“Sorry to suggest otherwise,” Tamhas said with a little harrumphing. “You’ll find him at Miriam Shell’s. Perhaps you should run along now, just…check up on the lad.” He seemed a bit…strained now, and Rose didn’t know quite what to make of it. He nudged her, and pointed in the direction of Miriam’s house. “Go on, then. Don’t let us keep you.”
Rose started that way, unsure if she should say something else, or just go. Hamilton and Tamhas were both watching her carefully, scrutinizing her as though she were something strange, a bizarre creature that defied explanation. Hamilton nodded at her, encouragingly, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he was watching her carefully as she started toward Miriam Shell’s house.
She tried to put it out of her mind, but it was difficult. The village felt strange this morning, however, and Rose didn’t know quite how it was so. An owl was hooting in the distance, birds were chirping, seemingly louder than they’d been before. She rubbed at her eyes; did the day seem especially bright?
Rose walked the short main street toward the outskirts of the village, only a few houses from her own, until she reached Miriam Shell’s dwelling. It was an old house, but well kept, the shingles taking the drizzle well, little streams of water trickling down off the gutters.
“Good morning, Rose,” Miriam said, stepping out of the house, her dark hair tousled. She watched Rose’s approach with careful consideration. “You look a bit wet.”
“It’s Scottish sunshine,” Rose said, feeling a little drop here and there between the rays shining down between the clouds. “Have ye seen Graham this morning? I heard he was helping you.”
“Aye, he gave me a hand,” she said, not sounding particularly pleased about it. “And little else, the thick lad.” She shook her head. “You have a real prize there, Rose. A real prize.”
Rose just stared at her. “I’m…nae sure what you mean…”
Miriam gave her a knowing look, full of mirth. “I’m sure you do.” She shuffled on her feet, then announced, “Graham! Rose is here asking after you! What should I tell her?”
The front door opened seconds later, snapping hard back and rattling, then shutting of its own momentum. Miriam looked vaguely scandalized, and said, “Now then! Take it easy or you’ll be back to fix my door soon enough.”
“Sorry,” Graham said, coming out of the house and almost tearing the door off the hinges as he did so. His hair hung to his shoulders, chestnut brown, and he was freckled in just the right ways, Rose thought. There was a single one that sat in the middle of his nose, and when she spoke to him, she’d look right at it. “So sorry, Ms. Shell—”
“It’s Miriam,” she said, with the air of a woman who had corrected him many times, and halfway through seemed to give up on correcting him any more. “I think we’re done for today, though if you’d like to stop back after—”
Graham straightened. “After what?”
“Oh, I assumed you two were going to go for a walk or some such thing,” Miriam said dryly. “Unless ye’d rather keep working.”
“I’d love to go for a walk,” Graham said, looking right at Rose, his hair catching a ray of sunshine stretching down from the clouds and giving a luster.
“Errr,” Rose said, quite caught in between what Miriam had suggested for an activity and Graham’s sudden leaping at an invitation she hadn’t even proffered. But…would it really be so bad to go on a walk with him?
No. No, it would not.
“Let’s go then, shall we?” Rose said, almost gulping as she said so, and Graham nodded, hurrying to reach her, as though Miriam might drag him back inside if he weren’t quick enough.
“Do be careful,” Miriam called after them. “You’re of an age that two of you could quickly become three of you.”
“What does she mean by that?” Graham asked as Rose felt the heat burn in her cheeks, and she quickened her pace to get away so she wouldn’t have to respond.
“She was right about you,” Rose said, cuffing him on the arm as she headed toward the road out of town. “You really are thick, aren’t ye?”
Graham followed her as she led the way, down the village road and toward the winding path that forked from it, descending down a hill toward the springs where the village drew much of its water. It was a rocky creek, winding its way from the Highlands toward the sea in the distance. Rose walked a pace or two ahead of Graham, and he seemed to have to hurry to keep up, but she didn’t mind that. The wind was brisk against her face, and she liked that, too, brisker than she recalled it being for how it had felt when she’d been standing still. Now it practically howled at her, coming at her with strength that it hadn’t possessed when she—
“What in the hell are you doing?” Graham asked, and Rose tossed a look over her shoulder. He was fifty meters back, and struggling to catch up without breaking into a run. “I thought we were going on a walk together, but…” He stopped, drew up short, and stared at her across the distance. His mouth hung slightly open. “Rose…I think you manifested.”
“What?” Rose stood up a little straighter. It seemed the grass on either side of the road was alive with bugs a-buzzing, things she’d never noted before. Her skin crawled with the chill of the sparse, sprinkling rain, the sensations filling her in a way she couldn’t recall feeling before.
Graham strode up to her, eyes bright and wide. “Did it happen? Can you feel it?”
Rose swallowed, and even that mere act felt more…more rich, somehow. Everything felt brighter, louder, and more…more so. It was as though someone had turned the volume knob for her senses up to their maximum level, and she’d not really noticed it except as a distraction. “I…I feel a bit strange…”
“That’s what it feels like!” Graham sounded as though he might wet his pants. He’d manifested his powers a few months ago, but then, he was also almost a year older than Rose. They were two of the only kids in the village. And at sixteen and seventeen, they were still kids to all around them, what with some of the adults, like her granddad, having lived thousands of years.
He studied her as though she were some novel new specimen. “Do you feel anything else?” He lowered his voice as he got closer. “Can you feel your power?”
“I don’t know,” Rose said, wondering what a power actually felt like. Her granddad and mam were both Thors, but her grandma had been a Poseidon. The line was hereditary, wasn’t it? That’s what her granddad always said in his stories. She tried to imagine how it would feel to conjure lightning, and concentrated—
“Do you feel anything?” Graham eased closer and took hold of her by the forearm. It was such a little thing, but his eyes were aglow with excitement.
Rose felt flush with an excitement of her own. He’d touched her before, of course, but for some reason it had been awhile since, as though their budding self-consciousness were holding them back. They’d touched all the time when they were children. The only two in the village of similar age, it was as inevitable as them butting heads. And oh, how they’d butted heads, though mostly that seemed behind them now. “I don’t…I don’t know if I feel…anything…”
She closed her eyes and concentrated, but it was hard. Graham’s palm felt delicate against her forearm. She was suddenly self-conscious about the little hairs that ran along her flesh. They were tiny, sure, and faint, but they were there, and she suddenly hated them furiously and wished she’d done away with them with her granddad’s straight razor the way she did to the hair on her legs during summer, and under her arms. She flushed, feeling the dark heat roll over her skin—