by kc dyer
“Jes’ another word for an old grave site. There are three of ’em there, and the center one is circled by standing stones. They are the only ones anywhere near Inverness, as far as I know. If you’re looking for stones hereabouts, y’must see the ones there.”
“But—Craig did say they’re not on the side of a hill, or even in a forested grove …”
“The side of a hill? Ah, girl, yer author lady there must have been using some of that there poetic license, righ’? The stones were for reading the sky—why would they plant ’em in the woods? But ye’d be crazy not to go today—it’s jes’ a mile or so ride from here, on t’other side of that road over there.”
I nodded at that. I seemed to remember Craigh na Dun was in a clearing — and who’s to say what had happened to the forests of Scotland since the 1740s?
“All right,” I said, at last. “Let’s do it. We’ve got the bikes for another couple of hours. Why not?”
Susan shook her head regretfully. “Ah, girl, I’d love to come and help ye find yer Highlander, but I have an errand or two to attend to this afternoon. I have to be ridin’ back to Inverness, now. Ye mus’ go on without me and have a look at the place. Who knows? Maybe the man o’ your dreams will be there, ready to show ye what’s unner his kilt, eh?”
She patted my shoulder to show she was just joking, and then drew a few lines on the local map the hostel lady had given me. “No distance at all, really. And there are road signs the whole way, to direct the tourists. Y’won’t have any trouble findin’ the place.”
We walked past the entrance to the visitor center. “Listen, you,” she said as the warmth of the building enfolded us. “I’ll have a chat with that looker at the bike shop, eh, and tell him you’ll be along shortly with yours. Y’can allus lock it up outside if the shop’s closed by the time ye get back.”
I pulled out my wallet. “Okay, but let me give you the money for my share, at least.”
She folded the bills into her pocket. “If there’s a late charge, I’ll cover it and you can jes’ get it back to me tomorrow, aye?”
“No—no—take five extra pounds, just in case.”
That bill disappeared into her pocket with the rest. “Righ’, perfect. And if there’s no charge, I’ll get this back to you in the mornin’, then.”
We were walking toward the exit through the gift shop, among the rows of plaid shortbread biscuit packets and stuffed Nessies, when a bit of a disturbance rose up at the cash desk. A man I recognized as one of the people who had been wiping his eyes at the end of the battle re-enactment movie was complaining loudly to the cashier.
“Look,” he said. “My wallet is gone. I had it when I came in, because I paid the entrance fee. Someone’s taken it.”
Susan clutched my arm. “Didja hear that, Emma? Fella’s had his pocket picked. Is yours still safely stowed?”
I felt for my own wallet, but it was safe in my pack, and then thought about Susan jamming my cash into the pocket of her jeans.
“Have you got yours?“ I asked, as we walked toward our bikes. She patted her pocket and took a quick look inside. “Yep, it’s there. Guess we got off lucky.”
Through the front window of the visitors’ center we could see quite a commotion brewing, with several employees milling around a group of clearly very disturbed patrons.
Susan swung her leg over her bicycle. “Ye’ll have no trouble at all finding Clava,” she said. “I’ll see to the bikes and you can tell me all about it tomorrow, yeah?”
I walked my bike up beside her, my knee still stiff from the earlier ride. “Thanks for the tour today. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that unmarked grave of the bugler named Sheridan.”
“Faith and Begorrah,” she said, her accent deepening. “We need to keep the feckin’ spirit of the green alive, yeah?”
I nodded and she wheeled around and headed down the road to Inverness. “See you tomorrow!” I called to her back, as she raced away.
She raised a hand in return. I could have sworn she flashed me the Celtic peace sign, which made me laugh out loud. I leaned my bike back against the wall, and paused to make a couple of quick notes before heading off myself.
3:00 pm, March 15
Culloden Battlefield, Scotland
Notes to self for later:
This place has everything I dreamed of, and more. The fields are rough and filled with memorials to the dead. My tour guide (Susan!) took me to a place where soldiers of my own family ancestry made their sacrifice in the name of the Bonny Prince.
It is a day I will never forget.
And speaking of forgetting, a note to HiHoKitty. (No, I’m not obsessing...)
HiHoKitty, to answer your question, no, Hamish (the young man I met) was not wearing a kilt. He had on a very nice cable-knit sweater, though, over his equally nice arms. I’ve thought about him every day for the two-and-a-half long weeks since I lost him.
Maybe I shouldn’t include that last line...too desperate-sounding.
I threw my notebook into my pack, shouldered it and pedaled off in the direction Susan had pointed.
The circle.
It was after four by the time I pedaled up to the sign Susan had told me to look for on the road. The sky was low and gray—not quite rain, but a mist filled the air. I couldn’t tell if it came down from the clouds or up from the ground itself, which as soon as I stepped off the road was dense and damp underfoot.
There was one of those mini-tour buses parked by the sign and I could see a small collection of people in heavy tweed coats and rubber boots snaking their way down though a thin line of trees. I leaned my bike against the sign and peered up at the sky. It didn’t look like it was about to full-out rain, but the mist showed no sign of slowing, either. As the bike guy had pointed out, there was a light on the handlebars of my hired bicycle, but I didn’t relish the idea of a ride back to Inverness along these bumpy roads alone in the darkness either. I was turning out to be a less intrepid traveler than Susan gave me credit for.
Deciding to make it a short visit, I leaned over the Historic Scotland sign to read the description of the site. Turned out the place was old—much older than the fields of Culloden. And though there were standing stones, something was not quite … right.
I leaned against a fence post and pulled out my copy of OUTLANDER, flipping through the early chapters. Some of the pages were beginning to feel loose. I was going to have to be careful not to lose any.
The last of the bus people—a pair of middle-aged ladies—stumped past me, chatting animatedly. I was scanning quickly through the middle of chapter three when I felt a tap on my sleeve.
“Best hurry along, dear. Angus gave us last call at least ten minutes ago.”
Her companion giggled conspiratorially. “Evelyn and I wanted to wait for the dusk, in case a group of local women showed up with sheets under their arms. But I guess we’re going to be disappointed again.”
I blinked at them. It seemed so odd to hear American accents after nearly three weeks, that I had trouble taking in what they were saying. “I—I’m not on the bus,” I said, sticking a finger between the pages. “I rode my bike.”
The first lady—Evelyn—pointed to the book. “You’re not on the OUTLANDER Tour?” she said. “But you have the book …”
A little clarity began to seep through. “The OUTLANDER Tour,” I repeated slowly. “You’re here on a tour …?”
“… Based on the television program!” finished Evelyn, triumphantly.
“And the book, of course,” chuckled her companion.
“Ladies!” came a shout from below us on the road.
“I—I even didn’t know there was such a thing,” I stuttered, as the ladies each took one of my arms and marched me down the path. “Really—I came here by bicycle.”
“I’m sure Angus will be delighted to add another participant, don’t you think, Helen?” said Evelyn, as she hustled me down the path. “You can take Gerald’s place—he’s disappeared somewhere.”
“And you have a copy of the book,” said Helen, who was her friend’s equal in energy and speed. “That should be enough for Angus. He was just saying today that he’s almost never sold out on this spring tour.”
“Plenty of seats, plenty of seats,” said Evelyn. “Lots of space, even for the missing Gerald! Tonight we stay in Inverness, and there’s a whisky tasting event. Tomorrow’s Stirling Castle!”
“And the brewery!” added Helen.
I was beginning to feel a bit breathless at the pace the sturdy ladies were setting as they hauled me along. Since logic hadn’t worked, I tried fruitlessly to extricate my arms as we speedily approached the waiting bus. The impatient bus driver stood inside on the front steps with one arm raised to his tardy passengers. Even at this distance I could see the puzzled look on his face.
“Look who we’ve brought you, Angus,” called Evelyn, in a voice that carried the distance with no difficulty. “We’ve found a wee Claire!”
“She’s got a copy of the book,” cried Helen, not to be outdone. “And just look at that hair! She looks just like the actress who plays Claire!”
I put my hand up to find the ponytail I’d jammed my hair into that morning was, in fact, long gone. I could feel my hair cascading around my head in frizzy, damp ringlets.
“I sold my hair straightener,” I muttered. But by that time we had lurched to a stop at the foot of the bus steps, where the astonished face of the tour driver looked down at us.
“I’m not on the tour,” I said to him apologetically. “These ladies were hoping to change my mind.”
The driver stepped down through the door. “Now, Evelyn,” he said calmly. “You must stop capturing young ladies. This is clearly not Claire. For goodness sake, she sounds as American as you are! You must remember Claire was an Englishwoman.”
For the record, I have to say I look about as different from Claire Beauchamp Fraser as is humanly possible. I’m taller, for one—five foot seven when I remember to straighten my spine. And my hair—on a summer day—could charitably be described as dishwater blonde, but is more often mousey brown. My eyes are green, but the contacts somehow make them come out a hazel color, too. I guess I share a certain paleness to the skin in common with Claire, but apart from that and the inclination of my hair to go curly in the damp—nothing.
Apparently this truth began to sink in with Helen. I could feel her grip on my arm lessen. “Her hair is a bit too fair, if you look at it carefully,” she said, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice. Evelyn, however, was not prepared to give up yet.
“But she has the book—there it is in her hand,” she said pleadingly to the driver.
“We all have the book, Evelyn. It’s why we are here. But that doesn’t mean every young woman we meet has to be Claire.”
Helen gave it a last salvo. “Gerald’s been threatening to leave all day,” she said. “This young lady could use his seat.”
“Gerald’s sorted, ladies. Truthfully. Dinnae worry your heads about him. Now we must be movin’ along.”
Evelyn reluctantly let go of my arm and stepped onto the bus. “But what about the ghost we saw, Angus? What about that?”
The bus driver smiled at her and reached a hand to help Helen up the stairs. “That was very exciting,” he said, and rolled his eyes at me. “Ye mus’ tell me all about it again in th’ pub t’night, awright?”
I stepped back onto the path as he swung the door closed. “So sorry,” he mouthed, as the door hissed shut.
I just smiled and waved as the taillights bumped up the road.
An OUTLANDER tour.
I felt strangely let down. It never occurred to me that anyone else would go in search of Jamie and Claire. I’d never even had the sense to look it up online before I’d come, but now that the evidence was before my eyes, I couldn’t believe I’d not thought of it. The books are best sellers, and the televised version had brought Jamie and Claire to further millions — why wouldn’t people want to investigate the mysterious Highlands for themselves? For all I knew, hundreds of fans flock to the sites from the stories every year. Why not? After all, Harry Potter had theme parks all over the world.
And yet … I couldn’t help feel that a comparison between Helen and Evelyn and myself was—what? Not the same. Just not the same. I’d never watched the show, for one thing. I wanted to keep the pictures in my head of Jamie and Claire and the others intact. Helen and Evelyn wanted to see the land of the stories, yes, but were they actually looking for Jamie? Had they actually met him in the flesh—in the form of a young man named Hamish—in Edinburgh?
Definitely not the same.
I hurried toward the cairns in the rapidly gathering darkness.
There were three of them in total. The two outer cairns looked like piles of gray rock in the deepening twilight. I could see they were hollow in the center, though, like two giant, rocky doughnuts. The mist lightened a little as I approached the final cairn, and right away it was clearly different from the other two. Standing stones radiated around it like the numbers on a clock face, and there was a path running through to an opening in the center of the mound.
It was definitely too dark to look up details in my book, but I figured that fifteen more minutes at the site would still leave me with enough light in the sky to get back to the main road, if I stood up and really pedaled. In spite of Susan’s advice, my gut instinct had been right about this not being anything like how I pictured Craigh na Dun. There were standing stones, yes, but the ancient graves were clearly the main focus of this site. Mammoth circles of piled stones, the two outer cairns each with a clear passageway to the center.
The Heritage Scotland sign had mentioned the presence of cists, which apparently were an ancient version of small, square coffins. The standing stones encircled the middle gravesite in a kind of sunburst pattern.
I wished there was less rain and more time. And maybe my laptop. I really wanted to know what had led people to leave these cairns here so many millennia ago. Long before Jamie’s time, anyway.
But dusk was already falling, and I needed a restroom. Also, I was hoping for a half an hour’s battery life on my bike lamp, so the whys and wherefores of this ancient place would have to stay on my to-do list for the time being.
I felt my hair lift a little off my neck as a thin breeze began to blow, and above me the heavy cloud that had shrouded the day began to break. This gave the brief illusion of a lightening of the sky, highlighted by the sight of a single star, low to the horizon.
The evening star.
How many times had Claire looked up at the stars, longing for her Jamie?
I made up my mind, dropped my pack near the path and stepped into the trees to relieve myself. It might cost me a minute or so of extra darkness, but it would make for a much less painful ride back into Inverness.
Moments later, I shuffled back toward the path, grateful for a pocketful of old Kleenex. Looking around, I tried to orient myself with the single, twinkling star. It seemed to be almost due east of where I stood, and I knew the road I needed to take would head almost straight north before bearing west and south down to Inverness.
I stopped for a minute, just staring into the darkness between the stones. What was I doing here? I mean, I know my plan was to retrace Claire’s steps, but maybe I needed to rethink it a little. Much as I was enjoying every minute of this visit, I had made exactly zero progress toward my goal of meeting an actual, flesh-and-blood Scottish guy.
The day had been full of so much that was wonderful, but I needed to get back to my room and work on my focus. I swung my pack up onto my shoulder and turned toward my bike when I saw a light bobbing between the Cairns.
I dropped behind one of the stones like a ninja, all thoughts of the return trip to Inverness gone from my brain.
The light must have come from somewhere behind the center cairn, because I could see the shadow of one of the standing stones nearby. I sidestepped back into the trees, carefully avoiding the smal
l puddle beneath the third tree over.
All I could think of were Evelyn’s words. “But what about the ghost we saw, Angus? What about that?”
What about that?
The light bobbed once more, and then vanished.
My hair lifted again in the breeze, and a light suddenly shone down on me. I slowly turned to face it. My guts twisted like a prisoner who had attempted escape, only to be caught at the forest edge by guards and a collection of slavering, killer dogs.
But there were no guards, and thankfully no killer dogs. Only a moon that had risen, pale yellow on the eastern horizon. It wasn’t a spotlight, but it cast a strange glow across the trees. Across the cairns.
Ghosts don’t walk in moonlight, do they?
I decided they didn’t, and then I tiptoed closer to the standing stones in the middle of the site, to see for myself.
As I crept forward, I decided to use the stones themselves as camouflage. This place was so different from the mental image I had of Craigh na Dun. It was in a field, for one thing, not a mountainside. But the stones still formed an unmistakable circle, and drew me forward. They were mostly taller than my head, and the solid feel of the cold, hard rock under my fingertips was reassuring, somehow. The trees offered little cover, as the area around the ancient site was in a clearing, and the stones circled the low, gray lumps of the cairns in the darkness. Unlike Claire’s experience at Craigh na Dun, these stones did not scream when I touched them and for that I felt strangely—torn.
The sensible part of my brain knew that I hadn’t visited this circle to find a ghost, and yet—Claire’s life had been completely changed when she touched the stone. A wee small part of my heart told me I wanted that same thing. A different life. Something else to consider when I returned to Inverness.
But for now, I needed to find out more about that bobbing light.
