“Don’t think I don’t see right through you,” Elspeth said, but she sank gratefully into the chair.
“Consider it payback for bringing me here to take care of you under false pretenses.”
“Have I thanked you for that yet?” Elspeth asked, her smile fading into something more serious.
Anna bent and kissed her cheek. “I’m the one who should be thanking you, remember?”
“I hope you’ll still feel that way when all of this is over. Now away with you both, or you’ll miss the chance to watch Davy lose some money. Unless he was smart enough to bet against himself.”
Moira had followed Lissa as far as the edge of the tent and stood there bouncing impatiently, peering around as if afraid to miss anything that was going on outside. “Davy’s next,” she said, coming back to tug at Anna’s fingers. “Can’t we go?”
Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shone, and she’d stopped ducking her head when she caught strangers looking at her. Or maybe there was just too much going on for her to pay attention. Anna let herself get dragged over to where Davy had heaved himself up on top of a whiskey barrel with the haggis—a medium-sized round pudding made of sheep hearts, livers, lungs, and sundry other unmentionables encased in a sheep’s stomach—poised in his hand. Winding himself up while trying not to tip the barrel over, he sent the haggis flying and visibly held his breath until it landed without splitting open. A cheer went up.
Anna shook her head. “I still haven’t tried haggis,” she confided as she and Moira clapped their hands. “This isn’t making it seem more appetizing.”
“Daddy says it’s a taste you have to grow into. I don’t think I’m old enough,” Moira said, wrinkling her nose.
Anna laughed. “That must be my problem.”
“Daddy’s, too,” Moira said, laughing with her. “But that’s a secret. He says if we tell anyone, they’ll think we aren’t proper Scots.”
They ate fried everything for lunch, chips and fish and deep fried Mars Bars for dessert—after which Anna felt vaguely disgusting and suspected she’d have been better with the haggis. Moira, skipping ahead and coming back again, herded her toward the field where the contestants were lining up for the tug-of-war, MacGregor kilts on one side and MacLaren on the other, along the length of rope that lay like a snake across the grass. Men and even a few women associated with either the MacLarens or the MacGregors had apparently come from all over Scotland and England for the event, thanks to the happy coincidence that the Balwhither Highland Games had turned out to be the first one of the season.
“Who do you think is going to win?” Anna asked, catching Moira’s hand as the crowd grew more dense around them.
“We will, of course,” Moira said with no small amount of satisfaction.
“Of course,” Anna said. “Shall we put a wager on it?”
Moira nodded, and Anna handed her a five-pound note to give to Davy who, apparently undaunted by not having thrown the haggis farther than half the other competitors, was walking up and down the sidelines collecting bets. Moira hesitated only briefly before going toward the group of people clustered around him.
Davy collected the money and solemnly wrote Moira’s name into his betting book. “That’s on the MacLarens to win, is it?”
“No!” Moira shook her head. “MacGregors, silly.”
“Och, is it now? Well, all right then. We’ll have to see if you are right.”
Standing at the edge of the crowd, Anna put her hands on Moira’s shoulders and looked around with no small sense of achievement while they waited for the event to start. While not a huge crowd, for a month of preparation it wasn’t half-bad. Just under a thousand people had paid the general entry fee, and with the additional charges for participating in events and extra for admission to the play, not to mention the booth rental income, they’d already taken in over twelve thousand pounds—almost fifteen thousand dollars. A good start on rebuilding the Village Hall, as long as the village all pitched in with labor and Connal kicked in the rest.
Down on the field, Brando stood on the sideline with Iaian Camm MacGregor, the two of them set to referee. “Ready,” Brando said, and the competitors bent to pick up the rope. “Set.” Everyone braced themselves. “Pull!”
The MacGregor side gave an enormous heave that forced the MacLarens two feet toward the midline before they managed to dig their heels in. The competition sawed back and forth, inches to the MacGregors then inches to the MacLarens in turn. Grass ripped beneath their feet and the mud-spattered T-shirts and socks and disappeared into the dark colors of the kilts.
Cheers split the crowd every time the momentum changed. The MacLarens leaned on the rope, using their body weight, their legs almost parallel to the ground as they fought for the last inches that separated them from defeat. But another MacGregor surge of muscle dragged the feet of the first MacLaren over to the MacGregor side of the line painted on the grass. A roar of approval went up as the MacGregors dropped the rope. The MacLarens tumbled to the ground with the release of tension. Another shout went up, nearly drowned by the groans on the MacLaren side.
Moira jumped up and down, then spun toward Anna with her face glowing. “You see? We always win.”
“Always?” Anna raised an eyebrow at her.
“The last three years at the Lochearnhead games.” Moira’s half-smile fell. “I didn’t get to see them, but people told me.”
Anna worked to hold her own smile despite the pressure building behind her eyes. “But you’re here now, and that’s good, right? Are you having a good time?”
“The best.” Moira threw her arms around Anna’s waist, and for Anna, the field and the loch and the braes all suddenly went blurry. Her heart ached.
How was she supposed to say good-bye to this? To Moira and Connal and Elspeth—the whole village? These hills that had become the landscape of her heart?
She swallowed down a wave of misery and concentrated on taking things one event at a time.
For the most part, the day was going more smoothly than she’d hoped. There were a couple lost children, a few squabbles between competitors who’d had a bit more beer than was good for them, one concussion, a broken arm, and a minor traffic accident that resulted in the victims heading off to the pub together. But overall, going to collect Moira from Elspeth again later, Anna had to admit things could have been worse. On the other hand, the day was far from over.
Her hand tucked in Elspeth’s, Moira stood watching the Married Ladies’ Race, which Flora Macara won handily by throwing her ample chest across the finish line just ahead of a MacLaren cousin from outside the glen. Moira and Elspeth shouted along with everyone else. Then, spotting Anna, Moira came running to hug her. “Did you see Flora win?”
“Who knew she was that fast?” Anna replied, putting an arm around Moira’s shoulder.
“I’ll bet she’s fast from chasing Shame,” Moira said.
“I’ll bet you’re right. And speaking of bets, did you figure out what you want to do with your winnings from the tug-of-war?”
“I want to buy a present for Daddy since he can’t be here. Will you help me pick one out?”
“Everything all right?” Elspeth asked, studying Anna’s stricken face.
Anna and Moira wedged back in beside her to watch the unmarried ladies line up at the starting line for the Spinsters’ Race. “Sure,” Anna said. “Of course.”
Brando called everyone to their marks again, and the race was off with sixty-three-year old Jenny Lawrence—who had apparently run the circuit around the lochs every day since she was twelve years old, rain or shine—taking the lead straight off. Jenny also finished twenty-third overall in the hill race that climbed steeply up to Creag an Tuirc, the ancient rallying point of the clan MacLaren, and continued roughly two and a half miles around the glen.
Leaving Moira and Elspeth again briefly, Anna returned at five o’clock, and the three of them ate meat pies and sticky toffee pudding from the concession booths and wandered a
round looking at the art and jewelry and trinkets for sale while, in the background, individual pipers competed with their slow laments, salutes, and gathering pieces for the piobaireachd. Moira bought Connal a leather-covered notebook and a pencil shaped like a tree branch, and Anna’s attention caught on the gleam of polished silver in the adjacent jewelry booth. She lifted a small bracelet with a unicorn out of the tray.
“What do you think, Moira? Do you like it?”
“I love it,” Moira said, her eyes going wide as Anna knelt in front of her to fasten it around her wrist. “For me? Why?”
“For remembrance,” Anna said, and then she realized she’d said too much when Elspeth whipped her head around and stared at her. She turned toward the loch where a piper was playing something beautiful and dignified. “Quick, Moira, what’s that song? Do you know it? It feels sad, doesn’t it?”
“A little.” Moira waited for Anna to pay for the bracelet then folded her hand in Anna’s while Anna and Elspeth checked at the booths to make sure the vendors had everything they needed.
An hour later, the awards for all the pipers had been handed out. None of the group trophies had gone to the glen, but Iain Camm MacGregor claimed the win in the piobaireachd, and Rory MacLaren won the individual strathspey and reel competition. Angus Greer and an outside piper tied for the trophy for the individual march, and Angus picked up Kirsty and swung her around. She laughed down at him with her black hair tangling around her face and kissed him soundly as if all the arguing of the past weeks had never happened.
The sun went down, and the pipers all gathered together to play “Scotland the Brave” and “Amazing Grace.”
Echoing around the glen, the music brought chills to Anna’s skin again along with another pinch of pain. She and Elspeth and the villagers had staged every aspect of the festival for maximum theater and romance, but she hadn’t realized how those moments would become bittersweet as they passed, each one a once-in-a-lifetime memory that brought her time in the glen closer to its end.
“We’d better go back out to the road,” she said, tightening her grip on Moira’s hand. “JoAnne will be here any minute to pick you up.”
“Do I have to go already?” Moira looked up at her, her expression pleading. “I want to find out who’s going to be May Queen and Winter King. And there’s the song night. Anna, please?”
“JoAnne’s probably on her way already, so you’d have to talk her into staying a little while.”
“She won’t.” Moira shook her head. “She doesn’t think anyone is nice. It’s like Shame and the other dogs, isn’t it? Shame jumps all over everyone and wants to lick them, but Brice at the garage has one who growls and comes straight at you with his fur standing all on end. JoAnne’s more like Mrs. Lawrence’s dog who stands back and barks and barks and barks, but if you walk toward her, she runs away and hides.”
“You think JoAnne doesn’t want people to hurt her?” Anna asked.
“I don’t think her daddy was very nice to her.”
Anna watched JoAnne coming toward them a few minutes later, wearing another shapeless sweater and with her long skirt blowing against her legs. Stoop-shouldered, she avoided eye contact with anyone, and with her face bare of make-up and her hair scraped back in a ponytail, it was as if she was doing everything humanly possible not to be noticed.
Moira tugged her hand free of Anna’s and ran to meet her along the fence outside the inn. “Can I stay a little long longer, JoAnne? Please? Please?”
JoAnne frowned and drew Moira in tight against her side. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I’m not tired, I promise, and I want to hear who’s going to be May Queen and Winter King.”
“You can find out in the morning.”
“No.” Mouth set, Moira tilted her head and stomped her foot. Standing in the light of the heat lamps the volunteers had set up around the tent and the courtyard of the inn, half her face was her mother’s, but she had Connal’s eyes. Between her parents and JoAnne, she didn’t stand a chance of having a normal life unless someone else stepped in.
“I’ll tell you what,” Anna said, “let me call your father and see what we can work out, all right? Maybe you and JoAnne can both stay for the announcement.”
“Don’t bother,” JoAnne said bitterly. “He’ll agree to whatever you want. He always does. I’ll go wait in the car until Moira’s ready to leave.”
The lamps around the courtyard provided warmth for the spillover crowd that didn’t fit inside the pub. Campers, villagers, and those who had driven in from the local area for the games all lingered, singing hammy versions of “The Braes of Balquhidder” and “Flower of Scotland,” and warming themselves on beer and Flora’s fresh pub food, sweets from Grewer’s, and the specialty pastries that Brando had brought from his shop in Callander. Rhona, Erica, Sorcha, and Fenella sat at a table slightly ahead and to the left of where Anna found two empty seats and squeezed herself in beside Elspeth with Moira on her lap.
Flora Macara, looking flustered and wearing a different ugly brown sweater and even uglier skirt than the one in which she’d run the Married Ladies’ Race, came to stand in the open doorway between the courtyard and the pub. With the ballot box in which she and Duncan had been collecting votes from the villagers tucked beneath one arm, she waved the tally sheet above her head.
“Quiet down, everyone!” she shouted. When that didn’t work, she placed two fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle.
“Wow, that’s a trick I need to learn,” Anna said to Moira. “Can you do that?”
Moira shook her head. “I can almost whistle. I’ve been practicing.”
“Good for you. I should practice, too. It seems awfully useful.”
Flora waved the paper again. “There’s been a wee delay with the May Queen voting. We’ll announce the winner in the morning instead, so go on back to enjoying your evening, everyone.”
“What?” Sorcha stood up at the table, and Rhona and Erica also jumped to their feet. “The voting’s over. Read the count.”
Flora folded the paper and ran her fingernail absently along the crease. “Check back here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”
“What about the Winter King?” someone shouted from the front.
“We’ll announce both together,” Flora said firmly. “Tomorrow.”
Rhona and the three girls advanced on her, still arguing. Flora turned away from them and crooked a finger at Elspeth and Anna instead, looking as if she wished she could disappear.
Anna swung to her feet. “We’d better go try to save her.”
Holding Moira’s hand, she wove through the crowd with Elspeth behind her. At the last minute, Elspeth veered off and planted herself in front of Rhona and the girls so that Anna had an opportunity to pull Flora aside.
“What’s going on?” Anna asked.
“All I can think is that people must have heard Moira in the tent yesterday,” Flora said, bending to whisper in Anna’s ear, the sound competing with the drunken singing that had started up again around the courtyard.
The whisper evidently wasn’t quiet enough. Moira shuffled her feet and stared down at the ground. “I said I was sorry.”
“I know you are.” Flora smiled at her. “And you’re not in any trouble, I promise.”
Anna pulled Moira closer and wrapped an arm around her. “I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”
“Apparently, everyone agreed with Moira. Almost no one voted for Sorcha or Fenella or Erica as May Queen.”
“They picked JoAnne?” Anna turned to the street where Connal’s Audi was double-parked, and the light was on inside showing JoAnne’s profile as she sat reading. “She’ll say that she won’t do it—and I don’t think we’ll be able to change her mind.”
“It wasn’t JoAnne.”
Anna blinked in surprise. “Then who? It has to be someone between seventeen and twenty-five, doesn’t it?”
Flora leaned forward to speak into Anna’s ear
once more, but again she misjudged her volume. “It was Moira,” she said too loudly. “They picked Moira for May Queen and Brando for Winter King, and Connal’s going to have a fit.”
Moira gave a squeak. And as the shock registered, Anna found Rhona, Sorcha, and Erica all staring at Moira, their faces white and stunned.
Dancing with Wolves
He often felt that too many
people lived their lives
acting and pretending, wearing masks
and losing themselves in the process.
Nicholas Sparks
The Choice
Once they arrived back at Inverlochlarig and Moira, bouncing in excitement, told her father, Connal waited only as long as it took JoAnne to bustle the girl away toward the carved mahogany staircase out of earshot before he turned back to Anna. His eyes blazed cold with fury. “Absolutely not. I knew it was a bloody stupid idea to let her go to the games. I should have listened to my better judgment instead of giving in to the pair of you.”
“She had a wonderful time, and nothing happened.”
“This happened, and what are people thinking? They love Moira. Or I thought they did—why would they do this to her?”
Anger made Anna hot, and she shook off her coat and threw it across a chair. “Maybe they’re doing it for her. Have you ever thought of that? A misguided attempt to give her confidence. Or a swift kick to show you that she’s not Rapunzel to be locked away in a fairytale tower.”
“Rapunzel? What are you talking about? Never mind. She can’t do it, and that’s the end of it. I’ll call Flora myself.”
“But I want to do it,” Moira said, running back around the corner toward them, evading JoAnne who rushed after her calling for her to stop. “I get to wear a crown and everything and walk behind the May Bush, and I get to be the first person to wash my face in the loch for the Sighting.”
Connal caught her arms and knelt in front of her. “Do you really want to do those things? They’ll wear you out, and you’ve already had an awful lot of excitement these past two days. Also, you don’t like it when people stare. That’s half the point of being May Queen, for people to look at you.”
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