Finder's Shore by Anna Mackenzie Page A

and honey shed, through the shelter belt and around to the back of the barn. My eyes skim the yard. The house is quiet, but within the barn I hear an animal snort, and the clank of a bucket. Motioning for Ronan to wait, I peer cautiously around the door. The interior is dark and the smell of livestock wraps soothingly around me. For a moment I’m my five-year-old self, sitting straight and eager on the stool by Merryn’s side, her fingers feathered around mine as she teaches me to milk.
    The barn is as familiar to me as Leewood’s. With just the tips of my fingers resting on the wood I slip inside. A cow stands quietly chewing in a stall near the door. A nanny goat rests on the straw of a pen while another, with a pair of kids, stamps her foot at my intrusion. Merryn sits with her back to the door, a bucket between her knees, her hands busy milking.
    “Hello?” My voice comes out hesitant and warped.
    “I’ll be with you in a moment,” she calls over her shoulder.
    The sound of milk against the pail loses its sharp ring as the bucket fills. Finally she sets it aside, running her hand along the goat’s knobbed spine before she turns.
    “How can I help you?” she asks, walking weighted by pails towards the doorway.
    I step forward to meet her. The light catches her face so that I see her expression shift from polite enquiry to astonishment. “Ness!” She sets the pails on the floor and envelopes me in her arms. “What are you doing here? Oh, the number of times I’ve feared you dead, or lost to us altogether one way or another.” She hugs me harder then thrusts me away to arms’ length. “Let me look at you: you’ve grown and you’re better fed — that’s a mercy.” Her grip is firm on my arms. “It’s good to see you, Ness.”
    My smile matches hers, the only shadow on my happiness the lack of such welcome from Sophie.
    “Come inside,” Merryn says, reaching for her buckets.
    “Wait. I’ve someone with me.”
    She straightens. I duck around the side of the barn and beckon Ronan forward. “Ronan, this is Merryn.” Her gaze is calm and steady. “Ronan is from Ister,” I add.
    That catches her by surprise. “Ister? You’re not so very far from home then.” She wipes her palms on her apron. “I’m pleased to meet you, Ronan,” she says formally. “Is this your first visit to Dunnett?”
    The absurdity of the question lightens the moment. Ronan tells her it is and offers to carry the pails. Merryn waves us towards the house. “I get few enough visitors these days, but it would still be prudent not to stand about in the open.”
    “Nothing’s changed then?” Even though I know it already, still I feel my tide of happiness ebb.
    “Oh, things have changed.”
    Over a pot of mint tea and honeycakes that recall me to my childhood, I sketch an outline of the last three years. Merryn’s questions, as I summarise the troubles at Ebony Hill, remind me of the differences between Dunnett and Vidya. At the news that I’m newly trained as a medic, she smiles. “At least that’s as it should be. I told Marn more than once that you had a talent worth nurturing. I’d have taught you more, if only Tilda could have seen it.”
    “I saw Sophie this morning.” I hesitate, feeling my way around the subject like a tongue around a sore tooth. “She said that Tilda has taken things hard.”
    “She’s not alone in that. There’s probably not much more I can tell you, Ness. I don’t get much news here, and Tilda no longer comes to me for her headache tonics.” Her smile is grim. “Not many do.”
    “Do you not still see Marn?”
    “No.”
    Her answer sits stark between us. “I’m sorry.” I swallow. “I didn’t know how much damage it would do when I left.”
    “Don’t take the blame on yourself. The way things are on Dunnett is Colm’s doing.” When she gets up to fetch the kettle, I notice that she favours her left knee. “The pair of you are proof, if we’d only heed it, that things