Kristie held her own breath while she waited to see if the bairn’s head would dislodge and come free. She tilted the child’s feet toward the sky and felt him come loose with sudden relief. As she collected her nephew in her awaiting arms, she couldn’t keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks.
Before Kristie lifted the crying bairn to his mother’s embrace, she kissed the top of his head. Jean wept in exhaustion and relief while Eileanor stood behind her to keep her from tipping over.
“Thank ye, Lord,” Jean whispered to the rafters. She looked to Kristie while she held her son close. “Thank ye, dear sister. Thank ye.”
Kristie wiped her tears away and smiled before discreetly collecting the afterbirth to set aside to bury later. While the new mother held her child, Kristie dipped a woolen washrag into the bucket of water and began cleaning the lad.
“What will ye name the child?” Eileanor purred.
Jean grinned at her son and touched his nose. “I been thinking of naming him after my da, Eoghan. Domnall and I had been talking ’bout it before…”
“That is a right good name if I may say so,” Eileanor answered with a decided nod. “Well, if Hendrie and Domnall had listened to me and gone out on the currach later in the spring, they might both be here to meet the wee fellow.”
Kristie bit the inside of her lip so hard it drew blood. Her anger only remained in check due to the distress would cause her sister-in-law. She finished wiping off the bairn until he was pink and tossed the rag into the bucket. Jean was looking tired, so Kristie helped her up and led her to her bed, where she lay down with her child and opened her chemise to nurse him for the first time.
“If that be not the sweetest thing.” Eileanor picked up a plaid by the frame and tucked it around the pair.
“Well, I would hate to keep ye from yer chores.” Kristie walked to the door and lifted the latch. “I know without the menfolk ’round, hardship is on us both.”
“No thanks to yer brother,” Eileanor said under her breath so Kristie was the only one to hear.
Daylight poured into the shadowy home, causing all of them to squint in response. Kristie waited for the neighbor to move toward the door and breathed a sigh of relief when she finally did.
Eileanor tilted her head to look at Kristie. “At least we have the helping hand of William until their return. Though I suppose ye have that handsome outsider to help ye about, though I dinnae know how much ye can trust a fellow like that.”
Kristie wanted to retort that she trusted him more than she did Eileanor, but she did her best to hold her temper and her tongue for Jean’s sake. Instead, she said, “We be lucky to have ye for a neighbor.”
Maybe it was the way she spoke the words, but Eileanor seemed to sense the lack of feeling behind them and stepped from the home with her lips pulled into a tight line. Before stepping away, she retorted, “I have nay seen ye at the kirk in a time, but ye best get that lad to the priest to be baptized soon or else—”
Kristie cut her off. “I thank ye for yer concern, but I know the risks of taking too long. No one better than his kin to look out for the preservation of his soul.”
She was in no mood to grin at the woman, so instead Kristie scowled as Eileanor sighed and stepped outside. She watched the neighbor walk off across the field toward her home. She had no patience for Eileanor’s high opinion of herself. Kristie had every intention of getting her nephew to the church as soon as Jean was able.
After all of the excitement, Kristie needed a moment to herself. She looked to Jean and the bairn snuggled in bed together. “I will return in just a moment.”
Kristie stepped outside, feeling the swell of emotions return just in time to hear Creag’s voice. “Well? Did I hear the wail of a wee bairn?”
Tears began to pour down her face, and she walked past Creag where he sat on a rocky mound. The playful expression that often pulled at the corners of his mouth and brows was absent. Concern lit his gray eyes as she hurried by.
He jumped up and grabbed hold of her arm. “Kristie? Tell me—are they safe?”
She turned around, unable to break free from his grasp. “They both live.”
A faint smile broke free on his lips as he stared at her tear-soaked face. “What be the bairn’s name? Unless ye want me calling it ‘wee one.’”
“Eoghan is the lad’s name.” Kristie sniffed.
He nodded and swept the dark locks from his eyes. “That be a strong name, indeed.”
Kristie nodded, but she knew her nephew would need more than a strong name to keep him alive through the trials of his youth.
Chapter 9
The following days passed with Jean rarely emerging from the home. Kristie would often interrupt her work to check on her, so Creag was left to finish up on his own. He could tell her mind was absorbed with new concerns and worries.
The bairn woke through the night crying out, something that disturbed everyone’s sleep. Even though Creag’s place was in the byre, it shared a wall with the home, and Eoghan’s bitter demands for milk were so loud he wondered whether even the neighbors could hear him across the field.
There was the pressing concern over Domnall’s return. Over two weeks had passed since Creag first discovered himself prostrate in the animal shed, but Kristie’s brother still hadn’t appeared, nor had anyone found any sign of him or Hendrie.
Creag’s haunting dreams visited him on a nightly basis, and he couldn’t shake the feeling they held secrets to his past. Knowing the distress both Kristie and Jean were in over the absence of Domnall, he visited the loch at the end of his long workday to do more than bathe the sweat and dirt from his skin.
He had avoided trying to change his form out of concern. He recalled the pleasure he’d experienced swimming through the loch, speeding after fish and having no responsibilities. It had been hard to go back to shore, but he had done so for Kristie. Now he would take to the loch to help search for her brother. Though Domnall’s return would surely mark his own departure, he wanted to do what he could to help bring him home.
Creag dropped his plaid on the rocks, then pulled free his tunic. He waded into the cold water, enjoying its feel against his skin. He dipped his head below the surface, and the world went silent. He thought back to his time spent as a seal, remembering his pointed nose, his whiskers, his powerful flippers as well as his sleek body.
That was all it took for the strange, charged sensation to revisit his pores. A flush of energy radiated from his torso out to his arms, legs and head. He felt the change take place and knew it was complete when his body rolled fluidly through the water.
A childlike excitement seized him, and he fought the urge to race through the current for the fun of it like he had last time. He reminded himself the reason he’d taken this form was to search for signs of wreckage, to help in the efforts to locate the lost men.
The sun was just touching the horizon. It wouldn’t be long before twilight would cover the land. He didn’t have much time, so Creag swam up the coast toward the inlet of the sea, stopping to lift his muzzle above water to search the shore. His eyesight was better underwater, yet he tried his best to seek the shape of a boat on land when he wasn’t swimming along the bottom of the loch.
Then he saw the darkened shape. He sped toward it, remembering his dreams. Maybe there was another like himself out in the waters, looking for him.
Creag recognized the form of the seal. Once it saw him, it began to swim away, but he tried to go faster. The animal wouldn’t slow down and moved farther and farther away and closer to the inlet of the sea. He raised his head, lifting himself up to breach the surface.
Though his vision was blurrier out of water, he could still make out the shapes of other seals lying out on the rocky crags in the distance. Creag stared at them for a while, unsure what to do. The sun was going down, and the women would be expecting him. He told himself that if the seals were truly selkies, they might not behave as animals, lying on rocks in plain sight. Maybe it was wha
t he told himself to feel better about choosing to return to shore.
Creag swam back to the beach where he’d shed his clothes and lunged onto the rocks. His body was now a heavy burden. He looked over his shoulder at the shiny surface of the darkening loch. It called him to return, to hold him forever, but he wouldn’t concede.
Something in his chest pulled him back to this place as if he were tethered by a string. He was not fond of the hard work Kristie laid at his feet, nor the permanency of living in one place without the confidence of knowing his past. Yet he could not leave.
His pores prickled and stung, leaving him in his human form on the wet, cold rocks. Creag pushed himself up with his arms to rise once again to his feet. He slicked his hair from his face, clearing the water from his eyes and dressed himself to return home.
When he arrived back at the byre, Kristie was waiting for him. “Off bathing again? Ye will be the cleanest one at church tomorrow.”
“Will I?” he asked.
“Best rise early so we can be off with the cart loaded. I wish to return home by nightfall. Jean appears to be well enough to move about, and I dinnae want to delay in delivering Eoghan to the priest, lest he fall ill.”
Creag rested his hand against the frame of the open threshold, which seemed to distract Kristie, who frowned up at the roof. “It is not sagging like it was. Did ye do something to it?”
“Oh, aye.” He patted the new wooden beam he’d propped beneath the outer corner of the byre. “It needed a bit more support, so I gave it some. Though I imagine it be time to build a new home for ye. Looks like it took a pounding last winter.”
Kristie’s frown only deepened, and she sighed. “Domnall built it anew four summers ago when he married Jean, though I was down south at the time, making a house of my own with Duncan.”
She fell silent. Creag didn’t know what to say in return. He left her to her thoughts and turned out of the smelly, dark confines of the byre and walked away.
He found the meal she’d left for him and ate it slowly under the evening sky. The ponies nickered from inside the animal shed. He felt their eyes on him as he finished his food. The moon was near its fullest, and it shined silvery light down on the land below.
Creag pulled out a small piece of wood from his hiding spot. The glint of a blade flickered as he worked away.
Kristie helped Jean to her feet so she could get her into her blue tunic dress. She hadn’t worn the long tunic since Eoghan had been born since she’d kept to her bed. Kristie wrapped Jean’s waist with a belt and fastened it loosely, so as not to give her discomfort. Then she draped a colorful red-and-white plaid around her sister-in-law’s shoulders.
The bairn lay cooing in the bedstraw as his mother prepared to leave. She’d just fed the lad, and he was beginning to look sleepy. Kristie glanced down at him and felt a pang in her heart.
It was agony hearing his noises, smelling his smells and seeing him clutched so lovingly in his mother’s arms. His birth brought memories of Seonaid that Kristie hadn’t been prepared for. She had worked so hard over the last year to push on, trying to forget the pain of her child’s death. It made her feel weak, letting it pull her down into such sadness. After all, she wasn’t the first mother to lose a child so young. It was the state of the world.
“There now,” she muttered to Jean. “Are ye prepared to get jostled about in the cart all morning?”
“Aye,” was her sister-in-law’s response.
Eoghan’s arrival hadn’t only affected Kristie. Jean hadn’t spoken a word about Domnall in over a week, and Kristie knew why. When she’d come to live with her brother following her husband’s death, she hadn’t spoken of him much. If she didn’t acknowledge what had happened, she couldn’t acknowledge how frightened she was being left alone. It was how she’d pushed on until Seonaid’s arrival. Her wee bairn was what had brought her out of the gloom. But that had lasted a mere six months.
Kristie collected a sack of grain and pressed it to her hip for payment of the sacrament while Jean leaned down to collect the sleepy little lad and wrap him amongst the folds of her plaid. The sound of movement outside met their ears as they opened the door and stepped from the smoky home.
Kristie hadn’t asked him to do it, but Creag had hooked up the ponies to the two-wheeled cart. She looked at him standing beside the nags, thankful for his help. Jean cast a sidelong glance her way before walking to the back of the cart. Creag offered his hand to help her sit in the back. Her feet dangled off the back ledge, but she seemed content enough sitting on a tuft of straw and nuzzling Eoghan’s little hand to her cheek.
Kristie joined them at the cart and nestled the bag of grain beside Jean before lifting the skirt of her dress out of the way to climb up to the front perch. Creag pulled himself up to sit on the other side of the narrow bench seat. He gathered the reins in his hands and offered them to Kristie, who took them in silence and snapped them, sending the ponies forward.
They jostled over the uneven ground of the field, and Kristie couldn’t help but worry about the chores that she hadn’t gotten to yet.
“What ye fretting about now?” Creag asked beside her. “Yer brow’s wrinkling up like a pair of sagging leather boots.”
She frowned at him and returned her gaze to the direction they were headed. “My chores, but now I get to fret about my face looking like sagging leather boots, thanks to ye.”
He snickered in response. “Yer face dinnae look like sagging leather, it be yer skin.”
“Oh, thanks for clarifyin’, for that makes me feel so much better. Ye sure ye dinnae want to stay on the land to get some chores done instead of having to look at my skin for the rest of the day?”
She didn’t know why she was allowing him to get her in a bad mood. Her husband was dead and buried. She had no need for vanity any longer. The days of her youth were gone. She didn’t have the skin of Moira or anyone else seven years her junior.
“Ye be taking it the wrong way,” he muttered. “I just mean that a bonnie lass like ye would benefit from trying on a smile instead of wearing the weight of the world on ye shoulders.”
“I will smile if I feel like it.” Kristie scowled. “Once that weight be lifted, I just might, but I dinnae see that happening until I join my kin in heaven.”
She felt him turn to look at her. His eyes bore into the side of her head, as she was unwilling to return his gaze. “I apologize—ye should do what ye wish, to be sure. But living is not all that bad, is it?”
Kristie was aware they weren’t alone. She didn’t often speak like this aloud and didn’t want her sister-in-law to hear. She glanced over her shoulder at Jean, whose head had dropped back and was bobbing around in sleep.
Kristie muttered, “It be the loneliness that bites at my soul.”
From beside her, Creag pointed to her hand and the silver ring that had been returned to her finger. “Ye loved him, did ye?”
“Aye, in our kind of way,” she answered. “We cared for each other like ye cannae help but do when ye rely on each other. He was good to me—a strong man who fought and died for his clan and country. No better sort than that.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“But it was not what tales of love are fashioned after—fables they are.”
He looked up at the tree boughs they were passing beneath. Clouds scattered the skies, and the sun was fighting to reach the contours of the earth. The winds were stilled by the break of the grove, so midges swarmed in a gray cloud where they wouldn’t get swept away. They waved them from their faces, and Kristie snapped the reins to coax the ponies to go faster.
“Though I think it best to have the company of kin and clan, happiness should be sought in the little moments, despite yer lot in life. For not many go unscathed, even lords or chieftains. Why not find sport and play before being silenced by the grave?” He crossed his arms and looked at her.
She sighed. “While ye are busy playing like a wee child, my sort will be left doing what needs tending
so we dinnae starve.”
“A martyr, that be what ye are,” he answered with a smirk. “Yer happiness does nay have to be sacrificed so ye can eat. But I suppose we will be agreeing to disagree.”
“Aye, that we will.” She was relieved when he let their conversation end.
The rest of the morning went by in silence besides the bairn crying out for another nip of his mother’s milk. His request was silenced by Jean putting him to her breast, having since woken from her nap. Kristie was relieved to see the point of the kirk’s roof across the dale.
They weren’t the only ones to visit that day. She spotted what appeared to be Jock tossing a ball against the side of the church. When they pulled up near the building, Creag jumped down and went to join the lad. Creag smiled broadly, clearly pleased to see him.
Kristie helped Jean stand and swatted at the yellowed straw that clung to the back of her plaid. Then she picked up their tithe for the sacrament of baptism to be paid to the kirk.
The priest came out of the doorway of the church and hollered at the two playing their game. “The Lord cannae hear our prayers with that terrible racket!”
Jock and Creag grinned at each other before walking toward the building. Kristie wasn’t the only one to shoot the two warning glares. Eileanor spun around in her seat inside the kirk to wave at the lad in clear agitation. Sacharie, Moira, and Rob took up a wooden pew, and when the young woman saw Creag, her eyes lit up, and her cheeks flushed.
Others from nearby territory along the coast and highlands by the loch had come to the kirk as was expected of them, but it also provided the opportunity to socialize and gossip about current news.
After mass and Eoghan’s baptism, Kristie stood outside and stared at the slope that held Seonaid’s grave. She hadn’t noticed Creag walk up beside her. “Do ye talk to her—yer daughter?”
Kristie shook her head. Doing such a thing would only remind her she was alone.
“I would like to believe we carry the departed with us in our hearts,” he said as he touched his breast. “They listen when we speak—if ye would like to have a visit with yer daughter before we go, we can surely wait.”
Outsider (Time of Myths: Shapeshifter Sagas Book 4) Page 10
