There is always sacrifice. Gifts must be repaid: the spoils of the earth, the bounty of the rivers, the rains and the sunlight and the winds. If you do not give back, you become entitled, selfish, rapacious; but by giving back you satisfy... something. Maybe you really are fulfilling ancient pacts with the living soil and the turn of the seasons, but deep inside you there's doubt, isn't there? That if you really were, it'd do... something. The crops would spring to life if you sacrificed enough, the rains would come if you screamed until your voice was hoarse and bloody, that you could do something. That you could grab the wheel and [i]make[/i] it turn.

But you don't. You don't know that. Maybe your rites are true and potent. Maybe you just carry them out because if you don't give back to the world that feeds you and clothes you, you'll all stop being mankind and start being something else, something with iron in its heart. And for all you know, perhaps the blood of the giants that Brutus fought, those ancient natives whose overthrow was great and terrible, it is becoming less and less with each generation. You are less than your mother, the Bristol Avon, and if you ever have a child to pass on the old blood, she will be less than you.

Doubt gnaws at your heart like a worm in rotten wood, but you carry out the steps anyway. What's important is that what's done is done. The summer and the sun and the earth don't care what's in your heart, not like the God whose death you now wear around your neck. (And the Christians dare cluck at the oldest ways of blood dashed on the stones, as if they do not mark themselves with sacrificial death, one and all.)

You turn the wheel. Sunlight glints as you put your shoulders and your back into it. It's painful going, but you don't let the knight step forward. No daughter of giants should need assistance. Not in this. Drums echo from the walls of the keep, the tramp and trod of dancing feet is all around you, and you turn the wheel. From your lips the welcome drips: Lordly Summer, be welcome. Infuse our crops with your light, and allow us our rain in neither excess or want.

(Does he listen? Or must you suffer because it reminds everyone that their life is not free? Is the Risen Christ listening? Does he command the sun to stand still for his prophets? The metal is hot under your palms.)

When the children hand you the fruit, you take your flint knife and cut the flesh open, squeeze them in your hand, let the hot earth-blood drip down. Where it strikes the ground, it is dark and sticky. The little ants and flies will feast. It is better for it to be fruit that is offered up; it was not always so. But if wine can be blood, so can this. In little pots on either side of the idol, smoke curls up, cloying and thick, corn-heads withering into ash: let this be your share, fire, and let this be your share, sun-that-kills. Keep us far from disaster. We remember where our life comes from, and where it will return. (And even the Christians agree that one day you will be dust; they simply disagree on what happens afterwards, and whether you may come back in different shapes and forms. How sad, to imagine that everyone will come back just as they were, all at once.)

And yet doubt gnaws at you. It may be that Summer's answer will be cruel, despite everything you are doing. You cannot march up into heaven and demand his cooperation. You cannot promise these people who look up to you that because they made the offerings, they will be rewarded. It may be that the answer is that the sky darkens yet and the sea rises higher. It may be that night shall be thrice night over you, and the sky an iron cope.

But this is what you can do. And this is what brings them hope. And perhaps because you carry out the rituals just as they have been done for generations, perhaps the tide will turn yet. And so the wheel turns, and the wheel turns, and still the wheel turns.