The Midnight Circus, стр. 32

AuldAnnie wrapped the butter in a piece of yellowed linen, tying the wholeup with a black thread, before handing it to me.

“Takethis to the place where ye wish to meet him and bury it three feetdown, first drawing out the black thread. Cover it over with earth andwhile doing so recite three times the very words ye said over thechurn. He will come that very evening. He will come—but whether he willstay is up to ye, my girl.”

Itook the sachet in my right hand and dropped it carefully into thepocket of my apron.

“Comenow, girl, give me a kiss to seal it.”

WhenI hesitated, Mairi pushed me hard in the small of the back and Istumbled into the old woman’s arms. She smelled of peat and whiskey andage, not unlike my father, but there was something more I could put noname to. Her mouth on mine was nothing like Iain’s, but was bristlywith an old woman’s hard whiskers and her lips were cracked. Her sourbreath entered mine and I reeled back from her, thankful to be done. AsI turned, I glanced at the mantel. To my horror I saw that between thewhite stones, the skull was now facing me, its empty sockets black asdoom.

Mairiopened the cottage door and we stumbled out into the light, blinkinglike hedgehogs. I started down the path, head down. When I gave a quicklook over my shoulder, Mairi was setting something down by Auld Annie’sdoor. It was a payment, I knew, but for what and how much I didnot ask, then or ever.

Wewalked back more slowly than we had come, and I chattered much of theway, as if the charming had been on my tongue to loosen it. I toldMairi about Iain’s hair and his eyes and every word he had spoken tome, doling them out a bit at a time because, truth to tell, he had saidlittle. I recounted the kisses and how they made me feel and even—Iblush to think of it now—how I preferred them to what came after. Mairisaid not a word in return until we came to the place where the path ledaway to the standing stones.

WhenI made to turn, she put her hand on my arm. “No, not there,” she said.“I told you he has gone up amongst the shielings. If you want him tocome to you, I will have your father send you up to the high pasturetoday.”

“Hewill come wherever I call him,” I said smugly, patting the pocketwhere the butter lay.

“Donot be more brainless than you have been already,” Mairi said. “Gowhere you have the best chance of making him stay.”

Isaw at last what she meant. At the stones we would have to creep andhide and lie still lest the fishermen spy us. We would have to whisperour love. But up in the high pasture, along the cliffside, in a smallcroft of our own, I could bind him to me by night and by day, marryinghim in the old way. And no one—especially my father—could say no tosuch a wedding.

SoMairi worked her own magic that day, much more homeythan Auld Annie’s, with a good hot soup and a hearty dram and a word inthe ear of my old father. By the next morning she had me packed off tothe shieling, with enough bannocks and barley and flasks of water in mybasket to last me a fortnight, driving five of our cows before.

Thecows knew the way as well as I, and they took to the climb likeweanlings, for the grass in the shieling was sweet and fresh andgreener than the overgrazed land below. In another week Mairi and Iwould have gone up together. But Mairi had my father convinced that Iwas grown enough to make the trip for the first time alone. Grownenough—if he had but known!

Perhapsit was the sea breeze blowing on my face, or the fact that I knew Iainwould be in my arms by dark. Or perhaps it was just that the time forsuch sickening was past, but I was not ill at all on that long walk, mystep as jaunty as the cows’.

Itwas just coming on late supper when we turned off the path to go up andover the hill to the headland where our little summer croft sits. Thecows followed their old paths through the matted bog with a quietsatisfaction, but I leaped carelessly from tussock to tuft behind them.

Iwalked—or rather danced—to the cliff’s edge where the hummocks and bogand gray-splattered stone gave way to the sheer of cliff. Above me thegannets flew high and low, every now and again veering off to plummetinto the sea after fish. A solitary seal floated below, near some rocks,looking left, then right, then left again but never once up at me.

Withthe little hoe I had brought along for the purpose, I dug a hole, fullythree feet down, and reverently laid in the butter pat. Pulling theblack thread from the sachet, I let the clods of dirt rain back down onit, all the while whispering, “Come, Iain, come. Come, Iain, come.”Then loudly I sang out, “Come, Iain, come!” without a hesitation inbetween. Then I packed the earth down and stood, rubbing the small ofmy back where Mairi had pushed me into the sealing kiss.

Istared out over the sea, waiting.

Hedid not come until past dark, which in summer is well in to the mid ofthe night. By then I had cooked myself a thin barley gruel, and madethe bed up, stuffing it with soft grasses and airing out the croft.

Iheard his whistle first, playing a raucous courting tune, not the onehe had played on the beach when first I had noticed him, but “TheCuckoo’s Nest,” with words that say the one thing, but mean another.

Inthe dim light it took him a minute to see me standing by the door.Then he smiled that slow, sure smile of his. “Well . . . Molly,” hesaid.

Iwondered that he hesitated over my name, almost as if he could notrecall it,