The black skerries with teeth sharp as a razor’s edge and rip tides capable of claiming the most stout, well-manned sailing vessel.
Truth be told, those who were granted access to Doon’s golden-sanded shores had only the good graces of Devorgilla to thank.
Bent, grizzled, and slow of gait, but with twinkling blue eyes that defied her age, the far- famed wise woman of Doon was selective in whom she called friend.
Likewise, she made a formidable foe.
And she it was, Devorgilla of Doon, who unwittingly or otherwise, now mirrored Gelis’s circular ascent up Dare’s winding stair tower.
Even if the crone’s circuitous path only took her round and round the tidy, peat-smoke-smelling confines of her cozy, low- ceilinged home.
As a good, nae, as the most reveredcailleachin all the Highlands and the Isles, she wasn’t just hobbling round her central hearth fire.
O-o-oh, nae.
She was scuttling alongdeiseil, circling her fine smoldering peat fire in a sunwise direction. She chuckled to herself as she went, taking care to croon to the little red dog fox trotting along in her wake.
The wee fox, Somerled by name, knew better than any that the crone’s mind was just as busy that morn as was Lady Gelis’s in distant Glen Dare.
Devorgilla pressed a hand against her hip and glanced at him as she passed her cottage’s two deep-set windows, her wizened face wreathing in a smile when the sharp-eyed fox swished his thick, white-tipped tail.
Her faithful companion and helpmate for some years now, he understood her well.
She winked at him, pleased when he flicked his tail once more.
“Ach, laddie, we have much to celebrate this morn, eh?”
Without halting her shuffling black-booted feet, she snatched a twist of dried meat from a small wooden bowl on her table and tossed the tidbit to the little fox.
She cackled with glee when he leaped in the air, catching the treat before it fell to the flag stoned floor.
“Guid,” she gushed, watching him fall into place behind her again, prancing along as if he hadn’t just performed such a bold and dashing maneuver.
She, too, felt nimble just now.
Power sizzled through her bones and lightened her heart. And though she wouldn’t own it — the Old Ones frowned on those who boasted — she was almost sure even her finger- and toenails tingled with magic.
So she continued on her way, mumbling blessings and indulging in a wee bit of humble if well-deserved self-praise.
’Twas well enough earned.
If she dared say so herself.
Her third rounding of the cottage’s central hearth fire completed, she paused. She raised her hands, palms upward, her gaze following her black-sleeved arms but seeing much more than her ceiling’s blackened, herb-hung rafters.
Then, when her palms began to warm and pulse with the Old Ones’ benevolence, she lowered her arms. Well satisfied, she turned her attention to the steaming cauldron hanging on its great iron hook above the pungent, earthy-sweet smolder of the peats.
Unable to help herself, another gleeful cackle — or two — rose in her throat.
She didn’t even attempt to stifle them.
Even though her excitement and bustling was clearly a great botheration to Mab, the tricolored cat curled in the exact middle of Devorgilla’s sleeping pallet and pretending disdainfully that it was just another ordinary Doon morn.
Not that any day on that cliff-girt, sea-bound isle could be called the like.
Devorgilla wagged a finger as if to emphasize the point.
Her wee fox lifted a paw in absolute agreement.
