He was silent, disturbed.
“Old and weathered, you would call me,” she continued, “with a voice that does not match how I appear.”
“Who are you?” Torin asked.
She finally ceased her whittling, piercing him with a set of watery blue eyes. “You wouldn’t know me. I don’t belong in your time, captain. That is why my body has aged, but my voice has not.”
“Then what time are you from? How did you come to live on this river?”
She nodded to her shelf of figurines. “Choose one, and I shall tell you. This is my penance for a vow I broke, long ago: I must tell visitors my story before I may answer a question of theirs in return, for this glen is cursed, beckoning only those who are in great need. But choose wisely, captain. A figurine as well as a question, for my voice will last only so long before it fades.”
Torin wanted to ask her about the missing girls but held the words back, heeding her warning. He turned to the shelf, gazing at the collection. There were more than he could count, a variety of women, men, and beasts hewn from all types of wood. But his eyes were drawn to one figurine in particular. Her hair was long, unbound, studded with flowers, and one hand rested over her heart, the other reaching out with invitation.
Torin gently took her within his hand, vividly remembering the day he had married Sidra. The wildflowers that had crowned her. How he had found stray petals in her hair hours after the ceremony, when she sat in his bed and they drank wine and talked late into the night.
He inhaled a sharp breath. “Has my wife been here?” And he turned to show the beautiful figurine to the woman.
She cackled. “Are you wed to Lady Whin of the Wildflowers?”
“This is a spirit?” Torin studied the figurine more closely and saw that flowers also bloomed from her fingertips. “I didn’t realize the folk looked so similar to us.”
“Some of them do, captain. Some of them don’t. And remember … take care with your questions. I am only beholden to answer one, after my tale has been spun.”
“Then tell me your story,” he said.
She was quiet for a long moment. Torin watched as she continued to cut into the wood, another figurine coming to life in her hands.
“I was Joan’s handmaiden,” she began at last. “I went with her when she married Fingal Breccan. I accompanied her into the west.”
Torin’s eyes widened. He knew the legend of his ancestor, who had sought to bring peace to the isle. Joan Tamerlaine had lived two centuries ago.
“In the days before the clan line, it was beautiful,” the woman said. “The hills were cloaked in heather and wildflowers. The streams ran cold and pure from the mountains. The sea was full of life and abundance. And yet a shadow lay over it. The Breccans often sparred amongst themselves, keen to prove which family was stronger. You had to sleep with one eye open, and trust was scarce even among brothers and sisters. I witnessed more bloodshed than I ever had before, and I eventually couldn’t bear to live there. I asked Joan to release me from my vow of service, and she did, because she understood. Every night, we dreamt of the east, homesick.
“I left and she remained. But when I returned home, I wasn’t welcomed by my family. They cast me away for breaking my vow to Joan, and I wandered, destitute, until I came to a loch in a vale. I knelt and drank and soon noticed something else, deep within its waters. A glimmer of gold.
“I was hungry and weary; I needed that gold to survive. I plunged into the water and began to swim to the bottom. But every time I thought I was almost there, when I stretched out my hand to capture the gold, it evaded me, sinking a little deeper. Soon, I could feel my chest smoldering—I was almost out of air. And just before I changed my course, the spirit of the loch met me. She kissed my mouth, and suddenly I could breathe in the water, and I continued to swim, defiant of my mortality, deep into the heart of the loch. Greedy and desperate for that promise of gold.”
She fell quiet, her hands pausing in their work. Torin stood transfixed by her story, the figurine of Lady Whin cradled in his palm.
“But you never got the gold,” he murmured.
The woman met his gaze. Her voice was changing, becoming raspy and frail, as if her confession was aging it. “No. I came to my senses and realized the loch was bottomless, and soon I would lose myself within it and the games the loch spirit played. I turned and swam back the way I had come, so exhausted I almost didn’t reach the light. When I broke the surface, I realized a hundred years had passed while I had been treading the deep.” She resumed her whittling, emotionless. “The family I knew was dead, long buried. Joan, too, was dead, I learned. She had died entwined with the Breccan laird, their blood staining the earth. She had cursed the west as Fingal had cursed the east. The magic of the spirits was unbalanced now because of their strife and the clan line.