But it was not quite over. Halfway up the hill a small voice wailed after her. She turned to see Wee Mairi tugging at Eithne’s hand, one small arm stretched out and upward. “My Kelpie!” she shrilled. “Do not go away, my Kelpie!”
Mina’s pale eyes were upon Kelpie, narrowed, watchful, suspicious. Kelpie set her jaw, hardened her face, and deliberately turned her back on the broken-hearted little figure below.
The next few miles were blurred. Kelpie tramped mechanically behind Mina and Bogle, unseeing, trying to wipe three months out of her life and become the person she had been before. Och, she had been right to begin with! A feckless, foolish thing it was to care for anyone, and only hurt could come from it. From now on she would be hard as the granite sides of Ben Nevis, which now loomed ahead, snow still patching its sheer northern side. She would be what Alex thought her—and a pox on him, too. Nor would she even care that he would strike down that braw lad Ian, for Ian had had his warning, and it was his own fault if he was too stupid to heed it.
Scowling, she kicked at an inoffensive clump of bluebells and deliberately stepped on a wild yellow iris. She would become a witch, then; not a “coven witch,” either. She had seen them—silly people, who made a great ceremony of selling their souls to the Devil and met in groups of thirteen, called covens, and held Black Mass, and did a great deal of wild dancing. Mina said these were little more than playing at witchcraft and learned only a few simple spells. No, now, Kelpie would be a witch of the old sort, who needed no bargains with Satan, but who tapped a Power that was old before the beginnings of Christianity. A Power it was that could be used for either black or white magic, but Kelpie had seen little of the white, and black seemed much more congenial, especially in her present mood.
She drifted into her old dream of what she would do one day to Mina and Bogle. Aye, and perhaps she would just add Alex as well. They were over the pass and heading south along the side of Loch Lochy before she came back to herself and began to wonder about the present.
“Where is it we are going now?” she demanded, moving up to walk beside Mina, half off the narrow path. “When will you be teaching me witchcraft? What are you planning?”
Mina cast a thoughtful eye at Kelpie’s blue dress, now kilted up through her belt for easier walking. “I think that would be fitting me,” she remarked casually. “We will be telling you what you will need to know when it is the right time for knowing it,” she added so mildly that Kelpie looked at her with dark suspicion.
Falling behind once more, she began again to brood over her life. It consisted of being pushed from one situation into another. It was other folk who acted, and herself who reacted, who was acted upon. Was she, then, such a spineless creature? Was her whole life to be molded by others? Rebellion once more rose in her, but then subsided as she remembered the two-pronged stick that Mina held over her—nay, three-pronged, really. She could curse Kelpie, and she could curse Wee Mairi and Ian and the other folk of Glenfern, and only Mina could teach Kelpie witchcraft. And witchcraft, now, had become the only goal in her life, the only hope of escaping the hateful mastery of Mina and Bogle. Kelpie set her teeth, and the look on her face was neither pleasant nor attractive.
Down to the tip of Loch Lochy and on down the river they plodded, past the home of Glenfern’s chief, Lochiel; and at last they made camp for the night in the old unfinished castle of Inverlochy. Roofless it was, and built four-square, with a round tower at each corner, and Kelpie narrowed her eyes thoughtfully as they went in. Mina and Bogle never looked for walls about them, except sometimes in the cold of winter. What was afoot?
For the moment there was no time to wonder. Mina nodded brusquely at the river, which flowed just outside the arched stone entrance. “Gather us firewood,” she ordered, “and then guddle us some fish—if you have not forgotten how.” Her pale eyes rested again on Kelpie’s dress, and Bogle chuckled.