“I—” Jack began to say, but his voice was drowned out by the thunder booming nearby. The floor shook beneath their boots. Dishes rattled on the kitchen table. A candlestick fell from the mantel. Herbs wept dust from the rafters.
For a moment, Jack couldn’t breathe. Fear wrapped around his heart again as he thought of Bane striking down every tree in the Aithwood, determined to find him. Of how likely it was that the king would soon remember Niall’s cottage. Jack couldn’t bear for something to happen to his father and his nan.
“It’s good to see you again, Elspeth,” Jack said. “But I’m afraid that the northern wind is hunting me, and I have only brought trouble to you both.”
Now Niall looked at him, brows slanted.
“What trouble?”
Jack met his father’s gaze. “I need to sing for the spirits, and Bane wants me silent. Again, I’m very sorry for bringing this to your door, but—”
“Tell me what I can do,” Niall gently interrupted. “How can I shield you? What do you need?”
Jack was so surprised by Niall’s fervent offer that he merely gaped at him. But then his memory stirred, like an ember winking from ashes. Jack remembered the words he had once said to his father, only a few nights earlier.
Let us be your shield and your armor.
Jack’s confidence began to return. His fingers twitched, eager to pluck notes from his harp. He began to see the ballad he would sing to undo Iagan’s hierarchy—to sing the fire, the water, the earth, and the wind free—and he felt the words rising, filling his lungs with forest-sweet air.
“If you two would follow the river downstream and stay with Mirin and Frae during the worst of the storm,” Jack said, “it would ease my mind.”
A pained expression flickered over Niall’s face, prompted perhaps by Mirin’s name, or Frae’s, or by decades of longing. Or perhaps he was realizing that he was moments away from reuniting with the ones he secretly loved.
“Are you certain, Jack?” Niall asked. “I can stay at your side if you need me to.”
His offer made Jack want to weep. But he only smiled, his confidence still growing, even as the thunder boomed louder, closer. He was ready to sing.
“Thank you,” Jack said, “but I need to play alone.”
Niall nodded, raking his hand through his hair. “All right. Let me pack a few things, and then we’ll head east.”
Jack set his harp on the table as his father and Elspeth rushed to fill two satchels. The walls of the cottage started to groan. Thatch was being torn away from the roof. Jack could see the lightning flash through the slats in the shutters, and he drew a deep breath, knowing the time had almost come.
“We’re ready,” Niall said. He cracked open the back door, standing in a slender shaft of light.
Threads of cold wind snuck inside, lifting the hair from Jack’s brow as he embraced Elspeth.
“Sing us to peace, Jack,” his grandmother said, laying her weathered hand on his cheek. “If there is anyone strong enough to do so, it is you.”
She stepped back to let Niall take her place.
Jack was racking his mind, trying to think of what to say, but Niall spoke first.
“I don’t understand fully what you intend to do, or what is about to be required of you. I won’t beg you to cast aside this duty and come with us, because I see the mark of a higher calling within you. A flame that will always burn, no matter where you go.”
Niall fell quiet, but he smiled. And Jack finally saw a shade of himself in his father. The smile he had stolen from Niall.
“But I cannot let you go without telling you that I was proud to call you mine then,” Niall whispered, “even if only your mother and the spirits could stand witness. And I am proud to call you mine now.”
Jack breathed in his father’s words. They calmed his heart and steadied his resolve. When Niall kissed his brow, Jack closed his eyes. Before he was ready for it, the warmth of his father’s presence faded. Niall escorted Elspeth through the back door, and Jack followed them, as if bound to their shadows. He came to a stop in the kail yard and saw the trees creaking and groaning around the clearing, their branches stripped bare of leaves.
This is the end, Jack thought, watching Niall and Elspeth walk downstream until they disappeared from view. An end and a beginning.
Jack returned to the cottage and latched the door. Then he slid the harp from its sleeve and looped its strap over his head. The instrument fit snugly against his shoulder, and he was thinking of his notes and how he would begin the ballad when he saw a golden brightness seeping through the shutters.
He realized that the lightning was no longer striking. The thunder had gone silent. And yet something brilliant was devouring the darkness.
Jack hurried to the front window and opened the shutter. He could feel the heat like a sunburn on his skin and he stared numbly into the burning woods. He watched as the fire grew higher, wider, driven by the wind. The flames crackled close to Niall’s yard, preparing to consume it and Jack whole.
Adaira thought the wind would tear her apart. She crawled along the vale, desperate to find purchase with her hands. She could scarcely see a stone’s throw ahead; the world was nothing more than a blur of indigo and gray. Bane continued to blow, raking his fingers through her hair, drawing the breath from her mouth, threatening to spin her head over foot.
Adaira clenched her teeth as she felt herself slipping. The wind was about to pick her up and hurl her away. Desperately, she dug her fingers into the loam.
Help me! she wanted to cry to the earth. To the grass and the heather and the hills. Help me find him.
She held fast to a rock, unable to stand or move forward. Clinging to it, suspended in time, she worried that she would never reach Jack. That she would die alone. A prisoner to the wind.
But then she opened her eyes, saw the deer trail in the bracken, and realized that this place looked familiar. Adaira began to follow the winding path, which led her to a hill. Her breath caught when she recognized it.
This was the burrow Innes had once shown her. A place to shelter her when she was in need.
Adaira stumbled forward and found the rock in the hillside. The lintel came to life, and the door appeared, hidden beneath tussocks of grass. Adaira opened it, eager to escape the storm.
She slipped inside. Even here there was no fire, and no sparking one with an enchanted blade. She left the door open so she could have a small vestige of light.
She sat on the floor, ears and cheeks burning from the gusts. She drew her knees to her chest, trying to ease her tremors.
Eventually, she closed her eyes, at an utter loss as to what to do.