Page 3 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
“Use it as a charm against witchcraft, as a protection for newborn bairns being stolen away by fairies, and to help keep the vigor in the marital bed,” she intoned, and laughed to herself.
Her smile faded, as she thought how handy its pulses slowing qualities might be in the case of her father. She shook her head, as if she could shake off the very thought of the man, like snow from her shoulders.
She trudged on through the drifts of fallen leaves, her mind suddenly preoccupied with what awaited her back at the camp. She did not wish to go back, but the light was fading fast and she knew that it would not be long at all before she was forced to return.
Just as she had reluctantly decided that she best be turning back, she skirted the base of a hoary rowan tree and stopped in her tracks. There, in the middle of small clearing, sitting and looking as lost and wretched as any creature she had ever laid eyes on, was a fox cub.
She had never seen a fox up so close, let alone a cub. The little animal’s fur was a bright, unsullied auburn, with a cascade of white running from the bottom jaw of its pointy muzzle down to its chest and belly.
The fact that it did not run away the instant that it clapped its piercing amber eyes on Charlotte convinced her that the fox cub was injured. She halted by the rowan, her hand resting upon the silvery gray bark of the tree that many Scots believed to be the most magical and useful. Many believed that it kept witches away, whilst the wood could be used to stir milk to stop it souring. Whatever its many real and perceived qualities might be, the rowan was a sacred tree in Scotland and cutting one down was thought to invite bad luck.
“Come now, what is the matter with you? What are you doing out here all alone, hm?” Charlotte asked it in her soft, kind voice. “Surely, your mother will be wondering where you are?”
Charlotte cast her eyes around her, but could see no sign of a vixen anywhere near.
“Well, perhaps I could take a look at you, and see if I might be of any assistance?” she ventured. She took a tentative step towards the animal, which cowered back a little in the small nest of leaves that it had rucked up around itself.
Charlotte lay down her foraging basket and dropped to her haunches, moving forward cautiously so as not to spook the cub. She made sure that she did not look directly at it, as she knew that direct eye-contact was the animal equivalent of going at another person with your fists raised.
After a few moments of careful, constant inconsequential chatting about the weather and what she had been up to that day, Charlotte managed to get within reaching distance of the little cub.
“That’s right,” she told it, smiling slightly. “You’ve got nothing to fear from me.”
She reached out her hand tentatively, thinking that she would at least get a hold of the cub by the scruff of the neck so that she could give it a quick examination.
As quick as a striking adder, the little cub lashed out at the hand that was edging closer and closer to it. There was a whirl of sharp, bright white teeth, a high-pitched screeching snarl––like a domestic kitten doing its best to be a mountain lion––and a rending of cloth.
Charlotte fell back with a shriek that, when she thought back to the incident later, she was embarrassed to recall. She clutched at her arm and let go a brief wail––more out of shock that the cute little creature would attack her like that than from the pain.
“Why?” she gasped, casting a reproving glance at the cub, but the animal was gone. Only a rustle in the bushes away to her left spoke of its flight.
Charlotte looked down at the torn sleeve of her dress. There were four perfect red lines visible through the tear in the fabric, running down the back of her forearm. Even as she brushed a finger hesitantly over the claw marks, bright red blood suddenly bloomed from the thin wounds.
Well, I suppose that goes to show that the little thing was probably more lost than hurt.
The way that the crimson blood suddenly oozed out, reminded Charlotte of when she cut herself with her father’s belt dagger whilst trimming kindling when she was younger. The knife had been so sharp that it had taken a few seconds for the blood to even begin to start flowing, despite Charlotte being able to see into the meat of her own finger.
She clamped a hand to the claw cuts. Ironically, despite being on a foraging quest to find medicinal herbs, she had nothing at hand that she could easily make use of as a bandage.
A small sob of frustration broke from her then; aimed more at what she saw as her own ineptitude than the pain or hurt of the wound.
There was another rustle behind her, from the same bit of brush into which the fox cub had disappeared.
“Are you back to finish me off?” she asked bitterly, turning. She would not have been surprised to see a furious vixen eyeing her coldly from the undergrowth for scaring her young.
However, as her eyes alighted on the bushes, she saw, quite clearly, that what had emerged from the forest was no desperate, angry creature of the woods. No, this was somethingquiteunexpected.
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Charlotte’s mouth sagged as she saw the young man push his way out of the dense woodland shrubbery. She had spent much time watching the native Scottish fauna since she and her father had come to the borderlands for his “work”––anything to get out from under her father’s feet.
The young man reminded her of a stag somehow. He was proud, exuding a certain indefinable nobility, and yet he moved warily, as if his usual state of being was to be on edge.
But, my he is handsome––at least, he has the body of a man in the prime of his life. It seems that he is more muscular than any man in the English army; such broad, strong shoulders and arms that could pick me up without so much as straining…
Even with a cloak on, Charlotte could see the slabs of muscle that made up the man’s chest. Through her surprise and shock, she wondered wistfully why it was she could not meet an Englishman of that sort to whisk her out from under her father’s dominion.
He was built like a warrior out of the old tales that she had heard told around the campfires at night; tall, broad, and powerful-looking. There was an air of command about him that she could not quite explain, a quiet sort of authority.
