With perverse irony, the pounding of her chest carried her to childhood, and a memory. She had been no more than a wee thing when she found a frantic little sparrow trapped within the stillroom, a dank dark place. How the bird managed to find its way inside the room heavy with the scent of malt and burning peat Maggie would never know. The thick oak door, framed in the opening of what was no more than a cave within the mountain, had been shut tight. The only light from a small window covered with a thin oiled sheet, its ledge as deep as a child’s arm was long. Maggie’s plan was to hide inside and hear how the whisky was made. She’d come ahead of the others, using all of her weight to get that monstrous door open a crack so she could slip inside. It was then she’d sensed the bird, feared it was a bat. But it wasn’t. It was a poor, helpless sparrow, startled by the light that the door offered. It dodged and darted, as frightened of Maggie as it was of its plight. She’d caught it then, held it gently within the palms of her hands, as she tried to sooth it’s trembling. The wild beat of its heart could be felt in her fingertips bringing prayers to Maggie’s lips. Over and over she begged God to be merciful, to allow the creature to live long enough for the men to arrive, for she daren’t let go of the sparrow in order to open the blasted door.
