by S. Leigh Ann Cowan

Sparks spray beneath the hammer’s blow, brilliant golden drops alighting in the grass beyond the forge. Warmed by the shining sun, the sparks pulse and surge out into crowns of soft petals. The smither smiles, and dips a ladle into the slack tub. The water glitters clear when she casts it over them. Rather than quenching them, the sparks press roots ever deeper into the soil.

Thus we perdure.

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Aodhnait shrieked. Birds exploded from the trees demarcating her family’s farmstead, scattering leaves and feathers. She laughed. Peripherally, Aodhnait spotted Mamaí glaring, bouncing the sleeping baby on her lap as she spun flax into thread. Her sister Bláthnat was sitting beside her on the ground, struggling to secure flax to her own distaff.

Finally, Mamaí took pity. Nudging Bláthnat with her toe, she pointed to her, then to Aodhnait, who now was throwing small stones into the pond and antagonizing the geese. She frowned toward Aodhnait, then pointed toward their cow, mimed milking, and gestured again at each daughter, pasting a peaceful expression on her face.

Bláthnat gladly traded the distaff for the pail and raced to Aodhnait. They exchanged a series of signs which they had developed between themselves, more fluid and expressive than those used by their mother. Together, the sisters traipsed across the field.

The cow, brown and shaggy as a friar, tossed her head at their approach. Aodhnait greeted her with a handful of sweetgrass. Bláthnat set the pail below the udder. Her sister frolicked about, picking the field clean and inhaling the pungence of spring as Bláthnat worked. Apron pockets overflowing with dandelions, Aodhnait created a basket of her lifted skirt.

She pressed her face into the cool pile, tickling her nose with the bittersweet grassiness. They could make tea from it, lovely to sip first thing in the fresh cold morning. Perhaps with milk, she thought, and promptly dumped some into Bláthnat’s pail.

The elder raised an angry fist. Aodhnait sheltered behind the cow, hopping excitedly foot-to-foot. Only the sight of their mother, still sitting outside their wattled house, stayed her hand.

Scowling, Bláthnat fished the floating dandelion heads from the warm milk. Aodhnait ducked and crawled beneath the cow. With many signs and an animated face, she reminded her sister of the teas their mother made, and how the dandelions could steep also in milk, for a new and interesting flavor. Bláthnat stared. Then she threw the milk-drenched flowers at Aodhnait.

The younger fled with playful bursts of voice as Bláthnat chased and easily caught her. They both tumbled to the ground laughing.

The cow trotted past them. They sat up in surprise. Beyond, the geese too scuttled toward a woman in a green gown. She walked alongside the road. The cow and geese greeted the stranger, who stroked them each in turn. As she continued walking, they flanked her. In wonderment, the girls moved closer.

Bláthnat came up short and grabbed Aodhnait. Apprehensively, she pointed, then cupped her hands, and made the sign for fire. Indeed the woman’s bowl, which she carried before her, contained a live flame, but she seemed untouched by the heat. The stranger’s path curved toward them. When her foot trod on a dandelion, it sprang back up, petals straightening, and more yellow heads propagating beside. The flowers closest to her took on a sunny glow.

Frightened, the sisters fled to Mamaí, gesturing and crying out urgently. Mamaí saw the fae woman.

She leapt up from the stool and fell to her knees, laying the swaddled baby aside. Hands clasped, she began to speak. The anxious girls watched as Mamaí tearfully gestured to her children, then to her ears, words buzzing from her lips.

The woman stopped, knelt before them, and smiled. All around, the dandelions shone, and more burgeoned from the earth. With one hand, she beckoned the sisters forward; Mamaí gave them a push. The stranger set the bowl of fire between them, then plucked a dandelion in each hand. She gave these sundrops to each girl, then gestured that they should drop them into the bowl. They did so—Aodhnait with gusto and Bláthnat more timidly. The flame neither leapt nor wavered as the dandelions, suspended, turned to ash, which the woman rubbed between her palms.

Good, good, she signed.

The girls gaped. Never before had any stranger communicated to them in their language!

Through signs the woman made them understand who she was. With her finger, she scratched out her name.

Then Brigit spoke to Mamaí, hands and face moving in tandem. Go and summon all the people here, she commanded, and bring each of them some drinking vessel.

Tears streaming, Mamaí obeyed, hollering into the house and calling out as she crossed the field, babe clutched to her chest.

Soon thereafter, nineteen faces well known to Aodhnait and Bláthnat were gathered before Brigit, standing or kneeling reverently, each holding a cup or bowl.

Around them, dandelions puffed into golden flames. Brigit plucked two, and placed these balls of fire in the bare hands of the girls. She commanded in signs, Pass these to each one here.

Aodhnait and Bláthnat flitted about with pollen-stained fingers, dropping a flame into a vessel held out to them and returning to Brigit for the next. The flaming dandelions turned to liquid. At Brigit’s cue, the nineteen lifted their cup or bowl and drank.

Good, good, signed an old farmer.

For by drinking the dandelion tea everyone had gained the knowledge of signs. Aodhnait and Bláthnat rejoiced most of all to see that Mamaí could finally truly understand them.

The remaining dandelions exploded in showers of golden sparks, which burnished to white, and floated far and wide. Brigit was gone, as though she had never been there.

The girls cupped their hands before them, and their fingers wiggled like flames. And we all understood that the sign meant Brigit.

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S. Leigh Ann Cowan (👉🏻/✋🏻; she/her) is a white, deaf, aroace, middle class, liberal arts-educated ciswoman. Her passion is for stories—not just the entertaining ones, but the stories that we tell about ourselves and others, and the hows and the whys and the whos behind the messages we send. Her creative works have appeared in the Disability in Dystopia anthology and the Deaf Poetry Now! anthology, among other places.