“Your husband’s a bard?” Innes said tersely.
Adaira blinked in surprise. “Yes, he is.”
Innes’s brow furrowed.
Jack knew something was wrong.
He had felt it the moment Innes Breccan had looked at him, scrutinizing the harp in his hands.
He knew something was wrong, and yet he tried to keep his mood calm and expectant as he paced the yard, waiting for the laird and Adaira to emerge from the storehouse. Eventually, Innes stepped out and strode to her horse without granting him a second look. Adaira motioned for Jack to join her. Setting down his harp and dropping his bag, he walked to meet her inside the storehouse.
She shut the door behind him, enclosing them in the quiet space.
“What is it?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”
Adaira hesitated, but her eyes still held a trace of shock when they met his. “Innes just told me that music is forbidden in the west.”
The words rolled off Jack. It took him two full breaths to comprehend them. “Forbidden?”
“Yes. No instruments, no singing,” Adaira whispered, glancing away. “Bards haven’t been welcomed among the Breccans in over two hundred years. I … I don’t think you should—”
“Why?” he countered roughly. He knew what she was about to say to him, and he didn’t want to hear it.
“She said that it upsets the folk,” Adaira replied. “It causes storms. Fires. Floods.”
Jack was silent, but his thoughts churned. He knew magic flowed brighter in the hands of mortals in the west, to the spirits’ demise. The opposite of life in the east. He thought about how playing for the folk here had cost him threads of his health. He had never considered what it would be like to play for the spirits on the other side of the isle. Not until this moment, when he realized he could strum his music and sing for the west without cost. What power would spill from his hands.
“Then I’ll leave my harp,” he said, but his voice sounded strange. “I can’t rightly play it warped anyways.”
“Jack,” Adaira whispered, sorrowful.
His heart turned cold at the sound. “Don’t ask me to remain behind, Adaira.”
“If you come with me,” she said, “you’ll have to deny who you are. You’ll never play another instrument or sing another ballad. Not only would you have to surrender your first love, you would also be separated from your mother, who looks so frail I worry about how long she has left to live, and your sister, who is devastated to lose you and who might end up in the orphanage. The clan also longs for you to remain, and I’m sure that Torin would be—”
“The Tamerlaines don’t know I’m Breccan by half,” he said sharply. “I’m sure their opinion of me and my music will change rather quickly when that truth comes to light.”
“And yet you might encounter far worse danger in the west, if the Breccans discover whose son you are.”
Jack was silent.
Adaira sighed. She looked so weary and sad; she leaned on the wall, as if she couldn’t stand upright on her own. Her breaths flowed fast and shallow, and Jack softened his voice, gently drawing her to him.
“I made a vow to you,” he said, caressing her hair. “If you ask me to remain in the east while you are in the west … it will feel as if half of me has been torn away.”
A sound escaped her; Jack could feel how she trembled.
“I worry that if you come with me,” she said after a tense moment, “you will soon resent me. You will long for your family, and you will ache for your music. I’m unable to give you everything you need, Jack.”
Her words struck him like a sword. Slowly, his hands fell away from her. Old feelings flared in him, the feelings he had carried as a boy, when he had felt unclaimed and unwanted.
“You want me to stay here then?” he said in a flat tone. “You don’t want me to come with you?”
“I want you with me,” Adaira said. “But not if it’s going to destroy you.”
Jack stepped back. The pain in his chest was crushing his lungs, and he struggled to breathe. He was angry at her, for her words held a faint ring of truth. He wanted to be with her, and yet he didn’t want to be away from Mirin and Frae. He didn’t want to surrender his music, all those years of discipline on the mainland going to rot, and yet he couldn’t imagine surrendering Adaira.
Agonized, he met her gaze, and he saw that she was composed, just as she had been the first day he had seen her, weeks ago. Her guard was in place; her emotions were tamed. She had accepted this separation, and the distance suddenly yawned between them.
“As you wish then,” he rasped.
She stared at him a long moment, and he thought she might change her mind. Perhaps she wasn’t as firm in her beliefs as she sounded. Perhaps she could also taste the sour tang of regret and remorse that would haunt them from this decision, for years to come.
He watched as Adaira opened her mouth, but with a gasp, she caught her words, turned, and fled the storehouse, as if she couldn’t bear to look upon him.
The sunlight poured in.
Jack stood frozen within its warmth until the pain boiled in his chest. He strode from the storehouse, looking for her.
Adaira was on her horse, following Innes and the western guards down the hill. Soon, she would melt into the woods and shadows. Jack fought the urge to chase after her.
He paused in the grass, waiting for Adaira to glance behind. To look at him one more time. If she did, he would follow her into the west. His heart was beating in his throat as his eyes remained fixed on her. The long waves of her hair, the proud posture of her shoulders.
Her horse stepped into the river. She was almost at the woods.
She never looked back.
Jack watched her disappear into the forest. His breaths were ragged as he walked down the hill. He came to a gradual stop in the valley. The river lapped at his ankles when he stepped into its currents. He stared toward the west, where the sun illumined the Aithwood, catching the rapids of the river.
He knelt in the cold water.
It wasn’t long before he heard footsteps splash behind him. Small thin arms came around him in an embrace. Frae held him as he grieved.
The lush green of the hills turned into withered grass. The bracken was tinged in brown, the moss like patches of amber, and trees beyond the Aithwood grew crooked, bent to the south. The wildflowers and heather flourished only in sheltered places, where the wind couldn’t break them. The mountains rose, cut from unforgiving rock, and the lochs were low and stagnant. Only the river ran pure, coming from a hidden place in the hills.
Adaira rode at her mother’s side, into the heart of the west. The clouds hung low, and it smelled like rain.
She gave herself up to a hungry land where music was forbidden. The place where she had taken her first breath.
A gust rose, drawing its cold fingers through her hair.
“Welcome home,” the north wind whispered.
Acknowledgments
I remember February 22, 2019, was a cold bleak day. It was also the day when I sat down and began to write about an enchanted isle and the people who called it home. I was writing for the first time in months, at last breaking what had been a long, miserable creative drought, and I had no idea what this story was destined to become. I owe my eternal gratitude to the people who each invested in my work and in me, and who lent their magic to make A River Enchanted what it is today.