Magni wasn’t about to argue with his friend. “After speaking with those people about missing bairns, I couldn’t help but wish to look for odd ships in the region.” He didn’t add his thoughts, that just hearing about missing bairns brought back awful memories of being stolen from the beach while playing in the water.
It was wrong to steal bairns. He’d experienced it, he feared it, and he was not going to sit idly by. He’d do what he could to stop it. They were headed out on the morrow, so he would search the area for strangers first.
Cormac knew Magni’s childhood had many difficult memories, so he never argued with him about these kinds of topics. “We’ll search the area for strange ships, but don’t forget we have to be back to Lagavulin Bay at high sun on the morrow.”
“We’ll be there. I want to help them in any way I can.” Magni’s gaze scanned the shoreline as they came down theSound of Islay, but he didn’t find what he was searching for anywhere.
Morgan Grant stood aft, lifting his face to the breeze. The two often patrolled the waters of Jura and Islay before returning to their cottage on the shore of Loch Ardnahoe.
Morgan said, “I’m going fishing when we get back. I’d like another big trout.”
Magni forced a faint smile. The two had built a cottage seven years ago when they had purchased their first ship to begin their business as merchants of travel. At the age of one and twenty, he knew it was time for him to think about taking a wife, and he knew exactly who he was interested in, but with the impending arrival of Lia, he couldn’t consider pursuing a lass.
Morgan pointed to a spot inland on Islay. “And now that it’s nearly summer, I’d like to finish that big project I have in the middle of the loch.”
“You mean the one that will surely kill you? The giant ladder with the ropes hanging from it?”
“Aye. ‘Tis no different than the rope swing Uncle Logan had built once.”
Magni smiled at the mention of his adoptive grandfather. Logan Ramsay was getting up in age, but he was still as quick in the mind as anyone he knew. To say Magni adored him didn’t adequately express the man who’d helped save him from the evil kidnappers over a decade ago. “You mean the one they hung from the tree? Eli and Alaric told me all about it.”
“Aye. Cormac has never seen it, and I promised to finish it for him.” A gull cried overhead, sharp and sudden, and then silence fell too quickly after.
The following year, they had met Cormac and his brother Fingal on Jura and together they expanded their business. The three formed the Brotherhood of the Black Keel and began carrying travelers and their cargo across the waters.
Magni handled the Islay-to-Jura route on his vessel, Lia’s Hulk. Even the name tugged at him now, as though it carried more weight than before. Cormac managed the Mull Cog that sailed between Islay and Mull. And Morgan managed the largest journey, from the mainland to Jura and Islay.
His father, Connor Grant, had gifted Morgan his first ship, the Sea Raven, named for Morgan’s mother, Sela, whose Norse heritage made the raven a fitting symbol. Odin’s birds, watching from above.
That day, they guided Magni’s hulk into the calm waters of the Sound of Islay, Magni still scanning the area.
“Cormac, are you staying this eve?” Magni asked.
“Aye, I wish to work on the still we started. We will make our own fine brew. Tristan is helping, and with Dermot Rankin’s recipe, it should be something worth drinking soon.”
Magni barely heard him. The prickle at the back of his neck intensified.
Morgan studied him. “What is it, MacQuarie?” The youngest son of Connor and Sela Grant, he was as tall as his father and the image of him, blue eyes and long dark hair waving in the wind.
“Something is wrong.” Magni scanned the shoreline. “Take the oar, Grant.”
Morgan shifted to the side-mounted steering oar as the wind softened. His shoulder struck Magni’s as they traded places, but Magni ignored it.
“What is it?” Morgan peered at him.
“I don’t know. But it feels familiar.” As though the thing he had long feared had finally come to claim him. A flash of a small chamber in an old building behind a kirk came to him, four bairns, hungry, dirty, and frightened, huddled in the corner as a woman was thrown inside with them.
Meg MacVey.
She’d helped them survive. Got them away from the evil men who were to sell them across the water.
He searched the land as he often did, always hoping to find his adopted sister who’d disappeared years ago. Always looking for the wee blonde lass he missed so.
Lia. The faery who had saved him from death years ago. She’d helped the clans on Mull by protecting the bairns, then she left as quickly as she’d appeared under a frond.
“You sound like my sister,” Morgan mumbled.
“Which one? Dyna?”
