Upon the bleak Scottish moors in winter a single wanderer seeks solace from the storm. What he stumbles upon looks to be simple good hearted assistance but there is more to this refuge than meets the eye.
An Adult Story by:
Miss Irene Clearmont
Copyright 2011 (September)
It is in the bosom of a woman that the ray of the Divine splendor will receive human form. (Vedangas).
Isis Unveiled
Written by,
Helena Petrovna Blætavsky, neé Van Hahn
Born 1831.
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THE LAMIA.
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Empty Moors.
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The Scottish moors are bright with purple heather in the late autumn. Two months later the color is gone and the cold grips the huddled hawthorn and heather. The wind blows, cutting through to the bone over the lonely stretches of wasteland that seems to belong to no one. Occasional gusts carry snow that is too impatient to settle. It just wisps across the browning reeds and bare heather.
Sheep farms cling to the landscape like grey huddles of weathered stone. Some of them are just the shells of abandoned ruins whilst others still contain warmth and succor for the farmers that watch over this grim land. But sanctuary is few and far between. It is seldom that those cottages and bothies are inhabited now in this twenty first century.
Some-whiles, hill walkers from the lowlands and cities stride along the dogleg tracks and weaving roads, intent on their next halting place and wondering how it was that they left the well trodden heights to wander in the featureless morass of reeds and heather. Then all is quiet again, a place of buried secrets, furtive concealment and self sufficient society.
Under a heavy sky and whipped by knife-like wind, Brian stood by the grey stone monolith and wondered which direction to go. Basically there were three possibilities. Choose a direction and stick to it, put up his tent and wait for morning light or backtrack to find the road that he had left at the very least five miles behind.
To be frank, none of them were in the least bit enticing and he cursed the moment that he had decided to split from the rest of his party and take a short cut. Once again he pulled the map from his pack, and the compass and tried to fix his position with some degree of certitude. But it was already getting dark. The clouds blanketed the light and visibility was dropping to the point where the familiar peaks, hills and features of the bare landscape were merging into an umbra of uncertain dimensions.
Brian had stood only ten minutes but already it was almost too dark to see more than a hundred yards. He decided to seek out a dell, a shallow depression sheltered from the wind and pitch his tent. As he walked, stumbling over clumps of heather and splashing through brown sweepings' and mud, he felt the first drops of the coming rainstorm.
Then he found himself on a track. Not a sheep path cut into the heather but the slightly overgrown double track of vehicles. Hoisting his pack higher, Brian tried to decide which way was the best way. But his hands were too cold to root the compass back out of his pack and the wind would have torn the map from his grasp.
Mentally he tossed a coin and headed left. For a mile the track wandered, seeking out the contours as the rain became sheets of cold water that lashed Brian and ran in rivulets down his back as it penetrated his waterproof coat and brought cold to chill his flesh.
Suddenly he saw light through the grey rain. A sliver of steady electric light that beckoned him on into an overgrown farmyard. Several stone buildings stood roofless around an area overgrown with hawthorn and grass. With a stumble Brain went to the door of the lit cottage and knocked with his knuckles on the weathered wood. It seemed to him that the wind must have carried away the sound but the door opened and light flooded into the yard.
A middle aged woman waved him into the house and Brian stumbled in as he was beckoned.
Elspeth.
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The cottage had seemed almost like a ruin in the dark of the moors but inside it showed a modern face. Snug and comfy the room was lit by a small chandelier and warmed by a fire in the hearth.
"Thank you so very much, the weather is getting nasty," said Brian as he turned to look at the woman who had opened the door.
She was as tall as him, in her late forties and might have had a generous figure but it was hidden under her tweed jacket and skirt.
"Not a good night to be on the Heatherstone Moor," she smiled. "Foolish in fact, very foolish."
"I know," he replied. "I lost my way..."
"Not the first, I'll warrant," she said. "I am Elspeth, Elspeth French, or at least that is the name that you can call me by."
"Hello, I am Brian. I hesitate to impose on you but I wonder if you could offer me a place to doss down for the night. I'm not sure that my tent will hold out in this weather."
As if to emphasize the point the wind whistled around the cottage and rattled the shutters in its grip.
"Of course, how very romantic! The lonely woman succors the stricken, lost traveler as the storm gathers in the northern sky," she said as she helped him lower his pack to the ground and strip off his coat.
Brian nodded his agreement and wondered what this woman was doing alone living in one of the most remote parts of the moors.
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