"She's in here, sir. It is late and I can guarantee she is asleep…"
Ailsa heard the voices outside the small cottage and called, "I'm not asleep yet, Aunt Lettie. Show in the visitor please." She stood from where she was mending the farmhand's shirt in front of the fire. But when she saw the man who stood in the doorway she dropped the shirt to the thrush covered floor. "Where's Darin?" was all she could say in a stifled voice as he entered the house.
"I'll go and get ye some tea," said Aunt Lettie, bustling through the crimson colored curtain to the small kitchen before anyone could protest.
"Where's Darin?" Ailsa said again slower, the coming tears evident in her quivering voice. "Devlin, where is he?"
Devlin walked to the fire and stood in front of it. His eyes were downcast and his hands hung limp at his sides. There was something different about him Ailsa noticed as he stared with blank eyes into the blaze just as he had done when they left their village. He's crushed. His spirit is gone. What has this war done to him? What has it done to my brother? She walked over to him and wrapped her small arms around his middle and pressed her face into his torso. He looked down at her, reached around and took her hands in his.
"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I –I tried to protect him. I went to help him. Then I don't know what happened. Next thing I knew I woke up a prisoner of the English. I looked everywhere for Darin but he was gone. Just gone."
Ailsa looked at Devlin. His face was marked with scars, telling an unbearable tale of the torture and pain of war. The fire in his eyes was gone. Gone like Darin. Then she realized the weight of the grievous thought. Her brother was dead. The last of her family was gone. She let the heaving sobs come and she sat on the floor with a thud. Devlin sat with her and held her in his arms as they cried together.
Aunt Lettie brought the tea and went back to the kitchen and cried there. The cottage was filled with an inescapable feeling of sorrow. Finally, as the sun rose and cascaded rays of pink light through the small windows, Ailsa stopped crying and saw that Devlin had fallen asleep. She slipped out of his arms and laid him on his back, placing the shirt under his head as a pillow.
Then she crept into the kitchen and saw Aunt Lettie also asleep, using her forearms as pillows as she sat bent over the table. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her damp handkerchief wadded up in her hand. Ailsa left her there to peacefully slumber and slipped outside. The wind was rushing at her from the sea as she stood facing west. The town below had just begun to teem with life as the fisherman got up and headed out for the day.
The sun rose behind her and illuminated everything in the coastal town below. It was a beautiful day and the crests of the waves became pink in the rising sunlight. Ailsa stood alone against the wind. It was a piercing cold wind that forever turned her delicate hands and her fragile heart icy cold. She felt like she would never cry again. And she felt utterly alone.