‘I know we’ve got the story of Isla and Gavan, Gran,’ she said quietly in the empty room, ‘but can you imagine having a fairy flag in your family tree? How cool would that be?’

She couldn’t be sure, but Elle thought she heard a small unimpressed sniff before she moved on to look through the rest of the castle.

In the grand dining room her gaze settled upon a huge portrait on the wall and she smiled. A grey-haired woman in a tartan kilt with a yellow shawl over her shoulders posed with the loch of Dunvegan behind her. Flora MacLeod, the only female chief of the MacLeods of Dunvegan, the plague read. ‘Hello, Flora,’ Elle murmured, and her smile became wistful. It was strange to see the woman whose grave she had visited only the day before. Flora had known how to live life to its fullest if her mysterious, slightly mischievous smile were any indication.

She moved on to look over the rest of the paintings and artefacts lovingly preserved in the old castle, imagining herself living in a place like this. Elle was sad to leave when she made her way back to the front towers and out into the drizzly weather that had descended once more.

Today she hoped to find Stormeil. Earlier, she had tried to ask Gran more about it, but Elle hadn’t been able to hear her grandmother. She’d thought Gran’s silence was odd, since this was the main purpose of the trip—locating the mythical family castle—but decided she would just wing it. There was still so much to see, and Elle was happy to simply drive and explore this beautiful island.

Her plan was to head for Kilmuir, the closest village that still existed today to where Stormeil Castle was supposed to be. Gran’s description had given Elle a rough idea of the location of the castle ruins, but her googling hadn’t offered anything more specific. It didn’t help that many village names and places mentioned in research from the fourteenth century no longer existed. Back inside the warmth of her car, she set the GPS to take her towards Kilmuir and decided she would just have to start searching the old-fashioned way—with a little bit of detective work, which included asking locals.

‘You know, Gran,’ she said quietly, ‘I could really use some help.’

The narrow roads had taken some getting used to, but Elle was now quite proud of herself for having mastered the pull-off-to-one-side-and-let-an-approaching-vehicle-pass thing. She looked forward to a friendly wave from passing cars, feeling a kinship with fellow travellers. Once she got used to the fact that all the roads looked as though she had mistakenly turned onto a rarely used backroad, she felt a lot more comfortable. But they were incredibly narrow in places. She passed white stone houses, some with traditional thatched roofs, and a gazillion sheep, who, she discovered, were not frightened by cars approaching, and in fact tended to waddle along the road, with their long waggy tails, quite oblivious to the fact they were holding up traffic.