Ceana dropped onto the bench that butted up to the rough-hewn table. The moment when this all shattered around her had to come soon. The wishes had never held off on torturing her this long before.
Davina scooped her out a bowl of oats and added what had to be some of the last apple left over from the year before.
Ceana dug out a taste small enough for a toddler and waited for the wishes to react—to make it taste like ash, or choke her, or cause her to break out in a rash. To make Davina yank the bowl back from her or for one of the table legs to snap and send the bowl crashing to the floor.
None of it happened. Instead, her tiny mouthful simply tasted like the applesauce oat cakes Davina used to make her.
Ceana gobbled down the rest before the wishes could catch up with her and then stared down into the empty bowl. Maybe she should lick it clean. It’d be a long time before she tasted anything this good again.
A peel of thunder rumbled outside, and she jerked. Her hand bumped the bowl, sending it wobbling in a circle and careening off the table. She reached out, wanting to stop it but not actually expecting to be able to grab it in time, but her fingers closed around it.
Her mind ground on the image of the bowl held in her hand the same as it would have if she’d looked at her reflection in a pond and it’d been a stranger staring back at her.
She shouldn’t have been able to catch the bowl in time. In fact, she shouldn’t have been able to eat the meal and enjoy it in the first place. Too much had gone right.
Something was very, very wrong.
If she thought fast enough, she could sometimes get out in front of the wishes for a second or two, but they never took a day of rest. They didn’t take a minute of rest. By their nature, they had to prevent her from experiencing any happiness or success because she’d wished those for Gavran, and she was cursed to receive the opposite of what she’d given to him.
Her heart felt like it bumped into her ribs. The wishes couldn’t have suddenly vanished, so that left only one logical explanation. When she and Gavran were together the success she’d wished for him and the failure she’d taken on herself cancelled each other out and gave them the same odds as anyone else at succeeding.
If her suspicion proved true, she had to find a way to convince Gavran that the dreams were real so that he would help her find her brother.
Chapter 4
Ceana picked up the sgian from where Davina left it on the table, next to the half-peeled turnips, and glanced over her shoulder. Davina had gone to fill the cooking pot with water, which should give her enough time. Gavran worked across the yard, near the sheep fold. Close enough to test her theory.
Everything pointed toward the wishes and curses cancelling each other out. In the past five days since she’d been awake, she’d eaten and drank, been warm and well-treated, but they’d mainly kept her resting. She wouldn’t wager what remained of her sanity on a fluke caused by confinement to bed.
She ran her thumb over the smooth antler of the sgian’s handle and turned the six-inch blade so it reflected the light. She needed to actively test her theory before she’d be willing to risk believing it.
A shiver traced its way over her skin. The last time she’d held a sgian, it’d been to take her life. With this sgian, perhaps she could reclaim it instead.
She sucked in a breath and picked up an unpeeled turnip.
She wanted to peel it.
She repeated the words over in her mind and set the sharp edge of the blade to the turnip’s skin. She cut off the head, then the root, and finally slid the sgian down the sides until only the white flesh remained.
She licked her lips slowly, the moist turnip resting in the palm of her hand. She’d done it. No one had stopped her. She hadn’t dropped the turnip and been magically unable to find it again. She hadn’t sliced off a finger, making it impossible to continue.
She had to try something else.
She laid the sgian and turnip on the table and climbed up after them. “I want to walk from one end of the table to the other without falling off.”
She couldn’t ignore the hesitation that still lingered in her voice.
“I’m going to walk across this table without falling off.” She put force behind the words this time.
Four steps carried her to the end. The temptation to leap to the ground burned through her, but she wasn’t fool enough to test the Almighty with a show of pride. She slid to the ground.
She indulged in a twirl. Being near Gavran did hold the effects of the wishes at bay.
Maybe her life didn’t need to be forfeit. She could check on her brother with Gavran’s help and then return to the Andersons’. All she’d need to do was live out her days close enough to Gavran. He owed her that much at least. And she’d learn to tolerate his presence the same way one grew used to the stench of pig manure if it meant finding peace.
She picked up the turnip again and rolled it from hand to hand. A smile tugged at her mouth. One more just for fun. Just because she could. She’d throw the turnip out the door.
She heaved the turnip with all her strength. It flew straight out.
“Ooph,” a male voice exclaimed.
Gavran stepped into the doorway, dirty turnip in one hand and his other hand rubbing a red mark above his eyebrow. “Were you angry at me or the neep?”
The push-pull she’d felt around him every time since waking froze her in place and threatened to tear her apart. She couldn’t quite forget that she loved him once. She’d also never be able to forgive him for what he’d done.
She couldn’t even seek revenge now to try to purge the anger from her system. She needed him.
Gall seared the bottom of her throat. Even when they were bound, the wishes found new ways to torment her.
The Andersons’ dogs broke into a racket of barks that turned into welcoming yips. Gavran tossed the turnip into a bucket by the door and stepped back outside.
Ceana tamped down her feelings. She had to curry favor for now at least, until she could convince him of the debt he owed her. She joined Gavran outside. A wagon bounced along the rough dirt track towards the house.
She shaded her eyes against the heavy sun. A tall man with a beard that reminded her of a bear with mange drove the wagon, and three young women rode in the back. The sun cast their faces into too much shadow to recognize any of them.
“Are these your sisters returning?”
He nodded.
“Who brings them?”
“Our neighbors.” He glanced sideways at her and scrubbed his hands over the stubble on his face. “My betrothed, Brighde, and her dadaidh.”
Watching Brighde pull up in a wagon while the enigmatic Ceana Campbell stood next to him felt like a new nightmare. His mamaidh hadn’t left her alone for more than a minute at a time, giving him no opportunity to question her about whether they might have met before. Even though Ceana hadn’t mentioned knowing any of them, being around her felt like meeting a person he recognized but whose name he’d forgotten.
Ceana swayed beside him.
Gavran cupped her elbow, steadying her. “You ought to have stayed inside.”
Her skin quivered beneath his fingers like a horse shaking off a fly. “I’m alright.”
She glanced at where he touched her, and her upper lip contracted. He pulled his hand away.
The wagon creaked to a stop in front of them, and Ros and Morna scrambled out. They sprinted for the house, and he and Ceana parted. The girls dashed between them, casting Ceana curious looks as they passed.
Brighde stayed seated, his eight-month-old brother cradled in her arms.
Tavish tipped his head to Ceana, then to Gavran. “Glad it wasn’t the Death or influenza.”
“No more than were we.” Gavran strode forward and rested his hand on the wagon next to where Brighde sat. She gave him the look he waited for each time they met—the one that made him feel like he could do no wrong. The look that vowed he could learn to love her the way she loved him, g
iven time. The look that was the opposite of how Ceana Campbell looked at him when he touched her arm. “Tavish and Brighde Nicol, this is Ceana Campbell.”
Brighde doled out a smile, tight at the edges. “Campbell? I thought the Campbell cottage lay empty.”
“It does.” Ceana’s voice was soft and flat. “But I didn’t know as much when I set out. I would have died on the moors had it not been for Gavran’s help.”
For a second, he considered smiling at her. But didn’t. “I did as our Lord commands.”
“The Almighty is pleased to work through the hands of his servants,” Brighde said.
Gavran cringed internally and glanced sidelong at Ceana. He’d heard Brighde make such reverent statements before, but somehow, this time, it sounded hollow.
Ceana shifted beside him. “I doubt the Almighty cares whether I live or die. At least I’ve seen very little of His mercy of late.”
Brighde sucked in her lips until they vanished. The smile that returned to her face looked chiseled in stone and painted on, fake as the statues in the church and as fake as her words a moment before.
She extended the bundle in her arms toward Ceana. “Will you hold Finn while I climb down?”
Ceana pressed a hand into her belly and stutter-stepped backward. “Nae. I should lend a hand to preparing the evening meal.”
She backed up another step and careened toward the house faster than was wise for someone who’d been confined to bed but days ago.
Brighde’s eyebrows raised near to her hairline.
Gavran held back a flinch and opened his arms for Finn. “I’ll take him.”
Brighde handed him down and hopped over the edge of the wagon. Tavish led the horse away.
Gavran pulled aside the light blanket Brighde had wrapped around Finn. Finn’s lips fluttered in his sleep. He gave him back to Brighde. He wasn’t usually at a loss for words around her, but after Ceana’s abrupt exit, no normal greeting seemed to fit. “Would you come inside? Mamaidh will be glad to have you both stay for the meal.”
Brighde’s gaze remained fixed on the path of Ceana’s retreat. “She’s recovered well?”
He didn’t see a point in pretending not to know which she Brighde meant. “Aye. Well enough. Mamaidh insists she still needs rest.”
Brighde fiddled with Finn’s blanket, smoothing it, crinkling it, smoothing it again. “How long do you expect her to stay?”
He was no great interpreter of any woman’s thoughts, but the ground beneath his feet suddenly felt ready to slide away off the edge of a cliff. “We don’t know as yet. Since she’s no family to speak of, my mamaidh’s invited her to stay as long as she likes.”
The muscle in Brighde’s eye that only twitched at the end of a long day spasmed. “No family to speak of? Didn’t she come to the old Campbell cottage to be with family?”
“I certainly don’t know where the Campbells went.”
“Then why doesn’t she go back to where she came from?” Finn squirmed in her arms, and she jiggled him and snuggled him to her chest. “Hasn’t anyone asked her these things? Didn’t you ask how she came here?”
His ran his tongue around the parched inside of his mouth. Seems he couldn’t do right by any woman today, Brighde included. He touched the spot where Ceana’s turnip smashed into his face. At least Brighde wasn’t throwing things at him. Yet. “I understand she walked.”
Brighde’s eyes opened a little too wide. “No woman walks alone to the home of people who haven’t lived there in years. Where did she stay before then?”
His mamaidh believed she’d been orphaned, forced to live on her own with all that meant for a woman, and had come looking for the only family she knew of, but to find them gone. The right thing to do was to make her welcome and put her past behind like the Lord did with the prostitute who washed his feet with tears.
He doubted that answer would satisfy Brighde anymore than his earlier ones.
She puffed out her cheeks. “You can’t tell me something doesn’t seem off to you.”
“She’s no harm being here.”
“You don’t know that.” Brighde’s words snapped out. “Why wouldn’t she hold Finn?”
“Perhaps she felt too weak and feared dropping him.”
“Then she could have said so ’stead of running for the house.” She pressed a hand to his bicep. “I’ll not sleep sound at night knowing she’s in the house with Finn and your sisters. You don’t know one thing about her.”
Lines etched in her forehead, and her eye twitched again. Brighde could be possessive of his attention, but he’d never known her to be outright unkind. Then again, he’d also never seen her in such an unusual situation before.
“Just because we don’t know her doesn’t mean she’s a danger.”
“Doesn’t mean she’s not, either.” Her gaze darted to the door again. “And by the time you find out for sure, it’ll be too late.”
Brighde wasn’t wrong, but if he sent Ceana away, he’d have no chance to further investigate whether some past meeting with her had incited his dreams. If he could explain them, perhaps he could also drive them away. And even if she proved not to be the woman who inspired his dream, it seemed more wrong than right to turn her out. “And what do you expect us to do, then? Send her back to the Campbells’ cottage? There’s not even a full roof.”
“We give alms for the poor to the kirk. Surely the priest will know how to help her. Probably better than your family.”
That option sat in his stomach as well as a plate of rotten vegetables. “With the meager harvest last season, I’m sure the kirk has enough mouths to feed without us adding another.”
Brighde’s hand tightened into talons on his arm. “I’m asking you to trust in me. Something’s not right. The way she looks at you isn’t right.”
Was that what lay at the bottom of this? He laid his hand over Brighde’s and gave her his best smile. “You’ve no reason to be jealous.”
“Ack.” Brighde yanked her hand away. “I’m not jealous. I’m scared for your life. She looks at you like she’d like to cut your throat and leave you for dead.”
He knew his jaw had gone slack, his mouth hanging open, but he couldn’t seem to make it close.
In moments when he caught Ceana looking at him, she didn’t look like a woman grateful to or infatuated with the man who saved her. She looked at him the way he would look at an adder in his home, with caution and cunning, waiting for the right moment to chop off its head.
And with his wedding fast approaching, perhaps he needed to put aside his wain notions that Ceana might hold the secret to his dream and respect the woman who’d soon pledge to be his wife.
“I’ll speak to my mamaidh. Ceana Campbell might indeed be better somewhere her family can find her should they come looking.”
Chapter 5
Ceana paced the length of the cottage and back again. Everyone had scattered after the evening meal, leaving their bowls abandoned and the room filled with nothing but the roasted-nut-and-sweaty-feet smell of overcooked neeps.
And her. Alone.
Dread settled in her gut, hard and cold and mean, telling her all the reasons she was a fool. She grabbed her mug of ale from the table and swigged it down, trying to drown it out.
She had to regain control of her mind. This was what over a year of living under the curse-side of her wishes did to a person. Nothing was going to go wrong this time. Gavran’s family had welcomed her and cared for her.
The last few days proved being near Gavran canceled out the wishes. She could be normal again. Perhaps in time she could even be happy again. No doubt she would once she saw her brother healthy. Everything she’d suffered would still be worth it if she could see him living the life a young man his age should.
Ceana peeked out the door, but the yard lay empty except for one of the dogs gnawing on an old branch. She shouldn’t allow this worry to grind at her mind the way the dog did the wood. They’d explained they planned to walk to the new site
of the home Gavran and Brighde would share. That they hadn’t invited her could be easily explained away. They felt she was still too weak. They couldn’t know she felt better than she had in a year’s time.
But during the meal, Brighde sat with her back straight as a broom handle, and Gavran refused to look at either of them. Davina ate not two bites of her meal—Ceana finished her bowl after everyone left—and the men had the same conversation about the weather affecting the crops three times over.
Only Gavran’s sisters seemed at all themselves. They’d been chattering on about their favorite wildflowers, and she’d promised to teach them to make dandelion chains. It was something she’d done with them in her pre-wishes life, and with her erased from their past, no one else had taught them.
She headed in the direction they’d all gone. It wouldn’t hurt anything to find Gavran and reassure herself that the added complication of Brighde had simply unsettled her.
She ought to have guessed the love her wishes gave Gavran would be Brighde. Brighde, who’d mooned after him since they were girls. Brighde, who’d hated Ceana for her friendship with Gavran. Brighde, whose beauty always made Ceana feel as desirable as a goat with three legs and buck teeth.
Ceana skirted the sheep fold. The sheep milled about aimlessly inside. The sun-warmed urine stung her eyes, and raised voices reached her ears. She edged a little closer, staying hidden behind the supporting beam of the lean-to.
Gavran and Davina faced off on the other side.
“Do you want me to tell her?” Gavran asked.
Davina folded her hands, extended her forefingers into a steeple, and tapped them against her lips. She shook her head without lowering her hands. “I’m the one asked her to stay. I’m the one should ask her to go.”
Ceana gulped in air, but it felt as if her chest cavity had sprung a leak. It had to be a mistake. They couldn’t be talking of putting her out. Not with Gavran’s presence holding the wishes in check. She hadn’t done anything wrong…except for the turnip incident, but surely that wasn’t enough to turn her out after Davina brushed away her scars and her past.
Cursed Wishes Page 3