Torin rode back to the croft, eager to see Sidra. The meeting at the clan line had gone better than expected, and this was the most hopeful he had felt in a long time. If Innes Breccan continued to be agreeable and provided them with Orenna flowers, then they would be one step closer to finding Maisie and the other lasses. He could be days away from holding his daughter. Days away from carrying her home.
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.
“The dog is mine,” Sidra said, and her brother startled, finally noticing her kneeling in the garden.
“Sidra?” Irving asked, squinting at her.
She knew she looked a mess. Drenched from the rain and smudged with dirt, with her hair like unspooled darkness. It had been years since they had seen each other. “I was in the vale and thought I would visit you and Da.”
“Da is kilometers away, in the earie paddock,” Irving said, still scowling at Yirr. “He won’t be back until dusk most likely.”
“I see,” said Sidra, rising. “Then I should probably go.”
“Don’t be silly,” her brother said with an impish smile. “I could use your help snapping beans.”
And that is how Sidra found herself sitting in the same chair at the same kitchen table, working with her hands, when Torin arrived. The same place and same time of day and same season—only the sun and her grandmother were missing. Or else Sidra could have fooled herself for a moment, believing time was a circle and this was the moment when Torin first knocked on the door with a displaced shoulder.
There was static in the air again, gathering in Sidra’s fingertips. Just as it had that day long ago. As if she had rushed her hands over wool, over threads unseen. Something was about to change, and she didn’t know what that thing was, but she felt it all the same in her bones.
Torin knocked on the door. His customary trio of raps, hard and urgent.
Irving huffed. He had snapped only half as many beans as Sidra had, and when he made to rise, she said, “I’ll answer the door.”
Her brother began to protest, but he must have seen that flicker of strange energy in Sidra, and he shut his mouth and lowered himself back down to the bench.
She delayed, though, until Torin knocked again, not as insistent this time.
She rose and answered the door.
Torin stared at her a long moment, a moment that needed no words. Behind her, Sidra heard the bench scraping the floor as Irving asked, “Is that Torin?”
“It is,” she replied after a beat, realizing Torin was still voiceless. “Why have you come?” she asked him in a whisper.
Torin held out his hand to her, a quiet invitation.
She knew if she passed beyond this threshold with him, that unknown change would ignite in the air. For a moment she feared it, because she sensed the path ahead would be hard. It would be forged through tears and heartache and patience and vulnerability. She couldn’t see the ending, but neither did she want to remain, stagnant and passive, in the place where she had begun.
She took his hand and passed over the threshold, closing the door behind her.
Yirr was panting in a mud puddle, content after his run with the sheep. He leapt up and followed Sidra and Torin through the long grass to the orchard. The air here smelled forbidden, sweet from rotten fruit, and Sidra at last came to a halt beneath the boughs, the wind stirring her hair.
“It wasn’t my intention to worry you,” she said. “I came to the vale to visit my grandmother’s grave, and I wanted to see home for a spell. I would have returned long before dusk.”
Torin held her gaze, and she could see a trace of apprehension in him. He wanted to speak; she sensed his frustration as he opened his mouth, only to sigh. But he noticed the dirt beneath her nails. The weed poking its flowery head from her skirt pocket.
He gently laid his palm over her chest, and she knew he wanted her to open herself to him.
She glanced down at the grass, hesitant.
“I don’t know where to begin, Torin,” she said. It was odd, how she kept waiting for him to say something. She met his gaze, tears in her eyes. “I’ve always been devout. I’m sure you’ve realized that about me by now. Faith was woven deeply into my life, but it cracked when Maisie was taken. When the stranger beat me down into the heather, as if my life meant nothing.”
Torin’s hand moved to take her own. He was so warm, as if a fire were lit within him.
“Nearly every night when I tried to sleep,” she continued, “I would tell myself, You should have fought harder. You should have been stronger. You’ve failed Maisie and Torin. You’ve failed as a mother, as a wife, and now as a healer, and what is left for you? I believed those words. They planted so much doubt and pain in me … I didn’t know how to uproot them.”
Torin drew a sharp breath. Sidra dared to study his face and saw his anguish. He looked the same as he had the morning when he’d first seen her, battered and blood-stained. Like a blade had been plunged into him.
“I know now those words are lies,” she said, but her voice broke. “I also know there is nothing weak about grieving, or feeling sorrow, or being angry. But I always wanted to prove myself worthy of you, and losing Maisie has made me question everything about myself. Who I was, who I am. Who I want to become.”
She began to weep, unashamed of her tears or how she trembled. It felt like a cleansing, and she wanted it to flow, unhindered.
Torin embraced her. He pressed his face into her hair, and she could feel his chest shudder as he cried with her. Together, they wept for the child they had lost.
Eventually, Sidra leaned back so she could look at his face, flushed and red eyed.
“I need to finish by saying this,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “It’s hard for me to admit, but I realize I’ve built my life upon something that can be taken from me, and I’m afraid. I long for Maisie to come home, and yet there is no promise that she will, and what does that leave for you and me? We see the world from different angles, and I wonder … I wonder if there is a place for us within it.”
Torin’s breaths quickened. He took her hand and held it to his breast, slipping her palm beneath the protective enchantment of his plaid, so she could feel the beat of his heart. She stood with him beneath the boughs, and she closed her eyes, feeling the rhythm of his life.
It began to rain. A soft whisper through the orchard.
Torin drew her hand away from his chest, but then he laced his fingers with hers, and she sensed his determination. He wanted to try this with her, just the two of them. If they needed to carve their own place together, then he would attempt it. He leaned his brow to hers, and they stood breathing the same air, the same thoughts.
He traced her jaw, the rain now shining like tears on her face.
Come home with me.
Sidra nodded.
The rain had intensified by the time Torin led her back to where his horse waited in her father’s yard. The valley roads were swollen with mud, and Torin guided them carefully across the hills, Yirr trailing behind. The afternoon was melting into evening, and the sky was still churning with the storm when they returned to their croft. They were both soaked to the bone.
Sidra stepped into the common room. She would never get over how empty it was without Maisie; it always felt the worst the moment she returned home. She cleared her throat, searching for something to do. She wondered if she should spark the fire in the hearth, or if she should change her clothes first. Before she could decide, she felt Torin’s steady gaze.
He was standing very still, his flaxen hair drenched across his brow. Sidra didn’t understand why he was so attentive until she realized he was waiting for her command.
She walked to him, afraid of the desire she felt—how sharp it was within her—until she saw it mirrored in his own face.
Sidra’s fingers drifted up to the brooch at his shoulder, unclasping it. His plaid cascaded beneath her hands, and she found the buckles on his jerkin next, unfastening them one by one. She removed his raiment—belt and weapons and tunic—all the way down to his muddy boots. And then he returned the motions, but it had been a while since he had undressed her. His eager hands tangled the laces of her bodice, and he let out a wisp of frustrated breath.
Sidra smiled, but her stomach was full of wings, as if this were their first time again.
It took her a moment to loosen the knot he’d made, and she hardly had time to lower her fingers before he pulled the dress and the chemise from her, leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor beside his.
Bared to each other, Torin traced her skin, as if he was memorizing her every line and curve. When she gasped, his mouth was there to catch it, settling against hers like a seal, and he tasted of rain and salt.
He carried her to the bed.
Together, they sank into the blankets. He kissed the curve of her throat, the valleys of her collarbones. His body was warm, comforting against hers. And for once, Torin took his time. She knew he had countless important things to do, but he chose her that night.
The light was fading. Sidra drank the scent of his skin—the traces of leather and wool, the loam of the isle, the sweat from endless work, and a slight touch of the wind—and it was familiar and beloved to her, as if she had found home in the most unexpected of places.
She drew him closer, deeper. The room was dark now, but she could faintly discern his face. The wonder in his eyes. Soon, they couldn’t see at all, but they felt and they breathed and they moved as one. The eyes of their hearts were open, and they beheld each other vividly, even in the darkness.
She woke before him. She had dreamt of a strange path in the hills, one she felt compelled to find. Quietly, Sidra slipped from the bed and found clean clothes in her wardrobe. Torin had suffered another nightmare last night. She didn’t know what he was seeing while he slept, but it worried her.
She found an empty basket and her foraging knife, donned her plaid and her boots, and emerged into the front yard.
It was dawn, and the light was a milky blue.
She left the croft for the hills, setting out on a muddy path, uncertain where she was going. But she dared to stray from the road into knee-deep heather as she looked for the path in her dreams. So entirely focused on looking for Torin’s cure, she nearly missed the trail of gorse that bloomed before her, a slender thread of gold that made her stop, amazed. It reminded her of the pathways she had seen in the spirit realm, and she followed its winding route, careful not to crush the blooms beneath her feet.
It led her into a glen that she had never seen before, a shifting location in the hills. The gorse eventually meandered up the rocky wall to a patch of fire spurge. The weeds boasted short red stalks, their fiery blooms reminding Sidra of the anemones that flourished in the bay. She knew this plant was vengeful if picked, inflicting painful blisters on hands bold enough to harvest it.
She stood and stared up at the beautiful, monstrous weed, let out a deep breath, and began to climb with her basket and knife. But the gorse hissed and wilted at her approach, and she understood the price that was required—she would have to harvest and carry the fire spurge with her bare hands. She dropped the basket and blade, then continued her ascent.
Sidra didn’t hesitate when she reached the spurge. The moment her hand closed around the first bloom, the pain swelled within her. She cried out, but she didn’t release it. She tugged until the blossom broke free and the pain burned, bright and intense, as if she had set her hand on fire. Trembling, she took hold of another, unable to swallow her cries of agony as she harvested.
Her hands took the pain for Torin; her voice rose for his lost one.
And if she thought that she could measure the depth of her love for him before, she was mistaken.
It ran far deeper than she knew.
