Queen of the Summer Stars by Persia Woolley

spirits move abroad and people can be snatched without warning into the Otherworld. Beltane is generally fairer, with its songs and dancing, May Day rites, and grand processions as the cows are turned into the pastures for summer. Since everyone must participate at Beltane—young and elder, weak and hardy—a bustle of activity filled the Court.
    I found the kitchen in chaos. Enid had dragged out every pot and pan and was surveying the lot with obvious misgivings. Small and dark as a changeling, my lady-in-waiting spent most of her time in the kitchen because Cook was more in need of help than I was. Her brows knit in exasperation as she assessed the remains of the Empire.
    “Those old Romans must not have had much of an appetite; aren’t any vessels here big enough for a proper frumenty. From the looks of it, they never sacrificed anything bigger than a pigeon!”
    I grinned and pointed out that when the Romans became Christian, they’d given up blood sacrifices. “But if anyone knows where a caldron could be found, it would be Cei.”
    Sure enough, the Seneschal located a battered bronze crater, and before long Enid and Cook were busy mixing up barley kernels and milk and dried fruit for the ceremony.
    As the shadows lengthened Ettard and I took the children through the house, making sure that every ember was extinguished in hearth and oven, lantern and brazier—at Beltane one must truly return to the darkness of the days before the Gods. Only then, with the lighting of the Need-fire, can the Gods prove they have not deserted us.
    It is a ritual I’ve taken part in all my life. With every year the memories become richer, layered one over the other like petals of a flower holding a secret in their center. In good years it is a time of high spirits and anticipation, but when plague and pestilence stalk the land the royal promise leaps to mind with the Need-fire spark. Mama had died the day before Beltane, and since the flux was still rampant, my father’s life would have been forfeited if the Need-fire hadn’t caught. The memory of that terrible fact lies always just beneath my Beltane joy.
    This time the bonfire roared to life with a fine, bright blaze, and the people laughed and capered and danced in giddy delight at leaving winter behind. When the flames died into a glowing pile of embers, we all helped pull the frumenty pot up to the coals and I began the circle dance.
    Singing and clapping, the women followed after me—snaking back and forth between the glow of fire and the dark of night, doubling round on ourselves—a living spiral in the dance of life bobbing and weaving to the high, piercing notes of Dagonet’s pipe.
    The men moved in behind, swaying and stamping as they reached out to spin us around. Deeply throbbing, lightly sinuous—together we called the Goddess, woke the land. Great waves of love, of pent-up longing, of glorious release, rose in the voice of the people as the cold constraints of winter dropped away and spring came romping across the fields.
    Every shadow whispered hope and invitation, and I was back again in the fire-glow of the Beltane after Kevin left. Now…now…I prayed, as if the time since his disappearance had not been. If you are ever going to claim me for your own, it must be now!
    His face shimmered suddenly before me; dark-eyed and haunting, but without a smile or gladness of any sort. And when I flung my arms out to him, he turned aside with a look of pure contempt.
    Confused, blinded by hot tears of hurt and disbelief, I stumbled from the circle. Arthur’s arms went around me, swinging me up in an arc so high that my feet left the ground. Flying, soaring, whirling breathlessly in his embrace, I blinked repeatedly, trying to clear my vision until I saw that it was Lancelot who moved silently away from us, not Kevin at all.
    The pain and poignancy of that love which was never to be, mixed with the cold hardness of the Breton’s scorn, made my heart cry out. Tears ran