It had also been one of the hardest subjects to capture. Alison found it difficult to depict the incredible sense of awe she felt in the presence of something so powerful, so magical, so much bigger than the life she had lived before. Weyland’s illustration was miraculous, unfolding across two pages in a stunning depiction of the spriggan’s incredible feat in helping to raise the standing stones.
But her own words just weren’t doing it justice.
“Still not right?” asked Keir as he brought her a cup of tea and a freshly baked scone from the kitchen.
She shook her head. “I was hoping our encounter would have given me some inspiration, but I can’t seem to figure it out.”
“The wise old one, the spriggan, follows.” Keir read the scratched-out line. “That seems accurate to me.”
“Accurate, but not majestic,” said Alison. “I’ll get back to it later.” She stacked her papers together neatly on her desk and capped her pen. “Are you ready?”
“Almost,” he said. “The cake is in the kitchen. I’ll go get the horses and meet you at the gate.”
“Oh, you got the cake already? You didn’t say.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you at work,” he said. “It’s in the icebox.”
He was so thoughtful. He’d gotten her the icebox when he heard her say how much she missed having one, and now he’d gone to pick up Rinka’s welcome cake unprompted.
She could get used to this.
“Thank you,” Alison whispered to him. She kissed him on the cheek as she went into the kitchen to check out the cake.
The baker had done a magnificent job. The cream was pale pink and impossibly smooth, and the strawberries on the top were deep red and mouthwateringly plump, picked fresh that very morning from the baker’s own patch behind the store. It was very difficult to walk away without stealing one off the top.
But then, Keir had thought of that as well. There was a bowl of extra strawberries in the icebox as well, cleaned and ready to eat.
Gods, she loved him. She felt a little thrill at the thought. Would it be too much to say it to him right now?
“I’ll be right at the gate in ten minutes,” yelled Keir from the front room as the door closed behind him.
Her confession would have to wait. That was just as well. She had been waiting for the right moment for several weeks now, but it always seemed to slip away before she could work up the courage to speak. She had managed to steel her nerves once before, a couple of weeks earlier as they sat together on a beautiful candlelit evening. But her words had failed her, just as they’d failed her in writing the poem about the spriggan.
How could it be possible to capture a feeling so all-consuming into simple words?
Alison pondered the unfortunate circumstance of being a poet who couldn’t express how she felt with her language as she took a bite into one of the extra strawberries. It was exactly as delicious as it had looked: juicy, fragrant, and wonderfully sweet.
If the greatest of her problems was either figuring out how to tell the incredible man she loved that she loved him or finding a way to describe the magic of the extraordinary town she called home, she thought she must be doing some things right.
She changed into her riding attire and met Keir at the gate a few minutes later. He helped her into her saddle—her romantic notions of sharing a single horse had been squashed weeks earlier when Keir had gone to fetch the horses from Fossholm. He had explained to her that two people could not possibly share a saddle, and that the weight of them together would hurt the horse.
And then he had suggested that if she wanted to be close to him, she needn’t use the horse as an excuse. The memory of the encounter that followed set her heart racing as Keir climbed back into his saddle beside her.
“What’s that look?” he asked her.
“I was just remembering when you bought the horses,” she said.
The look he gave her told her he hadn’t forgotten either.
“What time is Rinka arriving again?” he asked, glancing back towards the cottage.
“Soon,” said Alison regretfully. She was excited to see her friend again, but she had to admit she wouldn’t have minded delaying the trip for a moment if they’d had the time.
Keir led them up the lane towards Herot’s Hollow. They traveled through the town, stopping to say hello to Gwenla, whowas waiting at the post office for news of the arriving nobility. Then they followed the road along the river towards Fossholm, where they would meet Rinka when her carriage arrived a few hours later.
Alison had only taken the road to Fossholm a couple of times since she’d arrived in town. The town itself was about the same size as Herot’s Hollow, but it was much newer, having only come up around the time Weldan House, the residence of Lord Ainsley and Keir’s childhood home, was built. There were few businesses there that Herot’s Hollow did not also share, but Fossholm did have a small printing press that published theHill Country Standard, and they had agreed to print a first run of Weyland and Alison’s poetry book as a pamphlet. With any luck, they’d make enough sales to raise the funds to cover the cost of binding in Sudport.
The road to Fossholm quickly entered the woods after they rounded the hill that concealed Herot’s Hollow from the view of the wider Hill Country. It was only a few miles between the towns, but it felt longer in the isolation of the forest. The woods were so wild there, it was hard to imagine there were two bustling villages so close by.
