“I was born in Glasgow. West End.”
“West End,” she repeats.
He grins. “I couldn’t tell an elm from a monkey puzzle when I came here.”
“Monkey puzzle?”
He raises his dark eyes to the trees around them, his face lit in pearlescent afternoon light that leaks through the canopy. It’s a scene that reminds her of one of those Dutch paintings, as though the gods in Mount Olympus have spotted one of their own.
“No monkey puzzles in this wood. That there’s an elm, though.” He bends to retrieve a leaf. “See? Looks like nettle leaves. It’s a hermaphrodite, that tree.”
She swallows. Is he mocking her or being serious? “Shut up.”
He looks at her, wounded, and she wants to collapse to the ground and beg forgiveness.
“I mean, a hermaphrodite?” she says, backpedaling. “I didn’t know trees had genitals.”
He laughs, and she laughs, too, but it’s a desperate, kill-me-now laugh. “It means that the flowers of the tree have both female and male reproductive parts. No genitals.”
“That’s a relief. Can you imagine how awkward that would be? A forest full of penises and vaginas?”
Shut up, Saffy, she tells herself, wanting to die. Shut. Up.
“Imagine,” he says, and he holds her gaze a moment too long. He is dissolving her into a kind of vapor, one cell at a time. Never in her whole life has she seen such lips.
She looks away, embarrassed. “I, uh, read that this place has some kind of history. Involving witches?”
“Yeah. That’s what they say.”
She takes a breath, willing herself to stop overthinking her every movement. “I read that they burned about four thousand witches here in Scotland. Or, you know, women.”
“I think some of them were men.”
“Yeah, like two.”
“Well, yeah. Not all of them were burned on Lòn Haven.”
“Obviously,” she says, then flushes red.
“You’re staying at the Longing, aren’t you?” Brodie says, and she nods. “Do you know what the Longing’s built on?”
She’s puzzled. “Rock?”
He laughs, and her cheeks burn. His stare peels layers off her, one at a time. She understands now the saying “weak at the knees,” because he has removed all of her bones just by existing. She feels wobbly and melty and stupid.
“It’s built on an old broch from the Iron Age,” he says.
“Oh yeah, I heard about that.”
“Yeah. It’s like a kind of round tower made of stone, though a lot shorter than the Longing. A Scottish chieftain would have lived there.”
She remembers this from the Neolithic museum but can tell Brodie’s enjoying sharing it. “Yeah?”
“A lot of people say it’s cursed. They built a lighthouse on top of it and everyone who worked there died young.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?” she says. “The curse thing.”
He shrugs. “Do you believe in witches?”
She’s not sure how to answer. “Well, yeah. Rowan’s a witch, isn’t she?”
He looks away. She’s pleased to see what looks like irritation on his face at the mention of her. “So she says. She meditates and collects crystals. That’s about it.”
“So, the broch is cursed?” she says, circling him back to the topic.