Trigger Warning

A path of sorts ran across the high hills, and we followed it and encountered almost nobody: a tinker and his donkey, piled high with old pots, and a girl leading the donkey, who smiled at me when she thought me to be a child, and then scowled when she perceived me to be what I am, and would have thrown a stone at me had the tinker not slapped her hand with the switch he had been using to encourage the donkey; and, later, we overtook an old woman and a man she said was her grandson, on their way back across the hills. We ate with her, and she told us that she had attended the birth of her first great-grandchild, that it was a good birth. She said she would tell our fortunes from the lines in our palms, if we had coins to cross her palm. I gave the old biddy a clipped lowland groat, and she looked at the palm of my right hand.

She said, ‘I see death in your past and death in your future.’

‘Death waits in all our futures,’ I said.

She paused, there in the highest of the highlands, where the summer winds have winter on their breath, where they howl and whip and slash the air like knives. She said, ‘There was a woman in a tree. There will be a man in a tree.’

I said, ‘Will this mean anything to me?’

‘One day. Perhaps.’ She said, ‘Beware of gold. Silver is your friend.’ And then she was done with me.

To Calum MacInnes she said, ‘Your palm has been burned.’ He said that was true. She said, ‘Give me your other hand, your left hand.’ He did so. She gazed at it, intently. Then, ‘You return to where you began. You will be higher than most other men. And there is no grave waiting for you, where you are going.’

He said, ‘You tell me that I will not die?’

‘It is a left-handed fortune. I know what I have told you, and no more.’

She knew more. I saw it in her face.

That was the only thing of any importance that occurred to us on the second day.

We slept in the open that night. The night was clear and cold, and the sky was hung with stars that seemed so bright and close I felt as if I could have reached out my arm and gathered them, like berries.

We lay side by side beneath the stars, and Calum MacInnes said, ‘Death awaits you, she said. But death does not wait for me. I think mine was the better fortune.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It is all a nonsense. Old-woman talk. It is not truth.’

I woke in the dawn mist to see a stag, watching us, curiously.

The third day we crested those mountains, and we began to walk downhill.

My companion said, ‘When I was a boy, my father’s dirk fell into the cooking fire. I pulled it out, but the metal hilt was as hot as the flames. I did not expect this, but I would not let the dirk go. I carried it away from the fire, and plunged the sword into the water. It made steam. I remember that. My palm was burned, and my hand curled, as if it was meant to carry a sword until the end of time.’

I said, ‘You, with your hand. Me, only a little man. It’s fine heroes we are, who seek our fortunes on the Misty Isle.’

He barked a laugh, short and without humour. ‘Fine heroes,’ was all he said.

The rain began to fall then, and did not stop falling. That night we passed a small croft house. There was a trickle of smoke from its chimney, and we called out for the owner, but there was no response.

I pushed open the door and called again. The place was dark, but I could smell tallow, as if a candle had been burning and had recently been snuffed.

‘No one at home,’ said Calum, but I shook my head and walked forward, then leaned down into the darkness beneath the bed.

‘Would you care to come out?’ I asked. ‘For we are travellers, seeking warmth and shelter and hospitality. We would share with you our oats and our salt and our whisky. And we will not harm you.’

At first the woman hidden beneath the bed said nothing, and then she said, ‘My husband is away in the hills. He told me to hide myself away if the strangers come, for fear of what they might do to me.’

I said, ‘I am but a little man, good lady, no bigger than a child, you could send me flying with a blow. My companion is a full-sized man, but I do swear that he shall do nothing to you, save partake of your hospitality, and we would dry ourselves. Please do come out.’

All covered with dust and spiderwebs she was when she emerged, but even with her face all begrimed, she was beautiful, and even with her hair all webbed and greyed with dust it was still long and thick, and golden-red. For a heartbeat she put me in the mind of my daughter, but that my daughter would look a man in the eye, while this one glanced only at the ground fearfully, like something expecting to be beaten.

I gave her some of our oats, and Calum produced strips of dried meat from his pocket, and she went out to the field and returned with a pair of scrawny turnips, and she prepared food for the three of us.