Jack’s blood was coursing, fast and warm beneath his skin, but he kept his tone calm as he spoke. “You have held this secret for decades, Mum. I never understood why, and for years I resented you for your silence. But now I see. I understand why you wove and held it close to your heart. But the time has come to let it unravel. I need to find the missing lasses, and the answer lies within your past.”
“But that would mean …” Mirin couldn’t finish her phrase.
“That Annabel, Catriona, and Maisie have been kidnapped by a Breccan and taken into the west.”
Mirin closed her eyes, as if his words had struck her. She remained silent, so Jack began to speak, as if he had uncovered an old ballad.
“Long ago, you came to love your greatest enemy. A man of the west. I don’t know how he crossed the clan line unnoticed by the east, but he did, and you held the secret of him until I made that impossible. And so you led us all to believe I was the bastard of an unfaithful man in the east, and you wove the truth into a plaid because the threads would never betray or condemn you. Once I was sent away to the mainland, you must have seen him again, for Frae came into the world, and our two lives defied everything—east, west, and the hatred that thrives in between. You had no choice but to raise her as you raised me, as a Tamerlaine without a father.”
Mirin looked at him. Her face was pallid, but her eyes were lucid and dark as new moons, and she held Jack’s gaze. She laced her fingers together to hide their shaking.
“Do I speak truth, Mum?”
“Yes, Jack. Your father is a Breccan. But he wouldn’t steal children from the east.”
“And how do you know that?” Jack’s temper flared. “Lasses are going missing, vanishing into the mist, taken by the west. Could my father be the force behind it all? Because he was robbed of his own children?”
“He would never steal a child,” Mirin said again in a voice like iron. “Your father is a good man—the best I have ever known—and he has loved you and Frae from a distance, staying in his place so that you could have a whole life with me rather than a divided one.”
“But he has crossed into Tamerlaine territory without notice,” Jack countered. “He has broken the laws of the isle and has stood in this cottage with you, time and time again. He has trespassed and roamed the east, which means there is a break in the clan line, and the Breccans know of it and are using it as a weapon against us, taking lasses one by one. Stealing the daughters of innocent people.”
Mirin shook her head, but her eyes gleamed with tears. “Your father wouldn’t do this, Jack.”
“When was the last time you saw him then, Mum? Last month? Last year? How long has it been since you spoke with him, and is he the same man you knew in the beginning? Is there a chance he has changed over time?” And Jack inwardly added, Could years of denying himself, his lover, and his children drive him to madness and fury? Could years of being so close and yet so far from his family make him snap at last?
A tear streaked down Mirin’s cheek. She hastily wiped it away and said, “It’s been nearly nine years since I saw him last. He came to visit a few days after Frae was born, to hold her for the first and last time. As he once held you when you were but a babe.”
She paused to swallow more of her tears. Jack felt his heart go quiet, every fiber of him focused on Mirin’s words.
“Neither of us wanted to fall for the other, to embrace the impossible. We were brought together by a strange necessity, and the love bloomed quiet but deep between us. When I realized I was carrying you … I was terrified. I didn’t know how I could raise a child that was both east and west, and your father decided the two of us would steal away in the night. We would leave everything behind and start a new life on the mainland. But it’s nearly impossible to depart the isle without someone, whether spirit or mortal, knowing.
“Our first attempt was thwarted by the wind. It stormed and made it impossible for us to leave the coast. We had a little boat in which your father planned to row us to the mainland, but the waves broke it on the rocks. A few weeks passed while your father worked to find another vessel, which he kept hidden in a cave. During that time we both had to learn the rhythm of the watchmen of the east and the west, because the patrol was always there, a hovering threat to us.
“And yet it wasn’t the guard that nearly ruined our second attempt, but one of the neighbor’s dogs, who must have picked up the scent of the west left by your father on the hills. I was too afraid to attempt a third departure—your father and I were bound to be discovered fleeing together—and so I determined that I would raise you alone in the east as a Tamerlaine and your father would keep his distance. So that is what we did, but once you left for the mainland school … my loneliness was keen.”
Jack knew Frae came next, but in his mother’s silence he realized that she had been the one who crossed the clan line. “You reunited with my father in the west,” he said. He thought her foolish, impulsive, brave, and fierce. It had been a long time since a Tamerlaine had willingly walked in the west, but she had done it and hadn’t been caught.
And it was Mirin, he realized, who knew the secret of crossing the clan line. She had used it herself.
“I did,” she whispered. “Your father was not difficult to find. He is the Keeper of the Aithwood and lives in the heart of the forest on the western side, beside the river that flows into the east. The river connects the two of us like a silver thread, and I followed it to his cottage and found him there, quietly living out his life, as I did mine. Drinking hope and sorrow, both of us full of wonderings about the other and the life we might have shared had things been different between our two clans.”
“How did you make the crossing into the west?” he asked. “How did my father make the crossing into the east? Is it one and the same way? Did you use the Orenna flowers?”
Mirin held Jack’s gaze, and he saw the resistance within her, burning brighter than a flame. She didn’t want to tell him; it went against every grain of her being to let this final secret loose.
“Mum,” he pleaded. “Mum, please. If you want to help these lasses return home … I need to know how to make the crossing.”
Mirin stood and walked away from him, but there was nowhere for her to retreat to.
Jack slowly rose to his feet.
“It’s not the flower,” Mirin finally said, turning to regard him once more. “It’s the river. Your father discovered its secret by happenstance. One autumn night he was wounded and had an urgent need for assistance. He had lost quite a bit of blood and become disoriented. He was following the river and its current downstream, thinking it would lead him home. He was shocked when he realized that he stood in the east, and that no alarm had been raised. He believed it must be the river, shielding his presence. He followed it to my lands and dared to knock upon my door, asking for my help. We soon realized it was not just the river but blood within the water that made it possible for him to cross unnoticed to meet with me.”
Jack remembered the night of the raid, how he had seen the Breccans ride along the river valley, undetected. The words of Ream of the Sea rang in his ears.
Beware of blood in the water.
Frae brushed the cows in the byre until she could hear her mum and brother. She couldn’t make out the words, but their voices were rising, as if they were arguing.