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“I serve Máel Dúin,” he said and his voice was grave. “Tell me true, sweet Cébha.Will the Lady’s thread stick fast to the hand of any man among us?”

And I thought of the fibers we had carded and combed with such care, straightening and smoothing each matted tangle. I thought of how the Lady had spun them, brown and black, red and gold, into a single thread. And it was in my heart to lie, but Diurán gazed at me with his dark poet’s eyes, and my lips spoke the truth.

“Yes,” I said to him. “It will.”

He nodded, and I went away, for I did not want to know what he would do with such knowledge. Once only I glanced behind me, and Diurán was plucking rushes from the floor of the hall, smoothing them on his lap. Then I saw no more.

In the morning, I did not go to warn my Lady. Whether or not there would have been merit in it, I do not know, but I was sick at heart and had no wish for her to read the betrayal in my face. So I went to the ramparts and watched.

For the third time, Máel Dúin’s men pushed the curragh to the shore and it left its deep track in the sand like the mark of some vast beast. For the third time, they launched their mighty vessel, and it rode proud atop the green swells, surging with each stroke of the oars. Once more I counted their heads, black and red and brown, and Máel Dúin’s among them.

I saw him stand when the Lady came riding, and the sunlight gleamed gold upon his hair. Already, as her hand reached into her bodice and drew forth the ball of thread, he was gazing toward the shore. I wondered what look he had in his pale eyes. Was it the falcon’s fierce stare or the tender gaze of the lover?

There, the Lady’s arm moved, her skin white as foam. There, the mottled ball in a soaring arc, thread spinning out behind it, crossing the waves. There was the end, fine as silk, settling over the curragh and Máel Dúin’s hand reaching for it.

I do not know which of his men leapt to catch it instead. He had a name, too, but I do not know it. It was too far, and there was nothing about him I knew at such a distance. I know only what I may guess.When Diurán held the rushes concealed in his hand and Máel Dúin’s men drew lots, he was the one who drew the broken reed.

The end of the thread stuck fast to his hand. The Lady began to wind the thread into a ball, drawing the line taut, and the curragh’s prow turned toward the shore.

And there was Diurán, and him I knew by the angle of his shoulders and the movement of his limbs, by his hair as brown as oak leaves in autumn, and everything about him. I knew there was sorrow in his dark poet’s eyes; sorrow, and a warrior’s resolve. The sunlight was bright on the steel blade of his sword as he swung it, severing the man’s hand at the wrist.

So it was that the man’s severed hand fell into the green sea, and with it fell the end of the thread that the Lady had spun, hour upon slow hour. And Máel Dúin and his men sailed away and Diurán was among them, and my Lady was left on the shore, bereft and weeping.

In the stories told by men, they say only what further adventures befell Máel Dúin and his men. In the end, he found his father’s slayer, and forgave him. It was a monk, a holy hermit, who bid him to do so. When the tale made its way to our shores, the Lady heard it and smiled, though there was sadness in it. I do not know, in the end, if I served her purpose or hindered it. Although she bore me no ill will for what I had done, I did not dare to ask. Such boldness as I once had, I lost that day. I knew only that I was no longer worthy of speaking her name.

Of me, the tales do not speak. Perhaps it is as well.

My name was Cébha.

The Cat with No Name

BY MORGAN LLYWELYN

The cat was Nuala’s friend. The cat was the only living creature who was always happy to be with her. The cat had no name because Nuala had not given it one. To name the cat would mean it was important to her, and someone might have noticed.

When the weather allowed, Nuala played with the cat in the back garden. The area they liked best was a scrap of neglected lawn behind the sagging