The Falconer's Daughter, Book 1

Chapter 2 - Part 2

In the mountains, the summer smelled of pine and heather, and lower down the slopes, great thickets of birch trees spread lovely dappled shade across the rocky patches. Kirk had decided they should make one of their rare visits to the village in the valley. He rolled the furs he had trapped and treated last winter, hoping he had enough to trade for a young goat. The girl could use more milk. Some cheese. He worried constantly about her. She was getting so tall lately, her arms as skinny as her knobby kneed legs. In her shift, she looked like a waif. Maybe she was. "Are you ready now?" he asked, knotting the rope around the bundle. He would sling it across his back like a pack.

She nodded eagerly, smoothing her hair back from her face, her eyes bright. Cordaella loved the visits to the village. There were always so many people. So much to see.

"Is that all you have to wear?" he asked, seeing how much leg showed beneath the short hem of her shift. More scorn in Lochaber, he thought wearily. God only knew what they'd say now.

"I won't be cold," she answered brightly, skipping to the door. "It's a fine day, so much sun everywhere."

"It isn't the cold I'm thinking of," he said, whistling for Culross to follow. "It's just that your dress is small."

"Because I am so big." Cordaella danced delightedly in front of him. "See?" she said, pointing to the mark on the door. "I am much bigger now than I was in the winter."

"Yes, I see." He shut the door behind him. "Don't waste all your energy yet, lassie," he said, watching as she twirled down the path, her long hair flying in a circle of black. "We have hours of walking ahead of us."

"Oh, hours," she laughed. "Hours and hours!"

------------

That night, she woke with a lurch, her eyes flying open and her hand reaching out to the side of her straw pallet. Her fingers grasped the space between the pallets and she lay still, listening to the night and the wind blowing across the mountain behind the croft.
Culross, her wolf, was at her feet, and his head lifted in her direction. Slowly Cordaella lay back down, her heart still beating quickly, a pummeling that made her feel as if she had been running hard across the hill. "Papa—"

He grunted in his sleep.

"Papa, are you awake?"

"No. Go to sleep." He rolled over, pulling the blanket higher around his shoulders.

She stared up at the thatched roof, damp with the terror of her sleep. She had dreamed of a man in a strange robe. He had come with two other men to take her away. He had tied her to the back of the horse. "Papa!" Cordaella turned on her side to stare at her father's back. "I dreamed an awful dream. I dreamed that someone came to take me away. You were gone and Culross was dead."

"It was a nightmare. Go to sleep."

"I can't, Papa! It's true, isn't it?"

"Going into Lochaber has given you strange ideas, Cory. Maybe I shouldn't take you with me anymore." He listened for a moment and, when she did not reply, he was about to sink back to sleep.

"I dreamed that you let them take me. You walked away! I cried for you. But you were not listening. You did not hear me," she whispered, a profound terror in her hushed tone. She shivered and inched closer to the falconer.

He pulled her pallet next to his and patted the straw. "Hush, child, you will make yourself ill dreaming such things." She snuggled against him, her eyes just able to make out his profile in the dark.

He studied her tense face, not able to fathom her fear. "I told you that no one shall ever take you from me. I will not let your grandfather have you, nor the friar. As long as you wish to stay with me, I shall protect you."