Page 54 of The Heather Wife
Now, as the gentle refrain drifted across the hall, she could see it unfold in her mind’s eye: a lone figure silhouetted against the wide, still sky of the high pastures—her love, safe but distant, tending the clan’s cattle on the summer hills, the promise of his return held close through the long wait.
Sheinn mu 'gaol air chuan 'bha seòladh,
O bu bhinn a caoidhrean brònach,
Tha mo ghaol air àird a' chuain.
(Singing of her love sailing on the sea,
Oh sweet was her sad lament,
My love is on the high seas.)
The song’s words curled around her like a memory made sound. Calum, though near, felt so far away—locked in fever’s grasp, unreachable to her.
She reached for his hand, her thumb tracing the faint pulse beneath his skin. “Come back to me, Calum,” she whispered. “Please.”
Outside, the women’s voices rose and fell like the wind through the heather, soft and steady, carrying her mother’s song across the stone walls. Sorcha’s eyes grew heavy. She listened, chasing the image of the faraway hills and the promise of return, until the edges of the world blurred.
Sleep claimed her there—half prayer, half surrender—as the last notes faded into the night.
Beside the sleeping Sorcha, the healer moved in near silence, changing the herbs and laying fresh cloths over the wound. She glanced toward the chair, where Sorcha’s head rested against Calum’s arm, and smiled faintly.
“She’ll sleep now,” she whispered to her apprentice. “At last.”
***
Calum
Calum dreamed.
Through the fire of fever and pain, memory came in fragments. The night sky over the field. The whistle of an arrow. Sorcha’s cry. Then the moment her eyes met his—fear and defiance burning there before he threw himself between her and death.
The images shifted, tumbling one over another—the years folding back upon themselves. Sorcha at six and ten, a small smile on her lips as she stood in his father’s solar, the light from the hearth catching in her grey eyes, making them near silver. Her blue silk gown brushed the floor, her hands clasped before her. He’d told her then that Elspeth was the wife of his heart, and watched the light die in her eyes. She had only nodded, quiet and composed, and said she understood.
Sorcha on the training ground, her blade flashing in the sun. Sorcha in her clearing, speaking of her mother’s death, of being unseen—his own guilt burning with every word.
Around and around—Sorcha, always Sorcha—the thread woven through every part of him. He saw it now, clear even through the fever. He had known it before, but never like this.
And through it all came a song.
Faint at first, then nearer—the same soft melody weaving through the fog of his mind and shadow.
“Nuair a ghlac mi fhèin air làimh i,
Siab do dheòir, do ghaol tha sàbhailt,
Thill mi slàn bhàrr àird a' chuain.”
(When I took her by the hand,
Wipe your tears, your love is safe,
I have returned to you safely from the high seas.)
It wound through his dreams, pulling him from the fire and the memories, the guilt and the darkness—drawing him back toward her.
He reached for it—through shadow, through fever, through the ache in his chest—and found her hand.
