It had been years earlier, after a bad harvest, when hunger pressed hard on every house in the glen. The MacGregor name was only beginning to return to men’s mouths.
Ewan, his son Malcolm, and his younger brother Seumas had hidden a still in a fold of the hill above the birches, where mist gathered, and sound seemed to die before travelling far. A little stream ran nearby, enough to cool the copper. The place smelled of wet stone and herbs.
They fired it for the first time under a close grey sky. As the still began to sing and the first run came off, their talk grew easier. But Ewan kept his eyes on the fire, the worm tub, the stream, and the edge of the hollow where bracken gave way to stone. That was where she appeared.
At first, he thought it was only mist shifting oddly. Then the shape resolved into a woman — or something near enough to one. She wore a dress the colour of lichen and old stone. Her black hair hung loose over her shoulders. She moved lightly, as if her feet were scarcely touching the ground.
Malcolm stopped speaking. Seumas fell silent. Only the burn kept singing.
The woman came to the deepest part of the hollow and stood watching them. Smoke curled around her, but she did not blink or cough.
“You’re bold men,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried clearly.
Ewan greeted her carefully and remarked that it was a poor evening for walking the hill.
“It is also a poor evening,” she replied, glancing at the still, “for tempting the gaugers.”
Seumas asked what brought her so far from any house. “The same thing that brings any of us where we should not be,” she said. “Thirst.”
She stepped nearer. At a glance, her dress seemed like wool; in another, it seemed almost fluid, as if it belonged as much to stream or moss as to cloth.
After they finished, Malcolm volunteered to lead her back to the path. She gave him a faint smile.
“I am not lost. I have been here longer than your still, longer than your cask, longer than the law that drove your name into hiding. This hollow and I have an understanding.”
Ewan felt the hair stir on the back of his neck. “What sort of understanding?”
“I mind it,” she said simply. “And it minds me. I keep certain things from crossing this place — men with iron, men with fire. In return, what is made here owes a measure to the hill.”
Seumas scoffed and asked what she was, that she should claim whisky as rent. For a moment, the air sharpened.
“I have been called many things,” she said. “Wise woman. Wandering soul. Worse than that besides. But if you need a name, some call us Glaistig.”
Ewan’s mouth went dry. He remembered stories from his grandmother: a being of the hills, half woman and half otherworldly creature, sometimes helpful, sometimes dangerous, who guarded places and cattle when treated with respect. Just for an instant, beneath the hem of her skirt, he thought he saw something not quite human where her feet should be.
Ewan selected his words carefully. “If you mind the hollow, and we mind what’s made here, perhaps there is room for more than one understanding.”
She studied him. “You remember when your name had to be hidden. Then you know the value of a safe hollow.” She explained what she wanted: a small dram from every run, poured onto a flat stone by the burn before the first cask left the hollow, and a promise that no man of theirs would raise iron against what walked the hills at night.
Ewan believed her. The old laws of hill and stream felt sterner than the crown’s laws, but possibly fairer. He agreed: a dram from every run, and no iron raised against what walked these hills if it did them no harm.
“It will do,” she said.
When the first clear spirit came off the still, Ewan poured a small measure onto the flat stone. The whisky darkened the rock and seeped in. The woman closed her eyes and breathed it in. “Good,” she said. “Remember.” Then, quietly: “Your line owes me a watchful eye. As the years go on, I’ll collect in other ways.”
By the time they looked up again, she had retreated into the mist. The hillside took her as quietly as a sigh.
⁂
“Did the gaugers ever come?” the younger Ewan asked.
“Not once to that hollow,” the old man said. “They searched lower ground. They found other stills. But never ours. Not while we remembered the dram.”
“And did you always remember?” “I did. Your father did. Seumas required reminders from time to time, but even he never climbed up there alone after that first day.”
The boy leaned closer. “But the other ways she intended to collect?”
The old man’s fingertips swept over his stick. “There were nights when the cattle would shy from the hollow though no wolf was near. Sometimes a child wandered too close to the birch line and returned saying a woman had sung to them and sent them home. And there was a man from the glen, mad with drink and grief, who cursed the hill and went up one night with iron in his hand. He returned with a palm cut open on his own blade and no recollection of how.”
“We left a dram on the stone the next morning,” added the old man. “There were no more such nights.”
Rain tapped gently on the roof. The fire settled lower.
“So when we fire the still now,” said the boy, “we should do the same.”
“We will,” said old Ewan. “You’ll carry the cup yourself. You’ll pour it yourself. And you’ll say the name softly, but plainly. Not to bind her.”
“And if she comes?”
“Then you’ll listen. As I did. As your father did. There are bargains older than any made with ink and paper. Best not to forget them.”
He leaned back, listening to the rain beyond the walls. “Some say the old things are gone,” he whispered. “Driven off by roads, law, and progress. But the hill keeps its own account. And so long as a MacGregor walks past the birches carrying fire in his hands, there’ll be something watching — to see that he doesn’t burn more than he can pay for.”
The younger Ewan sat quiet, peat smoke settling in him like cloth, and the story with it.
The glen breathed outside through the rain. Something not entirely woman and not completely beast moved silently in the mist above the birches, listening to water and wind and the long-delayed return of the MacGregor name.