“Kelpie!” said she in triumph, and at last she had impressed them. For every Highland child knew that a Kelpie was a kind of fairy person, a water witch who wails at night by lochs and rivers for a victim, or cries for admittance at shuttered windows.
“I don’t believe it,” said the skeptical twin, but he said it halfheartedly.
“Ronald! Donald!” The green-frocked lass who was Kelpie’s age stood in the doorway, with a big-boned young woman behind her carrying a tray. “Och, naughty lads! Ye shouldn’t be bothering in here, and well ye know it!”
“She’s a witch, and a kelpie too,” reported one of them, unabashed.
“At least she says so, but we haven’t seen her put a spell yet,” added the other. “When will you be showing us one?”
The young woman nearly dropped her tray as she hastily tried to make the sign of the cross. Her young mistress looked faintly alarmed but stood her ground. “Be away, now,” she told the twins. “I’ll take that, Fiona.” She took the tray from the quaking Fiona and set it on a stool beside Kelpie’s cot.
“We thought you’d be waking up hungry,” she said and then looked at Kelpie apologetically, as if ashamed of her own good fortune and pretty clothes. “My name is Eithne,” she added, pronouncing it “Ay-na,” with the Highland lilt in her voice. “And the twins must not be saying such things—about your being a witch, I mean. Are you?” she asked, overcome by curiosity.
Kelpie already had hand and mouth full of cold venison pie and new-baked bannocks and had no intention of risking the rest of the food. She shook her head firmly and put on her most innocent and helpless expression.
“Och, no!” she mumbled truthfully around her bannock. “Not I!”