"I love you," he said. She knew this was true: she never doubted: and that this love was forever, she never doubted that either, or why else was the Widow the Widow, solitary? That was the only shadow on her happiness, to think in that moment on the Widow, her loneliness, having lost husband, lost daughter, black-clad forever.

"I love you," she said, because she always had . . . but she had never reckoned who it would be out of all the folk she loved that she would become the Widow for, if luck should turn. Marik kissed her again and would have done more than kissed, but the Widow had counseled Mila some things, and she would not. She fled, blushing with confusion.

And met Ciag coming up the self-same path.

Marik came hastening down behind, with a basket of forgotten fish on his arm, seawardrunning. She stopped. Marik did, in hot consternation. Ciag had stopped first of all, his face gone stark and grim.

No words were spoken, no move made, but for the white gulls which screamed to the winds aloft, the rustle of the grass and the dull murmur of the sea which was never absent, day or night, from the ears and minds of Fingalsey.

Mila went quite pale, and skipped by on the shoulder of the hill, fled faster—gone from innocence, for suddenly she perceived a hurt inevitable, and something beyond mending. Ciag came the next day, waiting beside the Widow's door in the morning. He had brought his own gift, a garland of daisies and primroses. He offered it with the merry flourish with which he had offered her a thousand gifts. He was skilled at weaving garlands as he was nets and cords and all such things—slighter than his brother Marik and quicker. She did not mean to take it, but so brightly and so quickly he offered it to her hands, that her hands reached on their own; and when they had touched the flowers they touched his hands. His fingers closed on hers, and his eyes were full of grief.

"I love you," he said, "too."

"I love you," she whispered, for she found it true. It had always been true: her two year-brothers, her dearest friends, the other portions of her soul. But she pushed the flowers back at him. He thrust them a second time at her, laughing as if it meant nothing. "But they have to be for you," he said. "I made them for you. Who else?"

She put them on, but she would not let him kiss her, though he tried. She fled from the Widow's door to the midst of the street. . . and stopped, for there stood Marik. She had not remembered the fishes. She had left them in Marik's hand on the hillside, running from him. But she wore Ciag's garland. There was anger on Marik's brow. She fled them both, running, as far as the goats' pen . . . she let them forth, snatched up her staff, walked in their midst, flower-decked, up the hillside, away from them both. All that day she found no song to sing for her charges, not then or coming home.

The brothers both met her that evening, each with a basket holding one great fish, as alike as rivalry could make them. She laughed at that and took the gifts; but there was hardness in Ciag's eyes and deep wounding in Marik's—her laughter died, when she looked into Marik's face. She still wore the flowers, day-faded and limp about her neck. She took Marik's gift first now, held it closer in her arm; took Ciag's basket and hardly looked at it. Then Marik's face lost some of its wounded look; and Ciag's bore a deeper shadow.

Mila fled away inside the Widow's house, and that evening had appetite for neither gift. Every day after that they gifted her, both laughing, as if they had discovered amusement in their plight. Then the knot bound up in Mila's heart loosed: she took every gift and laughed with them when they laughed, walked with them both—but not separately—waded with them among the pools and shared goat's-cheese with them when they scanted their fishing and their own parents to be with her. She sang again, and laughed, but sometimes the songs died away into hollowness when she was alone, and sometimes the laughter was difficult—because she knew that someday she had to choose, that someday the both of them would not be with her, but one alone. One gray fall day, with the storms beating at the shore and all minds numbed by the vast sound, it was Marik who found her, in that gray mist, by the boats which huddled like plain dark stones, hull-up along the shore, by the nets which hung ghostly and dripping in the fog.

"I have no gift today," he said.

She smiled at him all the same, shrugged, stood numb and cold while he took her hand, numb until she thought how she had waited for this time. Her eyes gave him yes, and drifted high toward the hill.

He would go now. He tugged on her hand.

"Tomorrow morning," she said, counting on another day of fog, and pulled her hand away. He was there, before the dawning, perhaps all the night. She walked up the hill in the dark, having slipped out of her warm bed in the Widow's house, having flung on her skirt and shawl—barefoot over the wet ground and the cold rocks, up the far shoulder of the hill, among the cairns, that side furthest from the sight of the village. The sea crashed at the foot of the hill, drowning all small sounds. The fog occasionally became leaden droplets. A shadow waited for her among the waist-high cairns.

What if it should be Ciag? she thought in fear, and knew by that fear which brother she chose, and that she had long since chosen. It was not Ciag: she knew Marik's stature, tall and strong—knew the touch of his callused hands, his warmth, looked into his face in the dark and came into his shadowy arms as into a haven safe and longed-for.

He spoke her name—Mila, Mila, over and over, like a song. She kissed him silent and stayed still a time, where she wanted to be.

"What of Ciag?" she asked then sadly. "What of him?"

"What of Ciag?" he echoed in a hard-edged voice.

"He'll be alone," she said. "I want him for my friend, Marik." She felt Marik's body within her arms breathe out a sigh as if he had feared all his life and gave up fear forever.

"He'll mend in time. He'll hold our children and sit by our fire and forget his temper. He's my brother. He'll forgive."

"Shall I marry you?" she asked.

"Will you?"

She would. She nodded against him, kissed him, full of warmth. "But don't tell Ciag. I will." She thought that this was right, though it was the bravest thing she had ever thought to do.

"I will," said Marik.

That was a claim she gladly gave place to.

There was no sound there but the sea. The sun rose on them twined in each other, and rose more quickly, more treacherously quickly than they would have believed, sunk as they were in love. There was the dull roar of sea and wind, wind to take the fog; there was the night and suddenly light; and they hastened back, going separate paths, different directions to the village in headlong flight. The light grew as the wind and sun stripped away the mist, so that it was possible to tell color. The traitor goats were bleating in their pens, and Mila could see below the hill a figure waiting.

Marik's trail led down first: she saw him reach that place and pause; saw the two youths stare at each other face to face. She shrank down against the rocks, not wanting to be seen, not daring—waited there, cold and shivering while the light grew and the village stirred to life—until she realized to her distress that with people awake there was no hope of coming unseen back to the village.

She walked back up the hill and down again by yet another trail. When anxious searchers found her, she was walking along the rocks below the cairns, her feet quite chilled, her skirts made a pocket, full of shellfish. "I couldn't sleep," she told the grim-faced men and women who had turned out searching for her. Beyond their faces she saw—her heart stopped—Marik and Ciag both, faces hard and not at all bewildered by her behavior. Other faces among the crowd grew frowns, suspecting; the youngest stayed puzzled.