But perhaps Lorna had hoped Jack would return as a bard, ready to play for the east. As she had once done.
He didn’t want to dwell on such things. And it was time for him to address Mirin directly. He set his bowl aside and turned from the fire to face her.
“How old is Frae?”
Mirin drew in a deep breath. “She’s eight.”
Eight. Jack felt the truth like a blow, imagining it. All those years he had been on the mainland, lost in music, he had had a little sister at home.
“I assume she’s my half-sister?” he asked.
Mirin was wringing her pale hands again. She glanced at the flames. “No. Frae is your full-blooded sister.”
The revelation was both a pain and a relief. Jack struggled to know which feeling to feed, eventually voicing the very thing that had driven a wedge between him and his mother. “I take it Frae knows who our father is then?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Mirin whispered. “I’m sorry, Jack. But you know I can’t speak of this.”
She had never apologized for anything before. It shocked Jack so much he decided to let the old argument ebb, and he acknowledged what was truly bothering him now.
He had a little sister, living on an isle where girls were vanishing.
This was a grave complication to his plans, which had been to play for the water folk and then bolt. He did not see how he could leave, unless he had some reassurance that both Mirin and Frae would be safe after he departed.
“I hear there’s been trouble on the isle,” he said. “Two lasses have disappeared.”
“Yes. The past fortnight has been tragic.” Mirin paused, tracing the bow of her lips. “Do you remember the old stories I used to tell you? Those bedtime tales as old as the land?”
“I remember,” he said.
“It was my greatest fear. That you would roam the hills and be tricked by a spirit. That you would never come home one day, and there would be no trace of you. So I told you those stories—to stay on the roads, to wear flowers in your hair, to be respectful of fire and wind and earth and sea—because I believed they would protect you.”
The stories had been frightening, entertaining. But stories were not made of steel.
“I’ve been told one of the missing girls is Eliza Elliott,” he continued, watching his mother’s reaction closely. “The Elliotts’ croft is only six kilometers from here, Mum.”
“I know, Jack.”
“What measures are you taking to ensure Frae isn’t next?”
“Frae is safe here with me.”
“But how can you be certain of that?” he demanded. “The folk are mercurial, even on their best days. They can’t be trusted.”
Mirin laughed, but it was full of scorn. “You truly plan to instruct me on the spirits, Jack? When you have always been irreverent toward their magic? When you have been gone from this place the past decade?”
“I’ve been gone because you sent me away,” he reminded her tersely.
Her offense waned. She suddenly appeared older to him. She appeared frail, as though the shadows in the room might break her, and he glanced at the loom.
“You’re still weaving enchanted plaids, Mum.” He sounded accusatory, even as he strove to soften his voice.
Mirin said nothing, but she held his gaze.
Her gift of weaving enchanted plaids was none other than the magic of the earth and water spirits: it began in the grass and the lochs, which gave the sheep sustenance, which trickled into the softness of their wool, which was sheared and spun and dyed into yarn, which Mirin took in her hands and wove upon her loom, turning a secret into steel. She was a vessel, a conduit for the magic, and it passed through her because she was devout. The spirits found her worthy of such power.
But that power came with a price. To weave magic drained her vitality. This truth had roused an icy fear in Jack’s chest when he was young and imagined her dying and abandoning him. He found that chill was even worse now that he was older.
“The clan needs them, Jack,” she whispered. “It’s my craft and my gift.”
“But it’s making you ill. Gods below, you have Frae now! What would happen to her if you passed?”
Would his sister be given to his care? Would she go to the orphanage in Sloane? The very place where Mirin had begun?
Mirin rubbed her brow. “I’m fine. Sidra has been providing me with a tonic that helps my cough.”
“Ceasing the enchantment is something you should be seriously considering, Mum. In addition to that, I think you should surrender this croft because of how close it is to the clan line, and move to the city where you’ll be saf—”
“I’m not giving up this croft,” his mother said. Her voice was like flint, slicing his words. “I earned this place. It’s mine, and it will one day be Frae’s.”
Jack exhaled. So Mirin was teaching Frae her craft of weaving. This day continued to get worse and worse, and he felt as if his fingers were tangling more threads than he could handle. “You haven’t taught her how to weave enchantments, have you?”
“When she comes of age,” Mirin snapped. He knew she was angry when she rose and began to extinguish the candlesticks on the mantle. Their conversation was over, and he watched the flames die beneath her fingertips, one by one. He wondered if she was regretting his visit.
I should have stayed on the mainland, he thought with an inner groan. But then he wouldn’t have known of Frae’s existence, or about the missing lasses, or how much the clan that had once shunned him as a bastard now needed him.
Mirin snuffed the last candlestick. Only the fire in the hearth remained, but she pierced Jack with a stare that made him freeze.
“Your sister has been very excited to meet you. Please be kind to her.”
Jack’s mouth fell open. Did Mirin think him a monster?
She didn’t give him a chance to respond. His mother retreated to her room, leaving him alone and bewildered by the dying flames.
He woke with a start. The hearth had gone dark; the embers glowed with the memory of fire, hissing a small thread of smoke. For a moment, Jack didn’t know where he was until his eyes adjusted, taking in the familiarity of his mother’s cottage. Something had woken him. A strange dream, perhaps.
He leaned his head back against the chair, staring into the darkness. The night was silent, save for that strange noise again. A sound like a shutter being shifted and rattled. A sound drifting from his old bedchamber.
Jack stood. Gooseflesh rippled on his arms as he walked into his room. He listened as the shutters moved, as if someone was trying to open them and enter the chamber. The chamber that was now his little sister’s.
His blood began to pound as he approached the window. He stared at the shutters until they seemed to blend into the wall and shadows. Rushing across the room, he forgot about the discarded clothes he had left crumpled on the floor. They caught his feet like a snare, and he stumbled and fell forward against his desk with a clumsy bang.
At once, the shutters became silent until Jack flung them open, furious and terrified. He saw nothing, his gaze sweeping the moonlit yard. And then a ripple of shadow caught his eye, but by the time he shifted his focus, it was gone, melting into the darkness. Jack wondered if he was hallucinating, and he trembled, contemplating pursuit. But what sort of weapon could wound a spirit? Could steel cut the heart of the wind? Could it divide the ocean’s tide? Could it make the spirits cower and bend to mortals?