Page 45 of Sins of the Highlander

He snorted and started in again on the tale. “So Fingal sneaked up on the horse, verra quietly for a giant of his size. He was almost close enough to toss a loop over its head when it turned and looked at him with eyes that seemed to see into the deepest wrinkle of his soul. ‘Ye dinna need a rope, Fingal,’ the beast said, lowering its head in a bow to do him honor. ‘Aye, I ken who ye are. Who in the glen doesna know so great a hero? Ye can ride me an’ ye wish.’”

“Doesn’t sound natural for the horse to speak,” Elspeth said.

“Oh, it isn’t. No’ now, in any case. But remember this was a long time ago when such things were common as…as beggars at kirk.”

Elspeth sighed. “Still no’ much of a poet, are ye?”

“No, I suppose not, but I warned ye I was no bard,” Rob said, glad Elspeth was talking to him at all. Even with her complaints, she seemed to be enjoying the story. Pleasing her was starting to be something he longed to do at every turn, whether it was delighting her body or her sharp wit.

“Go on,” she urged. “I’ll try not to interrupt again.”

“Thank ye. Where was I? Oh! But Fingal thought it seemed odd too. Not that the horse spoke, ye ken, for that was no’ something out of the ordinary for those days. But what the horse said gave him pause,” Rob said. “He was a mighty big giant, and no horse of any sense would willingly let him ride it.”

“Hmmm.”

“It was just then that the sun broke through the clouds, and Fingal saw the stallion’s true color,” Rob said, enjoying the way Elspeth’s eyes had gone round as an owl’s. “The horse’s dark coat was green as glass.”

“And that’s how he knew it was the water horse!” Elspeth said triumphantly.

“Aye, that’s how he knew,” Rob said, deciding he didn’t care if she interrupted him so long as she was happy. “‘Ye’re an each uisge,’ Fingal cried.”

Every time Rob said the hero’s name, the deerhound thumped his tail against the hull.

“‘Away wi’ ye,’ quoth Fingal. ‘I’ll no’ have ye threatening the folk who live around Loch Tay,’” Rob said. “So he used his rope for a whip instead and drove the water horse over hill and down dale until they came to Loch Earn. There both giant and beast were so blown, they stopped to rest by common agreement, and the beastie begged him to leave him be. Fingal had run about as far as he cared to, so he suffered the water horse to enter Loch Earn. But he made the each uisge promise never to return to Loch Tay.”

“And that’s how the water horse came to live in Loch Earn,” Elspeth finished for him, clapping her hands.

“Ye seem to know quite a bit about water horses,” Rob said.

“Oh, aye. Enough to know ye dinna want to ride any strange horse ye might happen upon near a loch,” Elspeth said. “Ye may mount such a beast easily enough, but once ye are astride its back, the skin of the water horse becomes sticky. Ye canna leap to safety no matter how hard ye try. Then the each uisge runs into the loch and drowns its victims.”

Rob laughed to show he didn’t believe a word of it. Still, the waves sometimes mounded up on the loch in odd shapes, as if something large and malevolent moved with purpose under the surface.

“Aye, and once they stop kicking,” Rob said, “the water horse gobbles them up.”

“Hair and bones and all. Everything but the liver,” Elspeth said with a shiver of horrified fascination.

“But ye know, the each uisge doesna always take the shape of a horse,” Rob said. “Sometimes, he poses as a handsome man. Ye’ll ken him by the waterweed in his hair.”

“Aye, in the old tales they warn of it, but that’s only when the water horse is courting,” Elspeth supplied. “Sometimes, the beast takes a human maiden for a wife, they say.”

“I’ve heard such things as well,” Rob said. “But the water horse is no’ a verra good husband.”

“No indeed. He’s cruel and spiteful, and his wife is kept prisoner till she dies, which didna happen soon enough to suit her in all the stories I’ve ever heard,” Elspeth said. “The water horse is a verra poor husband.”

“That’s a common enough failing too,” Rob said, suddenly serious.

When he didn’t say more, Elspeth cocked her head at him. “What’s wrong?”

Rob felt suddenly heavier, as if he’d been tossed in the loch and was dragged down by sodden clothes. “I canna throw stones at the water horse, Elspeth.”

“What do ye mean?”

“I was a husband,” Rob said slowly. “And as it turned out, a verra poor husband indeed.”

Chapter 15

“I didna know ye’re married.”