Jason had remembered some feeling when Josh had spoken of building the fire with Da. It was the first time Josh had 'helped.' The year before he'd been too young, at least in their mother's opinion, and Josh had been happy enough still being Mama's baby.
This year, with a new baby on the way, Josh was bigheaded with the idea of being a big brother so he had to learn how to do it right. (That was Josh for you.) It was at Josh's own insistence that he was helping.
Josh's big brother had NOT been as enthusiastic.
Da had been amused. He set the boys to pulling up the grass in the center of the meadow while he dug a shallow circle around them. Pulling the grass was easy enough, because they always made the fire there. They piled the pulled greenery in the center after they'd cleaned the roots (shallow because only a year old.)
When Da was about half done he sent Jason to start bringing small(er) rocks to make a shallow firewall in the trench. Da had specific instructions for the rocks Jason was to find. They were to be small enough for Josh to handle, but big enough to make him feel the work.
After all the plants were pulled, Jason was to rake the rubble from previous years into the trench, and Josh would stack the new rocks on top of that. Da himself was going into the trees for wood and branches to build the framework for the fire itself.
What Jason was remembering was the familiarity of the work. It seemed to be something he had done regularly….
Something that predated Da, but not Mom.
Jason's earliest memories were of he and his mother living in Scotland, living with either his father's brother or his mother's brother.
They had no place of their own.
Mama said that wasn't really a concern, because that was where his Da was, off finding a home for them, somewhere far away from all the bossy busybodies and judgemental relatives. All they had to do, she said, laughing, was to wait for him. He would come back one of these days.
She laughed, she smiled, but her eyes were sometimes sad.
The two homes, and the two uncles, were very different.
Da's brother, Uncle Duncan, was a stern man. There were rules to live by, and those were the rules. Said rules included that Jason, as the only heir (thus far) to the clan leadership, should be living and learning with the clan. He should receive the proper education, the proper training, and the proper discipline. He should learn his place among the people.
He should not be wrapped in petticoats and playing in the outdoors as if he were a child.
Mama laughed in his face and took her son outside to play and walk and learn and meet 'his' people.
The place they lived there, on the mainland, was a spare, sometimes barren, place. The ground was hard and rocky in the hills, and marshy towards the shore. The many streams tumbled through and over rocks, bright and bubbly, as they raced one another to the ocean.
Mama said they talked, if he'd listen. They were telling the rocks they caressed about their adventures getting there, and what was happening upstream, where the waters came from. She taught him how to listen, and he learned.
She taught him about plants and even the rocks, tumbled and tossed and strewn down the hillsides had stories to tell of where they'd been and what they'd seen. Their stories were written in every line and crack. He learned to read their language.
Mama took him with her into the village. She rarely spoke to them – she told Jason that she couldn't read people as well as the things of the earth, and was afraid of saying the wrong thing – but she usually joined in with any work going on. Mending nets with the sea-fishers, quilting with women, building stone walls around wells or along the road or along a dooryard. The only time she was easy with them was when they were working with plants, making their simple (and not so simple) medicines. There she was at ease.
The people never seemed to mind. That was what impressed Jason. He didn't understand it in words, being such a young child, but he understood some. Uncle Duncan said her aloofness and their acceptance of it was an acknowledgement of her 'place' The child didn't understand that, but had heard it often enough, so he ignored it until he could.
It didn't matter. He made up for his mother's silence. The bright eager child met people, talked to people, asked questions, and learned from them.
He liked them.
He liked their stories.
He liked the different ways they worked.
He liked their unity, and he liked their differences.
They liked him.
That was Kilmaron, his Da's family home.
There was an island across the way, that was Mama's family's home. Mama's family was her much older brother, John.
Uncle John was a wonderful person. He was patient, kind, loving, and best of all, he laughed a lot. Jason adored him, and wanted to be just like him when he grew up. (Mama said that was a good ideal – or idea? – but she thought he might have a bit too much of his father in him. She promised to help him work on anything that would keep him from his goal. That was because she, too, adored her wonderful big brother.)
The island was green and fertile. There was an orchard, and there was a bit of what Mama and Uncle John called a wildwood. The trees outgrew anything on the other land. Uncle John said that was because the island had never been raided. The wood had never been stolen.
The times it had been attempted, the ocean had not co-operated with the timber-thieves. Yes, there had been attempts to take the wood to build that Great Armada Jason would someday learn of in history classes, but they had never succeeded due to tides and oceanic storms.
And, it was but a small island, after all. Probably not that much of the wood would be used, and the great Queen's men would better spend their time gathering more accessible building supplies. From a more plenteous source than some isolated island.
Then Uncle John told him stories about that great Queen, who had been a redhead like he (Uncle John) was.
Mama laughed and said, "So much for future history class!"
Uncle John laughed and agreed.
Twice a year, at least, the best of these two cultures came together, In spring and fall, the villages all around had celebrations with rituals and songs and dances, and fires. Big tall all-night burning-bright fires. Jason's favorite was when they got to put on disguises and go to people or their houses, and the peoples would give them treats to go to someone else's house, not theirs. He guessed they were afraid of them or something.
Uncle Duncan didn't like the festivals, at least not while the children were running around. He called them heathenish practices and had no use for them. Uncle Duncan called the villagers the peasantry. Mama called them the pleasantry.
Uncle John said he had pleasant trees.
Under those pleasant trees, Uncle John tried to explain about the ceremonies being an ancient religion, related to something and rooted in something and having some meaning or other.
Jason didn't know, or care. He looked up through the trees, and wondered how Uncle John kept them growing here. Sea air and sea salt and intemperate weather didn't grow good trees, but Uncle John did. (Uncle Duncan could barely grow vegetables.)
How did he do that?
Uncle John tried to explain, but when his young nephew went to sleep on the ground, he just laughed.
"You're doing a fine job raising your own heathen," he said to his sister. An
She laughed.
"Seriously, what will your husband say to that? He's always been a church-goer."
"Oh, I'm sure he's got over that, being where there are no churches," she replied airily.
"I am not so sanguine as you, my dear. I know that you have fought over this before."
"Yes, and we always work it out, don't we?"
"How worked out is it that it keeps coming up?"
She grinned her urchin grin at him. "Something we get to make up over."
Uncle John laughed at her. "I'm going to miss you."
"We'll miss you, too."
"When you take time to think of me?" he teased.
"You'll have to come visit us."
"It's a thought for the future." He stood, touched her shoulder, and headed toward the house.
"Yes," Mama said, and she started humming a happy lilt, as if she saw the future walking toward her.
Maybe she did.
/klmj\
"Sounds a lot like Halloween, that fire thing," Josh said, as Jason ended his story-telling.
Jeremy nodded.
"Yes, it does," Jason agreed. "I'd forgotten all that. I guess I was wrong when I said I didn't know anything about it."
"How come?" Jeremy asked. He looked up from his work on the tea table he was reworking.
"It was a long time ago, and a world away, little one. I forgot; that's all."
"But how come you forgot?"
"Because he's old," Josh answered.
Jeremy tilted his head and studied Jason dubiously. "Is that r-right?"
Jason sighed and laughed. "I suppose it could be. I'm getting feeble-minded."
"J-jason, how old was you?"
"Four, five. Something like that."
"Was your disguises monsters?"
"Hm. Demons, ghosts, something like what you know as a banshee – I forget our word for it. Other lost or wandering or condemned spirits. So, yes, I suppose you could say monsters."
"Huh."
"Now what do you mean by that?" Jason was amused.
"Well, you forgot about monsters longer than I did, didn't you? Because I'm younger and I remembered before you. You p-prob'ly only remembered b'cause I d-did."
Josh laughed.
Jason waved a hand at Josh. "You could be right. What you're saying makes sense. Although I'd say I remembered so I could help you face your monsters."
"No." Jeremy shook his head. "No f-faces."
"No monsters," Josh corrected, and Jeremy looked down at his work, his jaw set, and again shaking his head.
"Leave be, Josh," Jason said. "Among the nothings we're doing today, one of the primaries is that we are not chasing or facing monsters. We'll save that for another day."
"Or not," Jeremy said. "M-maybe we c-can forget again."