“She no longer knew where she was, who she was, or what she was doing there

Shivering hard now, Rian dried herself on the relatively clean lining of her skirt. She dressed and then set off back over the hill. The rain clouds had reached the island. She would be rain-soaked by the time she got back. But as soon as the wind was on her back and she was moving, she warmed up.

As she marched along, she plotted revenge, poisoning them all with foxgloves.

But then she heard Danuta’s voice in her head, dire warnings about evil thoughts, and abandoned that plan.

She needed to focus on escape. She was clean now, she could look after herself. She must be ready for the first opportunity.

Back at the yard, she checked her hiding place in the wall. The herbs she had tried to dry were mostly mouldy.

It was a useless place for keeping that sort of thing. But there were herbs everywhere.

The fire-starter was more important. She sorted the bare minimum she would need into a tidy pile: cotton grass, heather buds and stalks, the flint. She needed something to carry them in.

The cows still needed to be milked and they seemed to sense her new resolve, standing calmly while she pushed their calves away to take a share of their milk.

Salvation

With the milk pail full, she returned to the broch where salvation waited.

Maadu and Cuckoo, Pytheas and Cuckoo were all out watching Gruach at work.

Fi took the pail from her. “You’re all wet. What’ve you been at?”

“Nothing.” Rian sat down on a stool by the fire, tipped her hair forward and combed out her hair with her fingers.

Gurda set a tray of risen bannocks beside her and tapped her on the shoulder with a griddle pan. “You can bake those while you dry off.”

She pulled up another stool and sat making more dough patties, as Rian cooked the ones on the tray.

“Maadu’s been talking plans for the wedding. We’re all getting to go.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

Fi shook some carrageen into a pan of milk. “Full moon, whenever that is.”

Rian turned the bannocks over in the pan. The moon was half now, and shrinking. “Twenty days or so.” Could she wait that long?

Gurda and Fi had stopped what they were doing and were staring at her. What had she said out loud? Fi stirred the milk. “Fancy yourself as a witch?”

“I do not.”

Gurda pointed over to a heap of old clothes on a chest. “We’ve to get new clothes ready for the feast.”

Rian got up to look. They were castoffs from Cuckoo and Maadu, both far fatter than any of the three of them. “Is there needle and thread for taking them in?”

“Over in that basket.” Gurda pointed towards a pretty wicker sewing case at Maadu’s bedroom entrance.

Rian peeked in. It had all she needed for making herself a pouch for her fire-starter kit and some herbs. Her adjustments to one of Cuckoo’s dresses would include a little extra preparation.

That evening she claimed a headache and went upstairs to her bed to avoid seeing any more of Ussa, Pytheas or, especially, Fraoch.

Miraculously, Maadu left her alone. She didn’t come down until she had heard them depart the next morning.

Assent

Maadu asked if she had taken the herb necessary for getting rid of her “little problem” and Rian allowed her silence to be interpreted as assent.

In just over two weeks, when the moon was rising earlier every night, Rian had made a tidy little bag for her fire-making tools, which she carried everywhere with her in her pocket.

She had dried some herbs, brazenly, in the broch, pretending she was doing it for Maadu, then filched some for herself.

Maadu made it clear that her food portions should be increased and Rian’s confidence grew with them.

She even took the chance of moving a little pocket knife from the toolbox out to her hiding place in the wall out in the yard.

It was a bit rusty but better than no blade at all, and once it didn’t seem to be missed, she added a snug sleeve for it in her fire pouch.

There was a flurry of activity when they scythed the barley crop down, winnowed it and stacked the straw. It was back-breaking work, but it meant fresh grain.

One evening, Rian sat with the quern between her knees, grinding.

She had always enjoyed the feel of seeds under stone, the rotary motion, and the songs that Danuta used to sing came back to her. She moistened the stone a little with tears, feeling sorry for herself in the hush of the room, her back smarting as the movements stretched her wounds.

Her mind turned to how she might escape. Time flowed with the spindle, the loom and the quern stone turning.

Rian thought back over all that had happened to her over the past months.

She felt it had been a lifetime. She was no longer the innocent girl that had been branded that awful day.

The hearth was no longer a place of comfort and safety. She was friendless. Sold, sold on, sold back, sold on again into deeper and deeper servitude, into blacker and blacker emptiness, until she no longer knew where she was, who she was, or what she was doing there.

She turned the stone. She ground down the memories of Ussa and of Pytheas.

She ground to remember poor Callum and Faradh, their bodies thrown to the fish and the monsters of the sea.

Memory

The thought of sea monsters brought back the memory of the giant spirit of the sea and she heard again the strange song that Toma had sung to it.

Toma had never been her enemy. Perhaps, while they were in Clickimin, if she could find Ròn could she persuade him to sail her away to freedom?

She hummed the tune to herself, having to slow the quern stone rhythm which did not fit the lilt of the song like a boat’s motion did.

Maadu’s hands halted their kneading. “What was that song?” She was staring at Rian, who went silent.

Some instinct told her not to volunteer too much. “It’s from the sea.”

Maadu was not satisfied with this but Rian would not let herself be pressed into saying more. She didn’t rightly know herself what it was.

But she did know she wanted to see Toma again, although she didn’t know clearly why. It was just that sense of their bond when singing those mournful notes, the feeling of a comrade who understood that the great forces of the earth are amenable to a will if that will is pitched true.

Toma knew songs of the sea spirits, a song that could find a safe way out of pack ice. That, surely, was enough of a reason?

More tomorrow.

By Mandy Haggith