A Hellion for the Highlander

There Are Tears For Things

Cicilia knew something was wrong before her eyes had even fluttered open. It was still dark outside, but a hard knot in her stomach had awoken her from a pleasant dream about a mysterious dark stranger sweeping her off her feet.

We were dancin’ in a ballroom, like proper ladies an’ gentlemen. An’ then it was just him an’ me, pressed up together, so close I couldn’ae tell where I ended and he started.

It was a surprisingly sensual dream, and one she’d rather have spent more time in, at least that she could have removed the disguising mask from the tall suitor’s face. She had a nagging feeling that the gentle kiss he’d placed on her neck was a warning—or maybe a welcoming?

Her sleep-fogged brain couldn’t work it out, and even that was banished at her instinctual reaction to the wrongness in the air.

She probably imagined it. Perhaps she should just lay down and go back to sleep. Maybe her dark stranger would be waiting for her, ready to—

Then she heard the soft, broken sobbing from just outside her bedroom and wondered if she’d ever sleep again. It was Annys and Jamie both, she knew that from the bottom of her heart. She’d only heard them sobbing in this exact way, so quiet and broken she could barely make it out, when they’d realized precisely what it meant that their father was dead.

What could o’ broken their heart in such a way now?

Cicilia didn’t bother dressing. She slid out of bed and into her house shoes, grabbing only her bed robe to wrap around her nightdress, and hurried to the open window.

It was hard to make anything out in the darkness before sunrise, but she could see the two dark shapes that were her siblings curled up as one next to the large pigpen. Inside the enclosure, there was no movement. None at all.

Cicilia shivered, though it was not cold. She turned from the window and rushed out of her bedroom and downstairs, stopping only to light a lantern to carry out with her.

It was quiet, eerily so, when she walked outside. There was no sound but the noise of the sobbing. There weren’t even the snorts and huffs of sleeping animals or the squeaking of the rats in the hay. So she held up the lantern and followed the sounds of the twins’ cries, pacing ever so slowly. She felt as though she was in some sort of ghost story. Could a monster await?

Dinnae be so fanciful, Cicilia. Dinnae be ridiculous. Ye’re a grown woman.

She turned the corner to the side of the pigpen and lifted the torch higher, spilling its light over the huddled twins.

“Annys? Jamie?” she whispered. It felt like if she tried to talk any louder, something horrible would happen. She took a tentative step forward and stared in shock at the pair of them.

Both twins were pale as the moon, their faces screwed up in pain as they clung to each other, drenched in mud and tears and—

God above, is that blood?!

She nearly dropped the lantern in her rush to get to them, and placed it down as she knelt at their side, grabbing Annys by the shoulders. “Annie, sweetheart, mo leanbh, what’s happenin’? Are ye hurt? Jamie, are ye? Who’s blood is that?”

Both twins looked at her, one pair of brown and one pair of green eyes streaked with raw red and shining with agony. As one, the children burst into tears once more.

She tried to talk to them, but they just cried harder, breathing so heavily that Cicilia was half-afraid they’d bring themselves to unconsciousness. Her very blood was cold now, horrified by imagining what her poor little brother and sister may have seen to have them in such a space.

With a tremulous hand, Jamie pointed behind her.

Cicilia lifted the torch and got to her feet, heart in her throat as she turned. As the light poured over the special pen where the twins kept their pet, she saw at last what had them in such a state. Acrid vomit threatened to burn her throat as she stumbled backward, and her hands flew to her mouth as tears scalded her own eyes.

Bacon wasn’t only dead, he had been mutilated. The pig’s throat was slit, so deep that his head was half-severed, and there was blood…everywhere. There were slashes and cuts all over the poor animal’s body.

He had not just been killed. He had been tortured. Cicilia did not like to imagine the pain the poor creature had endured before he had finally succumbed to his wounds.

Who could do such a thing to the bairns’ beloved pet? Who could do such a thing to anythin’ livin’?

She was shaking, but she retreated from the body, determined to calm her siblings down, get them inside and bathed, and solve the mystery of the pig’s murder later. But as she turned, her torch lit the nearby sheep pen and stopped her in her tracks.

She could only see two of them in this light, but there they lay, their wool matted with blood, their legs at odd angles.

In a daze, she walked further away, to check on the larger pig pen, the cowshed, the goats, the chickens, and geese. While the cows and the birds slept peacefully and would wake with the sun, the others were not so lucky. Everywhere Cicilia looked, there was more blood, more bodies.

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Everywhere she looked, there was more slaughter.