Page 94 of The Secret of Drulea Cottage
Screams drew Briony from her state of shock. They pierced the darkness as terribly as the lightning hitting the ground.
Except ’tis na just hitting the ground anymore!She gasped at the sight of flames rising from the town below. Her neighbors were flying through the streets in a panic, and Briony could see why: the tailor shop and the McGuffs’ house were alight!
Fergus!Briony forgot about Niall and charged down the hill with nary a care for her own well-being. All she could focus on was the thought of the little boy potentially trapped and scared. She reached the burning house and stepped inside. “Hello! Fergus?! Is anyone in here?”
Most of the fire was above her, hungrily swallowing the thatched roof. The smoke was so thick within the confined space that Briony struggled to breathe. Only a few licks of flame had reached the floor, and they were quickly spreading toward the McGuffs’ table.
“H-Here!” came a voice. Whoever it belonged to was too hoarse to identify. Briony covered her mouth with her hand and made her way forward, edging around the table.
Briony hastened into the back bedroom, her eyes flicking between the open window and two beds before landing on their target, Penelope McGuff. The woman was on the ground, facedown. The rest of the family was nowhere in sight.
“Mistress McGuff!” Briony dropped to her knees and took the woman’s hand, but Penelope didn’t stir.
CRASH!
Briony turned—The roof had collapsed, and the fire was stretching its fingers into the rest of the house! She clasped both of Mrs. McGuff’s wrists and dragged her into the main room. Briony’s muscles strained and protested from the effort, but she refused to give up. She only had to make it a few more feet to reach the doorway.Just a wee bit farther!
The room blazed hotter as the flames found more material to devour. Briony cried out with her mind for rain, but the clouds above the town ignored her; they had a different master now, and they wouldn’t easily switch allegiances.
“Help!” Briony didn’t know if she could make it the rest of the way. She could barely handle Penelope’s dead weight, and with the smoke in Briony’s lungs, her body could give out at any time.
Briony couldn’t tell if she was even going the right way anymore, but she knew she had to trust her gut and keep moving; otherwise, both of them were going to die.
With a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, Briony plunged through the smoke, her feet going one step at a time until, suddenly, she saw it: outside! She almost cried in relief as she brought Penelope over the threshold and onto the dirt path. Briony pulled the unconscious woman a few more feet before falling to the ground next to her. She breathed in great lungfuls of clean air, grateful to be alive.
But is Mistress McGuff all right?Briony turned to the woman and checked her wrist. She smiled in relief when she felt a strong pulse.
But then more screams stole away her momentary happiness. Briony may have saved one woman, but the storm was still raging, and people were still in danger. She spotted Matthew Levins putting out the fire at the tailor shop with Daniel Calhoun, but no one had even tried to save the McGuffs’ house yet.
And where are Mr. McGuff and the bairns?
I’m na sure I can go back in there and make it out again. I need to put out this fire before the entire house burns down.
She turned her eyes up to the sparking sky with determination. All she had to do was wrestle away a wee bit of Niall’s control.
Briony glanced toward the selkie on the hill and was glad to see his attention aimed at the market.This is my chance.
She remembered the water’s weakness for her voice and called out as loudly as she could:
“I heard a mother lull her bairn,
And aye she rocked, and aye she sang.
She took so hard upon the verse,
that the heart within her body rang.”
A tremor of power shot through her, a tiny echo of what she’d felt last time. It was working!
“O, cradle row, and cradle go,
and aye sleep well, my bairn within;
I ken not who thy father is,
nor yet the land that he dwells in.”[27]
Briony urged the clouds to exchange their angry bolts for a calm rain, a gentle but consistent flow that would douse the fire ravaging the McGuffs’ home. The clouds directly above the cottage obeyed, though most of the sky was still following Niall’s lead.
