Fable
“Aye, another woman dead. Forever young now. Went for a walk up t’tha loch and never came back.” The man sitting across from me folded his newspaper and tucked it under his arm before standing. “Mind ye not wander too close t’tha wicked deep. The loch swallows young, pretty lasses like yourself every time.”
“Oh.” I stumbled over his statement as the bus came to a bouncy stop. “Thanks for the warning, I guess.” I passed the old man and yanked my duffel down from the overhead bin.
It is written.
Those three words had brought me to Leith Hall on a rainy day in June. To say I’d been called to this place was an understatement. From the beginning, I’d felt the rambling medieval stone manor house in the marrow of my bones.
Salt battered the edges of the cliffs the manor and its abbey perched on precariously. Sandwiched between two bodies of salt water—to the west, the angry Atlantic, and to the east, the brackish saltwater shores of Loch Dunvegan—Leith Hall was hardly inviting. The shore’s gentle lapping sang to me; the smoky sea mist that blanketed the loch was otherworldly.
After a day of poring over my grandmother’s letters—all addressed to her sister, all signed with the closing line: It is written, and all inexplicably unsent—I’d booked my ticket here.
Leith Hall and Heathermoor Abbey. Kylemore, Isle of Skye. Scotland.
I stepped off the bus and onto the terminal platform as the butterflies in my stomach began to spin.
“Gab-mo leith-scyal, lass.” An older gentleman slipped past me in a rush, and the familiar lilt of his Scottish accent brought a quick smile to my tired cheeks. I followed the gentleman down the platform, surprised to hear the hum of old Gaelic around me.
Grandma.
I grinned as I thought of her rolling, melodic vowels and exotic, throaty consonants. I was engrossed. A group of cab drivers stood in a circle, and their comedic gestures and animated ribbing of one another drew me in. A memory of my grandmother’s house came back to me, the same thick accents arguing over the issue of independence, the scent of scotch in the air. I had been barely taller than my grandfather’s knee when a heart attack stole him from us and left Granny’s kitchen silent. Most of my happiest childhood memories were spent with Granny, her strict hand and loving smile everything my fragile heart needed. And if any of the men caught me lurking as they talked about another day in the auto factory, Granny would pinch my cheek and call me gràidh, a term of endearment I later learned meant darling.
Granny never made it back to Scotland, but she spoke of it often.
I knew she missed her family here more than she’d ever let on, so when I was given Granny’s books and correspondence after her passing, I’d drowned myself in the pain of losing her with her personal letters.
The scent of her perfume on the pages she wrote to her sister had hardly faded, even though she’d written them all before I was born. Granny never sent these missives full of love for those many years, and I was here to find out why.
Kylemore held the key to the secrets in my family, and I had less than ninety days to unearth them. Then, come September, I would be on my way back over the Atlantic and back to Middlebury, Ohio. My degree in evolutionary biology and ancestral and genetic systems gave me the best of both worlds. Not only could I come to this far-off corner of the earth to study my ancestors, but I was getting credit for the research as I worked on my dissertation for the final year of my degree.
I thumbed the worn edges of the last letter, safely tucked in its envelope in my pocket as I thought of its final words.
It is written.
What was written?
My mind had worked the puzzle over for days before I’d finally taken the leap and booked my ticket to the Isle of Skye.
This remote, windswept island with its jagged coasts and rocky volcanic slabs scared me, but it thrilled me more.
One of the cab drivers paused, noticing my attention on them. He broke away from the group, his warm smile turning up a few watts as he neared me. He tipped his chin, asking me in English, “Can I give ye a ride?”
“Oh, no thank you. I’m just headed around the crag.” His eyebrow jumped like a thick caterpillar at my use of the local term for the rocky slab of granite that dropped into the ocean at a near ninety-degree angle.
His tone changed when he replied, “Nothin’ good can come up at the crag. Would do ye well to stay away.”
I broke into a laugh. “I’m staying at Leith Hall. I’m afraid I don’t have much of a choice.”
“The Hall, huh?” He grunted and then shook his head. “Good luck to ya, lass.”
I frowned as he disappeared into the line of cab drivers.
I turned, setting sun at my back as I made my way around the bus station and down the narrow road that led out of town and toward the crag. The road meandered along white lime-chalked homes with thatched black roofs. Deep shades of green heather were sprinkled with late-afternoon dew, the landscape painted like it’d just been misted with rain. Clouds clung to the small, black-topped road, its width more than one but not quite two lanes. I walked at the edges, my feet already damp with the cloudy mist that hung on every blade and needle.
I knew I only had to walk a quarter of a mile before I reached the cliff that inspired so many Gothic legends and stories in this village.
I’d done my research, walked these country roads in my mind over and over as I’d planned for this trip. I only had a few months to get to the bottom of the mystery that surrounded my grandma’s family; I had to make the best of it.
I sucked in a breath of the salty air as the road dipped and then climbed a gentle hill after passing the last white thatched cottage. I smiled as I realized that cottage had probably been there when my grandma was a girl. I could just imagine her sweet Scottish lilt as she dreamed in the same shades of heather purple that lined Heathermoor Lane.
I reached the top of the slope. A chill hung over my shoulders as I realized that the fabled crag that had stolen so many lives in this village was just out of my eyesight. It was right there, my feet standing at the apex of the small path that led to its edge, but there was no indication of its presence in front of me now. How easy it would be to wander on any one of the cloud-filled days in this area, one or two missteps spelling disaster so quickly.
A dizzying sense of vertigo came over me. The pictures I’d seen of this cliff and crag before had made it look as if they rose three-hundred feet out of the Atlantic. I vowed to myself then that I would never find myself outside Leith Hall when the clouds hung this heavy.
I moved across Heathermoor Lane, careful that my feet remained on the dark asphalt and away from the graveled edge, when Leith Hall finally came into my view.
Mist shrouded a central Gothic spire that pierced the clouds.
A chill sank down to my toes as I made my way beneath a sagging iron gate. Matching medieval stone pillars flanked the entryway of Leith Hall. It stood tall on a rocky bluff every bit as haunting as a postcard from hell. The moor stretched around the rocky outcropping, angry waves churning in the distance on one side and the other extending to a wooded loch gouged into the mountains. I knew beyond the other side existed legends of enchanted fairy pools and wooded nymphs and kelpie that could lure you in to your death.
I was engrossed in Leith and the moor, anxious to unpack my things and then set out to discover all the history and lore this land could offer. For the next three months, this creepy old castle would be my home. A shudder traced my spine again as I slipped under the old moss-ridden stone archway and up the steps. The wood was chipped and graying, the banister broken and hanging from its support. I reached the threshold of the house. The door stood open, the only sliver of light into the house’s interior from the dark sky outside.