Isle of Tears Read Free Page B

no’ so long ago,’ Niel noted, looking down: at his feet was a fresh cow pat. Laddie sniffed at it interestedly.
    ‘How d’ye ken it’s Rosie’s?’ Jamie asked, the toe of his boot seeming to move of its own accord towards the splatter of cow shit.
    Isla hissed and pulled him sharply back by his sleeve. ‘Dinnae stand in it, ye mucky lad!’
    Jamie and Jean both giggled.
    ‘The herd’s in the back paddocks, that’s how I ken,’ Niel said testily. ‘None o’ them have been up here for weeks.’
    ‘They might have crept up here,’ Jean suggested. ‘One night. In the dark. When we wasnae looking.’
    Niel gave her a withering look and set off again, thrusting springy stems of supplejack out of his way as he went.
    Twenty minutes later, all red-faced and sweaty now, they reached the top of the hill. Isla looked down at the house, delighted as always with the tiny tendril of smoke drifting from the chimney, the miniature washing line and outhouse and the barest smudge of garden. And there was no sound at all, except for the faint noise of the bush. Once or twice when she had been up here, Isla hadheard her mother singing while she worked in the house. She’d asked her father about it, about why she could hear Agnes’s voice from so far away, and he’d said that sometimes the wind would take a person’s words and carry them straight to the ears of someone they loved, as a special little gift.
    ‘That’s no’ true!’ Isla had said at the time. ‘Is it?’
    ‘Aye, it is!’ Donal had replied. ‘Go up the hill, and if the wind’s in the right mood, ye’ll hear all o’ us.’
    And so Isla had. But all she’d heard that day was her mother shouting at Jamie and Jean for something, and her father laughing his big, hearty laugh. It had been nice, though, knowing that even high up on the hill she was still connected to her family.
    But today there was nothing, so she turned away and crossed the bald summit to stand beside Niel.
    ‘There. D’ye see her?’ he asked, pointing with the rifle down at the narrow valley below them.
    Isla squinted. ‘Aye, I can.’ Half-hidden behind a stand of toetoe, Rosie was stuffing her face with coarse, lush grass and no doubt giving herself colic.
    ‘Rosie!’ Jamie bellowed.
    Isla raised a warning hand. ‘Wheesht! She’ll hear us and run away.’
    ‘No’ if she wants her teats pullin’, and she will by now,’ Niel said, slapping at a sandfly. ‘Come on.’
    The four of them slipped and slid down the long, steep slope until they reached the bottom, where their boots squelched among the short rushes that masked a tiny stream running through thevalley. Rosie watched as they approached, calmly and rhythmically chewing a mouthful of grass and ignoring Laddie as he trotted around and dropped to the ground behind her.
    ‘You’re a bad beastie, Rosie,’ Jean reprimanded crossly.
    Rosie didn’t appear to care what Jean thought of her, and tore up more grass.
    Niel gave a low whistle and Laddie crept close to Rosie, his belly barely off the ground. She turned her head and gazed at him mournfully, then conceded to walk forward a few paces before she succumbed to greed and snatched up another mouthful of grass.
    Isla shook her head in reproach. ‘Get her oot o’ there, Niel, before she makes herself sick.’
    Niel whistled again and Laddie darted up behind Rosie and nipped her fetlock. She started indignantly, then trotted smartly across the rushes and headed up the hill, her swollen udder swinging ponderously between her legs.
    Jean announced, ‘I want tae ride Rosie up the hill.’
    ‘Well, ye cannae, ye’ll get knocked off under the trees,’ Isla replied.
    ‘No, I’ll make masel’ really wee, like this. See?’ Jean crouched and folded herself into a small ball.
    ‘Oh, hurry up,’ Niel said testily, stepping around her.
    Isla held out her hand. ‘Come on, mo leannan, ye’ll get left behind.’
    And then they heard it—a loud, flat, echoing craaack.
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