The spring before my 15th birthingyear, my life would change forever. Stories told to all acolytes and temple children that we once thought of as silly and dismissed would become real as the tears on my face, and my life would be entwined with another's; as well as the Goddess's herself.

A week before the Elders held their annual meeting with the outside villages; Tersan and Stera came to me when I was in the scholar's temple, assisting Mother Eydithe with recording that weeks' apple harvest numbers, and bade me accompany them to an audience with an Elder. My painter stick stopped midair, dripping the dark dye onto the records, but I did not care.

"You wish me to do what?" I whispered, my eyes grown huge in my skull. Mother Eydithe rapped my arm with her cane, reprimanding me for my lack of manners. Stera frowned at me.

"Muirne, this is quite a privilege to be present in an audience of one of the Elders! You speak as if we wish you to empty the shit buckets."

Eydithe snorted and grunted like a wiley old hog, mute as she was, appalled that we spoke the way we did in her presence. Tersan just shook her head, loose frays of her graying hair floated around her ears as she did so, making her look like a fae.

"Girl, I'll not tell you again. It's been requested of you, so we go. First, let's out you of that stained smock and get you into something more presentable."

Glancing at Mother Eydithe, who had no sympathy for me and shooed me away, I dropped the painter stick on the board and stood up, looking at everyone defiantly. "Well, if THEY requested ME, then that's what they will get!" and stomped off to my chamber.

Wringing my hands together and pacing in front of my window, as Stera shuffled around my clothing trunk and chattered away about whatever nonsense she was chirping, I began to feel sick, any bravado or bravery I had puffed up in the scholars temple was long gone and left me empty, afraid and faint. Sweat was gathering between my budding breasts and I felt as if I was going to float away.

"Stera… please… why me? I'm… This is me, for pity's sake! The girl who spilled the apple brandy basin all over the banquet table, and the Farsii tribesmen, last Samhain! I can't be seen by the Elders, or anyone they are seeing!"

The acolyte straightened up, an empathetic smile on her face as she held my best gown and mantle in her arms.

"Muirne, has anyone told you what your name means?" she asked, coming to sit near me on the bench under the window, smoothing out the wrinkled gown and laying it under the stiff mantle.

I sighed, irritated. "Of course I know what it means. 'To balance', and the old stories tell of my namesake the princess who stood as the peacekeeper between an angry Goddess and an ambitious King who thought to make himself a God to the people, striking down her sword of fire to the unfaithful and never wavering to remind the man he was only a man. She was the message that the Goddess would reward him in good faith if he remembered to curb that ambition. The peacekeeper and the King fell in love, and she died protecting him from a corrupt Lord vying for her hand and the kingdom. The Goddess in her compassion for her one true servant descended from the Heavens and transformed her body into a lake surrounding his castle so she could go on protecting him and the land even in death. No one can find her Lake because no one has been worthy to lay claim to the sword, the castle and the Crown left behind."

Laying back on my pallet, I blew my breath out and stared at the ceiling of my room. "As if I could ever become anything near my namesake…" I whispered bitterly, "I'm not even pretty…"

My pallet shifted as Stera sat down next to me, and ran her fingers through my dark red hair, flung over my outstretched arms.

"Muirne… you've never seen your face when you are happy. Your blue eyes deepen to out-color the deepest part of the river, your face even with its new cream skin has an apple glow upon your cheeks, and your laughter rings up and down the halls like bells. No one tells you this because you're so damned firey in your moods. I recall a few moons back, you were so angry with the kitchen boy for dropping a bowl of milk and honey on your shoulder as he walked by you in the dine hall, all of the torches outside the main hall burst out of their iron holding and almost lit the stablemen on fire who was standing nearby."

I stiffened at her words, like a rabbit preparing to bolt, and avoided her gaze. She tugged on a lock of my hair nearest my left ear and bade me look at her. I glanced slowly up at her, and she was serious faced, her eyes betraying the tiny lines etched on each side showing early aging.

"You know why that happened, don't you?" she whispered. "Tersan and the Elders were arguing for hours about it, not knowing how it happened, if a servant had used too much oil on the wood."

I bit the inside of my cheek, a bad habit when I was caught in a lie that everyone could see, my cheek just slightly indented.

"I don't know what you mean, Stera… I only heard about it later as I was scrubbing the blasted honey out of my mantle. The poor stableman can never use his right arm again…" I trailed off, trying not to bring my arms down across me and hold myself as I do when I am desperate or sad.

Stera stared hard at me, seeing right through my façade, but sighed and stood up.

"Brush and plait your hair. I need to shake your gown out, as it looks you did not seem to do it last time you wore it. And wear slippers, for Goddess's sake, Edythe will have our arses if she catches you running around barefoot anymore. You are 14 now!"