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“Perhaps one of his own did it to him,” Jack said. “The Breccans are known for their bloodthirsty ways.” The fisherman chuckled. “Should I dare to believe a Tamerlaine is unbiased?”
Jack sighed. He just wanted a swift, quiet passage over the water. But he knew the story. It was an old, blood-soaked saga that shifted like the constellations, depending on who did the retelling—the east or the west, the Tamerlaines or the Breccans.
Cadence was darker than night, a shadow against the ocean and the starry sky. Long and rugged, it stretched before them like a sprawled dragon sleeping on the waves. Jack’s heart stirred at the sight, traitor that it was. Soon, he would be walking the ground he had grown up on, and he didn’t know if he would be welcomed or not.
“Can I kill him, captain?” the lad who was dragging Jack asked, all too eager. “Maybe. Bring him yonder.” That voice. Deep as a ravine with a trace of mirth. Terribly familiar, even after all these years away. Just my fortune, Jack thought, closing his eyes as sand stung his face.
Emboldened, he met Torin’s stare. “You meet every stray who crosses the clan line with instant death?” “I wouldn’t have killed you, lad.” “That’s not what I asked.”
Sometimes Sidra felt unworthy, as if Donella were assessing her. How well was Sidra caring for the daughter and husband she had left behind? But most of the time Sidra felt as if Donella was simply keeping her company, so fastened was her soul to this place, to this ground. The women—one dead and one living—were connected by love and blood and soil. Three cords that were so interwoven that Sidra was not surprised that Donella appeared to her and her alone.
A dog could scare spirits away from a yard, even the good ones. And her faith in the folk of the earth ran deep. It was because of that devotion that Sidra could heal the worst of wounds and illnesses in the east. It was why her herbs, flowers, and vegetables flourished, empowering her to nourish and heal the community and her family. If Sidra dared to bring a dog into the fold, it might convince the spirits that her faith in them was weak, and she didn’t know what sort of consequences that would lend to her life.
Every spring, Sidra would take Maisie and a handful of flowers to Donella’s grave, and she would tell the lass about her mother, who had been lovely and brave and gifted with the sword. Even though it sometimes left a lump in Sidra’s throat, she would tell Maisie the story of how her father and mother had trained and sparred on the castle grounds, first as rivals but later as friends and then lovers.
“Your father . . . ?” Jack asked, uncertain. “Is quite well,” Torin said, but his voice was firm, as if he didn’t want to speak of his father. As if the dilapidation of Graeme Tamerlaine’s croft was the norm.
Jack soaked in the beauty, but he remained guarded against it. He didn’t like the way the isle made him feel alive and whole, as if he were a part of it, when he wanted to remain a distant observer. A mortal who could come and go as he pleased and suffer nothing for it.
When Mirin began weaving enchanted plaids, the people who had snubbed Jack suddenly became a little kinder, because no one could rival Mirin’s handiwork, and she suddenly knew everyone’s darkest secrets while they had yet to learn hers. But by then he had begun carrying every slight around like a bruise in his spirit. He had provoked fights at school, broken windows with rocks, refused to bargain with certain people when Mirin sent him to the market.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
She wondered if a girl could become a tree, no longer aging in mortal ways but by seasons. Could a girl become a wildflower patch, resurrected every spring and summer only to wilt and fade come the sting of frost? Could she become the foam of the sea that rolled over the coast for an eternity, or a flame that danced in a hearth? A winged being of the wind, sighing over the hills? Could she be returned to her human family after such a life, and if so, would she even remember her parents, her human memories, her mortal name?
“Do you ever wonder if we are unknowing participants in a spirit’s game? If they move us like pawns on a board and glean pleasure from provoking our heartaches?”
“Sometimes, when I watch the fire burn in the forge,” Una continued, “I imagine what it would be like to be immortal, to hold no fear of death. To dance and burn for an endless era. And I think how dull such an existence would be. That one would do anything to feel the sharp edge of life again.”
He was swiftly learning ever since he had returned home that he couldn’t live on music alone, that he cared about and needed other things, even if their appearance in his life came as an utter shock, like bulbs blooming after a long winter. He felt his greatest fear come to life within him, a fear that had been born only days before. Frae could be missing.
“But I must warn you, Frae . . . this is my first time playing on the isle. I might not sound nearly as good as I do on the mainland.” This was his first time playing in Mirin’s presence was what he truly meant to express. He was worried that she wouldn’t be impressed by the craft he had spent years mastering. But Mirin, who never left her loom in mid-weave for anything, stepped away and joined them, sitting next to Frae on the divan.
He began to play and sing one of his favorites—“The Ballad of Seasons.” A lively and happy tune of spring that melted into summer’s verse, which was smooth and mellow. And that in turn became the staccato fire of autumn, which descended into the sad yet elegant verse of winter, because he couldn’t resist the sorrow.
He thought that he would like to see those shadows in her. Because he felt his own, brimming in his bones and dancing in solitude for far too long.
I watched you, but I didn’t see anything remarkable within you. Because you were not the only one who became quiet when she played. You were not the only one who hungered for her songs. All of us did. And yet she saw the flame within you. A light she had been waiting for. She knew what you would become before you did.
It struck him then that he had no right to know the things in her mind, the plans she was making. To be within her circle. But he felt an ache in his stomach, and while he had no idea where it came from, he realized that he longed to be in the confidence of someone who had walked hours, searching for missing girls. Who had told him her secret plans and trusted him with her late mother’s music. Who had given him the chance to become something far greater than he had ever envisioned for himself.
“You sound like Torin.” Jack didn’t know if that was meant as a compliment or not. Once, he had wanted to be Torin, and Jack almost laughed, thinking about how different he was now.
At first it had felt strange to bake for people he didn’t know, until he remembered the old ways of the isle. For any event, be it joyful or sorrowful—a death, a marriage, a divorce, a sickness, a birth—the clan rallied and prepared food to express their love for those involved. Cottages became gathering places for hearty, comforting food whenever tears or laughter flowed. Jack had forgotten how much he liked that tradition.
She doesn’t seem real, but neither does this moment, Jack thought, with a tremor in his hands. He was about to play Lorna’s ballad and draw forth the spirits of the sea. And it almost felt as if the ground beneath him quaked, just slightly, and as if the tide grew softer as its foam reached for his boots. As if the wind caressed his face, and even the reflection of the moon gleamed a little brighter in the rock pools.
His fingers grew nimble, and Lorna’s notes began to trickle into the air, metallic beneath his nails. He could hardly contain the splendor of them anymore, and he played and felt as if he were not flesh and blood and bone but made by the sea foam, as if he had emerged one night from the ocean, from all the haunted deep places where man had never roamed but where spirits glided and drank and moved like breath.
He suddenly didn’t want her to know. He didn’t want her to know he was in agony, that he was bleeding. But the truth hit him like an axe: playing for the spirits required him to spin magic with his craft. It was devastating to realize this was how his mother felt after completing an enchanted plaid.
She didn’t know her mother’s health had been stolen, bit by bit, every time she played for the folk. Lorna’s untimely death had come from an accident five years ago. A fall from a horse, not a slow wasting sickness fueled by wielding magic. But her fate—had she lived out her years singing for the spirits—now hung like a constellation in the sky, and Jack could read it clearly.
Sidra stared at the bloodstains again. She felt as if the world had just cracked beneath her feet. It wasn’t a spirit stealing the girls. It was a man.
She thought of Jack again, of how he had come after her despite his own fear of the night sea. He had looked so angry breaking the surface with her—for some odd reason he had reminded Adaira of a cat that had been dunked in a rain barrel. But he had also looked content the longer he beheld her, as if he had finally remembered who he was. That he was isle born. And Adaira had done the most ridiculous thing. She had laughed, and it had felt like birds taking flight within her.
The history of raids alone is enough to make me despise the Breccans. But I confess that the hatred has worn me down—it has made me feel old and brittle, as if I have lived a thousand years—and I want to find another way.
Sidra shut her eyes. The house fell silent, and she wished that she could awaken. That this was only some terrible nightmare, and she wasn’t about to shatter Torin’s life.
Torin challenged his guards to question even their own fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and friends. To doubt their kin, down to every branch and root of their family tree. To doubt those they loved most, for sometimes love was like dust in the eyes, a hindrance when it came to seeing truth.
The longer he stayed here on the isle—the longer he slept beneath the fire of the stars and listened to the sighs of the wind and ate the food and drank the water—the more muddled his fancies became, until he couldn’t see the original path he had carved for himself. The safe path, the one that gave him purpose and place on the mainland.
“Indeed. She would play for the sea in autumn, and the earth in spring. It was part of her role as Bard of the East, although the clan never knew of it.” He didn’t mention Lorna playing for the fire or the wind, and Jack assumed that she had a reason not to.
When her tears had dried, she noticed the time of day. She had dived into the loch when the sun was at its zenith in the sky. It had now set behind the hills, leaving only a vestige of light on the horizon. The stars were winking overhead, and Sidra pushed herself to stand on shaky legs. How much time had she lost? How many days had passed?
He listened as she continued about the reflection in the loch. Torin went cold with dread. He imagined Sidra swimming down into the darkness, only to return after a hundred years had passed. He would be long dead, his bones in a grave. He would have never known what had befallen her. He would have lost his daughter and his wife in the span of a day, and it would have obliterated him.
“You thought I wouldn’t notice?” she said. “Oh, Jack.” “It’s nothing to fret about, Mum.” “As I’m sure you’d like for me to say to you,” she countered. “Prove me wrong and take a few sips.”
Sidra wanted to lose herself in work. When she was in the company of her herbs, she didn’t think about Maisie being lost, frightened, or dead. When she held her pestle and mortar, Sidra didn’t think about being assaulted on the hill that had previously held nothing but good memories for her. When she brought ingredients together, she didn’t think of the new strain on her marriage to Torin, because the one thing they had built it on had vanished.
Sidra had assisted with enough magic-imposed illnesses to know Jack was suffering from one. Most magic wielders suffered from headaches, chills, loss of appetite, and fevers. Others developed hacking coughs, insomnia, pain in their extremities, even nosebleeds. It seemed Jack was experiencing several symptoms, which meant he had cast a powerful magic.
Jack was silent. Sidra looked at him and saw how pale he was. She should have used a different example, because she read his mind: he was worrying about Mirin.
“I may know the secrets of herbs,” she said. “But I’m not a seer. I can’t foretell what is to come, but I do know that the people who wield magic are made of a different mettle than most. They are passionate about what they do; their craft is as much a part of them as breathing. To deny it would be like losing a piece of themselves. And while there is a cost and a direct consequence to spinning enchantments, none of them see it as a burden but as a gift.”
