The letters told a different story. They spoke of land so broad a man could walk all day and still live on his own; they spoke of wages and opportunities not determined by the temper of a factor or laird. They also spoke, more quietly, of hunger, of rents increasing, of neighbours calling exile opportunity because the truth was too bitter to name.

Malcolm put down the last letter and rubbed his brow. His eldest son, Ewan Ross, was in the doorway with his cap turning in his hands.

“You want to talk about leaving again,” Malcolm said.

Ewan gave a short smile. “Gregor’s near decided. He writes to cousins in Ontario. He says he won’t raise bairns on land that shrinks every time the factor grows greedy.”

“And you?” Ewan looked at the letters. “Some days I think of teaching here. Other days the hills seem to be closing in. Jean’s songs are one thing. The same stones and the same hardships are another.”

Malcolm listened. He took Jean’s notebook in his hand. “Do you recall what your aunt wrote? About the Washer at the Ford?”

“Aye. ‘The ground is never the same twice.’”

“Just so. We treat the hills as if they never change, because they outlast us. But they do shift, slowly, under our feet.”

“You’re saying we should leave?”

“I’m saying I don’t know.” Malcolm shut the notebooks. “I need air. I’ll walk the moor before dark.”

“There’s mist on the ground,” Ewan said. “Best not go far. This time of year the moss is treacherous.”

Malcolm smiled faintly. “You sound like Jean. Don’t fret. I’ll keep to the paths.”

The moor lay to the north of the glen: a broad stretch of heather and moss hewn by sheep tracks and half-finished drainage works. Men’s spades had changed the way water moved beneath the peat. Fog clung low. Malcolm’s stride was steady, heading toward a half-toppled standing stone that had been a landmark since his boyhood. Jean’s old warning rang in his ears as he walked: Watch where you set your wandering feet, for the ground is never the same.

He had passed roughly halfway when he spotted the first light. It hung low — not higher than a man’s knee — a pale wavering glow just ahead and to his left. Not bright enough to be a lantern. Too steady for a reflection.

Malcolm stopped. The light flickered and steadied. Then another appeared beyond it, until there was a thin line of them strung along a patch of moor he knew — or thought he knew — to be dangerous.

“Will-o’-the-wisps,” he uttered. The old tales called them corpse-lights, ghostly flames that lured foolish travellers onto false ground. “Peat gas,” Malcolm muttered. “Rotting roots and trapped air.”

The nearest light seemed to flare slightly. The lights flickered and moved, hovering over what he was almost certain was deep moss above hidden water. He turned toward higher ground on his right. Then a single light winked directly before his face, not more than a yard away. Unmoving. Stubborn.

“You’re not real,” he told it. “You’re swamp vapours.” The light bobbed once, twice.

He tested the earth with his foot. It felt firm enough. He took one step forward. His foot came down and the moss gave with a sensation of a held breath suddenly released. He flung his weight backward just as the ground beneath him collapsed with a soft sucking sound. Black water welled up, filling the hole where his foot had been. He staggered but kept his balance. The light before him flared white for a heartbeat, then settled.

Malcolm stared at the new-made hollow. “That should not have gone. That bit’s been solid since I was a boy.”

He frowned. The tales said corpse-lights led men to death. These were not leading him anywhere. They were marking something. Marking danger. Marking change.

He thought of the drainage ditch, the way men had cut into the peat and altered the water’s path. What had been safe last year might not be safe now. “You’re no guides,” he murmured to the lights. “You’re signposts. Warnings, maybe.”

He tested the ground away from the lights and followed them across the moor — the lit places marking hidden water, the dark places holding firm. He stopped on a small rise and turned in a slow circle. From there he could see the pattern clearly. Between the lights ran a faint line of higher ground he had never taken: a drier edge sloping homeward.

He let out a shaky breath. “If you’re lures, you’re poor ones,” he said. “If you’re warnings, you’re kinder than the stories say.” The nearest light flickered. He turned toward the safer slope. As he left the hollow behind, the lights faded one by one until the moor was only heather and mist again.

Ewan met him at the gate. “You were longer than I liked.”

“There are holes up there a man can’t see until he’s in them,” Malcolm said softly. “I was reminded of that.”

⁂

Later, when the lamp was lit and the house had quieted, Malcolm opened his notebook and wrote: On the twenty-third day of April, in the year of our Lord 1878, I walked the moor north of our glen and saw lights such as are often spoken of but seldom trusted. They appeared over ground that gave way when tested, and where they did not appear, the earth held firm. I cannot say whether this was a trick of gas and fatigue, or whether the old tales of will-o’-the-wisps contain some truth as warning rather than lure.

He paused, then added: Jean’s song came to mind: “The ground is never the same twice.” Perhaps the lights are only the land’s way of saying the same.

He closed the book. From the next room came the low murmur of voices: Ewan and his younger brother speaking of wages, ships, and passage prices. Beyond the window the moor lay black and quiet.

Malcolm still did not know whether his sons should go or stay. But he understood something he had not the day before. A family, like a traveller on the moor, could be undone by trusting too much in old footing. A path that had held for generations might

fail in a single season if the water beneath it changed course. Another way — less familiar and less proud — might prove safer.

By morning he had no final answer. He rose early and stepped outside. Mist still lay over the moor, though the eastern sky had turned pale gold. For a moment he thought he saw, far off, one last small light hanging near the place where the ground had broken under him. Then it vanished.

When he went back in, Ewan was already at the table.

“Well?” his son asked quietly.

Malcolm looked at the letters, the notebooks, the piled lives of those who had gone and those who had stayed. “I still don’t know whether a MacGregor belongs more to these hills than to whatever waits beyond them,” he said. “But I know this: no man should stay only because his father stayed, and no man should leave only because others have gone. A road is not made safe by habit.” He rested his hand on the notebook. “If you or Gregor go, you’ll go with my blessing. If you stay, you’ll stay with it too. But whichever path you choose, choose it with your eyes open. The ground is never the same twice.”

Outside, the wind moved softly over the heather. Somewhere beyond sight, water shifted under peat, reshaping the earth grain by grain.