Page 57 of Highland Sword
He may ask, and she must tell.
Sir Walter Scott
from “St. Swithin’s Chair”
CHAPTER18
AIDAN
Aidan thought about Morrigan every day that he was gone. Over and over, he recalled their conversation, skirmishes, arguments, her rejections. No, not rejections… evasions. Memories lingered of the night in the library, the day she looked after the bruise on his eye in the stairwell, the moment when he nearly kissed her. He also could not forget how upset she’d been the last time they met at the top of the old tower… when he asked her to speak to Wemys.
She told him she couldn’t. But at least she’d asked Isabella to speak to the scoundrel on her behalf. Some kind of agreement had been reached. He didn’t know the details. Still, the morning he and Sebastian left Dalmagavie, Aidan had the name he needed. He owed her and was grateful for what she’d done.
Even as he continually mulled over all of that, Aidan tried to imagine what their relationship would be once he returned. Were they only friends? Had Morrigan thought about him at all while he was gone?
For him, the nine days away felt like nine weeks. Ninemonths. But the weariness of travel lifted off Aidan’s shoulders the moment he laid eyes on her. No tam, no coat, she wore a dark green dress and a ribbon of the same color binding her hair in the back. The eve of Samhain was upon them, and the weather was unusually warm for the end of October.
She was standing in front of the kirk. A crowd of young people, most of them children, were gathered there, listening to storytellers. Near the market cross, a huge bonfire crackled and blazed, sending sparks high into the black night sky.
Samhain was the fire festival, celebrated here for as long as people lived in these Highlands. The long nights of winter had a connection with the world of the dead, and the power and light of the fires were needed to drive back the darkness. Two young lasses walked by him carrying their tumpshie lanterns—hollowed-out turnips with skull faces carved into them, illuminated from the inside with candles. On the hilltops and the craggy ridges of the mountains around Dalmigavie, a string of huge bonfires burned, visible for miles.
To celebrate the end of the growing season, the village market cross was the center for crafting displays and games of skill and courting rituals for the young and unmarried.
But Aidan had no time or interest in any of this. He had eyes only for Morrigan.
He approached but said nothing to draw her attention. Two women by the fire were attempting to best each other in their storytelling performance. Morrigan’s hands were resting on the shoulders of Niall Campbell’s nieces. Aidan had met the children before.
One of the women was spinning slowly, crying out in a singsong voice. “Samhain is the night of the Great Sabbat for the witches. But tell no one, do ye hear?”
Nervous giggles could be heard from their audience, and Aidan moved closer to them. He halted a step or two away, where he could see and hear her and yet not intrude.
“On this night, the witches of the wood gather to celebrate their auld ways and cast their spells.”
A smile stretched across Morrigan’s face as the girls pushed closer against her skirts, trying to get away from the women weaving through the audience and pretending to reach for them.
“Look to the sky.”
All eyes turned upward to where the storyteller was pointing.
“They’re flying through the air.”
“Cover yer head, bairnies!”
“Look to the fields. Did ye see her?”
“There she goes! Quick as the wind, riding a black cat.”
The women went back and forth, calling out with cries and whispers. The children gasped every time something else was evoked.
“A witch on a raven. There, by the kirk tower. Did ye see her?”
Heads bobbed.
Another woman strode in from the shadows, and the storytellers backed away with a cowering bow to her. Her hair was grey, and she wore a simple black robe. Her eyes flashed in the light of the torches and the fire.
“I am a MacDonald of Glen Coe, we of the tragic folk. Have ye heard? We have a witch who abides in the cave by the twisted oak on the banks of our woeful river.”
Murmurs of awe rippled through the children.
