Page 16 of The Moorwitch
In the coach once more, Lachlan sits across from me and shakes his head.
“Mortals,” he mutters. “I do believe you just swindled me out of a small fortune. You couldn’t possibly need atenthof what you bought to complete my favor.”
With him, even string comes with strings attached.
“What now?” I ask.
He stares out the window, his gaze a thousand leagues away.
“Now,” he murmurs, “we go to Scotland.”
Chapter Five
Three days later, after spending far too much time cramped in a coach with nothing to do but embroider spells, I find myself on the moors of Scotland, a north wind dragging at my hair. Before me slumps the ruined remains of some ancient castle, green with moss. The road ends here, a narrow track overgrown with weeds. Lachlan’s procession of coaches, carts, and wagons is still trickling in, and fae emerge from them blinking and stretching and shaking themselves. I am the only mortal in the company, a fact I have felt keenly every moment, like a mouse among wolves.
With the exception of the castle, the landscape is empty to the horizon. A few stalwart copses of yew and ash twist here and there, but by and large, all is dismal gray. Snow spreads in a scant layer, broken by jagged twists of heather and grass that bristle over the hills.
“The last functioning doorway to the world of the fae is ...here, in the middle of all this nothing?” I ask.
Lachlan’s whisper in my ear makes me jump; I had not heard him step close. “Only a fool looks at this place and sees nothing. You are no fool. Look again.”
I sigh at him, but when he walks away, I squint and study the ruins.
The castle is in dreadful condition, a remnant of the Middle Ages, scored by age and weather. Stone walls sag and crack, and moss has so overgrown it that entire portions have been swallowed entirely, giving the structure the appearance of a ship sinking into the mire. On thenorthern wall of what must have once been the great main chamber, the outlines of arched windows remain. Everything is soaked through; rain battered our line of coaches the length of the journey from London, and I’d been looking forward to a bit of warmth and dryness. No such luck, me. Even the stones squelch.
“Wait a moment ...” I go to the nearest wall and trace a pattern carved into the stone, so worn away by time only parts of it are still visible. But I recognize them all the same. “It’s knotwork.”
“Moorwitch knotwork,” says Lachlan. “This castle was built by the very first Weavers in Britain.”
“Oh,” I breathe, looking around with heightened interest. I think of a leather-bound book musty with age, its yellowed pages crinkling under my hands and whispering ancient, forbidden magic; a spell to summon immortals. The famous moorwitches’ power exceeded anything the Order of the Moirai can Weave nowadays, if the old stories are true. It was the moorwitches who repelled the Romans in their first invasion, and after them, the fierce Norsemen. But not long later, they vanished entirely and without explanation, taking with them a wealth of Weaving knowledge and history. The Order rose to power after that, taking over all magical affairs, and the moorwitches faded into myth.
While I explore the place, noting more instances of old carved spells, Lachlan’s faerie troupe set about erecting canvas tents in the heart of the ruins. They abandoned their human glamours the second day into our journey, when we’d left behind the Great North Road with all its bustle and turned onto the narrow, overgrown track which had taken us through wilder and wilder countryside and eventually led us here.
Though they dress in human garb, the other fae are somehow less human than Lachlan, their ears more sharply pointed, their limbs longer and gaits more loping. They move as I’d imagine uprooted trees might, swaying a great deal. Their eyes are large and luminous like cats’ eyes, but nearly entirely blackened by their pupils. I think Lachlan is something different than they are, some other sort of faerie, but I cannot begin to imagine what. I haven’t yet worked up the nerve to ask.
“Where is the doorway to Elfhame?” I ask Lachlan. “I’ve searched the entire ruins and seen nothing.”
“If only it were as simple as that,” he says. “No, this is merely to be our camp for the next few weeks. Now come, and I will show you where the doorway stands.”
Well, a walk will do me good after three days cramped in a coach, squeezed between two fae who hissed whenever I fidgeted too much. Securing my threadkit over my shoulder and my new bonnet atop my head, I nod.
Lachlan leads me down a stone stair of dubious integrity and then out of the ruins altogether, past the boundary wall that’s half sunk into the mud and moss.
Soon I am panting. “Is it far, this thing you want to show me?”
“Why? Are your feeble human legs—?”
“Call mefeebleone more time, and I will walk back to London myself, vow be damned.”
He chuckles, which surprises me. It’s a human sound, and I wonder if it’s something he picked up in his centuries-long furlough in England. Or, rather, the “World Above,” as he calls it, often with a disdainful curl of his lip.
Lachlan wears a tailcoat and breeches still, but every day since London, he’s produced a bit morefrill. Lace at his cuffs and throat. Sapphires in his ears. Gemstones appearing on his silver rings. The others have adopted similar attire, with a particular penchant for the gaudy and bright. They remind me of magpies, hoarding all things sparkly. Only on Lachlan do these accoutrements actually look stylish. He seems like the sort who might walk into a room wearing a ridiculous crystal-beaded cape, and a week later, every highborn young man in London would have one.
As I hasten to keep up with his long strides, I pinch myself to be sure I am here, with the silver faerie I summoned when I was a child, on a quest stolen straight out of a storybook, tramping over frozen heather.
Impulsive,I think.My second fault.Agreeing to mad things before I’ve half thought them through. Old Sister Elizabeth would be shaking her head at me now and saying that’s what comes from too many daydreams and not enough prayers.
Finally, pressing a hand to a stitch in my side, I catch up with Lachlan atop another hill. The ruins have grown small enough behind us that I can hide it behind the pad of my thumb.