Just in Time for a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  “Have ye ever thought of buying a couple new ones, Grand-da? I could loan you the money if you’re tight, aye?”

  “Fouck ye. I like the ones I have.”

  Duncan chuckled. His grand-da was eighty-one and still carried himself with the gravitas of the private who had crawled for a mile under North Korean artillery fire to save a company of twenty-one men who’d been cut off from their flanks. When Duncan was twelve, he’d watched a man on the streets of Edinburgh who had been in that battle come to a dead stop when he’d spotted Duncan’s grand-da. He’d called his grand-da’s name then saluted him. The man had been a colonel.

  Tall enough to have to duck under door frames and with hair the color of an autumn bonfire, Duncan’s grand-da provided his grandson with a somewhat unnerving look into what his own old age would be like. Duncan hoped he’d be able to do it with as much irascible grace.

  “Why exactly are you here, laddie?”

  “Och, and ye wonder why I don’t visit often.”

  “You’ve never stayed for three weeks before. Hell, you’ve never stayed longer than three days.”

  Duncan fingered the fraying edge of his running shorts, feeling the slipperiness of the fabric. The shorts had been his at university, and he’d kept them, along with a small stash of other clothes, at his grand-da’s. He’d worn the shorts hundreds of times, but now everything he put on here seemed odd and slightly foreign to him. “I told you. I have holiday time I need to use.”

  “Bullshite. And why the new treadmill? I’ve never known ye to run inside.”

  Duncan shrugged. “The outdoors is overrated. I want to be able to read when I run.”

  “Which explains why you haven’t touched a newspaper or book since ye got here.” Duncan’s grand-da began sorting the bags into baskets. “I have a theory. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “It’s a woman.”

  “There’s no woman in my life. I’m a free spirit.” Duncan chugged more Irn-Bru. The sun on his face reminded him of the day at the crumbling chapel. He hated the sun.

  “You’ve been running yourself raggit on that thing. Two, three times a day you’re on it. I didna do that much running when I was in basic training. And when you’re not running, you’re sleeping.”

  It wasn’t always sleep, Duncan thought. In fact it was hardly ever sleep. Lying in bed gave him an excuse to inhale the scant remains of her scent on his plaid.

  “It’s a holiday, Grand-da. Sleep’s what you do.”

  “Have ye even looked at my garden since you came? Look how you’re sitting. We’ve got the most beautiful view in Dumfriesshire here and you’re facing the house.”

  Duncan hid a wince. “I did look at your garden, I swear. But I would certainly love to look at it again.” He crossed the yard reluctantly. Beyond the fence, rising gently for a half a mile, was the hill where he and Abby had watched the singing soldier approach. Everything in this damned county reminded him of her. He hated being here, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

  He dropped his gaze to the exuberant beds of yellow and pink at his feet. Tall and short, of every shape and variety, the flowers in his grand-da’s fervently cultivated garden took his breath away. In the twenty-first century, an amassment of blossoms like this had to be engineered. Roads and suburbs crisscrossed the land, and green space near even small towns had been reduced to carefully carved-out parks, keeping flowers from covering the hills with their glory naturally. He thought of the path he and Abby had walked that day to the chapel, and the cranesbill and twinflower that had blanketed the hills. If he closed his eyes, he could smell the lush scent on the wind and see the tiny pink blooms beside which they had lain.

  “Grand-da, do you have twinflower here?”

  His grandfather stopped his sorting. “Now that’s an odd question.”

  “Is it?”

  The man leaned back in his chair and gave his grandson a curious look. “Aye, it is. Twinflower has been extinct from Scotland for a hundred years.”

  “Oh.” Duncan turned back to the garden, hoping he hadn’t opened a can of worms. He heard the squeak of the chair. Shite.

  “To be fair, extinct is a bit of an exaggeration,” his grand-da said, coming up beside him. “But it grows in so few places, it might as well be.” He looked down his long nose at his grandson. “Have ye seen it, then?”

  Duncan shook his head. “How could I have?”

  His grand-da made a thoughtful noise. “Aye, how could ye have?”

  “I must have heard someone say it.”

  “No doubt. It’s a beautiful flower. Sad shame it’s not around. In fact, one of the few places it does exist is not far from here. Would ye have any interest in taking a walk?”

  Duncan’s chest tightened with the fear of what he might be forced to remember. “Actually, I should probably call New York before—”

  “We’ll be back soon enough. Grab a couple of waters, laddie. It’s time to get a little sun on your face.”

  * * *

  Duncan made his way moodily up the rock-strewn path. They’d walked through the town, past the football pitches, and into the untamed Lowlands. On paper, he was the more agile hiker, being fifty years younger. But since his grand-da knew the paths and Duncan didn’t, he looked like an amateur, stumbling on unseen rocks and slipping on waterweed as they splashed across a small stream.

  “This is great,” Duncan said, squeezing the water out of his muddied shorts.

  “Och, what’s a little dirt?”

  The hill began to rise more steeply, and the muscles in Duncan’s calves labored.

  “Are you thinking about settling down at some point, lad? It’s not good for a man to live alone.”

  Duncan considered pointing out that his grand-da had lived alone since his grandma’s death a decade before Duncan was even born, but he held his tongue. “Haven’t given it much thought, actually.”

  “Men like you and I need a strong lass. Brains, wit, independence—as interesting out of bed as she is in. We’re bored otherwise.”

  Duncan wished he was dead. Or deaf. Or both. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Flitting from one bed to the next makes a man dull and empty. A wine with no depth. You’re starting to have that look to ye.”

  “Gosh, thank you.”

  They crested the long edge of the hill’s peak, and Duncan’s breath caught. There, below them, was the snaking curve of the Esk and the exact spot where he and Abby had first made love. The chapel was gone. Not a stone remained. It was as if someone had decided to remove every piece of evidence that their relationship had ever existed. For a moment he wondered if Abby had done it as a way to forget, but he suddenly had a heart-stopping vision of her sitting on the steps of the chapel, bow at her side, staring into the distance, with Grendel baying his sadness.

  The vision was so wrenching, he wove a bit.

  His grandfather, who’d been observing him, said, “Are you okay?”

  “I think I’ll sit.” Duncan dropped onto the hillside and put his head between his knees. “I wonder if I’m getting a stomach bug.”

  “I wonder.” His grandfather took a seat on a nearby boulder. “Duncan,” he said gently, “is this where you saw the twinflowers?”

  Duncan lifted his head a degree. His grandfather watched him with worried interest.

  “I told you I haven’t seen them.”

  “Did you meet a girl here?”

  Dumbstruck, Duncan struggled to respond. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I’m beginning to think you may have traveled to the past.”

  Duncan was so dazed by his grandfather’s statement, it was several moments into the older man’s explanation of the power of this site in pagan times before he’d gathered his thoughts enough to reply.

  “Hang o
n,” Duncan said sharply. “You wouldn’t ask me something like that based on a single mention of twinflowers. That’s not enough.”

  “All right, how about the fact ye arrived on my doorstep at dawn three weeks ago in a handwoven plaid with blood on you?”

  “I told you I went straight to the airport from a reenactment.”

  “Ye did tell me that. But the fact ye arrived from the ‘airport’”—he drew quotation marks in the air to underscore the amount of credence he put in the idea—“without a bag and without a car or taxi, or even a goddamned pair of roller skates, led me to believe ye were lying.”

  Duncan sighed. Octogenarians were more sharp-eyed than he’d bargained for, at least this one.

  “And the fact you’ve been moping about like a boy who lost his puppy made it obvious a woman was involved. At first I thought perhaps you’d stopped at Catriona’s place before you came around mine and she threw ye out on your ear.”

  The fling with Catriona had not ended well, and Duncan had had the unfortunate luck to have her take a teaching position in the same town as his grand-da. “Oh, for Chrissake, I haven’t talked to her in years.”

  “So, I understand. I stopped by her place last night with some cuttings.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “The twinflower reference got me thinking, but it was the look on your face when we crested the hill that told me what I needed to know.”

  “You know what? That’s a load of shite. You can’t take some obscure flower reference and add it to a look of surprise and come up with time travel. I don’t care what your instincts tell you, Sherlock. There’s something more going on here. What is it?”

  His grand-da gave him a stony look. “I know ye were time traveling because I did it myself once. Now, tell me and dinna lie. Where were ye before ye arrived on my doorstep?”

  There was no lying to his grand-da. There never had been. Less shocked than relieved, and feeling like an overfull water balloon that had finally been pricked, Duncan told the story in a rush—everything from the moment he’d run into the volley of rubber-tipped arrows in Pittsburgh until the moment he’d walked, bedraggled and despairing, to his grand-da’s door. Everything, that is, except the part where he’d fallen in love with the chieftess of Clan Kerr.

  “And that’s all?” his grandfather said.

  “Everything.”

  His grand-da made a doubtful noise. “Well, I suppose ye hardly need to tell me ye bedded the lass.”

  Duncan flushed. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “A beautiful young chieftess who knows what she wants? Seems like your type.”

  “I said it wasn’t like that.”

  “Did she throw you out? Or did ye sneak away when she wasn’t looking?”

  “Neither!” Duncan said. “I canna sleep! I canna eat! Jesus God, I can barely draw breath, and you’re accusing me of abandoning her? I loved her as I will never love another.” He dropped his head and bit back the tears.

  His grand-da rubbed his back and pulled him close. “I’m sorry, laddie,” he said softly. “I had to be sure. Call me a greedy old man, but if I’m sending you back to her, I had to know it was worth it.”

  Forty-nine

  “I canna go back. It’s not possible.” Duncan was hurrying to keep pace with his grand-da, who was practically trotting down to the river.

  “How do ye know?”

  “She told me. The white witch told me. ‘It’s not a door,’ she said, ‘that one can swing through at will.’”

  His grand-da stopped and looked at Duncan. “Your boss told you no one made partner before the age of thirty. Your first-form teacher told you boys who threw spitballs would never go to university. Your mum told you too much masturbating would make ye blind. I dinna recall you listening to any of them. Why would you listen to the witch?”

  “Well…”

  “As I thought.” He returned to his descent.

  “Wait. You haven’t told me about your trip.”

  His grand-da didn’t reply. He scurried to the bottom of the hill and turned to wait for Duncan. “Careful where you step. Now come over this way a bit. There.” He point to a small, wet mound of rocks at the river’s edge on which a few dozen narrow stalks topped by fairy caps of pink stood. “Twinflowers.”

  Duncan crouched to look. They were exactly as he remembered. The faint sweet scent filled his head, and he realized for the first time that was the scent Abby wore. “And this is the only place you find them in Scotland?”

  “Oh, there are one or two others.”

  “They look so delicate.”

  “Aye, they do. Rip ’em out.”

  “What?”

  “Grab ’em by the head and rip ’em out. We need their magic.”

  Their magic, it turned out was what had taken his grand-da on his journey. He’d been hiking in the Grampians twenty-some years ago when he’d first spotted a small patch of the flowers. Knowledgeable enough to know he shouldn’t touch them, yet drawn by an irresistible desire, he’d torn the entire bunch free and immediately found himself in a public house outside the Inverness of yore. There he’d met a beautiful, golden-haired woman from Dingwall named Raineach. At thirty, Raineach was long past the age of marrying, but with the encouragement of her mother, she had decided to accept the proposal of an older merchant in Edinburgh she admired but did not love, and was waiting for the carriage that would take her to him. The carriage did not arrive, and her only other choice was a tinker’s wagon. Having no other place to go and no way to return home, Duncan’s grand-da decided to join her, though the banging of the pots kept them awake all night. By the end of the first day, they were in love, and on the final night, he bowed to her plaintive request to show her what she could never expect to have with her husband. He’d slept that night with her in his arms, and at dawn he’d been whisked back to his own time with no warning.

  He’d fretted about her for many years, but it wasn’t until he’d read about the discovery of the small patch of twinflowers so near his home that he’d even considered the possibility of returning. But by then he’d lost his courage. Too many years had passed.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to do this yourself?” Duncan said, still eyeing the flowers.

  “Nae. I had my happy marriage. She deserves a chance at hers.”

  Duncan turned the idea over in his head, too afraid to believe it might work. “It’s been three weeks, ye ken. Abby may have already married the man with the chest of gold.”

  “We don’t even know if the flowers will work for ye or not. Let’s cross that bridge first, aye?”

  Duncan straightened and looked at his grand-da. “There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to come back.”

  “There’s no guarantee I’ll even be alive tomorrow. We can’t base our decisions on something that might or might not happen.”

  “Grand-da…”

  The man softened. “Aye. It will kill me to lose ye, Duncan. You’re all I have left of your ma. But no grandparent in his right mind would deny his grandson a chance at happiness.”

  “She canna marry me, ye ken. If I return, it will be to be her strong arm. Nothing more.”

  “Duncan, if I could have stayed to be the man who shined Raineach’s shoes, I would have done so without a single regret. You have a chance to do a lot more than that. You have a chance to change history.” The older man’s eyes shone. “To serve a woman as well as a country? Outstanding!”

  Duncan laughed, but his heart was breaking. He threw his arms around his grand-da and squeezed tight. “Thank you for everything you’ve given me. I’ve never known a man I admired more than you.”

  “There, there, a leannan. You’ve made me verra proud.”

  They drew apart and Duncan wiped his eyes. “Are we ready?”

 
; “You’re sure now? Have ye thought about your work in New York?”

  “Not once.”

  His grand-da laughed a booming laugh. “That’s my lad.”

  Duncan took a deep breath, folded his hand around the stalks, and pulled.

  Fifty

  Duncan landed with a whoosh on a cool stretch of hillside surrounded by wildflowers. He was dressed, he realized belatedly, in his shorts, T-shirt, and runners, any of which would likely get him in big trouble here, assuming “here” happened to be the borderlands in 1706. But that worry was immediately displaced by dread when the quiet of the afternoon was broken by the peal of church bells and the sound of applause just over the hill. With his heart in his throat, he flipped to his stomach and began army-crawling toward a place he could see what he was hearing without being seen himself.

  He’d gone no more than a dozen feet when he found himself staring into the disbelieving eyes of an overjoyed wolfhound.

  Woof!

  “Shhh!” warned Duncan.

  The dog licked Duncan’s face and shook with excitement.

  “Grendel?”

  Oh, Christ. Nab!

  Duncan jumped to his feet and with equal amounts of speed and reluctance, stripped off what he was wearing and hid everything under a rock. He was completely naked when Nab appeared.

  “What are ye—?”

  “Dinna ask. Give me your plaid.”

  “It willna cover you. Where have ye been? Lady Kerr said you were called back to your home.”

  Grendel was probing Duncan’s balls, and every press of the wet snout was making Duncan jump. “I was.”

  “Without saying good-bye?”

  Duncan pushed the dog aside. “I foucked up, aye?”

  “Foucked up?”

  “Made a mess of things. And I owe you an apology—a big one. But right now, what I need more than anything is your plaid.”

  Nab sighed and untied the knot at his shoulders. Duncan took the piece and wrapped it around his waist like a bath towel, tucking the edge in at his waist. Then he padded quickly to a place from which he could see.