Jack was up at dawn, anxious to locate Torin and tell the captain about the strange rattle at the shutters. He had every intention of sneaking away from Mirin’s croft before she woke, but it seemed his mother anticipated his attempt to do so. She was waiting for him in the common room, working at her loom, a pot of oats bubbling over the fire.
“Will you join us for breakfast?” she asked, keeping her focus on her weaving.
Jack hesitated. He was about to utter an excuse when the front door opened and in walked Frae with a burst of cold morning air. A basket of eggs hung on her arm, and she brightened at the sight of him.
“Good morning,” his sister said, and then she seemed to grow shy. She walked to the table and fidgeted with the teacups, trying her best not to look at him.
Jack couldn’t slip away. Not with Frae’s demure gaze and Mirin’s rigid stance, as if they both expected him to bolt and were furiously hoping he would remain.
He sat at the table and watched Frae’s smile widen.
“I made you some tea,” she said. Then she whispered, “You do like tea, don’t you?”
“I do,” Jack replied.
“Oh, good! Mum said you probably did now, being on the mainland, but we weren’t sure of it.” Frae took a mitt and unhinged the kettle from its hook over the fire and carefully poured Jack a cup of tea. He was baffled, taken off guard by how eager she was to serve. How confident Frae was, how easily she knew her way around the kitchen and the croft. He clearly remembered being eight and begrudging every single chore Mirin had set upon him, stomping and whining when he had to gather the eggs and set the table and wash the dishes afterward.
No wonder she had been so eager to give him up to the mainland.
“Thank you, Frae,” he said, taking the warm cup in his hands.
Frae set the kettle down and brought him a pitcher of cream and a pot of honey, then hurried to set the rest of the table, humming as she went. Mirin eventually joined them, carrying the cauldron of oats with her. She filled their bowls with parritch, and Frae finished her tasks by setting out bacon and mushrooms, boiled eggs, fruit, sliced bread, and a crock of butter.
It was a feast. Jack worried they had made it just for him.
Their first meal together was awkward. Mirin was quiet, as was Jack. Frae kept parting her lips as if she wanted to say something, but then, too nervous to speak it, filled her mouth with oats instead.
“Do you go to school in the city every day?” Jack asked his sister.
“No, just three days a week,” she said. “The other days I’m here with Mum, learning her craft.”
Jack’s gaze slid to Mirin. Mirin met it beneath her lashes, but her eyes were guarded. Their argument last night hung between them like gossamer.
“Have you seen Adaira yet?” Frae asked.
Jack nearly choked on his tea. He cleared his throat and attempted a smile. “I have, actually.”
“When did you see the heiress?” Mirin was the one to now cast an inquisitive glance at him, and Jack ignored it, reaching for a slice of bread.
“I saw her yesterday morning.”
“Were you friends with her?” Frae continued, as if Adaira were a spirit herself to be worshiped. “Before you left for school?”
Jack spread a hunk of butter on his bread. Mirin scowled at his excess. “I suppose you could say that.” He took a huge bite, hoping talk of Adaira would end.
But his mother continued to watch him closely, seeming to realize who, indeed, had asked him to return. He hadn’t studied Lorna’s ballad at all the night before, as he was supposed to have done, and he still felt a sting of worry when he imagined playing that eerie music.
“Will you eat supper with us tonight?” Mirin asked, breaking off his stormy thoughts. She cradled her teacup in her long fingers, breathing in the steam.
Jack nodded, noticing his mother had scarcely eaten a bite of her parritch.
“You’re probably very busy today, aren’t you?” Frae’s voice rose an octave, betraying how anxious she still was to speak to him.
Jack met her gaze. “I do have a few things to accomplish today. Why do you ask, Frae?”
“Nothing,” his sister blurted, and shoveled another spoonful of parritch in her mouth, blushing.
It was apparent she wanted to ask him something and was too afraid to voice it. Jack had only been a brother for less than a day in his mind, but he wanted her to feel comfortable enough to speak to him, to not be timid when she was with him. He realized he was frowning.
He softened his expression as he looked at Frae. “Is there something you need help with?”
Frae glanced at Mirin, who was staring at her parritch until she sighed, raising her eyes to Jack’s.
“No, Jack. But thank you for offering.”
Frae’s shoulders stooped. Jack sensed that his mother and sister were reluctant to ask him to do anything. Chagrined, he decided he would have to unearth their needs another way. Without asking or making them ask.
Frae rose from the table first. Gathering the empty dishes, she carried them to the wash barrel. When Mirin made to rise and join her, Jack surprised himself by taking the bowl right out of her hands.
“Let me,” he said, and Mirin, in her shock, relented. She looked so tired and worn, and her bowl was still full of parritch.
It worried him.
He joined Frae at the wash barrel, and she gave a little gasp when he began to dunk the bowls beneath the water.
“This is my chore,” she said. As if she would fight him for it.
“Do you know what, Frae?”
She hesitated and then said, “What?”
“This used to be my chore too, when I was your age. I will wash and you can dry. How does that sound?”
She still looked perplexed, but then Jack handed her a freshly washed bowl, and she took it and began to wipe it dry with a rag. They worked in rhythm with each other, and when the table was clear, Jack said, “Will you take me on a tour of the yard, sister? It’s been so long since I was home, I don’t remember where everything is.”
Frae was ecstatic. She threw the door open, grabbed her shawl when Mirin chided her to, and led Jack through the kail yard. She pointed out every single vegetable and herb and fruit they were growing, her voice as sweet as a bell that never ceased ringing. Jack patiently listened, but he was gradually taking them in the direction of the northern face of the house, where his shutters sat open to welcome the sunlight.
He studied his window, as well as the strip of grass that stretched between it and the fence. There was nothing to indicate someone or something had approached last night. Again he wondered if he had dreamt it all, but he stayed at the window, unable to ignore his disconcerted musings.
“Frae? Has someone ever knocked on your bedroom shutters before? In the middle of the night?”
Frae stopped walking. “No. Why?” And then she gasped and rushed to say, “Oh! I’m so sorry to have taken your room! I hope you aren’t angry with me!”
Jack blinked, surprised. “I’m not angry at all, Frae. I don’t need a room anymore, to be honest.”
Her copper brows quirked as she began to fiddle with the ends of her braids. “But why? Don’t you want to remain here with us?”
Why did her inquiry meet him like a spear? He suddenly didn’t want to disappoint her, and Jack had never cared about such things before.
“I don’t mind sharing a room with Mum,” she added, as if that would convince him to stay. “Truly.”
“Well … I do have to return to my school,” he said, watching her hopeful expression fall. “But I’ll be here all summer.”
The promise spilled from his mouth before he could think better of it. Before he could remind himself that a part of him still hoped to leave by the end of the week. He couldn’t break his word now, not when he had given it to Frae.
Summer was a long time in a child’s mind. Frae grinned and bent down to pick a few violets from the grass. Jack watched as her dainty fingers traced the petals, pollen smearing like gold on her skin.
“I found some wildflowers on my bed last night,” Jack said. “Did you pick them for me, Frae?”
She nodded, her dimples flaring in her cheeks again.
“Thank you. It was a thoughtful gift.”
“I can show you where I picked them!” she cried, and he was shocked when she reached for his hand, as if she had held it countless times before. “It’s this way, Jack. I know where all the best flowers grow.”
She tugged on his arm, completely unaware that a piece of him had melted.
“Wait a moment, Frae,” he said, kneeling before her so their gazes would align. “Will you promise me something?”
She nodded, her trust like a knife in his side.
“This will probably never happen, but if you ever hear the shutters rattle like something is trying to open them, knocking on them, promise me that you will not answer it,” Jack said. “You will wake Mum and stay with her.”
“Or I could come wake you, right, Jack?”
“Yes,” he said. “You can always come to me if you are afraid or uncertain about something. And even when you are in the yard, I want you to make sure that you tell Mum where you are, and that you remain near her, within sight of the cottage. Always take someone with you to pick flowers. Can you promise me that also?”
“I promise. But Mum has already told me such.”
“Good,” he said. But within, he told himself, I have to stay here until this mystery of the missing lasses is solved. I have to see this through, even if it takes longer than summer.
“Is that what happened to Eliza and Annabel?” Frae asked with a somber expression. “Did a spirit knock on their windows?”
Jack hesitated. He didn’t want to scare her more than necessary, but he remembered Adaira’s words from the day before. One girl had gone missing on her walk home from school. The other, while tending the sheep in the pasture. He thought back on the stories Mirin had once told him. Legends where spirits—often benevolent ones—thrived in the yard and were even welcomed inside, such as when a fire was lit in the hearth. But he had never heard of one approaching a house and forcibly entering. Not that it was impossible, as the spirits often accepted the gifts left for them on porches and thresholds, but it seemed that even the most dangerous of beings preferred to be in the wild, where their powers were strongest.
“I’m not sure, Frae,” Jack said.
“Mum says the spirits in our yard are good. As long as I am home or stay on the roads or at school, the folk can’t trick me. They watch over me, especially when I wear my plaid.”
Jack’s eyes drifted to Frae’s shawl, which she had knotted crookedly over her collarbones. He noted its shimmer of enchantment. The shawl was green from summer bracken and nettles, with a vein of madder red and lichen gold. Colors of the earth spirits, harvested and crushed and soaked to make dyes. He wondered what secret was woven into that pattern, and for once he was glad of Mirin’s skill.
He smiled at his little sister, hoping to ease her worry. “Mum’s right. Now show me where the best flowers grow.”
Torin was walking the nook of the marsh, searching for the missing girls, when he spotted Jack standing beside a crown of rocks, waiting to speak with him. Torin took his time. His clothes were wrinkled stiff from the rain, and his eyes bleary from a long night, but he continued to comb through the wet grass. His boots squelched, startling meadow pipits in their morning foray as his guards fanned out behind him. Eventually he reached Jack and the shadows of the rocks. Torin noticed a flower was tucked into Jack’s dark hair, but he said nothing of it.
He had finally met Frae then.
“No sign of either lass?” Jack said.
Torin shook his head. “Not a trace.”
“I think you should search the western hills, up by my mum’s croft.”
“Why is that?” Torin knew he sounded skeptical, but all he could think of was how the spirits had been thwarting him. The wind had blown away any markings in the grass. The storm had broken, impeding him at every turn, and even now the rain sat in puddles, destroying any evidence of where the lasses might have wandered off to.
He feared the worst—that he would not be able to find either girl. The conversation he had had with Eliza’s mother last week still rattled in his skull, like broken bones.
Why would the folk take my daughter? Can I strike a bargain with them to get her back?
Torin had been speechless, uncertain what to say to the desperate woman. But it had turned his thoughts toward more dangerous, risky contemplations.
Jack was quiet, waiting for Torin’s attention. The wind carved a path between them, but there were no whispers within it that morning.
“I heard something strange last night,” Jack began, and Torin’s focus sharpened. He listened as Jack told him about the shutters rattling, the shadow that had fled into the hills.
“You saw them?” Torin demanded. “What did they look like? Which manner of spirit was it? Earth? Water?”
“I saw a shadow moving,” Jack corrected. He paused, hesitant. “I couldn’t determine how it was built. But it has me wondering … are the spirits becoming bolder? Have they been approaching houses with the intention to enter, uninvited?”
“It’s rare, but I’ve heard stories of them doing so in the past,” Torin replied. “And if it truly was a spirit knocking on your window last night … it’s a sign they’re growing cold and cruel. To steal a lass directly from her home.”
Jack frowned. “Could it mean that there is trouble brewing in the spirit’s realm?”
“Perhaps,” Torin said. “But there’s no true way of knowing, now, is there? If they refuse to manifest and speak directly to us, we can only wonder.” He sighed, motioning for his guards to gather. “If you think something might be hiding in the west hills, we’ll search there.”
Torin began to chart his course by the rising sun, heading toward Mirin’s croft, but Jack stopped him.
“You don’t think it was a Breccan scout, do you, Torin?”
Torin paused, let his guards pass by him before he responded. “If it was a Breccan, I would know. No one crosses the clan line without my knowledge.” And he flexed his left hand, the one that bore the scar.
Three years ago, Alastair had named Torin the Captain of the East Guard. After the ceremony, Torin had held out his hand, and the laird had cut his palm with his sword—steel enchanted with awareness. The pain had run deep, deeper than any other blade Torin had ever felt. It sank into his bones and relentlessly ached, as if his hand had been cleft in two. He had carried that pain and walked the edges of Eastern Cadence—her rugged coastline, her border between west and east—letting his blood drip on the earth and the water. Just as the Captain of the East Guard had done before him. No one could step foot on Eastern Cadence without him feeling it.
His blood was bound to the land.
He could have told Jack that the last scout he had intercepted had been on the southern shore of Cadence, near the place where Roban had confronted Jack the other night. But Torin didn’t.
He didn’t tell Jack it had been a Breccan warrior who had attempted to swim his way over, who foolishly believed that Torin couldn’t feel a trespasser in the eastern tides. He didn’t tell Jack that the Breccan had been armed and viciously fought Torin in the sand, or that Torin had interrogated the scout in the same cave where he had given his plaid and heather ale to Jack in welcome. He didn’t tell Jack that when the Breccan had remained silent, giving none of his plans away, Torin had killed him and dumped his body in the ocean.
No, he hadn’t told anyone of that night. Not even Sidra.
He parted ways with Jack, following the trail his guards had forged up the hill. And Torin had to finally ask himself … What? What was he was searching for? A ribbon, a shoe, a shred of clothing? A physical trace that would lead him somewhere? A door that opened to another realm? A manifested spirit who would be helpful and guide him to the girls? A body? His initial search for Eliza and Annabel had been unsuccessful, but perhaps that was because he was relying on his physical limitations.
When he reached his guards on the road, Torin sent them ahead to Mirin’s with orders to search her land. He trailed behind, his eyes sweeping the thick grass and the deer trails, and he was almost to Mirin’s croft when he came across a glen he had never encountered before. A narrow, deep valley with a river flowing along its floor, trickling over rocks.
He paused, wondering if this river would lead to a portal. Ever since he was a lad, Torin had longed to uncover one, to pass through a doorway that would usher him into the spirits’ domain.
Feeling compelled to search this glen, Torin slid down the steep bank and walked in the shallow currents. He followed its winding path, his eyes peeling the rocks and dangling roots for a hidden door. Water was seeping into his boots when he unexpectedly came upon a bothy built on the stony bank. It was small and rugged, almost unnoticeable if one didn’t look closely, built of woven branches and vines. A hole in its mossy roof let out puffs of smoke.
He stopped in the river, uncertain as to who occupied it. The hair rose on his arms the longer he regarded the bothy, as if this place was holy ground where spirits gathered. He cautiously moved forward, hand on the hilt of his sword, and knocked on the driftwood door.
“Come in,” a voice beckoned him, smooth and melodic. A young woman’s voice.
When Torin pushed the door, it creaked inward, but he remained on the threshold. He had never seen a spirit manifested. He had only ever heard their whispers on the wind, and felt their warmth in the fire, and breathed their fragrance in the grass, and drunk their generosity in the water from the loch. So he didn’t know what to expect as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Are you afraid?” the woman said with a laugh. He still couldn’t see her in the shadows. “Come inside. I’m not a spirit, if that’s what you fear.”
He cautiously entered the bothy, stooping to avoid hitting his head on the mossy lintel.
There was a small peat fire burning in a ring of stones. A tiny table held a collection of books, a cauldron of parritch, and a bowl of blackberries. A shelf was crowded with carved figurines. A basket of branches sat beside a rocking chair, and in the chair was a woman, ancient and silver haired, her gnarled hands whittling a slender piece of wood.
Torin stared at her, confused, but her eyes remained on her work. The confident whisking of her knife and the wood shavings that fell with her motions. It almost looked as if she was carving a reflection of him …
“Ah, it is the esteemed Captain of the East Guard,” the woman said, glancing at him and recognizing his plaid and crest. Again, her voice was young and vibrant. “You were not expecting me to look like this, were you?”
He was silent, disturbed.
“Old and weathered, you would call me,” she continued, “with a voice that does not match how I appear.”
“Who are you?” Torin asked.
She finally ceased her whittling, piercing him with a set of watery blue eyes. “You wouldn’t know me. I don’t belong in your time, captain. That is why my body has aged, but my voice has not.”
“Then what time are you from? How did you come to live on this river?”
She nodded to her shelf of figurines. “Choose one, and I shall tell you. This is my penance for a vow I broke, long ago: I must tell visitors my story before I may answer a question of theirs in return, for this glen is cursed, beckoning only those who are in great need. But choose wisely, captain. A figurine as well as a question, for my voice will last only so long before it fades.”
Torin wanted to ask her about the missing girls but held the words back, heeding her warning. He turned to the shelf, gazing at the collection. There were more than he could count, a variety of women, men, and beasts hewn from all types of wood. But his eyes were drawn to one figurine in particular. Her hair was long, unbound, studded with flowers, and one hand rested over her heart, the other reaching out with invitation.
Torin gently took her within his hand, vividly remembering the day he had married Sidra. The wildflowers that had crowned her. How he had found stray petals in her hair hours after the ceremony, when she sat in his bed and they drank wine and talked late into the night.
He inhaled a sharp breath. “Has my wife been here?” And he turned to show the beautiful figurine to the woman.
She cackled. “Are you wed to Lady Whin of the Wildflowers?”
“This is a spirit?” Torin studied the figurine more closely and saw that flowers also bloomed from her fingertips. “I didn’t realize the folk looked so similar to us.”
“Some of them do, captain. Some of them don’t. And remember … take care with your questions. I am only beholden to answer one, after my tale has been spun.”
“Then tell me your story,” he said.
She was quiet for a long moment. Torin watched as she continued to cut into the wood, another figurine coming to life in her hands.
“I was Joan’s handmaiden,” she began at last. “I went with her when she married Fingal Breccan. I accompanied her into the west.”
Torin’s eyes widened. He knew the legend of his ancestor, who had sought to bring peace to the isle. Joan Tamerlaine had lived two centuries ago.
“In the days before the clan line, it was beautiful,” the woman said. “The hills were cloaked in heather and wildflowers. The streams ran cold and pure from the mountains. The sea was full of life and abundance. And yet a shadow lay over it. The Breccans often sparred amongst themselves, keen to prove which family was stronger. You had to sleep with one eye open, and trust was scarce even among brothers and sisters. I witnessed more bloodshed than I ever had before, and I eventually couldn’t bear to live there. I asked Joan to release me from my vow of service, and she did, because she understood. Every night, we dreamt of the east, homesick.
“I left and she remained. But when I returned home, I wasn’t welcomed by my family. They cast me away for breaking my vow to Joan, and I wandered, destitute, until I came to a loch in a vale. I knelt and drank and soon noticed something else, deep within its waters. A glimmer of gold.
“I was hungry and weary; I needed that gold to survive. I plunged into the water and began to swim to the bottom. But every time I thought I was almost there, when I stretched out my hand to capture the gold, it evaded me, sinking a little deeper. Soon, I could feel my chest smoldering—I was almost out of air. And just before I changed my course, the spirit of the loch met me. She kissed my mouth, and suddenly I could breathe in the water, and I continued to swim, defiant of my mortality, deep into the heart of the loch. Greedy and desperate for that promise of gold.”
She fell quiet, her hands pausing in their work. Torin stood transfixed by her story, the figurine of Lady Whin cradled in his palm.
“But you never got the gold,” he murmured.
The woman met his gaze. Her voice was changing, becoming raspy and frail, as if her confession was aging it. “No. I came to my senses and realized the loch was bottomless, and soon I would lose myself within it and the games the loch spirit played. I turned and swam back the way I had come, so exhausted I almost didn’t reach the light. When I broke the surface, I realized a hundred years had passed while I had been treading the deep.” She resumed her whittling, emotionless. “The family I knew was dead, long buried. Joan, too, was dead, I learned. She had died entwined with the Breccan laird, their blood staining the earth. She had cursed the west as Fingal had cursed the east. The magic of the spirits was unbalanced now because of their strife and the clan line.
“Magic would henceforth flow bright in the hands of the Breccans. They could harness enchantments with no consequences to their health, weaving magic into plaids, hammering charms into their steel. But the folk would suffer from their magic. The crops would grow sparse in the west. The water would be murky. The fire would burn dim, and the wind would be harsh. The Breccan clan would then be a strong yet hungry clan, belonging to a solemn land.
“In turn, magic would flow bright in the spirits of the east. And while the Tamerlaines would have to suffer in order to wield it, their gardens would flourish, their water would be pure, their winds would be balanced, and their fires would be warm. The Tamerlaine clan would then be a prosperous but vulnerable people, belonging to a lush land.”
Torin was quiet, soaking in her story. He knew of the curse. It was why the Breccans had no resources come winter, and why so many Tamerlaines required the medical attention of his wife.
He glanced at the woman, wondering how many questions he could ask before her voice fully faded.
“Do the spirits of the isle come here to visit you then?” he asked.
“Occasionally. When one is in need.”
“You didn’t happen to see one with two young lasses, did you?”
“What would a spirit want with a mortal bairn?” she countered.
Torin felt his impatience rise. “Is there a way to call the spirits? To make them manifest?”
“If there is,” the woman said, her words almost undecipherable, “I don’t know it, captain.”
He sensed her time had ended; her voice was spent. He wanted to ask her more about the spirits, but he would have to do it another time, when her voice had been replenished.
How will I find my way back to this place? he wondered, knowing this glen was cursed to shift and change. He studied the figurine of Lady Whin once more. Perhaps it could be a guide to him. It was uncanny how much it reminded him of Sidra.
“May I keep this?” he asked.
The woman gave him a curt nod, her attention focusing on her work, as though he were no longer present.
Torin left the bothy, the door closing behind him on its own. He tucked the figurine into his pocket, thinking Maisie would love it, and began to walk up the river before he paused, listening as the water’s babble changed.
Torin glanced over his shoulder and froze. It was just as he had feared.
The river had altered its course by a handbreadth, and the timeless woman’s bothy was nowhere to be seen.
Torin had just emerged from the glen and was heading north when he caught sight of Roban, sprinting toward him through the heather.
Torin knew something was wrong. He felt a pit in his stomach as he ran to meet the young guard.
“What is it, Roban?” Torin asked. But he already knew the answer.
He saw the sweat dripping from Roban’s brow, the sheen of panic in his eyes. His worn edges from searching day after day, night after night, with nothing to show for it.
“I’m afraid it’s happened again, captain,” the boy panted. “Another lass has vanished.”
