Shadow in Hawthorn Bay Read Free

neighbours, the people of peace, hoping the flattering names would keep away the trouble. Some simply called them the old ones. Mary and Duncan called them that and, because once they had been lost far from home and led to safety by a strange light, they had been sure that they were favoured and that one day they would find the old ones and perhaps meet a fairy cavalcade shining in the sun. They knew they would never fear the fairies.
    But Duncan had gone away. At first the loneliness had seemed so unbearable that Mary had choked back her pride and asked Mrs. Grant for a charm to bring him home.
    “It is not for this a seer has the healing gifts,” Mrs. Grant had reproved her. And Mary had settled down, finally, to await Duncan’s return. In time she had grown from a child to a young girl. Now, at fifteen, she was hardly taller than she had been at twelve and no more beautiful. But her hair was thick and long and shiny and she had a spark in her eyes and a quirk of humour that came and went from the corner of her wide mouth, and there was still an underlying sweetness to her nature that softened her sharp tongue and brought more than one boy, refusing to be afraid of her two sights, to come courting at her door. Astonished there would be any who imagined she would not wait for Duncan, she unceremoniously sent them all away.
    Mary looked across the Great Glen through sudden tears. “I cannot come where you are, Duncan,” she cried. The wind tore the words from her lips and carried them down into the valley but Duncan’s voice in Mary’s head, “Come, Mairi,” in such pain, was still strong. Abruptly she gathered up her skirt, clutched her plaid at her neck, and headed up the slope.
    With the rose and green check of the shawl making a bright sail behind her, her hair rippling in black waves above it, she ran across the fields, her bare feet scarcely touching the ground. She scrambled over the low stone dikes, leapt across the rushing streams, and atlast clambered up the side of the high, round hill that overlooked the waterfall where the kelpie, the water horse, was said to rule.
    All her life, in times of joy or trouble, Mary had come to this hill—the
tornashee
, the fairies’ hill. Below it, near the burn, was the rowan tree where the children came to dance on May Morning, to tell their wishes and receive their luck. On the slopes of the hill the magic pearl-wort, the safeguard against evil spells, and the velvet heart’s-ease grew in greatest abundance. It was on that round summit that Mary and Duncan had been sure they would find the old ones one day.
    She threw herself down on the hilltop, stretched out her arms, and put her ear against the ground. Sometimes, beyond the rustling noises of the grass and of the insects that burrowed beneath it, Mary could hear what might be the pipes and fiddles of fairy music, and once in a great while, in rare moments, she was sure she could hear the voice of the hill itself. It was a singing sound, a low, even, soft, thrumming, humming sound, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, and it came from deep in the heart of the hill. In that sound joy and sorrow met and from it Mary often felt that she drew all her strength.
    On this evening she was too upset to hear anything but the distress in her own heart. “I cannot go to Canada, och, how can I go?” shewhispered over and over. A sob was in her throat. “How can you ask it of me? Are you so unhappy? Why do you not come home? Duncan, I cannot.” Even as she said the words, the frenzy was growing in her. How could she not go to him? She sat up, her hands clenched into tight fists. She knew she had no choice. She had to go to Canada—and as she thought it, the means of going came to mind.
    She stumbled down the hill and across the few feet to where the old rowan tree stood. She put her face against it, her arms tightly around it. “Take my wishes,” she whispered brokenly, “and bring me good fortune.” Then she turned and