by C. Litka
Chapter 26: Saturday 10 August
01
The restless sun was warm on my shoulders as I followed the overgrown track up towards a dark green woods of the Old Forest. Below, bright in the sunlight, lay paddocks dotted with sheep, divided by the sparkling ribbon of the Maig. The hills beyond were thinly veiled in the humid air. A fragrant pine forest stood tall above us. The little hamlet of Minton, all of a half dozen cottages, lay ahead and below, hidden by trees. Nesta was following the other wheel track beside me. She was dressed for hiking, boots, tan moleskin slacks, a light ivory coloured blouse with a pale yellow scarf about her neck and a wide brimmed dusty green canvas hat on her head. She'd found a fallen branch on the edge of the woods and was cheerfully swinging it as a walking stick as we climbed the hill towards the track cut into the Old Forest. I pulled out my watson and called up the map on which I'd drawn the arc.
'This track pretty much meets the arc near the top of the hill. Should we go all the way up and then work our way straight down, or make our way up through the woods?' I asked.
'Let's walk to the top,' replied Nesta. 'We can search the woods as we go. I'd think you'd be able to see any building from the track and walking up through the woods would be rough going, lots of fallen branches, rocks, bracken and brambles.'
'Right,' I said and we started off again. Nesta was sceptical of finding the shed, but willing to humour me. It wasn't yet mid-morning, still fresh and mild, though it promised to be hot by the afternoon. Nesta had arrived before nine with her bike's saddlebags filled with provisions and two travel rods and reels – we'd added fishing for brown trout in the pools of the Maig – “the fish aren't large, but they're game enough” – to our picnic plans.
It was cool in the fragrant shade of the pines. Insects darted through the shafts of sunlight, and the pines occasionally stirred and whispered in the lazy breeze. I searched the dim, steep, forest floor under the old pines for a sign of a hut in the tangle of fallen trees and branches. I saw no sign of it, or any place flat enough to set one up until we reached the summit. At the top, we continued along the track until it left the woods and opened onto the wide heather covered uplands under the blue arching sky without a shed to be seen.
We paused to catch our breath and cool our brows in the breeze. 'Well, I'm beginning to think they must have taken it down,' I started to say.
'Beginning to think, are we?' Nesta laughed.
'Well, you're probably right, but as long as we've come this far, I'd like to make certain. Up here on the flatter land is really the most likely place they'd have erected it. The arc is quite close to the trail, so we'd not have to go in very far. What to do you say we spread out a bit and walk back through the woods until it begins to get steep?'
'You're in charge, Dr Say,' she replied lightly. 'But I must say it seems either your information is wrong and they put it some place else, or it's been dismantled. I don't think we'd have missed it. The woods aren't that impenetrable.'
'You're likely right,' I replied. 'But I had my heart set on finding something no one else considered, so let's make sure. Back through the woods until it gets steep.'
We walked into the woods, Nesta stopping about twenty metres off the road and I went on for another thirty before I waved, and we started walking back, pushing through the rough ferns and brambles of the wood's shady interior. Since the trees had been planted as a plantation, we could follow along a row of trees to keep our bearings.
'Found it!' Nesta called less than five minutes later. 'Over here!'
'Coming!' I called and headed for the sound of her voice. I passed only several rows of trees before I could see her standing in a small sunlit clearing amongst some bright green bushes.
'Where?' I asked as I came up beside her.
'You're standing on it,' she replied with a laugh.
I looked down, and sure enough, underneath the protruding bushes, I could see we were standing on a rotting plywood panel. Nesta watched me with a smile as I walked around, tracing the small mound of plywood and galvanized metal underneath the cover of moss, pine needles and bushes growing on or through the wreckage of the shed. I stopped and stared at it for a long while, considering...
'You're not too disappointed, are you Sandy?' she asked after a while. 'You didn't really expect to find anything, did you? Besides I thought you wanted both units in the lab to explain the electrical field around the lab.'
I sighed. 'Well, that's the bright spot. That theory stays intact. As for what I was expecting, well, I didn't expect to find anything useful, but I rather hoped I'd find the shed intact, with various wiring and circuit diagrams in plastic sheaths tacked on the wall and the actual blue prints of the device neatly rolled up in an aluminium tube. What I'm trying to decide now is how much hope and ambition I can muster to look for those diagrams and blueprints underneath this rubble.'
'And how much hope and ambition have you found?' she asked lightly.
I looked to her and grinned, 'Not enough. We know where to look, if it ever seems promising, but I doubt anything worth digging for was left behind, or has survived being left behind in this pile of rotting plywood. Let's go fishing.'
02
We were once more riding deep into the Maig Glen. Deeper than I'd have ventured on my own, given the unpredictable nature of the Rhymer's Gate these days in our current solar storm cycle. Nesta assured me that her picnic and fishing spot was not far shelter if the Gate should suddenly open early. And, she added, she'd brought along plenty to eat, so we'd not starve if we ended up having to wait out even a long storm. And well, it was not yet eleven, so we'd likely be able to fish, lunch and fish some more before any storm would become a factor. Since she spent her youth warning the cousins not to do things too dangerous, (or so she claims) I had to assume that there was indeed, little risk involved.
The glen narrowed as we rode deeper into it, and the hills grew higher, wilder and steeper. And that sense of, well, going back in time, (or approaching the Otherworld) became more intense. I'd become accustomed to it, but the deeper you went into Maig Glen, the bolder the wilderness proclaimed its domain. Rounding a bend in the narrow lane we came upon a herd of deer on the move, dozens of them streaming across the narrow green paddock, splashing through the shallow river and disappearing into the woods at the foot of the steep heather covered hills.
'The Riders on the move,' I said.
'But why?' replied Nesta, watching them.
'To get to the other side?' I suggested.
She politely smiled and we started off again.
I didn't notice the silence before the hairs on my arms and back of my neck started to rise. A jolt of deja vu. I'd felt this way once before.
Alarmed, I glanced to Nesta riding along side. 'Do you feel it? The Gate's field!'
'It can't be,' she said, turning to me, her eyes wide. She began to brake. 'We're still five kilometres away.'
We came to a stop. The silence was complete.
'The solar storms! It must have super charged the Gate. Has it ever reached this far?'
She shook her head, 'It was never beyond where we experienced it before.'
'Oh my,' I muttered, (or words to that effect). 'We need to get clear of this...'
'Yes,' she said simply, and swung her bike around.
We headed back at a fair pace. Within half a minute we could no longer feel the effects of the field, but it was no less frightening. I couldn't imagine how much energy had been collected to extend the field five kilometres out... Or what it would do... Or what we should do. Should people be warned?
It started low several minutes after we turned around. An electrical hum or buzz, deeper than the chirping of crickets, but it grew. And grew, until it filled the glen with an eerie wailing sound that rose and fell in odd cadences. It seemed to come from everywhere, filling the glen with an invisible menace, a heralding of doom.
'Oh my,' I muttered again, adding a louder voice to be heard over the sound, 'What the hell is thi
s?'
'It's known as the Rhymer's pipes or the Rhymer's hounds!'
I glanced at her. 'You've heard it before?'
'Once,' she said, waiting for the wailing to die down a bit. 'A long time ago. But it happens in the glen every once in a while. Rare. But harmless,' she added as the sound and the echoes from the hills closed in on us. Harmless or not, we picked up the pace.
'But what causes it?' I asked choosing my moment when I could be heard.
She shrugged. 'The Rhymer playing his pipes from the Otherworld, or the baying of his Otherworld hounds. Or it's the sound of the sea beating against the western shore, carried and distorted by some freak wind. Or none of the above. Take your choice...'
And then, like that, it was gone, save the last faint echoes from the hills around us. And then the silence was eerie with an invisible menace.
'I've a feeling something is terribly wrong,' I said, my heart beating, my breath short.
She may have smiled ever so slightly. 'You think so?' I'll give Nesta the credit she deserves, she keeps her cool – and gets sarcastic – when things get dangerously strange.
I, on the other hand, get alarmed.
'We'll need to warn...' I began to say when the world grew very bright.
Over us, in the clear blue sky, raced a wave of bright aurora-like light, filling the whole sky – from hill to hill – with an almost blinding electric blue light. Instinctively I glanced back, above the towering hill that we rode under, I could see a vast pillar of electricity rising to the heavens forming a thunder head of pure lightning that branched out in every direction.
'Oh my. Oh my...'
The world grew very silent under that sky of lightning. And then, a sort of electrical shock wave swept over us. It was like being in the field, all my hair stood on end, I felt pricked by a thousand needles as sparks flew everywhere from everything. And then was past us. I veered off the lane and almost took a spill, but managed to land on my feet, which proved fortunate when the crack of thunder hit us with a physical force. I was thrown to the ground by the force of the compressed wave air, where I expected to die.
The veins of lightning raced overhead in pulses, and the thunder continuously echoed back and forth between the hills.
And the air grew thin and hot. I could hardly catch a breath, and it was painful to do so. Death seemed seconds away.
But that too, passed, it probably lasted less than thirty seconds, but time had lost any relevance. It was just flashing blue electric light and, faintly, over the ringing in my ears, a madman pounding on the deep keys of a vast organ with the reverb on. There seemed nothing to do but to lay in the dust and heather.
The wind then veered 180 degrees, this time cooler, and began to build, trying to suck us back towards the Rhymer's Gate.
Half blinded by the dust – I could see lightning with my eyes closed – and mostly deaf, I lay gasping for breath and feeling my heart pound in my chest, too frightened and stunned to move until I thought of Nesta. I opened my eyes and pushed myself up to look about. She had also been thrown off her bike into the narrow ditch alongside the road. She had landed up against some rocks, and was struggling to get free of her bike.
I managed to climb to my feet – I was no more than bruised – and staggered against the wind over to help her. The rising wind began to wail and then shriek, flattening the bushes, bending trees and laying the grass and heather to the ground. I glanced back over the hill, the pillar had been replaced by a dance of ground to cloud, cloud to ground and cloud to cloud lightning strikes in a rapidly rising and spreading cloud.
'Are you all right?' I yelled as I reached her, grabbing her bike and offering a hand.
'I'm grand,' she replied loudly resting her arm on my shoulder as she freed herself of the bike. 'I was going slow enough when I hit the ditch to avoid any serious injury...'
'We need to get clear. Can you ride?'
'Yes, as soon as I get my bike back on the track.'
As soon as I helped her do that, I raced back to my bike and it picking up, joined her. 'We'll never be able to ride against this wind,' I yelled over it. 'Hopefully it'll die down shortly,' I added.
She nodded, 'The shed we took shelter in the first night is just up the way. We can find shelter there if things don't get worse... she yelled over the wind.'
I nodded and we started jogging down the lane driving our bikes, heads bowed to shelter them from the wind and blowing branches and debris. We'd need shelter soon. The lightning continued to strobe and the world grew dark as the rolling bank of clouds began to build and spread across the sky, hiding the sun. The wind towards Scathroy Lodge was no doubt a response to the air about the lab being heated by the tremendous electrical outburst and rising high into the atmosphere, its moisture now forming the clouds rolling low overhead.
After several minutes the wind had settled down enough for us to make better time riding, so we mounted up and set off. I began to grow optimistic that we weren't going to die just yet. Which was a mistake.
'Sandy,' Nesta called out, and slowing, pointing back behind us. 'The Riders!'
I braked and glanced back. The glen at this point was still narrow and the hills steep. Looking back, I saw the dark green of the woods and the purple brown of the hills speckled with bright points of moving lights. Hundreds of them. A horde. The “True Riders” had been released from the Gates of the Otherworld. Intensely bright and shooting sparks, they were racing through the glen towards us, bounding, zigzagging, rising far into the air, racing away from the lab driven by some unseen force. They may've been a couple of kilometres behind us but were shooting towards us.
'Oh, my!' I exclaimed again glancing about. 'Shelter and fast.' The cottage couldn't be too far ahead.
'Oh my!' echoed Nesta (or words to that effect), as the first of the brilliant plasma spheres of hissing electricity shot out from beyond the curve at the foot of the hill we'd just passed, not a hundred metres behind us.
'Hurry!' I exclaimed, standing on the pedals as half a dozen more appeared before I turned and concentrated on steering.
We bent low and pushed hard, leaping ahead, but even as we did, a hissing ball of electric plasma shot by us, not ten metres off – far larger and brighter than the one I'd knocked away before. I glanced behind again, Riders, like angry hornets, were pouring around the bend, swooping, soaring, zigzagging, following some twisted path against the still strong wind.
'We're never going to make it!” I yelled.
'The burn!' she yelled back and swerved her bike to the side of the road just before a narrow bridge. I followed her and, jumping off my bike, stumbled after her down the steep bank, slipping and sliding in the tall grass and over mossy rocks.
'Stay out of the water,' I exclaimed over the roar of the thunder. 'It'll carry a shock if one of the bolts strikes the stream!'
Even as we scurried and clung as close as we could to the stream bank we saw several hissing Riders shoot over us, zigzagging erratically. Our movement seemed to attract them, so we froze and they slipped out of sight, to be followed by more, and then more overhead and all about.
I put my arm around her and drew her close. We’d die together or not at all.
'I'm all right,' she said quietly, barely audible in the constant rattle and rumble of thunder.
'I'm not,' I replied. The simple truth.
We clung to the steepest part of the bank, almost under the bridge, while we caught our breath as the blazing stragglers slowly drifted overhead, as if blindly searching for us.
It grew as dark as night, the incessant flickering of lightning growing starker in the thick gloom.
And then, just as the last of the Riders seemed to have drifted off, a new sound, different from the thunder, a sort of pounding hiss, grew ever louder.
'What's that?' I asked.
'The Rhymer's hounds, or the warhorse of the warriors pounding out of the Otherworld to reclaim this one,' she replied, in my ear and then added, 'Or maybe it's rain.'
>
I gave her a look of envy. She seemed undaunted. Glen Lonon had raised a true daughter of the Highlands.
As she suggested, it proved to be neither the hounds nor horsemen, but a cold rain pounding that fell like a solid wall as it reached us. We had to bow our heads and hold our hands over our mouths to breath for the first half minute to avoid drowning. The lightning continued to flash and crash around us, but by now that was of no concern. The threat of just ordinary lightning seemed almost trivial.
'Time to go?' I asked as the rain let up to an ordinary downpour.
'I think so,' she replied.
We pushed ourselves off the bank and turned to climb the now slippery slope when the burn began to churn and bound, rapidly rising within seconds to tugging at our legs. Next to me Nesta slipped back down, unable to find solid footing on the mossy rock she was trying to climb.
In a panic I knew we needed to get clear or be swept away. 'Your foot! I yelled, crouching down and making a cup with my hands just over the surface of the water. She lifted a foot, and grabbing it, I boosted her up with all my panic enhanced might. She shot up over the mossy rock and scrambled up a bit further before stopping and looking back as I searched for a foothold, clinging to a handful of grass to keep from being entirely swept away. I found a foothold and lifted myself half a metre up, but with the rapidly rising flood, I was still almost waist deep. I looked for my next handhold, which proved to be Nesta's hand. A glance showed me that she was clinging to a bush above her, so I took her hand and pulled myself up another step, and then, quickly two more to settle beside her just ahead of the rising water. We scrambled up the rest of the way to the top of the bank.
Looking around, I could hardly see fifty metres in any direction in the pounding rain and the constant dance of lightning.
'The cottage,' Nesta said leaning close so I could hear her, 'It's just ahead, beyond the bridge.'
I nodded, and we collected our bikes from the tall grass and jogged across the bridge over the roaring brown waters that were now threatening to sweep over the bridge itself and fought our way slowly up the lane against the rain and wind – the lane more of a river than a road in the flickering gloom, the atmosphere, more water than air, it seemed.
It took us perhaps five minutes to reach the stone fence of the deserted cottage and the shed where we had taken shelter in that night, long ago.
Through the downpour we could see thin wraths of smoke coming from the shed and smell smouldering wet wool, and flesh. The open shed doors faced the west and apparently one or more of the ball lightning had found its way in.
'Oh my,' said Nesta, leaning her bike against the stone fence at the gate. 'I need to look in on that.'
'Why?' I asked, knowing what we'd find.
'Because I'm a doctor and there may be a shepherd or farm hand in there as well. You needn't come.'
'Oh,' I said, and followed her across the muddy yard to the open shed.
Inside there were six or seven dead sheep, several of them burnt and smouldering. The others just lying still. Either only a few sheep had made it to the shed before the Riders had struck, or most of them had managed to get out when things got dicey. Thankfully we only found sheep, so we didn't linger, but collected our bikes and made our way to the abandoned cottage.
The cottage had been fairly substantial in its day, and when they had converted it to a sheep shelter, they had kept the front room closed off from the sheep by a barred gate, so we had a room of our own. We wheeled the bikes in and I looked about. The small front room had only a long bench against the inside wall, and we settled on to that, shoulder to shoulder.
With the release of some of the urgency, I needed to take a few breaths to fight the fear I had ignored.
'All's well that ends well,' sighed Nesta.
I glanced at her next to me in the flickering light. Drenched, dishevelled, streaked with mud and grass stains, she looked like something the cat had dragged in on a rainy day. Still, she had managed to save her glasses for once, and wore a faint smile and seemed, for reasons that escaped me, happy. All's well? I hadn't reached that point yet and didn't know what to say.
'We're still alive, anyway,' I admitted after a moment's thought. 'But I'm not sure we're out of the woods yet.'
'This is of the destruction of the Rhymer's Gate,' she said. 'The worst is over.'
'Ah,' I thought. 'Perhaps, but then again, it might have just reflected the intensity of the solar storm that triggered it. We know it had been accumulating far more energy than normal, so that the release would be far more spectacular than normal as well...' I replied, thinking out loud. 'But you're probably right,' I added trying to strike a brighter note. 'I certainly hope so.'
'We'll check it out after the rain stops.'
'We certainly won't,' I replied. 'Not today.'
'I'll check it out after the rain stops,' she retorted.
'We'll check it out,' I muttered.
We sat watching the lightning flicker. The rain was now tapering off.
'Thanks for helping me up the bank by the burn,' she said after a while. We were both no doubt reviewing the frantic events of the last twenty minutes.
'I just wanted you out of my way,' I replied, 'And thanks for the hand. I don't know if I could've made it up the bank without it.'
'If I'd known you just wanted me out of the way, I wouldn't have offered it,' she replied with a teasing haughtiness.
We shared a grin.
I felt her shiver.
'I need to get out of these sopping wet clothes,' she said.
'Did you bring a change of clothes?' I asked, only half kidding.
She smiled. 'Making you nervous, Say? No, but I do have my rain gear, and I think it's still mild enough to get by with just that. They'd certainly be more comfortable than walking about dripping like I've spent a week in the loch.'
'Aye, like the Loch Nesta....' she gave me a shove.
'Right,' I said, pushing myself to my feet, and walked over to my bike. 'It's a good idea. I think I'll change too.'
She rose and gave me a look.
'Making you nervous, Mackenzie?' I asked.
'I see it all every day,' she replied, adding with an amused look, 'Are you as cold as I am?'
Certain she'd call any bluff, I said, 'I'm not a doctor, or not that type of doctor anyway. I am, however an English gentleman, so I'll change with the sheep, call me when you're done.'
'Coward,' she muttered just loud enough to be heard over the receding rumble of thunder.
I climbed over the bars to reach the larger sections of the house. The ball lightning had not penetrated this shed, (its door a smaller target and facing at a right angle to the charge of the horde) but it was, however, tightly packed with wet, vaguely concerned sheep who greeted me with a chorus of “baas” and shifted about to give me just enough space to quickly strip, don the pants and jacket of the thin rain suit and then wring out my clothes.
'Any time,' Nesta called some five minutes later.
She was dressed in the dark green pants and jacket of the rain gear, and had apparently stepped outside to wash off, since her face was clean and her hair pulled back and looped into a bun at the base of her neck. Briefly the world lighted up, but I'll blame that on the break in the clouds that let the sunlight back in to the glen. We stood by the window, its glass cracked but still in place and watched the rain taper off and the sun find its way more and more often through the straggling clouds of the storm that tore by overhead. Less than five minutes later the rain had stopped and the storm was a blue smudge to the east, the thunder a distant rumble.
We stepped out into the yard and looked about. Branches had been scattered about the yard and countryside. Looking to the south, we could see the Maig river, brown with rainwater overflowing into the paddocks, but otherwise the world seemed unchanged.
'I think we can get on our way,' she said.
'Do you really think it's wise?'
'We know what to expect, and after t
his storm, there can't be much left if the Gate wasn't destroyed. And I want to know,' adding with a shrug, 'I'm curious, and hopeful...'
'Right,' I said. She'd go without me and I wasn't going to allow that.
Before we left, we draped our wet clothes over the stone wall in front of the cottage to give the newly emerging sun a chance to dry them off a bit before we returned. I couldn't help but notice that Nesta seemed to have placed all her clothes on the wall...
The lane was littered with leaves and branches and waterlogged with water coming off the hills in streams and little waterfalls, so progress was slow. We reached the gate half an hour later, and abandoning the bikes, continued on.
It was still very silent, save for the dripping of the trees and the rush overflowing burns down through the forest where many trees had been blown down – the lake was littered with debris – or shattered by lightning, some still smouldered despite the downpour. Nesta pointed out the thin column of smoke or steam rising from, or from behind, Scathroy Lodge across the loch.
'See, that's never happened before. Nothing ever happens close to the lodge except for the discharge of lightning. Most likely it's the lab.'
'We'll see,' I replied. I was refusing to get my hopes up. I'd no basis for knowing one way or the other, and I've been burned by unwarranted optimism. It could be the lodge smouldering rather than the lab. One could only imagine what it was like when that vast column of electricity was released and then the horde of ball lightning. We had to make several detours around big branches, but eventually we arrived at the factor's house, and began our approach to the lodge.
The grounds had been torn apart, the azalea and rhododendron bushes where bent and shredded of most of their leaves. The tall grass was flat, and showed long streaks of burnt grass and charred shrubs, but the lodge still stood, scarred and stained, its roof slates littering the grounds, but looked mostly undamaged.
We, or I anyway, advanced cautiously towards the lodge – the silence was familiar, but the field was missing. We reached the building and started around it to reach the lab.
Nesta was growing ever more optimistic, but I remained cautious until I saw the scene on the far side of the lodge. Steaming debris lay scattered about the grounds. There were twisted pieces of metal siding, the walls and roof of the lab flung a hundred metres from the lab. There were tangled strands of cable, still hot enough to sizzle when a drop of water was brushed on them and charred smoking pieces of lumber and branches from the pines surrounding the lab. The pines were either blown down or stripped of most of their branches. We made our way through this maze of debris towards the lab. Or rather to where the lab had stood. It was now no more than a blackened concrete slab, the coils of high tension wire scattered and melted, a few big transformers lay about, flung ten or more metres from where they had been installed. There was no hint of the field, so we walked right up the slab of the former lab and looked about.
'I think the Gate is closed,' said Nesta softly.
'Having been here several months, I rather doubt that,' I said, looking about.
She glanced at me. 'How can you say that looking at this?'
I shrugged. 'Oh, this is certainly finished, but I rather doubt this will put an end to the Rhymer's Gate and the Riders of legend. The locals may perhaps admit that the gate is closed – but only for now. Rhymer will be back someday and I suspect the Otherworld will never be far from here...'
'Ha!' she said, but didn't deny it.
She insisted we go through the lodge to make sure there were no fires smouldering inside, it was after all, or would be, her property someday. The energy field kept every spider, rat, mouse, and bat away. However, the windows had been blown out decades ago allowing the four seasons to find their way into the house, so it was damp, mouldy, and even mossy inside. This damp atmosphere was likely a major factor in preserving the lodge from being burned down decades ago. Plus, Nesta said being so close to the fountain-head of the storms, most of the cloud to ground lightning struck further afield. We did, however, find several smouldering pieces from the lab blown through the windows that we gingerly tossed back outside.
Outside the locked “TTR's study” she knocked several times and called out 'Grandpa?' She tried to make it a joke, but I could sense a certain low level of belief in the stories they had invented. 'Perhaps the keys are still somewhere in the butler's pantry,' she added when, much to my relief anyway, TTR failed to answer.
'I don't think that's necessary,' I said, 'The study is on the opposite side of the lodge from the lab.'
'Don't you want to meet TTR himself?' she asked with a smile.
No, I didn't, but rather than admit that, I said, 'With Clan Lonon coming next week, I'm sure they'd be very angry with you if you entered the locked study before them.'
'Chicken,' she said.
'You know I'm right,' I replied.
'This time.'
03
There were two men standing about in the yard in front of the cottage when we approached. When they saw us they waved, calling out a greeting.
We waved back, and as we pulled up at the gate I recognized one of them as Jock McCay.
'Ah, there you are, M’lady. We were very worried about you.' he exclaimed as we dismounted. 'We'd seen you two riding up the road and did'na think you'd come back down, and it being quite the storm, we was worried.'
'Hello Jock, Mac,' said Nesta with a nod to each. 'Aye, it was a storm indeed, but we're just fine.'
'Me and Mac here came down to look for ya, and well, when we found yon clothing, we sort of hailed you, but not getting any answer, did'na know what to do next,' he said, with a straight a face, or as straight a face as he could manage anyway.
'I can imagine,' Nesta said dryly. 'I appreciate your discretion, but Say and I failed to make the shelter before getting soaked to the skin, so we changed into our rain gear and went for a ride to give our clothes a chance to dry a bit.'
'Aye,' said Jock, dryly. 'That's what we thought.' A transparent lie.
Nesta gave him a look, but decided to say nothing more. (The balance of the blackmail accounts may have shifted a little.) She turned and stepping over to the clothes on the stones, and collecting them said, 'Well, not exactly dry, but not too damp either. I think I'll get dressed.'
After she had entered the cottage Jock turned to me. 'Quite the storm. Looks like lightning somehow got into yon shed. There's many a downed sheep all about between here and the Minton.'
'Ball lightning, or what you might know as the Riders,' I said. 'Came down the glen like a pack of hounds. Scared the shit out of me. We're lucky to be alive.'
Jock nodded grimly. 'When we saw all the sheep down in the fields, we were getting scared. They usually know when to take shelter, so it had to happen fast... Didn't know what to expect,' he said, and then with a grin added, 'We didn't expect to find your laundry on the line, so to speak.'
'I suppose not. But it made sense to get out of our sopping wet clothes since we had our rain gear to wear.'
'And then you went for a ride...' he said, or asked with a sly grin.
All the hands knew something about Scathroy and the Gate, so there was no point in being coy. And the news I had would be good news to all.
'We rode to Scathroy Lodge, since that seemed to be the centre of the storm,' I said, carefully. 'Lady Nesta was curious to see what damage it did to the old lodge.'
'Ah, and was it damaged?' he asked, watching me shrewdly.
'The lodge itself is just waterlogged and mouldy, but one of the out buildings, a large metal shed was completely destroyed. Nothing left but still hot scattered pieces of the shed and a charred concrete slab.'
'Ah, is that so now?' he said with a knowing glance. 'Destroyed completely, you say.'
I nodded, adding off handily, 'I'd not be too surprised if the Maig Glen storms became rather rare.'
'Aye, that would be a blessing, for sure,' he agreed with a smile, and stood about pondering the implications a bit.
'And Jock,' I began, sorting out in my head what I wanted to say.
'Aye, Sandy?'
'I just want to say to both of you that Lady Nesta is very good, kind, and an amazing brave woman. I never met her mother, but I'm sure she's more of her mother's daughter than her father's. And well, I don't know what the staff says or thinks about Nesta's friendship with me, but I'm here to tell you straight off that we're only friends, not lovers. I know this,' I indicated my clothes on the wall with a nod, 'might imply something different, but it's not the case. I'm an honorary cousin and no more. I don't suppose Lady Nesta gives this much of a thought, but I'd hate to have anyone think any less of her because of her kindness to me. She's Renny Lonsdale's fiancée, and neither she nor I have done a thing we couldn't tell Renny about face to face.'
'Aye, I believe you', Jock hastily assured me. 'She was always the sensible one. Some of the other, well, they were wild and young back then. But you can count on us to be in Lady Nesta's corner if anyone should say otherwise. But we do treasure her, so you needn't worry,' he added.
'Thanks,' I said with a nod to each.
We chatted a little more on what the storm was like up the glen until Nesta joined us, and I took my turn getting dressed. The old estate Landrover and an electric lorry were pulling up as I stepped out.
Maude Munro stepped out of the Landrover and looked grimly about. 'Glad to see you two are safe and sound. Bad business though, sheep down all up and down the glen.'
'Anyone hurt?' asked Nesta. 'How did Glen Lonon fare?'
'No one hurt that I'm aware of. Trees down, some of the paddocks along the rivers are flooded at Glen Lonon, but otherwise unharmed,' she said, and turning to the shed, 'I take it there's sheep in there that need attending to...'
As she, Nesta and Jock walked off to assess the damage and make plans to deal with the victims of the storm, Guy, who'd been at the wheel of the Landrover came up beside me.
'We were right worried about you, lad, when we heard at Minton that you were up in the glen. Glad you're okay.'
'Touch and go, Guy, touch and go. There were a few minutes back there that I didn't think we'd make it.'
He hesitated. I knew what was on his mind, so I said, 'Nesta was curious, so we had a look in at Scathroy. Nothing standing any more but a concrete slab. Unless we're dealing with some geological feature or the supernatural, I think the gate has been slammed shut by that last storm.'
'Ah,' he said. 'Stories are fine, but it will be far less worrisome for a lot of people if that has been finally laid to rest.'
'Well we walked all the way to where the lab was without a tingle of the field, so I'm optimistic.'
We did not arrive back in Glen Lonon until evening. Nesta as the family member on the scene along with Maude, had to make all the decisions and oversee the operation to collect and bury the sheep killed by lightning and drowned by the flash flood along the Maig River.
We were both exhausted by the day, and said our good nights soon after we arrived home. I did a little work on the project and brought my journal up to date, before retiring for bed. This was a summer I'd not likely forget for many reasons. I hope I don't get as close to dying as I did today for years and years to come. I don't think I'm cut out for life beyond the pale.
