“I know. I wasn’t thinking. It’s so peaceful, and reading those legends has given me so much to think about.”
“I bet.” I make a bold move and lace our fingers together as I ask, “How about some tea?”
Her grin flickers before she nods, a look of relief falling over her. “Thanks.”
I’ll do anything to keep her feeling relaxed like she does just now.
“Which story were you reading last night?” I start.
She walks by my side down the path, and with every bone in my body, having her at my side just feels right.
I can’t explain it, I don’t want to overthink it, but this is how I know she’s different.
“All of them.The Fairy Loverespecially.”
I nod, having waited for this moment. We reach the front of my cottage, and I pause at the step, opening the door and gesturing her ahead of me. I watch her carefully as she takes a seat at the kitchen table. “The Fairy Loveris a personal favorite.”
“I’d ask if it’s real, but I found their grave in the garden. All of them. Olympia, Alaric, and Roderick.”
I hum, realizing she knows more than I thought she did at this stage. “Olympia Aberdeen. A woman transcribed on the pages of time. What must it be like?” I pour fresh water into the teapot and set it on the stove. It takes me a few moments to light the finicky cast-iron burner, but soon there’s flame. I pull down the tea bags and place them in the mismatched cups before turning to her. “That story is beloved more than Shakespeare to the people in this area. And yet, it’s all but untold once you leave Skye.”
“I thought legends were meant to teach a lesson, so what’s the lesson here? None of it sits well. It never will.”
“It never should. It’s unfinished,” I say, pouring the hot water into the teacups.
“Unfinished?” She slumps into her chair as I deposit her steaming teacup. Tiny lambs are jumping across a moon in a starlit sky. The imagery is fitting, I smirk to myself.
“I don’t think legends are meant to teach a lesson so much as make you think. Encourage spiritual and intellectual ascension, maybe.” I discard my tea bag and take a sip. I only ever drink tea with her. I’ve missed it. Keats isn’t even neighborly, much less amiable.
“The legends outline what makes Leith so cursed.The Fairy Loverwarns young lasses of the dangers of dark men who weave words of affection so hollow they cause their lovers to drown in its shallow waters. I think the cursed witch story is only a metaphor for all the tragedy that’s laid at the feet of the families that lived here.”
“Family,” I correct.
“Family,”she corrects herself, straightening in her chair before discarding her tea bag on the saucer and sipping slowly. “Generational trauma is a new field of study in psychology.” She sips her tea again, eyes holding mine as she does. “Can tragedy energetically imprint itself on other living things? And if it can, wouldn’t it follow that cells and genes also hold the scar tissue of our ancestors?”
I sit up straighter in my chair, eyes flickering out the window and over Loch Dunvegan. I recall all the centuries of memories inscribed on the pages of records in Leith’s library. “My father used to punish us by forcing us to read decades of Leith’s landowner logs at a time. Each page, line by line, I read about Leith Hall’s rising…and eventual falling.”
“You survived the fall.”
“Some would disagree.” I shake off her comment.
“So, is that why the little girl that died is haunting me? Because there’s some greater lesson I need to learn? Because I feel like I’m going insane. And why is my brain adding extra details? I swear I heard her say in my dream last night that a sister fell in a well, but that’s not in the story. Whose sister?”
“It’s probably your brain applying the same filter by day as you search for records about your great-aunt as it does by night, when the legends are coming to life.”
“The legends are coming to life?”
I clench down on my jaw, figuring I’ve overstepped with that comment. “It’s keeping you up at night and giving you anxiety attacks by day. I’d say that’s as real as it gets.”
“Yeah.” Fable bites down on her bottom lip as she regards me. It’s like she’s looking through me now, like I can’t hide anything, not that I’ve tried.Not really.Not when it wasn’t in her own best interest anyway.
I shift to the edge of my chair, eager for her next question.
“Because if they’re not real and I’m not going mad and something is leftunfinished…”I see her piecing it all together in her mind, and my stomach flips with excitement for her. “I mean, is Harris even real? It sure makes you angry when I’m around him, so he seems real enough to me. And Keats—he looks like he just crawled out of a crypt—how is it that you’re brothers when you look so much younger than him?” She’s half joking but deadly serious; I can see it in her cautious smile.
“Good genes?” I joke.
She grunts, slouching back in her chair but still assessing me boldly. “Ghosts. There, I said it. Call me crazy or whatever, but I think I’m being haunted.”
