by Ria Cantrell
Kiera gulped several deep breaths of air; air that suddenly seemed fresher. The scents around her were sharper, too. She could almost taste the green of the grass beneath her shaking legs. As her eyes got used to the dimly lit lea, she realized it was still night, but as the crimson streaks topped the sky above her, she thought it was closer to morning. Had they done it? Was she in medieval Scotland? She looked around and saw the standing stones surrounding her, just as they were when they had attempted this illogical journey. Perhaps, nothing had happened after all. Perhaps she had just blacked out and they had remained in her present. Part of her wished it to be so.
Kiera did not have a long time to ponder these questions. Beside her on the ground, lying as still as death, was the Old One. Kiera did not remember letting go of her hand, but as she stood and the other lay prone, Kiera realized that somehow they had been separated. Throwing off the hood of her cloak, Kiera knelt beside Morag and put two fingers to the base of her neck. Yes, there was a pulse. She gently shook her and called, “Morag…please…wake up. Please speak to me.” Kiera was starting to panic. What if she was in medieval times? Without Morag, she would be stuck there forever. No, it wasn’t going to happen. Shaking Morag again, less gently this time, Kiera cried, “No. Old woman, you can’t do this to me. Wake up. For the love of God, wake up.”
Tom stepped out from the shadows. That was a helluva fall. He was certain, as he plummeted through the chasm of time that if he ever landed, he would break all his bones. Instead, he too, had landed on his feet. The old woman who had taken Kiera and unknowingly Tom as well, seemed to have suffered a much less softer landing. He approached Kiera and she was nearly hysterical. “What have you done, Tom? You weren’t supposed to be near the Circle. I think your presence may have killed her.”
“Who is she?”
“She is a friend. Was--I mean, oh God! Morag, please wake up. Please don’t leave me here.”
Kiera immediately regretted agreeing to do this crazy thing. Tom knelt beside Kiera and took the old woman’s hand within his own. He knew what to do. He felt a slow steady throb beneath his fingers and he said, “She’s not dead, Ki. She just fainted.”
“You need to explain yourself, Tom. How the hell did you follow me?”
“I’d say I’m not the only one, Ki. I mean, it’s not every day you find out your cousin married some medieval warrior. What about that?”
“Never mind that! Look, now is not the time for me to explain things. I will if we get out of this, so help me, but not now. You have to do something. We can’t have her lying here like this. I don’t even know where here is.”
Thomas looked from place to place and he saw that the trees were dense around them. He listened for a moment; all his senses were on high alert and he said, “By the scenery it appears that we are still in Scotland.”
But something was definitely different. He could hear nothing that made him believe that the modern world existed. It seemed so much quieter, even though it was pretty quiet in the Highlands. There was no roar of planes, or hums of cars trudging down country lanes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Clicking it on, it winked, “NO SERVICE”.
“Guess it worked. We are back in time.”
“How do you know that?”
“Cell phone doesn’t work.”
Kiera felt panic rising at Tom’s words. Then, Kiera stared at her cousin as if looking at him for the first time. He had a fairly large sword strapped to his back and he looked like he had just gone to the local Ren faire. It hadn’t been an accident that he had followed her.
“What are you doing here, Tom,” Kiera demanded again but she would not get her answer for the moment because Morag started to come out of her death-like faint. Morag’s eyes fluttered open and she appeared to be confused. Trying to sit up sent waves of nausea and dizziness spiraling through her head and stomach and so she fell back down and squeezed her eyes shut to stop it. What had gone wrong? She had to pull herself together. Slowly opening her eyelids, she looked up at the two people leaning over her and she knew. Her day of reckoning was upon her. Concerned eyes in the handsome face of the lad peered down at her. Silver-grey eyes! Eyes just like hers.
~
Chapter Twenty-Six ~
“She’s coming to, Ki. Ma’am, are you alright?”
Kiera patted Morag’s hand and said, “Dear, you fainted. Can you sit up yet?”
Morag was so filled with emotion that she could not speak. Her throat seemed to be so tight, that breathing was an effort. She looked from one to the other and felt as if her heart was going to stop.
“I don’t know if we made it, but if we did, well, Morag please, Love, we have to get somewhere safe.”
Then looking at her cousin, she said, “It must have been too much for her.”
“Nay, t’was not that, Lass. It’s the lad…,” Morag’s voice cut out. She could not speak the words. It was too much, even for her poor old heart to fathom.
“I know I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry. I did not mean to cause you distress,” Tom Callum said. He was starting to feel guilty for overly taxing the old lady. Then he noticed that there were tears in the woman’s eyes. Maybe she was hurt. He said, “Are you hurt? Is there somewhere that you have pain?”
Pain, Aye, there is pain. My heart shall cleave in two from the pain of it, Tavish.
Morag began to murmur something in Gaelic and Kiera strained to understand. While Derek had been teaching her the ancient language, she was far from a master at it. She was pretty sure she had misinterpreted what the Old One had just said. If she wasn’t already totally upset, Kiera may have found the situation a little comical. But there was nothing funny about it. For Christ sake, they were in the freakin’ Middle Ages and now Morag was acting like she had gone daft. In the stilted understanding of the language, Kiera almost thought that Morag had said something about Tom being her son. Maybe she had banged her head when she landed or worse, maybe the old bird was finally succumbing to senility. Or maybe, Kiera was not so good at understanding Gaelic, after all, as she first thought.
Kiera’s eyes searched Thomas’ face and saw he looked horrified. She was even more astounded when he answered Morag in Gaelic; and not just the modern version, but the very dialect that Morag had spoken to him. What the hell was going on here?
Kiera tried to not sound as panic-stricken as she felt and she forced herself to remain calm when she asked, “Morag, please, Hon, I don’t really speak the Gaelic that well, yet. What are you trying to say?”
“She said I am her son,” Thomas interrupted.
“Yes, that’s what I thought, too, but we must have misunderstood her. Or maybe she hurt herself, you know when we fell.”
Tom said something else to the old woman and this time she began to sob. She sat up slowly and wept into her hands. It was the sort of weeping that came from a hurt so deep, it threatened to steal the life from her body. Kiera knew about that sort of sorrow. She had felt it, too, when she thought she had lost Derek. Kiera suddenly felt like an outsider, as Tom crouched next to Morag and put a comforting hand on her back. Nervously, Kiera blathered, “Well, she must be disoriented. I mean really Thomas! Clearly she is not your mother.”
Thomas wanted to give merit to what Kiera was saying, but the more he wanted to disbelieve the old woman, the more it started to make sense. Maybe the reason he never truly felt like he belonged in the modern world was because he didn’t. All his life he was marked as different and it had stopped bothering him a long time ago. It actually had worked toward his benefit because that oddness now suited his role within Celtic Storm and gave him that other worldly edge which made him super popular in the band. Tom wanted to agree with Kiera; the old woman had merely lost her mind when she fell; but there was that. Hell, only yesterday he would never have believed that going back in time or falling through time or whatever it was called, was something people only made up in stories. Here he was, dashed into the past; because Tom knew he was no longer
in the twenty-first century. He could feel it. It was like something that had been part of him and now he recognized it for what it was. Maybe his parents could never find his biological mother because she existed in a time long past.
Thomas swallowed deeply. He always knew he had been a foundling, left at the hospital where his parents worked. Deirdre and Dan Callum never hid that from their son, as some parents do with adopted kids. He knew Deirdre had not carried him, but she had cared for him and loved him and he could not ever ask for a better life with a family than the one he had been blessed with. He stopped wondering long ago, why he had been abandoned and he no longer cared where his natural mother was. Sometimes it bothered him as a kid, but Tom had grown up in a very loving environment. It stopped mattering long before he was a teenager. He no longer felt the wound of abandonment and he no longer searched for the answers that seemed to never come. Sitting here with this frail old woman ripped open wounds that had long healed. Now, he needed to know why? Tom Callum forced himself to not rail against the woman named Morag, but a simmering rage was brewing and he wanted answers. Now!
Morag began murmuring prayers to the Ancient Ones; thanking them for finally returning her precious Tavish to her side. She had imagined it her entire life, but never thought it would be done this way. The Guardians were masters of catching one off guard. Perhaps, there had come a time when Morag had given up hope of ever finding him, but one thing was certain. She never stopped yearning for the son that had been lost to her so long ago.
Morag appealed to the High King with prayers of thanksgiving. The handsome man was her son and he was there, kneeling beside her, holding her hand, but something was amiss. The man’s visage had hardened. The grey in his eyes glinted silver like splinters of shattered ice and his face was set with cold disdain. Morag had seen that look on many a man’s face in her long years walking this earth. This man; her son long lost from her, was glaring into her eyes with unmasked hatred.
Och my Tavish, ye’ canna’ hate me. Ye’ dunna’ understand that I had little choice. I wanted ye’ to live. I did it because I loved ye’. Morag pleaded her thoughts silently, hoping that somehow, despite their years separated, that he had been granted some of the gifts she enjoyed. Morag sobbed softly again. She could see plainly that he did not understand and if there was a chance of him sharing her Sight, it was locked behind the anger that threatened to boil over.
The entire time, Kiera watched the silent exchange. She yanked Tom away from Morag, and helped her to sit up, saying, “Leave her alone. You are frightening her. Haven’t you done enough damage by sneaking along?”
Morag hiccupped a sob back and said, “Nay, leave him be. I need to look at him. He is handsome…and hale. I have missed him so much.”
“Morag, this is insane. He is not your son.”
But as Tom stared at the broken woman, he somehow knew it was true. It was beyond madness to believe it, but then again, he never thought he would plummet through time, either. This pitiful wretch was his mother; the woman who had abandoned him. Tom had a flash of the scene. He heard his own mewling cries as the woman left him in that stark white room. We have a sick baby here, get the doctor stat. Tom had forgotten most of it, but now shards of the past were clawing into his brain causing pain to sear behind his brow. He closed his eyes to shut out the pain and he breathed in the pristine air that had been untouched by modern pollution. As the cool, crisp life giving oxygen filled his lungs, a dash of serenity returned to Tom’s psyche. At least now, he would get his answers. She owed him that much.
Their eyes were locked and finally Morag said, “Please dunna’ look at me so. It pierces my very heart.”
“Does it? Do you think it didn’t pierce a small child’s heart when you left him alone in a strange sterile place, cold and filled with strangers? I have a memory of crying so hard, did that not pierce your black heart?”
“Tavish, please, I had my reasons.”
“What did you call me?” It was the name Derek had called him. It was also the name he had spoken to Jenna in his dream. He had liked it at first, but now hearing it from this woman’s lips, made his stomach churn.
“Tavish…t’was the name I had called ye’ when I first held ye’ in my arms.”
“Yes, I know…it means Thomas,” he answered absently, but then more angrily he demanded, “Why did you do that to me? I was just a baby and you left me to be found by strangers. How could you have abandoned me in a world that was not even my own? ”
“Oh come on, Tom. You can’t believe you are this woman’s son? It is ludicrous,” Kiera thundered.
“More ludicrous than your Highland warrior husband?”
Kiera choked. Tom was right.
“That’s different. You don’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I don’t understand any of this.”
“But Tom, Morag is quite advanced in years. I mean no disrespect to her, but you are younger than me. That would mean that she had you when she was...”
Feebly, Morag said, “I was a young woman then. The time where I left him was only a score or so years in your time.”
“You mean you gave me up! Please don’t make it sound like you gently set me to be found.”
“I did nay want to give ye’ up, Tavish. I had no choice.”
“Stop this right now. Stop feeding each other this bullshit. Tommy, this is sheer madness. Morag did not give you up. Tell him Morag! Tell him you hit your head or something and that you were just confused.”
“As confused as ye’ were when ye’ learned about Derek’s plight?”
Kiera had no come back. She stood up and began to pace. This was going from bad to worse and they still didn’t address the other pressing issue, and that was that they landed in the fourteenth century and were like sitting ducks inside the ancient circle of stones.
“Old woman, I deserve an explanation. I want it now. You owe me that much.”
“I loved ye’. Ye’ have to believe me. Ye’ were ill. I wanted ye’ to have a chance; a chance I could nay give ye’. I knew that in a time much further from ours, there would be new advances in healin’. I was a healer, but I could nay heal my own son. But they could where I left ye’. I just knew it.”
Tom rose suddenly and he pulled the sword from the scabbard on his back. He was so angry, he barely was aware of his actions. He took the sword and swung it and with a loud cry he drove it halfway to the hilt into the ground beneath him. It hummed as it struck into the soil and Tom stalked back to stand before Morag. She labored to stand. She was not prepared for his ire. Surely, her many imagined reunions had not ended this way, but now it was time to tell him the truth. It was all she had left to give him.
“What do you mean I was ill? Didn’t my father think to dissuade you from pandering me to some strangers?”
Morag straightened her spine and looked up into the face of the son she had thought she had lost so very long ago. She would tell him. She only hoped he would listen.
“Yer’ da passed months before ye’ were born. I could nay lose ye’ too, but I was weak when I birthed ye’. I suppose the loss of yer’ da made my grief too deep and ye’ were born feeble from my unending tears. I blamed myself fer’ yer’ state. It was my duty to give ye’ a life where ye’ could grow strong, but I failed ye’ because of my sorrow. Ye’ suffered from lung sickness…ye’ struggled to breathe and every breath seemed to become harder.”
“Asthma,” Tom mumbled. “I had asthma. It is called asthma, but most children outgrow it in my time. I did.”
“Aye, in that time. In this time, ye’ were not going to live more than a few more months; never mind more years. A mother wants her babe to thrive; to be able to play and run; to grow into a strong man. I did nay know what awaited ye’ without me, but I knew I had to try. I did it fer’ ye’. And look at ye’ now. Ye’ are a braw laddie.”
Tom scrubbed his hands through his hair. By God he wanted to hate this woman, but he just could not. Could it be that she
had given the ultimate sacrifice so that he could have a chance at life? He did not know anything about this woman, but somehow Tom knew that she was incapable of lying to him. She had wanted to help him. But that did not answer all his questions. He looked down at her pleading face and his heart softened a bit. “Why…why didn’t you come back for me? Why didn’t you try to find me? Didn’t you wonder what had happened to me?”
A fresh wave of sobs erupted and Morag said, “I did try to find ye’. I traveled so many times into the future, but I was nay sure where ye’ had been brought to? In my grief of leaving ye’, I did nay know what I had done. Every time I came forth in time, I hoped to find ye’ but I ne’er did. I thought I had been punished for using my gifts for my selfish wants; for cheating the Great Reckoner from takin’ ye’ when ye’ were but a mere babe. I never stopped wondering where ye’ were, if ye’ were happy, if ye’ had grown.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“Please believe me. I never stopped lovin’ ye’. I have grieved for ye’ my entire life. I settled fer’ the raisin’ of other people’s children in yer’ stead, but t’was nay enough. Part of my heart bore the hole where ye’ once lived.”
Kiera stood next to Morag and held her elbow to steady her. She had seen her cry when Derek almost died, but the sadness that wracked her frail old shoulders was almost too much to watch. She offered gently, “Maybe you just want him to be your son, love. A mother’s heart never stops beating for her children.”
Thomas looked at Kiera and he said, “She is my mother, Ki. I know it. A son’s heart knows his own, too.”
He then cleared his throat and he began to sing a song he seemed to know his entire life. With stilted words, wrung with sobs, Morag sang along. It was a song she had sung to him as a baby, to comfort him through those times when he was so very sick. Now, he knew why he had remembered it all his life. It was the only thing besides the plaid blanket that his mother had left him and he had held onto it, not even knowing why.
