Somewhere Lies the Moon by Kathryn Lynn Davis

Author:Kathryn Lynn Davis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2014-05-17T03:00:00+00:00

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For the first time in her life, Ena did not like the hiss of the wind through firs and new leaves and long spring grass, the thrum of the burn that echoed through the trees, the hushed, clinging sigh of the darkening mist at gloaming. She was uncomfortable when she thought of what had passed between her and Jenny Fraser, as if, somehow, she had betrayed her mother, when she meant only to expose herself.

Shoving the door open with her shoulder, she stumbled into the cottage, welcoming the scene that greeted her. The loom stood in its accustomed corner, the Celtic harp in its place atop the kist, the wedding chest beside Ailsa’s low heather bed. The fire burned brightly in the center of the croft, the smoke curling lazily upward toward the hole in the thatched roof, leaving its gray mark on the layered and textured clay walls. The smell of peat and bubbling brose filled the air, one pungent and earthy, the other rich and spicy. The leather coverings had not yet been drawn down over the windows, so the gloaming crept in—a faint gauze of colored moisture—to Mairi Rose’s croft.

Ena wondered if it would always be called that, long after Mairi left it behind. After all, each stone in the aged cottage held her image in its gray, cracked surface, while the crevices and fissures called her name in a winter wind. She had made it hers as thoroughly as she had made Charles Kittridge her husband, so that he had returned to her, after forty years’ absence, because, in his heart, this place, this tiny, crumbling cottage was home. She had made it so to many more than her own child, Ailsa—not just Alanna and David and Connor and Ena, but Wan Lian and Genevra Townsend and Jenny Mackensie and Ian Fraser. She had gathered them together and bound them one to another with her generous heart, her strength and gentleness and perception.

Now Mairi was curled comfortably in one of the rocking chairs beside the fire, a skein of yarn wrapped about her hands and through her fingers in some ancient design. She was smiling into the golden flames until she looked up and saw Ena. Ailsa too looked up. She was laying the scrubbed pine table for supper with large carved bowls and horn spoons and cups filled with sweet milk. She’d taken one of the china plates she’d brought back from London from the tall back of the press, and put out fresh oatcakes and mashed turnips and boiled potatoes. A single paraffin lamp burned in the center of the table.

Behind her, deep in the settling shadows, was the painting Charles Kittridge had done of his daughters before he died. Ena blinked at the indistinct image, unable to believe in the familiar reality of the croft that closed around her like a warm, welcoming hand. Nothing had changed; no one was ill or moody or withdrawn, and the light from fire and lamp were cheerful.

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