Silently I followed my mother. I was allowed to hold the jar as we traced a wide circle around the mill. On the side where the brook ran deep and fast, there was a crossing bridge. But as we reached the shallows on the other side of the mill, it was clear there was no way across.
“No way across but in,” Ma said, gathering up her skirts. “Pull up your gown, Rose. We’ll be walking through the Goddess’s waters tonight.” She stuck out her foot, eyeing her sandal. “Too bad it’s not a cobbler we’re casting a spell for. We’ll be in need of new footwear after this.”
I laughed, taken aback at Ma’s impetuous humor. This was a side of her I rarely saw. I hitched up my skirts and stepped into the brook. Cold water swirled around my legs and mud seeped into my shoes, but I tramped on beside Ma, the witch’s jar tucked into the crook of my arm.
We circled the mill three times, then ducked inside with sodden shoes and wet legs. The cold didn’t bother me. It was sort of refreshing on a warm night, and I counted this spell as something of value, certainly worth including in my Book of Shadows.
Inside the mill, the MacGreavys waited in the flickering candlelight.
“The spell is done,” Ma said. “We need to bury the jar, but there’s no safe place around here. Rose and I will hide it in the woods where no one will find it.”
The miller went over to my mother, clasping her hands. “Thank you, Síle.”
She nodded. “And now I think I need a rag to wipe down my shoes. Seems that Rose and I had to go for a late-night dip in the brook.” She pushed off her shoe, and it flopped onto the floor like a dead fish.
“Oh, my!” Mrs. MacGreavy laughed, rushing off to find some cloths.
The miller brought out chairs and wine for all of us, and he and his wife talked in the quiet, dark room while Ma and I dried our feet. I took a sip of wine—sweet and heady. Just like Diarmuid’s kisses. Of course, nearly everything made me think of Diarmuid. It was an effort to concentrate on what was before me instead of the lovely picture floating in my mind of him. And at the moment, the conversation was so gloomy, with the miller complaining of slow business, that I preferred to dream of my love.
“At least it was our slow season,” Mrs. MacGreavy was saying.
“Aye, but if we don’t get that broken gear fixed soon, we’ll have no business at all,” Miller MacGreavy said. “It’s all a result of the curse upon us, probably from those vile Burnhydes.” He turned to Ma. “And I thank you for wiping it away. Our luck will change now, though I can’t say that I see better days ahead for the Seven Clans. It’s an age-old battle we’re fighting, and it’s getting worse instead of better, with curses and sheep thieves and vendors picking on innocent young girls at market.” His eyes burned with conviction as he glanced at me, and I bit my lower lip, wondering if everyone in the Highlands had heard of my escapades at the market. If the story was floating around, soon the real details—of the boy who had saved me—would wend their way to my mother. More trouble for me.
“Ian...” The miller’s wife tried to soothe him, but he forged on.
“I say it’s high time we Wodebaynes stopped taking the prejudice against us,” he insisted. “Time to use magick to fight back.”
Closing her eyes, my mother shook her head gently. “No, Ian, that’s not the answer.”
“Well, then, how are we going to stop it, Síle?” the miller asked. “You know the stories—though there are so many, I’ve lost count. A Leapvaughn tricking a Wodebayne farmer out of his land. A Ruanwande casting a spell that makes a Wodebayne girl go mad. Even your own husband, Gowan, was prey to the prejudice, Síle.”
“My father?” I dropped the rag on the floor. So long had I craved to hear stories of my father, Gowan MacEwan, but every time I asked, my request was headed off by a severe look from my mother. “Tell me,” I begged, turning to the man.
“ ’Tis not much of a story, Rose,” the miller said, touching his beard. “But one day, when your father was on the road traveling to a nearby village, he came across a Wyndonkylle man on a horse. The horseman rode past without incident but then returned to harass your father. He accused your father of looking upon him with evil in his eyes. Then, when he learned that your father was a Wodebayne, he reared up his horse and trampled your father under its hooves.”
I winced. “That’s a terrible tale. But Da survived it.”
Ma nodded. “Aye, but he walked with a limp ever after.”
As Mr. MacGreavy went on lamenting the clan differences, I thought of my father. He had died when I was young, so I remembered little of him. I’d heard a few dark rumors—tales that he had been interested in dark magick—though no one spoke of him to me directly. And my mother refused to fill in any of the missing details. Why was she so reluctant to speak of him?
After the conversation and wine ran out, we said our good-byes and headed home. Ma and I were across the river and down the road a bit when she realized we had forgotten the witch’s jar.
“Make haste and fetch it,” she told me. “I shall wait here.”
Lifting my skirts, I ran back along the road. But as I approached the mill, I saw a solitary candle burning upon the threshold. I slowed my pace as my feet silently crept over the cooling earth. There was magick here—I felt the boundaries of a witch’s circle, and I was forced to stop at its perimeters. I used my magesight to study the details. Was that a pentagram drawn in the dirt by the door? But it was upside down! ’Twas not part of the spell Ma had cast.
As I stood in the shadows, a figure loomed in the open doorway—Miller MacGreavy. He did not sense my presence as he leaned out and poured a dark liquid over the pentagram, all the while uttering words I did not understand. I gasped, realizing that the liquid Ian MacGreavy was using was blood.
The very tone of the scene made me shudder. ’Twas as if a cold wind had swept up the river, turning everything in its path to ice.
Dark magick. I gasped.
Miller MacGreavy twitched in fear, darting a look toward me. “Rose?” he asked suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”
“The witch’s jar,” I croaked in fear. “We. we left it behind.” He scowled at me, then ducked back inside. A moment later he reappeared with the jar, stepping around the pentagram and drawing a door in his circle to step out toward me.
His eyes glittered in the candlelight as he handed me the jar. “Begone with you, Rose MacEwan,” he said angrily. “And not a word to anyone of what you witnessed here tonight.”
“Aye, sir,” I said breathlessly. Although I feared his magick, I knew it was not cast against me. Still, his warning frightened me. Best to keep it to myself. After all, it appeared he wasn’t harming an innocent.
Yet even as I tucked away my memory of Miller MacGreavy, I decided not to let the matter of my father rest. On the way home from the mill that night I waited until my heartbeat slowed to a more relaxed pace, then launched into the subject. “I was glad to hear the story of Da,” I said, walking slowly under the orange moonlight. “We set a place for him every year at the Samhain table, yet you never tell me stories about him. You never speak of him, Ma. Why is that?”
My mother took a deep breath, searching for the answer. “It always pained me to speak of him. The way his life was snuffed out. the way it ended. It was a terrible thing, Rose.” She linked her arm through mine. “I supposed I thought that if we didn’t talk about it, you might be spared the pain that I felt.”
I shook my head. “When I think of him, there’s no pain, really. Just curiosity.”
“What do you remember of him?”
Thinking of Da, I smiled. “His largeness. He was a bear of a man, was he not?”
“Quite large,” Ma agreed.
“I remember riding on his shoulders—big, broad shoulders. And his hands. They were so huge, my little hand disappeared inside his. I remember his deep, ringing laugh. And a trip to the coast. Did he take me to the seacoast?”