Chapter Eighteen
The drive to Glasgow took about three hours, give or take, with modest weekday traffic and pleasant weather. I tried sitting up straight in the seat for about an hour, but eventually gave in to Dylan’s suggestion that he recline my seat back so that I could stretch out for the majority of the drive. I fussed about what an awful traveling companion I must be...when I wasn’t sleeping.
“We’ve arrived,” Dylan said sometime later, touching my shoulder.
I awakened to see lights from the balcony doors of a five-story building reflecting down onto the street. Night had fallen.
“What? We’re here already? I missed Stirling Castle, didn’t I? I wanted to see that.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you did. I didn’t want to waken you.”
I tried to push myself upright awkwardly.
“Wait! I’ll help you from the Rover.”
He came around and helped me out of the car before leaning in to raise the seat back and retrieve my pack, suitcase and his own pack. He slid his backpack on, threw mine over his shoulder and dragged my rolling suitcase across the street to the fairly large apartment building featuring a series of four street-facing balcony windows per floor.
“This looks very modern!”
“Well, we’ve come a long way here in Scotland,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m sorry. Of course you have. I just imagined an old eighteenth-century building converted into apartments, that’s all.”
“This building is quite new, actually. I only moved in last year. It’s quite dear on my salary, but I make do. I did not want to share with flatmates any longer.”
“No, I imagine not.” Josh’s face came to mind. I had called him to tell him of my injury and hospitalization, for old times’ sake, I guessed. And as I’d told Dylan, he had offered to fly over and visit with me, help me, see to me...whatever it was one did when they visited with a patient convalescing in a hospital. But there was nothing he could do, and I still smarted from the breakup, from his abandonment. Seeing Josh’s face would only remind me that I hadn’t been able to give him what he wanted—romantic love.
He had moved out of the apartment the day I left, but he had kept a key while I was gone so he could water my plants and pick up his mail until it was forwarded.
I supposed that when I returned to the States, I would no longer have a flatmate either. I didn’t relish the idea of living alone, but I had never considered a roommate.
I didn’t relish the idea of living alone...
A sharp pang of grief welled up inside me, robbing me of air. I missed Torq. I missed Ann, the island, even Iskair. But most of all, I missed Torq, and the notion that I couldn’t just email him or call him—to check on my plants, to tell him about my hospital stay, to exchange a key—broke my heart.
I had loved him, still loved him, with a passion I didn’t know I was capable of. Though he was long dead and buried, for me, he would live forever in a parallel universe.
“I have only the one bedroom, but I’ll sleep on the sofa,” Dylan was saying as we stepped off the lift and walked down a carpeted hallway.
I brought my attention back to the present...putting one foot in front of the other. That was all I could really do.
We stepped into a very nicely appointed apartment with laminate flooring, neutral furnishings and a modern kitchen devoid of frills. The apartment actually looked unlived in.
“Did you say you moved in last year?”
“Aye, I don’t spend much time here. I stay at my girlfriend’s flat quite a bit.”
“Your girlfriend?” For some reason, I was surprised, though I had no idea why. I don’t think I would have leaned on him so much if I’d known he had a girlfriend.
“Aye, Debra. Did you not realize? That’s actually good. Debra is a student, and I am not meant to be dating a student.”
My jaw dropped about the same time that Dylan dropped both of our packs.
“No! I had no idea!” I thought of the two of them together. “It’s not like you’re some old professor and she’s a young high school student. You look to be about the same age.”
“We are. I graduated three years ago, and she graduates this year.” He pulled out a generic hard-back chair from a small oval breakfast table in the large living room.
“Here, sit down. Would you like some tea? Coffee?”
“Tea, please. Will she mind that I’m staying here?”
“I don’t know. She is up at Dun Eistean. I don’t see any need to tell her one way or the other.”
“Oh!” I wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“Any marriage plans?”
Dylan puttered around in the galley kitchen, banging pots, running water.
“No, I don’t think so. Not for me anyway.”
While I wanted to ask more, I dared not.
“We’ve been together since last September. She’s a fine lass, really, but I’m not madly in love with her.”
“And that’s a requirement?”
“Oh, aye! Don’t you think so?”
“You’re the second man who’s told me that in the past month.”
“Who was the first? Torq?”
I shook my head. “No, my boyfriend, Josh.”
I told him about Josh while we sat and sipped tea.
“You must think us all a lot of romantic fools, then,” Dylan said with a wide grin.
“I’m beginning to discover that men are a lot more romantic than I thought.” I smiled in response to his grin.
“And Torq?”
My smile faded.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought him up. You’re probably trying to put him behind you, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think I can. Definitely not if I return to Dun Eistean.”
“Are you changing your mind then?”
I chewed on my lip. “Well, as you say, I need the dig to graduate. If I can manage the work—sorting and cataloguing the artifacts—and you and your superior sign off on my requirement, then I should go. I have to look to the future, not the past.”
“I know what you mean, Cyn, but those are strange words for an archaeologist.”
“Yeah, I realized that as soon as I said it.”
“I’m going back to Dun Eistean in the morning. Do decide before then. I can also drop you off at the airport before I go if you choose to go home instead. I wish you wouldn’t though.”
I smiled. “I’ll make a decision by morning. I promise.”
“I have to run over to the university tonight to take care of a few things while I’m here, so I’ll leave in a few minutes. I have some things in the freezer that you could microwave for dinner if you like. I’m not sure how long I will be gone. It might be late.”
“Okay, that’s fine.”
The university...where the dagger was.
“Dylan?” I asked as he rose and returned to the kitchen to set his cup in the sink.
“Yes?”
I closed my eyes and bit my tongue. “Nothing.”
“Right then!” He grabbed his keys. “You will find everything you need in the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Sleep well. I will see you bright and early in the morning.”
“Okay,” I said, fighting the desperate urge to ask him to find the dagger, to look at it, to steal it. As my heart pounded, my back twinged...always reminding me that I couldn’t go back.
“Dylan?” I called out as he opened the front door.
“Yes?”
“They must have survived the hurricane, right? You said you were descended from John, so they lived through it.”
He gave me a sympathetic look.
“And probably many more storms after that. I’m sure Torq lived a long life, Cyn. You have to believe that.”
I nodded. “I will.”
Dylan closed the door behind him, and I rose to cross to the balcony windows. I stepped out onto the balcony and watched him walk to his Rover. He looked up, caught sight of me and waved, and I waved back.
I had forgotten to ask him how he explained me to Debra, and promised myself that I would in the morning—if I drove with him back to Dun Eistean.
Dylan’s apartment was on the top floor, affording a lovely view of Glasgow. I didn’t know which set of lights belonged to the university, or if I could see it at all from my location, but I focused on one set of lights and imagined that I could see the dagger on display in some sort of glass case, the silver gleaming as a brilliant light shone down on it.
In reality, it was probably buried in the bottom of an old gunmetal-gray lockbox somewhere in the basement of the university.
I supposed that it didn’t matter, and yet it mattered to me. That dagger was magical with the ability to transport people—women anyway—to the past. I wondered if anyone else had touched it and found themselves thrown back in time.
I returned to the apartment and entered the bedroom. Both the bedroom and en-suite bathroom were modern and bland, but clean. I removed my outermost clothing, courtesy of the hospital charity, then spent the requisite ten minutes disengaging from the brace before gingerly stretching my muscles. Gingerly. They had been immobilized all day, and I was permitted out of the brace only for bathing, which I was about to do.
Dylan had kindly dropped my suitcase onto the bed, and I rummaged through it for my nightgown and toiletries. I showered thoroughly, trying to keep my mind from the sight of my wet, bedraggled and thoroughly handsome bare-chested Scot approaching me on the beach.
But I could not forget Torq carrying me up the cliff from the beach. I remembered again the strength of his embrace, the red waves in his hair, the strong line of his jaw. I imagined Torq carrying me once again, his hands wrapped around my plastic-and-aluminum corset brace, and I almost smiled at the absurdity of the vision.
I wondered if he missed me.
After emerging from the shower, I heated a pasta dish in the microwave, ate it, drank some water, and made my way to bed after brushing my teeth and strapping myself back into my brace.
I lay awake for hours lost in thought, maybe waiting to hear Dylan’s keys in the door. I struggled with the notion of returning to the States far more than I did returning to Dun Eistean. Torq might be long gone, but at least I would have my memories of him. I could walk where he had on the tabletop, on the beach. He was not in the States, had never been there, and I would not be able to conjure up his image so far away.
As soon as I made up my mind, I fell asleep, dreaming of Torq rising from the sea like some Norse god, wet hair dripping down his shoulders and across his bare chest. He saw me...and smiled.
I never heard Dylan return.
The following morning, a tap on my door awakened me, and Dylan spoke through the doorway.
“Are you awake, Cyn?”
“Yes!” I would have jumped out of bed to dress, but speed was just not something I did any longer...not for the next few months anyway.
“Come in,” I called out. I pushed myself upright.
“Good morning,” he said, bringing in a cup of tea.
He was bright and cheery eyed, and I hoped that Debra appreciated what a treasure Dylan was. As handsome as his ancestor, albeit in a less athletic body, his demeanor was pleasant to awaken to.
I took the cup of tea, and he looked at the edge of the bed. “May I?”
I nodded, and he sat down and looked at me.
“Have you decided?”
“I have. I’ll go back with you and do what I can do given my physical limitations. I appreciate your consideration in this.”
“No consideration at all!” he protested with a red face. “I’m glad you are returning. Sorting and cataloguing are every bit as necessary as digging, as you well know. I’ll ring the MacIvers up and see if you can get your room back. I’m certain you can. If not, I’ll see if my host has an extra room.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Drink your tea. I bought some muffins last night. We can eat those on the way.”
He left the room, and I climbed out of bed and washed up. I redressed in a familiar T-shirt and jeans from my suitcase, reharnessed the brace and then threw a long-sleeved blouse over the apparatus. Slipping into my shoes, I repacked my case and returned to the living room.
Dylan, his back facing me, peered into his backpack, both hands buried in the depths.
“What do you have there? The crown jewels?”
He whirled around, his face breaking into a smile. He zipped the bag and laughed.
“Just breakfast,” he said. He picked up a few prepackaged muffins and tossed them into his pack.
“Are you ready?” he asked. “Is your case ready?”
“It is. Thank you so much for getting it. I feel useless not even being able to carry my own suitcase or backpack.”
“No problem.”
I washed out my mug and then followed him out the door down to the car.
“It’s a long drive, you might remember,” Dylan said as we pulled away.
I declined his offer to lower the seat back.
“Yes, I do, about eight hours?”
“More like eight and a half, but we’ll need to stop and eat, so probably about ten. We could stay the night somewhere if the long drive gets to be too much for you. That is the reason the doctors didn’t want you to fly as well, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, that and possible swelling from pressure and the whole bag dragging thing. I’m sure I will be all right. If I were on a plane, I couldn’t lay the backseat down either.”
Dylan smiled. “The last ferry out from Ullapool to Stornaway is at five thirty. We’ll have to reach Ullapool by four, a quarter past at the latest to get on the ferry. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
We drove out of Glasgow and north along the western border of majestic Cairngorns National Park. We stopped for a snack at the quaintly Victorian town of Pitlochry and again in Inverness for a quick lunch before we drove on to the port town of Ullapool. The ferry took about two and a half hours, and by the time we reached Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis, twilight had descended.
I was back on the Isle of Lewis, something I hadn’t been quite sure would happen. We drove off the ferry and headed toward the Port of Ness.
Along the way, when I’d slept for a brief period, Dylan had contacted the MacIvers, and they were happy to have me back.
Night had truly fallen when Dylan pulled up in front of their cottage and carried my bags inside and up to my room. The elderly couple welcomed me, sighing over my injury.
Dylan promised to pick me up in the morning, and I let him go a bit reluctantly. I watched the lights of his Rover fade into the remote darkness, and I looked to the east in the direction of Dun Eistean. I had no way of getting there that night, and I knew I had to wait until morning. Torq did not wait for me there, I reminded myself, but still, I was anxious to return to the island.
Mrs. MacIver kindly set me up with a nightcap of hot tea and biscuits, and I snacked, washed up and fell into bed to sleep fitfully. Torq did not rise from the sea but stood at the gate staring at the mainland, watching, waiting for me.