Something moved near my head. I pulled myself up from the trauma and pain of the journey. I didn’t know where I was or how I had gotten here. I only knew that the shit hurt on every level. My skin. My core. My every single hair. It’s how I knew I had journeyed — the intense all-consuming pain. Because my mind was blank on everything.

I submerged under another wave of agony and curled on my side, my hands tucked under my chin — oh my god, oh my god, oh my god — blood was all over my hands.

I killed him. The blood. My breath was fast — what the fuck? I was covered in blood.

I startled — a hand beside me shifted.

Magnus.

I looked up at his face. I wiggled nearer him and burst into tears. “I killed him. Oh god I killed him — I killed him.” I sobbed into my blood-covered hands.

Magnus’s eyes opened barely, his voice was very low and strained. “Aye. Ye have killed him Kaitlyn, but I — I daena feel verra well. Can ye take the gun in your hand and watch the sky?” He coughed and wheezed for a long time. Groaning and holding his ribs.

“Are you okay?” I pulled the gun from his belt.

“Can ye walk yet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I just need tae rest. If ye would watch for them twould help.”

I laid my head on his thigh, the gun on my chest, staring up at the sky trying to stay on top of the waves of pain.

I woke a while later. I was barely dressed and it was cool, not freezing, but too cold to be wearing, I looked down at my outfit, a freaking strip of cloth. And I had blood everywhere.

I would need to deal with a lot of shit when I could think about it. I was on the forest floor of a — where the hell was I? I looked up, the trees, the ground, the big rock — I was in Scotland. When in Scotland? Magnus’s eyes were clamped tight, his lips a bit blue on the edges. “Magnus?”

“Och.” His eyes remained closed.

“What year are we, can I go get Quentin?”

Magnus groaned and said, “1703.”

“Can you move now?”

“I canna, Kaitlyn. I think ye should run tae Balloch, ask Sean tae come get me. Bring men.”

“Oh,” I looked around the wooded area we were in. This was a lot for me to figure out. “Magnus, where is Balloch? What direction?”

His finger pointed. “Tell Sean…” he moaned, “southwest near the river. Go fast.”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” I ran. I ran as fast as I could in as straight a line as I could, and it wasn’t long before the woods cleared and there was a field and beyond it men near the familiar gates of Balloch. “Help! Help! Sean Campbell, I need Sean Campbell, Lizbeth—” I was winded and possibly insane looking, covered in dried blood, barely dressed, and the clothes I barely wore were seriously foreign.

The men gawked, and I didn’t recognize any of them. “It’s Magnus, Magnus Campbell, he’s injured.” I pointed towards the woods, “Magnus! Magnus Campbell! Tell the Earl!”

One of the men left for the castle. The other men leered at me while I pleaded with the universe, “Hurry please. Magnus is injured.”

After a few long moments, Sean and Lizbeth rushed out through the castle gates. Sean asked, “What happened, Madame Kaitlyn?”

“Magnus is injured, he’s really — he’s sick, back there, through the trees,” I gestured the way I had come, “southwest, the river.”

Lizbeth asked, “Tis Magnus’s blood? What happened?”

“No, he — he can’t breathe, it’s his,” I gestured breathing in and out, though I could barely do it either.

Sean was already gathering men and sending messages into the castle and to the stables and then he was gone, with six men, seven horses, before I could believe it was possible.

Lizbeth wanted me to get dressed. She murmured sweetnesses over the cut on my cheek. She bustled me into the castle though I wanted to stand and stare at the woods until I saw Magnus coming. But Lizbeth led me to the laundry room where an older woman wiped me down with a cloth dipped in a bucket of water and then with the filthy blood water they cleaned the cut on my face. Watching the red water roll down my skin made me begin to cry anew and I wondered if I would ever be able to stop.

Lizbeth asked, “Were ye attacked, Kaitlyn?”

I nodded crying.

“Tis a shame, we haena seen ye in months and now this. Whenever ye leave I worry on ye so much. Tis much like trouble follows Young Magnus. He gets in more than most and drags ye intae it.”

She spoke to the woman washing me and I was brought a white shift to wear. The women were fascinated by my dress. It looked like water the way it shimmered and flowed and felt like silk. Lizbeth was admiring it so much I gave it to her, happy for it not to be mine anymore.

And then Lizbeth adjusted the tartan around her shoulders and it dawned on me to ask, “You’re pregnant?”

“Aye, I be with child, Kaitlyn. I haena seen ye in many months.” She whispered, “I landed the husband I was wantin’ too.” She loaned me a plain bodice and a dark skirt and helped me step into it. She was lacing up the back when one of the women entered to give us news. “They have Young Magnus in the upper rooms now. He daena look well.”

I burst into tears again. “I need to go see him.”

“Of course.” Lizbeth gave my laces a last tug and tied them. “I’ll send for the physician.”

One of the young women led me up the back stairs to our room.

Sean was standing outside the door. When I arrived he asked, “Is Lizbeth sending for the physician?”

“Yes.” His face was so worried I thought I might faint.

He asked quietly, “What happened tae him?”

“I don’t know, broken ribs?” I clutched my skirts in my hands. “Do you think he’s going to be okay?”

He scowled, “The physician will come, although he heals verra few.”

I couldn’t say anything else. I rushed to Magnus’s bed and climbed in beside him. He was staring up at the ceiling. I nuzzled my face onto his shoulder. “What should I do?”

He said, “I likely need tae rest, the physician told me such before and I hadna time.”

“Were your lips blue like this when you saw the doctor? Because you don’t look—”

He shook his head. He gasped for a breath. “He was givin’ me air.”

“Oh.” I tried to imagine why we ended up here in the eighteenth century. “Why didn’t we go to Florida?”

“Because Lady Mairead—” He coughed, groaned, and held his ribs.

I said, “You need pain medicine too. Plus air.” I crawled off the bed. “I’m going to go get it for you.”

“Nae Kaitlyn.”

I opened his sporran and pulled out a vessel. Then I walked his sporran with the other vessel to the other end of the room as far away from the bed as I could get it. “Don’t you follow me, Magnus. I’m going for medicine.”

“Ye canna travel—”

“I can and I will.”

“What if they grab ye while you are…”

His gun was in the sporran too. “I’m taking the gun. And what if? But you know what, fuck them. Fuck all of them. I’m going to get you some medicine.” I turned to the bed. “Don’t you die. Do you understand me? Don’t die. Just lie here and breathe and don’t die. I mean it.”

I ran out the door. When I passed Lizbeth in the hall, I said, “I forgot something. I have to go get it,” too frantic to come up with any plausible excuses.

“I should come with you—”

“I’ll be back! Wait, what day is it today?”

“Four days before Lughnasadh.”

I pulled to a stop. “Lunessa?”

“Aye, in four days we will celebrate Lughnasadh, the harvest festival.”

I had no idea what that meant. But just to be clear I asked, “Lunessa is a day in 1703?”

“Och aye, but maybe ye think of it as Lammas? Are ye feeling well, Kaitlyn?”

“Not really, but I really have to go get something. Will you watch over Magnus? Don’t let the physician do anything crazy to him.”

“Like what?”

I started running again. “I don’t know, like bloodletting or something — no leeches!” I ran down the hall, out the door, across the courtyard, through the gates, over the gravel drive, across the field, and into the woods as far as I thought I needed to go. I was thinking the whole way, when did I leave, when should I get back? What date? Lunessa, Lama’s day, lama day, llama day? I counted in my head, picked a date, two weeks after my trip to Scotland, and then I twisted the ends of the vessel and recited the numbers. The ones I knew best, aimed for the beach in front of my old house in Florida. Because I had no idea how to get to the apartment building where I actually lived.