the oak

    The sun was caught between the moon and the stars; a kind of sky that would seem fateful to one viewing it. The plains beneath it stretched endlessly, shadows of clouds moving dimly over the landscape until earth met sea and the simplicity of the rolling clover green hills carried itself into the scintillating emerald of the ocean's depth. Somewhere waves were crashing onto the pale beachhead and a woman, her belly fat with unborn child, stood beside a lonely oak tree; overlooking it all.
    The tree was at the top of a small rise. On the forward side of it's down slope the green-brown of the grass met with a billowed crash against heavy gray boulders, perched like marker stones at the edge of a gentler slope onto the beach itself; and from here into the ocean. It was the sunset the woman watched beneath the gnarled branches of the oak tree and not the rolling green of the hills behind her; a place where the night sky seemed even now was being swept over her head and down onto the setting sun, pressing it to the horizon line and squeezing a show of color from its ripened redness.
    Tonight she was alone, but on most nights when she could find the time, she stood here beside her husband; Kincaid. They would hold hands and lean their heads against one another in silence, satisfied with the comfort of the moment. The thick blades of grass slid between their toes and the icy tang of the ocean wind struck out over their bodies with some infrequency; pulling them together each time and reminding them that they were not alone with this closeness.
    But today he was down near the teach, their home. Out here on the frontier, away from the other towns, living could take up a lot of time. Thus they would cling to moments like these when they found them.
    She paused in her quiet contemplation to turn her head back to the hollow not far from here and look down into it to the house they both lived in. Smoke rose steadily through the roof hole and distantly she was certain she could hear the rasping slice as he cut thatch for the roof of the cashel next to their home. The land had been his father's and become his in the days when his father had still lived beneath the same sky. The house there now was one he had built himself of strong stone with a fine thatched roof, taking a more than a year in the building.
    The cashel, or ring fort, was older than that and had existed on this land back before even his father. It was a good defensible structure, and in this outland place devoid of fortification it had seemed wise to model the new structure after its predecessor.
    Kincaid was a patient practical man and for him it was as important to have a house he could defend as it was to have one to last perhaps through to the adulthood of his own children and thereby have some legacy to grant them. From his father had come the land. From he to his children would be given both food and shelter when he had passed to the other world.
    The land that was his now, that had been his father's, and all that stretched beyond it three hills past had in his grandfather's day been the site of a terrible battle. The struggle had been mounted between different families, since at peace but then at war and they had shed their blood on this grass; this place now little more than a farmer's field, until the blood went down to the soil and gave it a red tinge and strong topsoil, though it was named for the previous Magh Deargh, the red plain, in Gaelige.
    As she was looking down to her home in that moment her hand traced over her swollen belly. Her thoughts swung now to the children they would raise here and the love that they would know. This child was to be their first born, and they both had prayed for a daughter to carry on the line. It was an old custom, getting older with each passing season and each new conqueror that arrived on their island.
    There was no king of the old blood now to hold the peace. High King Brian, the king under the mountain, had lost his life to the outlanders with their strange ships and strange ways and this had been in the days of Kincaid's father. Now nothing was certain and this was why they were out here on an old battleground trying to raise a family. It seemed they stood a better chance against the mystery of the unknown than against the certainty of a headless kingship.
    Kincaid's father had lost his life to such bloodshed; the warring tribes became the murdering families, as if land and title obligated the killing. She turned back to the oak. This tree had stood alone against the bitter wash of the sea as each successive generation poured its blood into the soil around its roots. She reached out and touched its bark, gripping it until she pulled away a piece that could be held in her hand.
    "Had this been what they had fought for, shed blood over and died beneath?" she thought. Was it for the fields, the soil in which they grew, the salt air that tainted it as the sea slammed down on a tiny beachhead? Had they fought for so little?
    Or was it so that she and Kincaid could raise a family here? Bring their own children to fruition and leave a legacy, at last, of peace, of farming and hunting, and staring into the night sky without a care in the world beyond these things. She smiled, knowing the answer as she curled her toes through the grass and felt a tickling of ants begin to march across her feet.
    This tree was more than a mere sentinel. It was the place where Kincaid's father had been buried. She knew that when he had fallen in battle his people had seen fit to lay him to rest here amongst the roots of the old oak; curled him in the old way like a child in the womb, the things he would need for the next life laid in beside him.
    The blood of his ancestors to soak the soil and the body of his father to feed this tree truly this was a sacred place, and this tree a sacred thing, she thought.
    Each year it grew as families grow, branching outwards into the sky as in homage to all that gave it life, and yet never forgetting the mystery that was its roots; steeped in the body and blood of ancestors. Each new season the arc of lives passing through this world making room for the next, like leaves budding, shining, and falling away into eternity.
    She felt her child cast about in her belly as she thought of this and wondered at its birth, as yet an alien sensation to her; though she had spoken often to other women of it. The beauty of the oak faded from her minds eye.
    Birthing a child without knowledgeable women nearby was risky, and though she had much time left and many opportunities in which to seek midwives in the nearby villages she had not as yet done so. In truth some part of her believed that it would make no difference in the event of a difficulty, despite what others had told her.
    She folded her arms across her chest and was so lost in worry that she could not hear the soft footsteps of Kincaid's approach through the tall grass, nor even hear his voice rise up from the bottom of the hill to call her name.