“Then tell us how to help you. Give your burdens to us, the tasks that weigh you down. You shouldn’t be carrying it all alone to begin with.”
She didn’t know what to say. It was too much to think about, this notion of dividing all her responsibilities into slices and giving them away.
“The other day,” Graeme said, “I was thinking about all the different paths our lives take, how little choices here and there suddenly guide us to places we never expected. How sometimes even the worst of experiences turn us into what we need to be, even though we would rather avoid the pain. But we grow stronger—we grow sharper—and before we truly even know it, we are looking back on it all. We see who we were and we see who we have become, and it is why the spirits watch us and marvel.”
Sidra remained silent, still clutching the garden soil in her fist.
“Mummy!” Maisie’s voice broke through the night. “Why are you on the ground?”
“I was just coming in to get your dinner,” Graeme replied brightly before Sidra could scrounge up a false smile. “Go back inside before your feet get muddy, lass. I’m right behind you.”
Sidra could hear Maisie patter away. She sighed, feeling so tired she didn’t know how she would drag herself up.
Graeme’s hand slipped from her shoulder as he rose. “Take a moment more,” he said gently. “Then come inside and sit by the fire. I’ll toss the blood pudding and air out the cottage and find something else you’d like. Perhaps something simple, like parritch and cream?”
“That’ll be fine,” Sidra whispered. “Thank you.”
Graeme returned to the house, leaving the door open. He unbolted the shutters, as promised, to let the odors escape, and Sidra closed her eyes, listening to the thunder and the rain. To the pounding of her heart.
She wrestled with her fear until she let go of the soil and stared at her dirt-streaked hand. She could almost hear Torin’s voice, whispering into her hair.
Rise, my love. Rise.
Chapter 16
Jack found the cottage on the riverbank, just as Mirin had described it. He stood in the cold rapids, the cut in his palm clotting, and he stared at the house that belonged to his father.
Hedged by the tall ancient trees of the Aithwood, the cottage was quaint. Stone and mortar walls, shuttered windows, a thatched roof mottled with lichen. A steady trickle of smoke rose from the chimney, and a path led from the bank to the kail yard gate. A wordless invitation, it seemed, to those who arrived by river.
Only the garden betrayed the idyllic view. The vegetables were thin and bent to the south, as if the north wind had zealously raked over them. And though it did not storm, the light was bleak.
Jack emerged from the river and moved along the stone wall toward the cottage. He had yet to see a flicker of life, aside from the fowl in the coop, as he stood against the northern side of the house, waiting to see if he was spotted. But no sound came from within. He carefully walked the path around to the front, then knocked on the door.
He didn’t know quite what he was expecting—Mirin had implied that his father might be dead—and so when an elderly woman answered the door, Jack merely gaped at her.
The woman’s eyes widened, just as shocked to see him. Her gaze flickered beyond him, as if she expected to find a company of men in his shadow.
“I’m alone,” he said gently. “I’m—”
“Don’t speak yet,” she warned. He felt a slight breeze touch his hair. It was the west wind, the one Jack trusted the most, though he still felt a lingering trace of fear when he remembered the manifested forms of these spirits. “Come inside, lad.”
As Jack entered the cottage, his gaze roamed about the chamber. His father’s house was a simple abode with a hearth anchoring the common room, its stacked stones darkened from soot. A collection of animal skulls and candlesticks sat crookedly on a mantel of woven branches. A desk aligned with one wall was crowded with a haphazard stack of leather books and parchment and inkwells. A large basket held a family of walking sticks by the back door. Cast-iron pots and herbs hung from the kitchen rafters.
Jack tried to envision his father living in such a place, but failed to conjure an image.
He at last met the woman’s gaze and said, “Where is the Keeper of the Aithwood?”
“My son isn’t here,” she answered.
Somehow Jack maintained his composure. But his heart resounded with shock and amazement to realize he was beholding his grandmother. Someone he never even imagined meeting. Here was another thread, another root to bind him to the west.
Helplessly, he studied his nan.
Her hair was silver, bound in a braided crown. Her face was freckled and grooved from years facing the brunt of the wind. She was petite and wiry, her Breccan plaid apron fastened over a simple homespun dress. Her shoulders were stooped, as if she had carried a heavy weight all her life, and her eyes were blue as the eastern sky after a storm.
“Have I grown a second nose then?” she asked, but her voice was light, teasing him.
Jack blinked and flushed. “Forgive me. I—”
“Are you hungry? Sit by the hearth, and I’ll bring you something.”
He continued to stand, dazed by her trust and hospitality. But then he noticed that she was taking in his details as well. His long, brown hair with its quicksilver streak, his tall, slight frame, his elegant hands and his new moon eyes. And he thought, Perhaps she sees a trace of her son in me. Perhaps she knows who I am to her.
“Go on now,” she prodded, and he sensed it would be foolish to cross this woman.
Jack couldn’t help but smile as he slid his leather satchel from his back. He sat in the chair by the hearth, where a low fire was burning, and watched his grandmother shuffle to the kitchen table, where some sort of cake rested beside a bundle of herbs.
He wasn’t the least bit hungry, but when his grandmother brought him a slice, he accepted it.
“You’re Niall’s son,” she said.
Jack froze, the cake halfway to his mouth. Here he was, already breaking his promise to Mirin with the first Breccan he’d met.
His fear must have been evident, because his grandmother said, “Don’t worry. I’ll hold this secret as I’ve held many others over the years. Your smile gave you away.”
“My smile?”
His nan nodded. “Aye. You must favor your mother in quite a few ways, but you have my son’s smile. I would know it anywhere.”
Her statement nearly brought tears to Jack’s eyes. He had never realized how starved for connection, for family, he was until that moment. He forced himself to eat the cake by way of distraction, hoping it would fill the hollow spaces he felt. She made them two cups of tea and sat across from him at the hearth. The silence grew awkward, as if neither of them knew how to break it.
“Do you have a name?” she finally asked, gently.