Betrayed by an insane Celtic queen as the Romans conquer Britain, the Earth Mother, in her British manifestation as Brigid, curses her betrayer and buries that curse at the site of her betrayal. She places her confidante, Hroc, and his kin the rooks as guardians of the curse. A shadow, she has stood by for two thousand years as bloody conflict, driven by men and their fierce male deities, has brought the world to the brink of destruction. Now, in Out of the Earth, the Mother reasserts herself. The bird guardians and local man Richard, beset by black-winged dreams and the unwitting inheritor of a destiny older than the hills, help the goddess return to claim her own.