“I am looking. I cannot imagine a bonnier sight.”
“Ye fool,” she chided, but the tears rose hard into her throat. So emotional was she these days, who had ever held her feelings in strict abeyance.
He grinned at her, that wide, beautiful smile that never failed to touch her heart. “A mad fool, ’tis what I am.”
She went to him, there where he stood, and looked into his face. Aye, she knew it so well now. Each separate freckle. The way the hairs—redder than those on his head or, indeed, on his body—curled upon his cheeks. “I ha’ a confession to make.”
“Aye, so. Go on.”
“I do no’ ken where we are. Where, in all of blessed Alba.”
“Ye think I did not know that?”
“Did ye?”
“For days I have known.”
“Aye so, but ye placed yoursel’ in my hands, and I ha’ misled ye.”
He put out his arms and tugged her up against him.
“I think,” she said, “we have come too far east. And maybe too far north, after. If we turn back now, I am afraid we will cross Mican’s land—the last place we want to be. Yet…”
He lifted a brow. “Yet?”
“Each time I try to turn south, our way is blocked by a loch or a glen. By the land itself. ’Tis as if—”
“Alba is directing us?”
“Aye,” she agreed, relieved that he too had felt it. “Yet we canna keep on this way. You are hungry. We all are. Wen is down to fur and bones.”
They both looked at the hound, who did not appear bothered by his condition.
“What’s to do?” she said. She might wish to go on so forever, just existing with him, but they would run out of strength, and soon.
Adair glanced around as if seeking to read the land. They had spent that night in the shelter of a pile of stones on a broad stretch of moor, where lay the pool. It appeared to go on into a limitless vista of green turf and blue hills, in all directions.
He said, “The sun is far north this time o’ year. If we wish to start doubling back southward, we must set our backs to it.”
“I am afraid, as I say, to head south. I think we must be northeast of Mican’s lands. What if we stumble upon him? Or upon a native settlement. The blue men are everywhere.” Indeed, they had seen what they took to be hunting parties in the distance.
“Bradana, my love”—he gazed into her eyes—“ye must believe. Alba has so far protected us.”
“Aye, so, but she is wild and capricious. What may she show us next?”
They found out later that afternoon. They had turned to the west—what Bradana took for west—reasoning that if they could reach the sea, or sight of it, they could get their bearings. Yet the land seemed to go on forever, rising and falling beneath the ponies’ hooves, and when clouds gathered, Bradana could no longer see the sun.
It was as if Alba now hid her face and her signs. As if she opposed the change they had made.
Late in the afternoon, it began to rain. They’d had rain before, to be sure. A land of rain was this, brief squalls quickly flown, before the sun flitted through the clouds. Now, trapped on the broad stretch of moorland, they had nowhere to hide as it came in sheets, driving down through hair and fur and clothing.
Somewhere amid the deluge, before nightfall, they got turned around. By the time they stopped in a copse of young hazel trees above a nameless loch, Bradana could not tell north from south, east from west.
Hungry and soaked to the skin, the three of them sat in a huddle beneath the trees, Adair with his arms around Bradana and Wen across her feet. Protecting her, the both of them were, as best they might.
She wanted to weep. There, with the wet coming down, Adair would not be able to tell that she gave way to her misery and despair, but she would not. She would not because she needed to be strong for him.
She’d been placed in the position of leading him from harm. Yet she was fumbling and failing. That terrified her more than anything.
