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Overnight, someone left a decent plow by her doorstep … an offering to turn the curse. We watched her in the fields with that new plow and watched the pattern of rocks by the cliff take shape.

There was a time when it looked, from the village, as though she built a serpentine monster and the wind in the craggy tree looked to be its winking eye. She toiled on, ignoring those of us who watched her on those long miserable days, praying that she wasn't planning her vengeance on us. Gradually, however, our fancy of fear was replaced by reason and the pile of rocks slowly turned into a house. We watched her after seeding time, when she packed mud between the rocks of that craggy house she built. We watched Daft William wander over one day before anyone could catch him and begin to work beside her.

We saw many things that spring -- like her rooster-less hen followed by a trail of peeping, downy chicks and the nag begin to look like a glossy-coated young mare. Daft William brought her the blind runt from his bitch's litter. When one of Farmer Brennan's milk cows dried up, Iron Joan arrived on his doorstep with a handful of pennies, a bushel bag of potatoes and the rickety cart. Brennan sold her the cow and gave her its sickly calf for good measure. Like everything in Joan's care, the calf grew hale and hardy and the cow gave milk.

Daft William crossed Joan's field with impunity whenever he was lacking for work in his mother's house. He would come away talking of Joan's cooking and the stories she told of sleeping dragons who could be summoned if you knew the way. We couldn't help but wonder at the strange friendship but none of us dared speak against it.

Joan's house of stone continued to take shape and, even with her belly swelling with her second child, she refused all help but William's. Offerings made in the night … hammer and some nails, strong timbers for beams … these were the only things she did not refuse. No one admitted to the offerings and certainly no one showed for lack of the items that appeared by Joan's doorstep.

By The Same Author Magic's Silken Snare Silken Magic #1 (DAW, April 1 03, 556 pg) ElizaBeth Gilligan's first novel opens the Silken Magic saga, set in 17th-century Sicily - and a mythical kingdom across the water known as Tyrrhia. It is a world in which magic has the power to shape the course of history... and love has the power to unravel it. Where religions rise, governments fall, and the only thing more powerful than a Gypsy's passion... is a Gypsy's curse. It is on sale April 1st, 2003.

In the heat of one day, she broke down the shack her husband had given her and passed the boards up to Daft William to nail down as a frame for her roof. That night she and Baby John slept beneath the rickety roof, refusing even Pastor Matthew's offer of a bed in the church. Morning brought sight of another anonymous offering: thatches for her roof.

Thomas Murfie returned from the sea mid-summer. We watched him carefully as he paused at village's edge to stare at the wonderment of his wife's work. A fine house had taken place of the shack; a well-groomed mare replaced the nag; and there were chickens, a cow and her calf, and a young dog who stood at his mistress's side with his lip half-curled back. Baby John wore toddler's clothes and hid from Thomas among his mother's skirts.

We waited with great anticipation in the pub, coins already pressed into Angus' hand to pay for the rounds of ale that would loosen Thomas' lips. But Thomas was brooding and sullen, silent in his cups. Well past time for the more sensible among us to be in bed, he shambled back to his wife's house with hardly a word spoken. There was a glint in his eye that did not bode well for Joan. Some among us considered waylaying him, but in the end, fear held us.

We were unsurprised to see Joan moving stiffly about her chores the next morning and none among us were without shame for having done nothing. But what were we to say to Thomas Murfie? And would the Iron Joan we grudgingly admired have accepted our interference?

Mercifully, Thomas' stay from the sea was brief. He set out for the port at the county seat with his pay still in his pockets, leaving his wife to make due with whatever she had. The day his ship set out to sea, she stood with Baby John in her arms on the edge of the cliff, watching.

When Finna Brennan's time came early that fall, my Grania, the village midwife, was called to her side. It was a gray day, made worse by the signs that Brennan's wife was going to bring forth another stillborn child, only this time she seemed likely to die with it. Pastor Matthew and I stayed with Brennan, trying to distract him from the sounds in the house. Late in the day, Grania called Pastor Matthew inside. We saw the news on his face when he returned.

"I've done what I could," he said.

Brennan sank to the ground, leaving me to ask, "Is there nothing anyone can do?"

"She wants the witch. She says only the witch can save her and the baby," Pastor Matthew said.

"The witch's curse caused this!" Brennan said.

Pastor Matthew shook his head, but kept his own council.

"Let's see what Iron Joan can do," I said.

So it was I who set out to her stone house. Despite the wind, her door was open. I smelled fresh baked bread and heard John and William laughing. From the shadows of her house, I heard Joan's steely soft voice speak to me.

"Come, Smithy Kerwin. Warm yourself by the fire and have some tea to warm your bones. She came forward into the light then and I could see her own time was near.

"I've come … Pastor Matthew sent --"

"Finna Brennan's time has come then, has it?" she said, reaching for the shawl by her door. "William, bring the boy."

I followed her with William beside me carrying John. None of us spoke during the strange march to the Brennan farm. It frightened me how she saw me by her door before I was there and how she knew my purpose. William caught my gaze and laughed, bouncing John into the air.

Farmer Brennan hovered near the door of his house like an angry bee. As Joan stepped up, he pulled away from Pastor Matthew and blocked her way. "Let no harm come to my Finna, Witch! I know you for what you are -- "

"Enough!" Matthew said, taking hold of Brennan's arm.

Joan went directly to the birthing room but paused at the door. The silence that followed seemed to stretch into forever … then she spoke.

"There is no laughter in this house, Finna, and that is why your children die!" She came into the main room and looked at us sternly. "Why is there no laughter in this house, Brennan? You have a good wife and a fine farm. Open your windows! William, show these men how to laugh!"

"She's as daft as William!" Brennan growled, rising.

Our Joan met him, her face grim as she stared into his eyes … and big man that he was, Farmer Brennan knew enough to recognize his better. "Welcome this child with laughter, Brennan, and make his days sweet and you will have a fine healthy son; but raise your hand to me, the child or the wife and never will you have a family to gather at your hearth!"

We were silent, staring at Brennan and waiting. He crumpled into his chair, shaking his head mournfully.

"John!" she said and held out her arms. Her boy ran to her laughing, then William rolled his head back and let out such a guffaw I thought the roof would come down on us. The pastor's rich chuckle rumbled from deep within him and, God help me, even I began to laugh until the tears ran from my eyes. Grania came to the door, confusion on her face, and suddenly she was laughing too. Brennan began to shake and the first laugh came out like a croak, an odd sound at best, then he sat back and let the laughter out.

Joan watched us, that stony stoic mask never once twitched, then she set her boy down and went in to Finna. It seemed but a moment more before she brought out the baby.

Brennan held the boy in his arms and the laughter stilled for a moment as he stared in wonderment at the child, then he threw back his head and laughed like he would never stop.

When the women's business was done, I went with Joan and her boy and William back to the stone house. I'm not sure why I went, but I did. John toddled chortling at his mother's heels while William grinned at me and tossed rocks over his shoulder. As we neared Joan's house, I asked about the laughter.

Iron Joan paused in the doorway, ruffling John's hair as he ran inside. "I grew up in a house with a man who's very breath was a scourge. There was no laughter in his house either. I have John because I promised to give him a home with laughter in it."

"But laughter --?"

She stared at me in her stiff way. "Believe as you please, Smithy Kerwin."

William came for Grania when Joan's time came. We watched my wife make her way along the road, following in Daft William's footsteps that warm fall day.

Somehow, we were all about the village square late into the evening when Grania returned. Had we doubted she would come back? Did we expect news of some demon child borne of Iron Joan? Grania told us only that Joan's child was a girl named Saraid then shut me out of my house for the night.

William, with his mother's leave, started the harvest of Joan's crops the next day. Farmer Brennan left his family and crops to join him. By noon, Joan was working beside them with her newborn daughter asleep in the basket cradle nearby.

Thomas Murfie came home from the sea in early winter. Neither his new daughter, nor his wife's labors seemed to please him overly much. We waited of an evening in the pub, hoping that he might speak of Iron Joan's secrets, but the garrulous braggart who brought her to us nursed the ales we bought him with barely a word of thanks and nary a murmur of conversation.

The winter was long and hard. We spent hours watching the stone house, wondering what happened there. It seemed Thomas, though he had grown sullen and silent, still did not hesitate to raise a hand to his wife, perhaps to punish her for giving some other man a son and him only a daughter.

We could see Joan about her chores stiffer than even the cold and her straight-backed way called for. What man sired Joan's son and could be worse than the brute she married that she would let Thomas treat her so? We grew less and less interested in anything he might tell us and, soon enough, Thomas was paying for his own drinks.

None of us were sad to see the back of Thomas Murfie that spring morning he headed off to the county seat. His wife stood on that same cliff, watching the ship sail by, with sturdy John beside her and fair Saraid in her arms, her belly already swollen with another child.

The second year went much as the first. She plowed her own field, but this time young John seeded the soil behind her. Her cow calved two fine bull calves, though it was a mystery when or how the cow had been bred. The dog scattered even more chickens and chicks in his wake through Joan's yard than any of us could count. Then Farmer Brennan, with young Luke astride his shoulders, brought her two ewes near lambing time. We watched from the village as she refused the gifts at first, but after Brennan said something else, she opened her gate and let the sheep onto her land.

We stopped Brennan on his way home and asked about his gift to Joan.

"'Twas no gift. Those two were blighted from first breech lambing. I've enough to busy my hands without those two." But I saw him wink as he turned, swinging Luke onto his shoulders again.

So it was that Joan's small farm prospered. The village children didn't fear her as their parents did. Many a morning, we would spot a child scamper between the fence posts and up to the stone house. Only the Widow Turlough was willing to go after William and when she did, the other children came running back, laughing and talking about the wondrous stories of magic and dragons Iron Joan told.

Moira and Mahon were born to Joan early that summer, long weeks before they were expected. But nothing ever seemed to whither or fail in Joan's home and so it was that they were strong sturdy babes when Thomas Murfie found his way home in the late weeks of summer. Neither the riches of the farm nor chuckling twin babes -- even one a son -- pleased him; so, sour and sullen, Thomas languished his evenings in the pub. Joan was stiff from his beatings when she stood with her children upon the cliff and watched his ship pass out into the sea.

Come fall, Brennan and William took one of Joan's bulls to market in the county seat. She and her children harvested and stored the fruit of her field without aid. When Thomas returned from the sea in the early winter, Joan met him at the gate. We watched as he raised his hand. We watched Joan lift her chin and fix him with her stoic gaze. Thomas Murfie dropped his hand and Iron Joan opened the gate for her husband.

So it was that years began to pass and Joan's family prospered and grew as readily as her small farm. In ten short years, she bore seven more children: Shonna, Brendan, Colum, Myles, Kaitlin, Una and Ronan; and, though she still made us uneasy with her stiff, unsmiling ways, we learned to trust her.

We thought it odd that midsummer's day when the rider, wearing the colors of Glen Cluain, came to the village and demanded to know where he could find Joan of the High Clan Cluain. So many years had passed since we thought of our Joan as a member of her accursed father's family that Miller Dunne was speechless with confusion. It was Pastor Matthew who caught the rider's fist when he would have struck the miller and I who stepped forward and asked him why he looked for her.

"I come in her father's name!" the rider snarled.

Thirteen year old Saraid spoke with that soft steely voice so like her mother's, "Come down off your horse then, Sir, and pray let him rest. You may come with me to my mother's house."

The rider turned a hard eye on the blonde girl and apparently saw enough of Joan in her that he dismounted and followed her to the stone house with its craggy tree by the sea.

As had long been our habit, we watched our Joan come from her house with young, strapping John hard on her heels. If it was possible, she stood stiffer and straighter than we'd ever seen and her face, always stoic and cool, seemed to be frozen like a cold winter morning. She opened her fence just wide enough for Saraid to enter, but snapped it shut so that her father's rider could not follow. Strange behavior, indeed, for the woman known for having the warmest and most welcoming hearth in the village. She shook her head and spoke quietly to the rider who grew angrier and louder by the moment. Twice Joan stopped John from stepping forward and gestured for the rider to leave.

I went to my forge for my hammer and found, upon my return, that I was not the only man in our village prepared to defend Joan from this armed rider. We would even risk a raid from Clan Cluain. She looked toward us as we approached, I with my hammer, Farmer Brennan and his son with their staves. A score of others stood behind us. The rider turned and saw us too. He said something more, quietly, harshly, so that we could not hear him, then mounted and rode away. Joan nodded to us then returned to her house.