The wind swept across the moors like blade of vengeance, and cut strait through the thick woolen skirts and shawl of the old woman. A brown crow, the crone huddled a bundle close to her chest, and glanced frequently over her shoulder, back towards the menacingly dark crag from whence she fled. Feet clad in rags without pattens hastened across rocks and through tufts of moor grass and coarse sedge, setting startled tarmagin to flight but never missstepping from the secret path only the crone could sense through the reedy, dank fen.
The bundle against the woman's chest held some live thing, a thing that released a thin wail when the crone stumbled over a rocky outcropping, and jarred it.
"Hush, me sweet ba, hush," the woman crooned softly in a thick Scots brogue. "'Sright ye'll be warm enough when I carry ye far fra' tha cold evil man what called hisself your da."
The babe wasn’t comforted by the assurance, and continued to cry with increasing vigor and vitality, a cry of sheer life in the desolate bog. The crone paused to pull back the stolen Clan plaid that covered the babe's face. Blue eyes, fair skin and a crown of blonde hair met her gaze. She fumbled a sugar tit from her robes, and gave it to the child to suckle.
"I 'faith, your sweet own face woulda been enough to show how your Ma cuckolded him, yet he would still claim you as daughter, and wed you to the McClaren beast when you come of age. I swore upon yer Ma's cairn I wouldna let tha happen, Rosamunde, and so I shall not. For love of yer sweet ma, so I shall not."
And so the nursemaid, witch, and traitor to Clan Campbell disappeared like the veriest mist into the moor, with the only heir of Lord Ian Campbell crying at her withered breast. Ne'er was the witch or child found, though Lord Ian and his clansmen hunted the moor ceaselessly with their huge hounds and hawks. Nay, the Witch of Crannag was too canny for the likes of them, and raised the babe as her own and taught Rosamunde the ways of the ancients, to speak to the beasts and birds as if they were nigh human. The babe grew into a beautiful girl who knew naught of the world outside of the vast, deep moor, until one fateful day when she met the one beast she couldna tame...
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© 2005 Jody Wallace