Ivor told Iona her choices in the end, and the girl asked him to make the decision, just like he knew she would. Selfishly, he longed to keep her with him – but he knew that now there was only one right answer.
“Dinnae look so grim,” Iona said. Her voice was weak and pained even now as she held his hand while he sat by her bedside. “It’s all right. I just dinnae want to be sick anymore. And I’ll get to see Mammy and Daddy. I trust ye to do the right thing, Ivor.”
“Ye dinnae understand,” Ivor said, trying desperately to keep in his tears. “Ye dinnae.”
“Let me rest, Ivor,” she practically begged. “Please.”
They sat together for some time, and then the healer entered the room. Quietly, he approached and held out a small vial. “Do ye want to leave, lad?” he asked.
Ivor shook his head, but he couldn’t speak. His throat was blocked with trying to keep in his tears.
“Drink,” the healer told Iona. “And rest.”
She smiled at them both weakly and, with the healer’s help, drank down the potion.
“How…how does it taste?” Ivor asked anxiously. He knew it was a silly question, yet he couldn’t think how to ask anything else.
“Like brambles,” she muttered, laying back on her pillows. Her eyes started to flutter. “We found it, Ivor.”
“Found what?”
“The place where we can stay. The place where we can be safe.”
Ivor held her hand tightly. “Sleep now,” he said. She soon did, and he didn’t leave her side until her hand went cold.
* * *
She was buried two days later in the kirkyard of the village. The blacksmith and his wife held the funeral and promised Ivor that he’d always have a home, but when he lay in his room, all he saw was the empty space where she’d slept.
And so, the day after her burial, he left in the dead of night, only a note to thank the blacksmith and his wife for all the kindness they’d shown two orphans. Ivor didn’t deserve their kindness anymore, but he’d go on surviving. He owed Iona that much.
He wandered alone for six months, further and further north, taking jobs where they came. The day of his birth came and went, and he grew taller. Already, he looked like someone who would soon be a man.
The jobs were scarce near Fife for the young mercenary, though, and he was starving. That was why the apple yard outside that Laird’s castle sounded like such a good idea. That was why he simplyhadto stop to steal a few.
“What are ye doing?” a voice asked.
He turned and saw a young boy there, clean and obviously rich, about the same age as him.
“I…” he started. “I…”
“Me name is Killian,” the boy said. “Wait here.”
He disappeared inside. Ivor stood there frozen, not knowing what to do.
Killian returned a few minutes later with a basket filled to the brim with food. He handed it over and said, “Dinnae tell anyone, alright?”
Ivor knew he could never settle in one place, never again. But for the first time since his sister’s death, as he smiled with surprised gratitude at this boy, he felt hope.
Chapter Sixteen
The Puppy
Callum’s village was eerily quiet. The soldiers had moved on, but the people remaining had obviously experienced their fill of trust. Eithne could feel the wary eyes examining her from between the cracks of shuttered windows. Everything was unnaturally still.
“It’s like it’s a town of ghosts,” Eithne whispered to Ivor, keeping her voice low so that Callum couldn’t hear. “But I ken they’re here.”
“Aye,” Ivor replied in the same quiet tone. “MacDuff and his men probably took over poor Callum’s house, and everyone else shut themselves up. Naebody wants to be the next target.”
