Devorgilla placed a black-booted toe over her little friend’s paw, staying him before he did anything foolish.
“Aye.” She bobbed her grizzled head, her eye on the interloper. “Preying on helpless old women . . . and spoiling their stores!”
The figure leaned close, his white head and his ancient, robe-draped shoulders looming out of the cauldron’s mist. “I see no helpless female but afoolishone! Be glad I came to counsel you before your ill-placed interference causes more harm than good!”
He turned a meaningful look on the ruined herrings. “There are those who would do the like to you! And those you hold dear.”
Straightening, he jabbed his staff at the charred creel once more, this time restoring the basket and the herring to their former condition.
“Heed me if you are wise!” He looked at her, his gaze fierce. “Leave any reckonings to those more able.”
Devorgilla huffed.
Putting back her admittedly thin shoulders, she started to argue, but already he was fading. The cauldron’s steam whistled and swirled, closing around him, blotting him from view.
“Stay away from Dare . . .”
The words came as if from a great distance.
They echoed around the tidy little cottage until that warning dwindled, too, leaving Devorgilla and Somerled alone once more.
Mab — Devorgilla was sure of it — would be somewhere far out on the moors by now.
Safe, and seeking a comfortable bed.
“But we shall not be scared off, eh, Somerled?” She leaned down to pat the fox’s head, alarmed to see that her hand was trembling.
“Come, come, my little friend,” she cooed, hefting the creel of herrings onto her hip and hobbling toward the door. “We have much yet to do.”
Above all, she needed to wash the herring — and the creel — with water from her special sacred well. Whether the basket and the fish looked fullyunspelledmade no difference whatsoever.
The figure had wielded some hoary magic with his spark-spitting staff, and she wasn’t one for taking chances.
Nor would she do any further finger wriggling.
Instead, she opened her door and stepped out into the chill morning. Not quite sunrise, a fine silver-blue haze shimmered across the glade surrounding her cottage.
Unfortunately, the eerie luminosity reminded her of theirvisitor, and she shivered, not liking him or his warnings.
“Counsel, he called it,” she scolded, shifting the creel to her other hip. “ Counsel-schmounsel, I say!”
Trotting along at her side, the little fox slanted a glance up at her, all hearty agreement.
“And,” she added, encouraged, “there’s no reason we canna use some other means to help our charges, eh?”
She paused halfway across the glade and set down the creel, just to rest her back. The thing was heavy and, truth was, she was getting too old for such onerous chores as lugging full baskets of herring to her well and back.
Devil-blast the long-nosed, white-maned buzzard who’d made such a trek necessary!
“Call me afoolish woman, indeed!” Pressing both hands against the small of her back, she stretched. She rotated her shoulders and rolled her neck, her angry gaze on the early morning sky.
A few stars still glimmered, distant and frosty, while a crescent moon yet hung above the tops of the alders and birches ringing her circular glade. And far below Doon’s cliffs, out across the still-dark waters of the Hebridean Sea, the tides were running fast and pale gray light was just beginning to edge the clouds.
Not that she cared — now — if the sun ne’er broke the horizon this morn.
She had more important things to do.
“Ach, Somerled.” She snatched up the herring creel with a deal more vigor than before. “Now I know what must be done.”
