The Kelpie's Pearls

by Mollie Hunter

  Then she went back to the house and looked all round her. There was not a pin out of place or a speck of dust to be seen and she loved her little house so much that she felt her heart would break to leave it. The kelpie was right, she knew, about what would happen, and she believed she would find Tir-nan-Og as he had described it to her. But still the time of parting lay heavy on her and the ache of it was bitter in her heart.

  'I will leave the door open,' she said aloud, 'so that I can walk straight in at the open door of my house when I reach Tir-nan-Og.'

  She went outside leaving the door open behind her and the polished knob of the door-latch winked goodbye to her. Then she went down to the pool to find the kelpie.

  He was waiting there for her beside the pool—a great, strong, black horse with shoulders like polished ebony and the water still streaming from his tail and mane. Morag stood and looked at him for a long moment. The great horse looked at her, and it never moved.

  'Will you trust me?' he had asked her the evening before, and she had trusted him then. She trusted him now, and so she walked towards him. She grasped his mane, and still the black horse never moved. She stood on a stone beside him, swung herself on to his back, and the black horse moved.

  Morag closed her eyes and held her breath. Now was the kelpie's chance. Now, if he wanted to drown her, all he had to do was to plunge into his pool and carry her down with him to his home at the bottom of the water.

  The black horse moved towards the pool. She felt the gathering together of the great limbs, the bunching of the powerful muscles. Then the kelpie leapt, and with one soaring bound it was over the pool and galloping westwards across the hill in great leaping strides. Morag opened her eyes and looked straight ahead as she rode, and though the tears of parting ran down her cheeks like rain she did not once look back at her little house, for the memory of it was so clearly imprinted on her heart that she knew she was sure to see it again, exactly as she had left it, when she reached Tir-nan-Og.

  * * *

  No mortal ear could have heard the kelpie passing through the night for the great black hooves of it were soundless in their stride as feathers falling. But two people were awake to see it bearing Morag away, and these two were Torquil and the Woman.

  In the croft at the foot of the hill, Torquil sat sleepless on the edge of his bed. The door of his room opened quietly and the Woman's head peered round it. She saw him sitting there and came quickly in, the lighted candle in her hand making her shadow leap up big and dark on the wall behind her.

  'Get to bed, boy!' she said sharply.

  'I cannot sleep,' he said, and the sadness in his voice shamed her for she knew well it was concern for Morag that was troubling him.

  'It is the storm that is making you feel restless,' she said more kindly.

  She put down her candle-stick and went to the window, but as her hand went up to draw the curtains against the storm she gave a great cry that brought Torquil running to her side.

  'Look there!' she cried. 'Do you see her? It is Morag MacLeod the old witch-woman riding by on a great black horse!'

  Torquil peered through the glass and then he said something that caused the Woman to draw back sharply and stare at him.

  'You must have a fever, boy,' she said.

  'I have no fever,' Torquil replied, and he told the Woman again what he had seen.

  The Woman touched her hand to his brow and when she felt it was quite cool she backed away from him with a frightened look on her face. 'No, you have no fever, your brow is cool,' she muttered. She picked up her candle-stick. 'You are bewitched!' she cried.

  She fled from the room and the sound of her voice wailing 'Bewitched! Bewitched!' came echoing back to Torquil as he sat on alone in the dark with the vision of what he had seen in his mind, and the storm crying to him from outside the window.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Witch of Abriachan

  THE first people to reach Morag's house after she left it were two tall policemen who had been sent up from Inverness to investigate all the strange things that were said to be going on at Abriachan.

  They arrived at dawn the next morning, left their motor-cycles at the edge of the hill-road and took off their oilskin capes—for the storm had stopped exactly as it had been said in the spell, at dawn on the fourth morning after it was cast. They tramped across the heather in the bright morning sunshine to Morag's house and found the door standing wide open and the house deserted.

  'She'll turn up. She wouldn't go away and leave everything just like that,' said the one who was the sergeant.

  They waited for a while to see if she would come, but when an hour had passed and there was still no sign of her the sergeant went back to Inverness and left the constable on guard at the house.

  Torquil saw the policeman standing at the front door as he came running across the hill-side a little later on that morning. The sergeant had already passed him going down the road on his motor-cycle and he ran up to the house with his heart full of fear for what he might find there.

  'Where is Mistress MacLeod? Have you seen her?' he cried out to the constable.

  'Neither hide nor hair of her,' the man said. 'The door was open when we came and she might be at the foot of Loch Ness for all we know.'

  Torquil thought of what he had seen in the hours of darkness and his heart went right down into his boots. To give himself time to think he said,

  'I'll feed my animals then. They're in the shed at the back.'

  'Oh, they're yours, are they?' said the policeman. 'Man, that's a proper zoo you have there!'

  Torquil hardly heard him he was so busy thinking of the meaning of what he had seen. He went into the shed and straight to Polar's cage for he could always think better with Polar curled round his neck. As soon as he touched the straw he felt Morag's note. He drew it out and went to the door of the shed to read it. There were only a few lines in it.

  I understand now the sorrow that was in your heart for me, and so I am going with the kelpie to a far-off land where none may follow. This is to take my leave of you and to tell you that if you use wisely the great gift you have, neither this sorrow nor any other will walk at your side for long. Do not grieve for me then, for the place I go to now is the land of heart's desire, and there I shall be young and happy and at peace for ever.

  Torquil folded the note and for a long time he stood at the door of the shed looking at the bright morning outside. Every leaf and blade on the hill-side glistened with the jewels of rain the storm had scattered. Larks sprang singing from the heather into the eye of the sun and in the kelpie's pool the little burn-trout leaping at the morning hatch of flies were like silver darts flicking in and out of the golden-brown water. But Torquil saw and heard nothing of it all for his mind was black and blind with grief for the passing of Morag and for the death of his dream-world.

  There was one ray of comfort for him. At least now he knew what had happened to her and he understood the meaning of the strange thing he had seen in the hours of darkness. And he knew now, also, that he was not bewitched as the Woman had said. His sight had been clearer than hers, that was all, clear enough—as Morag's letter proved—to have seen her as she really was when she vanished with the kelpie.

  It was the thought of the Woman that drove him on now and shook him from the grip of his grief. There was no time to be lost if he was to save his animals and so he bolted the shed door and set off at a run for the Naturalist's house at Kiltarlity. As he ran he made up his mind that where his animals went this time, he would go, and by the time he arrived everything was sorted out in his mind. He poured the whole story out without stopping to draw breath.

  'I can take up the training you spoke about now, sir,' he finished. 'She'll not want to have me at the croft now. She'd be afraid to have me in the house and her thinking Mistress MacLeod has bewitched me.'

  'We'll see,' the Naturalist said. 'If she doesn't want you it's the way out we've been looking for.'

  That was all he s
aid for he was far too wise a man to question Torquil about his story. The way he looked at it, Torquil might well be talking a lot of nonsense about Morag, but even if it was nonsense—well, at least he was an honest boy and would be honestly mistaken in what he said. He hustled him into his jeep and the pair of them bumped off back up the hill and down the other side to the Woman's croft, and there things turned out just as Torquil had said they would.

  'Take him and welcome,' she told the Naturalist. 'He is my own brother's sister-in-law's son, but kin of mine though he is I'll not have a boy with the evil eye on him in my house a day longer than I can help.'

  'Evil fiddlesticks!' the Naturalist snorted into his beard. 'Come on, Torquil, we'll get your animals now.'

  And up the hill they went again to Morag's house. The policeman there was having a terrible job keeping the sightseers away and answering all their questions, but the Naturalist was such a well-known and respected man that he made no objections to him shifting the animals out of the shed. He watched the jeep with Torquil and the Naturalist and all the animals in it rattling off and thought it was one problem solved anyway, and he wondered what he should do if Morag herself did not appear by the end of the day.

  By nightfall when there was still no sign of her and all the curious crowds had gone, he decided there was nothing for it but to lock the door of the house and go back to the police station at Inverness to report.

  'Something must have happened to her,' they decided there, and soon they had search parties out all over the hill with sticks and torches and walkie-talkie sets. They saw no sign of Morag of course, but they did find someone. And that someone was Alasdair the Trapper lying unconscious at the side of the burn.

  As usual, Alasdair had only himself to blame for his misfortunes. He had come up the hill on the heels of the two policemen that morning and waited all day beside the burn till the second of them had left Morag's house. Then he had opened up his game-bag and taken out the dynamite, and just as he had threatened to do he had blown the kelpie's pool sky-high.

  The noise of the explosion echoed all over the hillside rousing people from their beds and bringing them running across the hill to Morag's house. And the first man who got there swore that a great black horse had passed him on the road, running like the wind.

  'He was the biggest horse that ever I saw in my life,' said the man, 'and a skin on him as black as the inside of a chimney.'

  'There's no horse like that hereabouts,' said the other men.

  'Nor ever will be,' said the first man, 'for big as he was and fast as he ran his hooves never made a sound on the road. And no natural horse that was ever foaled can run without a sound!'

  He looked round at all the other men. 'It was the kelpie I saw,' he said.

  No one said yes and no one said no to this. They looked down at Alasdair lying all wet and battered and bruised among the scattered rocks and mud of the burn, and they saw that the great ugly bruise on his forehead was the exact shape of the hoof of a horse.

  Just then, one of the police search parties came across the hill and when they found what had happened they took Alasdair back to Inverness with them. The crofters were left shaking their heads over me whole business and wondering what on earth it was all about till one of them spied something white gleaming in the mud. He picked it up.

  'Look!' said he. 'A pearl!'

  Everyone crowded round to look. Then they looked at one another and the same thought was in all their minds. 'Where there's one pearl there may be more!' But none of them wanted his neighbour to know what he was thinking and so they all said good night and scattered to their homes.

  The next day you might have seen people poking around in the grass and the mud where Alasdair had blown up the burn, but none of them said what he was looking for and none of them found any pearls. The only unusual thing to be seen was a set of horse's hoof-prints and these, it was noticed, did not lead down to the burn as they would have done if they had been made by a horse going there to drink. Instead, they pointed outwards—from the bed of the burn towards the bank!

  As was only to be expected this put a certain fear into the crofters. The search for the pearls was quickly given up once the hoof-prints were noticed. No one dared to go back again to look for them and so a proper search has never been made, and for all anyone knows, they may still be lying there scattered among the mud and stones thrown up by the explosion.

  As for Alasdair the Trapper, he got three months in jail for the unlawful use of explosives! The bruise on his forehead faded in time but it has never quite vanished, and any crofter who meets him on the hill-side nowadays 'makes horns' in his direction for fear of the mark shaped like a horse's hoof that he carries on the middle of his forehead.

  Alasdair is a sadder and a wiser man now. Never again has he been heard to call himself a modern man that does not believe such nonsense as kelpies, and he would not thank you for a million pearls supposing they were to be set and strung by the finest jeweller in the land.

  And Morag herself? The police search parties never found her, of course, though they searched every inch of the hill-side for days after she disappeared. They questioned everybody who lived at Abriachan as well, but they could not find anyone, apart from Torquil and the Woman, who had seen her on the night she disappeared.

  A sergeant and an inspector came to the Woman's house one day and the inspector asked questions while the sergeant wrote down the answers.

  'Tell us exactly what you saw that night,' the inspector began.

  'I saw Morag MacLeod riding by my house on a great black horse,' the Woman told him.

  'Which direction was she headed in?' he asked and she said, 'West.'

  'And did anyone else in the house see her?' the inspector went on.

  'Aye, the boy Torquil MacVinish that's living with the Naturalist over Kiltarlity way now, but you'll not get much sense out of him,' the Woman said sourly.

  'There's nothing else you can think of to give us a clue, is there?' the inspector asked. 'Anything strange about her appearance, for instance?'

  The Woman wasn't at all keen to answer this question but the inspector pressed her and at last she said, 'Well, there was a strange thing. I could see her clear, you understand, because she passed close to the house and—well, she was weeping!' And then, because she was kind enough under her rough manner, the Woman added, 'I've felt sorry for the old woman since when I thought about it, for she was weeping sore, poor soul, as if she had a great sorrow to bear.'

  Well, the sergeant wrote all this down. Then he and the inspector went over to Kiltarlity and the inspector told Torquil what the Woman had said and asked him did he see Morag too and where was she going and so. Torquil looked at the Naturalist standing listening to all this and he said,

  'They'll never believe me if I tell them what I saw.'

  'That's neither here nor there,' the Naturalist said. 'Tell the truth, boy, and shame the devil.'

  And so Torquil turned to the inspector and he said, 'I saw Mistress MacLeod ride by on a black horse that night, and true enough it was west she was going. But she was not an old woman when I saw her, and she was not weeping. She was young again, just like she was when she had her picture painted in a white dress with her long gold hair hanging down her back, and she was looking towards a great light that shone out of the west and I could see that her face was glad and shining as she rode towards it.'

  The policemen looked at one another over Torquil's head, smiling a little. The sergeant closed his notebook without writing down a word and when they got outside again he said to the inspector,

  'Can you beat that for a story?'

  'Aye, he has a wild imagination, sure enough,' agreed the inspector, and that was the end of it so far as they were concerned.

  There were one or two stories in the newspapers after that about the mystery of Morag's disappearance but when nothing further happened they soon found other things to write about. But on the hill, the argument still raged.


  She was a witch that was in league with the kelpie, said some, and some said that she was just a poor old woman that had been carried off by the kelpie. 'How could she be a witch,' they asked, 'when she was weeping as she rode?'

  This was quite a point of course, for it is quite true that witches cannot weep, and so it has never been proved to this day whether or not Morag MacLeod, the Witch of Abriachan, really was a witch.

  The story that Torquil had told the policemen became known after a time, of course, but it was all put down to his imagination. Indeed, there were times in his new life with the Naturalist when the memory of his time with Morag grew so faint that Torquil himself thought he must have imagined it all. When he thought like that, however, he had only to touch his little cross of rowan wood to step back through the secret door of the dream-world where he could smell the sharp, sweet scent of white roses, taste royal crowdie on his tongue again, and feel the spell of stories told by a bright fire on a winter's evening.

  But it was only for a moment that he could ever recapture this feeling, and this was just as well for Torquil, for a moment of longing for a world that has vanished is as much as anyone can bear.

  As time went by, then, everybody found their own explanation for the events on the hill that summer, and it was only when they remembered the pearl that had been found the night the Trapper dynamited the kelpie's pool that they realized there were pieces missing from the puzzle and wondered what was the true explanation that lay behind it all.

  Well, they will know now if they read this, and anyone who cares can go up the hill to Abriachan and see Morag's house still standing there. The burn no longer flows past it for Alasdair's dynamiting changed its course, and the house itself is breaking down as houses do that are not lived in. But the walls of clay and straw are still strong and so is the roof of pine-boughs and heather.

  And far below the house you can still see Loch Ness glinting in the valley as Morag used to see it every day before she rode off with the kelpie, and as maybe she still sees it, blue and shining in Tir-nan-Og.