Love by the Stroke of Midnight

punishing pace.
“Bonnie, whatever else you think,” Marcail said slowly, “I think he’s on my side. He sounded as pissed off as I was that I was kept in the dark.”
“So you say. Hold on, was?”
“Still am then. Why are you so anti him?” What was Bonnie not telling her?
“Because he’ll take you,” Bonnie burst out. “I can sense that, if nothing else.”
“No one takes me anywhere or anyhow if I don’t want them to, you know that,” Marcail said softly and, she thought, with commendable patience. “Anything I do is because it’s what I want.” She sighed and gave her sister a hug. “Bonnie, I’m more than attracted to him. Somehow, I just took one look and knew however much I didn’t want to, and whatever else happens, he’s important. I don’t know what my future holds, but I’m as sure as I can be, it will include Paden.”
“Thank our gods, and you, for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
Now she’d admitted it, Marcail decided she was happier, as if a great weight had lifted from her. If only Bonnie could accept it as well. “He matters, Bonnie.”
Bonnie bit her lip. “I know, and that’s the problem. I’m losing you, and life is never going to be the same.”
“Bons, you’ll never lose me,” Marcail said earnestly. “And life is never the same. It always changes as we change. You know that.”
Bonnie nodded and visibly shook her introspective mood off. “Yeah, sorry, I’m in a weird mood. Anyway, happy birthday and let’s hope it’s a good one. Come on, we better get inside before Dad decides we’ve fallen off a cliff or done a runner. I wonder why he’s asked Paden to go over to the village for him?”
“His bad leg,” Marcail said with pseudo-innocence.
They both burst out laughing.
* * * *
Marcail didn’t feel much like laughing a couple of hours later, as she, her mum, her dad and Bonnie gathered in the kitchen and began to carve their neeps—turnips.
Ruari, handed the vegetables round, then glanced at the clock. “One hour each and go. Baird’s going to bring his with him. I’ve told him we trust him to follow the rules.”
“Do we?” Marcail asked with a snigger. “Really?”
“Probably not,” her mum said. “But at least he should bring one to be lit at the appropriate time.”
“What about Paden?”
“He can judge them.”
“Well, we all know who will win then, don’t we?” Bonnie said with a scowl. “Not worth bothering.”
“Bonnie, enough already,” Ruari said with a finality that made Bonnie firm her lips and look down to her turnip. “If you can’t say anything pleasant don’t say anything at all.”
After that reprimand Bonnie was subdued, with her eyes cloudy and a preoccupied manner. Twice her mum asked her if she was all right, and she’d answered with an abstracted, “Fine.”
Marcail sent her a swift glance of query, but it was ignored. She mentally shrugged and got on with the tricky job of carving teeth into a very hard vegetable. Not easy, and she lost track of how many times her turnip became toothless. It made more flesh to cook for the pie if nothing else.
While their dad went to answer the phone and their mum to get some apples out of the pantry so she could make their traditional apple cake, Marcail took the paring knife from her sister. “If you carve any more off that turnip your lantern will need to be held together with sticky tape,” she said. “There’s more cut out than left.”
“As long as she’s not using me as her model.”
“Who knows?”
Bonnie half-smiled. “At least it means there will be plenty of it for supper. Do you remember the year Dad forgot to get the turnips in, and we all did a different fruit? Disaster, and orange with crofter’s pie instead of neeps is a big no thanks.”
Marcail laughed. She well remembered that. “When I was wee, I wouldn’t eat crofter’s pie as I thought it had Old Mrs McNee in it, as she was the only crofter I knew. Mum had to explain it was minced-up meat covered with neeps and tatties and cooked in the oven. Even then I was sceptical.” She smiled as she remembered those long-ago days, and her childhood misconceptions. “Then we got the fruit stuff. Urgh. At least we’ll not be subjecting Paden to that debacle.”
Bonnie’s expression darkened, and Marcail had had enough. She dropped her knife, slammed her hands onto the long, scrubbed, wooden kitchen table and made everything on it jump and rattle.
“That’s it, no more. You might not like him, no one says you have to, but I do, and you will be civil.”
Bonnie pursed her lips.
Marcail sighed. “This is so not like you, Bonnie. Why?”
“Don’t let me come between you and your sister, ma ghaol.”
“I won’t let her come between us though.”
Marcail waited as Bonnie bit her lip.
“I don’t know, and it’s worrying me. It seems all our traditions are being changed, and for what?”
“I wish I knew, but I don’t,” Marcail said. “But taking it out on Paden is so not on. Why not be narked with Dad, or Mum? Or Baird because he’s not here?”
“He’s teaching.”
“So?” Marcail was on a roll and ready to show how she thought Bonnie was wrong. “You can still blame him. That’s irrational. Or me because it seems something is to happen to me? That’s equally illogical and absurd.”
Bonnie stared at her, gave a loud sob, turned on her heel and almost ran out of the room.
Well, that went well. However, Marcail accepted it had had to be said. Whether Bonnie did or not was up to her.
“Well, you have set the cat amongst the pigeons haven’t you, Marcail Morven?”
Marcail spun around to see the white-haired lady—me, my once-upon-a-time self—rocking gently in the old chair that sat by the Aga. Next to where her dad had said in days gone by the stove would have been. The warmest place in the house.
The lady smiled. “I see I’ve not become any more careful with my