Zorica Fallen

Every fire in the camp knew when Zorica was coming, because she sang before she reached the wagons. She played a fiddle with a cracked neck, badly on purpose when the old men were trying to sleep. She could walk into the mists where the rest of her people turned back, and come out the other side with the same song.

She left with a man from outside one spring, promising to be back before the first frost. She never came back. Fiadh was born the next winter, and Zorica didn't live to hold her. The song Fiadh plays, the one about the river and the lantern, was hers.