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‘Slow down,’ he shouted.
‘Why?’
‘You do not know where you are going.’
‘I don’t care. I just want to go fast. Do try to keep up.’
‘Alright, head towards those peaks in the distance, and I will follow.’ He gave her a big grin and fell back. Up ahead, a few miles away, Morna could see black crags. They were shrouded in mist at their summits, forbidding and wild and, in no time at all, the horse’s hooves were clattering on loose scree as he strained up the side of a steep hill towards them. Larger rocks crashed downwards, dislodged by his hooves. Morna had to grip hard with her thighs, and her arms ached with reining the great beast in, but she was not about to show Will she was tired. She had stayed in front of him for most of the ride, preferring not to get drawn into a conversation where she would be on the back foot, as she so often felt with him. Now he drew alongside.
‘Slow down, this part is treacherous,’ called Will.
‘Are you sure it is worth the climb?’
‘Aye, keep heading upwards.’
They reached the crest of the hill together, marked by a lone tree, straining into the wind. As she drew over the top of it, Morna gasped. Will moved his horse close beside hers and, as one they surveyed the valley falling away beneath them in a sweep of grass studded with rocks.
On the far horizon, the ocean went on forever, a dark turmoil of surging waves under a bright sky, brisk with scudding clouds. The green, folding hills fell away, jewelled with lochs here and there, shining in the sun. But all that beauty was overshadowed by one thing dominating the landscape. Rising out of the ground was a stand of huge, jagged rocks reaching for the sky, each mountainous in their breadth, both timeless and menacing. Morna’s spine tingled at the sight of them.
She could not contain her wonder. ‘Oh, Will, what a sight.’
‘I told you it was worth it, did I not? This is the Quiraing, one of the most ancient parts of Skye, and the most mystical some say.’
‘They look like the teeth of the Gods,’ she said in awe.
‘What God’s would they be, Morna?’
‘Why, pagan ones of course. Certainly not Christian ones, for those rocks are too terrifying.’
‘God might strike you down for such blasphemy, woman.’
‘Then I shall die happy, for I have never seen such a sight in my life.’
All her life at Beharra, Morna had never looked on anything so wondrous in its harsh beauty. This was what life was about, this adventure, this vast open space, this wild sense of freedom awash with possibilities.
She looked out at Skye, all barren mountains, dark ocean, with shafts of sunlight hitting the water - harsh, desolate, but beautiful, like the man beside her. Morna risked a glance at Will. Somehow, he knew to be quiet and let her have this moment of awe. The wind ruffled his hair, brightened in the sunlight to gold. He smiled to himself, deepening the lines at the side of his eyes, a dark blue like the stormy seas in the distance, shadowed by sleepless nights underneath. Did he lie awake with thoughts of her in his head, as she shamefully did of him? Did he picture her face in his mind and imagine kissing it?
He turned and looked deep into her eyes, his own joyful and warm, and there it was, his power over her. Will could give a look that held and seduced a body, made you feel as though no one else existed in the world at that moment. Morna’s heart seemed to swell in her chest, and longing uncoiled in her belly.
‘It is a wonderful thing,’ he said quietly.
‘What is?’
‘That joy on your face.’ His eyes held hers with a kind of sadness in them, broken when he smirked. ‘You know, out here, under a bright sky, it makes you look almost pretty.’
Morna frowned at his teasing.
‘Come,’ he said in a voice thick with some emotion, ‘I will lead, you will follow this time, for the path down is steep. There is a place below where we can take some rest.’
The horses soon picked their way down the hill, and they rode a winding path between the massive crags, looming overhead, black with age and damp. Morna felt her palms start to sweat as the rocks seemed to swallow them up, but then they opened up into a flat, grassy plain in the middle.
‘See, here we have our own private place, unseen by any, apart from those pagan gods.’
‘What a good hiding place,’ Morna exclaimed.
‘Aye, people used to hide cattle up here, seek shelter from their enemies,’ said Will, dismounting and dragging a blanket from his horse’s pack. ‘Some folk refuse to venture close for fear of ancient demons and such, that are thought to inhabit this place. It has an enchantment over it, they say.’
‘Whatever lies over it, this place is beautiful.’
