I swung off my pony's back and pulled my tunic off over my head. Shaking out my hair, I flung myself down on my back in the grass, letting the wind blow over my body and set the grass to whispering. The pony shook his mane and bent to graze, as content with the wind as I. I closed my eyes and let the cloudy sky fall over me.

"This is where I like to be," I said to the pony. He didn't answer; his mane and tail streamed.

"Conn! Co-o-onn!" A girl's voice arched over the wind. I seemed to feel her voice rather than hear it. I didn't move, just lay there and opened one eye a crack as a yellow-haired girl came puffing over the crest of the hill, clutching her skirts. I closed my eye again.

"Conn!" and she tripped over me. I sat up. "All this empty space, and you have to trip on me?"

"Oh, go and jump off Cenn Bera," Etain snapped, standing up and setting herself to rights. "Fionnlagh wants you home," she said, "and so do I. He says you've been gone far too long."

"He had me this morning," I said. "All I want is a day, a half-day, to myself."

"You had that last week." She folded her hands behind her back and screwed her mouth up, looking down at me, very prim for her eleven years. I stared at her, then lay back down.

"Really, Conn, you are impossible." She sat down next to me. When I didn't say anything, she started playing with my hair. "I can't believe you still ride that pony around everywhere. Fionnlagh says you'll get a bigger horse soon. He says soon you'll start shooting up like an aspen with a sidhe."

She always said the most random things. "Mm-hmm," I said, forgetting what she said in an instant.

"Fionnlagh says…"

"That's your favorite phrase: Fionnlagh says. He's my foster-father, not yours. Why do you care so much what he says?"

She sniffed. "I can't believe I'm marrying you."

Neither could I. At twelve years of age, marriage excited me about as much as getting kicked in the stomach by a cranky heifer.

I turned my head so I could look at Etain. Her cheeks still flushed with exertion, the gold of her hair competing with the gold lock-rings at the ends of her braids, she looked like a faerie. I told her so. "You look like the Faerie Queen."

She cocked her eyebrows at me. "Don't let Fionnlagh hear you say that. He follows very closely the ways of the God of Patric, the Tailcenn, and wouldn't like to hear you speak of faeries."

"He's not here."

She smacked my arm, not hard. "Do I really?"

"Yes." I watched the wind play on her hair, and her eyes matched the sky. "Sing the song of the Faerie Queen, Etain."

She blushed. "I'm not sure I remember…"

I gave her the flicker of a smile, and she needed nothing more. In her lilting voice she sang, and all the hills listened.

On the rolling hills of Ériú

I saw the Faerie Queen

The Tuath Dé about her danced

Upon the rolling green

Her gown was yellow as her hair

Her hair was laid in braids

Adorned for her fair Fionnbharr

And for her faerie maids

On the rolling hills of Ériú

The Faerie Queen did dwell

Uonaidh was her faerie name

In her enchanted dell.

She stopped, and seemed confused. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again and we listened to the sky.

At last she said, "Fionnlagh says the man-traders from Albion are coming again."

"So? We have enough slaves."

She shook her head. "They're not coming to trade. They're coming to steal."

Etain often took fright at her own shadow, but for some reason this time I took her seriously.

"They took my cousins last year," and her voice sounded very small. "They're getting worse."

Nothing but the crunching of the grazing pony's teeth cracked the silence. The wind seemed stronger.

"What does Fionnlagh want?" I asked, only half-meaning to.

"What? Oh, him. More lore-learning. It's to be the Airgne today."

"The Plunders," I whispered. "A whole cycle of stories about plundering."

"I know." Etain stood up and smoothed her hair. "You – we should probably go back now."

Without a word I also stood. I gave her a lift onto the pony's back and led them away from the grassy under-sky knoll, making for Fionnlagh's dun.

The man-traders came that year; they took me to Albion, and I never saw Etain again.