He just needed to be patient. Torin inhaled, slow and deep, to calm his heart.
He dismounted and left his horse by the gate. It had rained here while he had been away; the front yard glistened in the sunlight. He then noticed that Yirr wasn’t guarding the front door, and Torin felt his first pang of unease. He stepped inside, opening his mouth to call for Sidra.
His voice was still dust in his throat. His wound still ached.
Torin swallowed and searched the rooms. Her basket of herbs and ointments was sitting on the shelf, so Torin knew she wasn’t visiting her patients. Perhaps she had returned to the garden. He walked the rows, but Sidra was absent. He stood for a moment in the midst of the towering stalks, lush flowers, and vegetables ripe on the vine. She wasn’t here, but Torin could feel a trace of her among the green living things of the earth, amongst the wildflowers.
He next rushed up the hill to his father’s, but she wasn’t with Graeme.
Torin returned to his yard, frowning. He realized that he had no inkling where she had gone, and that brought him to his knees beside the herbs. He thought again of the last time he had spoken to her. The things that had come from his mouth—sharp, angry, and prideful.
She had said that she loved him, even at his worst. And he hadn’t responded. He had never told her how he felt, and now the chance had been stolen from him.
But in this forced silence, he had noticed the weeds overcoming the garden. He had noticed the sorrow in Sidra’s eyes and the exhaustion in her posture. She was hurting, and he wanted to help her carry that pain, as she had carried his.
He looked at his hands, lined with dirt and grime, scarred from blades.
Which will you choose for your hands, Torin? she had once said to him, words that had offended him. But they had been living words—a phrase that wouldn’t die no matter how he tried to snuff it. Words like seeds that had slowly been germinating in him, unfurling new growth.
He dwelt on his dreams. The ghosts of the men he had killed. He wanted to change.
He rose and fetched his horse. He didn’t even know where he was going, and he rode aimlessly, listening to the wind and studying the ground beneath him. He remembered the first day he had met Sidra. How he had fallen from his horse.
Torin turned the stallion south and rode to the most peaceful place on the isle, where Sidra had been born. The Vale of Stonehaven.
Sidra first visited her grandmother’s grave in the vale. She knelt and spoke to the grass, the soil, and the stone that held a trace of the woman who had raised her. She also stopped at her mother’s grave, although Sidra held no remembrances of her. After she lingered in the valley’s cemetery, she walked to the cottage where she had grown up.
This ground was marked by memories. She passed through them one by one. First the stream that led to a loch where Sidra had spent time with her taciturn father, catching fish from the rapids. Next came the orchard, where she had experienced her first kiss. The paddocks where she had guarded the sheep with her brother. And lastly, the kail yard, where she first discovered her faith in the earth spirits. Where she had spent hours beside her grandmother, with soil cupped in her hands. Where she had learned the secret of herbs and the might of a small seed. This ground had seen her grow from child to girl to woman, and she hoped it would feel like reuniting with an intimate friend.
The cottage looked the same as she remembered; her father and brother had diligently kept up with the work. The kail yard, though, was a disaster, unorganized and beset with weeds. The trees were heavy laden with fruit in the orchard, and the sheep still roamed the hills like tufts of clouds. But Sidra acknowledged, with an ache in her soul, that this place no longer felt like home.
Yirr whined beside her.
She glanced down at the dog and touched his head, but his eyes were on the sheep. She released him to run and herd. Alone, she passed through the gate and stood in the kail yard, surveying the mess. Slowly, she knelt.
The soil was damp. She could feel it seeping through her dress as she began to pull up the weeds, examining them.
A weed is just a plant out of place, her grandmother had once said to her. Treat them kindly, even if they are a nuisance, for they can make a faithful ally amongst the spirits.
Sidra smiled, cradling one of the weeds. It was beautiful, with small white blooms. She didn’t know its name, and she tucked it away into her pocket to press and examine later.
She moved across the rows, harvesting the fruits that were ready, knocking away insects that were chewing the leaves. The dirt soon crowded her fingernails, and her skirt was muddy, but she was remembering.
She remembered all the times her brother Irving got lost on the hills as a boy. But Sidra never had, not with wildflowers in her hair and trust in her heart. She had always felt safe on the summits and in the vale. She remembered seasons of plenty, how this garden had overflowed with harvest. She had never gone hungry or wanted for food. She remembered the first time Senga had let her dress a wound on her own. How day by day, the injury had closed and healed itself beneath Sidra’s attentive care. As if there were magic at her fingertips.
Her memories drew closer to the present, and she wanted to fight them. But the deeper she put her hands into the soil, the brighter her thoughts flared.
She remembered tasting the Orenna flower, and how her eyes had been open. She had gone to the hillside and beheld the crushed heather. She had seen how the spirits wept when she fell, and how, even when she had lain unconscious, they embraced her. She remembered the treacherous spirit of the loch, and the other, the blazing tendril of gold, urging her to rise. To break the surface.
“All this time when I felt alone,” she whispered to the earth, “you were with me. And yet I couldn’t see you, because my pain clouded my sight. I don’t know what to do with this agony. I don’t know how to carry this.”
Give it to the soil, child. It was a phrase Senga had said countless times in the past.
Sidra rose, unsteady for a moment. The shed was still in the corner of the yard, its door draped in cobwebs. She stepped inside and found it exactly as it had been years ago before she left. Seeds were still hiding in a small sack; she took a handful and carried them back to the garden.
Sidra dug into the soil, angry. It was strong enough to bear her ire, and she raked her fingers through the loam. Digging trenches with her nails, she gave to the ground the words You should have fought harder.
“I fought as hard as I could, and I’m still strong,” she said.
She dropped the seeds into the furrows and added more words: You failed Torin and Maisie. These words were harder to relinquish. She was still waiting on a promise that she didn’t know would be fulfilled or not. She was waiting for Maisie to come home, and it might not happen. She was waiting to discover if Torin loved her in the way she loved him.
Her grief welling, Sidra stared at the seeds she had dropped, waiting for earth and rain and time to transform them.
“There is no failure in love,” she said and covered the furrows. The soil was rich; it swallowed a portion of her grief. “And I have loved without measure.”
In this, I am complete.
Sidra continued to kneel, staring at the spontaneous row she had planted. She was hardly aware that time had passed until she heard the back door of the cottage swing open with a bang. Her brother Irving bounded out, staring agape at the strange dog rounding up his sheep.