She wrenched her mind from the thought of Ian, drank her broth, and drifted back to sleep.
When she was on her feet again, Kelpie was strangely content just to stay where she was. It seemed to her that her life had been violently wrenched apart, and she hardly knew how to begin putting it back together again. She needed time to think. Kelpie had always found the world full and interesting, however cruel. She played a game. She avoided the cruelty when she could, and bore it if she must, and fought back when she had the chance. She adapted herself to each new situation that came along, and had quite enjoyed—on the whole—the glimpses of various new worlds that the last few months had offered.
But now she seemed to be cast out of every world she knew, for she could never go back to Glenfern, or to Mina and Bogle (even if she would), or to Campbell country. Worse, she did not even know what she wanted, now that the power of witchcraft was denied her. The old gypsy life no longer seemed attractive. New ideas had been planted in her mind, and she had found herself groping restlessly for something she could not name.
To keep her mind and hands busy, she began to help Alsoon and Callum with the various chores, and took an unexpected pleasure in them. For once, walls seemed not a trap but a warm, safe shelter from the early frost and biting wind outside, and from the world in general.
And so the autumn passed, and it was the dark of the year, with only a few brief hours of daylight and long gray dusks. In that remote glen they heard little of the outside world. It wasn’t until she had been there for two months that a neighbor from over the hill came that way in search of stray cattle and stopped in to pass on the news that his brother had heard from someone’s cousin who had been away in to a town.
Montrose had taken his army north to Aberdeen, and this time he had let his men sack the city. “It was because they had shot a wee drummer boy,” explained the neighbor. “The lad was just along with the envoy, asking them would they like to send their women and bairns to safety. And Graham was so angry at it that he took the town and turned his army loose on it, but they say he was sorry after.”
And then, it seemed, the old game of tag had started again, with Argyll panting after Montrose all the way from Bog o’ Gight to Badenoch, Tumnel to Strathbogie, devastating lands as he went, and slaughtering people if he even suspected them of royalist sympathies.
When Kelpie awoke the next morning, she saw the white light of the first snow coming through the cracks in the shutters, and her first, unbidden thought was: did Ian lie somewhere beneath that blanket? Had Alex been punished for killing him? Where was Montrose now, and what was happening in Scotland? It was the beginning of a new restlessness and a growing desire to learn whether Ian was dead, and perhaps even to take vengeance herself on Alex, if no one else had done it already. Even without magic powers, she reflected with narrowed eyes, she could still use her wee sgian dhu!
The dark, smoky shieling became too cramped for such thoughts, and, in spite of the cold, Kelpie took to making long walks over the braes and around the foot of Ben More. Alsoon looked at her wisely. If she guessed that confusing thoughts were disturbing the young waif, she said nothing but merely finished whatever task Kelpie might have left undone when the restlessness was upon her.