One kilometer stretched into two. The hills turned steep and merciless. He slipped on a slope of shale and cut his knees. He walked for what felt like hours, searching for a road, until afternoon gave way to evening, and the shadows around him turned cold and blue.
He had no idea where he was as the stars began to burn.
The southern wind blew, carrying a tangle of whispers. Jack was too distracted to pay attention, his heart beating in his throat as a storm broke overhead. He pressed on through mud puddles and streams.
It would be easy for a young lass to get lost here, he thought.
He reminded himself how much he had grown to hate this place and its unpredictability, and he eventually came to a halt, drenched and angry.
“Take me!” He dared the spirits who were toying with him. The wind, the earth, the water, and the fire. He challenged the glens and the mountains and the bottomless trickling pools, every corner of the isle that sprawled before him, gleaming with rain. The fire in the stars, the whisper of the wind.
If they had ushered the girls away for their own amusement, why did they hesitate with him? He waited, but nothing happened.
The gale chased the clouds, and the sky teemed with constellations again, as if the storm had never been.
Jack trudged onward. Gradually, he began to recognize his surroundings, and he found the western road once more.
He was almost to Mirin’s.
His mother lived on the edge of the community, where the threat of a raid was constant, even in summer. Despite the risk the Breccans posed, Mirin had insisted on remaining there. She had grown up an orphan until a widow took her as an apprentice, to teach her the craft of weaving. This house and land were hers now, her only inheritance, the widow having long since perished.
Jack could soon see firelight in the distance, escaping through closed shutters.
It drew him off the road, where he found the narrow path that wound to Mirin’s front yard as easily as if he had walked it yesterday, the grass whisking against his knees. The air smelled sweet from bog myrtle and sharp from smoke, which streamed from the chimney, smudging the stars.
All too soon, he reached the yard gate. Jack stepped inside it, his eyes sweeping the ground in the dim light. He could see row after row of vegetables, ripe from warm days. He remembered all the hours he had knelt in this soil as a boy, tilling and planting and harvesting. How he had complained about it, opposing everything Mirin had asked him to do.
He was stricken with nerves as he approached her door.
There was an offering for the folk of the earth on the threshold—a small bannock, now soggy from the rain, and two acorn cups of jam and butter. Jack took care not to bump them, unsurprised that the pious Mirin had set out a gift.
He knocked, shivering.
A moment passed, and he began to consider sleeping in the byre beside the cottage. Or even in the storehouse with the winter provisions. He was about to retreat when his mother answered the door.
Their gazes met.
In that frozen second, a hundred things tore through Jack’s mind. Of course, she wouldn’t be happy to see him. All the heartache he had given her as a wild boy, all the trouble, all the—
“Jack,” Mirin breathed, as if she had been waiting all day for him to knock.
She must have heard the wind speak of him. Jack felt a rush of guilt that he hadn’t come to see her first.
He stood awkwardly before her, uncertain what to say, wondering why his throat felt narrow at the sight of her. She was still as trim as she had been in the days before, but her face appeared gaunt, her cheeks hollow. Her hair, which had been the same shade as his, boasted more silver at her temples.
“Is it really you, Jack?” she asked.
“Yes, Mum,” he said. “It’s me.”
She opened the door wider, so the light would spill over him. She embraced him so tightly he thought he might snap, and he was overwhelmed by her joy.
He had spent countless years resenting her for the secrets she kept. For never telling him who his father was. But the knot in his chest began to ease the longer she held him. He sagged in crushing relief at her warm response, but his harp remained between them, as if it were a shield.
Mirin drew back, eyes glistening. “Oh, let me look at you.” Radiant, she studied him, and he wondered how much he had changed. If she saw herself in him now, or maybe a trace of his nameless father.
“I know, I’m too thin,” he said, flushing.
“No, Jack. You are perfect. Although I must dress you in better garments!” She laughed in delight. “I’m so surprised to see you. I wasn’t expecting you to visit until you had finished your teaching assistance. What brings you home?”
“I was summoned by the laird,” Jack replied. Not quite a lie, but he didn’t want to bring up Adaira yet.
“That is good of you, Jack. Come in, come in,” she beckoned. “It looks like the storm caught you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I got lost on the way here, or else I would have arrived sooner.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t travel by hill for a while,” Mirin said, shutting the door behind him.
Jack only snorted.
It was strange how his mother’s cottage hadn’t changed. It looked exactly the way it had the day he left.
The loom still commanded the main chamber. It had been here before the cottage, the loom built from timber harvested from the nearby Aithwood. Jack’s attention drifted away from it, touching the stretch of rug made of woven grass, the clutter of mismatched furniture, the baskets of dyed yarn and folds of freshly woven plaids and shawls. The hearth was adorned with a chain of dried flowers and a family of silver candlesticks. A cauldron of soup simmered over the fire. The ceiling rafters were dappled from Jack’s slingshot; he looked up at the small dents in the wooden beams and fondly remembered how he had sprawled on the hassock, shooting at the ceiling with river stones.
“Jack,” Mirin said, stifling a cough.
The sound of that wet cough roused bad memories for Jack, and he looked at her. She was wringing her hands; her face suddenly looked pale in the firelight.
“What is it, Mum?”
He watched her swallow. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” Mirin paused, glancing at his old bedroom door, which was closed. “Come out, Frae.”
Jack was frozen as he watched the bedchamber door swing open. Out walked a young lass, barefoot and shyly beaming, her long auburn hair tamed by two braids.
Jack’s initial thought was that she was Mirin’s apprentice. But the girl came right to Mirin, wrapping her arms around his mother in a terribly familiar way. The little stranger smiled up at Jack, her eyes brightly curious.
No. No, this cannot be … His heart beat wildly with shock the longer he beheld the lass.
His gaze rose to Mirin. His mother was unable to hold his stare; her hand trembled as she stroked the girl’s copper braids.
And then came her words, words that pierced Jack like a sword, and it took everything within him not to double over as Mirin said, “Jack? This is your younger sister, Fraedah.”
CHAPTER 4
Jack’s bones were leaden as he stared at the girl, his sister—his sister—and somehow managed to say, “It’s nice to meet you, Fraedah. I’m Jack.”
“Hello.” Frae smiled, her cheeks marked by two dimples. “You can call me Frae, actually. All of my friends do.”