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“And longer still since the goblins saw the face of the Goddess,” Ash said. If he resented the chiding, it didn’t show in his voice.

“Are you goblins?” the God asked.

“Yes,” Holly answered.

Ash was a little slower with “Yes.”

“Are you sidhe?” the Goddess asked.

“No,” Holly answered.

“We have no magic,” Ash answered, as if that answered the question, and perhaps it did.

“What would you give to possess the magic of the sidhe?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Holly said. “I am goblin, and that is enough.”

“She did not say we had to become sidhe, brother,” Ash said. “She spoke of the magic of the sidhe.”

“Magic of the sidhe, but still goblin,” Holly said. “That would be worth much.”

“Once there were many courts, even among the goblins,” the Goddess said.

“Once,” the God said, “there was magic in every court of faerie.”

“The sidhe stole our magic from us,” Ash said, and his hand that had been tender tightened against my shoulder. He didn’t hurt me, but his body was suddenly tense as it knelt beside me.

“Daughter,” the Goddess said, “what say you to this?”

“The sidhe stripped the goblins of their magic to win the last Great War between our peoples.”

“Do you think this was well done?” She asked.

I thought before I answered, because I could feel the magic beginning to gather around us. You would think that in the presence of Deities there would be no room for magic to build, that their presence would mask everything, but whatever was building in this summer night in this place between pressed against the air like the weight of invisible rock, as if a mountain were building above us one thought at a time.

Ash’s arm across my shoulders was almost trembling with tension. I had a moment to glance up at him, and he was staring as hard as he could straight ahead. I think he was afraid of what I might see in his eyes.

“I’ve been told that if we hadn’t taken the magic from the goblins they would have won the war.”

“But your two peoples are no longer at war, are they?” She asked. “No,” I said. Ash had gone utterly still beside me. I could feel the tension along his muscles, as if he fought himself to be still.

“If you could undo the wrong done the goblins, would you?”

“Was it wrong?” I asked.

“What do you think?” She asked.

I thought again. Had we been wrong? I had seen what the sidhe had done with their magic. They had used the fact that only we had major offensive magic to be tyrants. We had won the wars, but in the end, it was the humans with their technology who had truly won.

“I think we won a battle, but not a war, by taking the goblins’ magic.”

Ash’s hand spasmed against my shoulder.

“But was it right, the right thing to do?” the God asked.

I started to say yes, then said, “I don’t know. I was told that our magic came from You. That would mean that we stole magic from the goblins that You had both given to them. Did you agree with what we did?”

“No one asked us,” the Goddess said.

Ash startled beside me, and I just gaped at them. They had hooded themselves again, so my eyes and my mortal mind would be able to deal with them better. When had they hooded? Just now? Minutes ago? I couldn’t remember.

“Taking the goblins’ magic was the beginning of You turning from us,” I said.

“What if you, daughter, could undo that injustice?” the God asked. “You mean give magic back to the goblins,” I said. It was always good to be clear.

“Yes,” they said together.

“You mean give Holly and Ash hands of power,” I said. Ash had actually dropped his hand, as if it were all too much.

“Yes,” they answered again. Were they beginning to fade?

“They are sidhe as well as goblin,” I said.

“Would you give them their sidhe-side powers, daughter?” Now I was answering voices.

If I said no, would the Goddess retreat from me, from all my people again? I looked at Ash, and he would not look at me. I glanced in front of us at Holly. He was glaring at me. His face showed plainly that he thought I would deny them. But it wasn’t his anger that I saw, it was the reason behind the anger. Years of looking in the mirror, and seeing all that sidhe