Page 30 of The Splendor of Fire
Moira sent a right hand forward through the motioned waves of her left.
Cara interpreted. “How are you intending for her to get back to Skye?”
“Iain.”
Who was Iain?
The baby startled and grunted and Cara adjusted him in her arms. He opened one piercing sea glass-colored eye and stared at Moira, his red eyebrow arching in question. She smirked. Her thoughts exactly.
A hopeful expression lifted Cara’s face. “The others have agreed to what we talked about?”
Hector leaned down and kissed his wife once more and then his baby. “Aye, love.”
What did they talk about?
Hector straightened and motioned to Moira. “Come on. I’ve saddled a horse for you.”
Moira raised her eyebrows and waved her finger back and forth.
He looked at Cara who interpreted. “Where?”
“Laggan Wood.”
A fir treestood like a towering sentinel over Lochbuie. Stretching more than two hundred feet in the air, it called to her in the forest inviting her to climb its height and relax in its lofty branches. As Hector talked, her eye kept traveling to its rugged, colorful bark.
“Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
Something about language, but Moira had missed the last part. She brushed her hand across her chest in a half-finished genuflection and mouthedsorry.
“Sorry? Is that your sign for sorry?”
She nodded.
Hector’s eyes rolled skyward as if he were committing it to memory. “Go’ it. For once, I would like to be better at something than my wife.”
A comprehension competition to understand her words. Now that was funny. Moira pointed to his unruly curls and angled face and turned her palms face up, cupping them under her mouth and moving them away wiggling her fingers as if they were the great growling breath of a monster.
“Does that mean Beithir?” She nodded and repeated the sign, drawing the ferocious monster to mind. The undamaged side of his face lifted into a grin and the five men circling the clearing laughed. “Is that supposed to be my roar?”
Moira repeated the motion wiggling her fingers harder. It was a fearsome nickname; he needed a fearsome sign.
Hector pushed Calum forward. “Do Calum.”
She cocked her head to the side and circled him, squinting and looking him up and down, running her fingers over her chin as if shewere deep in thought. With her left hand she made a fist like a cloud and zig-zagged her right index finger away from it.
Murdoch got the sign first. “Lightning.”
The men around the clearing grunted their approval and Calum smiled. “Lightning?”
Moira mimicked their chase through the barmkin walls and everyone laughed. She came forward and touched his bright white-blond hair, and made the sign again.Lightning.
Murdoch mimicked the sign for Lightning, then Hector. Touched, she couldn’t help but smile. Not even Father had tried to speak with her made-up signs.
Hector waved everyone closer together. “This could be useful. It’s why I brought her to training. It would be good for us all to learn some basic communication that doesn’t require talking.”
Moira touched her mouth and pulled her fingers back to her palm and mouthedwhy.
“Why?” She nodded and repeated the sign, and Hector mimicked her. Pleased with himself he grinned at the others. She tapped him on the shoulder and repeated the sign.
