The Lighthouse Witches(50)

“My mother didn’t believe it, either,” Isla cut in, undeterred. “She’d been born and raised here on the island so she’d heard the tales of wildlings, and she knew what to do if she saw one. And then, when a boy appeared, in every way similar to my brother save the mark on his neck of a set of numbers, she couldn’t believe it.”

I was confused. They’d found her brother. So what if he had a mark on his neck? “OK. So what did your mother do?”

“It wasn’t just the mark,” Isla said. “They knew he was different. A parent knows their own child, right? My father told her that she knew in her heart of hearts that the boy wasn’t Jamie. He had the mark. Beneath the disguise of blood, bone, and flesh, he was faery in disguise, sent to kill every member of our family until the bloodline was destroyed.”

I’d heard enough. I made to get up, but Ling squeezed my hand. “Wait until you hear what happened,” she said, a little forceful.

“My mother hesitated,” Isla said, continuing the story. “Like any decent woman, the thought of killing a child, or what she believed to be a child, her own son, was a brutality of which she wasn’t capable. But not twenty-four hours later, Lòn Haven had its worst storm in living memory. Boats sank at the port, and several homes were underwater. There were deaths. My grandfather . . .” There was a catch in her voice, and she took a moment to recover. “My grandfather’s car got pulled into the sea. He was inside it. He drowned.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I was. To have lost her brother and grandfather . . . I knew intimately how devastating it was to lose someone you love, how your entire life can change—or end—in the blink of an eye. But still. What did they mean by wildlings destroying bloodlines?

“The fae have all kinds of powers,” Greer explained. “In human form, they have fae and human power. They can get close to folk. Their curses are more potent.”

“Perhaps this might offer another example of how wildlings have driven scourges on these isles,” Niamh said, producing a long tube of something and unrolling it in the center of the group. “Seeing how you’re an artist, I thought you’d appreciate this.”

I watched as she delicately opened an old scroll, about six feet in length. The lights were low, but I could make out that the paper was brittle with age, the edges rough and the ink faded. The scroll seemed to be a story, or a medieval kind of comic strip, with scenes and close-ups of people, animals, and trees. I made out a drawing of a house on fire, another of what seemed to be a haystack but turned out to be an enormous pile of bodies.

“What is this?” I said.

Mirrin pointed at one of the close-ups. A demonic face, with pointed teeth, crescent moon eyes, and horns, the mouth open in a cruel laugh.

“The fae are as old as the hills,” she said. “This scroll belonged to my great-grandfather. All of us have been disbelieving, at some point, but it’s hard to argue with history. The witches that were burned here cursed the island to have wildlings. Whole islands have been left without a single man, woman, or child due to these creatures. Scotland has just shy of eight hundred islands. At one point in history, all of them were inhabited. And then the wildlings came. You know how many of those islands are without a single human on their shores?”

I shook my head. “I’ve no idea.”

“More than seven hundred.”

“You’ve heard of shape-shifting?” Ruqyya asked. “Metamorphosis?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“In Greek myth,” Louisa said, “Zeus turns himself into a shower of gold, a cloud, a swan. In Norse folklore, Loki shape-shifts into anything and anyone, even giving birth a few times when he shape-shifts as a female. The Navajo know very well about skin-walkers, and the Irish have their púca, or Puck, as Shakespeare called it. And we have our own shape-shifters in the form of faeries, pixies, and goblins, to name just a few.”

“But those are myths,” I said. “They’re not real.” I looked at the scroll, astonished that they thought it was going to convince me. I didn’t care how old it was—were they really treating it like a serious historical record, this series of horrific portraits?

“Stories, yes, but very real indeed,” Ling added, resting a hand on my shoulder. “People have told stories about the natural world since the beginning of time. For hundreds of years, nature held dominion over humans. It was truly wild. We’ve spent centuries creating stories about our place in that wildness. You know how much of the world’s land remains wild right now?”

I shook my head.

“Five percent,” she said. “That’s a huge human impact. And look at our stewardship. We’re destroying it.”

“I agree with you,” I said, treading carefully. “But that has nothing to do with this child . . .”

“Liv, I implore you to put aside what you think you know and listen to those of us who have suffered,” Mirrin shouted then, throwing her hands up. The room fell silent, and Mirrin fixed me with an emotional stare, her eyes wide and glassy with tears. She lifted a hand and pressed it to her chest. “I lived on an island called Mulltraive,” she said, her voice trembling. “I had four brothers and three sisters. My parents ran a farm. My mother found a child wandering along the riverbank, a wee boy. My mother took him in and set about finding his parents. I remember my brother Ian forcing us all to play with the child. Said he’d want to make sure the wee boy didn’t feel too scared while his parents were found. Not long after, I went to visit my aunt Shauneen in Fort William. By the time I returned to the island, my family was dead.” She hung her head, overcome with emotion. “All my brothers. All my sisters. Both my parents. And not a month later, we had floods. Hundreds of livestock killed, twenty crofts underwater. Crops destroyed. It took a government intervention to keep the community from starving. But no one ever claimed that boy. And he was never seen again.”