by Annis Reid
Wouldn’t that be perfect? She couldn’t manage to make it out there for his gig, but she’d go after he’d broken her heart. The jerk, the coward, the creep.
Besides, it wasn’t like she’d never been there. Scotland had always held an interest for her thanks to its henges and standing stones, its mythology.
Yes. That was exactly what she needed. To go someplace where there was plenty of fresh air and gorgeous scenery, someplace she could reconnect with herself and her love of history and the outdoors.
Her gaze wandered to the other item on the coffee table, something she’d pulled from her purse and left lying there as a reminder of the way the night could’ve gone.
The necklace, nestled in its box.
“What the hell?” she whispered, taking the necklace out and fixing the clasp at the back of her neck. The rune nestled against her chest, where she figured it would stay for a while. No sense in letting something so beautiful go to waste just because of the idiot she’d had it made for.
2
Melissa took a deep breath, turning in a full circle to admire the scenery. The air was so fresh, so clear. Nothing like what she’d gotten used to in Chicago.
The sky was so blue! Clouds piled up in the west, big and fluffy and white as snow. When she was a kid they’d always made her think of mashed potatoes. The memory made her smile.
But there was plenty all around her to smile about. It could’ve been a painting, it was all so perfect. So green and lush. The distant Cairngorm Mountains were a mystery shrouded in a light mist, only adding to their otherworldly quality. The River Devon was less than a mile from where she stood, winding its way through the rocky landscape and mossy stones.
She’d walked for hours, or so it seemed, and was considering calling it a day when she’d stumbled upon the ruins of an old castle that tugged at her imagination until there was no turning back. For hundreds of years, those stone walls had stood, silent, watching the river as it moved along its ceaseless path. So much history, so many lives that had passed that very spot.
There she was, standing in the middle of it. One solitary tourist carrying a pamphlet containing details of the history of the castle once owned and inhabited by the laird of Clan MacNeill and his family.
She opened the pamphlet and skipped around until finding the passage dedicated to the ruins.
First built between the years 1345 and 1348, Castle MacNeill was abandoned in the mid-eighteenth century after an unnamed plague killed every man, woman, and child in the place within the span of a fortnight.
Melissa shook her head, clicking her tongue in sympathy toward those long dead inhabitants. What happened to them? She knew the people of those times were deeply superstitious and she guessed they’d probably chalked it up to a curse, something of that nature. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep everybody away ever since.
And what a shame that was. The castle must’ve been magnificent when it stood in its full majesty. There was an artist rendering in a pamphlet, an idea of what the castle had once looked like. Two soaring towers, one at either end of the keep where the family had lived. Several connected buildings—stables, housing for chickens and pigs and goats, a blacksmith, the armory.
All of them sat behind the stone wall which had reportedly stretched forty feet in the air. Now it was broken, wide open in some places, and probably too dangerous to explore on one’s own.
But Melissa had never exactly been one to care much for whether she was supposed to do something or not. And even though she wore a sundress, thanks to the balmy temperatures, her shoes were good for walking and gripping the mossy stones which she carefully climbed over so she might get a better look at the inside of the castle.
There was a haunted feeling behind the wall, though she was sure it was just her imagination. Most likely everyone in the castle had been brought down by a disease of that time, something that had spread fast and killed indiscriminately. They had most likely all spread it to each other before they were even aware they were sick, poor people. That didn’t mean this place was haunted, no matter how spooky it felt.
After all, there was no reason why a centuries-old Scottish ruin wouldn’t feel spooky.
What was left of the towers cast long shadows over the ground in the courtyard. Melissa walked through these shadows, practically holding her breath. It was like being in a church, almost, a sense of solemnity. Like she had to be careful how she moved for fear of being disrespectful.
Or stirring up old ghosts who’d called the castle their home for three hundred years.
She chuckled to herself, tucking the pamphlet into her shoulder bag. It had come along with her during all of her little adventures over the last few days, providing insight into the histories of the clans whose territories she explored. She had already visited the land which had once been ruled by clans with names like Fraser, Campbell, and MacManus.
The only thing she hadn’t seen yet was a hunky Scotsman.
That was her fault. She was still a little sore, a little tender after the drama with Jimmy. Barely a month had passed since that awful day, and since then she’d systematically removed him from her daily life.
She’d returned all his things. Or, rather, left them in boxes outside the apartment door which she’d then locked against him. Anything which she’d left at his apartment she’d given him permission to throw out—nothing that important, just toiletries and spare clothes. She could replace those.
What struck her as hilarious was his surprise that she was really serious about their breakup. The idiot expected her to take him back after what he’d done. Like this was nothing more than a misunderstanding, a slip-up.
Was he really that clueless? This wasn’t accidentally ruining somebody’s favorite sweatshirt or breaking a family heirloom. This was a breaking of trust, a destruction of respect. The sort of things that affected the future, a future which Melissa had no intention of sharing with him if he thought so little of her that he was able to be unfaithful.
“When a person shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” her mother had reminded her when Melissa finally got up the courage to share the news with her parents. She had every intention of following that advice.
Maybe she should consider herself lucky that he’d shown her who he really was before they were married.
But even now, a month later, she didn’t exactly possess the courage to put herself out there again. After three years and the promise of marriage, she guessed that was normal. It was one thing to tell herself the day of the breakup—after having her heart crushed—that she would get back at Jimmy by hooking up with a hunky Scottish guy, but was another thing to follow through with it once that immediate flareup of pain and anger and regret had died down.
That was okay. She always liked to travel alone, anyway, with the freedom to see and do exactly what she wanted for exactly how long she wanted to, without having to cater to anybody else’s desires.
She pulled her long hair back into a messy bun to keep it off the back of her neck. Though the breeze was fresh and cool, the sun was deceptively warm. Even though she wasn’t exactly exerting herself as she explored inside the castle walls, there was still perspiration at her temples and the nape of her neck by the time she reached the inside of one of the two broken towers.
Maybe she shouldn’t be in there, but that didn’t stop her from stepping further inside once she’d crossed the threshold. It didn’t exactly look sturdy, the tower walls now like jagged, broken teeth against the blue sky and white clouds. Or like fingers reaching up, the fingers of some giant trying to pull itself out from the earth.
Wow. Less than fifteen minutes inside tragic ruins and she was giving herself over to flights of fancy. The history buff in her found it impossible not to do this, no matter how her rational side told her there was nothing so special about this place. People died all the time, no matter the century they lived in.
She touched the wall, stroking the smooth stone and the crumbling
mortar. Who were the people who’d lived there? What were their hopes and dreams? Could they ever have fathomed that a young woman would stand inside these walls hundreds of years later and ask herself about them? Could they even have imagined there being a world centuries after their deaths?
And would they have imagined somebody from her time even being interested in them? Because to them, their lives were common and ordinary. They’d lived and worked the way everyone of their time did. It was a hard life, she knew, rough and unforgiving depending upon a person’s station.
Still, knowing all of this did not keep her heart from skipping a beat when she imagined what it was like in that castle at the height of its splendor. How busy it must’ve been, how the chatter of servants and guards and stable boys must’ve mixed with the clucking of chickens and neighing of horses, laughter from children running around and getting into mischief. How vibrant it had all been.
And how filthy. She stepped out of the tower and took note of what must’ve once been a latrine pit, positioned just inside the castle wall, a hole which had probably been filled with rocks and earth over the hundreds of years it had sat empty. Even now, it was still deep enough for her to know it had been deliberately dug. No wonder the been so easy for people to get sick, for illness to wipe out entire castles full of people.
The flapping of wings overhead gave her a start, and she laughed at herself with one hand over her chest as a flock of birds took flight from a nest hidden somewhere in the ruins. She was freaking herself out, plain and simple, letting her imagination get away from her.
Her imagination and her necklace, apparently.
She looked down in shock. That necklace had hardly left her neck in the time since she’d had it made. She had come to depend on its weight nestled against her chest, sort of a soothing presence.
Now, it was gone.
She had definitely been wearing it when she left the hotel, and could even remember her fingers running along the silver chain when she pulled her hair back. So she’d been wearing it while inside the castle walls. The clasp must have broken.
She muttered to herself as she traced her steps, going back to the broken tower with those creepy finger-looking jagged bits at the top. Maybe it had fallen off somewhere inside, and good luck to her trying to find it. It was so dark; the lack of a roof did little to illuminate the stone floor covered in centuries of debris and sediment.
Fishing her phone from her bag, she turned on the flashlight and shone it over the floor, squinting and wishing she hadn’t insisted on exploring at all. Somehow, losing the necklace would have been the final nail in the coffin. The final goodbye to the life she thought was supposed to be hers, even though she was supposed to have let it go by then.
The flash of silver brought a sigh of relief, though she wasn’t sure how the darned thing had gotten so far away from the threshold. What, had it slid across the floor? That didn’t make sense. But there it was, taunting her, far from where she’d stood earlier.
She crossed the floor, noting how slick the stones were in some places. Who knew how much sludge had caked its way over that floor in the years since the castle’s desertion? Her nose wrinkled in distaste.
“Gotcha,” she whispered in triumph when her fingers closed over the rune—which started glowing at her touch.
“What the…?”
It was a green light.
She wasn’t imagining it.
No, she had to be!
Stones didn’t randomly glow. There was something in the air in this tower, mold spores or something, and they were making her think crazy things. That had to be it.
Otherwise… well, she didn’t want to think about otherwise.
She turned, ready to flee the tower with the rune and its chain still clasped firmly in her fist—she might have dropped it, might have left it there and never looked back, but she just couldn’t—when the slick stone beneath her feet decided it had other ideas.
Like tripping her up and making her fall. As she went airborne, her mind flashed an image of a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel. Her fall was like that: feet in the air, landing flat on her back with a bone-jarring thud that rattled her brain in her skull.
Rattled it hard enough that the world went grey for a second, everything swimming around in front of her eyes. She blinked hard, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs, but it did no good. She finally rested her head against the floor for a second and let her eyes slide shut.
Only to open them moments later at the sound of hooves outside the tower.
Hooves? Horses? She hadn’t ridden in years and years, but she knew the sound when she heard it. Who was riding horses outside the ruins? And would they find her here, streaked with grime and embarrassed at her clumsiness.
She sat up, still a little shaky. Had she hit her head? She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. Squeezed, then opened.
It was the funniest thing. The tower looked different inside.
For one, there was a ceiling overhead—rather, a second floor. No more giant’s fingers reaching up at the sky. The walls were whole, and the plank floor was high enough overhead that Melissa could barely see it. But it was there, blocking her view of the sky.
She must’ve passed out. She must’ve been on that filthy floor, unconscious. She squeezed her eyes shut again, hoping to open them and look up at the clear blue.
No such luck.
And still, the sounds of hooves on the approach. Louder now.
Finally, a voice. Male. Young. “Aye, are ye going to get on with it or nay? I dinna wish to be here longer than need be, man.”
The brogue was thick enough to cut with a knife. She hadn’t heard anything that heavy since her arrival in the country. She listened hard, holding her breath while getting up as quietly as possible. She ached all over, but everything seemed to be in one piece. And she was still clutching the rune and its chain, which she slipped into her shoulder bag, rather than fiddling with the clasp with shaky fingers.
“Will ye quit complaining?” a second man asked with a laugh. “Ye remind me of me mam, clucking and fretting. Or are ye frightened of haunts?”
“Frightened?” the first man snorted.
They were just outside the doorway now. Melissa stood inside, pressed against the stones, her heart hammering. What was it about their presence that scared her? They might have helped, right?
“Ye dinna wish for the ghost of Laird MacNeill to punish ye for stepping foot in his castle,” the second man taunted. “Perhaps the curse that killed ‘em all will now visit ye while ye sleep tonight, lad.”
So that was what people still thought? Melissa rolled her eyes, then froze like a deer in headlights when the two men entered the tower.
What were they wearing? Only the light coming through the doorway revealed their costumes. One man wore a pair of tight trousers and a long tunic belted at the waist, a plaid cloak over his shoulders. The other wore a similar costume complete with a hat and a wicked looking knife at his waist.
She hadn’t heard anything like them, and she certainly hadn’t seen anything close to what she saw now.
“Will ye be on with it?” the first man asked in a tight whisper. “I dinna like being here, if ‘tis all the same to ye.” They hadn’t noticed her, probably not expecting to see another living soul in the ruins.
“As if I enjoy it,” the other, older man snickered. “Yet ‘tis worth the trouble if we find anything left behind, lad.”
Thieves? What could they possibly hope to uncover?
She wasn’t about to stick around and find out. They gave her an uneasy feeling. She took one slow, cautious step toward the door. Then another.
Her sigh of relief came too soon, since the crunch of broken stones under her feet once she was out in the courtyard gave her away.
And for a moment, the sight of what surrounded her was enough to hold her still.
What was this? The walls around the castle were solid, tall. Not broken and crumbling the way the
y’d been just minutes earlier. The buildings were in disrepair, but nothing compared to what she’d only just seen. Like they’d been deserted for fifty years rather than three hundred.
“Who’s that?” the younger of the men demanded, following her outside. “Och, what’s this, then?” he asked upon seeing her, a knowing smile twisting his mouth as his eyes traveled the length of her body.
And his tone changed, shifting into a tone which all women knew too well. He had something in mind other than looting the ruins.
3
“All I mean to say is, ye could do worse than marrying Flora MacNeill.”
Leith MacManus rolled his eyes, though his head was turned that his cousin might not see. Donald had been born with a tongue hinged on both sides and had not ceased his chatter since they’d left the MacManus keep together a day earlier.
Leith’s head ached, and not just from the noise. It ached thanks to the conflicting thoughts and feelings stirred by a journey he had no wish to make.
Only duty kept him in the saddle, walking his beloved horse Eoghan along the road which connected the MacManus keep and the lands surrounding to the castle which had only in the last half-century served as the center of all MacNeill affairs.
Beyond them, perched high on a hill surrounded by towering spruce, sat the home of Mervyn Fraser, his mother’s brother. The place where he would wed Flora MacNeill.
Or so he’d been told.
“I dinna ken why ye would not be wed at the MacNeill keep,” Donald mused, still thinking aloud. “Why go out of yer way to ride further?”
Leith cleared his throat, having remained silent for many hours. There was no need to waste his energy speaking when his cousin did more than his share of it. “Niall MacNeill wishes it so. Mervyn Fraser has long been his best friend, like a brother to him. Perhaps ‘twas the two of them who created this plan and brought it to my da’s attention when I was a bairn.”
