“We’ve no bargain.” Alex corrected her mildly. “I’m no such fool. It’s just that I’ve been telling you in a friendly way what will happen if you should be stealing anything or hurting Eithne, that’s all.” And he sauntered out, his kilt swinging jauntily about his brown knees.
4. The Daft Folk
Kelpie slept heavily for the first part of the night and then awoke to stare restlessly into the stifling, closed-in darkness. How could a body tell the hour, shut in like this? She must be out into the free air and waiting when Mina and Bogle came for her.
She got up and groped her way out into the warm, horse-scented main part of the stable. Dubh, a blacker shape in the dark, came and wove himself around her ankles as she felt for the door with her good left hand; her right shoulder was still too sore to move.
And then she was outside in the cold sweet air of pre-dawn. The hills to the southeast stood black against a thin ghost of gray in the sky, and the glen was filled with a toneless purple except for the ropes of pearly mist strung down the clefts of the hills and over the loch. A tiny burn and waterfall danced in a white thread at the far end of the glen, and the wind smelled of the sea.
Kelpie drew in her breath deeply, and the beauty of it made a sore ache inside her and a daft desire to cry. It was something deep within her, just, that had these strange feelings now and then, and she must be careful never to let them out.
It was these daft folk at Glenfern who were making her feel peculiar. She must be away from them, away from the trapping walls and alien people, to the freedom of the hills and sky. She slipped like a wraith around to the back of the stable, where the ground sloped upward, wrapping her bare ankles in the wetness of rank grass and heather and stinging nettles, which she had long ago stopped noticing. And at the upper corner a long skinny arm reached out with the swiftness of a snake, seized Kelpie’s wrist (fortunately, the uninjured one), and shook her.