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‘Get on with you,’ Liz laughed. ‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘I most certainly am not. The making ofuisge-beath,’ he pronounced the Gaelic wordusk-a-bar,‘involved knowledge of distilling alcohol, but the locals used herbs in it too which meant you had to know their properties. Likely, the early makers ofuisge-beath– the English called it Aqua Vitae, Water of Life – were also herbalists. Back then, that early whisky drink was considered medicinal. It was only later that it became a drink as we know it.’
‘So, distillers were herbalists, and therefore witches?’
‘Yeah. Kind of.’ Ben trod a few steps over to the right and plucked what looked like a weed to Liz from the grass and brought it back.
‘What’s that?’ She took it from his outstretched hand, and was taken aback at the slight buzz of something that came from their fingertips touching. It wasn’t an electric shock – anyway, what around them could have given them one? They were standing on a hill in the middle of nowhere. No, this was something else. Something just between them. That same electricity she’d felt before.
Liz felt the blush blooming on her cheeks again, like it had done before in her office, where she’d totally mortified herself by blushing after touching Ben’s arm and then trying to play it too cool afterwards. Doubtless, Ben thought she was probably suffering some kind of cheek pigment malaise, or a middle-aged breakdown of some kind.
‘Oh!’ she said, making an involuntary exclamation. ‘Hmm. Sorry, something stuck in my throat.’ She coughed on purpose a few times.
‘You all right?’ Ben watched her, amusement lighting up his eyes.
‘Fine. What was this again?’
‘Wild thyme. Smell it.’ He kept a little and rubbed it between his fingers. Liz gazed at him vacantly for a second. ‘It smells good. You just crush the leaves a little,’ he prompted her, clearly thinking she didn’t understand.
‘Oh. Right.’ Liz cleared her throat, masking the fact that she had temporarily disappeared somewhere for a moment. Maybe this was the door to the fairy world, after all; that would explain the sudden strangeness she felt between her and Ben. Not an unpleasant strangeness at all: it was… magical, somehow.
But it was probably the stunning location doing the hard work when it came to magical vibes, she told herself. The view was utterly breathtaking: they had gone far enough up the green and purple hill – purple, because it was covered in heather – to see for miles across the loch, the village and further into the fields and across to other, distant hills, ringed by clouds. It made her feel like she had stepped out of the ordinary world altogether.
Come on, Liz,she thought to herself.It’s just a crazily romantic environment. There’s nothing happening between you and Ben. Pull yourself together.
She crushed the small leaves between her fingers and sniffed them.
‘Wow. That’s aromatic. Pungent.’
‘I’ll take that as “good”.’ Ben smiled again, meeting her eyes with his soft-lashed brown gaze.
‘Yes. Good,’ she breathed. There was a brief silence, where she gazed back into his eyes and couldn’t think of anything else to say. The silence stretched out between them.
‘Umm. Do you want to try something else?’ he asked, awkwardly breaking the moment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Other herbs. Meadowsweet, Creeping Thistle, Angelica. They’re all here.’ He looked away, jamming his hands in his pockets.
‘Oh, I see. You know a lot about the local plants, then,’ Liz said, relieved that she could steer their conversation away from the strange energy that was between them.
‘Yeah. When I was a boy, I’d range around on these hills all day, finding herbs and taking them home to look them up in my father’s books. Bit of a nerd, really, but when I got older, I realised that’s what the early whisky makers did too.’
‘Are you a witch, then?’ she joked.
‘No. I don’t think so. But if I’d have been born a few hundred years ago, maybe I would have been, yes.’
‘Ha. I think whatever time I was born in, I’d be an entrepreneur of some kind. I spent a lot of my childhood making up schemes to make money from my friends.’ Liz sniffed the wild thyme again.
‘Junior capitalist. My father would have loved you. Like what?’ Ben leaned against the egg stone.
‘Oh, I made things and sold them. Jewellery, cakes, that kind of thing. When I got older, I had a T-shirt business. I’d make them to order.’ Liz smiled, thinking about it.
‘You drew them?’
‘Yup. I’d draw what people wanted. But then I realised hand-drawing every single one wasn’t cost effective, so I started making a range of standard designs and posting them online. People could just buy them from my online shop. I did that all through university as a sideline, in fact.’
‘I’m very impressed at your commercial acuity at such a young age.’ Ben met her eyes, and Liz felt that same shiver of electricity pass through her.
