Chapter Sixteen
Following my dejected response, Ann looked at Torq, then back to me.
“Well, not without eating. Come on. Let’s see if you can sit at the table. Otherwise, I don’t see how you can manage to travel forward in time.”
She approached me and slipped a hand around my waist. Torq moved forward as if to assist, but needing to put space between him and my heart, I refused.
“We’re okay!”
His hands fell to his side, and he swung around and left the keep.
Ann settled me onto a chair and placed a bowl of stew, oatcakes and a pitcher of water in front of me, setting the tray on the floor. She took the chair opposite and poured water into the cup.
“My own special brew of water,” she said with a smile.
I returned her smile and stared at the food.
“So you decided that quick?”
“Not really. To be honest, I was trying to hurt Torq...or something.”
Ann nodded. “Or get him to beg you to stay?”
“Yes, that.”
“I understand. I really do. Have you told him how you feel about him? He might just ask you to stay if he thought you loved him.”
“No, I haven’t. Seems kind of goofy anyway. Who falls in love in the space of a few days?”
“I did.”
“Well...” What could I say to that?
“I don’t know,” Ann said. “The air is thin? The island remote? The time for courtship finite and limited? Probably the latter, right?”
“That’s probably it,” I agreed. “You and I fell through time by accident, and everything seems accelerated—romance, falling in love, making life-altering decisions. There doesn’t seem to be any time to think things through.”
“You don’t have to rush back to the twenty-first century, Cyn, despite what I said before. You can take your time and make sure that you love Torq enough to spend the rest of your life in the sixteenth century.”
“I’m not sure that’s solely my decision, Ann. Torq has something to say about it, and he has said he thinks I should go.”
“Well, Torq doesn’t really have a say in this, Cyn. He can offer his opinion, he can refuse to continue looking after you or helping protect you, but the decision is yours...and John’s, I guess, if you want to stay here with us. You’re really no trouble, and I like having you here.”
Ann’s eyes filled with moisture, and I clutched her hand.
“You’re homesick,” I murmured.
“A little bit. Not enough to leave my family or my husband, but yeah.”
I blew out a breath of pent-up air.
“Why don’t you eat now?” Ann said in a thick voice. “It is up to you if you want to go. It looks like Torq is sending Andrew for the dagger, wherever he put the darn thing. Just don’t touch it until you’re ready, and don’t go without telling me or Torq. Please.”
I squeezed her hand again.
“Of course I won’t, Ann. I’m going to miss you. No one will ever understand what you and I have been through. No one.”
A tear slipped down Ann’s cheek, mirroring my own. She wiped at it and jumped up.
“Okay, I’ve got to run back and check on the kids. I’ll see you later. It looks like we’ve got some weather coming in. Are you okay here on your own? Torq is usually with you. I don’t want to leave you here to eat alone.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Go!”
Ann left the tower room, and I dug into the food. A whistling sound caught my ear, and I looked up at the window. Wind forced its way through the narrow slit. The sky had grown dark, and black clouds rolled in.
Ann dashed back into the room.
“Whew! That’s some kind of storm rolling in,” she said, her hair blown askew. “You should be safe in the keep here. If I can find Torq or Andrew, I’ll send one of them here to keep you company! They have some pretty fierce storms here in the Western Isles.”
“Are you guys okay in the crofts?”
“Oh yes, the turf roofs hold really well. Okay, gotta run. I’ll send someone.”
She hurried out again, and I looked up at the roiling sky visible through the window. Thunder cracked in the distance.
I studied the stacked stone walls and remembered that most of them still stood in the twenty-first century, those that hadn’t been carried away by local farmers over the years. The walls would hold in a storm. I ate my soup and bread and contemplated what traveling through time again would feel like. For the most part, all I remembered was falling, flailing, grabbing the dagger, a sense of weightlessness and then landing hard. I hoped that my return trip would be less painful, especially the landing.
The storm moved in fast, and water flew in the window. Somewhere, outside of the room, I heard shouts. I pushed myself up, suddenly terrified. Were we being raided yet again...in the middle of a storm?
I tottered over to the door and pulled it open. Rain and wind howled through the ground floor of the keep. I shouted up the stairs to the guards.
“Hello? Are you guys okay? What’s going on?”
I clapped my hand over my mouth. What was I doing? If we were being raided, I didn’t need to draw attention to myself.
I heard the shouts again, then a scream. I couldn’t just hide in my room. I had to know what was happening! I stepped outside of the room, but the ferocity of the wind swirling in the tower pushed me back in. I thrust my head forward and forced my way back out again. Huddling against the security of the stone walls, I clung to rock and worked my way toward the open doorway.
A sheet of white rain and wind blew sideways just outside the door. More shouts and screams sailed by. I thought I heard Ann, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t see the crofts through the storm.
Desperate to get to the crofts to help Ann if I could, I pushed my way out into the wind.
“Ann!” I screamed into the wind. “Torq!”
A body appeared out of the storm, clinging to the tower and edging its way around toward me.
“Torq?” I shouted.
“Nay, mistress. Andrew!” the boy shouted. “Torq sent me to see to ye. Go back inside. It isna safe here!”
“Are we under attack again?” I shouted. “I heard shouts, screaming.”
“Nay, it is the storm. It is the worst I have ever seen,” he shouted back at me.
Rain pelted his poor face. I reached out to grab hold of the slight boy, fearing he would be pulled away in the wind.
He grasped my hand and reached the doorway. I wrapped my arm around his waist and felt hard metal protruding from the back of his kilt. As I pulled at Andrew, he slipped from my grasp, but the dagger came with me.
“Mistress!” I heard his voice growing faint. The wind carried me away, twisting me painfully. I shrieked, but saw only Andrew’s hand reaching for me, for the dagger in my hand.
The wind died down around me, and I looked up into Debra’s face.
“Where did you come from?” she asked on her knees, bending over me as I lay in the ground. “Dylan said you’d gone home.”
I looked down at my hand, expecting to see the dagger still in it. It was gone. I bolted upright and looked up at the sky. Thick with fog, there was no sign of a hurricane. Pain seared through my back at the sudden movement, and I gasped in pain, in grief.
“Torq,” I said. “I didn’t get to say goodbye! Where is the dagger?”
“What are you talking about? Let me get Dylan. I don’t even know where you came from. Are you hurt? You look like you’re in pain?”
I nodded breathlessly. “Get Dylan.”
Debra jumped to her feet and ran off into the fog. I had no doubt that I had returned to present-day Dun Eistean. Andrew, having retrieved the dagger, must have stuck it in the back of his kilt, and I had inadvertently grabbed it when I wrapped my arm around his waist.
I hadn’t said goodbye to Ann or Torq. The screams and shouts in the hurricane worried me, and I didn’t know what had happened to them, if someone had been hurt, or...
I tried to get to my feet, but traveling through time had taken its toll, as I had feared. I remembered the twisting and turning of my body in the hurricane, as if the wind had picked me up and dropped me off in the present, Dorothy-style.
I needed to find the dagger. I desperately needed to get back to the sixteenth century, to Torq. I hadn’t been ready to leave.
The sound of feet pounding on turf caught my attention, and I looked up to see Dylan emerge from the fog, Debra on his heels. He threw himself down on his knees beside me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Debra. He didn’t wait for an answer before speaking again.
“Debra! Could you get my backpack so I can get my mobile?”
“Okay!” She ran off, and Dylan leaned in.
“Look. I know what happened to you. It’s happened before. Say nothing. The last thing you need is people knowing that you’ve traveled in time, and the last thing we need here is people flocking to Dun Eistean worshiping deities, or trying to travel through time, or just generally acting foolish.”
I clutched Dylan’s sleeve. “You know?”
“Aye, Ann told me when she came back. She had to tell someone.”
“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I need to go back! There was a hurricane. I grabbed the dagger accidentally. Where is the dagger?”
“We found it buried in what used to be a small room in the keep after you disappeared. I knew right away that it was the dagger that facilitated Ann’s time travel and probably yours, but it was much too valuable to leave here, so the university had couriered it down yesterday afternoon.”
“What?” I cried out. “In Glasgow?”
“Aye, I’m sorry, but there was nothing I could do. You cannot go back without it, and it’s locked away there awaiting examination, cataloguing and placement in a museum.”
“No, Dylan, please don’t tell me that,” I sobbed. Tears streamed down my face. “Please.”
Debra arrived with Dylan’s backpack.
“I’m so sorry, Cynthia,” he whispered, taking the pack from Debra. “Who can I call?”
“I thought you said she’d gone home,” Debra said. “What’s going on here?”
I couldn’t think straight enough to give Debra an answer. I let Dylan fumble through some sort of story while I brainstormed.
Glasgow...how was I going to find the dagger at the university in Glasgow and bring it back to Dun Eistean? Was there any other way to get back? I wasn’t about to jump into the hole again, all that was left of the keep, to travel back in time. If I hadn’t already cracked a vertebra or two, I surely would then...if not outright kill myself in the process.
Beyond that, I couldn’t think straight. Grief, the image of sapphire-blue eyes and wild red hair tore at my heart, clouded my thoughts. I hadn’t said goodbye, I repeated silently again.
Spasms gripped me, making me cry out.
“What is it, Cynthia?” Dylan said. “Are you hurt?”
I nodded. “When I fell...”
“Let’s get you to the hospital,” he said. “Can you walk at all? Can you make it to my car?”
“I don’t know,” I said on another sob.
“Do you want me to call an ambulance? They can bring a stretcher onto the sea stack.”
“No. I don’t know. No, just help me walk. It may take me a while, but...”
I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t sit around on Dun Eistean and do nothing. I could barely walk. The dagger wasn’t there. If they could help me to a hospital, the sooner the better, then I could get back.
I hadn’t said goodbye.