A River Enchanted

Sidra, Torin’s second wife, sometimes sees the ghost of Torin’s first wife, Donella, who died in childbirth. She talks to Donella about the plans for Torin and Donella’s daughter, Maisie. Torin wants Maisie to go to school in the city of Sloane. Donella encourages Sidra to keep Maisie home and teach her to be a healer, like Sidra. Torin and Sidra have a friendly partnership, but Torin and Donella were both warriors, friends turned lovers. Sidra spends much of her time alone raising Maisie and tending to the croft, or house, while Torin is away with the East Guard.

Torin returns, bringing Jack with him. Sidra recognizes him and begins to make breakfast. Maisie appears, happy to see her father, and informs him that their cat had five kittens and she wants to keep them all. Torin tells her she can keep one and must find homes for the other four. Torin also wants Sidra to get a guard dog, but she asserts she feels safe enough with Torin’s father next door, which frustrates Torin. Sidra does not want a dog to scare away the good spirits. Sidra tends to Jack’s wounds, and then he and Torin leave for town.

Jack remembers the city of Sloane unkindly. The community treated him poorly because he was the son of an unwed mother. Torin leaves Jack at the palace, Jack full of memories of attending events there with his mother, Mirin, and listening to Lorna the Bard, the laird’s late wife, who died five years ago. When he enters and meets Laird Alastair, he is shocked by his sickly appearance. He is more shocked that Alastair claims not to have summoned him. Adaira, Jack’s childhood rival and the laird’s daughter, appears, smiling at Jack.

Adaira tells her father she will reacquaint Jack with the isle and takes Jack to the garden. Jack questions her about stealing her father’s seal to forge the summons, but Adaira remains calm, telling Jack she cannot tell him why she summoned him in the garden, where the wind could steal her words. Jack thinks back to the last time he saw Adaira, the night before he left for the mainland. They fought after Jack threw pebbles at her, and Adaira told Jack he was a stain on the Tamerlaine name and that she hoped he would never come back to Cadence.

Adaira apologizes for her words, but Jack still berates her for taking him away from his students and teaching assistant job, a role he could lose if he stays in Cadence too long. Adaira tells him that he can leave whenever he wants, but that the clan needs him. She brings him into a windowless room and offers him whiskey. As they drink, Jack notes her lack of a wedding ring or necklace, meaning she is unmarried, even as her father is ill, and she is the next laird. Adaira tells Jack that the two little girls have gone missing in mysterious ways, and she suspects the spirits have taken them. Her mother, Lorna, could see the spirits and played music for them to honor and worship them, which the spirits repaid by increasing the Tamerlaines’ fortune. Only Lorna and Alastair knew about this, but now Adaira wants Jack to play one of her mother’s ballads for the spirits to summon them and ask about the missing girls. Despite his fear, Jack feigns confidence and agrees to do it in two days, after his hand has healed from the scrapes he endured during his journey to Cadence. He agrees to meet Adaira again the next day and then leaves to visit his mother.

When he arrives, his mother Mirin is happy to see him, hugging him tightly. She then introduces Jack to his sister, Fraedah.

Jack is shocked to find out he has a younger sister. Fraedah, who prefers to be called Frae, is happy to meet Jack, apparently aware of his existence. Mirin gives Jack clothes she made for him that fit perfectly, despite his long absence. He goes to his room and finds it unchanged, except for a bouquet of wildflowers on the pillow. Jack and Mirin have a stilted conversation about his life on the mainland. When Jack asks, Mirin tells him that he and Frae are full siblings, but that she still cannot tell either of them who their father is. Jack asks what Mirin is doing to keep Frae from disappearing like the other little girls, and she scolds him for questioning her understanding of the spirits. Jack can tell she is still weaving enchanted plaids, for the magic takes vitality from her, and she looks frail. Mirin tells him she cannot stop, as the clan needs her skills, and when the time comes, she will train Frae to follow in her footsteps. Jack wants her to give up the croft and move to the city, but Mirin refuses. In the night, Jack hears something attempting to open the shutters of Frae’s window. He sees a shadow slip away, but when Mirin wakes and checks on Frae, she is still safely in bed. Jack is unsettled and thinks a spirit has come for his sister.

Jack wakes early in hopes of telling Torin about the incident with Frae’s window. Mirin and Frae are already awake, and the family eats breakfast together. The conversation is awkward, but Jack is still kind to Frae, astounded by her helpfulness. They wash the dishes together, and Jack then asks Frae to give him a tour of the property. She excitedly shows him the garden and where she picked the wildflowers she left on his bed. He makes her promise to never open the window if something knocks on her shutters and to instead wake Mirin or him. He also makes her promise to not wander too far from the croft.

Jack finds Torin and tells him about the shadow, advising Torin to search for the missing girls near Mirin’s croft. Torin knows the shadow Jack saw is not a Breccan, because when he was made captain of the East Guard, Alastair cut his palm with an enchanted blade, and Torin dripped his blood around the border of Eastern Cadence. This gives him the awareness of the land in his blood, meaning he would know if a Breccan crossed the border.

Torin continues his search, entering a glen he feels called to. He sees a bothy, or hut, with smoke coming from the roof. An ageless voice beckons him to enter, and he obeys. He meets an elderly woman who knows him, though he does not recognize her. She promises him an answer to any question if he listens to her story. She tells him that she was a handmaiden of Joan Tamerlaine during her time in the Breccan land, but that she returned home with Joan’s permission, as she could not stomach the Breccans’ violent ways. Her family shunned her upon her return. Poor and unhoused, she saw gold in the bottom of a loch. She dove for it, the spirits giving her the ability to breathe water, until she realized it was a trick, and the loch was bottomless. When she returned to the surface, she realized 100 years had passed, and everyone she knew was dead. The spirits are now unbalanced; the Breccans use magic easily, but they struggle for resources, while the Tamerlaines suffer when they use magic (as with Mirin’s illness caused by her weaving enchanted plaid) but have bountiful resources. Torin asks her if she knows of spirits taking any young girls, and she says she’s never heard of such a thing and that she doesn’t know how to summon the spirits. Torin leaves, taking with him a gifted figurine of Lady Whin of the Wildflowers, a spirit who looks remarkably like Sidra. When he finds the other guards, he is informed that another girl has gone missing.