Corrag (30 page)

But it was more than pity.

In my hut, I could not sleep. I still heard his song. My heart sang it, over and over, and I stared at the fire thinking
why am I still troubled? Why does it not leave me, this feeling?

I had heard
maul…
I had seen his bright, black eyes.

O
H THERE
is always sadness. Always grief. I have heard folk say this life could be all hardship and sorrow, if we let it be. If we let our hearts seal over.

I should have stayed, perhaps. Nestled by Glenlyon and spoken with him, for a while. But what might it have changed?

Men have their orders.

L
ATER
, a wolf howled.

I stood in the snow, and closed my eyes. It sounded so sad to me. And the howl echoed. It came from Bidean, to the south, and yet it rang about the Coire Gabhail as if the wolf was with me. It echoed inside me, somehow. I felt it. I widened my eyes.

Gormshuil. Once she had said
come to me. When the wolf calls.

Listen to your heart’s voice, little thing
. And I knew I had to be with her. I knew that she was the one to see—so I left my seaweed drying in the eaves, and my goats sleeping with their heads upon each other, and I ran, and ran.

Is it not all there? Are the signs not all there, Mr Leslie? Oh they are now. They are clear as rainwater to the backward eye. The wolf’s call, and the stirred heart. The silence of a snowfall, and the black ink in his hand. My stag had gone—he had taken his branches and wise eye and he’d left across the tops, trod out across the moor, and hadn’t the bats streamed out from their roosts under a half-moon bridge in the days before my mother was taken, and tied thumb-to-thumb? And when did I last hear the owl? It had not called for nights and nights.

The world whispers, and we must hear. And when we don’t hear, we find ourselves running through waist-high snow, with a drunkard’s mourning song in our ears, and I knew what the truth was—I was certain of it. And the morning star was shining, and the trees had broken their boughs with the weight of the snow and
you will come to me, after the wolf. You will.

I went. I ran to Gormshuil. And I was fast, that night—fast, as if the wolf’s call had woken me, so that I ran down my gully over the rocks and frozen pools. I ran east, with my heart going
thump thump
and my breath going
in and out, in and out, in and out,
and I ran onto the lower slopes of the Dark Mount thinking
be there, be there
—for what if she was not? What then?

I hauled myself onto stones. I slipped, cut my knees.

But she was there. She was sitting neatly. Waiting.

Ah,
she said.

I fell down. I fell before her, and put my hands on her knees, not caring for their scabs or her clotted smell, and I said,
Gormshuil, I heard the wolf—I heard it call. It called, and it sounded so mournful, and so wise…And I came to you
—

She smiled.
Why did you come? To me?

Because you told me to!

No
—she shook her finger at me.
Because you know it is time, do you not?

Time? For what?

I looked very earnestly at her. I looked, and thought, briefly, that I could see beyond her, beneath her skin—that I could see the truth of her. Mistreated, lonesome, haunted thing. Wise. Half-lost.

I looked about me, then. The peak was so quiet, so I said
where is Doideag? Laorag of Tiree?

The snow was thin, small. It hovered in the air. It did not fall—it hung about her face, and caught itself on her pale hair.
Gone.

Gone where?

She pressed her lips against themselves, half-smiled but with lonesome eyes.
Fled.

Fled? Why have they fled?

Gormshuil breathed out, shook her head.
You know. All your talk of second sight, and how you think it’s my henbane that talks when I speak as I do. All sour. All green-handed…’Tis not the herb that’s speaking.

I don’t understand,
I whispered.

She wiped her nose on her arm and looked away. She looked across the top of Dark Mount, across the empty hearth and animal bones, and the rags, and the dirt, and for a moment she looked so very sad that I wanted to touch her arm, to comfort her heart. But I did not, for she turned. She licked her teeth.
Blood comes, Corrag. It is coming. The girls spread their wings and flew from it—for it’s more blood than they know, or wish to. It comes. A man comes.

Blood? A man?

Oh aye. A man. He’ll write a word or two on you. You with your shiny iron wrists…

I looked at my wrists. My wrists were fine—flesh, not iron.

He’ll come, he will. And it won’t be cold too long, for you. It will grow hot. It will grow fiery hot…

I did not understand. I did not know her talking, and stepped back from her, and gave a small, single wail, for I could feel the snow in the air, and the truth I could not grasp, the strangeness, and I said
I am lost with this! I can’t understand…

She took my hand. She held it.

I stared at this—my small hand in her blue claw.

You can. You do. Haven’t you always listened to your heart’s voice, bairn? Did it not bring you here?
She leant forwards.
Listen to it now. Listen to it now…

I looked upon her. I looked upon her human face, with its hollows, its bruises. I saw the sorrow, the hard living, and I saw my own eyes reflected in her eyes. And as I looked at my own eyes, I saw grass, and a dandelion day, and as the dandelion seeds drifted through the air a man was drowning kittens, and I
knew
. I had known. My heart had said
run! Save them!
And I had listened to my heart, and run across the grass, and I had saved five grey cats which had been meant for drowning—but they lived! They lived. And I blinked, and kept looking at my eyes in Gormshuil’s eyes. And I saw my mother, then—not twirling on a rope but standing in her skirts, her hands behind her back and her hair blowing out, and in the last moment before the door went
bang
she’d seen the autumn skies and thought of me—of
me
. I’d been her last thought. I’d been her one, all-feeling love—and she smiled as she died, because she was thinking of me. I knew this. I was sure. I had crouched in the dank, border wood and thought
she is about to die,
and I’d sent so much love to her from those woods that she’d felt it, on her scaffold—she’d felt her daughter’s love. I knew she had! And what else? As I knelt before Gormshuil I saw the Mossman’s face, his plum-mark, and his mouth, and I saw the shape his mouth took when he said
Highland
at me.
Highland…
And my heart had said
yes
as he’d said it.
Yes! There! That is the place…
And I’d heard my heart speaking, and I’d kicked the mare on. And when I’d breathed the night air of the mountains, and knelt down to feel the cold, sucking peat in my hand, hadn’t my heart and whole being said
yes
to it?
At last. Here.
Hadn’t I wept, as I knelt? Hadn’t I always known
Glencoe
? It had called me. It had sung my name for all its years and years, waiting for me to walk onto its earth with moths in my hair, and thorns on my skirts. It had waited, and called for me—and I came.

And
him…

I knelt in the snow and looked at her. I looked at her eyes, and saw my eyes. And I thought
him—Alasdair.

Of all the things my heart has known, it has known
him
most of all.

Never love a person.
And I had nodded at Cora as she’d said this. I’d whispered
I won’t
. But even then—even then! As a child!—I had heard my heart shaking against its ribs, shouting
you will love! You will! You will!
And many years later, in a room of beeswax candles with the rain outside, I saw his face, and knew.

Gormshuil said,
you want the second sight? To be taught it? Half-mad thing…You have always had it.

And she was right. I had. I knew it, as I knelt there. I had always had it, for we all do—all people born with a heart have it, for it is the heart’s voice. It is the soul’s song. I have had it with every starry sky, with each bee that knocked against me as it rose up from a bloom. I’ve had it with kindness—mine, and others’. I’ve had it with the hairs on my arms standing up, at the sound of a clan singing a fireside song, or with my eyes filling with tears at a simple, lovely sight. For it is in these moments that the heart speaks up. It says
yes!
Or
him!
Or
left
or
right.
Or
run.

We all have it. But I think it is people like us—lonesome, in love with the blustery world—who hear the heart most clearly. We hear its breath, feel its turns. We see what it half-sees.

We sat for a moment like that. My hand in her hand. The snow coming down.

Then she leant forward. She put her mouth by my ear so that I could smell her breath, and feel her damp hair against my cheek, and she said the word I’ve said to myself, all my life—a word which a witch’s heart sings over and over, night after night. A second-sight word.

Corrag?

Yes?

You must run.

I did. I ran. I left her sitting in the snow and ran down the mountain, sliding on the ice, knocking my bones on the rocks. I ran along the glen floor thinking
faster! Faster
. For I knew. I did.

It is not what the eyes see—no. I thought it was! I had thought the second sight was a dream, or a vision, a sudden rush of breath. I had thought that the truth might step into my hut, like a ghost, and says its name—that I might find it, if I sought it. But Mr Leslie, I was wrong.

You will know it, in time…

I knew it, now. And I knew it was a feeling—deep, in the chest, or in more than the chest. It was a feeling in the bones, in the womb, in the soul. It was the animal that hides in us shaking its coat, pricking its ears, and telling us
run!
Or
fight!
Or
love!
Or
hide!

And I thought
go go go.

I
PASSED
the Three Sisters. I passed beneath the Ridge Like a Church. I hauled myself through the snowdrifts, and brushed under trees, and ran.

It was dark when I came to Alasdair’s home. The sky was gone—there was only snow falling down now, and the dark. There was no wind in the glen, and before I knocked on his door I paused, and breathed. I heard the hush. All about me, there was quietness. The smoke rose tall and untroubled. The house was asleep.

But he opened the door like he’d not been sleeping.
What is it?

We took ourselves to a darker place, by a tree. I could not talk for being breathless, and I leant forward, breathed hard. He put his hand on my back and crouched down beside me, and said,
what?

The red men,
I said.

The soldiers?

Yes.

What of them? Corrag?

They will try to kill you. Tonight. All of you.
I looked in his eyes—his huge, blue eyes which were shining, so that I saw my own eyes in his eyes, and he did not say
no…
Or
you are mistaken
.

He said,
how do you know? Who has told you?

I took his arm.
No one has told me. But I know—I know!
I beat my chest with my fist.
I know…

Corrag,
he said, shaking his head,
why would they harm us? We are their hosts—their hosts! We have fed them, warmed them. My father is playing cards with Glenlyon at this moment…
He shook his head more slowly, and then stopped.
What reason would they have?

But I stamped my foot. I took his other arm so that I was before him, looking up.
I know. I know what your head is saying—I know. But trust me? Please? Trust what I am saying, even if it seems strange? Did I not help your wife? Bring out your son? Didn’t I mend your father when I barely knew him and was so desperately afraid—but I still mended him? I don’t know why they will hurt you, but they will, Alasdair. Tonight, they will. I am more certain of this than I have been certain of all other things, in all my whole life. My heart knows it—here.

He stared.

I know what second sight is, now. I have it,
I said.
We all have it. We are born with it, as all creatures are…
I calmed myself.
Please—listen to me.