By the Moon’s Light, New Beginnings Stir

"T his is a land of enchantment. We will dance beneath the moon and listen to the song of fairies. Our hearts will be brimming full of merriment. And before you know it, you will fall in love with a fine man here on the borderland… "

Rhona awoke to her mother's voice.

She sat up, looking around the chamber but there was no one there. The small tin lantern hung by the door still had a candle flickering inside of it. The light scattered across the floor in a hundred crescent moons of yellow light, beating back the pitch-blackness of night.

Fall in love?

How was she to accomplish that with the Church coming to claim her?

The window shutters rattled again.

Harder.

Rhona looked toward them before she climbed from the bed. Anything was better than sitting in her rumpled bedding feeling defeated.

Far better to look for a sign of hope, even in the rattling of window shutters.

The floor was cool against her bare feet now. Autumn was in the air. The shutters were being moved by the cooler air that was coming down from the north to push the warm air of summer away. But she liked the idea of the shutters rattling because her mother was speaking to her.

She lifted the little bar of wood that held the twin sides of shutters closed. They opened wide and a gust of wind blew in. She laughed and leaned out of the window; the moon was almost full. Its brightness was like the smile on a treasured friend's face.

And in the distance, there was a flicker of light.

Rhona gasped.

It wasn't the sort of gasp one made when they were frightened. No, this was the sound of excitement. The dread that had twisted her during her slumber melted beneath the rush of anticipation flooding her as surely as the bank of a river eroded during a spring snowmelt.

Someone was up in the pasture.

The light danced and the wind moved the clouds so that more of the starlight shone down to illuminate the spot.

She saw him.

Cast in the silver light of the stars, there was an unmistakable outline of a man. A man in a kilt. The strangest sensation took over her, as though the man had reached out and touched her, igniting a trail of chaff inside of her. The flame caught in an instant, flaring up like a tinder bowl did after you struck a flint stone above it. For a moment, everything was bright and hot, just waiting for her to hold a wick over the flames. But what caught fire was something inside of her. She'd never realized there was darkness deep inside her, but now, there was a new flame, even if she didn't know what it was intended for.

You are desperate…

Her little inner voice was not wrong.

Rhona sat back on her haunches and tried to rekindle the excitement that had made her open the window shutters, but reality had arrived to extinguish her hopes. The wind blew and the clouds covered the sky, darkening the spot where the man had stood.

Like the light had been pinched out.

Suddenly, the wind blew again, hard, and the shutters slammed shut in her face. Rhona ended up on her backside in the middle of the floor. The room was pitch black and far colder than she'd noticed before. Sitting in her shift, she felt exposed and vulnerable.

Your mother never gave up…

Her inner voice was reprimanding her, but Rhona liked what it said. She thought back to the night they'd arrived at the house and her mother's words: "This is a land of enchantment. We will dance beneath the moon and listen to the song of fairies."

Rhona felt her self-confidence strengthening. She grabbed her stockings and shoes before reaching for her simple wardrobe, which consisted of two long garments that closed at the waist to make her a dress. And then the last thing she grabbed was a length of wool she used as a shawl. She wrapped it over her head once before crisscrossing it across her chest and using the single button at its tip to close it behind her back.

She was not afraid of the night, especially under a full moon, and she was going to find out who else found it a silvery place of wonder and delight.