by Jane Stain
At the same time, it was rugged and untamed. But that added to Scotland’s beauty.
Below the craggy cliffs, the waves sprayed up white moonlit foam when they crashed against the rocks, breaking into different intricate patterns every time that seemed to expand to the beat of her music.
“Cool,” she said aloud before continuing to dance-jog along the pathway.
When it turned to the right and Port Patrick loomed down on her left, she felt tired enough to sleep. Regretting having come so far and needing to walk all that way back, she turned around.
She was as close to the edge of the cliff as she dared go, looking down to watch the waves crash against the rocks and bobbing her head to the beat of the music when out of nowhere, someone in a white hooded robe ran at her.
Her instinct was to shrink away from the running man, but her experience in basketball told her to run toward him instead. So that was what she did, knowing full well that if she hadn’t been in such good shape, she would have been startled into falling off the cliff for sure.
It seemed to be the robed man’s intent to make her fall off the cliff, because he kept on running toward her, not backing down and not turning aside.
She changed her course a bit so that she was running more toward the trailers and less toward the man, surging with all she had to get out of this path and run back there before he would get to her.
But he was faster than her. Even running all out, she could tell he would get to her before she could get back to the dig camp.
So she changed tactics again.
Pivoting hard to her left, she ran away from the cliffs toward the grass, where at least he couldn’t push her off the cliff. She was getting winded now, though. She wouldn’t have much strength left to fight him once he caught up to her.
Fortunately, she was now within earshot of the trailers. If anyone happened to be outside.
She stopped suddenly, took in as deep a breath as she could, and screamed for all she was worth.
The man laughed just before he got to her. A harsh, cruel laugh.
And then he grunted and went down.
He must’ve tripped. She made herself start running again, to take advantage of this trick fate chose to play on him. But she was nearly spent. She’d been running all out for almost a mile. And besides, curiosity got the best of her.
She firmly planted her feet far enough apart that she couldn’t be knocked over easily and then looked over her shoulder.
Tomas was here. He had tackled the man in white, and the two of them were wrestling on the ground.
Exhilaration swelled in her heart. Tomas had come to save her.
And at the very same time, a new fear bloomed in her head. Fear for his safety now, rather than hers.
She looked around for a rock or a stick, anything she could use to hit the robed man in the head, if given the chance.
But white-robe-man got up and ran off.
Suddenly exhausted now that she felt safe and was sure Tomas would be safe, Amber put her hands on her thighs and gulped in the air.
Tomas stood back there where he’d wrestled with her attacker, looking past her at the trailers. He had his arms crossed, but he wasn’t angry. It was more like his arms were two doors that he was closing in front of himself.
In light of that, what he said really caught her off guard. It was so familiar and informal that it made her feel like there hadn’t been a seven-year separation between them. Like this was just another day the two of them were hanging out together in a long string of such days.
The way things had been between them seven plus years ago.
“You look better without all that black stuff on your mouth.”
Finally, she’d caught enough breath to speak. She said the first thing that came to her mind.
“What are you doing here so late? I thought you were staying at a hotel in town.”
Tomas started walking quickly back toward the dig’s trailer town.
“I’m just out for a walk.”
She rolled her eyes out of habit, but he was looking ahead and didn’t see. She had to jog to keep up with him.
“I know that, but why are you walking here? I thought you and … that you went back to town, to your hotel.”
He kept walking on in silence.
And again, she felt foolish. Yeah, he’d been nice enough to come and save her, but he was someone else’s boyfriend now. He didn’t have to tell her anything about why he was here, what he was doing out at night, or anything. She had to remember that.
It was hard, though.
Walking with him like this — at night on the grass with the stars above them in the bright moonlight — well, it reminded her of many such nights they used to spend when they were together. He’d been such a romantic, inviting her to take walks in the moonlight on the grass and then gazing deep into her eyes and baring his soul to her before each kiss…
Stop it.
Yes, Tomas needed her to get through to him and get him away from Sulis. That much Kelsey had convinced her of. But that didn’t mean she and Tomas would be back together again. Look at him, she told herself. He’s looking off at the boring trailers. He isn’t the least bit interested in you. Yeah, he cares enough to save you from some white-robed weirdo, but he would do that for anyone.
She wasn’t special to him. Not anymore.
But then when they entered the dig camp, he turned to look at her finally. And rather than the studied indifference and patience — or even just the friend-zoning she had been expecting — the look on his face was … uncertain. Puzzled, even. Like he had just woken up in a strange place and wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there.
“Sulis said she wanted to walk on the grass in the moonlight, but that I couldn’t come with her. I insisted on driving her here, and then I just hung out in the car — until I saw you go walking off toward the cliffs.”
She raised her eyebrows at him and gave him a goofy grin.
“So if I hadn’t taken a walk out toward the cliffs, you’d still be just sitting in the car all alone? Were you at least reading a book or something? Listening to your music? Do you still like Celtic rock?”
He pursed his lips and moved his eyes from side to side as if he could find the answer to her question in their surroundings. Finally, he shook his head no and gave her a sheepish grin.
“Yeah, I still like Celtic rock, but no, no I wasn’t listening to music or reading or anything. Just sitting there.” He rumpled his eyebrows a little bit. “Are you saying I should thank you for relieving my boredom?”
Maybe Kelsey was right. Just her being with him seemed to be working. His personality was peeking out behind the dull lifeless eyes — and maybe it was her imagination, but they seemed to be getting a little twinkly, a little less absent.
Amber laughed just a little, just enough to hopefully lighten this mood that was too somber even for a Goth girl.
“Uh huh.”
He gave her a small amused smile.
“Okay. Thanks.”
She gave him one back.
“You’re welcome. Oh, and by the way, thanks for stopping that guy from running me off the cliff.”
He nodded his head sideways once.
“You’re welcome.”
Amber’s analytical brain was pointing out that since the mood was now light and they were joking around, it would be a good time to ask him what was going on.
And before her heart could talk her out of it — before her love for him and yearning for him could convince her to just enjoy his company for however long he wanted to share it with her, to live in the moment and cherish it for what it was — she blurted out the questions that were on her mind.
“Tomas, who was that guy? Why was he wearing a white robe? What is Sulis doing walking around in the moonlight, and why can’t you go with her?”
They had reached Kelsey’s trailer. Just as her heart had feared, her questions made him back away from her, from the familiarity they were begin
ning to enjoy again with each other. He looked out to the grassy fields where Sulis must be walking.
He said just one more thing over his shoulder as he walked away toward his rental car.
“No more walks after dark, Amber.”
Amber just stood there. She watched him get in his car and close the door, but then when he just sat there waiting for some other woman and didn’t look at her, she felt alone again.
Thanking the stars above that she was so tired, she snuck back into bed and fell fast asleep.
~*~
She dreamed that she and Kelsey were in the underground castle together, the site of the dig. Only now it was new inside. All the chiseled stone pictures of snakes, dogs, birds, human anatomy, flowers, and other natural things on the walls, ceiling, and floor practically gleamed with newness. And there was furniture in the rooms. It was odd furniture, made of carved wood but in shapes she’d never seen before. There were odd niches in every room whose purpose Amber couldn’t even guess at they were so foreign, and the beds were carved out of the native stone of the place in shapes like giant bowls, and full of pillows shaped like apples and pears and grapes.
Standing still yet flying up and down and sideways together as if they were on a magic painter’s lift, she and Kelsey went on a whirlwind tour of the underground Celtic palace, seeing dozens of rooms in only a minute.
They stopped inside a large room with a huge golden throne. It looked heavy. How would they ever get it out without destroying the place? She looked all around for a way to get such a large object out, but saw none. How had it gotten in here? Had the ancient Celts made it down here, thousands of years ago?
Amber was imagining she saw long lines of Celtic men and women with patterns tattooed on their faces and all over their bodies bringing endless pieces of gold down here for the head druid to melt in an iron pot over a roaring fire when Kelsey spoke.
“I’m here with you for real, Amber. This is more than just a dream. No one can hear what we say when I visit you in your dreams. It’s the safest way to make plans and compare notes.”
What the…? To give herself time to think and analyze the situation, Amber crossed her arms and blinked a few times.
“Okay, this is weird. But what’s the harm in talking to you in my dream, right? I’m ninety nine point nine, nine, nine percent sure that tomorrow you’ll have no idea what’s been said in this dream. But weird things are going on. So just to test it, tomorrow I’ll casually say something innocuous that we’ve said in this dream. If this is real and you remember what we said, then wink at me. If this is just a dream, then of course you won’t wink at me, and I’ll know.”
Kelsey pursed her lips and nodded at Amber.
“Good plan. Okay, so here’s what I think we should do about Sulis —”
Amber put a hand on her friend’s shoulder and shook her head no — in fact, she shook her friend’s whole body, trying to get her attention.
“Oh, we’ve got much bigger problems than Sulis.”
Kelsey lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows.
“Bigger than Sulis?”
Amber took a big breath and let it out.
“Oh yeah. Bigger than a whole pack of Sulises walking on a shoe store’s worth of high heels.”
She told her friend what had just happened to her, with the white robed guy chasing after her and Tomas saving her.
Kelsey’s face went white.
“Are you sure he was wearing a white robe?”
What did she mean, was she sure?
“Uh, yeah. But what’s the big deal about a white robe? I was kind of more alarmed with the fact that he was trying to make me Fall. Off. The. Cliff.”
Kelsey put her arm around Amber and hugged her.
“Of course that part’s more disturbing. Sorry. It’s just that while Sasha and I were at Celtic University, we studied druids, who were Celtic priests. They wore white linen robes during their ceremonies, which were always out in nature...” Kelsey gasped. “And it was a full moon last night.”
Amber raised her eyebrows.
Kelsey took a deep breath and spoke fast.
“Druids were nature worshipers. They held their ceremonies in sacred groves of trees — which they fortified with standing stones once the Romans started coming after them. And the movements of the moon and the planets have to do with it also…”
Amber laughed and playfully nudged Kelsey’s arm with the back of her hand.
“You said ‘have to do with it’ instead of ‘had to do with it.’”
But her friend didn’t laugh.
Amber tapped her with the back of her hand again.
“Come on, that’s funny.”
Kelsey turned around until she was staring Amber in the face, inches away from her, very intense.
“Tomas said Sulis wanted to walk on the green grass in the moonlight last night, right?”
Ceithir (4)
The next morning, Amber showered, did her long dark hair in a more romantic style, removed her black nail polish, and did her makeup normal instead of Goth. Just for variety. What Tomas said had nothing to do with it. She just had more personality than to always wear the same look, was all. She checked herself twice in the mirror, adjusting first her hair and then the lay of her clothes before she was satisfied.
When Amber came out of her bedroom dressed for work in her Doc Martin boots, jeans, and a white blouse so long it might as well have been a dress, Kelsey was busy scrambling eggs.
Amber went into the refrigerator and got out the orange juice.
“It was a full moon last night.”
Kelsey paused for a moment at stirring her scrambled eggs, and when their eyes met while Amber was on her way into the cupboard to get the juice glasses — Kelsey winked at her.
A rush of adrenaline went through Amber, and she almost dropped the glasses. She managed to put them down on the counter, but her hand shook so much when she tried to pour that she gave up and set the carton down.
Kelsey handed her the spatula.
“Here, you stir the eggs. I’ll pour the juice.”
When they both had their food and sat facing each other, Amber opened her mouth to say something.
But Kelsey shook her head no and took a sip of her juice, staring at Amber significantly over the top of the glass.
“I hope you have sweet dreams tonight.”
Oh.
They could only talk in their dreams.
Because people might be listening.
Amber nodded, and they finished their breakfast and went down inside the underground castle. Amber saw it with new eyes after that tour in her dream the night before, recognizing the odd niches in each room and seeing the barest hints of decoration behind all the layers of dust and cobwebs. Excited again about working here, she grabbed Kelsey by the arm and gestured to include the whole underground area.
“I might not have the book learning you do, but my experience tells me how this is supposed to work. You haven’t gotten very far down in your dig, so you can’t have turned up much of anything to base theories of origin on. How do you know what it looked like down here when it was new?”
Kelsey smiled at a construction worker passing by before turning to Amber with wide eyes.
“Are you kidding? Only in my wildest dreams would I know that!”
Slowly nodding yes, Amber let go of her friend’s arm. Okay, the weird magic stuff was way more secret than she thought.
The two of them talked business for an hour — with Kelsey asking a million questions about where to keep the cataloging stuff and how to organize everything — and then Amber got her tools off a table that stood in the center of a long hallway and moved toward the room she was working on, speaking to Kelsey over her shoulder.
“I can see we need to talk a lot more about your dreams. See you at lunch?”
Kelsey nodded matter-of-factly and waved as she walked down the hall.
Amber spent the next hour brushing dust and cobwebs out o
f a huge tree carved in the floor of the secret room she was working on, but all the while her mind was scheming. Tomas knew more than he let on about all this weird magic stuff. And he knew who the white robe guy was, she could tell by the way he looked at the man.
How should she go about getting Tomas alone so she could ask him about the man? She would have to get Sulis busy doing something else. Her favorite idea there was spilling something all over blondie’s designer clothes, but then she would probably just demand that Tomas drive her back to their hotel…
Before she could act on any of her ideas, however, Tomas came into her workroom.
His vacant zombielike eyes looked away from hers almost as soon as he came in, and then he turned to study the part of the tree she was done brushing free of debris and spoke offhandedly, in a barely audible voice.
“Why did you come here to Scotland?”
She sighed. She couldn’t exactly tell him the truth, which would be ‘I came to see you, of course. I thought we could pick right up where we left off in our relationship before you disappeared on me the day after your eighteenth birthday. I figured since Kelsey and Tavish were back together, it only made sense that you and I would be back together. Thought all I’d have to do was show up, and you’d welcome me back into your arms.’
No, she couldn’t give out any hint she wanted to talk about that, or he would be stricken with the fear of his creepy girlfriend and bolt out the door. Amber knew that in her gut. And because her heart ached so for him, she knew her ache for him would show in her eyes, here under the bright work lights. So she didn’t even dare look at him, but made a point of keeping her eyes on the carved-out tree as well, while she formulated her answer.
She did come up with something truthful she could tell him.
“Kelsey called and begged me to come help her. She just got her doctorate in Celtic Art History, you know, but she doesn’t have much experience at dig sites. Well, I’ve spent the last six years working at them, so I’m helping her in lots of little ways only a real friend can.”
She kept working while he slowly wandered around the large room, aimlessly looking at the wall carvings that were still barely legible beneath all the dirt and grime. When he was back near the doorway a quarter hour later, he spoke again.
