Granny Winter shook her head slowly, her silver hair wafting about her. A chill breeze rustled everything inside the cottage, though the door remained snuggly shut. “You must begin your journey now. Sorcha will lead you to Loch Dreva, and, as you journey, she will teach you how to escape the traps that await you.”
Sorcha offered a humble agreement. To Duncan’s relief, she didn’t seem upset at the prospect of making the trek, though she’d not chosen it.
“But you mustn’t set out without this.” From beside her chair, Granny Winter produced a sack made of rough-hewn fabric, lumpy and awkwardly pieced together.“Everything you most need for your journey ahead lies within.”
She held out the sack tohim, not to Sorcha, which was surprising. She entrusted to him, whom she hardly knew, something he suspected was of value to her.
“I will guard it well,” he promised.
Granny Winter shook her silver head. “Do notguardit well.Useit well.”
“How long do you expect this journey will require?” Sorcha asked her. “It is nearlyBealltainn.”
Bealltainnwas a holiday of some significance in this corner of the world. It fell upon the first day of May, less than a week hence.
“Your wanderings can be concluded by then,” Granny Winter said. “See that they are. I will look after the young girl, tend her until your return. But should you not take my place at her bedside by the going down of the sun on the first day of May, all will be for naught.”
And thus began a journey into the world of fairies and monsters, walking a path riddled with danger in pursuit of answers to questions the two wanderers had not yet thought to ask.
Chapter 2
For three years, Gemma Milligan had sent a letter every few months to her one-time home in the Finsbury area of London, updating her husband-in-name-only on her whereabouts. He’d sent very few responses, none of which requested her to return. She’d told him before leaving that he needn’t send for her unless he’d come to feel something more than a vague friendship for her. Absence was meant to make the heart fonder, she’d been told. After three years, she’d accepted that some people couldn’t be absent enough to make any heart fond of them.
She currently laid her head in Wandsworth, a rough area of London south of Thames. She worked what odd jobs she could find. None of it would make her wealthy, that was for sure and certain. But she weren’t starving, and she’d not needed to crawl back to her horrid father for a roof over her head. She couldn’t have anyway. The man was dead, and good riddance.
Upon returning from a long day selling flowers on street corners, Gemma was met by her landlady, who tossed her a neatly folded letter addressed to Gemma. She recognized the handwriting and nearly dropped at the shock of it.
“Can’t remember you ever getting a letter,” Mrs. Woods said, watching her with all-consuming curiosity. “Hope it ain’t bad news.” On the contrary, the woman seemed to hope it wereexactlythat.
“Ain’t got the first idea what it is.” Gemma dropped it in her coat pocket. “I’d twig it’s some job coming my way. Been hoping to leave off the flower selling.”
On that Banbury tale, Gemma trudged up the tenement stairs toward the tiny, single-room flat she’d called her own for nearly half a year, which was a fair-sight longer than she usually kept to any one place. Her family’s reputation had, miraculously, not caught up with her here. Yet.
She unlocked her door and stepped into the darkness that awaited her. The hour weren’t overly late, but dusk came early in the winter. She hung her coat on the nail on the wall next to the door. With a flick of a Lucifer match, she lit a stump of a candle. She carried it and her letter to the kerosene lantern on the table and lit it. That was as bright as the space ever grew.
Gemma dropped her weary body onto her only chair. She broke the seal on her bit of mail and unfolded it under the spill of lantern light.
Gemma,
I am in particular need of seeing you. I realize Wandsworth is not an easy distance from Finsbury, but I hope you will be able to make the journey sooner rather than later. I am still at the same house and can be found there most of the time. If you choose to come—and I do hope you will—and I am out, the keys have not been changed. Let yourself in. Make yourself at home.
Yours, etc.
Barnabus
It was not precisely a declaration of love and devotion, but considering the agreement between them, it was nearly that. She’d waited years to hear anything from him other than “Received your letter. Hope all is well.” He’d written so much more this time. He wished her to come home and not at a shambling pace. It was what she’d waited three years to hear from him. Three long and lonely years.
Make yourself at home.
Home.
Pleased as pudding, Gemma packed her few belongings into her well-worn carpetbag. She’d dragged herself so many places she hardly had to think about the ins and outs of it. Perhaps it was telling that she wouldn’t miss this place or the people she’d come to know. If there was one thing Gemma was a dab hand at, it was moving along. Only once had leaving a place broken her heart. But now she was returning to that very place and the man who lived there. A man she adored to the depths of her soul. A man whose heart had grown tender toward her.
At last.
At long last.
The Finsbury house Gemma had lived in as a new bride hadn’t changed much on the outside. Still tidy as seasons and neat as a new pin. The brass plaque on the door, kept polished to a shine, declared this three-story home a “Doctor’s Infirmary.” The peony bushes weren’t in bloom, but she had no doubt they would in abundance when the season was right.