Chapter Thirty-Eight

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Fynhallow

Isle of Gunn, Orkney

December 1594

EDWARD

Edward walks across the beach of Fynhallow, stopping every now and then to pick up dulse on which to chew. He is hungry and afraid, but he can’t risk being discovered, not even by the boys he has grown up with or the people who live by their cottage.

And now he weeps for his father, and for Mr.Couper. He is terrified, and wrung out with guilt. He wants to see his mother, and his grandmother, and his sister.

When he sees his cottage on the hill, he starts to run, his body propelled toward it. He is crying noisily now, and so exhausted that he stumbles and falls to his knees several times before he reaches it. He can smell the peat burning, sees the shaggy kyloe gifted by Agnes. The sight of her burns in him, the familiarity of home an overwhelming comfort.

Just as he reaches her, a girl comes out of the cottage. It’s Beatrice, his sister, and he is astonished. Her fair hair is braided in a long plait that hangs down one shoulder, catching the light of the sun. She lifts her eyes to him, then shouts out his name.

“Edward!”

They run toward each other, colliding in an embrace, and he is laughing and weeping and she is asking question after question. Where is Father? How is their mother?

She leads him inside the cottage, where a fire is blazing. Porridge is bubbling in a pot over the stove and the smell of it pulls him close.

“Where is Grandmother?” he asks as Beatrice serves him. She is so little, he reminds himself, not yet seven, and yet she is so capable. “How long have you been alone?”

“Not long,” she says. “Grandmother is looking after me.”

“Where is she?”

“I think she’s with Solveig. The Triskele are helping get Mother out of prison.”

Edward’s heart lifts. “Is that true?”

She smiles and nods. “It is. But we must not tell anyone. Do you want to see something?”

He nods.

“You have to promise not to tell anyone,” she says, suddenly cautious.

“Just show me.”

She moves to the space under the fire, the space he knows neither he nor his sister is to touch, for his mother uses it to keep her potions and strange powdered bones and any extra coin that comes her way. He watches as Beatrice lifts out a large object wrapped in black linen, peeling back the fabric to reveal what looks like tree bark.

“Look what I found.”

His breath catches. “ The Book of Witching .”

She is disappointed, having hoped to astonish him. “You recognize it from the initiation?

“No,” he says. “I am the Carrier. That is why it’s here. I have been keeping it safe in our cottage.”

“Not safe enough,” Beatrice says. “The soldiers came and pulled everything apart, looking for it.”

“I do not think they were searching for this,” Edward says. “And besides, it can hide of its own will. It can vanish and travel without us knowing.”

Beatrice looks puzzled, and he realizes—she has not seen what he has seen.

She does not know what will befall their mother.

···

Edward is asleep when he hears it, the drumming sound. He is entangled by dreams about wild dogs rushing inside Mr.Couper’s office and biting his ankles, and in the dream, one of the dogs—a large black one—noses the crawl space and begins to bark, alerting the others.

The snort of a horse outside draws him sharply out of sleep. He shakes his sister awake.

“Go up into the roof,” he says, and she does so, quickly and quietly, right as the door opens.

And though he climbs after his sister, the soldiers stride across the floor of the cottage, grabbing Edward before he has time to make a sound.