Bradana ceased playing, the notes continuing to quiver through the air of the room like living, sacred things. She looked at him.
“Bradana?”
He did not see her move or lay aside the harp. She was just there of a sudden, kneeling beside him, touching his face, his chest, his hands and weeping. Weeping.
Mayhap this was a dream. But nay, for then she kissed him, and he could feel the life in her and taste her tears.
“Why d’ye weep?” he asked when her mouth left his.
“Because ye were far, far from me.”
“Did I no’ tell ye I would find ye? I will always find ye again.”
*
In MacMurtray’s hall,the tale pauses upon a bright shimmer of harp notes. Finlay the bard smiles, knowing that he holds his audience spellbound. His eyes sparkle just like the notes he gives them, with knowing, and memory.
His dancing, skillful fingers leap and accompany the rest of his words, releasing cascades of sound, his voice like singing.
“Adair MacMurtray recovered steadily after that day, and ’twas as well that he did, for though the settlement also recovered, Rohracht MacFee did not, and soon enough lost his far more personal battle wi’ the sickness that possessed him.
“On his deathbed”—a further shower of notes—“he again told his granddaughter’s husband, who had once been only a third son, that he wanted him to have all his lands. And”—Finlay’s green eyes gleam—“is that no’ how our good host, Chief Anders MacMurtray, comes to hold these lands even today?”
The chief smiles with pride and pleasure. Finlay’s gaze seeks out but one of his listeners. Is it to her he speaks?
“We come and go from one another. Time after time, and life after life. The dreams that fall between the lifetimes may beguile our eyes and keep us from knowing one another. But”—a still brighter cascade of notes—“a vow is a vow. A promise remains a promise, like that the blessed land of Alba gave to a one-time exile when she took him to her heart.
“He is here still.”
The End
