The moan of miller Beale’s crude bell is nearly swallowed by the third week of February cold. Gray stirs in his haybunk, clinging to Leith. There the marshlands stretch toward the North Sea, and Elspeth—his bride—walks the rain-dark fields beneath a graphite sky. Their daughters run in widening circles through the grass: Isobel serious beyond her years, Alisone all wild curls and laughter, and wee Violet stumbling after them, gap-toothed and breathless. Pregnant clouds drag their swollen white bellies across the Lowlands. The wind tastes of salt.
The bell tolls again.
Once.
Gray sits upright.
Continue reading “The Fields of Leith Christopher Kostyn Passante”
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