Chapter One #3
After a while, a soft voice came through the cold mist, singing. It sounded eerie and magical. Lifting his head, he saw little beyond sifts of fog and glimpses of rocky mountainside. He shivered, went still, listened. The voice and tune were strangely familiar.
Then he remembered. Years ago, a girl sang that haunting tune.
A girl who stood on a hillside in Glen Shee.
Now that same song, that disembodied voice in the fog, was like a compass.
Down and left. That was where he needed to go.
There would be a road or a path, he was sure of it now.
Standing slowly, he moved down again, boots cautious on icy turf, and moved toward the voice.
Dizziness and the steep incline overtook him, and he realized that he was tilting, then sinking to his knees. An instant later, his head hit turf and heather and all went black again.
*
Shivering in the cold, damp air, Catriona clenched her mittened hands to warm them.
The temperature was dropping fast, and sleet made the way icy.
She walked slowly, singing to distract herself from the cold.
Her voice echoed a bit, a soft sound, not the strong, clear repeat she would have heard through here on a fine day.
She was familiar with the path that led past a rocky precipice, its massive height swathed in fog.
The path followed the incline of a foothill that buttressed the ancient, craggy mountain.
Looking up into layers of mist, she glimpsed snow-covered peaks far above.
The fog obscured the caves and crevices that honeycombed the mountain, but she knew some of them, and was familiar with many of the legends and stories told about this place.
Drawing her woolen plaid high over her head, her long, bright-coppery braid falling over her shoulder, she shivered again. Morag’s prediction of snow might be correct, for the wind had a bitter edge.
The old track overlooked the glen where Glenachan, her father’s rectory, sat. Soon enough, she would reach home, though she had slowed her pace as the icy coating became treacherous in places.
As she walked, she sang the tune she had just learned from Morag, going through it more than once to commit its poignant melody and verses to memory.
At home, once warm and dry, she would copy today’s scribbled notes and translate the Gaelic words to English.
Over the last few years, her efforts had captured pages of songs with basic musical notation to remind her of the melodies.
The collection was still growing as she visited crofts in the local glens; she carried paper and pencil with her in case she heard an unfamiliar song.
She loved collecting the old songs, and if that helped save a bit of the old Highland culture that was fading away, all the better.
Darkness loomed, but she knew the path and walked on, glad to have the protection of her long, thick plaid shawl, her green wool skirt and jacket, and the sturdy nail-studded boots that made the way easier.
She hoped her brother had stayed home in this weather rather than ride to Inverness as he had intended.
For two years and more, Finlay had made an effort to find exiled Glen Shee Highlanders, quietly relocating them to their old homes where those still existed, and helping them to rebuild and find work when possible.
They were willing and able shepherds for the vast flocks of sheep that roamed the slopes and fields of the glen now, sheep that belonged to the Earl of Kildonan, the heir who had replaced the older earl.
The heir had not visited the glen since the old earl had died, so Finlay all but ran the estate as a hastily appointed new factor.
As Finlay made decisions with increasing boldness, Catriona worried that one day the new earl would return and want to know why his sheep were being herded, tended, and clipped by the same Highlanders his father had run off the land.
If that day ever came, she could only hope Kildonan would be so content with the profit from the wool that he would not care if Highlanders, English, or fairies did the work of filling his pockets. But she knew Finlay risked arrest or even exile if matters went otherwise.
Lost in thought as she walked through thick white mist, she took an upward incline to avoid a cluster of toothy sleet-coated rocks.
As she climbed upward to follow a branch in the track which plateaued for a stretch and then descended again, her attention was divided between her ruminations and each careful step through bowls of fog.
She did not see what lay ahead on the path until she nearly tripped and then gasped in a loud echo.
A man lay in the path, motionless, face down, an arm flung outward, legs curled. She had nearly fallen over his feet where he lay half-hidden by an outcrop of rounded boulders.
“Ach Dhia!” Sinking to her knees, Catriona reached out tentatively, fearing the man was dead, for his profile was pale and still. Seeing his fingers twitch slightly, she touched his shoulder. “Dear God, sir—wake up!”
As she shook him gently, he groaned low.