Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 310 – A Falling Star and a Flying Bird by Rhiannon Grant

Saturday, March 29, 2025 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 310 – A Falling Star and a Flying Bird by Rhiannon Grant - transcript

(Originally aired 2025/03/29 - listen here)

Today’s story kicks off the 2025 fiction series with “A Falling Star and a Flying Bird” by Rhiannon Grant. Rhiannon lives in Birmingham, UK, with her wife and lots of books and teddy bears. She has been fascinated by British prehistory ever since visiting stone circles in Cornwall as a child. In addition to her fiction she researches, teaches, and writes nonfiction about the Quaker tradition and philosophy of religion.

I’ve had Rhiannon as a guest on the podcast a couple years ago, discussing her sapphic historical novels set in Neolithic Orkney: Between Boat and Shore and Carving a New Shape. The current story is almost modern in comparison, set in the British Iron Age a few centuries before those pesky Romans show up. As with her longer work, Rhiannon has built on archaeological knowledge to envision entire societies, including plausible ways in which queer people might have moved in those societies.

If you want to find out more about Rhiannon Grant and her work, check out her blog at brigidfoxandbuddha.wordpress.com via the link in the show notes.

I will be the narrator for this story.

This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.

A Falling Star and a Flying Bird

By Rhiannon Grant

Singing Oak gets upset about the big stuff, like being humiliated in public or having her authority as our Druid undermined. I won't say that doesn't bother me on her behalf, but I have less power to lose and so it's the little digs which get to me. Take now, for example. Victory is holding my baby. I know she thinks of Tiny Spark as her son Brook's baby, and therefore in some sense her baby, but I was the one who carried her and when she cries to be fed, she'll have to come back to me. But for the time being she's happy enough being cuddled by her grandmother and it leaves me with my hands free to slice apples to eat with the pork when it's roasted.

Victory isn't happy, though. She's describing to little baby Tiny Spark, who's only been able to hold up her own head for a month or so, how she ought to be starting training to get strong and ready for battle. Ready for battle! Victory might have sent her son out to fight when he was too young to understand what was happening, and left him with all the nightmares you'd expect from that, but I don't want to let my daughter become a warrior unless she really wants to. If I've anything in mind for her, it's probably Druid training, but who am I to say what the gods will give her?

Such scruples about waiting for divine favour are important to Singing Oak, and although I'd be a bit more willing to hope for something specific, I also value the principle of waiting for a sign to be sure. Victory, on the other hand, likes to think she can make things happen. She brought her husband to her, a powerful man who fought well and died in the process, leaving her with the one child, a son who might have moved away – taking much of her money and all of his fame with him – if she hadn't arranged for him to get both a Druid wife who had already left her family and a lower-class woman who wouldn't want to marry him. Singing Oak is the Druid and I'm the lower-class woman, by the way.

Fortunately, I'm fond of Brook in a general sense and didn't mind getting pregnant, but I don't care about him enough to be longing for his attention all the time. Sometimes I wonder which would be worse, to love him less or to love him more. Since in fact I love Singing Oak dearly, and she loves me, and Brook loves riding out to be alone, we're all pretty happy when Victory isn't trying to tell us to do something different.

"Silver Wheat?" It's Singing Oak, and it sounds like it's not the first time she's asked. I blink and turn to her with a smile. "I asked if you saw something in the fire. You were staring."

I'd been resting my gaze there in an effort not to scowl at Victory or worry about whether Tiny Spark was going to remember any of the nonsense she was hearing, so I shook my head. "No, only the logs burning."

"You were miles away."

"Thinking about something else." I made myself refocus on the apples in the bowl, slicing another one open and cutting out a maggot. "How are the stars? Did you see better from the rampart?"

"Yes, but there's nothing new." Singing Oak sat down beside me and watched the young man who served Victory as he turned the meat over the fire. The smell was filling the air now and every mouth in the village would be watering soon. "I did see Spot tethered up to graze, so Brook must be back."

People gathered and we ate. It was one of those clear autumn nights when you can feel the winter's cold beginning, without it being sharp enough to stop you sitting around. Victory handed Tiny Spark over to Brook and she was fussing in his arms, trying to look around at however much a little baby can see. Singing Oak wasn't finished with the stars, and took breaks from her meal to watch the skies. Beautiful though she is when she's thoughtful, almost like one of the goddesses she's trying to understand, I kept myself focussed on trying to get plenty of food before Tiny Spark came back to me.

So it was that Singing Oak saw it first. She said, "Look!" and we all turned.

Burning through the sky was a star. It looked like a ball of light, and it flew over us for several breaths before it winked out. It was very bright, much brighter than the evening star which we could see not far away from it.

"I thought it was coming towards us," Brook said when it had gone dark. He bounced Tiny Spark, who was grizzling a little bit, perhaps getting hungry or disconcerted by the adults all looking up.

Then there was a thump.

It was loud enough to feel a little shake in the ground as well. It was somewhere on the far side of the fort, in the area where we dig our storage pits.

"What was that?" I asked, and I wasn't alone. People who hadn't been gathered around the fire started to come up to us, wanting to be close to their family members or find out what was happening.

Brook put on his booming voice.

He doesn't like using it but it does come in handy when there's an emergency or general confusion.

"The gods are sending messages," he said. "Singing Oak, where shall we look?"

She pointed, and we all traipsed back over to the storage area. With the sun almost gone we had to look around with lamps and torches, anything we could light. I checked the new storage pits first – if the gods had sent something to destroy our harvest, we would have had a very serious problem – but the seals were all intact. I went a bit further, testing my footing at every step – I didn't want to fall into an old pit in the dark – when something beneath my torchlight seemed a different colour. I knelt down to find a deep black dust scattered around the mouth of one of last year's storage pits.

"You found it," Singing Oak said behind me as I picked up some of the grit and rubbed it between my fingers.

"Do you think so?"

Singing Oak was carrying a branch, alight at one end, and she lowered the flame into the old pit. There were some little weeds growing on the walls, now covered in black dust, and earth freshly turned over, and at the bottom, below where we would be able to easily reach, a dark stone smaller than my palm.

"The fireball fell here," she said. "I suppose this is the ash it made, or perhaps it's soft like chalk and scattered this when it landed." People were starting to gather around now, including Brook. I stood up, still holding a handful of dark dirt, and Brook gestured for Singing Oak to speak.

She waited for quiet. There are about a hundred people living here at the moment, safely enclosed in our fort, farming the land around, trading with our neighbours when we can, and defending ourselves against them – or going out to raid their herds – when we can't. Some of the children were already asleep, or people were preparing themselves for tomorrow, or simply too tired to care about strange things in the sky, so perhaps thirty or thirty-five people were gathered to hear her.

"The gods have sent a blessing," she began. There were a few murmurs in the crowd, a few deep exhalations as people heard that and welcomed it. Any sign could go either way. The lamb's entrails in the spring had been complex and Singing Oak had told us, regretfully, that difficult times could lie ahead. There had been more rain than usual in the summer and the fields had turned golden later than usual, making it a rush to get everything cut and stored before the days started getting too short. A big flock of ravens had made their home on the east side of the fort, making everyone worry that fighting was on the way – although Singing Oak always told us that they could be waiting for something else. In short, when strange things started to happen, we were all on edge for bad news, and if Singing Oak thought this was a blessing, we were ready for it.

"There are two messages here," she went on. "The first was the falling star." She gestured with her torch, indicating the path of the light we had seen in the sky. The torchlight also shone on her red hair and lit her lively green eyes and wasn't quite bright enough to show all the freckles on her cheeks, freckles which I loved dearly and which she worried might form inauspicious patterns. It was lovely to look at. I had to restrain the urge to remind everyone that she was my wife, especially when they were all gazing at her hopefully as well.

"A falling star is like a bolt of lightning. It comes from Taranis and it means growth is coming. Lightning comes with rain and it means physical growth is coming; the falling star is a quiet, dry light, and it means we will be bigger and stronger as a people." I snuck a look around. Everyone was watching; even Tiny Spark wasn't fussing, perhaps even sleeping in Brook's arms. Singing Oak's voice had the power of authority and the mention of Taranis, her patron deity, probably helped. She had full authority to interpret his oracles. "The second message is this stone and dark earth, come to one of our old pits."

She paused, and someone took the opportunity to call out, "Is it the falling star? Is it a star that landed?"

I knew Singing Oak well enough to see her trying to decide about that. On the one hand, this thing had hit the ground so soon after the light in the sky it seemed they should be related. On the other hand, it looked like a stone; whatever made stars glow, it didn't have it. Slowly, she said, "Perhaps a piece of it. If a star is like a lamp, perhaps this is part of the frame."

Victory frowned. "I'm not sure..." she started.

I glanced at Brook, in case he was about to speak, but he bent his head to check on Tiny Spark and avoid getting involved. "The mystery of stars is far beyond us," I said. "Whatever fell, our question is about what the gods are telling us, not where it came from."

"Wouldn't you need to understand the origin to grasp the message? What if this fell from the sky and not from the gods?" Victory asked. She was as pious as you could wish for and sometimes more pious than I could stand when the gods were on her side, and could be an outright atheist when they weren't.

"Singing Oak, what does your wisdom tell you?"

In pausing, Singing Oak had risked losing the crowd. The bickering had given everyone a brief distraction. Now she was ready to take her cue from me. She adjusted her shawl and said, much more firmly, "This is a blessing on our harvest. We've seen two signs: the falling star for light and the stone for soil. The gods have sent it to bless even our old pits; our new pits will be full and safe all winter, and we will have plenty of bread. We are safe and well."

Everyone cheered, perhaps not as loudly as they would when that phrase was used in our spring-time rituals, but enough to show that Singing Oak had convinced them. She walked through the crowd towards the living quarters, torch held high, and people turned to follow her as she went.

Brook and I ended up at the back. Tiny Spark was mewling and once we were back on solid ground, I opened my tunic to feed her. It's not easy to walk at the same time but sometimes it's better than waiting until she screams.

"I'm sorry about my mother," Brook said.

I shrugged. It's not really his fault that she behaves like that. Even if it were, he should be apologising to Singing Oak, not to me. I didn't say that, though, because the whole messy ground of their marriage arrangement and its ending and my role in everything has been ploughed over so often that while there are very few stones left, it's also hard for anything to stand still long enough to grow. Instead I said, "I wonder if there will be another sign," and when he glanced at me questioningly, I added, "Things come in threes, you know, Singing Oak says that sometimes. Three great blows, three sad stories, three famous weapons."

"A triad of signs," he said, echoing the formal phrase. "But if there is a third sign to come, Silver Wheat, what question will it answer?"

I thought about that when I couldn't sleep that night.

Singing Oak was curled around my back. I could tell from her breathing that she was already asleep. We'd been too tired for more than a hug and kiss when we finally managed to get Tiny Spark to settle, but at least we were tucked safely into bed and behind the blanket which separated our sleeping space from Brook's. Sometimes I thought about how in this woolen cave I was surrounded by the hard work of many hands: the blanket on the bed, of which Singing Oak was currently using more than half, I had woven myself in my mother's house using wool she had shorn from my father's sheep. Although I enjoyed having food every mealtime and not relying on gifts from neighbours who were equally likely to be going hungry in the difficult parts of the year, I missed the laughter in my family.

The brightly dyed hangings which helped to keep the fire's warmth from escaping through the wattle and daub walls were Victory's work, perhaps aided by Brook at times, and had been in use since her husband was alive. We'd washed the smoke out in the summer and been surprised by how much difference it made to the colours. Of course, when I tried to make a joke about it Victory had been offended – I never did work out why, other than that I was both socially inferior and funnier than her – and thinking about them now reminded me how difficult I find it to live here.

Hanging from a roof beam was a blanket which might have been used on the bed, except that Singing Oak had chosen to use her work to separate herself from Brook rather than join him.

I was glad to be on the same side as her. I couldn't really see the blanket in the dark, but I knew it carried patterns representing her own name – oak leaves – and that although her parents had encouraged her to embrace her marriage, it didn't have so much as a shade of blue let alone anything suggesting a brook. I wondered again, as I often had, whether the situation hurt her more than she let on. Druids and the sons of queens can do almost anything they like, but they can also be put into positions they don't like without being able to see a clear way out.

People like me have even fewer options, unless the gods see fit to give us some. I was indeed surrounded by the work of many hands. It turned out that on closer inspection they were also reminders to the ways in which I felt trapped.

Singing Oak sighed and shuffled, unconsciously seeking more of the warmth of my body, and I gladly snuggled into her. Trapped in this case also meant loved. I liked being with her, and where else would I go?

Come to think of it, that would be a question worth divining: what choice do I have?

The gods don't usually bother to answer that sort of thing. In the absence of signs I considered the things I could think of for myself. Stay and spend every day swishing my tail like a horse, trying to flick off a fly which comes back over and over again. Leave alone and go hungry, either an extra mouth trying to make myself useful in my parents' house, or searching for whatever work I could do, or taken in by someone who wanted my body, or maybe enslaved. It didn't seem appealing and I'd miss Singing Oak and Tiny Spark – and Tiny Spark would have to be found a wet nurse or she'd go hungry too. Not that taking her with me would make anything easier.

Maybe in an ideal world, we'd stay and she would go. I pictured Victory riding out of the gates of her own free will, but I knew it would never be a long-term arrangement. She's too attached to the hillfort and the people here are too proud of her and her lineage. I briefly considered murder, but even if the gods would smile on something like that, there are the practical challenges like sneaking up on her at a vulnerable moment, dealing the death-blow, hiding my guilt, and burying the body.

It made for some entertaining images, though.

Perhaps I drifted off to sleep with this in mind, because when I woke I had another picture: Singing Oak and I rode out from the gates with Tiny Spark on my back. I didn't know why, and I immediately dismissed it as unrealistic, but I liked the idea.

I'd woken because Tiny Spark had woken. She was making little noises, not yet crying but on the way, so I slipped out from Singing Oak's arms, wrapped my cloak over the tunic I'd been sleeping in, and took her to the hearth to feed her.

Once she'd had enough milk, I didn't want to lie her down again immediately, so I took her out in the dawn light just to see the day. The sky was clear and the ground soaked with dew. Hardly anyone was moving; even the dogs slept, some of them opening an eye as I passed but ignoring me when they saw I didn't have any food.

Slowly, I walked down the main path through the fort, away from the great wooden gates and towards the far side where Shining Oak goes to commune with the gods. There's an oak tree there which Brook curses sometimes because it would block the view if we were attacked, but it would be ill-luck to fell it when so often the ravens which rest in the branches have served as the gods' mouthpieces.

Some of the ravens looked around as I approached. Not wanting to disturb them – or the people who would hear them if they started shouting – I stopped a good distance away and turned to the east. The sun was just appearing over the ramparts. Our good earthen slopes, topped with a wooden fence, are intended to hamper a raiding party or group of warriors, but they also slow down the sunlight.

Tiny Spark fussed a bit, not yet ready to go back to sleep nor awake enough to look around, and I rocked on the spot while she settled again. I watched the wisps of cloud over the sun and wondered what they meant; I didn't think any god would speak to me, but perhaps a goddess would leave a little trail of clues I could use to work out what to do. Did I have a choice I hadn't seen?

A raven flew past me. Watching, I expected it to go off into the fields or perhaps towards the houses, where they would take dropped wheat grains which the dogs spurned.

But the raven landed on the ground, almost at my feet. I stopped moving. Fortunately, Tiny Spark was quiet. The huge black bird walked a few steps, ignoring me although it was less an arm's length from my feet. It stuck its beak into the grass and came out with a beetle, which it crunched down. I breathed in, and perhaps I made some other noise, because it cocked its head to look up at me before spreading its wings to fly away. I felt the wind as it left the ground, climbing into the sky in an unhurried, deliberate way.

I wished for Singing Oak to tell me what that meant. Then I wondered what it meant to me: the ravens are associated with Brook as our king but also with our people here. We'd been close enough to touch, the raven and I, but it had flown away so that I couldn't follow. It could have walked, as they often did when they searched the ground for food. Did that mean something? Did it mean that I should leave, or that I couldn't, or that the gods were close, or that they were ignoring me? I tried to think of a story in which a raven flew away, but I could only think of stories in which they were forewarnings of battle to come or gathered around the dead afterwards. They weren't hopeful tales and I was pleased that they didn't seem relevant, although it also didn't help me understand whether the raven's actions were a sign.

Another cloud passed over the sun, dimming the light for a moment, then moved on. That was the second and a third one followed behind. The clouds could be us; I looked for, and found, a small one just above the others to represent Tiny Spark. I wondered whether that could be a sign.

The image from my dream came back to me then. Here was Tiny Spark's cloud, slightly above and to the left of the one I had chosen as my own. My cloud was following the one which might represent Singing Oak. But the first one I had seen, which had crossed the sun and drawn my attention, the one which was for Brook, had started to change shape. It was breaking up. Singing Oak's cloud could no longer follow it.

I didn't see a cloud for Victory. The rest of the sky was clear.

Not having a proper offering with which to thank the goddess for her guidance, I pulled a strand of my hair and let it fall to the ground.

I tried to wake Singing Oak quietly, thinking that we could pack and be gone before anyone else noticed, but of course she wanted all the details of the sign, and to interpret it properly, and by the time I'd told her everything and she'd explained to me three reasons I knew nothing about the gods, even though I'd had a prophetic dream and an augury from birds and an explanation in the skies, Brook was awake and on the verge of telling Victory and my plan was about to fail.

"Wait," I said, before he could get out the door. To his credit, he did wait, taking a seat by the hearth and beginning to stir up the fire. That was good, he'd need it to cook his own breakfast when we were gone.

"The interplay between last night's signs and..." Singing Oak began. I think she heard me sigh, because she stopped talking and looked at me, really looked in the light from the refreshed fire, for the first time that morning. "A god did speak to you, didn't they? I can see it in your eyes."

"I think so," I said. I didn't want to be too set on it, although telling the story to Singing Oak had made me more convinced that it was real.

"Yes," she said, slowly, considering. "You've always been special, observant, kind, open... you love me so well, and now the gods have rewarded you."

That was putting it a bit strongly, I thought, although I didn't like to argue with her and we were at risk of getting distracted. I answered her with a kiss, making it strong and sweet but keeping my mouth closed and pulling back when Tiny Spark made a noise. "I do love you, and so do the gods, and maybe they love me enough to help me. My question now is... do we obey? Do we go? Do I go, and do you come with me?"

"And do you take my daughter?" Brook asked. I jumped, having almost forgotten he was there. "More to the point, what do I tell my mother? She won't be pleased, and she won't have much time for anything Silver Wheat says about the gods."

Singing Oak looked into the fire. Perhaps she was searching for a sign of her own; the shapes in the embers are sometimes said to give clues in much the same way as clouds. Perhaps she found one, or something inside her changed, because when she lifted her head I could see that she'd decided that we would go.

"Tell Victory that we've gone to give an offering at the shrine to Brigid," she said to Brook. "Tell her – tell everyone – that we saw signs this morning that we need to give thanks for last night's blessing, and that Brigid brought us the fire and the metal and so we have gone to repay her, on their behalf. It will save us sacrificing any more of the harvest. And tell them to leave the rock where it fell. And get a sword ready to give to the river when the spring comes, because these blessings don't come for nothing."

It was a good plan. The shrine to Brigid was several day's ride away, not so far that we would be expected to spend a long time preparing for the journey but not so near that they would expect us back tomorrow. The other instructions would distract people – especially Victory, who loved the fine work of our excellent blacksmiths and resented it every time we had to kill a perfectly good sword and hand it over to the other world.

Brook stood. "Is this goodbye, then?"

Singing Oak smiled at him. "We'll see each other again, my official and dutiful husband," she said. "We'll bring your daughter when she's old enough for the combat training her grandmother wants to give her."

"Can I see her before that?"

"When the gods will it," I said. I'd had enough talk and handed Tiny Spark to Singing Oak to hold while I threw a few things into a leather bag: some spare clothes, the end of yesterday's bread.

"I'll have them ready your horses," Brook said.

Singing Oak relaxed once we were alone, rocking the baby and handing me things to pack. "Remember your thick cloak," she said. "The weather's already turning."

As we went out the door, I paused to thank the spirits of the hearth and the house who had sheltered me. It wasn't their fault I couldn't stay.

At the gate, Brook was waiting. I took Ivy's bridle from his hand and gave her a brief glance over – my little mare is willing and friendly and prone to scratching herself on sharp posts, so I always look to see if her skin is sore before I ride. Today, fortunately, she seemed fine. One or two people were already walking around, watching us as they went about their business, and if we did anything which seemed remarkable we'd have a crowd before we could blink.

"Give my greetings to Brigid," Brook said loudly once we were mounted, and the groom who had helped Singing Oak echoed the sentiment. Hopefully nobody would think to question that story for some time.

We rode down the hill and onto the plain in silence. We turned west towards the shrine of Brigid, knowing that in some places along the route we could still be seen from the fort; and Singing Oak said, "We might as well make it true, at least to start with, unless we get another sign."

"We'll pray for one," I said, adjusting Tiny Spark as she slept on my back. But the sign that I got that afternoon was nothing more and nothing less than the fulfilment of what I had already seen: Brook's cloud dissolving until there were just the two of us; the raven flying away from me as I was leaving the fort; riding away as I had seen in my dream; the blessing of the full grain pits so we wouldn't be worried about the people at home even if we went hungry in our travels; and the light of Taranis coming overhead and heralding a change. I couldn't make it add up to a neat set of three. I had a feeling that Victory would be proud of the way I made it all fit the answers I wanted to reach.

I didn't mention that to Singing Oak. Instead, when we stopped by a stream to refill our water skins and rest, I hugged her close. "I'm glad we get this time."

"It's a gift," she agreed, and kissed me. The water chattered beside us and Tiny Spark woke up, but I ignored it all for a few more moments thinking only of her lips.