Goddess Cake

         Legend had it that the Goddess Aythera lived in seclusion at the top of Mount Tye.  She watched the world from the crater’s rim, her roving eye sighting mischief despite the mists.  Mothers warned children in the cradle that if she saw them misbehave she would bring damnation down on them faster than the mages could call rain and when thunder and lightning struck many a young thief could be found shivering in the cellars, hoping to escape their doom.
         Kuk knew that Aythera had marked him.  Last spring, struggling to run the family farm after his father’s death, he had lit a fire to clear the scrub from back field without sounding the traditional warning call to the wildlife.  Mrs Coldfoot’s cat had burned to death and although the kindly old lady had forgiven him, Aythera was known to love her swarm of felines far better than her people.  Her wrath was slower to build than his mother had led him to expect, but it was awful in its coming.
         The potato seedlings, planted in the back field to keep his family through the winter, drowned in the first summer storm.  Kuk had not worried overmuch, because the flourishing wheat in the front field promised profit enough until it was scorched by wildfire the week before harvest.  Because Kuk went lame during the fight to quench the fire, he could not hire-out as a labourer for his neighbours and now, come December, he was feeding his mother and sisters by poaching rabbits. He knew that with Aythera revelling in her revenge, he was inevitably going to be caught and hanged before the thaw came, with only one, thin hope of salvation.
         “Don’t be so feeble-minded, boy!” His mother screeched in disbelief.  “No one really believes that Aythera can be placated with birthday cake.  Come to the temple  tomorrow instead and pray as the priest has instructed.”
         “I’ve already done that!.” Kuk shot back.  “Can you make the cake or not?”
         “We don’t have the makings of cabbage soup in this house!”  At his stricken look, his mother relented. “Mrs Coldfoot wants to help, says you can take a slice of hers.”
         Kuk’s father had often joked, quietly, that the Goddess was a vicious old crone who wielded damnation like his mother-in-law wielded her walking stick, but she had a sweet tooth and an ear for flattery. So it was that Kuk set out hours before dawn the next morning to attempt a journey so treacherous it had only been completed in myth.  He must brave the hike through the Theran peaks to deliver Aythera a slice of Goddess cake on her birthday - usually enormous, rich, moist and delicious and far too costly to make on any other day of the year - so that she might be persuaded to lift her curse. 
         With no track to follow he kept the looming crater of Mount Tye in his eyeline as he forced his way through snowdrifts over ever-steepening rock. Since by mid-afternoon he was exhausted and half frozen, the willowy young woman standing before him as he emerged onto a cliff edge could only be a hallucination.
         “Well met, young sir.”  Her silvery voice echoed like angelsong across the valley that lay between him and the foot of Mount Tye, amplified by the sheer distance he had yet to travel. 
         “I am Allaya. I will share my warmth with you in return for half your cake.”  The apparition shook a cloak of gleaming white fur onto the snow.  “I will make you forget your despair”
         Shivering and sorely tempted, he turned from Allaya’s dazzling face and beguiling curves to concentrate on tracing his path up the sharp rockfaces of Athera’s mountain.
         “My lady, I am truly sorry, but I cannot; I have only a single slice, pledged to Aythera.”
         “A slice?" She baulked, then recovered. "Come, Kuk, you remember the taste?  For a single mouthful, you may have your fill of me.”  Athough she smiled like Kuk had always imagined a woman might one day smile at him he looked away again, summoning Tilly’s dimpled grin in his head. He had to live long enough to invite her to the Spring Dance.
         “I am sorry, my lady, but I cannot.” He repeated.
         “A crumb or two, that’s all.” Allaya pouted prettily.  He thought of his little sister, Lisk, who could spend all day sulking like a toad and still curl like a kitten in his lap of an evening.
         One more time: “I am sorry, I cannot.”  Resolutely, he started down the slope to the valley floor.
         Allaya disappeared in a sulphurous crack of smoke, transformed into a wizened old woman with a voice like a banshee.
         “Thrice you were asked, and thrice you refused, Kuk Trueheart.  Give me my cake and leave my mountains to live in peace for the rest of your days.”
         He sank to his knees with his jaw on his chest.
         Aythera twitched with annoyance, much like his grandmother did when denied. “The cake, boy, before I change my mind.”
         He took it out of his knapsack and handed it to her, reverentially.  Pausing only to weigh it in her hands, she gorged it in less than a minute
          “You don’t look like a goddess,” he said thoughtlessly.
         “You don’t look like a hero.” She retorted, with a cheeky smirk that reminded him of Tilly. “But you seem to be one.”
She bent down and picked up a chunk of rock. “Now go, and take this with you.”  She handed him an equal weight of starstone, traded the world over for it’s flawless shine .  “You’ll be rich enough to buy your farm, but if you’d brought me the whole cake you could have had the country.”
         Kuk. after gasping his thanks, trudged home and lived happily ever after, making sure to leave a whole Goddess cake at the temple every year on Athera’s birthday until he died, in tribute.