He slept at last, waking slowly, and only when the sun was full up. The zeal and purpose that had driven him for days had leached away, and he felt tired and listless, yet oddly uneasy.  He was torn between a desire to curl up and sleep forever, and an abiding need to move, to get away, even though he had no sense of destination.  Finally he roused himself to check his snares, finding nothing in them.  He made what repairs he could to his torn breeches using a long pine needle tied to threads he had pulled and twisted from his old shirt, now reduced to a few small rags.  At last he broke down his camp, slowly gathering his meager store of belongings: his cloak, his weapons, including the bow and arrows he had managed to fashion, his old plaid, the small water skin he had worked so hard to make.

He checked his snares again just before he left, but the one rabbit they had caught was very young, and he pondered whether he should kill the creature for the small amount of meat it would provide.  The thought provoked a startling and ugly vision in his mind of the brutalized carcass of the boar.  It stopped him cold and he had to swallow the bile in his throat at a memory he had managed to put out of his mind all day. 

But as he did, he realized that was what had pushed him to move on.  He didn’t know what to think anymore.  About himself.  About who or what he was.  Maybe he was a demon, after all, like they all said – a danger to those he cared about and the safest thing to do was get away.  He knew he couldn’t face them anymore, not with their accusing words and fearful looks. 

He let the rabbit go, watching it scurry away into the evening dusk, back to the safety of its warren and the familiar comfort of its family.  He had set out to prove his worth, but all he had done was confirm his own worst fears.  And yet something inside still insisted, against all logic, that he was not evil.  At least he didn’t want to be.

He recalled a vivid dream he had once had, long ago, while still a child.  He had seen himself a grown man, imposingly tall and muscular, clad in a long, dark coat.  His older self seemed confused and uncertain, facing some enemy he didn’t know how to defeat.  He remembered waking with the singular phrase echoing in his mind.  “Do you not know that good will always win over evil?” 

And that was, he decided, all he could rely on.  If he was a demon, then he would just have to fight his own nature.  No one, not even the devil, was unbeatable. 

The sun had set, but Duncan knew the trails and paths well enough, even in the darkest hours of the night.  He had also learned more about stealth in the last few months than he had ever expected to have to know.  Jean MacClure’s pony snuffed his hand in recognition as Duncan quietly opened the pen and led him out.  He had silently pulled the small cart over the rise with his own muscle before leading the horse away from the house as quietly as possible.  He found Robbie MacClure’s peat shovel inside the pony’s small shelter.  It was old and battered and not as sharp as it should be, but it would have to do.

Once out of earshot of the house, Duncan hitched the pony to the cart and led him down towards the peat bog in a small valley about halfway to the shores of Loch Sheil.  There were sometimes one or two laborers at the bog during the day, but no one would be there in the dead of night.  Long after moonset, he worked in the precise, practiced motions of planting the flat-bladed spade in careful, even rows, shearing off piece after piece, piling it, then stacking it in the cart.  He worked until his hands bled, his shoulders burned and his biceps trembled, but kept going until the cart was full.

He led the pony back, pulling the poor old gelding along as fast as it could go.  He had already taken too long, and wouldn’t have enough time to pile the peat by the house before the family awoke, as he had hoped.  The sun was just beginning to lighten the sky by the time he topped the rise, but he figured he could just leave the pony and cart in the front and quickly slip away.

But Jean was waiting, standing in front of the house, watching for him.

He slowed and stopped, not knowing whether he should go any closer.  At last Jean came forward, took the lead from his hand and led the horse to the front of the house.

She began unloading the peat and stacking it in neat rows against the wall.  Duncan hung back for a few moments, but couldn’t just watch her work, so he stepped closer and they silently toiled, side by side.  When the cart was empty, Jean had still said nothing, and moved inside the house and closed the door.

Duncan stood, stretching his strained shoulders and breathing deeply to catch his breath after all the exertion.  He brushed a little of the dirt off his hands, then unhitched the pony, leading him into the pen, then pulled the cart around to the side of the house where he had found it.  He came around front to gather his things, and Jean was there, holding out a cup of water.

“Thirsty?” she asked.

He nodded, and took the cup, finishing it quickly.  She refilled it from the bucket she had brought outside, and handed it to him again.  Their fingers brushed, and she almost dropped it, so he was careful when he handed the cup back not to touch her.

“I…I made you a meal,” she said.  “It’s not much, but…”

“Thank you,” Duncan answered.  “You’ve been very kind.”  It sounded awkwardly formal, but he couldn’t really think of anything else to say.

“Nay,” she whispered.  “I don’t know what you are, Duncan, but I cannot believe you’re evil.”

It seemed passing strange that she would say that only after he had managed to confirm his own worst fears.

“I don’t know what I am, either, but it is time for me to leave Glenfinnan, Jean.  I just wanted to do something to repay you for…”

“Treating you like a friend, a clansman?” she inserted with a hard, cutting wave of her hand.  “Like a man who has treated me and my bairns with naught but kindness?”  She crossed her arms and turned away, her back stiff.  “I’m a coward!” she said, almost to herself.  “A coward and a fool, just like the rest of them.”  She picked up her skirts and marched into the house, returning a moment later with a large bowl of hot porridge laced with thick buttermilk.

Duncan took the dish almost reverently, warming his hands on the smooth wood of the carved bowl.  Holding a spoon in his hand after months of eating with his fingers seemed momentarily awkward, but the taste and smell of the salted, butter-thick porridge flooded his mouth with juice and for a few moments, his world shrank to a very small space between his mouth and the bowl.

When his spoon scraped the last of it off the sides and he had licked the utensil clean, he looked up to find Jean watching him with undisguised pity.  He felt his face flush, and he looked away, wiping his mouth.  He mustered as much dignity as he could and handed her back the bowl.

“It was very good,” he said stiffly.  “Thank you.”

“Would you like some more?”

“No.”  It wasn’t easy to say, but it came out almost normally.  “I really should be off.”  He reached for his things.

“Really, Duncan.  There’s plenty to spare.”

“I said, no!” he snapped, settling the plaid over his shoulder and his claymore at his waist. He relented a little, knowing she meant well and cursing his own dark temper and stiff pride.  Perhaps it was the demon, fighting to control his actions. “The sun is up and someone might see me here, and you’d have no end of trouble for that.” 

“Where will you go?” she asked.

He shrugged, looking up at the horizon.  “North, most likely.  I hear there are wide stretches there with few people to fill it.”

“Well, then,” she said softly, “Godspeed, Duncan.” 

He nodded, but couldn’t meet her eyes, turned and walked away.  He headed up a long slope, and turned at the top of the rise.  She was still watching him and raised her hand in tentative acknowledgement.  When Duncan turned away, it felt like something was tearing away from his soul.

It was a long walk over steep terrain, and he tried to do most of his traveling in the early morning and late evening when it was light enough to see, but he was less likely to meet others.  Even so, he periodically crossed paths with another as he traveled through lands dominated by the Camerons, then the MacDonalds.  He made the mistake of giving his name at a chance meeting with an aged MacDonald clansman out watching his small herd of sheep.  The man backed off and swung his staff at him, set his dog to attack him, then started yelling a “Hail, Mary” in a frantic bellow that scattered his herd.

He should have known.  Gossip, stories of inter-clan rivalries and tales of ghosts and mystical events spread quickly in the Highlands, sometimes distorted beyond recognition.  Whatever had been said about Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, the tale had rendered his name a curse, and he would find no welcome anywhere amongst the clans.

He made northern progress in fits and starts, and while food was a little less scarce than it had been in earlier months, being on the move all the time kept him from staying near regularly used animal trails and easily finding game.   Even so, he surprised himself late one evening when he brought down a fat partridge with an arrow.  The shot was more luck than skill, especially given the rather crude bow and arrow he had fashioned from poorly seasoned oak, but he still felt a surge of happy pride in the achievement – until the automatic and ingrained wish that he could share the moment with his father and his clan struck him like a sharp slap in the face. 

The thought filled his mind as he retrieved the bird.  Never again would he feel the sense of warmth and completion when he shared his life with those he loved, provided for them, protected them, taught them…and they him.  He swallowed the hard constriction in his throat, pulled out his dirk and dug out the arrow, cleaning it and returning it to his quiver.  He tied the bird’s feet together with a strip of leather and hung it from his belt. 

Never again.

He stood for a long time, knee deep in rough underbrush at the top of a hill, looking out across the land that had given him birth.  Far below to the northwest, towards the sea, he could see a dark green shadow of a long stretch of forest.  He had not headed to Donan Woods because it was too close to those who knew him, even though he had always felt at home in that mysterious, much fabled forest.  But now, there wasn’t a village as far as the eye could see.  Wandering far from all men, indeed.

He headed northwest.

It was a beautiful forest, full of pine and oak, alder, aspen and birch, the floor a soft, green carpet of moss and ferns.  The light filtered down in golden streaks when the trees thinned out a little, but mostly the sunlight was only seen up in the high branches, splintering into shards of white if you looked up towards the sun.  Duncan followed the path of an old creek bed.  The ground began to slope downward, and where the old branch met its original source, the sound of running water was music to a tired, thirsty traveler’s ears.

The weeks passed in solitude as a cool, wet spring gave way to a warm summer, and Duncan mostly avoided thinking about anything but survival, except at night in his dreams.  He kept a lookout for a likely place to winter, since the rude lean-to he had built from pine boughs would hardly suffice during the long, cold months to come.  He marked the passage of time by the cycles of the moon, and the growth of the plants.  The wild strawberries came earliest, along with a noticeable increase in the rabbit population.  He soon had enough of the small pelts to fashion better footwear and leggings, but he wished he had more tools to work the skins and sew them together.

He had a startling and rather terrifying brush with a bear one late afternoon while exploring a cave as a potential wintering site.  Even as he stumbled, rolled, scrambled and finally dashed away, the bear’s snarling roar echoing in the woods behind him, he wondered if he would eventually have to challenge the animal for ownership of the cave.  While there were many stories and legends he had heard about bears, this was the first he had ever seen, and he wondered if it, too, was alone, the last of its kind, cast out, with no mate to keep it company.  Even so, winters in the Highlands were long and brutal, and without real shelter, demon or no, he would end up as food for the wolves.

It was already high summer and he had only managed to store some roots and grains he had found.  The thought that he might ultimately have to find refuge in a village somewhere made his guts churn.  Death from cold or starvation seemed preferable to being reviled by a people whose respect and affection he had always cherished.

Things looked up when, following a small herd of a stag and his hinds one warm afternoon, he discovered their salt lick at the outer edge of a small, hidden valley where brackish water stood in soggy puddles, never seeming to soak fully into the ground.  He managed to chip out some large chunks, which might just give him some means to preserve some meat for the winter months.

Having found a place where he knew they would come, he eventually managed to bring down one of the deer, carefully cured its hide and, for a few days, ate enough to finally dull the gnawing hunger that had dogged him for so long.  Then he carefully cut the rest of the meat into thin strips, smoking, drying and salting it against leaner times.  As grateful as he was to eat at all, he was getting royally sick of a diet of just meat and was pleased when the wild berries began to ripen in high summer.

One afternoon he found a whole hillside of blaeberries.  They were small and barely ripe, but they were plentiful, and he ate until his hands began to cramp from picking.  Then he got a stomachache, but it wasn’t as bad as he might have expected, given that he had hardly had any fruits or vegetables in months.  It was a bare, struggling, lonely existence, but he did learn to appreciate small pleasures, such as finding a fallen log of a beautiful old oak, undamaged by rot or insects and aged enough to use to carve a new bow, more arrows, and even a bowl and spoon so he didn’t have to eat with his hands like some wild animal.

There were days when the sun was warm, there was food in his belly and some sense of satisfaction from his achievements, that he was actually able to lie in the shade of his small camp and drift to sleep, and the dreams that came to him were all good – of days when he and Debra Campbell walked together, their hands barely touching, but so aware of each other it seemed their heartbeats sounded as one.

Of games with his many cousins, mock battles with crudely carved swords, kicking a rag-stuffed pig bladder through the village.  Of nights sitting by the hearth, his mother working the tangles out of his hair, listening to his father talk to the other men of the village, talking politics, planning raids or just discussing the raising of cattle or sheep, how and when to get them to market, how to insure the welfare of their small community.

But afterwards he felt the loss of everything important in his life even more keenly, sometimes awakening with his face wet with tears, and he wasn’t sure whether such memory-dreams were better or worse than the nightmares that regularly startled him out of sleep with his own cry of terror still ringing in his ears. 

Then there were the demon-dreams, as he labeled them in his mind.  Frightening glimpses of faces he could have sworn he had never seen, but which seemed so familiar, bright flashes of swords always coming at him, sensuous dreams of a woman with long, flowing dark hair that left him aching with sexual desire.  They had nothing to do with his life as he knew it and had to come from the demon -- he thought of it as a separate entity from himself.  He had to.  It was the only way to stay sane, especially when he would bruise or cut himself accidentally, then watch as his skin healed itself in a tiny shower of flashing blue lights.  After awhile he stopped looking and did his best not to think about it.

Duncan had waited since long before dawn, watching the mouth of the only cave he had found that was large enough to provide real shelter.  Unfortunately, its current occupant had already demonstrated his determination to keep the space for himself.  The bear had gained weight since their first encounter, bulking up for the winter to come, and was even more intimidating than he had been when Duncan had scrambled away in terror at the beginning of the warm season. But Duncan had been watching all summer.  And waiting.  The trees were now just beginning to turn gold, the mornings were getting chilly enough to mist breath, and Duncan had decided that the bear would have to either find someplace else to hibernate, or have his hide become Duncan’s new sleeping pad.

He would be smarter this time.  He had nothing to prove to anyone, and did not wish a repeat of his ugly battle with the boar.  He had settled in the crook of an oak tree about fifteen feet off the ground, upwind but within easy sight of the cave opening.  He had been observing the bear closely for weeks now, and the animal usually emerged well before dawn, spent the day hunting for food, and returned a little after dusk.

Duncan had no intention of trying to corner the bear in his own lair, nor did he wish to get into a one-on-one battle with an animal who, on his hind legs, was taller than he was, and outweighed him by a several hundred pounds.  It was not yet light when the bear lumbered out of the cave, rising briefly on his hind legs to sniff the morning air.  Then he casually wandered off to the east, towards an area where the blaeberry bushes were plentiful, if picked almost clean this late in the season.  Duncan waited until the animal was well clear of his cave before he slipped down from the tree, and followed.

It took a day and a half and four arrows before the bear finally began to falter.  Duncan had stayed between the beast and its cave, driving it back each time the wounded animal sought shelter.  After awhile, he felt a certain sad kinship with the animal, driven away from its home, in pain and having no understanding of why he was being tormented so.  At last, the bear lay down and didn’t rise, his sides heaving for each breath, arrows embedded in his back, his neck, his leg and his chest.

When Duncan drew close, the huge animal rolled its eyes at him and tried to rise, only to collapse back with a sad, groaning growl of pain.

“I’m so sorry, ye poor beast,” Duncan whispered.  They were the first words he had spoken aloud in months and his voice was rusty and hoarse.  He could have just waited, but the bear’s suffering was too painful to watch and at last he risked getting raked by those long claws, moving in quickly and using his sword, driving it deep into the massive body.  In seconds, it was over.

But it was only the beginning of the task, of course.  As tired as he was, the skinning and butchering of the bear had to be done immediately.  Flies and scavenger birds were instantly attracted to the smell of blood, and he worked well into the next day before he had the blood drained, the meat sufficiently cut up, the grease captured as best he could, the hide stretched tight on a frame, and all of it moved from the site of the slaughter and into the cool shade of his new home almost a mile away.

The place stank of bear scat and would take some time to clean out, but he was too exhausted to care, and barely managed to put down some pelts against the cold hardness of the earth before he slept long and deeply.

The next days were a blur of work as he alternately smoked the meat, scraped the hide, cleaned out the cave, hauled water, and caught brief naps to keep himself going.  But his endurance surprised even himself, and when he finally went down to the creek, stripped and washed away all the sweat and blood and grime, he realized he was still lean, but had lost the scrawny, painful thinness that had made his body embarrassing to look at at the beginning of the summer.  He needed to start working with his sword again, he decided.  It would build his arm strength, and the mark of a man’s worth was in his ability to protect himself and those he cared for.  He would not relinquish that, even if he lived alone to the end of his days.

The birch and aspen leaves had turned yellow, the oak and ash trees gold, then brown and were falling like rain with every gust of cold northwest wind that tugged and pulled at his cloak.  He was on a desperate search now for any edible grasses, grains or nuts to supplement his store of dried meats.  In his heart, he knew it was not enough, that his meager supply of food would not last through the bitter months ahead, but his choices had dwindled to none, so he kept going, using a staff he had carved to sweep aside leaves and uncover any possible treasures hidden beneath.

Through trial and error – sometimes grievous and painful error – he had discovered which mushrooms were edible and which were not, which berries made his insides cramp, and which did not.  Certain tree bark could be steeped into a tea, certain grasses could be cooked into a mash that, while tasting bitter, filled his stomach without making him sick.  Certain roots were edible, if not particularly palatable.

He had even found a hive of honeybees earlier in the summer.  The memory of the sweet, golden taste still had the power to fill his mouth with juice.  He paused at the top of a rise, with much more of the horizon around him revealed now that the leaves had fallen or been blown away.  A minute smudge against the brown-green of the trees in the distance drew his eye.  He stood and watched, and it took him awhile to recognize what he was seeing.

It was smoke from a fire.

His heart gave an unnatural and uncomfortable lurch in his chest.  He had never wandered that far to the west, given that it was in that direction, toward the sea, that he was likely to encounter other people.  But this could be no more than a few miles away.  Had they been there long?  Were they planning to invade his territory?  He smiled at his own presumption.  It was hardly his territory.  If it belonged to anyone, it had been to the bear whose dark fur now served as his sleeping mat.

He hadn’t seen a human face or heard a voice besides his own in at least half a year.  Perhaps he should take a closer look, just to make sure they weren’t a threat.

It was a small hut that had clearly been there for many years.  There was a carefully tended garden in the back, protected by dense and intricately woven fencing made from gathered twigs and branches, designed to keep out deer and rabbits, as well as the two or three chickens and one rooster he could see pecking around in the clearing.  His mouth watered just from the sight of the ragged tops of carrots, of a small trellis for beans, and a long row of cabbages, beets, turnips and other vegetables. 

An animal pen was attached to the side of the house, with a portion of it covered against bad weather, and a dirt path led away from the doorway down a hill and out of sight towards the creek that ran nearby.  A second garden appeared to be planted right in front of the cottage, with neat rows of herbs and flowers rising up from the dark earth.  Wood was piled under the eaves next to the door, along with a wooden frame where long loops of dyed wool in bright blues, greens, reds and yellows were hung, and someone had painted intricate patterns around the doorframe and windows in colors that were long faded from the weather and the passage of time.

The thin stream of smoke he had seen from afar rose from a stone chimney, but blew away quickly in the steady, autumn wind.  Duncan settled on his haunches, hidden in the shadows of the forest near the edge of the clearing, watching.  It was something he had learned a great deal about in the past six months.  Patience and stillness.  The sun had almost set by the time the door opened and a woman emerged, her head and shoulders wrapped tightly in a dark woolen shawl.  She was small and squat, moving stiffly but steadily, carrying a bucket into the small pen, and Duncan saw a fine Highland pony step out from the shelter to greet the woman, snuffing eagerly at the bucket she carried.

“Ah, ye likes yer oates, do ye, my lovely?” the woman’s voice was high and grating, but it sounded like music to Duncan’s ears, nonetheless.  The chestnut mare with the bright white blaze all the way from her forelock to her flaring nostrils, nodded as if in answer, then eagerly bumped at the pail with her nose.  “Easy, lass, don’t be greedy.  We’ve got to make it last ‘til the next trip to market, ye know.”  The woman patiently held the bucket as the horse ate, gently stroking the mare’s withers with her free hand.  “It’ll be getting cold soon,” the woman spoke conversationally.  “’Twill be a hard winter, I fear.  These old bones are already startin’ to ache.”  The horse reached the bottom of the pail, her lips scraping noisily against the metal.  “That’s it my lovely.  We’ll go to market in a few days and you can bring back some fine oats and some grain and all sorts of nice things for us both, eh?”  The woman gave the horse a final pat on the rump, closed the pen behind her and shuffled back into the house, the chickens scurrying behind her.  Before the door shut, Duncan got a glimpse of a crackling fireplace and clumps of herbs hanging from a beamed ceiling.

The night closed in around him, the only light from the quarter moon hanging low in the sky, and the dim gold from the fireplace seeping out from behind the cottage shutters.  At last, even that faded, and Duncan crept forward, carefully opening the gate to the elaborate fence into the garden.  In a few minutes, he had dug up some late carrots and found a head of cabbage, and pulled up some turnips.  He climbed back out of the garden with his treasures and slipped back into the shadows of the forest, then paused, squatting again in the dark.  He couldn’t bring himself to just slip away like a common thief. 

He pulled off his cloak and untied the rabbit pelt underlayer that kept out the cold.  It was his best work so far, sewn together with care to form a large shawl, with a strip that could be used to tie it on at the throat.  He crept back to the garden and laid the pelt over where he had taken the vegetables, hoping it would be considered a decent exchange for the food, then – his conscience almost clear – he headed back to his cave deep in the woods.

The old woman had been right.  Winter came early and hit hard.  Sleet covered the trees and hillsides with ice, and game became harder and harder to find.  The venison stew he had made steeped with the old woman’s vegetables became a fond memory, and he subsisted on the dried meats he had stored, plus whatever small animals he managed to catch.

He did manage to bring down a big stag just before the snows closed in, but it was an enormous struggle to get it back to his cave when the ground was slippery with mud and ice.  Cutting up the carcass and working the hide in the bitter cold was equally as difficult, but at least the antlers served as useful tools, including new needles for piecing together hides.

He visited the cottage three more times that long, difficult winter, once to dig again in the garden, but his pickings were sparse in the near-frozen ground, only a few stunted carrots and some beets gone to seed and partially frozen.  Once he reluctantly took a handful of grain from the mare’s feed pail.  He left a pelt, or couple of rabbits in trade each time.  They were the only live game he could reliably find, now.

Gradually, he realized that he went to the cottage at least partially to remind himself that he was not the only remaining person in the world, to catch a glimpse of a normal life, to hopefully hear the sound of a human voice.

Sometimes he thought he’d go mad, sitting alone in the dark of his cave, the wind whistling mournfully through the barrier of branches and hides he had built over the opening.  He tried to remember all the songs he had ever heard sung, all the stories he had ever heard told.  He relived his youth, straining to recall each detail, every word, every face.  Then he would invent stories of his own.  They usually involved great heroes, whose true worth was only recognized after they were gone.

Eventually, though, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, his thoughts ultimately returned to the same dark place.  Who was he?  What was he?  Was he truly evil, some blight upon the earth doomed to live out his years alone in a cave?  But there were no answers to be found, only a renewed determination to not be what everyone believed him to be, no matter the cost.

Solstice had passed, and the woods were now permanently white with snow and ice, making his footsteps crunch noisily no matter how carefully he walked.  At least the foot or so of permanent frost on the ground made tracking animals easier.  His snares had garnered a rabbit and a fox, an excellent haul that would last him several days.  His supply of dried and smoked meat was practically gone, and what remained was barely edible.

He wondered how the woman and her horse and chickens were faring.  She was old, and a long distance from any help, with no one to hunt for meat or chop wood.  It had been weeks since he had looked in on the cottage.  It was too far and too cold for a casual walk.  Still, it bothered him.  He looked at the rabbit now hanging from his belt, checked the low-hanging clouds above, then set out to the west.

It began to snow on the way there, big fluffy flakes that quickly covered the crust of ice with a new layer of softness, muffling the sound of his steps and quickly covering his tracks.  He reached the cottage in a couple of hours, and squatted under the low hanging boughs of a young pine tree, its branches laden with snow until they were almost touching the ground.  The sun set early this time of year, and light was beginning to dim, but Duncan could see the imprint of fresh footprints in the snow outside the door and leading into the pen.  He could not tell if the woman was inside, but it was a pretty safe guess.

The shadows lengthened, the snow began to fall in earnest, and still he didn’t head back, not really knowing why he lingered.  At last he crept forward and let himself into the pen, glad to hear the breathing and see the movement of the horse inside the shelter, where the woman had hung a thick blanket on the exposed side to keep in the warmth.  The mare’s coat was shaggy, but it felt really good to feel and smell the warmth of the trusting animal.  She snuffed gently at his proffered hand, the soft lips nibbling to see if he had anything to eat. 

“No, my friend,” he whispered.  “I have nothing for ye, but I’ll try to find something to bring when I visit again.”  The food pail had been left in the hay manger, and it still had several handfuls of oats inside.  Duncan looked at it longingly, but left it alone.  He would not take food, even from an animal, when there was obviously so little to spare, and no grass on which to graze.  “How fares your mistress, eh?” he asked the horse.  “Does she have enough to eat?  I bet not, with no one to hunt for fresh meat for her.”  He scratched his hand over the horse’s heavy winter coat and smiled when she leaned into his touch.  He stood with her for a long time, taking great comfort in her company.

When he reluctantly slipped out of the warmth of the mare’s enclosure and quietly let himself out of the pen, he realized it had gotten completely dark, and the snow was falling heavily now.  It was going to make it a long, cold trek back to his cave.  He untied the rabbit from his belt, made a loop of the leather thong and crept up to the cottage door.  As quietly as he could, he hung it onto the latch of the door, and quickly crept away to the edge of the clearing.  He groped around in the snow for a few minutes before digging out an acorn and tossed it hard at the door.  It didn’t make much of a noise, but a few minutes later, the door opened and a shadow peered out into the darkness.

“Anyone there?” she called, her voice slightly muffled by the falling snow.  She stood in the doorway, clutching her shawl around her, then shook her head, mumbling to herself, then stopped, her eye caught by the large rabbit hanging from her doorlatch.  She pulled it off and held it up to the light, then turned and peered again out into the clearing.  “My own Daoine Sithe is back again, eh?  What did ye take from Old Mog this time?  Show yoursel’!  Ye think I fear the Domhnull Dubh?  I know all yer tricks, Black Donald!” she shouted.  Duncan sank back further into the shadows and waited until the woman shook her head with a low cackle, and the door closed.  Then he began the long walk back to his cave. 

He made two more trips to the cottage to check on the old woman, each time taking a small offering of food, such as it was.  It was getting harder and harder to find the energy to hunt and gather wood to keep his small fire going, and he spent long hours in the cave, sleeping or just letting his mind drift into daydreams.  Sometimes they became so real he could have sworn he heard his mother’s voice calling him and he would start awake, answering her before he realized he was alone.

He no longer knew how much time had passed, had lost track of the cycles of a moon perpetually hidden behind gray snow-laden clouds.  The daylight was short and the nights were long and cold.  Sometimes he feared entire days would pass and he hardly moved, like some hibernating beast.  One morning he struggled out to relieve himself, check his snares and to find some wood, but the wind was howling through the trees, blowing snow in blinding sheets that stung the eyes.  He had virtually no food left, and only a small pile of kindling to keep warm, not enough to last the day, much less the long night to come.  He took a few more steps, then realized he could see nothing except white.  Snow was blowing into his face, stinging his skin and collecting in his beard.  He slitted his eyes and tried to peer ahead, hoping to see enough landmarks to find one or two of his snares, but even the surrounding trees were invisible behind the curtain of white.

A surge of cold that came from inside wracked his whole body with a shiver as he turned in a circle, unable to discern enough landmarks to even find the cave, which could be no more than twenty paces away.  For long moments he stood in abject panic, feeling the icy wind freeze his face and fingers.  He knew this clearing as well as he knew the contours of his own palms, but had not the slightest idea where he was.  At last, he dropped to his hands and knees, groping through the thick layer of snow and ice, feeling for something, anything that might serve as a landmark, something to orient his sense of direction.

By the time his hand scraped against a boulder, then a tree he knew to be to the right of the cave opening, he was shivering violently and had to force every movement as he stayed on his hands and knees, chest deep in snow, pushing forward, feeling with limbs that seemed too frozen to do the job properly.  At last he fell into the thick pine boughs he had used to cover the cave entrance, and crawled through the hole of an entrance he had left at the bottom.

The sudden absence of stinging wind and snow left him gasping, but more snow tumbled in from the unsecured entrance.  With fumbling, numb fingers he tied the hide covering into place.  Even that much effort was exhausting, and he leaned back at last against the cold, cold stone. 

He should make a fire from the small bits of kindling he had.  He should crawl underneath his hides and pelts for warmth.  But he didn’t seem quite so cold now.  It was really almost warm, pleasant, and he was so very, very tired. 

He must have slept.  He jerked awake with a gasp, as though he had been dreaming, but he could remember none, only darkness.  And cold.  He would have expected the drifting snow to have blocked the small amount of light that filtered in through the branches and the hides, but sunshine was leaking through the cracks and seams and edges.  When he tried to move, his limbs were painfully stiff.  Then he started to shiver from the cold and had barely enough control to crawl over to his pallet and pull the soft fur over his body. Very slowly his own body heat seemed to gather around him.  The shivering eased, and he slept again, this time with vivid dreams of bright summer days, lying in the heather and daydreaming of performing great, heroic deeds, while the herd of sheep he was watching managed to watch themselves for awhile. 

He awoke again, but now thirst and hunger forced him out from under the pelts.  The water skin he had filled with snow before he had taken shelter was inexplicably empty, so he crawled weakly on hands and knees to the opening, expecting to have to dig through snow to reach the outdoors.  It took him long moments as trembling fingers pulled at knots in the leather ties that refused to come loose, as though they had almost melted together.

In frustration, he used his dirk, slicing away the fastenings, and pushing outward.  He forced himself to his feet, his knees wobbling underneath him, looking around him in dizzy confusion.  Instead of the several feet of snow he expected, there were large brown patches of earth, and the sun shone with painful brightness after the long darkness of the cave.  The air was almost warm, and Duncan stumbled to the nearest remaining patch of snow.  The top of it was crusty and flecked with dirt, as though it had been on the ground a long time.  He broke through the crust, digging out cleaner snow underneath and sucking on the crunchy pieces of ice to assuage his thirst.

He pushed the oddity of it all to the back of his mind and concentrated on his immediate needs.  He needed food, and soon, or he would be too weak to hunt at all.  He gathered his strength and went to find the snares he had left out before the storm had forced him into the cave.

All but one had disappeared.  The one remaining had a marten caught by the hind leg.  Or at least it had been a marten at one time.  Now it was just a few bones and some shreds of dried, shriveled skin.  Duncan’s legs folded up underneath him, and he looked up into the sky, acknowledging what he had known since the moment he had emerged.  The sun was in the wrong place entirely, its angle indicating early Spring, not mid-winter.  The implications left his mind whirling.  But as he had done so many times in the past year, he deliberately pushed them aside in favor of dealing with the problems of the moment, problems that presented possible solutions, questions that had answers he could understand.

It was weeks before he had caught enough game to truly fill his stomach, and as his strength returned, he could search for food harder and longer.  He brought down a fawn born too early to survive the Spring, ignoring the twinge of regret at destroying the young animal with the big, soft, sad eyes.  The meat was tender, the small pelt soft and supple, and it fueled his strength to find bigger game.

The snow was completely melted and new greenery was pushing up through the forest floor by the time he made a pilgramage to the old woman's cottage, bearing a brace of hares that made him feel quite proud of himself.  She was working in her garden, turning the soil with a hoe, her strokes firm and strong.  He watched until she went inside, then crept forward to hang one of the hares on the fence gate.

"Well!  If it isn't my own Daoine Sithe come back to visit," the old, rasping voice spoke behind him.

He jerked around, flushing at being caught.  He had gotten careless by not waiting until dark.

"I...I mean ye no harm," he whispered, raising his hands and backing off.

She laughed.  It was an unpleasant cackling noise.  "Oh, yes, and I'm supposed to believe you?  You steal my food, leaving a few mangy hides for payment?  Can a woman eat hides, eh?  I know you.  You canno' trick me, Black Donald!  I thought the storm had got ye, but I guess your kind isn't easy to kill."

The insult to his good intentions sparked a hot surge of anger.  "I'm no devil, old woman," he spat.  "I never took without leaving equal value, or better, and well ye know it."

She glared at him for a moment, then smiled a gap-toothed sly grin.  "Ah, well, even if ye are the Black Donald, ye have no power over me.  I have my own magics, ya know."  She waved vaguely at her cottage, and Duncan recalled the patterns inscribed around the doors and windows.  She squinted her eyes at him, coming a little closer.  "Are ye the incubus they've been talking about in the village, then?  A changling with a devil-made face that seduces women and takes their souls?"

"Stop that!  I'm no..." but he was, so his denial stopped in his throat.

The woman cackled again, lifting her skirts til the tops of old ragged stockings showed.  "Ye want this, eh, lad?  Ye'd be the first to try that dry hole in years too long to count.  And ye'd no get my soul, for all tha.'"  She laughed hysterically at her own baudy joke, finally hiccupping to a stop, and cocking her head at him.  "Well, ye look more like a beast than any incubus I've ever heard tell of."

"I'm no' a beast either, old woman.  I came only to bring you these," he held out the rabbits.  He hadn't intended to give her all of them, but his pride made his decision for him. 

She looked at the string of fat hares, then back up at him.  "Why?" she asked suspciously.

"Why?"

"You heard me.  Why are ye bringing me food?"

"Because...because ye're an old woman living alone with no one to hunt for ye.  'Tisn't right.  Your clan should be taking care of you."

She put her hands at her waist and just looked up at him, her mouth twisted in disgust.  "My clan?  They turned me out years ago, though they come to me quick enough when they want to see if the old ways will soothe a boil or rid a woman of an unwanted babe.  I need no one to care for me."

"Then I guess you won't be needing these," Duncan snapped, but before he could hook the hares back onto his belt, the old woman had snatched them out of his hand.

"But it's only right that the young should show respect for an old woman," her tone had changed, and was even more grating when she attempted to sound sweet.

Duncan barely managed to hide his smile.  "Aye, I suppose 'tis only right," he agreed.  After a moment of awkward silence, he turned to leave.

"But don't ya try putting any spells on Old Mog!" he heard the woman shout behind him, "or I'll twist that devil's tail 'til ye howl for mercy!"  Somehow being labeled an evil spirit by Old Mog didn't carry any sting, and Duncan smiled all the way back to camp, even when he realized he hadn't any fresh meat for dinner.
 
 

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