The Eye of Callanish

Chapter 1
The Journey
The marshlands were full of waterfowl at this time of year, and sometimes it seemed to Neil that their island was more suitable for these creatures than it was for humans. So much water reflected the blue of the sky that his horse's hooves often seemed to wade through clouds at the edges of the meres.
It was a good day to start on a journey . . . a good day to be alive. He sang. The birds sang. The clouds scudded above and below and a cool, clean breeze lifted the silky threads of the bog-cotton and set them drifting to far away places.
The rumour that there was a pure white mare for sale in the village of Kirkoway on the eastern shores of Loch Roag, of exactly the kind Fiona, his sister, had set her heart on, had reached their farm only two days before. Neil's father, Lorn, had at first intended to fetch it himself, but had found that he was too busy. So Neil was chosen as the best horseman of the family to ride to Kirkoway. He was delighted to leave behind his daily chores and to ride out into the world.
'I will never be a contented farmer,' he thought, the hills riding beside him, reflected in the mirror-smooth pools.
When he was a young boy he had run away to Iceland with a Viking sea captain called Baldur, and had returned home exhausted after Baldur's death, satiated with dangerous adventures and only too glad to settle down to the quiet of his father's farm. He had sat at the feet of Durston, the hermit who lived on the headland near his home, and tried to learn everything he was prepared to teach. He remembered how he had contrasted the active, violent life of the Viking, moving from one place to another as though the moving was an end in itself - with the quiet, contemplative life of the hermit, deeply aware of the rich adventures available to the spirit while the body remained in one place.
Neil remembered how he had said he was sick of the farm and the Island.
'There is nothing here but wind and water and sheep and cows!' he had grumbled.
Durston had smiled quizzically and replied: 'Have you not seen the lichen and moss more beautiful than the finest tapestries in the royal palaces - heather crisper and richer than the thickest carpet - butterwort and flowering cotton grass, bog asphodel and lily clad more grandly than the finest ladies? Have you not seen the cunning sundew outwitting the dragonfly? Have you not seen the marshland and the green coastal hills teeming with birds: the winchat, the whitethroat, the neat sandpiper, the agile dipper turning pebbles over at the bottom of clear running streams? Have you not seen the rocky crags, castles of the golden eagle, the merlin and the buzzard? What sickness has blinded you to the beautiful golden plover, the blue-black raven, the red grouse and the courageous storm petrel? The thickets are teeming with animals: the otter, the hare, the red deer . . . The rivers . . .'
All that Durston had said that day was true - his island world was beautiful, rich, exciting, but nevertheless . . .
Suddenly a bird sprang up from almost under his horse's hooves and hurtled to the sky. Neil's heart stirred. If only he could travel that far and that fast. If only he were not bound by the earth - by flesh and bone . . . He had learned much from Durston and he was not the foolish boy he had once been - but he had never achieved the far and free-ranging spirit the hermit seemed to have. Physical journeys and physical places still called to him.
Digging his heals into his bronze-red stallion he set off at a gallop.
'Go, Flame! Go.' he cried, and as though he too was excited at the thought of freedom, Flame responded to his master's mood and was away over the dark, soft moss and peat, shreds of it flying up from his hooves, his mane streaming out behind his head like the flame he was named for.