The Sunstead

The Supper on the Longest Day

The Sunstead is the feast of the longest day, when the hay is in and the whole village sits down together at one long board on the green.

The hayward keeps it and sets the table by the old way, her grandmother’s way and her mother’s before her. Everyone brings something. Everyone sits where they have always sat. It is not a thing you book. It is the Board, and it belongs to the whole parish at once.

There is a wonder folded into it, and like most wonders in Wending it is more a complication than a convenience. The longest-day light is meant to linger past its hour, long enough for the whole village to stand at the one laid Board and drink the sun-down toast together. A village of one mind gets its gentle golden ending. A village split down the middle, over who sits where or an old hurt no one will name, gets a morning that will not ripen: the sun hung low and gold and unclimbing until they come right. The light cannot be tricked by a kind speech. It wants the village whole, or as near whole as village hearts can come. Only then does the day remember where it was going, and roll on toward the long evening it was promised.