Jack’s bones were leaden as he stared at the girl, his sister—his sister—and somehow managed to say, “It’s nice to meet you, Fraedah. I’m Jack.”
“Hello.” Frae smiled, her cheeks marked by two dimples. “You can call me Frae, actually. All of my friends do.”
Jack nodded. His face felt hot; he couldn’t swallow.
“Mum told me I have an older brother who’s a bard,” his sister continued. “She said you’d return soon, but we didn’t know when. I’ve dreamt of meeting you!”
Jack forced a smile. It felt more like a grimace, and he narrowed his eyes at Mirin, who was finally looking at him, a pained expression on her face.
“Frae?” she said, clearing her throat. “Why don’t you go and sleep in my room tonight? You can see Jack tomorrow at breakfast.”
“Yes, Mum,” Frae replied in a dutiful tone, her arms falling away from Mirin’s waist. “Good night, Jack.”
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t find the words in time, even as she grinned once more at him, like he was a hero in a story she’d been hearing about for years.
Frae slipped into Mirin’s bedchamber, latching the door behind her.
Jack stood, quiet as stone, staring at the place where she’d been.
“Are you hungry?” Mirin asked, tentatively. “I left soup on the fire for you.”
“No.”
He had been starving up until that moment. Now his stomach was churning, his appetite gone. He had never felt more uncomfortable or out of place in his life, and his eyes swept toward the front door, seeking an escape route. “I can sleep in the byre tonight.”
“What? No, Jack,” Mirin said firmly, standing in his path. “You can have your old room.”
“But it belongs to Frae now.”
Frae. His little sister, whose entire existence Mirin had kept concealed from him. He gritted his teeth, felt the sting of his palm as his fingers curled inward.
Before his mother could speak again, Jack hissed, “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”
“I wanted to, Jack,” Mirin replied in a low voice. She seemed to worry Frae might overhear them. “I wanted to. I just … I didn’t know how to tell you.”
He continued to regard her, coldly. He wanted to leave, and Mirin must have sensed it.
She stretched out her hand to him, gently touching his face.
He flinched, even as he longed to see and feel her love for him. The love he had seen in her hands when she had touched Frae’s hair. Effortless and natural.
He felt the years that had been lost between them now, like a limb torn away. Time that could never be regained, time that had encouraged them to grow apart. Mirin might have given him life and raised him the first eleven years, but the mainland professors and their music had shaped him into who he was now.
Mirin’s hand fell away. Her dark eyes glistened with sorrow, and he worried she was about to weep.
His throat was still aching, but he managed to say, “I would appreciate some dry clothes, if you have them.”
“Yes, of course,” Mirin said, her posture easing with visible relief, as if she had been holding her breath. “Yes, I have clothes ready for you. I always hoped you would return, and so I … in here, Jack …” She strode into his bedroom.
Jack stiffly followed.
He watched as Mirin opened the wooden trunk at the foot of the bed. She withdrew a stack of perfectly folded garments. A fawn-colored tunic and a green plaid.
“I made these for you,” she said, staring down at the raiment. “I had to guess how tall you’d be, but I think I imagined right.”
Jack accepted the clothes. “Thank you,” he said, the words clipped. He was numb with shock and irritated from wearing Torin’s oversized, drenched clothes all day. He was hungry and tired and overwhelmed by the knowledge of Frae, by the request Adaira had made of him.
He needed a moment alone.
Mirin must have sensed it. She left without another word, closing the door behind her.
Jack sighed, dropping his guise. His face grooved in pain, and he closed his eyes, drawing in long, deep breaths until he felt strong enough to survey his old room.
A candle burned on his writing desk, washing the stone walls in faint light. His childhood storybooks were lined up in a row; he wondered if Frae had read them by now. He was surprised to find his slingshot still hanging on a nail in the wall, alongside a small tapestry that must have belonged to his sister. A reed mat covered the floor, and the bed sat in one corner, draped in his childhood blanket. Mirin had woven it for him, a warm covering to ward off the chilly nights of the isle.
His eyes traced it, catching on something unexpected near the pillow.
Jack frowned and stepped closer, realizing it was a bouquet of wildflowers. Had Frae picked these for him? Surely not, he thought. But he couldn’t help but assume that his mother and sister had been waiting for him to arrive all day. Ever since they heard of his presence on the wind.
He set his harp down.
He disrobed and dressed in the clothes Mirin had made for him. To his shock, they fit him perfectly. The wool was warm and soft against his skin, and the plaid came around him like an embrace.
Jack lingered in his room a moment longer, struggling to dissolve the emotion he was feeling. By the time he had regained his composure and returned to the common room, Mirin had a bowl of dinner waiting for him.
This time he accepted it as he sat in a straw-backed chair by the fire. The soup smelled of marrow and onions and pepper, of all the green living things Mirin grew in her garden. He let the steam ease before he began to eat, savoring the rich flavors of the meal. The taste of his childhood. And he swore for a moment that time rippled around them, granting him a glimpse of the past.
“Have you come home for good, Jack?” Mirin asked, sitting in a chair across from his.
Jack hesitated. His mind was still reeling with questions about Frae, with answers he was keen to learn. But he decided to wait. He could almost fool himself, thinking it was the old days. When Mirin had told him stories by the hearth.
“I’ll be returning to the mainland in time for autumn term,” he said, despite Adaira’s warning.
“I’m glad you’re home, even if it’s just for a spell,” Mirin said, lacing her fingers together. “I’ve been curious to hear more about your university. What is it like there? Do you enjoy it?”
He could have told her many things. He could have started at the beginning, recounting how in those early days he had hated the university. How learning music had come slowly to him. How he had wanted to smash his instruments and return home.
But perhaps she already knew that, from reading between the lines of the letters he had written her.
He could have told her about the moment when things changed, in his third year, when the most patient of professors had started to teach him how to play the harp and Jack had found his purpose at last. He was told to take great care with his hands, to let his fingernails grow long, as if he were becoming a new creature.
“I like it just fine,” he said. “The weather is pleasant. The food is average. The company is good.”
“You’re happy there?”
“Yes.” The reply was swift, reflexive.
“Good.” Mirin said. “I didn’t want to believe Lorna when she told me that you would prosper on the mainland. But how right she was.”
Jack knew the Tamerlaines had funded his education. The university was expensive, and Mirin alone could not have afforded it. He still sometimes wondered why he was chosen, out of all the other children on the isle. Most days he surmised that he was chosen because he was fatherless, troublesome, and wild, and the laird thought instruction far from home would tame him.
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?
He was just about to slip out the window when a strong northern gust blasted against his face, howling into the room. He winced at the sharpness of its breath, even if there were no voices within it.
“Jack?”
He startled and turned to see Mirin standing on his thresh-old, a rushlight in her hand.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, looking to the open window beyond him.
The wind continued to hiss into the room, stirring the tapestry on the wall, overturning the books on the desk. Jack had no choice but to latch the shutters, which began to rattle again.
Perhaps he had only imagined the intruder. But the night had felt calm and still a moment ago.
Jack struggled to slow his breath, to blink away the wild gleam in his eyes. “I heard a noise at the window.”
Mirin’s gaze flickered to the shutters. A flash of silver caught the firelight at her hip, and Jack saw that she was wearing her enchanted dirk, sheathed at her waist.
“Did you see anything?” she asked in a wary tone.
“A shadow,” Jack replied. “But I couldn’t discern what it was. Is Frae …?” His voice trailed off.
“She’s in bed,” Mirin replied, but she exchanged a worried look with Jack.
They quietly walked into the main bedchamber. Mirin’s candle cast a ring of faint light into the room, gilding the tangles of Frae’s auburn hair as she slept.
Jack felt a pinch of relief and returned to the threshold. Mirin followed, long enough to whisper to him, “It must have been the wind.”
“Yes,” he said, but the doubt left a sour taste in his mouth. “Good-night, Mum.”
“Good-night, Jack,” Mirin said, shutting the door.
Jack climbed into his childhood bed. The blanket wrinkled beneath him. He forgot about Frae’s flowers until he heard them crinkle by his ear. He took them gently in his hand and closed his eyes, trying to convince himself that the night was serene, peaceful. But there was something else, lurking at the edges. Something sinister, waiting to rise.
He couldn’t sleep when he thought of it.
A spirit had come for his sister.
