“Thank God he’ll never meet me—I’m a MacDougall.”
Sìneag’s eyes sparkled. “Are ye really?”
“Well, yeah. My grandparents immigrated from Scotland to the States, so I’m American. But my last name is MacDougall.”
“Aye! Aye! Excellent.” Sìneag’s voice shook a little from excitement. “I was hoping I’d meet ye here, lass.”
Amy frowned, something about those words setting her on guard.
“Anyway,” Amy said. “What about that Craig? Did he travel in time or something?”
“Nae, he didna. He marrit a good lass to arrange a clan alliance, but he was never happy. He lived his life as a good man. An always lonely good man.”
Amy pursed her lips to fight a strange wave of emotion that Sìneag’s words brought up within her—sadness and loneliness. The desperation of being left alone and abandoned was too familiar.
“Yeah,” she said. “Some people never get over things that cut too deep.”
Sìneag’s eyes shone with understanding and empathy. “Aye. And what if the person who can heal them lives across the river of time?”
“Then they need to use that Pictish tunnel, I guess.”
“Aye, Amy! That is very true.” Sìneag clapped her hands like a little girl. “Ye said it yerself.”
A movement caught Amy’s eye. Zach hurried down the pile of rocks towards Deanna.
“Careful!” Jenny cried.
As soon as Zach was on the ground, Deanna ran with a squeal away from him. With a yell like something between a battle call and the sound of a horny chimp, he followed her.
This wouldn’t end well. Forgetting Sìneag, Amy followed every movement as Deanna circled around the courtyard, every time evading Zach’s attempt to bear-hug her. Then she launched herself faster than ever towards Amy. Amy had already prepared to grasp and stop the girl when, at the last moment, she turned to the eastern tower.
Amy took a step forward on instinct.
Deanna pushed the security grating to the side and squeezed herself behind it—towards the gaping blackness of the entrance. She took one step inside, screamed and fell.
Amy’s heart stopped.
“Damn it,” Amy cursed and raced towards the tower. “Do not even dare!” she cried at Zach, who had stopped at the grating with a pale face and a worried expression.
Amy grabbed the flashlight from her pack. Grass flashed under her feet while she ran until she reached the grate and slid through. She stopped by the entrance into the tower. Her light fell on the broken, crumbling stairs leading down—and gaping black nothingness around them.
“Damn those teenagers,” Amy cursed under her breath and climbed down the broken stairs as fast as she could without breaking her own neck.
Rocks crumbled and fell from under her feet. Some steps were missing, some were broken and turned into flat slides. It smelled of wet earth and damp stone, of rotten leaves—and something else rotten she didn’t even want to think about. By some miracle, Amy made it all the way down. The outside light didn’t reach here. Only her flashlight remained, as though nothing else existed beyond the underground. Amy shivered, memories rattling the door in her psyche that she’d closed tight long ago.
She’d learned how to deal with darkness and with confined spaces, she reminded herself. She needed to be strong for Deanna.
“Deanna!” Amy called as the flashlight ran along the rough rock surrounding her. “Deanna!”
Her words echoed in the silence as though she were alone. As though Deanna had disappeared into nothingness.
Amy looked up, but there was only a rocky ceiling and the gap she had come through. Her arms and legs chilled, and her hands shook.
Quick. Just find Deanna, help her, and get the hell out of here.
“Deanna!” Amy searched around with the flashlight. It fell on the entrance to another room. Shivering, her legs leaden, Amy moved towards it. She couldn’t leave anyone alone in the darkness.
She had to let the people she was rescuing know they hadn’t been abandoned.
Someone was always coming for them.
She was.
“Deanna,” she called as she stepped into the chamber, her voice echoing from the rock.
It was a small room—not even a room, but rather, a cave. Amy searched around the floor—no one.
Any more exits or doors?
No.
“Where are you?” Amy called. She didn’t know if she meant Deanna or herself.
“In here,” a voice said.
Amy moved the light, and there she was. Deanna stood, hugging herself, her eyes wide, the mass of her hair in disarray. Relief flooded Amy, the tension in her chest releasing.
“Oh, thank God!” Amy said. “Are you hurt?”
“Just bumped my head a little.”
“Okay, let’s go back right away. I’ll take a look at your head when we’re up. Here, take this. I have another.”
She handed the light to Deanna and removed another one from her backpack. Deanna swept around herself with the flashlight, and it fell on something. Amy frowned.
A rock, big and flat. There was a large carving on top of it—a broad ribbon with three wavy lines. Something like a river in the form of a circle. Through it ran the broad line of a road.
“I’m freezing,” Deanna said, walking back towards the entrance.
“Wait for me,” Amy said, but then froze, her gaze glued to the rock.
Was Amy hallucinating, or was the carving glowing ever so slightly—the river blue, the road brown? Next to the carving, there was a handprint right in the rock.
Deanna’s light was already flashing in the first room. She’d be all right. Amy came closer to the rock, curious.
The glowing grew brighter, and it seemed as if the carving moved: the waves of the river seemed to flow, and it looked as though a small cloud of dust rose above the road. It was so pretty.
Was this a Pictish handprint?
A lonely hand… A lonely man…
Was it Craig Cambel’s?
Would she be touching his fingers if she pressed hers into the imprint? Holding her breath, she traced it gently. It was cold and damp. Had it been cold and damp when Craig lived here?
She laid all five fingers into the imprint. A buzzing went through her—like a wave of excitement before a journey, an adventure. Her heart raced, and her pulse beat in her temples, in the veins of her neck, in her wrists and between her fingers.
Fear struck her again—gripped her throat and her shoulders, clenched her airways till she gasped for breath.
She tried to pull back her hand but couldn’t. The rock pulled her palm like a magnet. The cold surface felt wet, as though water rose up from it.
Amy’s palm touched the stone completely and was sinking into the rock as if it were a river. The rest of her arm followed, and then her shoulder.
“Ahhhh!” Amy heard herself scream.
She gripped the stone with her other hand, scrabbled her feet against the floor, but couldn’t stop herself from falling.
And then she fell completely into the stone…and the world grew dark.
Chapter 2
Inverlochy Castle, November 1306
The catapult launched a rock with a loud wooden crack, and Craig held his breath, watching the rock fly. No matter how often he’d seen that during the last three days, the sight was ever majestic.