Part I: The False Spring
The Great Hall of the Keep smelled of beeswax, venison, and the damp, ancient stone of the Highlands. It was a place of rigid lines and heavy tapestries, a stark contrast to the wind-scoured, chaotic beauty of the Ring of Brodgar where Colum mac Eòghain made his home.
Colum stood before the hearth, his boots muddy, his hands stained with the dark earth of the peat bogs. He looked like a wild thing trapped in a cage of polite society. Across from him sat Lady Moira. She was a woman of terrifying composure, her silver hair braided like a crown, her gown the colour of a winter loch. She did not just occupy the room. She ruled it.
“You have the spark, Colum,” Moira said, her voice low and smooth, like a stone skipping over water. “I do not deny that. You pull life from the ground where others see only rot. But you are… unrefined. You are a storm without a direction.”
Colum bristled, though he could not deny the awe he felt. Moira represented the High Lineage – the ancient authority that connected the physical world to the spiritual aristocracy. “The earth does not grow in straight lines, My Lady. The feverfew blooms where the wind drops the seed.”
“And that is why your cures reach only the few who stumble upon your circle,” Moira countered, leaning forward. The firelight caught the jewels at her throat. “I offer you the architecture of power. I offer you the Keep. My name carries the weight of centuries. If I sanction your work, it becomes law. We will not just heal the village. We will heal the Kingdom.”
Standing in the shadows behind Moira’s high-backed chair was Murdach. He was a small, wiry creature, his face a map of malicious wrinkles. He wore the heavy iron boots of the border goblins, and on his head sat a woolen cap, currently a dull, rusted brown. He watched Colum with eyes like wet pebbles.
“Listen to the Lady, mud-man,” Murdach rasped, his voice a grinding whisper. “You have the seed. She has the soil. Why struggle in the rain when you could rule from the tower?”
Colum looked at Moira – at her certainty, her stability. He was tired of the cold, tired of the endless battle against the elements. He mistook her arrogance for wisdom, her rigidity for strength.
“Very well,” Colum said, clasping her extended hand. “We shall tend the garden together.”
He did not see Murdach smile, revealing teeth filed to needle points. He did not see the Redcap touch the brim of his hat, as if anticipating a fresh rain.
Part II: The Seduction of the Scribe
Yasemin arrived at the Keep with ink on her fingers and a hunger in her eyes. She hailed from the southern academies, where magic was treated as mathematics – a thing to be measured, weighed, and replicated. She had come to the Highlands because the books had failed her. She sought the raw source.
Sigrid had come from the sea. A survivor of the northern fjords, she had washed ashore near Brodgar years ago, half-dead from the cold. Colum had warmed her not with spells, but with soup and rowan-berry tea. She stayed not for the magic, but for the man.
In the courtyard of the Keep, Colum demonstrated the Teine Beò – the Living Fire. He took a withered root and sang to it, a low, discordant hum that vibrated in the chest. The root twisted, cracked, and burst into a crown of vibrant blue flowers.
Yasemin gasped, whipping out her ledger. “Do it again,” she demanded, her quill scratching furiously. “What was the pitch? How many seconds did you hold the root? There must be a sequence.”
“It is felt, not counted, lass,” Colum laughed, tossing the flower to her.
Yasemin frowned, frustrated by his lack of precision. She looked up to the balcony where Lady Moira stood, watching the display with cool detachment. To Yasemin, Moira was a revelation. Here was a woman who spoke of magic with the diction of a scholar. Moira didn’t sing to roots. She commanded them.
“The Lady Moira understands,” Yasemin whispered to Sigrid later, as they scrubbed the pots. “She knows that if we cannot write it down, it is useless. Colum… he is just a conduit. He doesn’t understand the why of it. But Moira… she has the theory. She has the True Knowledge.”
Sigrid scrubbed harder, the water turning grey. “Moira has walls,” Sigrid grunted. “Colum has the wind. You cannot catch the wind in a jar, Yasemin.”
“But you can build a windmill,” Yasemin retorted. “You can harness it.”
The tragedy was that Colum favored Yasemin. He was dazzled by her ability to memorize his chants, to replicate his hand movements perfectly.
“Look at her, Sigrid,” Colum would say, pointing as Yasemin perfectly mimicked his gesture over a sick lamb. “She has the hands of a master. She learns faster than you ever did.”
Sigrid said nothing, though the words cut deeper than any blade. She knew Yasemin was mimicking the shape of the magic, not the soul of it. Yasemin could copy the painting, but she could not mix the paint. Yet Colum, blinded by the flattery of imitation, ignored the loyal guard at his back for the brilliant mirror at his feet.
Part III: The Iron Bargain
The winter came early, and with it, the discontent.
Moira sat in her private solar, a room of glass and starlight. She was angry. Colum was becoming difficult. He refused to plant in the neat rows she designated. He refused to harvest on the dates the almanac decreed.
Murdach sat in the corner, sharpening a skinning knife on the sole of his iron boot. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
“He is insubordinate,” Moira said, swirling her wine. “He treats the craft as a playground. He has no respect for the lineage.”
“He is a peasant, My Lady,” Murdach rasped. “He thinks the fire belongs to him because he found the flint. But you…” He pointed the knife at her. “You are the Hearth. What is a spark without a hearth?”
“He says I suffocate the plants,” Moira murmured, a flicker of doubt in her eyes. “He says I value the container more than the contents.”
“He lies to protect his own smallness,” Murdach hissed, standing up. He moved like a spider, quick and jerky. “He holds back the best secrets, My Lady. I have watched him. When he thinks you are asleep, he whispers words to the earth that he never tells you. He thinks you are unworthy.”
Moira’s eyes narrowed. The doubt vanished, replaced by a cold, hard pride. “Unworthy? I am the Keeper of the Tioram. My ancestors bound the storms while his were digging for worms.”
“Exactly,” Murdach whispered, leaning close. His breath smelled of copper and old meat. “Why do you need the peasant? You have the Scribe – Yasemin. She has recorded every move he makes. She has the maps. She has the technique. If we removed the… obstruction… you would have the sole claim to the magic. It would be pure again. Unbound by his mud.”
“Yasemin is skilled,” Moira mused. “She replicates his work perfectly.”
“Better than perfectly,” Murdach lied smoothly. “She refines it. She brings order. Colum is just the chaos. You don’t need the storm, My Lady. You just need the water.”
Moira set her goblet down. The decision crystallized in her mind, not as a betrayal, but as a necessary correction. A restoration of order.
“Prepare the men,” she said.
Part IV: The Reaping
They waited for the moon to die. The night of the raid was thick with fog, the air clinging to the skin like a wet shroud.
Colum was asleep in his cottage at the Ring of Brodgar, believing he was safe in the partnership. He did not hear the boots on the heather.
But Sigrid did.
She stood at the low stone gate, her breath pluming in the cold air. She saw the torches first – not the warm light of welcome, but the sputtering, pitch-blackened torches of war.
Yasemin walked at the front. She wore a cloak of fine Tioram wool, and in her hand, she held not a weapon, but a spade. Her face was pale, set in a mask of terrified determination. She had convinced herself this was a rescue mission – she was saving the knowledge from Colum’s reckless disorganization.
“Step aside, Sigrid,” Yasemin called out, her voice trembling. “We are here for the specimens. The Lady requires them for the Conservatory.”
“The Lady can grow her own,” Sigrid said, hefting her rowan staff. “These roots die if they leave this circle.”
“You don’t understand!” Yasemin cried, desperate to be validated. “He is wasting them! He plays with them! Moira will give them a home! She will make them eternal!”
“She will make them statues,” Sigrid spat.
Then Murdach stepped from the mist. “Enough talk,” he gurgled.
The violence was sudden and absolute. Murdach’s mercenaries, armored in blackened steel, surged forward. Sigrid fought with the fury of a trapped selkie. Her staff was a blur, cracking ribs and shattering kneecaps. She held the gate, a singular force of loyalty against a tide of greed.
But Murdach was not a man. He was a monster of the Border. While his men engaged her, he slipped through the shadows. He came up behind her, swinging a heavy iron mallet used for stunning cattle.
Crack.
Sigrid fell, her leg shattered. She did not scream. She hissed, trying to drag herself back up, but the Redcap placed his heavy boot on her neck.
Colum burst from the cottage, unarmed, his eyes wide with horror. “Yasemin?” he cried, seeing his prize student digging frantically at the earth, ripping the sacred mother-roots from the soil. “What are you doing?”
Yasemin didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. “I am saving it,” she sobbed, tearing a root free. “I am saving it from you.”
Murdach laughed, a wet, sucking sound. He dipped a finger into the blood pooling around Sigrid’s leg and rubbed it onto his cap. The faded brown wool turned a vibrant, glistening crimson.
“The tithe is paid,” Murdach whispered. “Burn the rest.”
Part V: The Cargo Cult
Castle Tioram had never looked more beautiful, nor felt more dead.
The Great Conservatory was a marvel of glass and iron. Inside, the stolen garden had been replanted in pots of porcelain and gold. The lighting was engineered to mimic the solstice sun. The water was filtered through diamonds.
Moira walked the rows, her train sweeping the floor. “Perfection,” she declared. “Look at the order. No mud. No chaos. Just pure, distilled power.”
Yasemin stood by a workbench, her hands shaking. She was following the notes – Colum’s notes, which she had stolen. She performed the gestures. She chanted the words.
Step one: Grind the star-moss. Step two: Add three drops of rowan sap. Step three: Invoke the fire.
She did it all perfectly. Technically, it was flawless.
But the mixture in the vial did not glow. It sat there, brown and inert sludge.
“It… it needs time,” Yasemin stammered, feeling Moira’s eyes boring into her back. “The shock of the transplant.”
Days turned to weeks. The plants began to change. The vibrant blue of the feverfew turned a sickly grey. The leaves curled inward, resembling grasping claws. They were not dying, exactly. They were becoming hollow. They grew, but they grew as mimicries – shapes without substance.
When the sick came to the castle gates, paying their heavy bags of gold, Moira gave them the new elixirs.
“It tastes… bitter,” a merchant complained, nursing his gout.
“That is the potency,” Moira assured him haughtily.
But the gout did not fade. The fevers did not break.
Inside the lab, Yasemin was unraveling. She began to dissect the plants, looking for the missing gear, the hidden lever. “I did it exactly as he did!” she screamed at the silent room. “I have the process! I have the data! Why won’t you sing?”
She didn’t understand that the magic wasn’t in the motion of the hand, but in the heart of the man who moved it. She was a cargo cult priestess, waving wooden wands at the sky, praying for steel birds that would never come.
Part VI: The Tithe
The fall of the House of Moira was quiet, like snow falling on a grave.
Word spread through the glens: The Tioram cures are water. The Sisterhood, the elite circle of dames who had bolstered Moira’s reputation, were the first to vanish. They did not defend her. They simply stopped inviting her to their solstices. They ghosted her, protecting their own reputations from the stench of her failure.
The gold stopped coming. The castle grew cold. The servants fled.
But Murdach stayed.
He sat in the shadows of the throne room, whittling a piece of bone. The crimson stain on his cap had begun to dry, flaking off in brown dust. He needed a fresh coat.
“Fix it, Moira,” the Redcap whispered. The scraping of his knife echoed in the empty hall.
“I cannot,” Moira wept. She had aged twenty years in a month. Her arrogance had crumbled, leaving only a frightened old woman. “Yasemin has gone mad. She speaks only in numbers now. The plants are dust.”
Murdach stood up. The iron boots rang out – clang, clang, clang – as he approached the throne.
“I told you to steal the fire,” Murdach said, his voice devoid of pity. “But you only stole the ash. You have starved me, Mother. A Redcap must feed.”
Moira pressed herself against the cold stone of the throne. “I am your Lady,” she whimpered. “I gave you a home.”
“You gave me a promise,” Murdach said, raising the knife. “And now, since you have no gold, and no magic… you must pay in the only currency that remains.”
In the conservatory, Yasemin sat rocking back and forth, surrounded by dead vines. She heard the scream from the throne room – a long, jagged sound that ended abruptly. She didn’t blink. She just dipped her quill into a pot of dry ink and wrote another zero in her ledger.
Part VII: The Brotherhood of the Mud
Far from the stone towers, in the bruised purple heather of the “Broken Coast,” a new fire was burning.
It was a hard land, populated by the forgotten – the crofters, the fish-wives, the people the High Keep deemed too poor to heal.
Colum sat by a peat fire, his face lined with new sorrow, but his hands steady. He was not hoarding the magic anymore. He was giving it away.
“You do not need a castle,” he told the circle of young faces gathered around him – faces of every color, from the dark skin of the southern isles to the pale redheads of the coast. “You need only to listen.”
Sigrid leaned against a rock nearby. She walked with a heavy limp now, her leg stiff where the iron mallet had struck, but she stood taller than ever. She was the Gatekeeper of the Wild.
A young healer, a boy from the outer islands, looked at Colum. “But Master, if we heal everyone for free, how will we live? The Lady Moira charged a fortune.”
“The Lady Moira is dead,” Sigrid said, her voice cutting through the wind. “She died of hunger in a room full of gold.”
Colum smiled, tossing a handful of dried rowan onto the fire. The flames leaped up, blue and alive.
“We do not sell the water, lad,” Colum said. “We teach you how to dig the well. And when five hundred of you are digging wells in every village from here to the border, the Keep will not matter. The Sisterhood will not matter. We will be the flood.”
He looked at Sigrid, and for the first time, he truly saw her. Not as a servant, but as the foundation. The rock upon which the garden was built.
“We are the Brotherhood of the Mud,” Colum whispered. “And we are growing.”
On the wind, far in the distance, the howl of a wolf echoed. Or perhaps it was just a madwoman in a ruined castle, counting backward to zero. But in the circle of the fire, there was only warmth, and the steady, rhythmic beating of a hundred hearts learning to sing.
Image: “Where The Wind Remembers”, The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. This figure, woven from branches that dissolve into a flock of birds, seems to release its thoughts toward the sea like memories taking flight. Facing it, the lighthouse stands firm, a quiet keeper of presence and direction. Between disappearance and vigilance, the work reflects on what leaves us and what remains, and on the light that continues to guide even as the self drifts away.