Summer stretched before Wren, as long and as lifeless as the view from the window.

 

Tired of her temper, her mother had sent her to spend the holidays at her uncle’s Highland farm: a place of constant hills, rain-streaked windows, and patchy internet. The days had blurred together without so much as Netflix to fill them. Only the drone of the quad bike, the smell of damp wool, and dull, beige dinners with the shearers.

 

She sat scowling at the kitchen table, hunched over her phone as the men talked over their tea, voices thick with worry.

 

“There’s just no money in it anymore,” one of them muttered, shaking his head. “Not worth the time it takes to shear them. The fleeces just rot in the barns.”

 

“Saw a beast up on the moor yesterday,” another said into his cup. “A great grey ram with ice blue eyes, bigger than any I’ve seen.”

 

An uncomfortable silence settled. Wren’s uncle exhaled through his nose.

 

“A bad omen,” he said at last.

 

Wren rolled her eyes. These men were stuck in the Dark Ages with all their talk of omens. She longed for the lights of Glasgow and the company of normal people.

 

“I’m going out,” she announced.

 

“Where to?” asked her Uncle.

 

“Just OUT,” she shouted back from the hallway, pulling her heavy boots on.

 

She slammed the heavy wooden door and stormed out onto the moor, drawstrings of her hood pulled tight against the damp of the mist. She splashed through peat-dark puddles, gagging at the scent of manure. She could have been drinking by the canal with her friends, but instead she was stuck here.

 

Then she froze.

 

A man stood ahead of her on the path. No, not a man.The figure was tall, draped in a tattered wool cloak, its head that of a great shaggy ram. Its horns curled thick and ridged, ancient as the hills. In one hand, it gripped a crook; in the other, something long and pointed.

 

Wren’s breath locked in her chest.

 

Devil, her mind insisted.

 

The creature stepped closer, peering at her with slotted blue eyes.

 

“You cast my gifts to the wind like waste,” it said, its voice as soft and deep as distant thunder.

 

Her skin prickled. Fear clawed its way up her spine, like a slithering raindrop in reverse.

 

“I—I don’t—” Her voice cracked. “It’s not my farm. I’m just visiting.”

​

The figure tilted its shaggy head. “You have forgotten how to use the gifts of the land.”

​

A hand shot out toward her. Wren flinched. But the thing it held was not a knife. Just a smooth, round stick, tapering to a point, a carved swelling at the other end.

​

The creature stood motionless, holding the object out to her, neither good nor evil in the blue of its eyes. And for a moment she felt like the land itself was waiting.

​

She hesitated, then took it. As her fingers closed around the smooth, whorled wood, the fear melted away. Not all at once, but slowly from the centre, like frost from a windowpane. The creature nodded once, satisfied, then turned and was swallowed up by the mist, leaving Wren alone on the lane.

She ran, breath ragged, back to the farmhouse. She never thought she’d be so glad to see the yellow light in the kitchen window, the perplexed face of her uncle as she fell through the door.

​

“What is it now?” he asked with a sigh.

​

Wordlessly, still gasping for breath, she set the object on the table.

​

His brows furrowed. “Where did you get this?”

​

Wren swallowed. “The moor.”

​

The old farmer turned it over in his hands, eyeing the cross carved into the base, the lines that traced its circumference. “A dealgan,” he said. “An old spindle. They used these here for a long time.” His fingers traced the symbols etched into the wood.

​

Wren leaned forward. “What does it say?”

​

He glanced up at her, her expression unreadable. “It’s shepherd’s code. An old symbol for the Adharc Reith.”

​

She stared at him.

​

“A bit of old folklore,” he clarified. “A protector spirit, of some sort. Long ago when the people here were starving, the Ardharc Reith sent sheep - thick-fleeced, hardy beasts that kept them warm and brought them trade. All he asked in return was that the people use his gifts without waste.”

​

Neither niece nor uncle spoke. The spindle sat heavy between them.

​

“A funny old tale,” the farmer said at last, “nothing more.”

​

Wren barely slept that night, her mind at war with her memories. A trick of the mist, it must have been. Yet she knew what she had seen.

​

At dawn, before the sun had fully risen, she pulled on her boots and followed the sound of bleating to the pens. The shearers were already at work there, blades flashing in the half light, fleece falling in soft, rippling waves.

​

She hesitated, watching matted tufts fall to the ground. Then, thinking of the spindle, the ram horns, the ice blue eyes, she bent down to pick one up. It was soft and oily in her hand, clotted with muck and laced with potential.

​

Perhaps, she thought, it wasn’t too late to remember.