Chapter 33

 

 

Vic pounded on the cottage door. The farm to which Malcolm directed her wasn’t much more than a collection of hovels on the far distant coast of a windswept island. The wind whipped up the ocean not far away, and she shivered.

She would be glad to get indoors after the last two days on the run for her life. She only hoped and prayed this Norris Gunn character really was a friend and wouldn’t sell her and Malcolm out to the Gunns.

No sound came from inside the cottage.

She banged her fist against the solid wood one more time, but nothing happened. Her heart sank. If they didn’t find help soon, Malcolm would probably die. His skin grew colder, sweatier, and more ashen with every passing hour.

She turned to look out over the landscape. Where could she go now? Where could she hide him in this dreadful country?

She set off toward the fence where she’d left him when she noticed a flash of movement near one of the other buildings. She hurried toward it and came upon an old man standing bare-chested in what looked like a stable. A wide leather belt strapped a dirty Gunn tartan kilt around his muscular waist. Other than that, he wore no clothes at all to keep away the cold—no shoes, no socks, no shirt. His dirty sandy-blond hair draped his enormous shoulders, combining with his full beard and his body hair to form a solid mat over his whole hulking frame down to his kilt. He glanced up at her with flashing blue eyes. They blazed out of his feral face with quick, intense flickers, and his booming deep voice rose out of the very Earth itself. “What do ye want?”

“Are you Norris Gunn?” Vic asked.

“Aye. Who are ye?”

Vic rushed up to him. “I need your help. I have a wounded man who said he could come to you. We need your help. It’s urgent. He’s dying, and he… Well, he said you would help us.”

A shadow crossed his face, but he remained calm and impassive. “What man?”

“His name is Malcolm Gunn.” She turned around and pointed. “He’s right over there by the fence. He told me to bring him here to you.”

Norris stiffened. Then, without answering, he set off across the yard and marched over to Malcolm’s fallen body.

Malcolm lay bent and senseless against the fence. His cheeks hung loose and sagging on his bones. His arms and legs splayed out at odd angles.

Norris didn’t even look at him. He bent over and picked Malcolm up in his arms like a fainted lady, cradling him against his massive chest, and carried him to the cottage. He kicked the door open and took Malcolm inside, crossed the room to a double bed, and laid Malcolm on it before he stood back to examine the patient. Norris yanked open Malcolm’s shirt and tenderly removed the dressing Vic had wrapped around him. He gazed down at the wound beneath.

Standing back, Norris said, “Aye. I see how it is.”

“It happened two days ago,” Vic told him. “He’s lost a lot of blood since then.”

“Aye.” He turned around and signaled Vic to follow him back to the cottage door. He pointed across the yard to another building in the distance. “Ye go over there and tell Bonnie and me lads to come here.”

Vic hesitated. “Are they…I mean, are you sure they won’t… I mean, what if they…”

Norris waited. “What is it, lass?”

Vic gathered her resolve and blurted out, “How do you know they won’t give us away to the Guild? I mean, we left Stromness under less than ideal circumstances, if you know what I mean. There are several dozen armed men out looking for us. If anybody gives us away, we’re both finished. That’s all I meant.”

Norris’s eyes twinkled. “Och, I see what ye mean. Ye go on and fetch them. Ye’ve naught to worry about with any of me people out here. Not all the Gunns work for the Guild, ye ken, and no one ever comes here for help without several dozen armed men out looking for them. On ye go, lass. We’ll need their help to do this.” He walked away and left her in the doorway, returning to the bed.

Vic had her orders, and the man’s manner and even his rough, animal appearance filled her with trusting confidence. Whatever he said he would do, he would do. She could leave Malcolm in his hands.

She charged into the open, her heart singing with renewed hope. These people really were going to help them. They would save Malcolm and protect the pair from the Gunns. She didn’t understand how someone named Gunn could side with the Angui, but that was Norris’s business. She raced to the building and thumped on the door as hard as she could.

A mouse-brown-haired woman answered it. Her eyes pinched when she saw Vic. “Aye?”

“Excuse me,” Vic panted. “Norris sent me to fetch you and the lads—if you’re Bonnie, that is. He said you should come over to the house right away. There’s a man…he’s injured…and he said…”

Bonnie didn’t wait to hear any more. She shouted into the building. “Yer faither’s calling ye to the house, lads. Come along.” She scooped up a shawl and rushed out of the building to join Vic.

Three huge men followed behind her, all wearing their hair thick and shaggy like their father, along with full, thick beards. These men all wore Gunn tartan kilts, although they wore shirts and jackets over their chests. If they hadn’t been Norris and Bonnie’s sons, Vic would have braced herself to fight them. Under the circumstances, she could only run back to the house with them on her heels.

They barreled into the cottage, and the place exploded in a flurry of activity. Norris and his sons crowded around the bed. Vic lost sight of Malcolm, and she couldn’t make head or tail of what any of the men said in their heavy accents. Voices fired back and forth in all directions. Norris bellowed orders at everyone. Bonnie got to work over the cookstove. She boiled water and started stirring up a poultice. The men worked over Malcolm in a ferment of excitement. They resembled a bunch of men working over the engine of a car, but Vic couldn’t make light of this situation. They were working to save Malcolm’s life.

Vic retreated into a corner to make room for everybody in the one-room shack. After an hour, she sank into a chair in the corner and stared at the people rushing back and forth. Bloody cloth left the bed, but Vic still couldn’t catch a glimpse of Malcolm or what they were doing to him. Her brain went numb as the exhaustion and terror of the last three days caught up with her. She leaned back in the chair to relax for the first time since she’d left Malcolm’s apartment in San Francisco.

All at once, someone shook her awake. “Ye cannae sleep there.”

She snapped alert to find Bonnie leaning over her. “What’s going on? Is he okay?”

“Och, lass,” Bonnie crooned. “They’re still working on him. Ye must get some rest. Ye’re worn-out. Come with me, and I’ll put ye to bed with a nice hot bowl of soup. Ye look as though ye need it.”

Bonnie started to rise her to her feet, but when Vic caught sight of Norris and his sons still working around Malcolm’s bed, she resisted. “I don’t want to leave him. Let me stay here.”

“Ye’re no good to him here, lass,” Bonnie murmured. “Ye’re no good to him at all if ye wind up overtaxing yerself as bad as he is. Come with me and get some rest. When ye wake up, ye can come back and see how he is.”

Vic glanced into the lady’s face. She read there the wisdom of hardship. This woman had seen it all—tragedy, danger, violence, and all the good stuff too, the love, the togetherness, the working side by side with the men in her life. She’d raised these sons on the land. Vic couldn’t fathom everything this woman had been through in her life, but she’d seen a lot worse than a man stabbed in the guts. She’d seen death and birth and everything in between.

Melting before this woman’s power, she let Bonnie guide her out of the cottage to another shack not far away. Fatigue and crushing emotion robbed Vic of her ability to think. She couldn’t tell where she was or where she was going. She only knew Bonnie had her. Bonnie wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

Bonnie ushered her into a tiny cabin barely big enough to hold a single bed. She pushed her down on it, and Vic toppled onto the pillow. In seconds, her eyes closed and she floated away into nothingness.

In the dark of night, Bonnie’s hands closed around Vic’s body and raised her head. “Drink this, lass. It’ll give ye strength.” She held a cup of scorching hot soup to Vic’s lips.

Vic guzzled it down as best she could without fully waking up, then Bonnie left her alone to sleep.

Vic woke up to daylight streaming through the one window. She lay in bed for a long time before gathering enough resolve to go find out what happened to Malcolm. Would she find him dead over in the cottage?

When she opened the door, the farmyard tumbled away before her to the ocean. The wind howled off the Atlantic on its way farther north. That low moaning sound soothed Vic’s shattered soul. Whatever else happened in the world, these people continued against all odds. No wonder they found it in themselves to stand against the Gunns—their own people. Whoever they were, they didn’t fit the mold. They followed their own path, the path of hardship and making a stand on this land against the elements.

What did immortality mean to people like this? They lived close to the wind. The salt spray ran in their veins. Their earthy, grounded nature gave them something no eternal mission ever could.

Vic found a thick woolen shawl draped over the end of the bed. Bonnie must have left it for her. She wrapped herself up and crossed the yard, but she hesitated before daring to enter the house.

The same cosmic understanding filled her mind that had made her say what she did to Malcolm on the way here. She couldn’t face this life without him. She had nowhere to go and nothing to live for without him on the other end. If she found him dead in there, she would die with him. Nothing else made sense.

Butterflies whispered in her stomach as she opened the door. She stepped inside and found the house deserted. The cookstove radiated heat into the room, but everyone was gone—everyone except Malcolm.

He lay on the bed with the quilt drawn up to his bare chest. His hair lay spread over the pillow, and he kept his eyes closed. She tiptoed toward him on tenterhooks at what she would find.

Her guts twisted in a clenching fist until she saw his chest rising and falling. Tears welled up in her eyes as she feasted her gaze on his sleeping face. She could never see enough of him. She sat down on the bed next to him and picked up his limp hand. A rough horn of callused skin marked the inner curve of his thumb and forefinger where he held his saber. She caressed his hand between both of hers and kissed it. A tear streaked down her cheek from sheer happiness and relief.

He stirred in bed and turned over. He let out a deep sigh, and his arm stiffened. “Lassie!” he breathed. “I wondered where ye were.”

She couldn’t stop the tears running down her cheeks. “I’ve been here all along. I would never leave you. Bonnie made me go get some sleep.”

His eyes drifted closed, and he collapsed back on the pillow. “I’m glad. I was worried about ye.”

“You were worried about me!” she gasped. “Why?”

“Ye worked so hard,” he whispered. “Ye gave everything to save me. I thought ye might have collapsed.”

She bent forward, unable to hold herself together any longer. She rested her head on his chest and wept in such joyous relief to find him alive.

He cupped her neck against him. “It’s all right now, lass. Ye did it. We’re safe.”

She sat up and wiped her face. “Are you sure? Are you sure they won’t find us here?”

“I’m sure, and now ye must go home. Ye must go back to yer own time and leave me to me own.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she exclaimed. “You’re still in danger here. The Gunns could come at any moment.”

He shook his head. “Norris will make sure they don’t. He’s not such a farmer as he makes out. I’ll be safe here.”

“You can’t go back to the Guild,” she remarked. “You blew your cover getting me out.”

“It’s all right, lass,” he replied. “Norris and his people will get me out of Scotland, and I’ll go to America. In a few generations, I’ll resurface and rejoin the Falisa.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?” she asked. “Won’t they leave word about you?”

“They’ll no’ pick me up,” he replied. “I’ve escaped under worse circumstances than this before, and I always rejoin.”

She clasped his hand against her heart. “Don’t do anything that could put you in danger. Promise me that. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

“I promise ye, lassie, I’ll be waiting for ye there in 2018. If ye go back right now, ye’ll find me there.”

She broke down in tears again. “I thought you were dead! I couldn’t go through that again.”

He stroked the tears off her cheeks. “Ye’ll never have to. Ye saved me life once. Ye’ll no’ have to do it again. Now please, go back for me sake. I need to ken ye’re safe too.”

She bowed her head and nodded. “Okay.”

He tried to lift his hand and failed. His arm dropped onto the blanket. She had to pick it up and support it for him as he laid his palm on her head.

She closed her eyes against the inevitable. She never wanted to feel that touch break away from her skin. She would never have consented to this if she didn’t believe him about meeting her on the other side.

She held up his arm while he dragged his thumb across her forehead. He whispered under his breath the words she’d started to recognize.

“Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph yblos rae

Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe

Takiyok keorvik suluk yo

Uyarak ek chua lo.”