by Moira Miller
“Follow him, quickly,” she bellowed. “See where he goes!”
The strange little creature tore up the hillside behind the cottage leaving a trail of blankets and a path scorched through the heather. Hamish and Mirren raced after him, with the old lady puffing up behind them, still clutching the jar of jelly and grumbling to herself.
“If that daft beggar had just listened to me and made the bairn a cradle of rowan wood in the first place…”
Up the hillside they raced. Up through the trees, across the shoulder of the Ben, and down into the Fairy Glen where the heather grew thickest and even in the hardest winters the snow melted first. Hamish raced on, following the fairy bairn to a green, grassy mound at the head of the glen. The creature, skirling and shrieking, burrowed into the long grass, with Hamish all set to follow after him.
“Stop there!” yelled his mother. “Have you no sense at all? Listen!”
They stood, panting and breathless, and gradually, as their pounding hearts stilled, the sounds of the glen came to them. The birds were quiet, as if singing in a whisper. The wind through the bracken was soft and above it came another sound, far beneath their feet, deep in the earth. It was the sound of tiny voices arguing, and above them all, the howling, hungry cry of the noisiest baby in Camusbuie.
“It’s Torquil,” shouted Mirren gleefully.
“Aye,” said the old lady. “And I think they’ve stolen more than they bargained for this time.”
The hungry howls grew even louder, the argument more furious, as she marched boldly up to the grassy mound and tapped with her little silver spoon on a stone as if it had been a boiled egg. The voices stopped instantly.
“You thought to steal away my grandson, did you? I hope you’re pleased with him,” she shouted. The tiny voices wailed in misery above the baby’s howling.
“Please! Please! Please take him away!” they moaned.
“Aye, well I might…” said the old lady. Hamish opened his mouth, but she held up her hand to silence him. “I might just take him away again. On one condition.”
“Anything. Anything at all,” the fairy voices wailed.
“I’ll take him if you will promise my wee grandson the Fairy Hansel — the Wee Folks’ gift to a new bairn. Grant him your help whenever he calls on you throughout his life – and we’ll say no more about it.”
Mirren gasped: “The Fairy Hansel! They only give that to the son or daughter of a king.”
“And why shouldn’t our Torquil have it? He’s as fine as any king’s bairn, I’m sure.” The old lady raised her voice and shouted again. “Do you hear me? What do you say?”
Wee Torquil certainly heard her, and bawled louder than ever.
“Anything! Anything you wish. Only take him. Please take him, and with him the Fairy Hansel.”
As the voices died away, the glen whirled around them, the air was filled with a strange whistling music, which faded as the baby’s howls grew even louder.
“Torquil!” shouted Mirren, recovering first. Lying at their feet, still wrapped in his knitted shawl, with his little face quite scarlet beneath the ginger curls, lay Torquil. Hamish lifted him gently, and the old lady slipped a spoonful of rowan jelly into his yelling mouth.
“Well, look at that,” said Mirren. “He’s smiling at us.”
“Aye, and no thanks to his stupid big father,” sniffed the old lady, following them down the Glen, back to the farmhouse. “If you had just listened to me and made the bairn a cradle of rowan wood in the first place…”
But neither Hamish, Mirren nor wee Torquil, sound asleep in his mother’s arms, were listening to her.
8.
Hamish and the Seal People
Hamish had taken a day away from the farm, and gone fishing. He pushed his wee boat down the rocky beach into the water. Then, rowing out to the mouth of the loch, where the brown hill water met the green sea, he cast his lines and waited. But never a fish did he catch.
Not one.
Through that long hot day the sun glittered on the sea, melting the wind-ripples into a sheet of glass. Hamish baited hook after hook, dropped them over the side and lay back in the sunshine to wait. At last, as the sun was sliding towards the headland in the west he sat up and yawned.
“Ach, it’s no use, the fishes must have all gone on their holidays. Time I was away home for my tea.” Slowly, he hauled up the line, hand over hand. Suddenly there was a tug, and the boat rocked violently.
“Mercy on us, whatever have we got here? It must be a whale, I’m thinking.”
He yanked the line hard. It tugged back, pulling him against the side of the boat. For five long minutes he rolled backward and forward, as the sea creature caught on his hook gradually became weaker and weaker.
Hamish gave one last mighty heave – and the line broke.
“Ouch!” He sat down hard in the bottom of the boat, then struggled to his knees in time to see a long, dark, gleaming shape turn and twist in the water. A trail of silver bubbles floated to the surface as it vanished.
“Well, I never,” he gasped, picking himself up. “That was a real monster I’ve lost, and my hook as well. No fish for dinner tonight, I doubt.” He settled himself in the boat, fitted the oars in the rowlocks and pulled for the head of the loch and home.
“Help! Help me, fisherman!”
Hamish turned at a shout from the beach. On the sand bar by the mouth of the loch, shadowy against the setting sun, stood a short square man. The golden light gleamed on his thick black hair and on the soft fur jerkin he wore. He was small, but powerful, and his face was brown from the sun. Hamish hesitated. But the man demanded help and, stranger or not, he must be given it.
“You must help me, fisherman,” the man called again. His voice was soft, but strangely commanding.
Hamish found himself pulling the boat towards the beach. Unable to resist, he climbed out and pulled it up on to the sand. The man’s eyes, watching him, were dark and deep as the ocean.
“Fisherman,” he said softly. “You have hurt my brother this day. He is mortally wounded, and you alone can help him.”
“Your brother?” Hamish was astonished. “I would hurt nobody. I am a peaceful man.”
“That is as may be. But nonetheless he is hurt, and by your hand.”
“But I have been fishing,” protested Hamish. “And saw no man all this long day.”
“No man of your race, perhaps. But you cast your line into our kingdom, without thought or care, and now my brother is hurt sore. You must come to him.”
The dark man took Hamish by the hand, and led him down the beach towards the edge of the sea. Unable to pull back from the cold strong grip, Hamish shook his head in horror as he found himself dragged into the water.
“No! No, I cannot go with you. I must not.”
The man smiled, his grip stronger than ever.
“Keep by my side, fisherman, and you will come to no harm.” Wading deeper and deeper towards the gold path of the sinking sun, he led Hamish on until the dark water closed over their heads. Only the otters playing on the wet sand saw their last footprints covered by the lapping waves. Only the herring gull, swooping high above, saw their hair, tawny as seaweed, vanish beneath the waves.
***
Hamish gasped, fighting for breath in the cold water, and then opened his eyes in astonishment. He had swum in the sea often enough before, but this was different. In the enchanted grasp of the Seal Man he felt himself floating, flying almost, in a cool green world where he could see and breathe. Deeper and deeper they twisted and turned. Hamish held tightly to the cold hand in his and allowed himself to be drawn towards the far-off glimmering green-silver of the sandy sea bed. Shoals of tiny fish drifted around them, like a shower of raindrops in sunlight. Instantly, as if to a silent command, they darted off, all turning together towards a mound of seaweed-covered rock far beneath.
Around the rock, waving fronds of weed reached out as if blown in a gentle breeze. The Seal Man parted them, uncove
ring the entrance to a dark cave, and drew Hamish in.
In the shifting, flickering light, they were surrounded by black shapes who came and went silently. Hamish turned back, to find that they followed close behind them, blocking the way out of the cave, and still the Seal Man drew him on, gliding through the green water.
“You will come to no harm,” he said. “So long as you are with me.”
They swam through twisting passageways until Hamish had lost all sense of direction, and came at last to a small chamber, so round and perfect it seemed to have been cut from the rock. A weird shimmering light glowed from an open shell in which lay a pearl, the like of which Hamish had never seen before.
“Man,” he gasped. “It’s the size of a potato, yon thing!”
“Hush, fisherman,” whispered the Seal Man. “We have come to my brother.”
In the centre of the sandy floor of the cave stood a large flat stone. It was draped with a soft cloak, the edges of which waved in the gently shifting currents, like a living thing. On the cloak there lay a dark figure, as still as death.
“Our chieftain,” said the man. “And my brother. Please, I beg you, help him.”
Hamish crept closer. The man’s thick dark hair floated around his face. On his right arm the shirt was torn, slashed and bloodstained where a fishing hook had been pulled deep into the flesh.
“It is your hook and it is iron,” said the man by his side. “To us it means certain death and we may not touch it. Only a human may free him.” He held out a small knife, the blade made of pink seashell.
Around them the dark shadowy figures came closer. As the Seal People gathered about the bed of their chieftain, Hamish could see that they were men and women, old and young, all with the glossy dark hair and eyes of the man by his side.
He knew their stories well enough. From childhood he had heard his mother tell them so often. Like the Wee Folk, they were of the old enchanted world before the Age of Iron, and that metal spelt death to their charmed lives.
“I see now how I have done your brother harm,” he said, understanding at last.
Taking the shell knife, he slit the man’s sleeve. Slowly and carefully, he cut the hook from the torn flesh, while the others watched. Then he took from his pocket a little pot of salve, which he always carried.
“This is prepared by my mother,” he said. “And will cure most ills. It is made of seaweed from the shore and self-heal from the hillside.” Gently he rubbed the salve into the wound, and bound it with a frond of the healing seaweed.
“I have done what I can,” he said. “Now I must return home, for Mirren and my mother will surely be afraid for me, should they find my boat empty on the beach, and my little son will miss his father.”
But the man who had brought him shook his head, for his brother lay unmoving, with his eyes closed.
“No, fisherman, you may not leave without my help and I must be sure that my brother is well. We must wait.” He turned from Hamish and crouched by his brother’s side.
Hamish sighed and joined him as the dark figures shifted closer.
***
Through long hours they waited and watched in the pale light. Around them the Seal People sang softly, a wordless song that rose and fell in his ears like the music of the sea, until, gradually, Hamish fell asleep.
He woke suddenly, at a cry from the man who had fetched him.
“He is awake! My brother is awake, fisherman.”
Stumbling to his feet in a sleep daze, Hamish saw that the man on the rock lay with his eyes open, watching them.
“Fisherman,” he whispered, “I have much to blame, but more to thank you for.” Hamish, speechless, shook his head. The man smiled.
“I know of you, fisherman,” he said. “We have watched you, my people and I. I know that you would hurt no creature willingly. Return now, with my brother, to your own people. But, beware, and heed my warning. Cast no more hooks of iron where my people swim and we may live together peaceably.”
“You have my word and my hand on that,” said Hamish. “From this time on I will take heed and watch out for you and your people.”
As he reached out to grip the cold hand of the chieftain there came a rushing in his ears. Tossed like a cork in a whirlpool, Hamish found himself struggling in the water, as if he had fallen from the boat. He kicked out and swam alone up towards the light.
As he waded from the sea, the sun still hung, a half-sunk ball of golden fire, spreading its path across the water towards him.
The tide still lapped around his footprints, vanishing into the water from the wet sand. Of the other man’s footprints there was no sign.
His little boat lay drawn up on the beach, just as he had left it, and far up the loch, in the blue dusk, Mirren had placed a light in the window of the wee farmhouse.
Hamish blinked and shook his head, looking down at his clothes. They were dry as the dusty summer fields.
“I doubt but I must have been out in the sun too long and fallen asleep,” he said, scratching his head. “A strange dream that was! Time I was home to Mirren right enough.”
He turned then to push the boat back into the water and found that in his hand he still held the little shell knife of the Seal People, while at his feet lay three fine plump silver mackerel, a gift from the sea.
9.
Hamish and the Bogle
Everyone was talking down in Camusbuie. Heads nodded and tongues wagged – but always in whispers.
“Did you ever hear the like of it?” said Wee Maggie to the crowd in the village shop.
“Hear it? Hear it, did you say?” Andy the postman looked around the other customers who stood with their eyes goggling. “Did I not see it for myself?”
“Never!”
“Tell us aboot it.”
“What was it like? Did it have huge flashing eyes like they say?”
“And a wail that turned your blood to ice?”
“Were you not – terrrrified?”
“W-e-e-e-e-ll,” said Andy. “I didna’ like it much. It takes a brave man to face a thing like yon. I’ll tell you, this was the way of it…” They gathered round in fascinated horror as he lowered his voice.
“I was coming home late the other night, round the road by the shore – past the ruined cottage…”
Hamish, who had gone into Camusbuie to do some shopping for Mirren, stopped to listen with the others. It seemed that Andy had been walking home alone in the dark, when suddenly, passing the cottage, he heard a noise behind him:
“Hoooo-hoooo! Hoooooo-eeeeech! O-o-o-o-o-h!”
“It was bloodcurdling right enough,” whispered Andy. “And when I looked round, there was the ghost – a great white bogle, wailing and moaning…”
“Aaaaaaah!” They were pop-eyed with excitement in the shop.
“…flitting in and out among the trees by the old ruined cottage. I stopped to get a better look at him and, guess what – he vanished clean through the wall.”
“Mercy on us, Andy,” gasped Wee Maggie behind the counter. “That’s enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies.”
Andy was not the only person to have seen the bogle. There were others in the village who had seen it, and heard it, too. Indeed, it was getting so bad that nobody would go out after dark at all for fear of meeting the ghost.
***
That evening, Hamish told Mirren and his mother the story.
“Och, hoots and havers!” said his mother. “Ghosts and bogles indeed. There’s some folk would be daft enough to believe anything.”
“But I thought you believed in ghosts and Wee Folk,” said Mirren.
“Wee Folk, yes. Anyone with half a brain kens aboot them. But bogles? I’ve never heard such clishmaclavers. They’ll have forgotten about it in a week. You mark my words.”
But the bogle was not forgotten about so easily. And the stories went on until at last Hamish felt he had to find out the truth for himself.
***
One night, after Mirr
en and his mother had gone to bed, and wee Torquil was sound asleep in his cradle, Hamish crept out of bed. He tiptoed out of the house in his socks and pulled the door shut behind him. Then he put his boots on and marched off down the road to the ruined cottage.
It was a still black night with not a breath of wind. The moon was a thin slice of silver, and even the stars seemed dull and misty. The only sounds were the soft pad-pad of Hamish’s feet on the road and the swish of the grass as he passed.
He walked faster and faster. In the darkness the trees and bushes that he knew so well seemed to change shape and to move around him. Hamish was nervous and almost running as he came to the bend in the road that led towards the shore and the old, roofless, ruined cottage. Hunched and black, the empty chimney pointed like a finger to the clouds drifting across the moon.
He held his breath and listened to the silence. There was nothing.
Nothing but his own heart beating softly: Putta-putta-putta. Nothing.
Then suddenly from behind him there came a terrible noise:
Hoooooo-hooooo! Hoooooo-eeeeeech! O-o-o-o-o-h!
Hamish whirled round in time to see a huge white shape flitting through the trees by the cottage. He stepped back and swallowed hard. It was now or never.
“Aye,” he said, lifting his cap. “It’s a fine night for a walk.”
“Hooooooooo — eh?” The white shape stopped whirling and flopped to a halt in front of him. Hamish stepped back and smiled bravely.
“I said it’s a fine night for a walk. And get on, you daft big bogle. I’m no’ feared for you.”
The bogle suddenly shot straight backwards, clear through the wall of the cottage, and then trickled back again, like steam from a kettle spout.
“Here, that’s a right clever trick,” said Hamish. “You’re no’ such a daft big bogle after all. Go on. Let’s see you do it again.”
The bogle whirled back to the wall, gathering itself up into a ball of mist. But then instead of going through, it bounced off and fell – flump – like a large untidy bundle of washing, into a clump of nettles.
