Outsider (Time of Myths: Shapeshifter Sagas Book 4)

by Natasha Brown

  Creag walked alone through the moonlight to the old home and his place amongst the ponies in the byre. When he lay down on the hay-strewn ground and covered himself with his plaid, he couldn’t stop thinking about Kristie. Thoughts of her filled his mind until he began to wish for nightmares from his past so he might be freed from her memory.

  It became clear to him that sleep would not come so long as he held onto thoughts of her. Before the sun appeared over the horizon, he gathered what needed to be deposited at Kristie’s door and left it outside the threshold. Creag touched his hand to the stony exterior of the home and sighed.

  He moved down the slope to the loch, weaving between the trees. His leather shoes threatened to slip over the slick rocks that lined the shore, but nothing would slow him from his course. Creag continued along the shoreline until he stepped over a rotting log that stretched down to the water’s edge, the place she’d found him lying unconscious and injured.

  He pulled off his shoes. Then his belt, plaid and tunic followed. They were folded neatly and stacked in a pile. He supposed it wouldn’t be long before she found them. Maybe it was his way of telling her subtly that he was more than just a man. Without a stitch or a possession, he stepped into the cold waters of the loch, submerging himself up to his chest.

  Creag gave one last look at the Highlands and the place he’d called home since he’d awoken in Kristie’s byre so many weeks ago. He thought of the form of the seal, recalled swimming through the waters as if he’d been born to them. Tingling coursed across his skin while the change took place.

  In moments, he was floating on his blubbery back on the surface of the loch. He tucked himself into a ball and rolled under the gentle, lapping waves. He was leaving to find his brother, and that would take all his focus. Creag pushed aside thoughts of Kristie and began to swim.

  Time was lost to him as he spent his day combing the length and depths of the loch. He turned toward the rocky inlet and the open sea. The waves increased in height and strength with the power of the winds. He thought he saw a dark form moving that might have been a seal, but it was just a school of fish holding together in tight ranks.

  The skies grew darker from a blanket of dark clouds casting out from the horizon. The sun was lost from sight, though he sensed it must have been touching the ocean’s end. Pointed upright, he let himself be carried through the waves.

  A deep rumble echoed above him, so he slipped beneath the surface again where it was quieter. He thought he detected the sound of rain beginning to slap against the swells, and he remembered his dreams of bloodied waters.

  Another loud clap sounded, but it was distant and muffled. With the sudden noise, something clicked inside of him. A rush of memories flooded his thoughts. It was too much to absorb all at once.

  Creag thought back to the start of it all, swimming through the sea with the fast, sleek form of a seal beside him. He knew it wasn’t just any seal: it was his younger brother, Niall. His brother loved to race him through the water. Maybe that was because Niall always beat him.

  Rain pecked at the surface of the sea like birds feeding off of seeds on an unharrowed field, much as it was doing just then. His brother slowed down ahead of him and rose to the surface to let him catch up when it happened.

  His brother’s body jerked unnaturally before a bloom of red tainted the sea. A long wooden pole stuck out from Niall’s neck, and a metal point came out the other end. His brother’s lower body flailed for a moment before going limp in the current.

  A strange noise escaped Creag’s chest and muzzle, and he raced to catch up to Niall, but his brother’s body continued to get pulled away by a rope that was tied to the end of the spear. Creag swam as fast as he could through the increasingly rough waves, breaking the surface beside his brother. Without hesitation, he changed back to his human form so he could grab hold of Niall’s listless body.

  The sound of the rain and storm raged in his ears. Wind whistled past, bringing with it surging swells that lifted and dropped them in the current. Creag’s hands closed around his brother’s body. The spear tugged away, threatening to yank Niall from his grasp. Creag’s screams were lost in the gale, though he was determined not to let the weapon take Niall, so he pulled it from his brother’s slick gray hide.

  More blood spilled into the sea while he cried out, “Niall! Dinnae leave me!”

  The seal’s round, black eyes stared sightlessly into the sky as Creag held his brother to him. A large gash exposed pink flesh on Niall’s neck. The memory of it took Creag up short, and he stared disbelievingly into the dark waters of the sea.

  There was shouting, though it wasn’t his. He recalled squinting through the storm at the boat getting carried up and over the swells and the two men on board. One held the end of the spear with lengths of rope in his lap, while the other gripped an oar. Both were drenched from the fat droplets pummeling down from the sky.

  He’d let go of his brother when anger stirred in his chest. Creag swam closer to the leather-wrapped boat and tried grabbing hold of the edge, roaring, “Ye killed my brother!”

  Wide eyes stared back at him in shock, and the pain of that night deepened.

  Creag tried to push the tragedy away. He didn’t want to remain under the sea. It was too much.

  He came back up to the surface. The quiet the ocean provided under its waves was broken. Rain tapped down on his head, and the skies continued to rumble as if the heavens knew what had been revealed to him. Creag swam past the rocky teeth that lifted from the bottom of the sea until he reached the nearest shore at the inlet of the loch.

  His body was heavy out of water, though not as weighted as his heart. He lay out on the rocks, not wanting to move. Creag pinched his eyes shut to force out the rain. Nothing could rid him of his memories now that they were exposed. Nothing could take away the pain of realizing his brother had been killed by the hands of Domnall and Hendrie. Nothing.

  Without the energy or ability to cast it away, he continued to relive that night. He could see it in his mind, as vivid as if it had just happened. Rough waves lifted the boat, and him with it. Turning them sideways to the swells. Creag pulled on the edge of the currach while cursing the two fishermen inside. Then he looked up into an immense wave before it tossed the craft over.

  The sound of roaring silence filled his ears as he was rolled and yanked deep into the current. Without any control of his body, he collided full force into the rocky spires that reached up from the sea floor, hidden below the surface of the sea. His head slammed against the jagged rocks, and the memory quickly faded away.

  He remembered more than just that stormy night. Creag was given an understanding of who he was. He was born of Beathan, a woman left on her own to raise two boys. When she passed away a year ago, it was Niall who wanted to return to the sea. To live as their father had. Creag wasn’t fond of leaving the land for good, but he wished to remain with his little brother and only kin.

  Though he couldn’t have named himself better than Jock had. He was not Creag, but Rònan. In truth, he was a man with no kin and nothing to his name. Alone.

  Rònan rolled onto his side, noticing the rain had stopped, and blinked up at the sky. The mottled gray and white clouds began to part, revealing a tiny sliver of blue. He closed his eyes again and wondered how he could live with the truth of his past. How he could survive with this pain in his heart?

  Kristie lay awake for what felt like all night, although she must have found sleep at some point because she woke up from the sounds of the bairn. His soft cries were muffled, presumably when Jean put him to her breast.

  For a brief moment she was happy. That is, until she realized she would not find Creag working in the field or gazing out at the loch. He would be gone, for she’d told him to go without a farewell. She swallowed the truth and sat up to start a fire in their new hearth.

  Through the dim, she observed a stack of dried peat bricks lining the wall beside the door. She hadn’t noticed he’d replenished their sup
ply. He must have done it while she was hard at work at some other task, too preoccupied to notice. Kristie sighed and tried to push him from her mind.

  She started the fire and their morning meal when Jean walked over to their wooden table where Kristie was working and yawned. Eoghan wasn’t on her hip or sleeping in her arms. Her sister-in-law gestured to the shadowy corner partition where her bed was before whispering, “The lad is spent from his long night.”

  “Best let him sleep, then,” Kristie answered in hushed tones.

  “For a bit, but then I may wake him so he does nay keep me up all evening. Did ye go collect the morning dew? The first day of summer is sure to freshen our tired skin.” Jean went to fetch some watered-down ale to have with their meal.

  Kristie shook her head. “Nay. Had not thought of it—only the chores that are left for doing.”

  Jean handed her a filled cup and stared at her a moment before taking a sip. “Ye look tired. Are ye all right? Back late, were ye?”

  In response Kristie shrugged and rubbed the skin beneath her eyes. “Got carried away, I suppose.”

  “Did ye?” Jean asked with a wry smile and tucked a strand of her pale hair behind her ear. “Ye think Creag will be sleeping still? I was hoping he could repair my drying rack—it broke when I moved it yesterday.”

  “I dinnae think ye will be seeing him ’round here.”

  Jean frowned. “Oh?”

  “It was time for him to go search for his kin—his brother. Ye remember me telling ye?” Kristie avoided looking at her, trying to hide her disappointment.

  “Hmm, that be sooner than I was expecting. I thought he might find a reason to stay.”

  Kristie felt her sister-in-law’s eyes on her, so she did her best to mask her emotions and smiled at her. “What comes with the wind goes out with the water.”

  She turned away to place a round of flattened dough on the cooking stone and pretended to be too busy to talk. Jean picked up on her unspoken signal that the conversation was over and went to put on her dress and plaid.

  They ate in silence until Jean went to the door. “Ye may not feel ye need the magic of May’s summer dew, but I do—oh, what is this?”

  Kristie looked at her in the open doorway. “Oh, he said he made something for Jock.”

  The soft yellow glow of sunlight poured into the darkened room, and at Jean’s feet she saw the glint of her knife and something else. She got up and went to get a better look. Her sister-in-law stepped out of the way as Kristie bent over to pick up her dirk and the beautiful knee-high carving beside it.

  “Does that say ‘Seonaid’? How lovely,” Jean murmured from beside her.

  Tears flowed down Kristie’s cheeks as she stared at the wooden grave marker. Shapes twisted up from its base. She recognized the form of the bluebells immediately. Above their hanging floral heads, her daughter’s name was carved vertically into the upright beam.

  She couldn’t say a thing. She only stood there, holding the gift in silence. Kristie stared outside, looking toward their old home and the shadowy back end of the byre. In her heart, she knew he was gone. Departed without a farewell just as she’d asked.

  “This must be for Jock,” Jean said. She’d leaned down to pick up something on the ground Kristie had missed and handed it to her.

  Kristie stared at the carved wooden seal and smiled through her tears, knowing how much the lad would appreciate the gift.

  “I have to go,” she muttered and tucked her dirk under her belt and slipped the seal between the folds of her plaid. She hurried to the animal shed to collect one of the ponies.

  Kristie’s eyes lingered on the musty byre where Creag had once slept. She slipped a bridle onto one of the nags and pulled herself up, careful not to drop the length of wood cradled in her arms. With it balanced across her lap, she guided the pony out from the shadows and started off across the field.

  Her mind was kept busy while she set off for the kirk. Smoke lingered on the breeze, and memories from last night filled her mind. Maybe she should have felt guilt for lying with a man who would never be her husband, but she didn’t. It might have been the magic of the night welcoming the start of summer that had pushed her to act. Or maybe she was weak. Either way, it gave her happiness to think of. With so little pleasure in her life, she clung to thoughts of Creag like a starving beggar might cling to a life-sustaining meal.

  The day slipped past as she tended her daughter’s grave. She used her dirk to cut at the roots beneath the earth’s surface so she could secure the beautifully carved marker into the ground. Her dirt-covered hands pressed into the soil to pack it down while she hummed a tune that lifted her spirits. No longer did she feel so alone; she felt her daughter’s presence in her heart.

  She whispered prayers over her brother’s and Hendrie’s graves as she paused to pay them a visit. They may not have remained in the flesh, but they were near enough in spirit, or so she felt. She might have imagined Domnall teasing her over her attachment to Creag, a fellow who had little interest in fishing. It made her smile thinking of it.

  Clouds blanketed the sky before she returned to her pony. The deep rumbling overhead made the creature nervous, but it heeded Kristie’s direction as she rode it home. Rain pelted the ground like pebbles dropping against the earth. She pulled her plaid up to cover her head while they went, wondering at the wet spring and hoping it would not ruin the crop.

  By the time she spotted Eileanor’s roof, the storm had eased, and a touch of blue appeared between the wisps of clouds moving across the heavens. Kristie led the pony to their neighbor’s house with the intention of giving the carving to Jock, just as she’d promised.

  Her relationship with Eileanor had improved measurably since the wake, yet Kristie still hoped she could find the lad without his aunt being present. She neared their land when soft melodic sounds met her ears. She followed the sound of the music, expecting to find the lad, and she wasn’t disappointed.

  Sitting inside the darkened shadow of the neighbor’s animal shed with his psaltery clutched in his arms was Jock. When he saw her, he raised his eyebrows and without stopping his song, he sang, “Good day, love-ly Kristie.”

  She smiled back at him as she dismounted the nag and led the animal closer to the lad. Now that Kristie was there, she wasn’t sure what to say to him. He’d known that Creag wasn’t staying, that he would be leaving any time. And she knew just how fond Jock was of him.

  Kristie slipped her hand into the folds of her plaid to pull out the carved seal and knelt down beside Jock. He stopped playing his instrument to ask, “What do ye have there?”

  She took a slow breath and answered, “Creag left it—asked me to give it to ye.”

  The lad looked up at her. “So he left, then.”

  She held it out to him. He took the palm-sized piece of wood from her hands and lifted it up to give it a closer look and smiled. “I will nay need this to remember him by, but it was a kind thing just the same.”

  Kristie was surprised by his attitude. She’d expected a little more sadness or disappointment from the lad. Jock seemed to notice her confusion and asked, “What bothers ye?”

  “I just thought ye would be down—with Creag leaving and all,” she answered.

  Jock’s brows furrowed as he appeared to give it some thought before responding, and when he did, he spoke carefully. “I will be missing him, to be sure. But the thing is—I have a lot of experience with losing folk who be important to me. I may be a young lad, but I have given it a lot of thought. Ye see, if ye cannae believe ye will ever see him again, then it truly be a sorrowful day. But I have been blessed with a colorful imagination—Pa used to tell me so when I was a wee thing—and I can imagine us together again, playing ’round. Ye just have to believe.”

  Kristie shook her head with a sigh. “I dinnae know how ye came to be so wise, young Jock, but I will heed yer advice. I will just have to believe that I will be seeing him walking up from the loch after having a bathe, wearing one of hi
s crooked grins. Thank ye.”

  “Sure enough,” Jock said and plucked a few strings. “Who knows, if ye believe in it hard enough, it might just happen. Yer voice may be carried to the fairies on this first day of summer.”

  She rustled his hair and stood up. “Sure they have better things to do than answer my wishes. See ye ’round, lamb.”

  He nodded and began to play his song again with the back of his head resting on the wall of the animal shed. She mounted her pony and urged it away from the neighbor’s farm.

  In no time she arrived home and removed the bridle from the pony. She watched it have a drink from the trough at the byre. This was it. The new start of another life. She would have to adjust to not having Creag there—the outsider who had frustrated her to no end from the very start.

  Kristie began to walk back to the new home when she thought about what Jock had said. A voice in her head pushed her to take a stroll down at the loch, so she wandered down the slope, past the trees, until she reached the water’s edge. The water was as gray as charcoal, though the clouds were reflected like smudges on its surface. She continued along the shoreline, breathing in the damp, salty air.

  Before long, she stepped over a soggy downed tree trunk. Just beyond it, in the place she’d found his naked body, was a neatly stacked pile of clothing. Kristie hurried over to it and lifted the plaid. These were the clothes she’d given Creag, but she could not understand it. Why would he leave them on the shore?

  She nuzzled her cheek against the woolen tartan. She could still smell him on the fabric. Kristie imagined his steel-gray eyes and playful smirk. Jock’s words repeated in her thoughts: ye just have to believe.

  The water rippled, drawing her attention. She looked up, assuming a fish was responsible, but saw nothing. She was about to return home when a dark shape bobbed above the surface of the loch. It had a smooth, glossy head, and its dark eyes stared out at her.