Page 6 of The Speed of Lightning
The truth felt absurd—a sword dance when they were eight. Yet was it not also his oath, his confession, the courage it had taken to speak it? It was the lad she knew. The lad she cared for.
Were they lovers?
No.
Had he taken her to the marsh, as he was known to do with other lasses?
No.
Was she with child? Horrified, she shook her head with all the force she could muster.
No.
Did she love him?
Here she faltered, unsure of the answer herself. What had passed between them in the skiff left her shaken and tongue-tied. Something new had stirred there, but it was not love—at least she didn’t think it was. So she only stared.
Týr leaned closer, his face intent. “Why did you do it, Freya?”
In a small voice, she peeked her nose above the covers and whispered, “He let me win the sword dance. I owed him my help.”
Mariota pressed a soothing hand to Freya’s forehead, checking for fever, and declared she needed rest. With no further evidence to keep her father under house arrest—and deciding it was all a misunderstanding—the elders released him, on the condition that Freya remain in Mariota’s care for two months to recover. Papa, his position already precarious, had no choice but to agree.
For the first time in her life, Freya experienced life in a normal household. She learned to care for a family, did chores the proper way, cooked and hunted, and shared meals with neighbors. More than that, for the first time, she knew what it was to be loved: to have her favorite dish prepared just for her; to be roused at night to sit beneath the stars and name constellations; to feel her short hair brushed and be dressed in a feminine leine; to sleep until sunrise; to have her talents encouraged; to be kissed goodnight.
When the two months ended and her father demanded her return, she obeyed without complaint—but not without a secret. With Týr she devised a signal in case she ever found herself in danger—a green stocking hung from a loose stone in her father’s fence.
The boat incident—as she came to think of it—changed life even within her own house. Under Mariota’s tutelage, she became the Lady of Thane MacSorley’s household, something even Papa could not fault. The longhouse grew cleaner, and she learned to cook and nourish herself, no longer dependent on the scraps Papa scrounged when he remembered. Before long herskill surpassed that of the neighbors, and Papa, abandoning his habit of taking supper elsewhere, began staying home.
With her belly now full on a regular basis, she’d finally blossomed in her seventeenth summer. Her hips rounded, her bust filled, and her frame stretched another two inches in height. The high angles of her face and too-large features softened into the beginnings of beauty. And then, she became a woman. No one took more delight in these changes than Papa. Now able to cook, clean, and bear children, she was at last worth something to him. A rare gem, he declared, like her mother. A prize to be bargained, a means to seize the chieftainship he coveted. So he stopped shearing her hair and dressing her as a lad, and began bringing home suitors.
He had waited ten years for the perfect son-in-law, letting her bride-price rise to its highest value, and his patience had won more than she could have imagined. She was to wed Rory MacDonald, one of the most powerful men in King John of Islay’s court—yet the betrothal sat uneasily with her.
Papa had thundered at her after the match was sealed, unable to understand her disappointment. “Are you not pleased? Will I not make you the most powerful woman at court? You will wed the head of the King’s guard—his most trusted retinue. You have the beauty to lord power over him and anyone you choose. You will make me chieftain, and from there, king.”
Again the memory of her near escape surged so strongly she staggered to a halt in the harvest night, staring past the trees to the black ocean, feeling as though she were drowning all over again. Nothing in this world would ever belong to her. Not even her appearance. The only things that were truly hers were her stories, her words, her voice—and the one night each week when she could be herself.
Through the bowed branches heavy with leaf, she looked upward. Clouds drifted across the moon, and stars glitteredin the dark. As often happened when she remembered Calum beneath such skies, she suddenly felt him close in her heart. Did her lad look upon these same stars tonight? Did he ever remember that she had once helped him? What would he think if he knew she still did?
A nebulous fog of breath slipped from her lips as she began to whisper the words of a ballad, walking on, clinging to the connection between herself and the kind lad she had once known. She had pledged to walk beside him in solidarity with the man he was. Though she had not been able to follow, in some small way she liked to think she had.
Ardlussa Wood was dark and deep. The long stretch of wild between Inverlussa and Lealt tangled with gnarled branches, twisting vine, and bramble. Mist clung to silvery webs like dragon’s breath exhaled over a floor of moss and liverwort. A narrow path, scarcely two paces wide, wound through the darkened forest until it opened into a clearing of heath. She had just passed the lone rowan tree when she heard it—the shuffle of feet, the snap of a twig.
Her heart leapt into her throat. She froze, listening, praying she had not woken her father when she slipped away.
“Heill og sæl?”?2 The greeting wavered like a question. She licked her dry lips, squinting into the night. Her pulse thundered in her ears as she edged forward, eyes locking on a shadowed figure moving along the forest’s edge. Breath catching, she waited.
The shadow dipped, rattling the thorn-cloaked brush, then burst upward with fanned wings, screeching overhead. Freya ducked with a cry, covering her head as a great owl swept into the night sky.
She let out a shaky breath, then laughed at herself and pressed on toward Lealt. Everything was as it should be. It wasonly her imagination conjuring boars, wolves, and mad fathers lurking in the wood.
The small village of Lealt, perched on Jura’s eastern shore, was quiet and calm when she reached the distinctive green door of Fraser MacSorley’s longhouse. She knocked once, and the door swung open.
“Freya!”
Dozens of children and their parents from the island greeted her as she slipped into the crowded home.
Fraser’s wife, Gavina, pressed a warm cup of mulled wine into her hands. “Did you have trouble getting out tonight? You’re late.”
