Fireflies at Lughnasadh

III

That evening across Salvatka and Lenkija the same fires would be lit and the same prayers offered. Lapiukas – Lugh – didn’t care for too much gloom at his festivities. Each of the eight festivals of the turning year held some form of hope in it, even the dark, damp Samhain – known as Ilgés, Forefathers’ Eve, to the Lenks – as the nights closed in but frosty Yule was still most of two months off. But the summer solstice, named Kupolinés by the Lenks after the Slovian Kupala, and Lughnasadh were the pinnacle of the year for the fox-god’s worshippers across Insula.

In Dun Dubh, the ceremonies had been conducted in a funereal hush, without the customary revelry usually seen at free festivals.

“It takes one to know one,” Aushriné said quietly to her fellow shaman as they watched the lighting of the bonfire from the shade of the cloisters. “Of course, I’d have been a little smarter than that – not to try my luck only in my nightwear.”

“They didn’t let me get dressed,” he replied through a barely open mouth.

“Where would you have gone had you actually got out the gate?” she asked.

"I would have got to Carraig Dubh early in the morning,” Naujokas whispered back, keeping his eyes fixed forward. “There’s a lot of us there and I’m sure there would have been at least someone prepared to help.” It sounded a flimsy plan even as he tried to tough it out. The Empire was too powerful – they hadn’t even bothered to lock the outer door because there was nowhere to go.

“You’d have gone twenty miles in a night?”

"It’s not that far,” he bluffed. “Not if you cut a few corners across the fields rather than go round by the road.” You’re too comfortable here, he thought. You’ve had more occasions than me to try something like that.

So why had he done it? He shut his mouth and sucked his lips as he saw a warder, not involved in last night’s little fracas, look in their direction. They were allowed as far as the cloister parapet, but no further. Mac Dhomnhuill had been strangely lenient, but Naujokas put it down to the warders having been complacent and being as much to blame as he was for escaping. Nevertheless, they’d been caged up all day, only allowed out of their cells to watch the fire. On a summer holiday, that was indeed punishment, but since they weren’t under official sentence, they couldn’t be birched or subjected to any other physical punishments.

Eimear and Doirrean stood to attention on the other side of the bonfire with the other guards; they looked rather embarrassed and nervous, and received their own cold glances from time to time from the senior warders. Graeme wasn’t there at all. Mac Dhomnhuill and his pet druids were offering the ritual sacrifices to the flames – the wreaths of flowers braided at midsummer, now dried husks, were burnt on the pyre to symbolise the fading of summer and the gentle decline towards autumn. There weren’t any magical lights in the spitting, crackling flames; Naujokas wondered if Doirrean had been given Mac Dhomnhuill’s permission to get him to perform for them, and their plan had gone wrong, or whether she and the other warders had just been larking about on the eve of a holiday.

He concentrated his attention on the sparks popping and crackling into the evening sky. One blinked into a firefly, light enough not to require any particular effort from him; it eased a dull headache that had pulsed all day as he lay on his bunk, bored. The Lughnasadh magic was still in his body. If it was anything like what he’d experienced before his long detention at Dun Dubh, it would fade again at midnight and not recur in the same way until Misrule, the magical festival celebrated by all the faiths of the Four at the end of the long Yuletide season. He popped another spark into life, then another and another, careful not to do too many at once in case the orderly tending the bonfire noticed, or Doirrean or Mac Dhomnhuill picked up his magical aura.

For a few minutes, he revelled in subverting the ceremony, making a fool of the commandant. He noticed from face after curious face that he had an audience. Aushriné finally noticed what he was doing and dug her fellow shaman in the ribs, but he continued the display.

There was one problem with his light show. He was slowly being overcome by the excitement and energy of the magic. It was more and more difficult to control it; the force within him channelled its way through his fingers and the air was soon bubbling with the energy he needed to start a real fire. Indeed, he could see the flames spit a little higher; one of the officiants jumped back with a frown. They needed to be close to the bonfire to conduct the ceremony. He had no quarrel with them; they were going through an honest religious ritual which didn’t call for overt solemnity and had no role in their oppression by Mac Dhomnhuill and the Empire itself.

Naujokas’ need to hold back so as not to attract undue attention confronted his desire for a little more colour and light after eight previous Lughnasadhs spent in this tedious, hollow fashion clashed.

To hell with it, he thought. I’ve started something I need to finish. Even if they burn me as a witch I’ll gladly go to the stake a proud, free man.

He voluntarily increased the tempo and range of his conjuration such that red, blue and green lights broke over the heads of the Galtarai druids. They themselves relaxed slightly as their fire returned to its normal intensity. Having granted himself permission to go full steam ahead, he found himself able to control the fireflies better. Naujokas even funnelled the fire upwards; he could shape it better into fireflies, pulling it away from the priest whose cassock he’d almost singed.

He had no argument with her.

It was Eimear who first broke into hesitant laughter. One of the druids, Caoimhe, a red-haired woman who acted as chaplain to the warders and occasionally deigned to take a detainee’s confession, began to smile, even in the middle of a prayer that was supposed to be mourning the passing of the seasons.

And then Mac Dhomnhuill looked up, his face grim.

Naujokas dropped the spell, having done what he came to do. The dancing lights were at their most intense, and the momentum of the light show had already peaked. A shower of stars fell to the flames and dissolved into the bonfire. Now the commandant had noticed, everyone was watching them. It was no longer possible to stop the fidgeting and murmuring with a few sharp glances.

Naujokas bit his lip. Mac Dhomnhuill had done nothing to him last night but hustled him back to his cell and begun yelling at the warders in their own language, and that day’s punishment had not been brutally administered. The commandant now opened his mouth and gave a few snorts. The priest, a Salvat named Agnieszka Glowacka, put her hand on Mac Dhomnhuill’s arm and said a few words to him that no-one except the commandant could hear. The only thing Naujokas could perceive was that she distracted him from a hasty outburst. Another of the druids, Aodh, recently anointed as Caoimhe’s novice, launched his own fireworks into the gentle evening breeze.

Caoimhe herself orchestrated his response; Naujokas perceived through heightened senses that she was acting as ballast on Aodh’s attempt at fireflies. It was smooth and practiced, earning his respect.

The commandant took a deep breath and smiled; people audibly relaxed, and once Aodh’s own spell had climaxed and dissipated, the ceremony resumed. Darkness finally fell, and with it Naujokas’ view of the dignitaries.

In his cell later on, Eimear brought him a note from Mac Dhomnhuill, and left without saying anything. It read simply:

You can have your magic back.