Helplessly, he studied his nan.
Her hair was silver, bound in a braided crown. Her face was freckled and grooved from years facing the brunt of the wind. She was petite and wiry, her Breccan plaid apron fastened over a simple homespun dress. Her shoulders were stooped, as if she had carried a heavy weight all her life, and her eyes were blue as the eastern sky after a storm.
“Have I grown a second nose then?” she asked, but her voice was light, teasing him.
Jack blinked and flushed. “Forgive me. I—”
“Are you hungry? Sit by the hearth, and I’ll bring you something.”
He continued to stand, dazed by her trust and hospitality. But then he noticed that she was taking in his details as well. His long, brown hair with its quicksilver streak, his tall, slight frame, his elegant hands and his new moon eyes. And he thought, Perhaps she sees a trace of her son in me. Perhaps she knows who I am to her.
“Go on now,” she prodded, and he sensed it would be foolish to cross this woman.
Jack couldn’t help but smile as he slid his leather satchel from his back. He sat in the chair by the hearth, where a low fire was burning, and watched his grandmother shuffle to the kitchen table, where some sort of cake rested beside a bundle of herbs.
He wasn’t the least bit hungry, but when his grandmother brought him a slice, he accepted it.
“You’re Niall’s son,” she said.
Jack froze, the cake halfway to his mouth. Here he was, already breaking his promise to Mirin with the first Breccan he’d met.
His fear must have been evident, because his grandmother said, “Don’t worry. I’ll hold this secret as I’ve held many others over the years. Your smile gave you away.”
“My smile?”
His nan nodded. “Aye. You must favor your mother in quite a few ways, but you have my son’s smile. I would know it anywhere.”
Her statement nearly brought tears to Jack’s eyes. He had never realized how starved for connection, for family, he was until that moment. He forced himself to eat the cake by way of distraction, hoping it would fill the hollow spaces he felt. She made them two cups of tea and sat across from him at the hearth. The silence grew awkward, as if neither of them knew how to break it.
“Do you have a name?” she finally asked, gently.
“My name is John, but I’ve always gone by Jack.”
His grandmother’s brow creased. She was frowning, and at first Jack thought she was displeased, but then she spoke, her voice warbling with emotion. “John was my husband’s name.”
All this time Jack had hated the birth name Mirin gave him. He had refused to answer to it. Now he saw his name as another thread weaving him into the family he had longed for.
“I’m Elspeth,” she said, clearing her throat. “But you can call me whatever you like.”
Did she mean he could call her Nan?
Jack took a sip of tea. It was weak, as if she had steeped the herbs multiple times before, but it was sweeter than Mirin’s brews, and he savored it.
“And why have you come to the west, Jack?” Elspeth asked.
He smiled again, because the answers felt impossible and strange, as though he were in a dream. But here he was, sitting across from his grandmother in his father’s house on western land, a situation he would have never thought he’d experience. “I’ve come to be with my wife.”
“You’re wed to a Breccan?”
He nodded, almost saying the name Adaira before catching himself. “Lady Cora.”
Elspeth’s eyes widened. She took a sip of tea, as if to wash down what she truly wanted to say. The gesture made Jack nervous, and his mind began to race.
“Have things been good here for her?” he dared to ask. “I had hoped the clan would be welcoming.”
“Yes, yes. Lady Cora seems to have found her place among us, although I’ve been banished to this cottage since the truth emerged. And sometimes the wind refuses to carry news this deep into the woods.”
“You’ve taken my father’s place in the Aithwood then?”
“Not quite,” Elspeth said, tilting her head to the side as she continued to regard Jack. “What all do you know, lad?”
“About my father? Not much,” Jack confessed. “I hoped to find him here.”
“I’m sorry to say that he won’t ever return to these woods.”
Jack’s heart quickened as he waited for her to continue. When the silence stretched long between them, he whispered, “Has my father been executed?”