Shana Abe by The Last Mermaid

Author:The Last Mermaid [Mermaid, The Last]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-10T11:46:58+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was well noted in Highland folklore the remarkable resemblance the lairds of Clan Kell all had to one another over the past two hundred odd years, each one golden-haired, blue-eyed, approximately the same weight and height—although accounts here sometimes varied; at times a laird was said to be a little taller than his father, or a little wider, but truly, beneath the plaid or cloak or cape or greatcoat, who could tell?

And some auld kin of the clan claimed that the lairds had always looked such, but others countered with tales of redheaded lairds, and raven-dark lairds, all the way back to the great King of the Isles himself, who was known to have hair as black as Solstice Eve.

So perhaps it was only a whim of nature that had all the recent lairds so golden blessed.

Perhaps not.

Only a very few knew the truth, even though most in the clan suspected it and some even boasted of it.

But the real secret of Clan Kell stayed tight within the family, trusted to an inner council of men and women that had begun in those long-ago days of that black Solstice king, who had wooed and won a maiden of the sea and named their child his heir. From the beginning there needed to be a circle of protection around this noble secret, and so in the way of their people, the honor—and, Ronan suspected, burden—of guarding the blood of the king had begun. From the loins of those council members, new ones had been conceived, just as new queens and kings and then lairds had been, and they marched together hand in hand across time, across generations, partners in kinship and mystery.

And so had come Ronan, and then Baird and Kirk and finally Finlay, all of them born to their own rules and their own obligations. Family.

And it was family who knew that the man who had no children had become his own son, over and over again. Ronan had reached his fourth incarnation now. A false youth, a swift adolescence; then he could emerge once more as himself, as the old laird passed on and the new began his rule. Over the years he had taken care to always include his true name—Ronan—in every new leader he created. It was easier, certainly. But more importantly, it was his very first gift from his parents, the one piece of himself he found he was unable to surrender to time.

He was aging, but it was slow. So slow. He had wondered more and more of late how much longer he could hold on to his role before tiring of it completely.

All he had to do was stay away from Kell. He knew that. Just resist the lure of Kell and gradually slip full into mortal life. He would age as everyone else did. He would eat and drink and live and die, just like all the clan. Just like all the world.

From the deck of the Lyre, Ronan looked out at the snowy wild sea, so painfully beautiful to him, green and gray and rocked.

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