“This has to be it.” I glanced down at the thick, heavy textbook I’d been lugging around in my backpack all day long, comparing the hundred-fifty-year-old photos to what I saw in front of me.

I could’ve brought photocopies of the pictures, and I would have if, I hadn’t lost them. My shoulders and lower back would’ve cursed me out if they could’ve. I’d be spending the evening looking around the apothecary shops for a heating pad.

None of that mattered when I confirmed that I was in the right place. My body hummed so hard with excitement, it was a wonder my hair wasn’t standing on end.

I ran a self-conscious hand over the top of my head just to be sure it wasn’t.

The same mountain, shaped like an arrowhead, with five pointed rocks arranged in a semi-circle, roughly a hundred yards in front of the carved opening at the base. Behind the mountain was a chain of smaller peaks, nearly hidden.

I checked this against the grainy, black-and-white version of the same scene in my textbook. After a century-and-a-half, the rocks were a little rounder, the edges softer, thanks to the elements.

Thick clusters of trees grew everywhere, which was part of the reason for the trouble I had in finding the location. Even though that arrowhead stood out against the dark clouds which had started to gather, way up above the treetops, it was nearly impossible to figure out the best way to get to the mountain.

Just when I was sure I was on the right path, I’d find myself getting hopelessly turned around. Just my horrible sense of direction, right up there with clumsiness and a penchant for losing things.

I’d been out here for hours—most of the day, in fact. I checked my phone with a sigh. Nearly four o’clock. No wonder I was exhausted, not to mention starving. Still, none of that mattered as much as finding the cave.

“I knew it,” I whispered.

The wind carried my words away. There was nobody here to hear them, anyway. Nobody but me. That was enough. I had always known I was right, that the ancient cave was real and that it would still exist somewhere.

“Grandma, I knew it. You were right, too.” My heart ached, and I wished she was with me.

All the stories were true.

Saighead Uaine.

Loosely translated as Green Arrow. Very green. Almost supernaturally so. Green enough to nearly hurt my eyes, but I couldn’t stop staring. I had imagined it so many times, over the course of so many late-night bedtime stories.

Seanmhair, as my grandmother had taught me to call her, should’ve been a writer. She had a way of weaving a story that was even more skillful than the beautiful knitting and embroidery she used to work on while she spoke in her low, soothing voice, setting my imagination on fire. Stories about ancient clans and curses and enchantments. And dragons.

So, this was how it felt, finally finding something after searching for years. Telling myself it existed. Refusing to listen to those who dismissed me and told me to focus my graduate research on something a little more concrete, a little less fairytale. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry or strip naked and dance in the center of the upright stones.

The first splashes of raindrops, on the top of my head, made the decision for me. I looked up at the ominous clouds and caught a fat raindrop right in the eye for it.

I had wanted to explore the inside of the cave, anyway. Looked like this was as good a time as any. I held the book tight to my chest, the way I’d hold a baby to protect it, and made a dash for the cave mouth. I managed to make it inside just before the rain started falling in sheets.

It seemed like a good idea to lose the pack for a little while, and my shoulders nearly screamed in relief when I let the straps slide over them and down my arms.

I pulled out a protein bar before sliding the textbook inside, and sat cross-legged on the cave floor while eating and drinking from one of my water bottles. It was so strange, actually being in here, where so much had happened, according to legend.

You don’t really believe that, do you?

Even my inner voice seemed to be on a quest to piss me off and remind me how naïve I could be. Legends weren’t real—otherwise, they’d be called reality. And there was no way of knowing how much was legend and how much was added on over centuries of retelling.

I was certain the dragon aspect of the stories was embellishment. Or, hell, they could’ve been part of the original stories, since people believed in that sort of thing back then. Before science, before the printed word. A thousand years into the past. Dragons and fairies and such—they were how people explained natural phenomena back then.

Though I wasn’t sure how a dragon could provide an explanation for anything. And there were multiple civilizations whose members had produced drawings and paintings of what could’ve been dragons, civilizations who’d never been in contact with each other. Before ocean travel even was a thing. The drawings had to come from somewhere, and I didn’t believe in group consciousness. Not when the group was spread out over hundreds of years and thousands of miles in what were basically the Dark Ages—and before.

When I was finished eating, I stood up and wiped the dirt from the seat of my cargo pants. It was still raining, though that initial burst of violence had turned to a softer, gentler rain which seemed to swirl around in a cloud. The sort of rain I was more accustomed to seeing in that part of the world.

I’d only lived here for four months while studying at the University of Edinburgh, but it already felt like home. Maybe because Seanmhair was the closest thing to home I’d ever experienced—while I was in her birthplace, it was like having her all around me. Like she was with me again.

I shook my head, like that would be enough to remind me my grandmother was dead and would be dead no matter where I went or how many mystical caves I explored. No matter what I found on my travels through the highlands, it wouldn’t bring her back. I knew it in my head, in the part of me that had helped me graduate summa cum laude from Columbia before pursuing my Master’s in Edinburgh. I was a frigging intellectual, for God’s sake. I should’ve known better.

But the mountain from the old stories was real. How was I supposed to give up all those flights of fancy, as Grandma used to call them, when there was proof of the truth of at least these notions right here—over my head, behind my back, all around me?

She would’ve done it herself, if she could have. She’d always sworn up and down that she was happy in America. It was her home, and it was my home, and she was in charge of making sure I grew up well. She’d put on a happy face and promised me that it didn’t matter, that she wouldn’t want to go back to Scotland even if she could.

But I knew better. I could read that burning love of her homeland in her eyes when she told me the legends she’d first heard as a little girl. I could hear it throbbing in her voice. I could just imagine her hiking for miles at a time, probably outpacing me, never tiring.

I was doing it for her, just the way she would have. I couldn’t bring her with me, but I could at least fulfill her dreams.

With that in mind, I pulled the big flashlight from my backpack before slinging it over my shoulders, and decided to go a little further into the cave. Not too far—I didn’t need to piss off any bears or bats or whatever. But wouldn’t it be cool to find some cave drawings or artifacts?

I rolled my eyes at myself, but kept moving, anyway. Like there were thousand-year-old artifacts just waiting for Ciera Rivera to discover them. There was also a bridge in Brooklyn just waiting for me to buy it.

I breathed deep through my nose as I took those first few tentative steps, paying attention to the scents in the air. I didn’t pick up anything that smelled like an animal. It gave me the courage to keep walking, even as the darkness grew deeper and more complete.

Before I knew it, the light from outside the cave was almost completely gone. There was only me, the sound of my breathing, and the steady thumping of my heart.

“What am I doing in here?” I whispered, then jumped when I heard my voice doubling, tripling back.

I was way too keyed up. Being in there, knowing how many hundreds of years of life had passed while the mountain stood, it was all too much. I took a deep breath and chided myself before moving on.

The tunnel widened.

I ran the flashlight over the walls, then the ceiling. It was at least twenty feet over my head, maybe thirty, and there was a good twenty feet in all directions.

I turned in a slow circle, the beam of the flashlight pointed straight in front of me.

The walls were so smooth. That was what caught my attention first. Much smoother than they should’ve been, without a bump or jagged edge in sight. Same with the ceiling.

“What is this place?”

My voice didn’t echo that time. Something absorbed the sound. A chill ran up my spine and covered my arms in goosepimples.

Wherever it was, I was alone. I could feel it just as clearly as I could’ve felt the presence of somebody—or something—else. At least that was what I told myself. It was the only thing that kept my knees from knocking together.

What was going on? I went to the wall and ran my hand over the surface, then rapped against it with my knuckles.

Painted sheetrock, with some sort of substance underneath. Probably to dampen noise and keep moisture from seeping in after it trickled through the mountain.

I could hear it, too, all around me. A constant trickling sound that might have been pleasant, even comforting in any other situation. As it was, it gave me the creeps.

A very large, very anxious part of me said run. Just get the hell out of there and never go back.

A very solid idea—after all, there was no telling who did this, or why. Or whether they’d be back.

Then why did I slide the straps over my shoulders and lower the backpack to the floor?

“Probably because I’m an idiot,” I whispered, hands shaking.

The flashlight’s beam moved back and forth over the walls. And I here I thought I was going to find cave paintings. What a quaint idea.

I forced myself to keep walking deeper into the tunnel, which narrowed again after that room. Was it a room? I had no idea. The walls here were the same as back there.

Until they weren’t.

Until I shone the light on a door.

“Oh, crap.” I had to pee all of a sudden. Desperately.

What the heck was this? I looked back and forth down the hall—because that’s what it was, it wasn’t just a tunnel anymore, it was a hallway—as if I were making sure nobody was watching.

When I was sure again that I was alone, I pushed the door open. The hinges didn’t even squeak.

Dark monitors. Wires.

What I immediately recognized as a fuse box. I ran the beam of light over all of it, my heart pounding harder than ever. Somebody lived here. They ran power here. They even had computers.

And they might be back.

And I was trespassing.

I turned and ran blindly in the direction I’d come from, not caring anymore about what I might find. I had seen enough.

This wasn’t the ancient home of the highland’s earliest clans, the ones I’d been studying for years. This was something somebody had taken great pains to modernize.

And yet it was easy as pie for me to walk right in and have a look around.

That thought ran through my head about as fast as my feet were carrying me through the tunnel.

I didn’t have time to ponder it before I tripped over my backpack and went sprawling.

Everything went black.