Isobel’s pale green eyes turned toward Rose, and she whispered, “They don’t understand they’re dead.” She shook her head sadly, her thick copper-gold braid slipping over her shoulder. It, too, was kinked from curls. Rose was the only one of the three with impossibly straight auburn hair.
Isobel continued in a low voice, “It’s making it most difficult for Gillian to help them move on.”
Gillian smiled ruefully. “All they want to do is play.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Rose asked. “I think I’d like to be a bairn forever and have nothing better to do than play.”
Gillian’s eyes softened and her smile faded. “You never did play much, did you? Always healing, even when you were a wee thing.”
“Aye, well,” Rose said, feeling guilty for expressing such feelings. Her mother had worked very hard to teach her, even though Lillian herself had not been a healer. She’d had such faith in her youngest daughter, and Rose had failed her. She’d been barely competent when Lillian had died. Rebellious and complaining, she’d given hermother fits. Rose gave a small shake of her head, putting it from her mind. She couldn’t change it now, so there was no value in dwelling on it. Instead she worked hard to be the healer her mother had always believed she could be.
Rose nodded to the corner. “Why can’t they just stay here and play?”
Gillian sighed and gazed at the empty air thoughtfully. “I suppose they can for now. But they should move on. Others are there, waiting for them. They’ll be happier.”
“It sounds as if they’re happy now.”
“They keep asking about their mother,” Gillian said. “They understand that she’s dead, but they don’t understandthey’redead. If they’d move on, they’d be with their mother again.”
“Unless she went to the other place,” Rose said.
Gillian shook her head firmly. “She didn’t.”
“How do you know?” Rose asked, skeptical. Her sister could see ghosts, but so far there’d been no mention of an afterlife.
“Because there is no hell.”
Isobel looked around the hall nervously, but no one was close enough to overhear. “Hush, Gillian. That’s blasphemy you speak.”
Gillian shrugged. “It’s the truth—or so it seems to me. Hell is of our own making, if we’re afraid to move on.”
“So the wee lassies are in hell?” Rose asked.
“That’s not what I said. They’ve not made it into a hell. They don’t even understand theycanmove on. They’re just children. It’s the ones that tie themselves to a place and haunt it. Those are the ones in hell.”
Rose considered this while Isobel glanced around nervously.
“Can we speak of something else?” Isobel whispered. After nearly being burned herself for witchcraft, Isobel had become quite cautious about such things.
“Aye,” Rose said. “I’ve something to tell you, but you must not breathe a word to anyone—especially Uncle Roderick.” Rose scanned the hall. It was deserted except for a few hounds lazing in the rushes. She leaned closer to her sisters. “I’m leaving at first light. I’m going to bring Lord Strathwick here.”
They both stared at her as if she’d gone mad. And perhaps she had, to undertake this alone, but she could see no other alternatives.
“Tell Da for me, but give me as much of a head start as possible in case he tries to send someone after me. Two days would be good.”
Isobel reacted first, shaking her head in bewilderment. “You’re going north—alone?”
Before Rose could respond, Gillian gripped her arm. “Youcannotgo alone.”
“And who should I take? Who can I trust here?”
Isobel and Gillian exchanged an uneasy glance.
“Fash not. I will disguise myself as a man.”
Gillian grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Rose—think! Broken men roam the Highlands. Even lone men are in danger.”
“You and Isobel traveled alone, and not disguised as men either. You came to no ill.”
