'To hunt?' McKendrick brought the back of his hand to his mouth. 'My wee girl?'
Veitch saw something else. 'She isn't going to stay around here forever.'
The leader's eyes narrowed. 'If the pact is broken the Lupinari will seek retribution through the hunt.'
'It is agreed,' Tom said.
'No!' McKendrick was blazing with righteous anger now. 'I won't leave my daughter with these things!'
Tom placed a firm hand on his shoulder. 'There isn't another way. If you want to save her life, and yours, then you'll do this.' He turned back to the leader and repeated, 'It is agreed.'
The leader nodded slowly. 'Then perhaps in times to come our peoples can live closely and wisely once more.'
There was a note of conciliation in his voice. Veitch herded McKendrick away before he could put up any opposition, relieved that it hadn't come down to a fight, knowing they wouldn't have stood a chance if it had.
After a few paces he glanced back, just to be sure they were not being followed. But all he saw were vague impressions as the Lupinari melted back into the mist, and not a single footfall was heard to mark their passing.
Back at the croft McKendrick was in a state of shock, but Anna seemed to have accepted her tribulation with equanimity. When she saw Veitch watching her intently, she left her father sitting on the floor next to the hearth and pulled him to one side.
'No grim faces now,' she cautioned with a gentle finger on his cheek. 'It's not the end of the world.'
'You don't know what they'll be expecting of you on your nights with them.'
'I'll deal with it when it happens.'
'And it's going to be hard for you ever to get away from here now.'
'What's to stop me coming back just for the night?' But they both knew it wasn't going to happen. 'I just wanted to say, thanks for helping us.' She seemed to read every troubled thought passing through his head. Then she took his face in her hands, stood on tiptoes and gave him a long, deep kiss. Afterwards she said, 'It's a shame you have to go-'
'I have to.'
'I know. But it's a shame.' And then she smiled once and turned to her father. Veitch watched her for a while, kneeling next to McKendrick, one hand round his shoulder, whispering comforting words that only the two of them could hear. But then Tom caught his eye and nodded towards the door.
They made their goodbyes as best they could, and then when they were out walking over the sun-drenched hillsides, Veitch asked, 'Is this always how it is?'
'What do you mean?'
'When you're trying to do the right thing in the world. When you've got all these responsibilities. Like a big fucking rock on your shoulder.'
Oddly, Tom appeared pleasantly surprised by the comment. He clapped Veitch warmly on the shoulder. 'That's how it is. You get your reward later.'
'How much later?'
Tom's tight smile seemed filled with meaning, but Veitch couldn't understand it at all. 'Much, much later,' the Rhymer said before turning his attention to the path ahead.
They walked nonstop for the next day across the exhausting mountainous landscape and made camp in a gorge as night fell. They hadn't seen or heard anyone since they had left the croft; in the desolation, humanity could have been stripped from the face of the planet and they would never have known.
Since he had left Anna, Veitch hadn't been able to settle. He had found his thoughts turning to the others he had spent so long with over the past months. Why did they act the way they did? Why did they say one thing while believing another? His own thoughts had always moved swiftly and directly into words, and in the past he had judged others by the same standard, although he had known subconsciously that was rarely the case. And finally his attention had turned to Tom; he had spent the day secretly watching the way he moved, the subtleties of his facial expressions, his strange choice of words, and by the evening he knew that he didn't know the man at all.
As they sat around the fire finishing up the last of the provisions McKendrick had given them, the questions were plaguing Veitch so much he couldn't keep them in any longer. 'You said yesterday your eyes were better than mine.' Tom nodded. 'How much else has changed?'
The Rhymer prodded the fire, sending the sparks soaring. 'A great deal.'
'Like what?'
'I can hear better. Smell things more acutely. Can't really taste very much any more, though.'
Veitch gnawed on a crust while he thought. 'If a doc cut you open,' he began, 'what would he find inside?'
Tom stared into the fire, said nothing.
'If you don't want to talk about it-'
'I don't think I'm quite human any more.'
'Don't think?' Veitch watched Tom's face in the firelight, wondering why it was always so hard to tell what he was thinking or feeling.
'I don't know. I don't know if I should be here with people, or back in Otherworld with the rest of the strange things. I don't know if I can trust my feelings, if I really have any feelings, or if I just pretend to myself I have feelings. I don't know if I cut myself open if I'll find straw inside, or diamonds, or fishes, or if all the component parts are there, just in the wrong order.' He continued to watch the flames.
Veitch had a sudden, sweeping awareness of Tom's tragedy. He had lost everything; not just his family and friends, who were separated from him by centuries, but his kinship with humanity, his sense of who or what he was. He was more alone than anyone ever could be. Yet he still wished and hoped and felt and yearned; and he still tried to do his best for everyone, despite his own suffering.
'I think you're just a bloke, like me and the others,' Veitch said.
Tom looked at him curiously.
'And I think you'll find what you're looking for.'
Tom returned his attention to the fire. 'Thank you for that.'
'It must be hard to go back to that bitch who wrecked your life.'
Tom remained silent, but Witch noticed the faint tremor of a nerve near his mouth.
'You know when I said I couldn't understand why everybody thought you were a hero. I'm sorry about that.'
Tom threw some more wood on the fire and it crackled like gunfire. 'We need to get some sleep.'
'Okay, I'll take first watch.' He stood up and stretched, breathing deeply of the night air. 'What are we going to find when we get where we're going?'
'Everything we ever dreamed of.' Tom wandered towards the tent. 'And everything we ever feared.'
Tom had been in the tent barely five minutes when an awful sound echoed between the steep walls of the gorge. All the hairs on the back of Veitch's neck stood erect instantly and a queasy sensation burrowed deep in the pit of his stomach. Veitch hoped it was just an unusual effect of the wind rushing down from the mountains, but then Tom came scrambling out of the tent, his face unnaturally pale, and Veitch knew his first instincts were correct: it was the crying of a woman burdened by an unbearable grief.
At first he wondered if it was Anna, who had followed them, but Tom caught at his sleeve as he made to investigate. 'Don't. You won't find anyone.'
'What do you mean?' Veitch felt strangely cold; his left hand was trembling.
'You can always hear the Caoineag's lament, but you will never see her.'
Veitch peered into the dark. The wailing set his teeth on edge, dragged out a wave of despair from deep within him. He wanted to crawl into the tent and never come out again. 'What is it?'
'She is one of the sisters of the Washer at the Ford.' Tom's voice was so low Veitch could barely hear it. 'A grim spirit.'
'Is this her place, up here in the mountains?'
Tom shook his head. 'She is here for us.'
'For us?' Veitch dreaded what Tom was to say next.
'Those who hear the sound of the Caoineag's mourning are doomed to face death or great sorrow.' And with that he turned and dismally retreated to the tent.
