Witch of the Glens

by Sally Watson

Now what, wondered Alex, had got under the skin of their wolf cub lately? For there was a new venom toward himself—and after he had been thinking her nearly tamed, too. Aye, a wolf cub: belligerent, cunning, snarling, biting, thieving, destructive—and yet innocent, as a wolf cub is innocent because it knows nothing else.

But she had been changing. She had been learning trust and affection, even to play and tease. And now, suddenly, there was a new and deadly hatred smoldering at him from those ringed eyes. It was puzzling, it was, and rather less amusing than her old spitting indignation had been; and even though it could hardly be a tragedy to him, still it was disconcerting. Alex kept a wary eye on her, lest she should decide to take her sgian dhu to his back.

As for Kelpie, she found the business of warning Ian a bit harder than it had seemed. For one thing, it was none so easy to find him alone, for he and Alex were usually together and about their own affairs, while Kelpie had her tasks in the house. In the evenings the family sat together in the withdrawing room, which was not Kelpie’s place. The big warm kitchen, or her wee cot in Marsali’s room, was where she belonged, or—more often—away by herself outside, in the pale half-light of the long northern gloaming. For summer was drawing near, and darkness now merely brushed down late upon the world and, like a gull’s wing, quickly lifted.

So she glared at Alex and did her tasks and kept her eyes and ears open and bided her time. And at last Alex went off for a few days to visit his brother in Ardochy. And the next evening Kelpie, on one of her rambles, saw Ian on the hill above her, quietly looking down over the glen.

Kelpie drew near, and then paused. Och, a braw lad he was! But how might she be approaching him best? It might be he wanted to be alone. Before she could decide, Ian saw her, smiled, beckoned, his face oddly blurred in the half-light that turned all things gray. She sat beside him and for a minute followed his gaze over the long shadowed cup of the glen, lit by the silver gleam of Loch nan Eilean.

Finally Ian stirred and spoke. “I wish I might never need to leave it again,” he said wistfully.

Did he love it so? Kelpie dimly sensed that he did; but she did not understand, for she herself had no roots to her heart, but only a wanderlust to her feet. “And must you, then?” she asked. Why could Ian not be doing as he pleased, since he was the heir to Glenfern?

“Aye so,” he said, a bit more briskly. “For I must finish my schooling if I am to be a fit chieftain and leader to my people. However”—he brightened considerably—“I think we’ll not be able to return to Oxford for some time, with the war moving northward and becoming more serious, and Argyll endangering all the Highlands.”

Now was the moment for her to warn him about Alex. But it was also a chance to ask about Argyll and put off the more difficult thing. “Tell me about Argyll!” she urged.

Ian turned to look at her with friendly interest. “You’ve a good head on you, haven’t you, Kelpie? Mother says you’re quick to learn and that you speak English as well as Gaelic. Are you truly interested in national affairs, then?” Kelpie nodded.