Frae could be missing.
He didn’t waste another moment.
Jack sprinted along the road. He refused to stop, even when his breath turned to fire in his lungs and a stitch pulled in his side. He ran all the way to Mirin’s croft and vaulted over the yard fence, and he thought his heart had melted when he burst through his mother’s front door.
He halted, his boots leaving a track of mud on the floor. Mirin stood at her loom, startled and wide eyed as she turned to behold his dramatic entrance. And there was Frae, sprawled on the divan, reading a book with flowers tucked in her braids.
He stared at his little sister, as if he didn’t trust his own eyes, and he trembled as he shut the door. He felt a rush of relief, followed by a twinge of guilt, to know it wasn’t Frae but another nameless lass.
“Jack?” Mirin asked. “Jack, what’s wrong?”
“I thought …” He couldn’t speak. He swallowed and battled his breath. “I heard another lass went missing.”
“Which lass?” Frae cried, shutting her book.
“I’m not sure. No names have been shared yet.” Jack hated the fear that crept over Frae’s expression. “Perhaps it’s only a rumor, and not true at all. You know how the wind gossips.”
Mirin’s gaze shifted to her daughter. “It’ll be all right, Frae.”
Jack was stricken as Frae’s face crumpled, on the verge of tears.
He didn’t know what he would do if she wept, but it made something in him ache. At the university, he had come to learn there were moments when words were not enough, and he strode into his bedroom. His harp still sat in its sleeve, waiting to be freed.
He carried the instrument back into the common room and sat in a chair across from Frae. A few tears had trickled down her cheeks, but she wiped them away when she realized what he held.
“Would you like to hear a song, Frae?”
She nodded vehemently, pushing stray hair from her eyes.
“I would be honored to play for both you and Mum,” Jack said, resisting the temptation to glance at Mirin, who was lowering the shuttle of her loom. “But I must warn you, Frae … this is my first time playing on the isle. I might not sound nearly as good as I do on the mainland.”
This was his first time playing in Mirin’s presence was what he truly meant to express. He was worried that she wouldn’t be impressed by the craft he had spent years mastering. But Mirin, who never left her loom in mid-weave for anything, stepped away and joined them, sitting next to Frae on the divan.
“Then let us be the judge of that,” Frae replied with a sniffle. Her lashes were damp, but her tears had ceased. She watched with rapt attention as Jack withdrew his harp. Its first time breathing the air of the isle.
He had earned this harp in his fifth year of study. Constructed from a willow that had grown beside a maiden’s grave, its wood was light and resilient, its sound sweet, chilling, and resonant. Carvings of vines and leaves had been burned into the sides, simple adornment compared to other harps his fellow students had earned. But this harp had called to him long ago.
As Jack tuned the pins, he examined the thirty brass strings, and he thought about all the hours he had spent on the mainland playing this instrument, coaxing sad, wistful ballads from its heart. Out of the three classes of music a harp could make, Jack preferred the lament. But he didn’t want to add to Frae’s sorrow. He should play either for joy or for slumber. Perhaps a mix of both. A song framed on hope.
His old plaid was draped over his knees as he continued to tune the harp, and the fabric caught Mirin’s eye.
Jack leaned the harp against his left shoulder.
“What shall I play for you two?” he asked.
They were speechless.
“Anything,” Frae eventually said.
Jack felt an echo of pain when he realized his sister didn’t know any old ballads. She had been only three when Lorna passed away, far too young to remember the bard’s music. And Jack inevitably thought of the ballads he had read through earlier that day, song after song that he had grown up listening to. Frae’s childhood had been robbed of that music.
He began to play and sing one of his favorites—“The Ballad of Seasons.” A lively and happy tune of spring that melted into summer’s verse, which was smooth and mellow. And that in turn became the staccato fire of autumn, which descended into the sad yet elegant verse of winter, because he couldn’t resist the sorrow. When he finished, his last note fading in the air, Frae burst into enthusiastic clapping and Mirin wiped the tears from her eyes.
Jack thought he had never felt so content and full.
“Another one!” Frae begged.
Mirin caressed her hair. “It’s time to weave, Frae. We have work to do.”
Frae sagged, but she didn’t complain. She followed Mirin to the loom, but her eyes traced the harp in Jack’s hands with longing.
He could keep strumming, he realized. He could pluck notes while they wove.
Jack played song after song while Mirin and Frae worked at the loom. All the ballads he wanted his sister to know. A few times, Frae became distracted, her eyes wandering toward his music. But Mirin didn’t chide her.
The afternoon had deepened by the time Jack set down his harp. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and wind rattled the shutters. The scent of rain was heavy in the air as Jack reached into his harp case and took out the parchment Adaira had given him the day before.
He didn’t know the girls who were missing. He didn’t know what would happen when he played this bewitching music, if the spirits would answer him or not. But he had always desired to prove himself worthy of the Tamerlaines. To be wanted, to feel as if he belonged.
Music had once given that to him. A home, a purpose.
As Mirin and Frae wove, Jack began to fervently study “The Song of the Tides.”
It was Catriona Mitchell, and she was only five years old.
The youngest daughter of a fisherman and a tailor, she had been helping her father mend nets by the quay when she went to play with her older siblings on the northern coast. None of them recalled seeing her wander away, but Torin had found a trace of her footsteps on the sand, just before the high tide rolled in.
He followed her trail. She had been alone on the coast before choosing to climb a knoll, where it became harder for Torin to follow her path. He examined the grass and the rocks, wondering what had prompted the child to leave her siblings on the sand.
A flash of red caught his eye.
Torin crouched, at first fearing it was blood, until he moved the grass aside and saw it was only a flower. Four crimson petals, veined with gold. It was beautiful, and he had never seen anything like it before.
He frowned as he studied it. He knew the eastern landscape well; he was familiar with the plants that flourished on this side of the isle. Yet this flower was odd and out of place, as if a spirit had purposefully left it here to be found.
He wondered if it marked a portal to the other side.
Gently, he scooped it into his palm. The blossom had been lying on the ground, already sheared, and he wondered if this had been what Catriona had seen, what had prompted her to climb the knoll.
Torin searched the area again, combing for evidence of where she had gone next. He succeeded in finding a few small steps heading to the hills of the isle. Her bare feet had crimped the grass, but then it was as though she vanished. There was no further trace, no sign of footsteps, save for another loose red flower, sitting like a drop of blood on the ground.