Begin Where We Are

by Knightley, Diana

  I leaned over to see, trying to make sense of it. The man was attaching a bundle of something to the gate at the front of the—

  “It’s a bomb, Magnus, we need everyone away from the front of the castle now. Off these walls.”

  Magnus began urgently waving his arms to get the attention of the other men up and down the parapet. “Get off the walls!” He yelled over the racket of the insane machines below, “Get away from the front gate!”

  We crouched and ran along the wall to the far opposite corner when the drone emerged again to shoot from above. Magnus ducked, pulled me to a stop, and stood and shot at the drone until it fell and crashed against the bricks below. “Run, run, run,” he yelled.

  We escaped into the tower stairwell, and fled down toward the ground floor below. I was tripping and sliding behind Magnus.

  As we emerged from the stairwell a deafening explosion knocked me back against the bricks. My ears were ringing. Magnus threw his arms across me protectively. “Are ye okay, Kaitlyn?”

  I clutched his shoulder. “I think so.”

  Then the vehicle that set the bomb drove over the rubble through the dust and mayhem and right into the middle of the castle. Magnus shoved me into an alcove. “Stay here!”

  He rushed toward the edges of the courtyard where the other men were stationed. I covered my ears and watched as a drone dipped and flew around inside the courtyard shooting indiscriminately.

  Magnus from one side, Sean from another, Liam in a far corner, and more men fired and threw rocks until finally the first vehicle driver was slumped over in his seat. But a second vehicle drove over the ruins of the gate, entered the courtyard, and began spinning wildly, its machine guns shooting at anything that moved or didn’t. Hunks of brick crumbled from the walls. A wooden eave fell to the ground in splinters.

  I escaped into the stairwell and a moment later Magnus was behind me. “Go up, go up!” At the top of the stairs Magnus yelled, “Go tae the Great Hall, Kaitlyn, get Master Quentin, tell him we need him in the courtyard.” He flung the door open and I raced.

  I was running with all my might terrified — what were we going to do? Quentin rushed to meet me. I was panting and could barely speak. “Magnus, he needs — down—” I pointed at the stairwell. “Courtyard.”

  Quentin said, “You stay here.”

  “No. Not. I’m with Magnus.” I followed him stumbling down the steps. “Careful—” I warned as he stuck his head around the wall to scope the action.

  “Shit, that’s some fucked up shit, Katie.” The noise was deafening — shooting, yelling, the engines, bricks crashing. Quentin held a pistol. “We are seriously outgunned.” He looked back around the wall for a second. “Of course this is cool as fuck. A science fiction battle in a medieval castle. Awesome.”

  Magnus raced over to us from across the courtyard. “There is a weapon ye could use, Master Quentin — would ye ken how tae?” The courtyard was full of rubble. A vehicle was spinning and shooting but another one sat idle in the middle of the havoc.

  “I can figure it out.”

  The noise was so loud I was sure it was destroying my eardrums.

  Magnus yelled, “Ye will have tae figure it quickly, three more ridin’ machines are outside. They are circlin’ and will come inside in a moment. Can ye get tae the weapon?”

  Quentin looked around the wall and pulled back. “I can get to it while the other is turned away.”

  Sean raced into the stairwell with us. “What is happening, Magnus?”

  “Tis a war from my kingdom, Sean. I canna explain more. Quentin says he can ride one of the weapons. Twill help tae have a—”

  I clutched his arm. “We have to go, Magnus. They’re after you.”

  “I canna leave my family—”

  Quentin said, “You can, you have to. They’re following the vessels. It’s what you said, they track the vessels.”

  I said, “You know you can’t stay. We have to go.”

  Magnus looked uncertain. “The walls have been breached — more men might be comin’.“

  Quentin said, “Yeah, and they’re going to take apart this castle until they have you. You have to hide better than this. It’s unsafe to have you here.”

  Sean was looking from face to face. “If this is true, Brother, ye have tae take the battle from our walls. The weapons are takin’ a deadly toll, we have lost two men already.”

  “We have to go, Magnus.”

  The machine gun sprayed bullets across the wall near us. It was loud and terrifying. My skin crawled. I clutched Magnus’s arm and kept my head ducked. “The other vehicles are coming. We have to hurry.”

  Magnus nodded. “Quentin, ye have a plan tae get us away?”

  “I have a plan to get you and Katie away. Katie, you think you can drive one of those vehicles?”

  “What? Yes, maybe. I drove an ATV once. I mean probably. Where will you be?”

  “I’m going to help protect the castle. I’m the only one with modern tactical experience. So I’ll stay. You’re going to drive out of the castle to the west while I cover you. Then you’ll time jump.”

  “Okay, we’ll leave you one of the vessels—”

  “Nope, you’ll take all of them. They’re tracking them, you’ll take them away.”

  “Quentin!”

  He smiled, “Hey, it is what it is. I’m the only one here who knows how to work any of these machines, except you and you need to get to safety. It’s what you pay me for.” He leaned out from behind the wall to check on the chaos. “Besides, you’ll come back and get me when you get the chance. You have to visit your family.” He checked his ammunition clip and slammed it back. “When I get to the vehicle, Boss, I’ll distract the other guy, you shoot him from here. Then we’ll have two.” He grinned, his fingers counted down, three, two, one — and he was gone.

  I couldn’t watch. Magnus looked around the wall and I hid behind his arm. The shooting was crazy and continuous and loud and scary.

  Magnus said, “He has it.”

  And then another gun was firing, doubling the noise.

  I closed my eyes as Magnus, from just outside the confines of our stairwell, fired his future pistol and Sean fired a flintlock pistol aiming for the man driving the second vehicle until finally Quentin’s voice, “Boss! Come get on this one. I’ll teach you how to shoot it before the next vehicle comes in!”

  Magnus said, “Sean, watch over Kaitlyn.” He raced away across the courtyard for the newly vacated vehicle. My heart followed him. Oh god oh god please keep him safe. Quentin drove his vehicle up beside Magnus’s and they discussed the controls for a moment while Magnus pushed buttons on the dashboard.

  The love of my life didn’t know how to work a microwave and he was going to defend a castle with future tech none of us had ever seen before.

  A second later he and Quentin had their weapons aimed at the big gaping hole of the front gate as the next vehicle came through and the next and then the next. I kept my head down between my knees. The battle was loud and long and terrifying. Sean with his flintlock kept reloading and shooting. I took a peek at his face — stoic, focused.

  When he ran out of bullets he picked up stones and heavy rocks from the rubble around us, hurling them at the attackers while their backs were turned.

  Finally, the shooting subsided and the courtyard fell quiet. Magnus and Quentin rushed from man to man, checking their pockets and clothes and tossing them off the vehicles.

  Quentin yelled, “I can’t find it. None of these men are carrying it.”

  Magnus said, “There’s someone else then.”

  Quentin said, “The men controlling the drones are out there too.”

  The two ran to the front gate and stood scanning the woods.

  Then Magnus rushed to my side, “Kaitlyn, we must away. Whoever carried the vessel isn’t here in the castle — there may be more coming.” He said to Sean, “I am terribly sorry tae leave ye when the walls have been breached, but Quentin will stand guard
, treat him well.”

  “Aye, go and if your destination is yet undecided, I recommend takin’ the fight tae them. Your kingdom is at stake.”

  Magnus shook his head. “Maybe ye haena heard, Sean, I daena want the throne.”

  “I have heard it, and next I see of ye, I will need a full accounting of the magic here.”

  “You’ll have it when I return. Keep Lizbeth and your Maggie and the bairn safe. I will see ye soon. Take care of Master Quentin, he is a good man.”

  Magnus grasped my hand. “Ready Kaitlyn?”

  “Ready.”

  We left the safety of the stairwell to race across the ruined courtyard, full of stone rubble, debris, and smoke, to one of the vehicles. I climbed onto the seat.

  Quentin drove his vehicle forward with jerks beside me. “It’s straightforward. Gas here, brake here.” I revved it. Magnus climbed on behind me. Quentin said, “Hold on tight, Boss, Katie is wild on a motorcycle.”

  “That was a dirt bike, ten years ago.” I sped forward and just about crashed us into a pile of stone. “No worries I got this!”

  Quentin pulled up beside me again. “See this button? It makes it go bang bang bang at the bad guys.”

  “Awesome, but hopefully they’re all dead. I’ll leave this at the trees to the west. And you might want to clean up this mess. All this tech is going to freak out the Campbells.”

  “I’ll figure something out. But in the meantime I’ll teach a Campbell or two to use them to protect the walls in case there’s a bad guy lurking in the woods. Or more coming because they don’t know you’re gone. Or whatever the fuck these assholes are up to. I’ll see you guys in a couple of centuries. Oh and Boss, can I take your room?”

  Magnus said, “We will see ye soon, thank you for your protection.” He passed him his gun. Over his shoulder he yelled, “Sean, give Master Quentin my room.”

  I revved the machine and we shot forward over piles of rubble toward what used to be the main gate. This castle wouldn’t hold against more attacks. Even with Quentin protecting the walls. We had to leave to draw them away.

  Magnus’s arms around me, I drove the vehicle around the back of the castle. Then I sped us across the fields bouncing over rocks and ditches toward the forest on the west side.

  Magnus adjusted in his seat, looking behind us, checking the sky. “No one is comin’.”

  “Good,” but I still drove like a maniac.

  “Kaitlyn, ye could go a wee bit slower.”

  I joked, “This is plenty slow enough!” And pulled it into a turn, spraying up dirt, skidding to a stop near the trees. We both hit the ground and ran to the woods.

  Magnus had one of the vessels in his hand — “What date, Kaitlyn?”

  Magnus twisted the vessel, reciting the numbers, and suddenly I was lifted and slammed and went crashing through pain into another century.

  Chapter 54

  A cool wind was blowing across my cheeks. I pulled my eyes open. I was in the sand, face to the sky. I groaned. “Magnus?”

  He was sitting beside me, looking out over the ocean, his hand on my hip. Attentive, guarding.

  I forced myself to sit up and leaned my head on his shoulder. We needed a moment to catch our breath. The day was a perfect all-one-shade day — a beige, cloud-covered sky, the ocean all white foam and shades of grey, the sand pale as if the color had been drained from it all and we were left in a monochromatic world. I could deal with it better after the stark light and dark of the past and future. This was our present.

  As my grandfather used to say, “This day is fair to middling.”

  Something was scratching me deep in my bodice. I dug between my breasts and pulled out one of the flowers Lizbeth had placed there hours before. A flower, a three hundred-year-old flower. I would need to press it in a book, keep it forever.

  I wrapped a hand around his bicep and we sat together breathing in and out watching the surf. A lone gull flew overhead. The seagrass bowed. Magnus’s hair waved with the wind. And when I looked up and caught his eye he smiled, a slow smile, a meant for me smile. The crinkle at the edge of his eye was there within reach.

  I asked, “How can you be smiling, Magnus? We have so much to do. We have to hide these vessels. Find somewhere new to live. Rescue Zach and Emma from her parents’s house. Find a phone. See my grandmother. Oh and walk home. Also I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a key to my apartment. That doesn’t even include coming up with a plan to go rescue Quentin and somehow secure all those weapons. And lastly, we are being chased through time.”

  He raised his brow. “You forgot tae mention that I am verra hungry.”

  “That’s always at the top of your list.”

  “Tis all I have on my list, I leave the list making tae ye.”

  He rubbed a finger along the back of my hand. “And I ken we have a great deal tae do, mo reul-iuil. I am smilin’ because I finally made it back home with ye.”

  Chapter 55

  My grandma cried when she saw him. They sat together on the edge of her bed, his strong arm around her, her soft fuzz of white hair against his shoulder, and talked about how much she missed Jack. Because Magnus here now, this age, was the same as Magnus then, and the whole thing caused her to conflate the two times — Jack here, Jack gone, Jack young and Magnus. The un-aging Magnus reminded her of those young days with her husband. And I couldn’t hear most of it, as it was whispered between them, but it was sweet and intimate and sad.

  “...I miss him so much...”

  “...I ken, and ye will see him someday, Madame Barb...”

  I sat in the corner, unheeded, unnecessary, but that was okay. Because the strong arm of my husband comforting my grandmother was a balm on my tender spots too.

  * * *

  When we left her room and walked to the lobby and looked out the front windows it was pouring down rain outside. The car was across a windswept, rain-covered parking lot. Magnus said, “Looks like ye will be getting wet. Tis nothing I can do for ye about it.”

  In answer I folded into his arms. “Thank you. It means so much to me that…”

  He kissed the top of my hair. “You daena need tae say it. She is part of our family, Kaitlyn, and I am sorry I was gone for so long.”

  Chapter 56

  Hayley was the first guest to arrive. “I brought Scotch whisky!” She bustled into the living room and hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks. “It’s meant to be ironic!”

  I relieved her of the bottle and carried it to our stuffed liquor cabinet. “You didn’t have to bring presents. You’ve been here every day. You helped us move in.”

  “Plus I found you the place, but still the first party deserves a present.” She spun around while taking her jacket off. “You hung pictures. This has a much better vibe than your last place.”

  I followed her eyes. There was the photo of our dinner after our wedding hanging in the living room. A selfie we took at Disney World placed on the mantle. The photo of Magnus that I took in 1702 was printed and framed and hanging as well. If anyone asked he was on his land in Scotland. The date need not apply.

  Beside that? One of the five paintings I owned that looked suspiciously as if it was painted by Pablo Picasso. With a signature that said as much. This was something I needed to handle someday.

  Ben was happily banging on the tray of his high chair. Emma was arranging appetizers on a platter. Zach was bustling in the kitchen preparing dinner for twenty. Thankfully this kitchen was four times as big as the apartment’s kitchen.

  Hayley did well finding the house for us. Signing the lease for me. Money-laundering the payments through her own account. She was doing everything she could to help us hide.

  Hayley went to the sliding doors and looked out over the beach. “Too bad it’s cold out there today. Your deck is awesome.”

  “Yep, we maybe should have checked the weather before we planned the housewarming. But that’s literally what it’s called — a housewarming. Not a deck-party. So it’s better anyw
ay, more literal.”

  “I thought all you did was check the weather?” She gestured at the Weather Channel beaming across the room from the tv on the wall.

  I said, “Yeah, well as you know, we’re especially interested in the weather over Michael’s uncle’s unused land near Gainesville. So far so good. No storms over the vessels.”

  “So if there are storms you’ll drive down to protect them?”

  “Not if, when — when there are storms. We have the shovels packed in the trunk of the Mustang for when it happens. Speaking of Michael’s uncle, when does Michael get here?”

  “A few moments. He’s bringing Tyler again.”

  “Seriously? Well, at least he’ll get to meet Magnus, then he can stop being interested in me at all.”

  “You are so full of yourself, maybe he’s here because he likes to spend every weekend with Michael?”

  “Right, are you hearing yourself?”

  She chuckled. “Though as you mention it he didn’t come once while you were gone.”

  “See?”

  “I do see, I also see that my hand has yet to be holding a drink. Zach! I’m practically your sister-in-law and I’m about to die of thirst over here.”

  Zach said, “When ya gonna go ahead and marry him, anyway? It would be a lot fuckin’ easier to take orders from you if you were a relative instead of just some chick at a party.” He brought her a glass of wine and kissed her hello on the cheek.

  “You see what I’m dealing with here, Katie, literally everyone is pressuring me.” She sighed over-dramatically. “I’ll have to sign us up for another race. I’m going to run out of the fun ones. I’ll be forced to do an Iron Man.”

  We sat down in the living room. It was decorated beach house modern, but in pale blues and greens instead of the peaches and pinks of our last house.

  It suited us better, more wood, a little smaller. Though it had enough room for Zach’s family to live here too. There was a lot less glass, plastic, and chrome. Best part? Lady Mairead had never ever been here. She had never even been to the north end of the Island.