Highland Ballad | Page 6

language that her daughter could not understand, and at length the dead leaves and smoking stalk caught solid fire. Standing once more, she drew a slow circle with it in the center of the room, then went to the door. As soon as she opened it a cold wind pushed past and blew out the trembling torch, but this seemed no more than she expected.
Stepping outside and closing the door behind her, the witch took a few paces forward, turned again to face the hut. She waved the branch in strange patterns, moving from side to side and repeating the same chant, so that the smoke which still seethed from it drew wisping traces about the door, the window, the whole of the house. Then turned again, and cast it to the ground before her. She opened her eyes wide, oblivious to the stinging smoke, and whispered harshly.
"You leave us be!"
She went inside. Four
As if a troubled thought that had slowly worked its way through her second sleep, with the first light of dawn Mary sat bolt upright in the bed, and said aloud.
"He's not my brother."
The old woman, who had apparently not slept at all, turned to her from her place by the fire, now lowered to glowering coals for cooking. She thought to reply harshly, then checked herself. Like a skilled surgeon or a patient general (or a bitter woman gnawed by hate), she knew that the matter of her daughter's lost love must be handled with extreme care.
"Not your brother. Your cousin."
"Then---" The realization scalded her. "We could have married! There was no sin, no shame in what I felt for him."
Again, though it ran counter to all her designs for the girl, the old woman knew this was not the time to speak against the hopeless romance that she still carried like a torch in the Night. And also (the darkness had not yet swallowed her completely), she felt that her daughter deserved this much.
"There was no sin. Naivety perhaps."
With this her daughter broke into wretched tears, and it was some time before the woman could calm her enough to speak. She moved to sit beside her on the bed; and so helpless and forlorn did Mary then appear, that for a moment her mother forgot all else and slowly brought to her breast the face that had suckled there so long ago.
"What is it child?" she said gently, stroking the soft hair that had once been her own. "What is it hurting you so?"
"All this time..... I thought it was because..... After he was killed, I went to my confessor. I told him everything, and he said---"
There was no need for her to finish. Too well did the other understand the vindictive nature of men.
"He said that Michael was taken because you had committed incest: that it was God's punishment for a grievous sin, and that it's your fault he died." The pitiful nod and freshened weeping told her she was right. "Nay, lass. It was not the hand of God that killed him, and many other good men besides. It is not the Creator who so brutalizes lives and emotions. It is men. "
And with this all her maternal softness faded, as her eyes stared hard and dry into some galling distance of thought and memory. Her arms fell away from her daughter's shoulders, and she unconsciously ground her teeth.
Mary, who had seen none of this, raised her head and wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling something like a pang of conscience. "I'm sorry. . . Mother." She could not help blushing at the word. "I've been selfish, thinking only of my own sorrow. Won't you tell me something of yourself? It must have been hard for you, surely."
The woman's gaze returned.
"Ah, life is hard, girl. Someday I'll speak of the roads that brought me here, but not now." She rose as if to say no more, then turned to the girl, so young, with the only words of comfort she could find. But at that they were not gentle, were not the words of hope.
"You must learn from the trees, Mary. A lightning bolt, a cruel axe, cleaves a trunk nearly to the root, and the oak writhes in agony. But it does not die. It continues. And though the hard and knotted scars of healing are not pleasant to look upon, they are stronger, many times stronger, than the virgin wood. You must learn from the trees," she repeated. "It is among their boughs and earthward tracings that the true gods are found."
"You're not a Christian, then?" This simple non-belief seemed to her incomprehensible.
"Nay, Mary, I'm not. The gentle Jesus may comfort the meek, but he is of little use when it comes to vengeance." The woman stopped, knowing she had