The Song in the Silver Read Free Page B

pack, she assumed, ran off to the depths of the woods. Whatever they had chased, they had brought down. The wolves sometimes took lambs, sometimes a sheep, less often a deer. She was glad to be safe indoors and glad that her William, even if he had not found his way home before the storm, would be safe behind the stone walls of the bothy.
    She reached for her necklace, a movement that she made a dozen times a day, unconsciously, for comfort and reassurance. Her fingers brushed her bare throat, and she smiled. It was with William. He had part of her with him. They were together for that. She rolled over, warm in her bed, and fell into a contented sleep.
    The morning came, gray and dreich with no color in the sky and a bitter wind that blew through any clothing and bit into her. Mary wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and hurried to the bothy to see if William had spent the night there. If he had and if he were still there, wrapped warm in the blankets with a fire lit, then she would steal a kiss and perhaps a little more.
    The bothy door swung wide, and the path leading to it was muddied with a confusion of tracks. Mary could see the imprint of wolf paws in all directions and what looked like the tracks of a deer heading to the bothy but not away. But no footprints. William must be inside still.
    She ran in, calling his name.
    And fell to her knees and wept, her tears falling to the blood-stained floor where the silver chain of her necklace lay.

Chapter Three
    “You saved me that night. Not my mortal life, but you saved me. And gave me...time. Time to protect her when I could, and the knowledge that there would be times when I should be far, far away from here,” said William, gazing across and beyond the glen.
    “In the early days, when the bloodlust of your change was upon you, William, we protected her. Not just from you but from the revenge of the baobhan sith for the loss of one of theirs. You clutched Mary’s silver to you until it burned its mark forever in your hand, but the fire inside you was beyond your control,” said Aatu as she sat by his side.
    William opened his right hand and looked at the imprint there. The scar of a Celtic cross, a circle around the intersection, harsh red against the white of his palm.
    “And now I cannot touch it, Aatu, but I can feel it, its song. I held it then until I could hold it no longer, and only when I let it go did I realize that it sang. I felt it in the quiet of the night, the song that it sings, silently. It sings with the life, the uisge , that she—we—gave it when we brought our daughter into the world that day. The starting of her life and the passing of mine, through the fire and the blood in that cold, stone bothy. There it began its song. It sang the harmony of both of them until Mary passed, and now it sings with our daughter’s fading song.” He reached inside his cloak and brushed his fingers against the deerskin pouch.
    Aatu stroked his raven-black hair and kissed his head.
    “But you saw her at the end. You told her. She knew that she had been loved, always, and that your love would continue for your daughter. She passed happy, in your arms.”
    He nodded.
    “Yes.”
    “And now it is her time. Go to her. Tell her the same. She has had a long and happy life, and your pain is but a story to her. Kiss your daughter good-bye. Her son is your concern now.”
    ***
    Meaghan Reed lay in her bed, warm, comfortable, tired, and happy. William, her son, had just stroked her hand as he kissed her good night, and as he left the room, he’d turned and smiled that beautiful, wide smile that sparkled in his eyes and made her heart dance. Her own mother had told her of a similar smile, that of the father she never knew. It pleased her that she had seen William grow to be a strong, tall man to stand by his grandmother and remind her of her one and only true love, her William, the love that had brought her into this world.
    Meaghan knew in her heart, in her gently