When the sun rose, Urla was in a glen among the hills. A man who shepherded there took her to his mate. They gave her milk, and because of her beauty, and the frozen silence of her eyes, bade her stay with them, and be at peace.
They knew, in time, that she wished death. But, first, there was the birthing of the child.
“It was Isla’s will,” she said to the woman. Ula was but the shadow of a bird’s wing: an idle name. And she, too, was Eilidh once more. “It was death he gave you when he gave you the child,” said the woman once.
“It was life,” answered Eilidh, with her eyes filled with the shadow of dream. And yet another day the woman said to her that it would be well to bear the child and let it die: for beauty was like sunlight on a day of clouds, and if she were to go forth young and alone and so wondrous fair, she would have love, and love is best.
“Truly, love is best,” Eilidh answered. “And because Isla loved me, I would that another Isla came into the world, and sang his songs—the songs that were so sweet, and the songs that he never sang, because I gave him death when I gave him life. But now he shall live again—and he and I shall be in one body, in him that I carry now.”
At that the woman understood, and said no more. And so the days grew out of the nights, and the dust of the feet of one month was in the eyes of that which followed after: and this until Eilidh’s time was come.
Dusk after dusk, Ula that was Isla the Singer, waited by the Stone of Sorrow. Then a great weariness came upon him. He made a song there, where he lay in the narrow place: the last song that he made, for after that he heard no trampling of the hours.
The swift years slip and slide adown the steep;
The slow years pass; neither will come again.
Yon huddled years have weary eyes that weep,
These laugh, these moan, these silent frown, these plain,
These have their lips acurl with proud disdain.
O years with tears, and tears through weary years,
How weary I who in your arms have lain:
Now, I am tired: the sound of slipping spears
Moves soft, and tears fall in a bloody rain,
And the chill footless years go over me who am slain.
I hear, as in a wood, dim with old light, the rain,
Slow falling; old, old, weary, human tears:
And in the deepening dark my comfort is my Pain,
Sole comfort left of all my hopes and fears,
Pain that alone survives, gaunt hound of the shadowy years.