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the door to the West.
     
Three fifties of warriors uphold me,
whose names are lauded in the halls of chieftains; great lords make haste to do their bidding.
     
Royal blood flows in my veins,
my kinship is not humble; yet my portion is despised.
     
Truth is at the root of my tongue,
wisdom is the breath of my speech; but my words find no honor among men.
     
I am the singer at the dawn of the age,
and I stand at the door to the West.”
     
    Well, knock me over with a feather. You live with someone for a few years, and you think you know them. “Where on earth did you get that?” I asked when I finished gawping.
    “Like it?” He smirked at me like a naughty schoolboy.
    “It’s okay,” I conceded. “Where did you find it?”
    “Haven’t the foggiest,” Simon answered. “Must have tumbled across it somewhere in my reading. You know how it is.”
    I knew how it was, all right. Simon the dutiful scholar hadn’t so much as winked at a book in months. “Have you any idea what it means?” I asked.
    “Actually, I was hoping you’d fill me in,” he replied diffidently. “It’s a bit out of my line, I’m afraid. More in yours, I would have thought.”
    “Simon, what’s going on? First this extinct ox business; then you get all bothered about the time-between-times thing; now you’re quoting Celtic riddles at me. What gives?”
    He shrugged. “It just seemed apropos, I suppose. The hills, the sunrise, Scotland . . . that sort of thing.”
    I would get more information from an oyster, so I changed the subject. “What about breakfast?” Simon didn’t answer. He seemed stubbornly preoccupied with driving. “How about we stop in Nairn for a bite to eat?”
    We didn’t stop in Nairn. We whizzed through that town so fast I thought Simon might be trying for a land speed record. “Slow down!” I yelled, stiff-arming the dashboard. But Simon merely downshifted and drove on.
    Coming out of Nairn, Simon picked up the A939 and we flew, almost literally, over the hills. Luckily, we had the road to ourselves. It unwound in a seamless, if convoluted, strip and we beat it along with respectable haste. Just beyond the Findhorn River we came to the village of Ferness located at the crossroads of the A939 and the B9007. “This is our turn,” I told Simon. “Take a right.”
    The B9007 proved to be a narrow tarmac trail along the bottom of the Findhorn Glen, and the principal way into the remains of the Darnaway Forest, which, to my surprise, possessed all the earmarks of a proper forest. That is to say, hills thickly covered with tall pines, morning mist wafting among the trees, and little streams coursing down to the river below. After a mile we reached a tiny village called Mills of Airdrie.
    I knew enough Gaelic to figure that the word Airdrie was a contraction for the ancient Celtic term Aird Righ , meaning High King. While there was nothing strange about a king having a mill on the river, I found it slightly peculiar that he should have been a High King. In antiquity, that title would have been reserved for only the most elite of royalty, and rarely in Scotland.
    The village itself wasn’t much: a wide spot in the road with an inn and combination grocer’s-newsagent’s-post office. We continued on another mile and reached an unmarked road. A weathered sign stood at the crossing; it had “Carnwood Farm” written on it in bright blue with an arrow pointing the way. We turned left and soon came to a stone bridge. We crossed the Findhorn once again and drove on deeper into the heart of Darnaway.
    Carnwood Farm lay on the flat ground between two broad tree-clad hills. Small, neat, and spare, the place appeared efficient and prosperous. But it also had about it an air of . . . I don’t know . . . emptiness. As if it were long abandoned. Not neglected, not deserted. Just untouched. Or, more precisely, as if the land were somehow resistant to human occupation. This was patently absurd. The buildings, the fields, and