The Boggart (15 page)

In the sleeping castle, the Boggart paused at one of the narrow outer windows that opened toward the Island of Mull. Tomorrow he would visit the seals, on the rocks out there. A picture flickered through his wild mind, of two boys and a girl, whom he had watched visiting the seals once, but he could not remember their names.

He looked out at the glimmering sea and the islands, and the sky lit with stars that had seen all the great or terrible things that ever happened in Scotland, through more years even than a boggart. Echoing faintly over the water from the village hall, he heard the joyful skirl of a single bagpipe. Then he flittered away to the library and found that his own special place was still there, the space between two blocks of stone high in the library wall, where three hundred years earlier an absentminded mason had forgotten to put mortar, and an absentminded carpenter had hidden the forgetfulness with a shelf. The Boggart curled up, contented, at home, and went to sleep.