The Song of Adrian MacLeod

Humans possess almost no power of memory. For the Clan of Man, everything seen or experienced must be quickly written down on leaves of paper, or else it is lost forever. If the leaves are somehow destroyed, the memories are lost with them.

We of the Clan of Cat are not so limited. For us every moment of past life is as clear in our memory as if it had just happened. We still see them all in our minds. There was never a need for anything like human writing.

Instead, my kind were born to sing. We cats are all singers, skilled at expressing ideas with our voices, each of us contributing his share to our store of Songs. All our history, all the stories that are the legacy of our Clan and our kind are kept within the Songs. They are passed from friend to friend, from she-cat mother to her kits, from the old to the young, down through the long ages so that nothing is ever lost, nothing is forgotten.

The Created Universe as we know it begins with what we call our First Song. The before times were dark, and nothing is known of them. The First Song s beginning verses sing of Creation s Day, of how the Spirit Above breathed out the universe and everything that is within it. They tell of how He set the Clans of the Folk on His good green earth to live beneath the sun, and they tell of how He loved the living beings He had made.

They sing of how the Clan of Cat and the Clan of Dog were placed beside the Humans to be their steadfast companions, loving and guarding them, each in our differing ways. For this purpose and no other we were made, and we are content with the places we have been given.

Many summers have passed since that day in the morning of the world, and many are the Songs that are sung by my kind in these latter times. Every life that is lived upon the earth is given its own Song, and all of them are beautiful to us. All are of equal importance. They grow longer each day, and some of them will never reach an end while the earth yet turns beneath the sun.

I am called Bellatrix, so named by my human companion for a bright star that rises high on the coldest winter nights. It is not the name I carry among my own kind, but rather a new name bestowed on me by the one human being I love, and I have taken it as my own. I am of the Folk, and of the Clan of Cat, we of nine Life-Walks beneath the sun.

I was sent to this one special person from the Sacred Isle of Avalon, where those of my kind rest between our many Life-Walks. Together with my littermate brother Betelgeuse, and our friend Sirius of the Clan of Dog, we are the sworn companions of the human woman Adrian MacLeod.

Of these things I will sing for you, after the manner of my Clan and my kind. I will sing the Song that has been made for our chosen human friend: the Song of Adrian MacLeod. In this way you too may know her as she is, in her one Life-Walk upon the earth and under the sun. Listen if you will, for her Song is beautiful, as she is beautiful.

She is unique among her fellows, special and like no other. Know then, all who hear my voice, that this human being is ours, and any who would do her harm must first pass the three of us.

When Adrian and her kinsmen say her surname, it sounds like Mac-Cloud. It is a good and proper naming, for Adrian s life work is to study the clouds of the sky, and the winds that carry them along. By them she foretells the rain and the storms, as well as the winds and the bright, warm days. Her name is held in high honor by those who travel upon the sea, and many are the lives that have been saved by her skill.

Our home is the small island of Ronaidh, or Ronay in the new speech. Adrian brought all of us to this place ten summers ago. Betelgeuse and I were tiny newly weaned kittens when we arrived here, and Sirius was not much older, a mere puppy. We all grew and played together, just as if Sirius had been another kitten, even when she began to grow so alarmingly large.

Many are the Songs that are sung of the conflict between the Clans of Cat and Dog, but there was never any strife between the three of us. Our friend Sirius possessed a nature far too sweet and gentle for that, and she was as fiercely devoted to our human friend as we were. From our very beginning, we loved her as we loved each other.

Though the island was a cold and lonely place, we were content because we were together. All of us had pledged ourselves to be the guardians of the woman who had adopted us, and we were happy living our lives there with her. The fact that no other human beings dwelt on the Island of Ronaidh made little difference to us.

We understood that Adrian had chosen to come to the island mostly because of its solitude. She d already been a lonely person, even among others of her own kind. For her, Ronaidh was a refuge from a world in which she could find no place, and possibly from things within herself she could not change.

As we lived there with her, she took on the habit of constantly speaking to us, just as if we were the fellow humans she had left behind her. We of the Clan of Cat comprehend much more of your human speech than any of you realize, perhaps even more than you might suspect.

That being so, we began to learn many things about the human woman Adrian MacLeod, she whom all of us loved and had taken as our own. Though these things had begun long before any of us had been born, we kept every word she spoke in our presence in the deep memory of our kind, and gradually we pieced together her story.

The Spirit Above did not create the Clan of Man to be solitary hunters and prowlers, like so many of my own kind. No, that life was never meant for them. They were meant to live and work together, taking part in each other s lives in friendship and harmony. Only thus are they truly happy.

Still, some of them are born strangely lacking in the ability to form the relationships that allow them to comfortably share their existence with their fellows. These tend to drift further and further away as their lives go on, isolating themselves from the society that has no place for them.

Our chosen human was such a one, and her state brought her endless frustration and unhappiness. When she was small her parents clung steadfastly to the belief that as she matured, Adrian would grow out of her strange reticence, but it was not to be. If anything, she became even more silent and alone within herself.

The fact that the quiet little girl with carroty red hair and emerald eyes grew tall and spindly at an early age only made things worse. Young humans are quiet often terribly cruel to one another, particularly those who look or act differently from what they see as normal. It makes their world a colder, harsher place, but it has always the way of their kind, and no one can say why.

As a child Adrian had invariably played alone, making up complicated games no one else knew. She would arrange twigs and stones in intricate patterns that no one but she could understand, and then rake them all aside and begin again.

The few other children who attempted to join her were silently rebuffed, and quickly drifted away. She had no friends, and few outside her immediate family ever spoke to her. What is strange is always feared, and those who are feared are shunned.

School was the purest form of torture for Adrian. To be forced to recite before her class was unbelievably painful. Parties and social events that her parents insisted she attend found the tall, thin girl with red hair sitting in corners, or even hiding in bathrooms. The laughter of her schoolmates was unrelenting, and seemed to follow her everywhere.

Adrian was actually highly intelligent. In reading, mathematics, and the sciences she excelled far beyond her classmates. In numbers she found great beauty. The exquisite crystalline patterns they formed resonated with something deep inside her, and the solutions to the problems she was given often appeared in her mind as if by magic. Where other students perceived only a dull task to be performed for a teacher s approval, Adrian found in numbers something akin to wonderful, soaring music.

Above all else she loved books, for in the printed page she found the nearest thing to pleasure she knew. Books could transport her to bright new places, different and better worlds.

Her books and a battered slide-rule were her most valued possessions. As long as she had them, she could go on; everything else was extra and of little importance.

As soon as she was able, Adrian left home and family behind her. She took with her a certain sum of money which had been the bequest of her maternal grandfather, enough to live for a little while. When it began to run out, she found employment cleaning offices at night, when no one else was present to intrude on her thoughts.

With her earnings she rented a small flat, where she could arrange her precious books about her, and there she lived in blessed solitude. Adrian kept her new home almost painfully clean, with every object and possession in its own precise place. Life fell into a daily routine of waking, cleaning her flat, going to her work, and when she returned, reading, and sleeping. If not actually happy, Adrian MacLeod was at least comfortable in her lonely existence.

After several unremarkable years, during which nothing changed except for the seasons, she was walking home one quiet morning when her eye caught a brightly printed broadsheet, newly pasted upon a high board fence. It was from the British Royal Navy, an announcement that a new Weather Service was to be formed.

It stated that this adjunct to the Navy would attempt to more accurately predict the storms which always endangered its ships as they patrolled the seas. Enlisted personnel of the Royal Navy, as well as civilian employees who demonstrated the necessary skills, would be posted to observation stations in every place where the Navy held sway.

Most of these would be built on lonely islands and points of land on both sides of the great ocean, and would from there communicate back to Greenwich by means of the new wireless transmitter. All manner of atmospheric conditions would be observed and reported. Every scientific advancement would be utilized to gather information on forming weather patterns, which would then be sent to a central location at Greenwich, there to be assembled and analyzed. The result would be an ability to send storm warnings to ships at sea far earlier than had ever before been possible.

Qualified British citizens interested in this type of employment were invited to submit their applications at any office of the British Royal Navy.

A few hours later Adrian did exactly that. At first the stunned officers in charge of civilian recruitment flatly refused her. They made it abundantly clear that women were neither suitable nor wanted for this sort of duty. But Adrian persisted.

Though they tried very hard to discourage her, Adrian s intelligence, knowledge, and mathematical skills were so astounding that she could not be gainsaid, even by these staid traditionalists, and at last they relented.

The officers made sure she understood that as a woman, she could not be assigned a companion on station, and so would live and work absolutely alone. She would have no other human contact for several months at a stretch. The wireless would be her sole connection to the rest of humanity. When she readily assented to these conditions, she was reluctantly hired, and instructed to report for training in two days time.

And so it was that twelve weeks later, in the spring of the year 1911, Adrian MacLeod embarked aboard the small steamship Hector from the port of Inverness with all her meager belongings. With her home and former life left behind her, she sailed away northward to the small, deserted Island of Ronaidh.

As it happened, Adrian would not be quite alone there after all, for with her were three traveling companions: two kittens and a puppy, my brother Betelgeuse and I, and a young English Shepherd she named Sirius. It was the first time any of us had been away from our birthplaces, and the journey was exciting beyond anything we had yet experienced.

We had been adopted by her only that morning from our birth homes. She named us all for the stars in the sky, and assured us that she would never part from us while breath remained within her. I was happy to accompany the young human woman. Cats are given senses not possessed by others; with them I reached out and saw her heart, and knew that it was good and true. All of us loved her instinctively. We became her family, in a very real sense.

Our grand sounding names soon became too much for Adrian to bother with every time she called us, so I quickly became Bella, while my brother was Beetle. The puppy Sirius she called simply Siri. Only when she was piqued with us did Adrian use our full names.

We first saw the island of Ronaidh as a brilliant green jewel rising out of a sparkling blue sea, from the pilothouse of the Hector where we stood with her commander. There were no trees, the climate being far too chilly for any to grow, and yet Ronaidh was not barren. It was covered with various grasses of brilliant green, as well abundant low shrubs and mosses such as were able to withstand the cold of winter.

The ship s captain, a short, white-whiskered man called Amos Lochlear, shook his head slowly and turned to his passenger. There is your new home, Miss MacLeod, such as it is, he said in a deep Scottish brogue. We ll drop anchor off the eastern shore, where we can land boats as near as can be to the weather station. It s built on Tobha Ronaidh, the highest point there.

That s Scots Gaelic, she said. She was gazing at the green place with wonder in her eyes, as if it weren t a bleak, almost deserted island at all, but a sort of magical kingdom all her own.

Aye, the captain said with his pipe clenched in his teeth. Ronaidh is the old name for the island, from the days when William Wallace took refuge at the old monastery that was there. The name of the hill means Ronay Mound if you can believe that. Them as named it were MacGregors who knew mountains when they saw them, and they would na dignify this as anything more than a mound.

Our young mistress considered that for a long moment and then asked, How will I get my things up there from the landing place?

We ll do that for you, he said. It will take most of the day to get all of the food and other supplies hauled from the ship to the station and stowed away properly. We ll leave you with a long ton of coal for your stove, as well as a couple of barrels of oil for your lamps, and plenty of spare batteries for the wireless. We ll recharge your exhausted batteries from the ship s generator each time we return.

They told me the winters are quite severe, here.

That they are, Miss MacLeod. And dark as well. You ll see some days around Christmas when the sun won t come up at all. You ll have a kind of twilight instead, all the day long.

Captain Lochlear was as good as his word, and as soon as boats could be sent ashore, began landing everything Adrian would need to live there. The rough-looking sailors of his crew quickly formed what looked for all the world like a line of busy ants, hauling food, fuel, medicines, and equipment, as well as Adrian s personal belongings up the stony path to the newly constructed weather station.

The station itself was built of mortared stone, with a steep slate roof. Beside it was a shed for coal and other things that wouldn t be damaged by the cold, and the tall steel tower of the wireless antenna. Neither structure was larger than what was absolutely required, everything but the stones themselves being of necessity brought out by ship from Scotland or England.

Adrian immediately loved the place, and stood gazing about with one of her rare smiles on her face. We were released at once, the captain assuring her there were no snakes, and no large animals other than the grey seals on the rocky shore. As long as we stayed clear of them, there was very little on the island that might endanger a kitten or puppy, unless it might be one of the seabirds who nested in the rocks below.

Nevertheless, it was all terrifyingly unknown, and we stayed near our human friend for the time being. Any excursions into the grass and heather could wait until we were surer of ourselves. Everything was new and fascinating, the scents and sounds different from anything we had yet experienced. It was quite overwhelming.

Siri wagged and wiggled around Adrian s feet until we thought she might break in half, while Beetle and I cautiously explored the immediate area of the house and shed. There were myriad insects squeaking and croaking and hopping, and my brother began chasing one after another. I discovered a large glossy black beetle with formidable jaws, and followed it until it disappeared into its burrowed lair. Everything seemed purposely made to pique the curiosity of a new-weaned kitten!

Just as dusk was falling, Captain Lochlear bade us all farewell and returned down the steep path to his little ship. I ll see you in three months time, he said with a wave. We ll ride at anchor during the night and be gone in the morning, when we can see all the rocks. May the Almighty guard and protect you, Miss MacLeod. Then he smiled and turned to walk back down the path to his ship.

That night I realized that I had never experienced true quiet. The human city of Inverness, where we had been born, had never been really quiet; no place where large numbers of humans live ever is. When evening fell here, and the petrels and kittiwakes settled into their nests for the night, the only remaining sounds were the sea and the crickets. The ear quickly became accustomed to those, and then even they seemed to fade away. We slept in peace, Beetle and I next to Adrian upon her narrow bed, and Siri across its foot.

When the sky grew light in the east and she looked out, Captain Lochlear and the Hector were gone from where they had passed the night. We were alone now, the only four living beings in all our world.

Adrian solemnly raised the Union Jack upon the station s short pole, built up the fire in her iron stove, and set a kettle of water on it to boil for her tea. Then, astoundingly, she laughed and danced a little jig, there before us in her new home. I knew that something had changed within her, or maybe something long hidden had been uncovered.

As she set about her daily chores for the very first time, our human companion slowly burst into bloom, like a rare and long dormant flower. This was no longer the tall, spindly, red-haired girl who had been so uncomfortable in almost every situation. On her very first morning alone on the Isle of Ronaidh, she transformed before our eyes into a totally new creature.

For one thing she began to speak, something she d done only from necessity among her own kind, and then as seldom as she could manage. Now she chattered constantly to Beetle and Siri and me as she attended to the many incomprehensible instruments and tasks that made up the working part of her weather station.

She sang little human songs to us as we gathered about her, not fully understanding what had happened. We only knew that our chosen human was happy, and being who and what we were, we were content. Such is our place and our purpose, upon the earth and under the sun.

We are far different from one another, we of the Clan of Cat and the Clan of Dog. We are each as the Spirit Above chose to create us, and we each have our own relationship with him. We Cats are creatures who live in the sunlit world, but clearly sense and see that of the Spirits, while the Clan of Dog are all anchored firmly to the solid earth upon which they stand. We are ethereal, while they are solid through and through. Only in the love of our chosen human companions are we the same and united, and so it was with us on the Isle of Ronaidh.

Siri grew to become a fierce and loyal guardian of our human mistress, her eye ever upon Adrian for any signal or command. We knew that no danger would ever come near Adrian while Siri lived, or for that matter, Beetle and me. Siri loved us all and would gladly give her life for us. It was for this purpose that Dog was created in the morning of the world, and she was as good and true a Dog as had ever been made.

My brother and I were Adrian s constant companions. Given the perception and ability of our kind, we knew when she was happy, when she was sad, and when she was troubled. We possessed the ability to be whatever she needed us to be at any given moment, whether that be comforter, companion, or playmate. For this reason alone was Cat created and placed upon the good green earth, and we own no other purpose under the sun.

All of us, Siri, Beetle, and I, gave unstintingly of ourselves to the one human being we had chosen and given our pledges to. This human woman was ours, and we were hers. If she needed our lives, then we would lay them at her feet.

Adrian s life quickly fell into an easy routine, just as it had before. She would wake each morning at first light, put on her cotton dress, and prepare her tea, or sometimes coffee. She would then go outside as the sun was rising and read her instruments, which were all mounted in a kind of little house that had louvered sides, built a little way from the station.

Some of these had round white faces with pointers that revolved, while others consisted of glass tubes with a mysterious liquid inside them. One she would wet and then whirl about her head in the air before reading it. Another was a small vane like a bird s wing, fixed to a pole. It would always turn to face the wind, and part of it would spin around madly.

They all held meaning to her, and these meanings were carefully written in a great book or journal that she kept near her always. Then back into the house, where she would take her seat at the wireless, put round black things over her ears and begin to tap its key.

The wireless was forbidden territory for us. These were the days of the spark-gap transmitter, a thing quite different from the more modern ones of today, with their dials and hot, glowing bulbs. We were not allowed to come near the mysterious human contrivance, or even permitted into the small room where it was installed. Adrian kept that door firmly closed, and made certain we knew that this machine posed great danger to creatures such as us.

That met with my complete approval; I had no desire to come near the wireless, or even be in the same house with it. We could all hear the baleful thing crackling and spitting while she tapped at the key, and the whole house smelled of thunder and lightning for hours after she had finished. Siri hid under the bed when it was in use and would not come out until Adrian came to get her.

I was never able to reason out how such a frightening device could help our mistress speak to the others of her kind. I finally concluded that some human mysteries had nothing at all to do with me, and these were best left completely alone.

Beetle said I should have known that just by the sound and scent. A house was no place to keep thunder and lightning! I was sorely tempted to join our dog friend hiding under the bed. Indeed, only the pride of my Clan and my kind kept me from doing so, but I kept my distance from its door, nonetheless.

The best quality of the wireless was that its use consumed only a small part of Adrian s day. When it had been shut down and its door closed, the rest of the morning was hers alone. After she had thoroughly cleaned her little home, she would put on stout leather boots and take us on long walks around the island, from one end of it to another. The days were mild, the nights crisp, and only a few thunderstorms interrupted our days.

Sometimes Adrian would carry with her a pad of paper and a box of pencils, with which she made drawings of the seabirds and seals which came ashore to bear and raise their young. On other days she would stand on the highest part of the island and sing to us or recite poetry.

One day we all went to explore the ruins of the old stone monastery where William Wallace and his fierce rebels had stayed. There she told us stories about the valiant warrior Scots of long ago, and how they fought against the marauding English.

She would make her weather observations again at noon, and once more in the evening, but after these had been duly reported back to Greenwich, her time was hers to do with as she pleased. Adrian MacLeod was, for the first time in her life, altogether happy. Each new day was a fresh adventure beneath the sun for her and for us, and there was no one else there to spoil it. No one at all.

At the end of Ronaidh s short summer, Captain Lochlear and the Hector appeared one cloudy morning off the landing place, bearing fresh food and supplies for the coming winter. I felt Adrian closing off once more, like a flower folding in upon itself, one petal at a time, until nothing of its glory was left.

By the time the captain came trudging up the path trailing puffs of smoke from his pipe, she was as she had been since birth, a closed book, tightly fastened and sealed off from the world. A part of her seemed to die once more.

Only we companions understood that the person we knew and loved was still there, waiting to re-emerge. With the senses given my kind, I knew that Adrian in fact liked the old Scot very much; the trouble was within herself, and not with anything about him, or about anyone in particular. It simply was. In the presence of others of her kind, she became as she always had been, a pale shadow of the human being we her companions knew her to be.

She was quiet as she shared a cup of tea with him, while the sailors restocked the station. There were crates of preserved food in tins, mounds of potatoes, containers of tea and coffee, and a stack of thick woolen blankets for the winter.

There was a packet of letters from her family, which she set carefully in the center of her desk to be read once the Hector had gone, and from her father a gift, a new fur parka. She smiled as it came from its wrappings and stroked its wide sleeve with her hand.

Cold weather will be here quickly now, Miss MacLeod, the captain said, his ever-present briar pipe clenched in his teeth. Keep your water kegs full at all times. The well will na likely freeze, as deep as it s dug, but there ll be days when you won t get further from the house than it takes to read your instruments. Above all never let your fire die completely out. A body can get too cold very quickly when its twenty below outside and a gale a blowin .

Adrian nodded thoughtfully. Will the snow be deep?

Some, but not as much as ye d think, replied the captain, slowly stroking Siri s woolly head as he spoke. Something about the ocean currents. Ye d know more about that than I.

Take care to stay warm, he said again. We ve replenished your coal, so there should be enough if ye re careful. Use the wireless to call for help if you need it, and someone will come if the storms or the ice di na stop them.

He took down Adrian s requests for items she needed Hector to bring upon her next visit, a few foods she liked, an artist s easel, and of course, more books. As an afterthought she added yarn and knitting needles to the list. She handed him a small packet of letters she d written over the summer, just as the sailors brought in the last of the recharged batteries and stacked them in in the forbidden room of the wireless.

I ll post these directly I make port, Miss MacLeod, he said with a little half-bow. I ll see you again sometime in the New Year, the weather and the sea ice permitting. Take care and may the blessed Lord watch over you.

And with that the old captain was gone once more, down the path to the landing place, where he was rowed back to his ship by the last of the sailors. A short while later a great jet of black smoke rose from Hector s funnel, and she began to gather speed, bound back to Scotland.

For several hours after Lochlear and his seamen had gone, Adrian simply sat and gazed out at the grey rolling sea. Then toward evening, she gathered herself and brightened once more, as suddenly as if someone had turned up the wick of a lamp. As though in agreement the dark clouds parted, and the sun began to shine down once more upon the Isle of Ronaidh.

Autumn, with its blustery shorter days, came upon us swiftly after Hector s visit. Adrian s work began to take more of her time then, as storms and squalls swept in from the Atlantic and North Sea. Everything had to be reported back to Greenwich, and to any ships that might lie in the path of dangerous weather.

Once during a fierce storm, she heard a wireless distress call from a steamer in trouble in the North Sea. It had been damaged and was taking on seawater fast, but its cry for help was so weak that it was doubtful anyone else had heard it. She immediately relayed the message to the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, and naval ships were quickly dispatched with assistance. Thanks to her swift action, not a soul was lost when the ship foundered.

The winter that swept over us was unbelievably cold. Never before, in any of my lives upon the earth that turns beneath the sun, had I experienced anything like it. The wind was like a howling beast, beating against the walls of the station as though it meant to smash them down.

The only place within it that even approached warmth was a small circle about the coal stove. We three companions huddled together there and only ventured out of doors when we absolutely had to.

Adrian still faithfully read her instruments three times each day, bundled into her heavy winter clothing and wrapped in scarves. Then she dashed back inside, to report every nuance of the fierce weather back to Greenwich.

She laboriously kept the path to the instruments little shelter shoveled clear of snow, but it drifted all around the rest of the station as high as its small windows. The winter wrapped its frigid arms about us all as though to prevent our escape, and even the sea fell silent now, as ice locked it solidly around the island.

Our human companion spent much time at her wireless receiver, listening with its round, shiny black things over her ears, but there were no more emergency calls that season. As massive storms lashed the entire northern ocean one after another, very few ships ventured out from their home ports.

The dark days at the end of the year came, just as Captain Lochlear had promised. There was no true sunrise, just a glow at the horizon as if the sun wanted to emerge but dared not rise into the frigid sky. It circled us beneath the horizon day and night, and there was neither darkness nor light, but only a strange twilight. Adrian kept her lamps burning continually, and the stars at the very top of the sky s dome shone all the while.

The cold grew deeper still, and the wind more savage, until it clawed at us through every unseen crack and crevice between the stones of our shelter. Adrian s iron stove burned so hot that its flue glowed red, but the chill crept into the house despite everything it could do. Ice coated the small windows in the station s walls so thickly that we could no longer see outside at all.

And still we were content. Adrian smiled, told us stories, sang her little songs, and drew pictures of us with her charcoals and pencils. She was the center of our lives, and that was enough.

I doubt she ever suspected just how much of her speech we comprehended. Most humans do not, though the proof is there before their eyes. Even when her words themselves carried no meaning for us, we still knew what was in her heart, after the way of our kind. The eyes of Cat are bright, and they miss very little. We knew our chosen human was happy. Why and how she came by her joy no longer mattered at all.

Nothing can last forever, not even the most savage winter, though this one certainly seemed to try. Slowly, as the short days and long nights went by, its frozen fingers started to lose their grip on us. The Isle of Ronaidh stirred, and began to wake once more from its winter slumber.

One bright morning some weeks after the darkness of midwinter had passed, we realized that the sea was no longer silent, but crashing against the shore as it had done before. Adrian looked out to find that the sea ice had broken up during the night. It was almost gone from the landing place below the station. A few days after that the Hector dropped anchor offshore, and Captain Lochlear came stumping up the path from the landing place.

Just as before, our joyful, buoyant mistress disappeared within herself. By the time the sailors began to bring up supplies to replace what we d used during the cold months, Adrian was as she d been for the whole of her previous life.

Sealed off behind her personal ramparts, she hid from a world she could not understand, and which offered no place for her. We companions knew she was still there inside, but we could no longer reach her, and our world became colder than even the winter had made it. We wept, after the manner of our kind, but there was nothing that could be done. A Cat or Dog who cannot make her mistress happy is an empty creature, without purpose upon the earth.

Captain Lochlear seemed somehow to comprehend, as he sat across from her at the table drinking his tea. The weathered old Scot smiled over his cup and made no attempt to force a conversation from her that she had no way to share. He rubbed Siri s head fondly with his wrinkled hand as he sat there.

I see ye ve come safely through the winter, Miss MacLeod, he said gently. I m glad. You should know the Brass-Hats of your Service are all sayin that ye are just about the best of their weather observers. I for one am proud for ye. A ghost of a smile flickered just behind her green eyes as she sipped from her cup and nodded her thanks.

Lochlear s seamen refilled our almost empty coal bunker from barrows and began to stack new food supplies into the pantry. They were just good plain foods that would keep without spoilage, apples, potatoes, beans, salted meats and the like, but it was all we needed. His eyes twinkled as he set several tins of tuna and sardines on the table with a smiling glance at Beetle and me.

In just a few hours Hector s visit was finished. All the wireless batteries had been recharged, and every corner of the station was crammed with enough supplies for several more months without contact. The captain had handed over Adrian s accumulated mail and received in return all the letters she had written to her family during the winter.

Then as he always did, the captain said, Take good care Miss MacLeod, and may the blessed Lord watch over you. He smiled as he turned to make his way back down the path, to the boat which waited to ferry him back to his little ship.

Just as she had before, Adrian sat silent before her window for a long while after the Hector had departed. Her eyes were empty as she gazed out upon the sea, as if no human person lived there behind them at all, but we three companions knew that our beloved friend was still there, imprisoned by something she had no power to change.

We waited for her, my brother Betelgeuse and I, together with our friend Sirius, of the Clan of Dog. We knew that she would return to us, and that our lives on the Isle of Ronaidh would be as they had been once more. Our love for her had not changed by so much as the thickness of a whisker, and she surely would come back.

And so, she did. A little before the sunset flooded the sky with ruby and gold, our Adrian seemed to awaken. Life flowed back into her face, and she smiled. Scooping me into her arms she crooned, Oh Bella, what would I do without all of you? I purred as loudly as I could as her tears wet my fur. Beetle rubbed fondly against her leg, and Siri put her huge paw upon Adrian s knee. We were together once more.

It was just a few weeks later that an awful tragedy took place in the north of the great Ocean. Adrian had eaten a light meal that evening, and returned to the wireless room in case she was needed to relay messages to or from the various freighters, liners and naval warships which were then making the northern crossing. The weather was calm, but there were many, many reports of icebergs in the shipping lanes, and all of them had to be relayed back. Modern ships were massive, but the drifting mountains of ice were very much more so, and deadly dangerous.

The situation was critical, and we knew that she might sit at her station all night long, listening and sending what she heard onward to Greenwich or Scapa Flow. Adrian had forgotten to close the forbidden door that evening, but I had no inclination at all to approach her while the transmitter crackled and spat. I could see her there in her chair, with the round black things over her ears and a look of intense concentration on her face.

The nights were still quite chilly that spring, so after a while I curled up with my brother in the warmth by the stove. Siri remained where she could watch our mistress, but there was really nothing any of us could do to aid her, so I finally drifted off to sleep.

It was getting towards dawn when I heard her cry out in dismay. All of us woke instantly, always attuned to the needs of our human friend. Oh no! she kept saying over and over as she frantically tapped at her key. Oh, my Lord no!

We knew that whatever was happening must be terrible indeed to distress her so. Now tears were sliding down Adrian s cheeks as she relayed the messages onward to the Navy and Greenwich. Siri whined and hung her head, and Beetle crept almost to the door of the wireless room, kept back only by his fear of the malevolent thing.

I could see her heart, and I knew that Adrian was distraught beyond anything that had ever happened since we d all been with her. Oh no, no! she kept repeating, as the messages kept coming and were repeated onward. Oh, those poor people! she cried, as the tears kept rolling down her face.

The ordeal lasted for hours, and the sun was high in the sky when she finally shut down the wireless and threw off its headphones. Our beloved human friend put her head down in her arms upon the worktable and wept as if the whole world had ended.

We companions had only been waiting for the wireless to stop its evil hissing and popping, and all ran immediately into the room despite all earlier edicts to the contrary. I leapt into her lap while Beetle sprang up on the table and licked frantically at her face. Siri put both her great paws on Adrian s knees, shoving me hard against her.

Finally, Adrian seemed to notice us for the first time and scooped me into her arms. She s gone, our companion sobbed to us. The new ship, the RMS Titanic. There were more than two thousand people aboard, and she hit the ice. I don t know how many got into the lifeboats, but it can t have been many. The Carpathia couldn t get there for two whole hours.

All those people went into that freezing cold water. A great many of them must have died. She hid her face in my fur and wept on.

Many of her words were strange and held little meaning for me, but between them and what I sensed of her inner being, I could put together most of it. I knew that Beetle and Siri did, too. She grieved for weeks after that, mourning the deaths of so many human beings, that night in April of 1912. Even years later, she would sometimes shudder and grow pale, and we knew that the memories had come to her again.

This was our beloved human friend, Adrian MacLeod. Shunned and rejected by her Clan and her kind because she was different, unable to be what they expected of her to be. Forced into isolation, first in Inverness and then to this deserted island, alone save for us. And yet she still kept her humanity and compassion for them. She mourned for them, weeping until her tears should have all run out long ago.

This was our Adrian. This was the one human being we three companions loved with all our hearts. Only we, with our senses that no human ever possessed, knew the beautiful person who hid inside her silent, unreadable exterior. Only we ever saw the young woman who kept enough love inside her to cry for all the world, even though that world had allowed her no place within it.

Such was Adrian MacLeod as she was in our days upon the tiny Island of Ronaidh, in the year of 1912. We, her companions of the Clan of Cat and the Clan of Dog, knew her and loved her beyond all else in our world. And that was all that mattered.

So has her song been remembered, and so it will ever be sung.

END