On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine

      And back at the school in the evenings sometimes she spied on Adam in her dreams. Secretly she remembered the strength of his arms, the passion of his kiss, the soft boy’s cheek above the newly rough man’s whiskers, the deep thrust of his manhood, and she slipped from her meditation out into the plane where there is no time or place and all things are one, and she crept close to him to touch his lips with her own as he slept.

      It was a few days after Adam took his final exam the following summer that he saw Brid again. She was waiting for him, as she had once before, near his house, and she dived on him as he climbed off his bicycle after a visit to Robbie to celebrate the start of the holidays.

      ‘A-dam! A-dam! Where have you been? I have come for three days!’ She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth, then she pushed him away and punched him gently in the stomach. ‘You forget Brid?’

      ‘No.’ Recovering from the shock of seeing her, his face broadened into a smile. ‘No, I never forget Brid. How did you get back? What about your uncle?’

      She smiled, and put her finger to her lips. ‘I have persuaded him to be nice. I will tell you later.’ She glanced round. ‘Is it safe for me here?’ She looked nervously up the street. She would never tell him the fear she had felt when she saw her first car, a black Alvis belonging to James Ferguson from Birnam, roaring along the narrow road leaving a trail of blue smoke.

      Adam followed her gaze and then glanced back at the house. Behind him the manse would be empty. Jeannie Barron would have gone on the bus into Perth as she usually did on a Wednesday and his father would be visiting the cottage hospital. He nodded. ‘No one will see us.’ He smiled at her, still holding her hand. ‘I tell you what, shall I fetch some cake?’

      ‘Chocolate cake?’ She looked at him archly.

      ‘Maybe.’

      She followed him nervously around the back of the house and even more hesitantly in at the back door.

      ‘It’s all right. There’s no one here.’

      He beckoned up the passage towards the kitchen.

      ‘It’s big. Like a castle.’ She tiptoed over the flags in awe.

      ‘No it’s not.’ He flung open the kitchen door and stopped in surprise. Jeannie Barron was standing at the table, up to her elbows in flour, rolling pastry.

      It was too late to turn back. She had looked up and seen him. ‘Well, young man. Did you have a good visit with Robbie? Did you remember to tell him to say hello from me to his grandmother –’ She broke off abruptly as she saw Brid hovering behind him. ‘So, who is this?’

      Adam watched her eyes move quickly up and down, taking in Brid’s long hair, her embroidered tunic, her soft leather skirt and her laced sandals. Her frown was so quickly hidden he wondered if he had imagined it.

      ‘So, lassie, come in and let’s be seeing you.’

      Brid hesitated and Adam, turning, took her hand with a reassuring smile. ‘This is Brid. Brid, this is Jeannie who makes chocolate cakes.’

      Brid’s face lit into a smile. ‘I like chocolate cake.’

      Jeannie nodded. ‘I thought he couldn’t have been eating them all by himself. Well, if you look in the pantry you’ll find a new one I made specially for him.’ She turned back to her dough. ‘And what kind of a name is Brid, if I may ask?’ Like Adam she had pronounced it Breed.

      ‘It’s short for Bridget,’ Adam put in hastily. ‘Sort of a nickname.’

      ‘I see. And where do you come from then, lass? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

      ‘She lives in a village the other side of Ben Dearg,’ Adam answered for her again. ‘Her brother is the stone mason there.’

      ‘I see. And you’ve no tongue in your head?’ Once more the quick shrewd glance. Jeannie Barron had summed Brid up at once. A pretty tinker child, or perhaps foreign. More likely the latter in view of her silence. And besotted with young Adam, if she were any judge.

      Adam had emerged from the pantry with the plate.

      ‘Greaseproof is over there.’ The floury hand waved towards the dresser. ‘Then get you both from under my feet, if you please. I’m here today so I can have Friday off and stay with my sister the whole weekend, and I’ve a lot to do before I’m away.’

      Outside Brid rounded on him. ‘I thought you said it would be safe. That is not your mother?’

      ‘No. I told you. My mother’s gone away.’ Adam was fairly sure Jeannie would not mention the visit to his father.

      ‘So, it is the woman who looks after the priest?’

      He frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call him a priest. It sounds so papist. I told you. He’s a minister.’

      ‘Sorry, A-dam.’ She looked contrite. ‘She makes nice cake.’ Then, as she did so often she changed the subject, abruptly and without a second thought, dismissing Jeannie as no longer worthy of interest. ‘Come. We go find Gartnait.’

      They did, but not before she had pounced on Adam in the shelter of the lonely screed valley on the north side of the waterfall and laughingly begun to pull off all his clothes.

      ‘A-dam! You are tall and big!’ Her glance was deliberately provocative. She stood in front of him and slipped her tunic up over her naked breasts. ‘Me too. I am big now.’

      ‘Indeed you are.’ He smiled. In the twelve months since he had last seen her, her breasts and hips had rounded and her slim child’s legs had become more shapely.

      They made love again and again and then after a respectful handful of cake had been given to the Lady in the waterfall they swam under the icy cascade. Afterwards they found a sheltered patch of sunlight where the wind couldn’t chill them, and lay on the flat rocks to dry.

      ‘I have studied the omens.’ Brid was staring up at the sky. ‘You and I will be together forever. I read the entrails of a doe before I ate her flesh as a cat. She told me so.’

      ‘Brid!’ Adam sat up. ‘You are joking? That’s disgusting!’

      ‘No.’ She smiled at him and pushed him back, her fingers playfully clawed as she raked them gently over his chest. ‘I not joke.’

      He stared up into her eyes and for an instant he was appalled by what he saw there. ‘Brid –’

      ‘Quiet, A-dam.’ Her lips came down on his, and for a while he was silent, distracted from his thoughts by her hands.

      When she at last lay back next to him, sated, he turned a sleepy head towards her. ‘I thought you said you weren’t allowed to talk about your studies?’

      ‘I’m not.’ She looked defiant.

      ‘So you made all that stuff up? About the entrails?’

      ‘I didn’t make it up.’ She sat up, her legs crossed, and looked down at him. ‘Do you want me to show you?’

      He looked at her and suddenly he was afraid again. The hardness he sometimes saw in her eyes was at such variance with her passion. He was confused. ‘No!’ He spoke sharply. ‘It didn’t really say you and I will be together forever?’

      ‘It did.’ She smiled, and he saw the small pink tip of her tongue flick across her lips. ‘You and I make love together forever.’

      He frowned. He had not thought about Brid and the future. The future contained university and medicine and a shining array of new opportunities. He wasn’t at all certain yet how Brid fitted in, if at all. He shifted uncomfortably, watching her through narrowed eyes as she sat beside him, silhouetted against the brightness of the sky.

      I told you to beware my sister, A-dam. She is a daughter of the fire and her power will kill. Forget her, A-dam. She is not part