Searrach writhed on the forest floor, her rage muffled and impotent.
“But if ye ever think to go near Dand again,” Kirsten added, “I’ll be shaving yer goddamn head and usin’ yer hair to wipe my—”
“Good lord, Kirsten.” Finley sighed, yanking her friend back toward the path. “It’s true what they say about the quiet ones, isn’t it?”
* * * *
Lachlan saw the bonfire lights from Town Blair’s green when they were still halfway up the mountain, north of the lake. Unlike the bay beyond the clifftop, Loch Acras seemed to suck what little light was in the new moon sky and hold it just under the surface of the water like a mottled looking glass, turning the vale into an ominous scrying tool.
Lachlan remembered so many happy nights of his childhood before Dand was born, scouring the reedy shore of the lake with Marcas for the hardy, thick-skinned frogs that hid there. He could recall with crystalline clarity still the peace and security he’d felt then, although had anyone asked him at the time, he would have been unable to define the contented feeling he carried with him; it had been nothing more than his childhood. Looking back, he could see now that it had been a heaven of immeasurable worth, now gone forever.
He had the sudden desire to run down the remainder of the hill to the shore of the brackish lake, as if he could dive headlong into his past, when he was Marcas’s only son and he was loved by his grandfather, by all of Town Blair.
There was a foreign ring of lights on the road to the east of the town, and as Lachlan and Geordie traveled through the trees, Lachlan could see that it was a corral of sorts, roped and bordered with torchlight, holding what must have been fifty horses and several two-wheeled carts, mounded into black hillocks by whatever cargo they contained.
Someone had indeed come to Town Blair. A wealthy someone, with many companions. Could it truly be the Englishman, Vaughn Hargrave?
Geordie stopped suddenly, and Lachlan drew even with him, watching his old, misshapen profile, somehow already familiar to Lachlan. Geordie’s bulging eyes glistened.
“Sure, it looks bigger,” he said gruffly.
Lachlan turned to regard the town. “Aye. I reckon it is bigger since you left it.”
“More houses.”
“There’s a chapel now, as well,” Lachlan said. “A friar comes a few times a year.”
“Aye. Uh-huh,” he said with his dipping nod. “Nae matter that. Still just as black.” There was bitterness in his hoarse voice.
Lachlan felt a cold emptiness in his chest that mirrored the sentiment of Geordie’s callous words, and it unsettled him. “Geordie, you canna mean that. Isn’t some part of you glad to see it again, being so long away from the only home you’ve ever known?”
Geordie Blair turned his eyes up to Lachlan’s face, and the pain and sorrow there was raw. “Nay. Nae a single part of me. Sure, that isna my home. I was a score-three, reckon, when Harrell sent me into the falls. I’ve spent more of my life away from Town Blair than I have in it, and I can tell you now that in all them lonely, hungry years, the thing I feared most was having to return,” he finished with a rasp. He blinked, and a tear rolled down his sunken cheek even as he lifted his chin.
“You remember it, Edna’s son. You remember the leavin’. It stays with ye.”
And, just like that, Lachlan forgot about warm summer nights on the loch with Marcas; forgot about the indulgent smiles from the town mothers, if not from Mother Blair. Instead, he remembered the look on his grandfather’s face when Archibald disowned him; remembered being sent from the town the night he’d married Finley Carson, and the palpable relief emanating from his own townsfolk at the wedding feast. Aye, Lachlan’s leaving had stayed with him.
Still, he prayed Geordie was wrong.
“Whoever has come to Town Blair has left their horses unguarded on the road,” he said to the man at his side. “Doesn’t seem like a decision made by one wishing to secure an easy escape.”
“He doesna want to escape,” Geordie scoffed. He walked to one of the trees on the edge of the wood and sat down against it. “I’ll wait here.”
“Geordie, this could be your time to be avenged,” Lachlan said, striding down the hill toward the tree. “I’ll stand by your side. We’ll both confront Harrell, and you’ll be accepted.” He crouched down with one hand braced on the tree trunk above Geordie’s head. “You can come home.”
The old leather skullcap shook. “You’re nae the chief, Edna’s son. Harrell made sure of that, dinnee? Doona want any part of it. With none of ’em. You go on, if yer a’goin’.” He stared ahead stubbornly. “An’ ye shouldna stay. Like I told you, it isna my home. And it isna yours, neither.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll wait here,” Geordie repeated. “If I spy ye comin’ with any other than the lasses…” He gave his swooping nod. “Ye’ll nae be seein’ me agin.”
Lachlan sighed and rose from his crouch. “I gave you my word. I mean to keep it.” He emerged from the edge of the wood toward the lake shore, staying back from the marshy margin to approach the town from the north. He had hunted this stretch with Marcas for years; he knew each dip and washed-out gully, each bleached boulder thrusting through the thistle and briars. They caught on his breeches like little hands clutching at him.
Lachlan ignored them, thinking of the last thing Finley had said to him:You’ll never know home.
Wasn’t this it, though? This place where he was born and raised? Didn’t he know each corner of every house? Didn’t he recognize the silhouette of each rooftop, know who lived where as sure as he knew the pattern of his own shawl? The acrimonious thoughts made his footfalls drop harder onto the earth, cause his fists to clench as his arms swung at his sides, turning into pendulums, then pistons, as he broke into a run.
Home. This was his home, no matter what Finley, what Geordie Blair, what Marcas said. His legacy. Sure, they will have missed him. Someone…someone would be glad to see him. Even if it was only Dand.
