Free The Forbidden Land by Kate Forsyth Page A

his caravan, strumming his guitar and talking to Jay and Ashlin, who were eating bannocks with honey. Brun the cluricaun was fussing around the fire, making a fresh pot of tea for Donald as he fletched his arrows. Nina was sewing up a rent in her skirt and Enit was talking with some birds that had fluttered down to perch on her knees. Despite the warmth, the old woman wore a crimson shawl wrapped close about her thin form. Lying back in the grass was Dide’s father Morrell, smoking his pipe and blowing perfect smoke-rings up into the sky, where they were torn apart by the wind.
    Finn groped around in the pocket of her breeches and pulled out her own pipe and pouch of tobacco. Nimbly her fingers went about their work while her eyes roamed about the camp, enjoying the colour and activity. She stuck the pipe in the corner of her mouth and tried to catch a spark from her flint, but the breeze was too strong. She wandered down to the fire to drag out a burning twig with which to light her pipe. Morrell saw her and beckoned to her lazily.
    ‘Come amuse me, lassie, an’ I’ll light it for ye.’
    Finn sat down next to him and he conjured flame with a snap of his fingers and held it to the bowl of her pipe. Fragrant smoke billowed up and he said with a wink, ‘By the stink o’ that, it’s Fair Isles smokeweed ye’re puffing on. Could ye be sparing a man a pinch o’ that, by any chance? Sick to death I am o’ smoking dried grass, which is all they’ll sell a man in the marketplace these days.’
    Rather reluctantly Finn gave him a pinch of her tobacco, conscious of how thin her pouch was growing. Morrell knocked out his pipe, packed it again cheerfully, lit it with his thumb and drew back greedily. ‘Aye, that’s the stuff!’ he sighed and drew out a battered silver flask from his pocket which he unscrewed and drank from deeply. ‘Och, naught like a wee dram and a lungful o’ smokeweed!’
    He amused her by breathing out his smoke from his nostrils in two long streams like a dragon, then showed her how to send one smoke ring drifting through the centre of another, until six blue hazy hoops hung above them in ever-widening concentric circles. Finn lay back in the grass to practise, Goblin curling up on her stomach. She suddenly became aware of a long blue skirt towering over her. She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered up through the smoke. Brangaine stood over her, her face stern with disapproval. As always, she was clean and neat, her fair hair tied back in a plait, her boots shiny.
    ‘I do no’ think your mother would approve o’ ye smoking a pipe,’ Brangaine said.
    ‘Well, mam is no’ here, is she?’ Finn replied mockingly.
    Her cousin’s lips thinned. ‘Ye look like naught but a beggar lass.’
    ‘Why, thank ye, my dear,’ Finn replied. ‘That was exactly the look I was going for.’
    Brangaine breathed through her nose in exasperation, the sound far too genteel to be described as a snort. She turned on her well-polished heel and marched over to the fire, where she helped Brun wash up the breakfast plates, the griddle and the porridge pot.
    ‘Och, a braw lassie,’ Morrell said admiringly. ‘And wi’ such bonny manners.’
    ‘There be too much o’ the stink o’ sanctity about her for my taste,’ Finn replied morosely.
    ‘Aye, well, happen if ye were a laddie ye’d sing a different tune,’ Morrell replied with a wink, before settling down in the grass again, his cap pulled over his eyes.
    Finn smoked the rest of her pipe in silence, then got up and went down to the fire, the elven cat at her heels. Not looking at Brangaine, she said to the cluricaun, ‘Is there aught I can do to help?’
    ‘Nay, thank ye kindly,’ he replied in his gruff voice, looking up at her with bright brown eyes set in a furry triangular face. His ears were exceptionally large and pricked forward with eagerness. Dressed in the rough clothes of a farm lad, he had cut a hole in the trousers for the long tail which