Horry has been off balance since his sister Ancella married and left Tanqueray Manor with her dog, Glory. Her new husband is kind and charming, but Ancella’s first sweetheart, Pom, felt like part of the family, and Horry misses him. His brother Guy is changing fast, Horry is falling behind, and there’s something amiss with the twins.
A letter requesting the return of something the Tanquerays don’t have brings a small mystery. Horry delivers the answer, and in the process he meets the galleonfee maid Vigdis. They enjoy a perfect day, but back at the manor, Horry’s world keeps shifting as he learns astonishing facts about his family and especially about his beloved pony, Lis.
Tamhas a’Phiobaire, hereditary piper of Clan MacCaa, did not always sleep peacefully in his bed. This had troubled him in his younger years, and all the more because he thought he had to bear his trouble in silence.
He loved his parents and they loved him. His mother, Annag, was a brewer of heather ale, a compounder of salves, and a distant song on the wind. Annag always sang, using the old tongue which few now employed, although some still understood it.
Tamhas’ father, Gaoth Mungo, the MacCaa himself, was a hearty windblown presence who blustered through Talla a’Phiobaire, the stately stone manor where they lived.
Annag and the MacCaa were good to Tamhas, and if they let him alone to grow into his own shape upon his own recognisance—well now, he preferred that far above being cossetted and hemmed with rules and prohibitions. They were openhearted to him, and to his sister Ròsaneilein Thomasine. Ròs was half an hour his senior, and a fine example of iron will wrapped in a bonnie skin. Life went Ròs’s way, or Ròs would demand the reason why.
With Ròs as an example, Tamhas understood that one mastered one’s own problems in life. Others might offer help, but to accept was weak. It would also give the helper unwarranted power in the debt of gratitude one incurred.
Admitting to Ròs, or to their parents, that he was sometimes troubled in his sleep was something he knew he couldn’t do.
He could also not go to Grandmother Saoirse.
It was the sight that troubled his rest, and Saoirse blamed herself for the incident that had awakened it in him.
It wasn’t her fault Tamhas had run to rescue tiny Treasa from the brim of a pool that day. It wasn’t her doing that he’d looked deep into the Glainne fìrinn glan, the mirror of truth and seen shadows of a future he couldn’t understand.
Yet Saoirse blamed herself. If she had not looked away from the swift-footed Treasa for a few seconds too long—if she had been swifter-footed herself when she saw the danger and hurried to the rescue—she might have saved Tamhas from his fate.
Och, laddie…I’m that sorry.
Over the years she’d taught him to deal with a situation that couldn’t be mended until finally he’d come not only to accept it, but to embrace it as a valued part of his being.
Whenever one of these intentions, as he thought of them, came to his mind, he would open his heart and follow where it led.
Treasa understood his sudden impulses. She teased him about them sometimes, but lovingly, as she did everything concerned with Tamhas. Treasa was his past, his forever, and his joyous present.
He had no need to tell Treasa of his restless nights when they came. She shared his bed, so she knew.
It was a deep winter night when the latest intention tapped Tamhas on the shoulder.
He was already awake.
“I’ve been expecting ye,” he told it, though softly, out of consideration for his wife.
“Have ye indeed…then might I suggest ye attend to the wee thing an’ let us sleep,” Treasa said tartly.
Tamhas stifled a chuckle. “I might hae known.”
“So ye might.” She turned over in the bed to face him. “Have ye to gae noo?”
Tamhas consulted his heart.
“Not the noo. Just an early warning for the turn o’ spring.”
“Aye? What have ye to do?”
He sat up, hitching the plaidie to his bare chest. “Nothing,” he said. He supposed his puzzlement echoed in his voice. He added, “Yet.”
“Wha’ then?”
“Stirrings at the auld manor.”
“Again?” She didn’t ask which manor he meant. “And hae ye to dance wi’ another bonnie lassie as ye did at Hogmanay?”
He smiled. “Aye, at the dannsa geamhraidh I’ll dance wi’ the bonniest lassie o’ them all.”
“That’s all right then,” she said contentedly.
“My business this time is wi’ the gifted one. She needs to use a new trick.”
Treasa gave her sudden crack of laughter. “That auld one has every trick known to man or woman either. What can a wee bairnie like you teach to her?”
Tamhas didn’t understand this either, but he shrugged and lay down again. “I’ll know when the time comes.”
“Ye hope.” She added, “What if this does nae happen?”
“Then…something that should ensue may not.”
