The Hidden World

Chapter 13

The wigwam-like structures, or mamateeks as the Beothuks called them, were surprisingly comfortable. Unlike a true wigwam, a mamateek was a permanent building, its birch-bark walls supported by a foundation wall made of stones. The occupants slept in hollowed-out, fur-lined depressions in the earth, while the embers of the central firepit warmed them. So many members of this community had left or died or gone missing that there was plenty of room. To the children from Morgana's realm, the circular shape of the foundations was soothingly similar to their own round houses, and the Connemara children were delighted by what to them was an unusual design. They had now forgotten their fears, and seemed to feel that they had embarked on a sort of adventure.

Maeve was offered a place in one of the mamateeks, but, finding the atmosphere stuffy and the children's excited whispers distracting, she chose to sleep outside with the adults. She was growing accustomed to lying on hard ground, and the banked fires gave off a comforting warmth, but sleep still eluded her for some time. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the swaying neck and lunging jaws of the peist.

Presently, there arose in the night a long, mournful cry. She was not alarmed at first, thinking that it was only the call of a loon out on the lake. But the wailing voice was joined by others, an eerie chorus, and she started up, her heart beating hard. The howls were coming from the direction of the barrens.

"It is not the Cwn," Dugall reassured her as he walked by, doing sentry duty. "Only wolves."

Only wolves! She sank back, listening with trepidation to the distant howls. Wolves. Canis lupus beothucus. Now where had those words come from? She lay still, trying to remember. The Shadow-world ... Newfoundland. Yes. There had been a mounted wolf skin in the museum, she now recalled, with the skull displayed beneath. And a sign explaining that this was the last known specimen of the Newfoundland wolf, hunted to extinction decades earlier.

But here the wolf lived on, as the Beothuk did.

She lay gazing up at the sky. It was clear tonight, and filled with those wondrous stars. Looking straight up, with trees and tents removed from her field of vision, she could almost imagine that she was suspended in the midst of the heavens and the stars were all around her. Presently, the stars themselves were dimmed by a greater wonder. A pale light flickered above her, so quick and faint that she thought for a moment she was imagining it. It came again, brightened— and the sky burst into flame. Great tongues of fire sprang up to hide the stars. Unlike earthly flames, they were a pale fairy hue—green with edgings of blue and violet—though here and there, as they wavered and rippled, Maeve saw flowerings of gold and rose. They flared, dimmed and died, then blazed forth again to fill all the sky. She sat up, staring at them in wonder.

"You seem amazed, young Maeve," said Dugall. He and Zosweet were standing by the fire, looking at her with amusement. "Are the Fir Chlis, the Merry Dancers, not known in your world, then?"

"Yes, we call them the Northern Lights. But I've never seen them like this. They're almost... alive."

"So they are," he answered. "The Fir Chlis are spirits of light and air, angels who left high heaven to dance beneath the stars."

"To us they are the messengers of the Good Spirit, who sends them to watch over us," said Zosweet. "But it is the same thing. Your angel spirits are messengers, are they not?" 

"True enough. It is as you have said: we believe in the same things, though we call them by different words."

Myths, Maeve thought as she lay down again. The auroras were just natural phenomena, weren't they? Solar rays colliding with the atmosphere. But perhaps that was only what they were in her world, that place of shells and shadows where the outward part was all. In Annwn, the inner selves of things showed more clearly—everything here was more real, more alive and aware. Who could say what the auroras were in this world?