Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein Read Free Book Online

with Binn’s rich milk and secretly add a bit of the honey Mother gave me. Colum and I glare at each other as our cakes cook side by side in the small iron skillet. When he tastes my farl, his eyes widen and he stares at it. I smile in triumph.
    “What did you do to it?” He drops it back in the skillet. “You put a spell on it.”
    Suddenly angry, I kick the pan off the fire, scattering ashes and embers.
    “I have nothing to do with Helwain’s magic!” Tears burn my eyes, but I hold them back. “That is a simple farl made with milk and honey. You are a fool to think there is any harm in it.”
    Colum is silent. After a moment, he picks up the oatcake from the ashes, brushes it off, and eats every crumb.
    “That is the best farl I ever ate,” he says solemnly.
    Still trembling, I eat the oatcake Colum made. It disturbs me to think how quickly my anger flared up, how hot my nature is, like a fire.
    “This one is good, too,” I say meekly.
    “If you like the taste of dust,” says Colum with a glum smile.
    Suddenly we are both laughing. I can’t stop, though my sides ache. I think that Colum and I are like two lambs of the same litter. We wrestle, play, and sometimes nip each other, but easily forget our hurts.
    While the sheep graze on the green and plentiful grasses, Colum plays on his pipe and teaches me songs. My favorite is about a lad and a lass who meet in a dream. The haunting tune carries the words deep into my mind.
    I see you now with the moon in your hair
And the dew on your lips. O nevermore
May I waken to find
That I’ve left you behind
In the cold dark enchantment of air.
    I feel something stir in me, loneliness mixed with a nameless longing. I think of Mother’s kisses, but that does not satisfy me. I try to imagine putting my lips to Colum’s face and the idea makes me giggle.
    When we tire of singing, Colum tells stories. I never knew there were so many goblins, giants, princes, fathers and sons, faeries, and silly fools, more than in all the tales Mother and Helwain have ever told me.
    One day a lone shepherdess by the name of Caora wanders by with her flock. Her hair falls in curls as fine as the fleece on her lambs. Her supple limbs remind me of a willow tree. She and her sheep stay with us for most of the summer. One night the three of us recline beside a loch whose islands seem to float in the mists rising from the water. Frogs hidden in the reeds send up their hollow croaking. The hour is late, but on the shieling, a summer night is never entirely black, even when the moon is hidden.
    “It’s a perfect evening for stories,” Caora says. “True ones.”
    So Colum tells about the Greentooth of the River Nairn, who called his little cousin, a bairn barely able to walk, to the water’s edge, pulled her beneath the surface, and devoured her.
    “I myself have seen the hag’s flowing green hair and her shilpit arms like those of a starveling,” says Colum, lifting his arms and wiggling his fingers. “She waits just beneath the water, and no one dares swim in the river or even put in a boat there.”
    Seeing me shiver, Caora reaches over and squeezes my hand. Her fingers are cold, but I do not pull away. I’ve never met a girl my own age, and I am eager for her friendship.
    “Will you tell a story now?” I ask her.
    “I have seen a monster even more fearsome than the Green-tooth hag,” Caora begins. Her voice is silvery, like a waterfall lit by moonlight. “A horse with fins on his legs, a huge mouth that steams like a kettle, and one fiery eye. Nocklavey is his name. Out of his back grows the body of a man whose huge head rolls from side to side. Most terrifying of all, he has no skin, so that you can see all his sinews and the blood that flows black in his veins.”
    Caora’s eyes glow like golden orbs as she tells of Nocklavey rising from the sea and laying waste to the land.
    “The monster seizes men with his great skinless hands and crushes them, and the breath of his