—people did not remark on it, and took it as par for the course. Marshall had been in Europe in the war, and it had left its mark, and it must be said that the new seriousness of purpose he had earned there suited his role as young businessman and entrepreneur. People whispered, quite truthfully, that he was singlehandedly responsible for the expansion of Douglas Grocery from a little general store to a chain of successful supermarkets that peppered the Island and even extended into New Brunswick and Halifax. He was getting to be a very wealthy young man. There were some who said, a little jealously, that they had never suspected Cecilia Blythe to marry for money, and while it was true that she delighted over Marshall's success, nobody who knew either of them could really think that their relationship was born of anything but a true heart's love for one another. As they sat together on that moonlit night, Marshall was watching her face and thinking that there was really not a more beautiful girl in the world than his little sweetheart, and Cecilia, her cheek resting on his flannel-covered legs, thought quite reasonably that she could, in the words of the old song, 'worship the trousers that cling to him.'

Next to them sat Joyce Penhallow, nee Meredith, a little plumper and more matronly than she had been in erstwhile days, but with good reason; in the room over the stairs at Ingleside slept dear, curly-headed Rose and Daisy, four and three respectively, and beloved by all who knew them. In her arms, Joy held a sleeping, flame-haired bundle of girl-child who sometimes answered to the preposterous name of Gabrielle Alexandrina, but was more commonly known as Poppy. Joy gathered her baby up to her breast and pressed her lips to her warm brow with that mysterious, holy air of motherliness that made Cecilia's heart and head fill up with secret, unutterable hopes. She had felt, the first time she had peeped down into Rose's face, that Joy had crossed a Rubicon to a country Cecilia could not yet reach. It separated them, and she longed to join her cousin in the land of motherhood. Marshall squeezed her hand, and she knew what he meant by: that it would not be too long before she might follow.

A little ways off, but close enough for quiet conversation, sat a sandy-haired young man with a face that was built for dreaming. Only those that new him best knew that he was also capable of great keenness and a biting wit, besides. Blythe Meredith had not changed so much in five years as to be wholly unrecognizable to those who knew him well. Currently, pride and good humor fairly exuded from him, due in part to the celebratory mood that all the Blythes, Merediths, Fords and Wrights that had gathered in the district were experiencing, and in other part to the fact that he had recently had a second anthology of poems accepted by a prestigious publishing house in the States. Blythe did not need anyone to tell him he was a poet—he was, and always had been—but he had to admit the recognition and reputation he had garnered after his first book had been published was pleasant enough. And the accompanying royalty cheques didn't hurt, either.

But the touchstone of Blythe's good humor was not esteem or success or money—it was the golden-haired, lissome girl who now stood over the aster bed, gathering the purple blossoms and holding them to her perfect face. It was his wife, Manon—Cecilia's dear friend. She sometimes thought—but never articulated, for fear of hurt feelings—that Joy had been the friend of her girlhood, but Manon the friend of her womanhood. It was Joy who had helped her over those dark days when Cecilia's mother had been ill, after little Susan had died, but it was Manon who had helped her to navigate the straits of adulthood, to help her understand the complexities and nitty-gritties of life. But loving one did not mean she could not love the other. That was the nicest thing about love: there was never too much of it. There was always enough to go around, a never-ending supply.

"Fairies will be dancing," Cecilia said, ruefully, "Is just a nice way of saying 'going to rain.' I know the old superstitions, Blythe—you needn't quote them to me. Rain is supposed to be good luck for a bride, you're about to say—you'll conveniently omit the corresponding myth about how it is also supposed to bring tears. Oh, I did want it to be fine on my wedding day."

"Mackerel skies and mare's tails

Make for fair weather and full sails," sing-songed Joy, as primly as if she were reciting a lesson for her girls. "We had some lovely little mackerel clouds tonight at sunset, Cecilia—sweet floaty pink and purple clouds so light and airy against that orange sky. I heard Aunt Rilla say once that whenever she hears two bits of gossip that contradict each other, she cannot help but believe the one that is the most scandalous. I suggest you turn that proposition on its head, and believe in the prophecy that augurs cheer—and good weather. Either way, darling, you're going to be a beautiful bride, and," Joy nodded seriously with the expertise and authority of a four-years' married woman, "All that matters is that you are married. Not what the weather is."

"It will be nice enough, with or without rain," said Manon, a hint of her native accent still in her voice. It had gone nearly away since she had lived in Canada, as she rarely had a chance to use her French. Blythe and Manon had bought a cottage in Cap-Carmel, a mostly-Acadian village in the west of the Island, but Manon, her Parisienne pride intact, refused to lower herself to speak the informal, chirruping French her neighbors spoke. "It will be a perfect day, and the orchard at Red Apple Farm is the sweetest place for a wedding. Though I heard Marshall's maman say that it is positively scandalous for you not to be married in the church."

"Mary Vance said the same thing to me," admitted Cecilia, "But I wanted my day of happiness to be an entirely family affair. I want to be married from home—with Dad to give me away—and Uncle Jerry to perform the ceremony—and Aunts Faith and Di and Rilla to help with the food—you girls and Trudy and Bertha as my 'maids of honor, and Romy as flower-girl. And Blythe will stand up beside us and read one of his poems and then we'll say our vows."

"Just as long as he remembers to step back before we say them," said Marshall, under his breath, and mostly in jest, though nobody could deny that there was still a dangerous current that ran between the two tentative friends, from time to time. Even so many years later, nobody had forgotten that Cecilia and Blythe had been engaged before Cecilia and Marshall had. Manon, who had overheard Marshall's remark, laughed with real mirth—she was not in the least bit unsure of where her husband's affections lay.

"Even our loved ones who cannot be there will be with us in spirit," Cecilia said, dreamily. "Uncle Jerry is using Grandpa Meredith's prayer-book to read the service, and Marshall is going to wear Grandfather Blythe's watch. My flowers are going to be roses from a bush that my sister Susan planted when she was just a little girl—mother had it dug up and transplanted when we moved from Montreal. And my dress belonged to my grandmother Cecilia Meredith, my namesake. My mother wore it when she married my father."

"It is a lovely old-fashioned dress," said Joy, with the sadness of one who knew she would never be able to wear it, herself—Cecilia Meredith, even after four children, had been tinier than Joy was after three. "Like something out of a movie—I Remember Mama, or something like it. But won't you have trouble feeling like a bride, without white and a veil?" Joy had had both of these things—she had been the very picture of all a bride should be.

"I'd feel like a bride in my bathrobe and bedroom slippers," Cecilia laughed. "I couldn't feel like anything else on my day of days."

"If only you weren't moving so far away, after, I could be perfectly happy about tomorrow," said Joy, with a little sigh. "Bright River is an hour away from Lowbridge—too far for a casual jaunt. All of our meetings are going to have to be pre-arranged and talked over beforehand, and that spoils the fun of things, a little. Why did you have to join Dr. Harper's practice there, Cecilia?—when Uncle Jem was so willing to take you into his, here?"

"It is hard enough to be a 'lady-doctor,'" said Cecilia, with spirit. "People talk about you—gossip over you—wait for you to make a mistake and then hold it against you mercilessly, and take it as a sign that women oughtn't work outside the home at all. I won't have, on top of that which is sure to come, everybody saying that I got my job simply because my uncle gave it to me. Don't chastise me, Joy. I feel bad enough about leaving everybody. Romy has cried for a week straight and I have the horrid feeling that Mother will do the same—after I've gone. She wouldn't dare tread on my happiness by crying before I go. Oh, I don't want to leave home, any more than you want me to."

"But think of the new people you will meet in your new home," said Manon, "And all the adventures you will have. You'll see your old friends often enough." She grinned, and Cecilia knew why—Cap-Carmel was only a twenty minute drive from Bright River.

Joy sighed, to show that she would lay off the subject on this, Cecilia's bridal eve, but that it was not by a long shot dropped entirely. "It's getting cool," she said, "And I'd better take the baby up to the house and put her to bed. Mother is sure to chide me about having her out in the dew and damp, but I feel that Grandmother will set her straight. Children were born to be outdoors, she always says. Goodnight, you dears—I'll see you in the morning."

Blythe and Manon bid their goodnights, also, and melted into the night, gone for a walk over the dunes to watch the sea and talk. It was only Marshall and Cecilia left in Rainbow Valley, and Cecilia could not help but think about all the other happy couples who had trysted there before them. Aunt Nan and Uncle Jerry—Aunt Faith and Uncle Jem—even her own parents, once upon a time. Thinking of them made her feel like the latest in a chain of good and fortunate people, and she felt sure their happiness boded well for her future. Of course they had had sorrow—but she, Cecilia, would willingly drink of sorrow as long as she could sup at the table of it with Marshall by her side.

"This time tomorrow you'll be my wife, Cee," said Marshall wonderingly. In his voice was the delicious hint of a promise born of years of waiting, working, hoping and loving—and remembrance of a battle fought—and the triumph of a sweetheart won at last. She turned to him, her eyes like stars, and whatever was said between them can not be set down here. It was not meant for the ages, but only for each other.