Jack Tamerlaine,” Adaira greeted him. Her voice was nothing like he remembered; if he had heard it in the dark, he would have assumed she was a stranger. “What a surprise to see you here.”
Jack said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to speak, but he refused to break their gaze, as she seemed eager to make him do.
“Ah, I forget the two of you are old friends,” Alastair said, pleased. He held his arm out to his daughter, and she drew even closer, so close that her shadow almost spilled over Jack in his obedient stance.
“Indeed,” said Adaira, breaking her stare with Jack to bestow a softer, genuine smile upon her father. “I should reacquaint him with the isle, since he has been away for so long.”
“I don’t think—” Jack began to protest, defiant, until Alastair looked at him with an arched brow.
“I think that is a wonderful plan,” the laird said. “Unless you oppose it, Jack?”
Jack did oppose it. But he shook his head, swallowing his words, which caught like thorns in his throat.
“Excellent.” Adaira turned that sharp smile upon him again. She had noticed the twist in his voice—the discomfort she had inspired. She didn’t seem to care. No, she seemed to welcome it, and she motioned for Jack to rise, as if she held the power to command him. And yet, didn’t she? She had made him break his prior commitments to rush home.
He might have been on the mainland for the past decade, forming himself into the mold of a bard and forgetting his ties to Cadence. But in that instant, looking at Adaira, he remembered his upbringing. He felt the last name he wore like a cloak—the only name that would claim him, even at his very worst—and he knew that his deepest allegiance was to her and her family.
He stood.
“I hope you can grace my hall with your music soon, Jack,” Alastair said, stifling a deep, wet cough.
“It would be an honor,” Jack replied. His concern heightened when Alastair pressed a knuckle to his lips, his eyes shut as if his chest ached.
“Go and rest, Da,” Adaira said, touching his arm.
Alastair regained his composure and lowered his hand, smiling at his daughter. But it was a weary smile, a façade, and he kissed Adaira’s brow before he departed.
“Come with me, Jack.” Adaira turned and strode through a secret door, one he would have never noticed. Incensed, he had no choice but to chase after her through branching corridors, his eyes boring into those fair braids of hers and the thistles she wore like jewels.
I should have known it was her.
He almost let out a scathing laugh but stifled it just as Adaira led him into the inner garden. He came to a sudden halt on the moss-spangled flagstones, nearly bumping into her. Once, she had been taller than him. He was pleased to discover he had a full hand width of height on her now.
He watched with heavy-lidded eyes as she faced him. They were silent, the air fraught between them.
“You didn’t know it was me,” she said at last, amused.
“You didn’t even cross my mind,” he replied in a clipped tone. “Although I should have known you would have no shame in forging your father’s signature. I take it you also stole the signet ring from his hand? Did you do it while your father slept? Or did you drug him? You were very thorough with your crime, I must say, or else I wouldn’t be standing here.”
“Then what a relief that I went to such lengths,” she said, so calmly it threw him off balance. He realized she was bringing out the worst in him; he was acting as if he were eleven again, and the shock of that made him fall into a furious silence, worried he would say something he would regret. That is, until she added, “I wouldn’t have called you home if I didn’t have a purpose for you.”
“You speak of purpose?” he countered, stepping closer to her. He could smell the faint trace of lavender on her skin. He could see the ring of hazel in her blue eyes. “How dare you say such a thing to me, when you’ve dragged me away from my obligations and my duties? When you have interrupted my life without remorse? What do you want with me, Adaira? What do you want? Tell me so I can do it and be gone from here.”
She held her composure, intently staring at him. It almost felt as if she could see through him, beyond flesh and bones and veins, down to his very essence. As if she was measuring his worth. Jack shifted away, uncomfortable with her attentiveness and her silence. How cold and placid she was in the face of his smoldering wrath, as if his reaction was unfolding as she planned.
“I have much to tell you, Jack. But none can be spoken in the open, where the wind might steal the words from my lips,” she said, inviting him to keep pace with her as she began to walk the winding garden path. “It’s been a while since I last saw you.”
He didn’t want to reflect on that final moment between them, but it was inevitable, because she was looking at him, daring him to dredge it back up. And she had brought him here, to the garden, where it had happened.
The last time he had seen Adaira had been the night before he left Cadence. Mirin was speaking with Alastair and Lorna at the castle, and Jack had wandered, morose and angry, into the starlit garden. Adaira had also been there, of course, and Jack had reveled in hurling pebbles at her through the roses, startling and then irritating her until she had found his hiding place.
But she hadn’t responded as he expected, which had been to run away to tattle on him. She had taken hold of his tunic and challenged him, and they had wrestled amongst the vines and flowers, crushing the blooms and muddying their clothes. Jack had been surprised by how strong she was, how viciously she fought, as if she had been waiting for someone to match her. Her nails drew his blood, her elbows bruised his ribs. Her hair stung his face.
It had roused strange feelings within him. Adaira had fought as though she knew exactly how he felt, as if they were mirrors of each other. But that was ridiculous, because she had everything he didn’t. She was adored, and he was reviled. She was the clan’s joy, while he was the nuisance. And when he remembered that, he had striven to triumph in the match, pinning her beneath him on the garden path. But he drew back when he saw his fury reflected in her eyes. It was then she had said to him—
“Your parting words to me were that you ‘despised my existence,’ and that I ‘sullied the Tamerlaine name,’ and that you hoped that I ‘never returned to the isle,’” Jack drawled, as if those words had meant nothing to him then. For some strange reason, they made him ache now, as if Adaira’s farewell had seeped into his bones. But then again, he had never been one to forgive and forget easily.
Adaira was silent as she walked, listening to him.
“I’m sorry for the words I spoke that night,” she said, catching him by surprise. “And now you know why I had no choice but to forge my father’s order, because you would have never returned for me.”
“You’re right,” he said, and her eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure if her mistrust was sparked by his honesty or the fact that he was agreeing with her. “I would have never returned for you alone, Adaira.”
“As I just said,” she spoke through her teeth.
At last, Jack thought as he slowed his pace. At last he had roused her temper. He said in a smug tone, “But only because I have built a life for myself on the mainland.”
Adaira paused on the path. “A life as a bard?”
“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. I’ll soon be a professor at the university.”
“You’re teaching now?”
“Hundreds of students a term,” he replied. “Endless music has passed through my hands over the past decade, most of it my own creation.”
“That’s quite the accomplishment,” she said, but he noticed how the light in her eyes dimmed. “Do you enjoy teaching?”
“Of course I do,” he said, although sometimes he also thought that he hated it. He was not one of the adored assistants, and every blue moon he dreamt of casting off all the expectations that sat heavy on him. Sometimes he imagined becoming a traveling bard who drank lore and spun it into song. He imagined gathering stories and reawakening places that were half dead and forgotten. And he wondered if remaining at the university, held within stone and glass and structure, was more akin to being a bird, held captive in an iron cage.
But these were dangerous thoughts.
It must be the isle blood in him. To crave a life of risk and little responsibility. To let the wind carry him from place to place.
Jack suddenly dashed these reveries, worried that Adaira might see them in his expression. “So now you can understand why it was very difficult for me to leave my life’s work for a mysterious purpose. And I want to know why you summoned me home. What do you want with me, heiress?”
“Let me first say this,” she said, and Jack braced himself. “You are a bard, and I am not your keeper. You are not tethered to me. You are free to come and go as you please, and if you want to leave the isle tonight and return to the mainland, then leave, Jack. I will find another to fulfill my request.”
She fell silent, but Jack sensed there was more. He patiently waited for it.
“But if I am honest,” Adaira continued, holding his gaze, “I need you. The clan needs you. We have been waiting ten long years for you to return home to us, and so I would ask you to stay and aid us in our time of need.”
Jack was astonished by her words. He stood frozen, staring at her. A terrible voice within him whispered, Leave. He thought of the winding corridors of the university, full of light and music. He thought of his students, their smiles and their determination to master the instruments he set into their hands.
Leave.
It was tempting, but her words were far more enticing. She claimed that she needed him in particular, and he was curious now. He wanted to know why, and he took a step forward, following her once again.
She led him into a small inner chamber, devoid of windows. A room in which to discuss sensitive topics, he knew, as there was no chance of the wind stealing the words spoken there. A host of candles burned on a table, and flames crackled in the hearth, shedding light. Jack stood by the closed door as Adaira approached a table and poured them each a dram of whiskey. When she brought the drink to him, he hesitated, even as the firelight caught the glass, casting her hand in amber.
“Is this a peace offering or a bribe?” he asked, brow arched.
Adaira smiled. It was genuine, crinkling the corners of her eyes. “A bit of both, perhaps? I thought you might enjoy a taste of the isle. I hear mainland fare is quite dull.”
Jack accepted the offering, but then he realized she was waiting for him to make a toast.
He cleared his throat and said, a bit gruffly, “To the east.”
“To the east,” she echoed, clinking her glass with his. And she waited until he had taken his first sip of the whiskey, which curled down his throat like a flame of ancient fire, to add, “Welcome home, my old menace.”
Jack coughed. His eyes watered and his nose burned, but he held himself together and merely winced at her.
This is not my home anymore, he almost said, but the words melted when she smiled at him again.
Adaira moved to sit in a leather chair, pointing to an empty one across from hers. “Have a seat, Jack.”
Whatever she had to ask of him must be truly wretched if she had to ply him with whiskey and order him to sit. Jack relented, sitting on the edge of the cushion, as if he might need to bolt at any moment. He laid his harp across his lap, weary from toting it around.
She was gazing at him again, her fingertip tracing the rim of her glass. He took that quiet moment to study her in return. In particular, her hands. There were no rings on her fingers. But sometimes partners didn’t wear rings to signify their vows. Sometimes they broke a golden coin and each wore a half of it around their neck, and so Jack’s eyes traveled upward. Her dress was cut square, exposing the valleys of her collarbones. Her throat was bare; no necklace hung about it. He presumed Adaira was still unwed, which surprised him.
“You’re exactly how I imagined you to be, Jack,” she said, and his eyes snapped back to hers.
“I haven’t changed?” he asked.
“In some ways, yes. But in others … I think I would know you anywhere.” She downed her whiskey, as if the confession had made her feel vulnerable. Jack watched as she swallowed, uncertain how to reply.
He kept his face poised as he drained the rest of his drink.
“More?” she asked.
“No.”
“Your hand’s bandaged. Are you hurt?”
Jack flexed it. The pain from the cut had faded considerably, thanks to Sidra’s care. “Just a scratch. The folk of the sea weren’t very welcoming.”
Adaira rolled her lips together, as if she wanted to say something else but decided against it.
“Should you tell me now, heiress?” Jack asked. His stomach was beginning to ache, wondering why Adaira needed him.
He wanted to get this over with and be gone.
“Yes,” said Adaira, crossing her legs. He caught a glimpse of her calf, the mud on her boots. “I suspected you enjoyed your life on the mainland since you never visited us here, and as you have many responsibilities at your university … let me be frank. I don’t know how long I will need you.”
“Surely you have some idea,” he said, tamping down his irritation. He lived by a schedule and hated to imagine floating through time. “A week? A month? If I’m not back in time for the autumn term, I’ll lose my position at the university.”
“I truly don’t know, Jack,” Adaira replied. “There are many factors at play, ones beyond my control.”
Jack’s first assumption was that she had called him home to play for her father, since the laird looked gravely ill. Which meant that Adaira was about to ascend as laird herself. Jack felt a pang of awe, imagining her crowned.
His eyes traced the thistle blossoms, tucked within her braids.
“You saw Torin earlier, yes?” Adaira asked.
Jack frowned. “I did. How did you—?”
“The wind,” she said, as if he should remember how it gossiped. “Did my cousin tell you about the two lasses who have gone missing?”
“Yes. But he didn’t provide much detail, other than that he believes the spirits are at fault.”
Adaira glanced across the room, her face solemn. “Two weeks ago, eight-year-old Eliza Elliott went missing on her walk home from school. We searched acres of land, from the school to her family’s croft, but we found little trace of her. Only a few places in the grass and heather, where it looked like she walked, only to vanish.” She paused, her eyes returning to his. “I’m sure you remember the ways of the isle, Jack.”
He did.
He remembered the perks as well as the dangers of straying from Cadence roads. The roads were pathways that resisted enchantments. The spirits couldn’t influence the roads, but they could toy with the grass and rocks and wind and water and trees of the isle. They could turn three hills into one, and one hill into four, but even then, there were ways of knowing the lay of the land, and which parts of it were prone to shift, and which landmarks remained fixed. Many children who didn’t know that secret map had gotten lost for hours if they wandered from the road.
“You believe the folk have tricked her?” Jack questioned.
Adaira nodded. “Not a week after her disappearance, another lass went missing. Annabel Ranald. Her mother says she went to tend to the sheep one afternoon and never returned. She is only ten years old. And we searched all the way to the northern coast. We searched their croft, every cave and loch, the hills and the glens, but there is no sign of her, save for a trail in a patch of heather that ends abruptly. As it was with Eliza’s disappearance, like a portal had opened to them.”
Jack raked his hand through his hair. “This is troubling, and I’m sorry to hear of it. But I don’t know how I can help in this endeavor.”
Adaira hesitated. “What I am about to tell you must remain between us, Jack. Do you agree to hold this confidence?”
“I agree.”
And yet she still faltered, doubtful. It irked him, and he said, “You don’t trust me?”
“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have called you home for this,” she countered.
He waited, all of his attention bent upon her, and she released a deep sigh.
“When my mum was still living, she used to tell me the most vivid stories,” Adaira began. “Stories about the spirits, about the folk of the earth and the water. I enjoyed her tales and held them close to my heart, but I never thought too deeply about them. Not until after she had died and my father fell ill and I realized I was about to be alone, the last of my blood. Not until Eliza Elliott went missing.
“Torin and I both went to my father, to seek his advice. For it was evident to us that someone in the clan must have done something to upset the spirits, and the folk had taken one of our own to punish us for it. My father instructed Torin to continue searching the east with his mortal strength—his eyes and his ears and his hands, to be ready at any moment for a spirit portal to open and lead him to the other side. But after Torin was dismissed, my da spoke to me alone. He asked me to recount one of my mum’s stories, the legend of Lady Ream of the Sea, which my mum often sang to us in the hall.
“So I did, although I hadn’t thought of my mum’s stories in years, for the pain they bring me. And yet even as I thought of Ream rising from the foam of the tides, I still didn’t grasp what my father was hoping I would understand on my own. It took me a few more stories before I saw it.”
She paused. Jack was transfixed. “And what was that, Adaira?”
“That in my mum’s stories and songs … she could describe the spirits in perfect detail. How they looked in appearance. How their voices sounded. How they moved and danced. As if she had seen them manifested.”
Jack instantly thought of the woman in the sea, how her hair had tickled his face. He shivered. “And had she?”
“Yes,” Adaira whispered. “It was something only she and my father knew. A bard can draw the spirits in their manifested forms, but only with a harp and their mortal voice. Old knowledge passed down on the isle for many years, kept hidden by the laird and bard out of respect for the folk.”
“Why would your mother need to sing for them?” Jack said, his palms beginning to perspire.
“I asked my father this very question, and he told me that it was a way to ensure our survival in the east. We remained in good favor with the spirits, he said, because her worship pleased them, and they in turn ensured that our crops grew twofold, and the water ran clean from the mountains into the lochs, and the fire always burned through the darkest and coldest of nights, and the wind didn’t carry our words over the clan line to our enemies.”
Jack shifted. He felt the weight of her words. He knew why she had summoned him now, and yet he wanted her to say it to him. “Why have you called me home, Adaira?”
She held his gaze, her face flushing. “I need you to play one of my mother’s ballads on your harp. I need you to invite the spirits of the sea to manifest, so I may speak with them about the missing lasses. I believe they can help me find Annabel and Eliza.”
He was silent, but his heart resounded like thunder and his mind spun like leaves caught in a whirlwind.
“I have a few concerns about this, Adaira,” Jack said.
“Tell me then.”
“What if the spirits answer the music, but they are malevolent toward us?” he asked. For while he worried about his own well-being, he was even more concerned about hers. She was the sole heiress, the only child of the laird. If something befell her, the east would be bewildered. Jack didn’t want that on his hands, to witness the spirits of the sea drown her.
“We’ll play at night. When the moon and stars shine on the water,” Adaira said, as if she had anticipated that he would ask this.
When the spirits of the sea are easily mollified.
Jack’s dismay didn’t ease; he recalled the sound of fingernails tapping on the hull of the fisherman’s boat, seeking a weak spot. The dim figure of the woman in the water, laughing at him as he desperately swam to shore. Did he truly desire to reel that spirit to him like a fish on a hook? To sing up that dangerous being?
So he tried once more and asked, “What if they don’t come to the sound of my music, my voice? What if they remember their fondness and respect for your mum and refuse to answer me, a bard who has been ousted by the clan?”
“You were never ousted by us,” Adaira said, intently watching him. And then she whispered, “Are you afraid, Jack?”
Yes, he thought, desperately. “No,” he said.
“Because I will be there with you, at your side,” she said. “My father was always with my mother when she played. I won’t let anything befall you.”
It was strange how much he believed her in that moment, given their troubled history. But her confidence was like wine, softening him. He could see why the clan adored her, followed her, worshiped her.
“Perhaps this will grant you clarity,” Adaira continued. “My da explained it to me like this: My mother couldn’t play with a skeptical heart. The folk came not just to hear the music, but to be adored by her. Because that is what they desire from us. Our praise, our faith. Our trust in them.”
Jack’s initial reaction was to scoff. How could he praise the beings that were stealing girls? But he swallowed his retort, remembering Mirin’s old stories. Not all spirits were bad. Not all spirits were good. To be safe, it was wise to fear them all.
He didn’t want to believe what Adaira was telling him, and his mainland opinions rose up in his mind. But then he thought, If she’s right and the spirits relinquish the lasses, I can return to the university within the week.
“Very well,” he said. “I will play this for you and for the clan. For the two missing lasses. Where is your mother’s music?”
Adaira rose and led him to a southern turret of the castle, up a stairwell, and into a spacious chamber Jack had never seen before.
The walls were carved deep with shelves, crowded with illuminated books, and the floor was black-and-white-checkered marble, polished so fine it caught his reflection as if he stood on water. Three large windows let in rivers of sunshine, and there was an oaken table, covered in parchment, inkpots, and quills. In the center of the room was a grand harp, exquisitely crafted. The strings gleamed in the light, aching to be played.
Jack walked to it, unable to take his eyes from the instrument. He knew who it had once belonged to. As a boy, he had listened to her play it in the hall. Reverently, he traced the shoulder of the harp, and he thought of Lorna.
“This harp has been well maintained,” he said. He had expected to find it dust ridden, its frame cracked by the weight of strings. “Do you play?” And he couldn’t explain why the mere thought of Adaira sitting at this harp, her fingers rendering music, made his breath catch.
“Very little,” Adaira confessed. “Years ago, my mum taught me how to care for the instrument, how to pluck a few scales. Unfortunately, the music never took to my hands.”
Jack watched as she sorted through heaps of parchment on the table, eventually bringing a few sheets to him.
It was a ballad, “The Song of the Tides.” And even though the notes and lyrics were silent on the parchment, waiting for breath and voice and fingers to rouse them to life, a warning swelled within him the longer he entertained the music in his mind.
Something about it felt dangerous. He couldn’t fully describe it, but his blood recognized the threat swiftly, felt the bite of its unsung power. Chills swept over his skin.
“I’m going to need some time to prepare,” he said.
“How much time?” Adaira asked.
“Give me two days to study it. That will give my hand time to heal, and I should be ready to play by then.”
She nodded. He couldn’t tell if she was pleased or disappointed with his answer, but he sensed a fraction of the weight she was carrying as the Heiress of the East.
He didn’t envy her status or her power as he had once.
“And where will I be playing this?” he asked.
“On the shore,” Adaira replied. “We can meet at midnight, two nights from now, at Kelpie Rock. You remember where to find it?”
It was the place where they had once swum for countless hours as children. Jack wondered if Adaira was choosing it because the rock held strong memories for them both. He vividly recalled bobbing on the waves as a lad and racing her to the shore, eager to beat her.
“Of course,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten my way around the isle.”
She only smiled.
Jack was carefully folding Lorna’s music into his harp case when Adaira said, “I suppose you are eager to see Mirin?”
He bit back a sarcastic retort. “Aye. Since you’re done with me, I’ll be heading that way to visit her.”
“She’ll be overjoyed to see you,” Adaira stated.
Jack said nothing, but his heart felt like stone. When he had first arrived at the mainland school, his mother had written him once a month. He had gone to a broom closet and wept every time her words had arrived. Reading of the isle roused his longing to return home, and he often skipped his music classes, hoping his professors would send him back. They hadn’t, of course, because they were determined to see him flourish there. The wild isle-born lad who would have had no proper last name if not for the generosity of his laird.
As the years passed, Jack had finally given himself up to the music, falling deeper and deeper into that world, and Mirin’s letters had become more and more infrequent, until they only arrived annually, when the leaves turned gold and the frost fell and he had aged another year.
“I have no doubt,” Jack said, and this time the sarcasm bled into his voice.
Adaira must have noticed, but she didn’t make a remark. “Thank you for your help, Jack,” she said. “Would you also be able to meet with me again tomorrow at noontide?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Adaira tilted her head, gazing at him. “You are quite overjoyed to be home, aren’t you, my old menace?”
“This place was never my home,” he said.
She made no reply to that comment, but her eyes softened. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He watched her leave. He stood in the music chamber for a few minutes more, to soak in the solitude.
The light was beginning to fade. He felt how late the hour was, and he knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable.
It was time for him to see Mirin.
Jack once reveled in the swiftness of hill travel. As a boy, he had been quick to learn which summits flattened and which ones multiplied, which rivers changed course and which lochs vanished, which trees moved and which ones held steady. He knew how to find his way back to the road should the folk succeed in tricking him.
But it might have been foolish of him to think that would still be the case a decade later.
The isle looked nothing like he remembered. He pressed west as he walked the fells, Torin’s boots wearing blisters on his heels, and suddenly the land around him was wild and endless. He might have once loved this place and its many faces, but he was a stranger to it now.
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.”
