“It’s a pleasure to meet ye, Amara,” Marissa said, giving the girl a friendly smile.
Color rose in Amara’s plump cheeks.
She’s rather bonnie,Marissa noted, appreciating the girl’s copper hair, rosy cheeks, and the smattering of freckles on her face.
“Thank ye, Me Lady,” Amara answered, dipping her head in a sign of respect.
Immediately, Marissa waved her off. “Call me Marissa, please,” she corrected, and Amara nodded.
Ayla clapped her hands excitedly. “This is all just grand,” she tittered, her eyes darting between Marissa and Amara. “I just kenned we’d all be fast friends. Now…” She leaned in closer, placing her elbows on her knees. Her eyes were shining as she looked at Marissa. “I heard that ye are a writer. Me braither told us all about it, since he kens I love to read. Please tell me more.”
Now, it was Marissa’s turn to blush. While she was proud of her ability to craft a story, it was something that had always made her feel a bit bashful whenever it was brought up. She did, however, appreciate Ayla’s attempt at flattery.
“I am a writer, aye,” she admitted, feeling suddenly sheepish.
She didn’t know what had gotten into her. In her entire life, she had never been this bashful. Especially not when it came to her writing.
In fact, her writing had always been something she had been proud of. She was agoodwriter. A great storyteller. She’d never felt nervous about her talent before.
Marissa guessed that being in a new place, where she knew no one, was getting the better of her.
“Can ye tell us a story?” Amara asked, her hazel eyes shimmering.
The moment the words left her mouth, Ayla perked up. She clapped her hands again, grinning madly.
“Aye! Tell us a story!” she exclaimed.
Her excitement was contagious, and before Marissa could give it too much consideration and talk herself out of it, she began to speak.
The tale that fell from her tongue was a familiar one. She’d first told it many years ago, back when she’d first arrived at Castle McEwan with Freya and Abigail to heal Cody.
“Many years ago,” she began, her voice taking on a mysterious note. “There was a young girl named Elspeth, but everyone called her Elsie. She grew up in a quaint village that had never experienced crime. Until one night, it was set upon by bandits.”
Elspeth’s story poured from her. She’d honed it over the years, from all the times she had told it to one person or another. She told them of how the bandits ransacked everything in Elsie’s village, stealing and killing to their hearts’ desire until the last person and animal were no longer living.
Everyone except for Elspeth, that is. Because she was cunning and smart, even though she was young. And she had been small enough to hide, perfectly tucked, beneath a rotting bale of hay that the bandits paid no mind to.
“When Elspeth came out of her hiding spot,” Marissa continued, finding both Amara and Ayla enraptured in her story, “her heart felt as if it would shatter. Her entire village was nay more. Windows had been broken, barns had been burned. Livestock and people alike lay slain in the streets. And so Elspeth did the only thing a young girl in her predicament could do—she ran.
“Into the forest, as fast as her wee legs could carry her. She didnae stop until the sun had long since set. The shadows of the forest stretched around her, and it was only then that the wee lass realized she had gotten well and truly lost.”
Amara gasped. “What did she do?”
And Marissa told her. On and on she weaved the tale, telling them how Elspeth found a small cave. But the girl didn’t realize that it had been inhabited by wolves. She made friends with them, and the wolves, realizing that they quite liked her, took her into their pack.
Elspeth was raised by them until one day, a hunter came and tried to kill them. She fended him off, and in doing so, he became enamored with her.
Marissa continued recounting the story, one that she loved with all her being, telling them how slowly, over many many months, Elspeth and the hunter fell in love.
She watched the two women as she spoke, noting the parts they reacted to. It reminded her of Cody, who was the first person she’d ever told the story to.
He’d gasped at different parts, reacted to different things, and had almost no interest in the romance part. But he’d loved it just the same.
By the time Marissa was finished speaking, ending with the hunter and Elspeth’s wedding, telling them how the wolves, in their old age, had stood at the edge of the clearing where they’d wed and howled their love for the girl, Amara and Ayla’s eyes were wet.
“She’d never hear those howls again,” Marissa said as she wrapped up the tale. “Nae from the wolves’ greyin’ muzzles, anyway. Because she kenned that they had long since passed. But sometimes, at night, when the wind was howlin’ somethin’ awful, Elspeth would pause, almost certain that she could hear them howlin’ at the moon and sendin’ their love to her from far within the heavens.”
Amara sniffled, while Ayla swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. Marissa, however, beamed at them.
