~

 

“Well, if you knew what you were talking about then I’d give way to your opinion, but in this instance: I’m right, you’re wrong, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” Ross MacNabbie was at it again. He looked just smug enough that I quite expected my sister, Moira, to whack him over the head with a skillet. By the look on her face; I think she had a mind to do just that.

Now, Moira wasn’t one of those shrinking violets, nor was she prone to bouts of rational thought, preferring to raise her little fist and punch someone in the eye without thought or consequence for her actions, and the fact that her jaw was working like she was chewing a wasp said to me that MacNabbie needed to watch his step.

In truth, Ross was being particularly annoying today: offering his male opinions on everything and nothing much of consequence. Ross could be a real sweetheart when he wanted to be, but most of the time, he was just a Muppet.

Just to rub salt in the wounds, and in line with how the rest of the world believed Highland men to be, Ross was tall, as in; well over six foot, broad, as in; the span of his shoulders could block a doorway rather nicely, and he had a ruggedly handsome, by anyone’s standards, look to him. And yet, he was still a butthead of epic proportion, especially when it came to my sister and rubbing her up the wrong way.

“And pray tell me, who is it around here that controls who gets the cookies and who doesn’t?” Moira sneered back.

The key to any Scotsman’s heart was definitely through his stomach, but she wasn’t interested in Ross’s heart, more in trying to win another victory over him.

Moira wasn’t tall by anyone’s imagination, some would say that when she was driving in her car, it looked as if it was driving itself, and some would say, that a runaway car would be safer than my sister being behind the wheel. They’d be right.

It was also true that behind the counter there was a step that ran all the way along the back – it was there so that my sister could reach the top shelves – and there was also one at the counter itself, so that she could at least give the impression of meeting a customer eye to eye.

Moira took a step up onto the wooden boarding and glared over the counter at Ross across the way. The man was sitting at one of the bespoke tables, his regular spot, enjoying cookies and a large cup of Moira’s special coffee, and he didn’t even blink as she glared at him.

“Now don’t go getting all salty and shrew on me, lass.” Ross offered the kind of smile that warmed the tourist's hearts. Or more importantly, for him, the tourists that were of the female persuasion, of which there were many every season that fell for the man’s charms, and Ross was eternally grateful for that fact.

Unfortunately for Ross, Moira had seen that smile all too often, a by-product of growing up in a small community, and snorted her contempt for it, for him, and for his comment. She lifted a coffee pot and made sure that everyone heard it hit the counter again.

“So, I’m a salty shrew, now am I, Ross?”

Ross might not have been able to see that her hands had gone to her hips because the counter was in the way, but I knew my sister, and I’d bet my life that not only were hands on hips, but her little fists were all tightly balled up. Poor Ross.

Teasing or not: Ross was about to enter a world of pain if he didn’t stop annoying my sister. I knew from personal experience just what that little poison dwarf could be like – not that she was a dwarf in the supernatural sense of the word. Of course not – that would be silly by anyone’s standards. Nope, not a dwarf, neither a faerie be – she was an out and out witch, and I use the W sparingly.

I’m Maggie McFae, Margaret by birth, and I have a confession to make: I’m a witch as well. Now, I know that being a witch is somewhat popular nowadays, and I don’t see that as a bad thing – truly I don’t.

I believe there’s a little witch in all of us waiting to get out. But my family are descended from the Picts: a magical people that inhabited Alba, which is Scotland to the uninitiated, long before the outlanders came, that’s everyone not descended from the Picts.

I also own a quaint little bistro in Portree, which is the main town on the Isle of Skye. In truth, it’s not much of a town, but it suits our needs, and the tourists seem to love it. The same tourists that come in their thousands each year to visit such notable places as; where Bonnie Prince Charlie landed when he was whisked across the sea by Flora MacDonald, you might know the song, I hear there’s a show – sort of.

They visit the castles: of which we have three, or technically two and some ruins, but we sort of lay claim that Eileen Donnell Castle as ours, even if it is on the pesky mainland. Pah!

The old man of Storr is also another popular destination as tourists flock to our Isle by small plane, car, motorbike, pushbike, foot, and my personal favourite – which is a bugbear to most people, especially when they do twenty miles per hour on the wrong side of the road: mobile home, if you’re at the middle end of the earning scale, or caravan to most normal folk.

From April to November the tourists rush to see the Fairy Pools, the Fairy Glen, and the Fairy bridge. Of course, most of them remember to leave their trinkets and make their wishes, and yet, they never really know that there is so much more true and unmistakable magic that is fluid all around them.

I say all around them, because I have a large family, and so it follows on Skye that without knowing it; on any given day, you might be talking to a witch, and as most of my family are nosey, you probably are. My Aunt has a favorite saying when she meets anyone; rest ye legs and come chat a while, which means; take a load off and spill your gossip because I’m all ears.

There were other magical, mystical elements to Skye, but as the primary, and most notable family of witches on the island, we held rank. So, you see, on Skye, you’re always close to magic.

Just as Ross was now. Silly man.

You would have thought after knowing Moira all of his life that he would have learned the painful lesson of when to keep his big mouth shut. But, he was blessed with that winning smile, those dimpled cheeks, the height, the build, but not too much was happening in the brains department, and that wasn’t going to get him far with my sister.

“Now, Moira, don’t go getting those silk and lace panties of yours in a twist.” Ross’ grin widened, but in my expert opinion; the man was playing with fire and was about to get burned.

“You leave my panties out of this, Ross McNabbie!” Moira warned him. She had the look about her of a woman that you just didn’t mess with, but on a small island such as this, there really wasn’t much else to do. Playing with fire, it was for Ross then.

“So they are silk and lace?” Ross was definitely dicing with danger, and that smile of his wasn’t going to save him.

“Well, that would be something that you’re never going to find out!” Moira tipped her head to one side and regarded him in much the same way that she did the family cat – our familiar – when it decided that it needed to sharpen its claws on whatever was handy. Bonus points when it was something belonging to my sister.

“Now don’t be like that, salty, Moira, you know that many a lassie has been…”

Oh, he didn’t go there.

“Oh, I know where many a female has been on you, Ross. I have no intention of adding to the notches on your bedpost.” Moira huffed like an elder scaling a mountain, known as a Munro in Scotland, of which we had a few of those as well.

It was true: Ross was a man ho. Every busy-body on the Isle knew it, and it was getting to the point for the man where nobody wanted to date him. You couldn’t blame them either. Who wanted a neighbor’s slopping seconds? Not me and certainly not my sister.

“There’s nothing wrong with being experienced.” Ross was chuckling now, but I could see that my sister didn’t think him as funny as he thought himself to be.

“It’s lucky for you that we have so many tourists for you to prey on because you’ve worked your way through the female population of the island.” She berated him, and she did it so well. She reminded me of our mother, Caitlin, all fiery red hair and a temper to match it.

I didn’t inherit the red hair, but I did have a temper.

“Jealous, are we?” Ross was back to looking smug again, but not so much when Moira gave a small twitch of her nose, and he yelped in pain, grabbing one hand in the other and rubbing furiously against the sting that she’d delivered with her magic.

I could feel the energy in the air like an old familiar friend.  That feeling warmed me and made my own magic sparkle a little inside of me as if by offering me a warning that danger was at hand.

“Midge season again. Those little beasties are biting!” I offered because I had to. Someone had to cover for Moira’s lack of self-control. We might have been witches, and there might have been gossip about us, but we really didn’t need to announce it to the world.

Moira knew better.

“That felt less like a midge bite, and more like a Clegg!” Ross grumbled as he eyed my sister in annoyance. There was a vast difference between a midge and a Clegg, midges were annoying, and Clegg’s were downright painful, and I had to wonder where my sister’s commonsense had gone.

Another reason why not many people knew about the witches on Skye was that we generally kept ourselves to ourselves, and I fear that the tourist board would have had great trouble in marketing all things witchy as a tourist attraction. Especially, if my sister was the poster child.

“You’re a wicked woman, Moira McFae,” Ross said, suspecting, but not saying what most of the locals had figured out long ago about my family, that we had magic running through our veins, and how right he was, about that and Moira being wicked.

She wasn’t like that all the time, but sometimes my sister just couldn’t help herself. You know that old chestnut; when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was evil? Well, my sister seemed to neglect the first part for the second when her feathers got ruffled.

“Clegg indeed,” I said as I pushed up to my feet. My break was over, and it was time to give my sister hers if only to let her cool down a little and save Ross from himself. “Anyone would think you were a girl, Ross.”

“Aye, well…” he grumbled. “I can’t sit around here talking to the girlies all day. Some of us have some real work to be doing,” Ross said as he pushed up to his feet.

The man would never learn.

I saw it coming from a mile away, and as his long stride ate up the distance towards the door; so my sister used her magic to make the man trip over his own feet. I felt the urge to plant my face in my hands and groan.

Ross wasn’t the only one who would never learn.

It didn’t take much for the man to right himself, although, for a minute there I thought he was going to head-butt the door, and my first thought was to wonder how much a new pane of glass would cost. That was something that I’d take out of my sister’s wages for sure. But with a glance of embarrassment back over one broad shoulder to see if we’d been looking: he wrenched open the door and was on his way.

“He’s right about one thing,” I said as I rounded the counter and placed my used cup down on the side. “You are a wicked woman, Moira McFae.”

“Witches be bitches.” Moira shrugged as she stepped down to the floor from her step, and shrank in height by a good five inches.

“And flaunting it is your specialty,” I offered back as she walked past me with a look that was every bit as smug as Ross’ had been.

“Oh, don’t tell me that you didn’t want to zap him.”

“Unlike you, I have some self-control.” I know it sounded superior, and I could see that mirrored in the look that she gave me - but it was also true.

“Tell that to Eileen,” she tossed back at me. It sounded like an accusation, felt like an accusation, and pretty much was an accusation, but I didn’t care. “She’s still trying to get the tinges of green out of her hair since your last act of retribution against her.”

“Well, if she learned to glamour herself then she wouldn’t have a problem, would she?” I offered back.

It was true, our sister, Eileen, was just too good for magic – or so she thought. She wanted to be normal, and so she didn’t practice the art of spell-crafting.

More fool her, being a witch was, well, magical.

“You are a wicked woman, Maggie McFae.” My sister’s eyes sparkled with amusement and mischief, and I couldn’t disagree with her, at least, not on that one.

It was in our temperament to be somewhat wicked, and as my grandmother, Fiona McFae, liked to call it; opinionated to the extreme. But we were witches three, my sisters and me. We’d grown up with the power of three and got a taste for it until Eileen had decided that magic wasn’t her thing, which none of us could understand because it was written into her DNA, so how could it not be her thing?

It was like denying yourself, denying who you truly were, and that wasn’t good for your soul.

Still, Moira and I more than made up for Eileen’s lack of interest. And then there were our cousins. We had a somewhat large, extended family, and special witchy occasions at our house, when everyone showed up, were insane with all hands to the helm in the kitchen, and magic abound, and with a table for fourteen; what else could a witch do but rely on her magic?

“I think you still have a soft spot for that Ross,” I said, and watched with a certain amount of satisfaction as a scowl took over her face.

“I think you’ve lost your mind. That was Isla, not me.” She tipped her chin up and strolled out after Ross without another word on the subject, but I knew where the bodies were buried in our family, and my cousin Isla and Ross certainly didn’t get on – at least not anymore!

Nope, I think Moira liked to have her pigtails pulled by Ross, and she certainly liked to pull them back, not that Ross had ever had pigtails, he was too mucho by design for that. But, the two of them had been sparring since they first met at school, so I guess that was just the nature of the beast between them.

Just at that exact moment; the devil that we’d been speaking about only moments earlier came flying in through the back door, not on her broomstick, but maybe she should have been because she was out of breath and panting like a wildling in mating season.

I knew there was something up; I could see it in her eyes – mischief of the worst kind – gossip.

The church would say that gossip was the Devil’s work, poor old mythical Devil gets blamed for everything, but then the church did make him up so they could pin the tail on that particular donkey all they liked. Trademarked.

I would say gossip was derived from the storytelling of old, like Chinese whispers, but sometimes it could get out of hand.

My cousin, Isla, was one of three witches born to my Aunt Kenzie, who was my father, Donlan’s, sister. Of course, she was a witch as well, that’s what I mean about never being far from magic – witches are everywhere.

My father is the only Warlock in the extended family, and that can give rise to a joke or three around the dinner table.

“Maggie, Maggie – Did you hear?” Isla couldn’t get the words out fast enough to keep up with enough breath going in and out of her body, and she did look a little light headed.

“Wait … let me tune in my psychic abilities,” I offered back dryly.

I did have the sight, but it was sporadic and fleeting at best, which she well knew so she ignored my teasing.

“Old man Croon slipped off the cliffs at the point and … died.” Her eyes were wide with excitement at telling the story to someone who hadn’t heard it – which, admittedly, on a smallish island was hard to find after the morning rush when the gossips were out in force.