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THE light was fading,
changing across the water as the shadows advanced. Now the loch was a
sheet of silver, now ash-grey, now purple where the reflections of the
hills deepened with the coming of night.
From where we stood, high on the hill road to Kintail, not a ripple was
visible, save where the small motor-ferry chugged lazily back to its
moorings on the Totaig shore. Eilean Donan Castle, that curious blend of
the old and the new, stood up starkly in the waning light, like a fortress
defying the legions of darkness. The new toll-bridge at Dornie gleamed
faintly in the last rays of the setting sun.
Our eyes were drawn irresistibly to the great slopes of the hills -- the
Five Sisters adjusting their crowns of mist in the still mirror of the
water. Then, in thought, we followed the long line of the loch away out
towards Kyle of Lochalsh and the open sea. Somewhere down there, beyond
the dreaming hills, the big ships rode at anchor in the dusk, their lights
winking like faery lanterns, reflecting a million facets of shattered gold
on the quiet surface of the outgoing tide. Below us, a heron flapped
drowsily along the shore -- a cormorant dipped and dabbled among drifting
weed. The wakeful gulls called plaintively across the evening air, as if
they mourned to see so lovely a day die so soon.
The loch was now a still, black pool of shadows; the castle an enchanter's
stronghold, old as the rock on which it rested. Only the bridge still
glimmered, ghostly-white and unreal, as if it had not yet been absorbed
into its surroundings.
In silence, the Sisters put on their night-caps. The shadows closed in.
Night was triumphant.
A minute passed -- or a hundred years. Nobody counted; nothing moved.
Loch Duich had fallen asleep.
Eilean Donan Castle at the entrance to Loch
Duich |
