A flickering shadow appeared in the murk ahead. Cam tried to move towards it. For a moment he was stuck, unable to work out whether his shape consisted of legs or flippers. The dream held him back. Water rushed against his face, dragging him down…
‘No,’ Cam said fiercely.
Inhabiting both shapes at once, he kicked flippers and marched legs forward, battling through the current. The shadow became solid, the outline of a woman with dark red hair and intense green eyes. There was no fire this time. Cam was able to make out the details of her old-fashioned dress. She wore a great kilt: a large length of tartan in drab colours that wrapped around her lower and upper body. Both the cloth and her hair fluttered and flapped as though moving in the water’s current—or being blown about by wind.
Cam studied her face. Elspaith was twenty-seven when she died, the same age as Cam. This version of her looked to be about that age, though her face was ruddy and well-weathered like someone older. By twenty-seven, she’d birthed three children of her own and helped countless other mothers deliver theirs. Her hard eyes had witnessed unavoidable death and preventable suffering: babies born silent; women beaten for their choices; villages devastated by plague. They held an earned wisdom that Cam felt he couldn’t match.
Elspaith’s gaze shifted—it seemed she looked directly at Cam, instead of past him. Her mouth dropped into a frown. She turned around and began walking.
‘Wait!’ Cam hurried after her but couldn’t quite catch up. She remained a few yards ahead. Her pace quickened. Almost running.
As Cam followed, the darkness gained definition. Became a landscape. A barren hillside under grey sky. Water glinted a long way below. Loch Ness, Cam realised, recognising the shape of the peaks on the far shore. He was on the edge of a cliff, with a sheer and deadly drop only a few yards away.
Feeling breathless, he trailed in Elspaith’s footsteps.
The wind whipped at her linen under-skirts as she climbed the cliff path. Her kilt acted as both dress and cloak. She hugged the excess fabric tight round her shoulders to shield against the foul weather.
At the top of the path, still some distance away, was the silhouette of a small stone cottage. Cam knew, as though sharing the knowledge from Elspaith’s mind, that a family of six lived there. Two of the children were mere infants. It must be hard to live in such an unforgiving landscape, but here they were, all alone, miles from the nearest settlement—living, nonetheless.
Also on the path was the shape of a man, hurrying in the same direction. Elspaith called his name. ‘Bróccin!’
The figure halted, turning to face her. They met at a bend in the trail, close to the cliff’s edge. The wind seemed so strong it might have hurled them both off it, but the two siblings stood firm and eyed each other up like cats.
‘You mustn’t do this, Bróccin,’ Elspaith spoke first, shouting over the wind. ‘It is cruel and unjust.’
‘Unjust? What do you know of these people?’ Bróccin waved toward the cottage. ‘Is this family’s pathetic existence notunjust?Their crops have failed yet again, and their sheep are sick with rot. They will starve to death in the winter. What am I robbing them of, that God has not already taken?’
‘Their lives are not yours to end.’ Elspaith took a step closer. ‘Or to steal for yourself.’
Bróccin grinned. It should have been handsome on his youthful face, but the cruelty behind his mouth twisted the shape into something repulsive. ‘I wondered whether you would fathom the meaning of my actions. It takes a ruthless mind to recognise such ruthless genius, Elspaith.’
Elspaith did not recoil, but she froze as though she’d been struck. ‘Do not liken me to yourself. I am not heartless. I come to you with hope. I am here to take you home, Bróccin. There is yet chance for you to turn back from the path to Hell you are travelling down.’
Bróccin seized on this as though it was an opening. ‘Yes! I would have you guide me, Elspaith. Together we could work my endeavours into something worthy. Please, think of my immortal soul. I’ve not yet perfected the art of this brutal magic. But with your help I could—’
‘Never,’ she cut him off.
‘But think of it, sister,’ Bróccin wheedled. ‘Of how much good could be wrought, over the course of many lifetimes? How many more mothers you might save, and how many innocent babes? Think how you might guide your own children, watch over your bloodline… We witches couldrulethis land over time.’
‘A witch does not rule.’ She spoke quietly, but her words pierced the rising gale, nonetheless.
Bróccin’s smile turned wan. ‘You have no ambition.’ He drew his hands behind his back. Cam saw, with a surreal omniscience in the dream, that they began to glow with veins of flickering fire under his skin. With a dreadful premonition of what was about to happen, Cam tried to call out to Elspaith to warn her, but the words were trapped in his throat.
He could only watch helplessly as Elspaith closed the distance. Her mouth was set in a grim, determined line, red hair streaming behind her. ‘I will not let you continue this evil. This ends today, Bróccin.’
Bróccin had the audacity to look mournful for a split-second. ‘I agree, dear sister. You leave me no choice.’
He whipped his hands round to catch Elspaith’s wrists as she reached for him. The white light in his veins flashed to a deep, mean crimson. It raced up his arms to his throat, casting a ghoulish glowing mask over his face. Elspaith gasped—and fire erupted under her skin.
Bróccin’s expression turned cold, a true, unfeeling mask while he watched his sister burn. ‘I will take damnation, Elspaith, if it means immortal life on earth.’
Elspaith released a pained, broken scream. ‘Damn us both, then!’ The flames licked up her skirts, around her face. ‘I swear an oath. I shan’t rest ’til you cease to draw breath.’
‘Fearless words,’ Bróccin replied calmly. ‘I would truly have liked you at my side, as equals.’
Suddenly calm, even as her skin burned and blistered, Elspaith bowed her head. ‘Then you shall have me.’
Bróccin’s eyes widened as a fiery shape stepped out of Elspaith’s body: a flaming phantom, hair as bright as embers and eyes like molten metal. Her burning corpse dropped to the ground behind her. She stood proud, a blazing creature made of fire. She was the embodiment of her own magic: power made corporeal.
