The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,3

the table. "She summons monsters from the sea with the power of her beautiful eyes. It was you who sang to the poor whale, was it, Maidie, and lured it up to its death on the beach?"

"I did not."

For once, I didn't like Tam's teasing. The whale had been too grand and strange for jokes.

Granny had gone outside again to fetch water from the burn.

"Why do you always call me Maidie?" I asked Tam. I'd meant to ask him often but never dared while Granny was around.

He looked over his shoulder, but Granny was still filling the bucket.

"You know why, my pretty one." He pinched my chin. "It was what I always called your mother. Mary, her name was to everyone else, but Maidie she was to me. And you are just like her. Even prettier, maybe."

"But she had the gift, didn't she? Granny said so. The second sight."

"Oh, that." He shook his head. "You shouldn't mind your granny, Maidie. She speaks sharply, and who wouldn't, with the troubles life has brought her? She loves you in her heart."

I shook my head and looked away from him, down into the red caves the fire had made in the burning peat.

"Anyway, be thankful that your mother didn't pass the gift on to you. It's not a comfortable thing, to foresee the future and know beforehand the manner of a person's death."

Granny came back then, a heavy bucket in each hand, and Tam set about fetching down the beakers and pouring out the whiskey, a good long slug for the two of them and a little drop for me. Then he put his hand inside his shirt, and with a flourish he pulled out a duck, holding it up by its webbed feet so that its bright feathered head hung down, its eyes dead and glazed.

"Will you look at this. A king's feast, that's what we'll have tonight. You'll want to save the feathers, Elspeth. Where shall I pluck the wee fellow?"

***

Oh, it was good that night. The duck's feathers flew and the pot simmered and the whiskey sank in the bottle. And Tam, as he always did, started on the old stories. They were stories of the sea, put into his head by the whale. He told my favorite, the one about the seal who shed her skin and became a beautiful woman who married a fisherman. Her children were as pretty as she was, and she loved them, I suppose, but one night she found her old sealskin and put it on, and a longing for the sea overcame her. Back she went under the waves, a seal once more, and her children never saw her again.

Like I never saw my mam again, I thought.

Tam went on to tell tales of mermaids and sea horses and a monster that lived in a loch along with the hero who killed it. But what with the purring of Sheba on my lap, the good food in my stomach, the peat smoke in my eyes, the whiskey in my head, and the tiredness in my arms and legs, I couldn't stay awake.

"No, no, Elspeth," I heard Tam say. "It was Canola who invented the harp. She heard the wind blow through the sinews that clung to the ribs of a rotting dead whale, and it gave her the idea."

Whales again, I thought. I was so sleepy I almost fell off my stool. Tam saw me nod and laughed.

"Away to your bed, Maidie, and dream sweetly all night long."

Chapter 2

I think I did have happy dreams that night, but they floated away like wisps of mist, and I couldn't remember what they were. My sleep wasn't long, anyway, because before dawn there came a battering on the door, startling me awake so suddenly that I shot up out of the straw like a hunted hare.

"Elspeth! You're to come quickly! My Jeanie's got her pains!"

It was Mr. Macbean, and I knew what he wanted. Granny was a famed midwife, and if his wife's time had come, he'd need her to bring the baby safely into the world.

It was pitch-dark in the house so I kicked at the peat. A little flame flared up, giving enough light for me to see Granny lying dead asleep on the floor, her empty beaker of whiskey by her hand. Tam had gone.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Macbean," I called out. "I'll wake her up."

"Is that you, Maggie?" The voice outside the door was hoarse with anxiety. "Get her up quick,