Maistreas Eilionoir does a humph.
“I disagree,” says a different woman who is thin and sad. “Clann-a-Tuath wants what’s theirs by right, and they deserve nothing less. While we were prisoners in the mountain, I dreamt of nothing but home. I’m sure it was the same for us all. Is it fair that we should be granted our dream yet deny them theirs? I, for one, am willing to risk my life to help them.”
“Your support is received with heartfelt gratitude,” says Maistreas Eilionoir.
“If you’re so convinced that threatening the Raasay islanders will work, why didn’t you do it weeks ago?” asks a Clann-na-Bruthaich man with a stubbly face.
“We needed time to regain our strength,” says Lenox. He is the Hawk from my clan who taught me how to be a good Hawk. The deamhain killed all the other elders from our clan so Maistreas Eilionoir had to choose new people to be the deciding people for Clann-a-Tuath just for now. Lenox is one of them and so am I and so is Jaime. “The time to act is now. The longer we leave it, the more time they have to bolster their defenses. We’ve already given them too long to prepare.”
“But what if your plan doesn’t work? What if they’re not scared into leaving, as you predict?” asks Kenrick. “We will have no option but to fight. Do we really want to risk more death? I know you don’t consider this your home, but it could be. After the losses we suffered in the mountain, there is plenty of room for all of us here. There’s no reason why you can’t just stay.”
“I’m afraid that’s incorrect,” Catriona says to Kenrick, “and you do not speak for us all.” Everyone looks at her. “Our food supplies are disastrously low. You’ve all seen it — the meal rations have been getting smaller for weeks, and they will continue to do so. Our crops failed while we were in the mountain, and since the deamhain burned most of our boats, even fishing is proving problematic. The truth is simple: we will not survive the winter with this many mouths to feed.”
“So you want us to leave yet are unwilling to help us do so?” says Maistreas Eilionoir.
Catriona sucks in her cheeks and does not reply.
A man speaks next, then a woman and then Lenox again. When Lenox talks I watch his eyebrows going up and down and up and down. The meeting is getting more boring. I’d rather be up on the enclave wall doing the looking out. I’m a Hawk again now and that is the best ever. Maistreas Eilionoir said I’m allowed to be one because I am the hero. I promised to do the best looking ever. It is a different wall because it is Clann-na-Bruthaich’s wall but it is still being a Hawk.
After lots more talking, Kenrick says that everyone has been heard. That is not true. I have not been heard.
“What about — me?” I say. Everyone looks at me and now I wished I didn’t say it.
“You are at liberty to say whatever you like, Agatha,” says Kenrick. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”
“I think we should f-fight them. I am not afraid. I am the hero. It is our — home and they are wr-wrong to — to be there.”
“Enlightening,” says Catriona.
“Thank you, Agatha,” says Kenrick. “If no one has anything further to add, I draw this meeting to a close. Let us sleep on the matter and we will vote at dusk tomorrow. The majority decision will be final.”
People start to leave the bothan. Everyone is talking to each other about the things that were said.
“I’m going to the cookboth,” I say to Jaime. “Do you want to come — with me?”
“No thanks, Aggie,” Jaime says. “I’m pretty tired. That meeting exhausted me.”
“Okay. See you later, Jaime.”
I leave the bothan and walk to the cookboth. I’m hungry. Evening meal was a long time ago and it was a very small one because we have to do the rations. I will smile my biggest smile at the Stewer and say please and then he will give me something to eat. They always say okay to me because I am the hero. I will get some food for Milkwort too.
I tell Milkwort where we are going, but he doesn’t answer. At first I am panic that I can’t speak to him again like in Scotia when I couldn’t do it. Then I remember that he is still in the meeting bothan. I left him and I forgot. I hope he will not be cross with me. I run back to the meeting bothan as fast as I can which is not very fast but I am trying. No one is outside anymore. Everyone is gone.
I open the door. The lanterns are still lit inside but no one is there. Before I even call for Milkwort he runs up my leg. He saw me come in. It tickles only a little bit. He is a good vole. I say sorry for leaving him here and tell him my plan which is to get some food for both of us and he is happy about that.
Wait. Someone is talking in whispers. I only just heard it. It’s coming from the room next to this one. I didn’t know there was a room there. I go to the door of it. It is open only a little bit. I look in and there are two people there who are Kenrick and Catriona. They cannot see me. It is rude to listen to other people when they do not know that you are there. I am not rude but I do listen.
“This is not a monarchy, Catriona. I respect your opinions and — for the most part — I agree with you, but I will not silence anyone’s right to speak.”
“You’re stuck in the past,” says Catriona. “Times have changed. We’ve all seen what happens as a result of weak leadership.”
“I don’t know what you are implying,” says Kenrick, “but I do not appreciate the tone of your voice.”
“I’m not implying anything. What I am quite clearly stating is that sometimes hard decisions need to be made. After all we’ve been through, you should be putting the needs of our own clan first.”
“That’s exactly what I am doing,” says Kenrick.
“What? By giving Clann-a-Tuath half of everything we own? Half of all our food?”
“Clann-a-Tuath are earning their keep. What would you have me do? Turn them out to fend for themselves in the wild?”
“Precisely that, yes. All I care about is our clan — what precious few of us there are left — and I refuse to be manipulated by these bullish outsiders.”
“You will have your vote tomorrow, the same as everyone else. Until then, I suggest you hold your tongue. Clann-a-Tuath are our guests here, and for as long as I am the chief of this clan, they will remain so.” Kenrick turns to leave.
I need to hide or he will find me. Oh, it’s okay, there is a different door and he is going out of that one.
“One more thing,” he says to Catriona. “If you undermine me in public again, there will be consequences.” Then he is gone.
Catriona is staring at the door where he left. She is not happy. I should go too but I can’t stop doing the watching. She taps her fingers on the back of a chair. She looks around her even though there is no one in the room. I duck away from the door crack so she won’t see me. When I look back, her hand is fishing around under her clothes by her neck. She moves her hand around like she is searching for something. Then she finds it and she pulls it out.
I cannot even believe it.
It is Nathara’s necklace. The one with all the shadow things inside. It is on Skye and that lady Catriona is holding it in her hand.
“How did it go?” Aileen asks after I say goodbye to Aggie and step outside the meeting bothan. She’s been waiting for me, eager to hear any news.
“I don’t think I’m any good at playing elder,” I say.
“Was anything decided?”
The other people from the meeting mill around us, continuing the debates in irritable little groups.
“Not really,” I say.
“Come on, I want to hear about it.”
I shrug. I don’t know what to say.
“Okay, come with me,” she says. She grabs my hand and leads me away.
I flinch at her touch; I’m still not used to her being here, back on Skye, safe from the deamhain.
We weave in and out of bothans and around the loch that lies at the heart of Clann-na-Bruthaich’s enclave. We’ve been here nearly a month now, but I still struggle to find my way
around. Aileen appears to be navigating it just fine. She stops by the giant oak tree that Clann-na-Bruthaich use for their big meetings. It’s the tallest and the oldest tree in the enclave. By the light of the moon, it’s autumnal leaves shimmer midnight red. Aileen starts to climb.
“Wait. Surely we’re not allowed . . . ?” I say, hovering below her. I’ve seen people tending to the tree as if it’s sacred.
“Probably not.” She looks over her shoulder and gives me a conspiratorial grin.
“What if someone sees us?”
“Well, the longer you stand there dawdling, the more likely that is to happen.”
I shake my head, glance behind me to check no one’s watching, and then place my hands on the trunk. The first few steps are easy; hand- and footholds have been chiseled into the bark, all the way up to what they call the speaker’s branch — a long, sturdy branch that has been cleared of its leaves. It’s where Kenrick stands when he leads their meeting circles. Although they don’t call them meeting circles here, because they don’t stand in a circle. They just gather below him at the base of the tree.
From the speaker’s branch upward, the climbing becomes trickier. I try to copy the route Aileen’s taking, but she’s already several yards above me. Damp leaves slap me in the face and the rough bark crumbles away beneath my fingers. My arms start to ache. While we were at Dunnottar, Cray told me that if I kept practicing with my sword it’d increase my upper-body strength. I’ve been training every day, but my arms still feel like weeds as I pull myself from branch to branch. I’m out of breath by the time I reach Aileen, who’s settled herself on a neat perch with enough space for both of us.
“Did we really have to come all the way to the top?” I ask her.
“Shhh. Look at the view.”
Now I see why she wanted to bring me here. We’re so high, we can see straight over the enclave wall, for miles around. The pitch-black water between us and the mainland shimmers with a mesmerizing allure as it shreds up the reflection of the moon.
Clann-na-Bruthaich’s enclave is closer to the mainland than ours is, but in this light Scotia is nothing but a gloom in the distance. What happened there already feels like a lifetime ago. Whenever I think about it, my heart aches with . . . I don’t know what. Grief or fear or longing or something. I can’t quite figure it out.
“So, tell me everything,” says Aileen.
“There’s not much to say, really.” I recount the arguments that went back and forth without any resolution, and explain about the vote that’s been agreed for tomorrow night.
“Which way are you going to vote?”
“I don’t know. It’s too much pressure. I preferred it when the elders made all the decisions for me.” A small bird flies toward us, as if to land in the tree, then changes its mind, altering direction at the last moment with a dramatic swoop. “How would you vote?”
“All I know is that this will never feel like home,” she says. “I’m as desperate as everyone else is to go back to our enclave and it feels like some members of Clann-na-Bruthaich aren’t all that happy with us staying here anymore. Like Catriona; she’s made it quite clear she wants us gone.”
“She didn’t hold back at the meeting. She’s worried there won’t be enough food for both clans over the winter. If it was up to her, we’d be thrown out of here by morning.”
“Miserable gobhar. And ungrateful too; we’ve been working our hands raw here. Maybe we should just go back to Norveg. At least they wanted us there. . . .”
I don’t laugh. I don’t even give her a polite smile.
“Oh come on, it was a joke,” she says. She knocks my side with her shoulder, then starts laughing, either at her own joke or at my unwillingness to acknowledge it.
Her laughter cracks right through me. I can’t bear it. Ever since we came back, we’ve been pretending that nothing happened, that everything is the same between us, but it’s not.
“What happened in Scotia, Jaime?” she says as if she knows that’s what I’m thinking about. I can’t help feeling that’s the real reason she’s brought me up here: to ask me that question. It’s not the first time she’s asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe it would do you good. I know it’s hard, but it might help.”
“Sorry, Aileen. I . . . I just can’t right now.”
“I only want to help. I’m supposed to be your best friend. But since we’ve come back — ”
“I said no.”
We sit in a silence as thick as cold stew. I want to talk to her about it. I do. But I can’t. There’s no room in my head for it all. If I tell her what happened to me, she’ll tell me what happened to her, and I can’t face hearing about that, either. The reality of everything she suffered would engulf all the happiness of the rescue.
“It’s getting cold. Are you ready to head back down?” she asks after a while.
“You go.”
“I don’t mind waiting with you.”
“I’d rather be on my own.”
She’s staring at me. I know if I turn to her I’ll see the hurt etched into her face. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions.
“Things are better than they were,” she says, giving my hand a slight squeeze.
“I know.”
She lowers herself down. The leaves whisper to one another as she descends.
Why am I being so unreasonable? She’s only trying to help, to be a good friend. All I wanted — through all those weeks of torment — was to find her alive and bring her home again. So why isn’t that enough now?
I spin the metal bracelet around my wrist. It’s the one Aileen gave me on the day I married Lileas. I wondered that morning if Aileen felt jealous. Not of the fact that I was being coupled with someone else — Aileen and I have never felt that way about each other — but because there was a stranger entering our lives who had the potential to threaten our relationship. The thought was laughable at the time; my friendship with Aileen was all that mattered to me, and I couldn’t imagine anything ever changing that. Now Lileas is dead and Aileen and I . . . Well, it’s not the same.
The tree smells damp, of fresh rain and old earth. Above me, a spider is making a web between two branches. It scurries back and forth with intricate precision. How much simpler life would be if we could all create a new home that quickly, and whenever someone came along and destroyed it, we’d just move on and make another. I reach up toward the web, attracted by its fragility. I’m careful not to touch it; I don’t want to undo the spider’s work.
There was a time when everything felt great. When I saw my clan walk into the mountain chamber after the battle and realized that they were free — the elation I felt in that moment was real. And the whole journey back was a blur of happiness and celebration. It’s since returning to Skye that the darkness has crept in, like something’s not quite right, or like what we achieved wasn’t enough.
But we’re here, back on Skye. I succeeded. We succeeded, Agatha and I. Our clan is alive. Aileen is alive. Konge Grímr and the mountain deamhain were defeated. I should feel proud and full of joy, grateful for everything and everyone around me, yet I feel nothing. What’s wrong with me?
It doesn’t help that we can’t return to our own enclave. We’re in limbo here, unsettled and uncertain. After the traumas in the mountain, everyone’s craving the stability that only our own walls can grant us. I can see it in the eyes of my clan. No one’s happy; we’re all just pretending.
The spider has gone. I stare at the half-finished web, waiting for the spider to reappear, but it doesn’t come back. I swipe up, tearing the weightless threads from their moorings. The destroyed web clings to my fingertips. I immediately regret doing it. I wipe the guilt away on my trousers and hurry down the tree before the spider returns and realizes what I’ve done.
It’s a lot darker now, and quiet too; most people have already gone to bed. My stomach growls. The reduction in food portions has done nothing to improve tensio
ns in the enclave. As I make my way to the communal bothan I now sleep in, I try not to jump at every shadow that moves. The sgàilean are gone, I remind myself. They’re trapped in Nathara’s necklace, lost somewhere in Norveg, far away. It doesn’t stop them from haunting my dreams, though. Them, and the deamhain, and the wildwolves . . . There isn’t a single night that I haven’t woken up drenched in sweat. I’m sure I’m not the only person in our clan suffering, but no one seems inclined to talk about it.
A group of people emerge from behind a low-walled bothan. From the way they’re stumbling and supporting one another, it’s clear they’ve been drinking. People from Clann-na-Bruthaich drink a lot. Either their elders were more relaxed about it than ours were, or they’ve started drinking more since returning.
“Hey, you’re Jaime, right?” one of them says.
“Yes.”
He plonks an arm on my shoulder. “Our rescuer. Our hero.” He says the words too loud in my ear, accompanied by flecks of spit. “I’ve never thanked you . . . thank you.” He belches, smothering my face with the smell of sour fruit.
“I don’t want your thanks,” I say.
“Leave him alone,” says a woman, tugging at his other arm.
“We’ve been talking about you.” His tone sharpens, edging toward hostility.
“Have you?” I ask.
The woman gives up trying to pull him away. The rest of his friends loiter around us.
“Rumor has it the room was evenly split at the meeting this evening,” says a different woman. “And that the only person who didn’t speak up was you.”
I can’t deny that.
“So we’re thinking your vote is going to be an important one,” says the man. “Maybe the most important one.” He lifts his arm and grips my shoulder, a little too hard. His drunkenness disappears, replaced by an intense clarity. “You need to vote against the attack.” Is he threatening me? “We’ve been through enough. I’m sorry about what’s happened to your enclave — we all are — and we’re grateful to you for rescuing us, but our clan has lost too many already. Stay here if you like, or don’t. I don’t care. But either way, we’re not about to fight your battles for you. Whatever Kenrick might be promising, if it comes down to it, and you vote to fight those meirlich in your enclave, we won’t be by your side. You hear me?” He looks me dead in the eye. “You and your clan are on your own.”
The Broken Raven Page 2