by Annis Reid
When he reached for her wrists, she pulled them away and stepped back, as a scared dog would do.
He rolled his eyes with a sigh. “I dinna wish to harm ye, woman. Though perhaps a beating about the head might straighten ye out.”
“Oh, charming. Why don’t you give it a try and see what happens?” she challenged. He’d get a kick to the groin, for one. Maybe a few kicks.
“Nay, I dinna think I will.” He beckoned her, waving his fingers toward himself. “For the love of God, I was only going to release ye for a moment so you might take care of yourself. Dinna make me regret it.”
“Oh. You’re sure that won’t get you in trouble?” And why on earth was she asking that question? She should have been relieved and grateful instead of second-guessing him.
And since when did she care if he got into trouble?
She knew the answer to that the instant his hand touched hers. It was a gentle hand, kind, even if a little rough. Anybody else would have mistreated her, she knew it. Would have been rough and uncaring and would probably have hurt her just for the thrill of doing it. Because they thought she was a witch, and witches didn’t deserve anything better than that.
But he wasn’t like them. And because of that, she knew she should care very much what happened to him in the next day or two. Having him get into trouble in her account would be the same as putting the noose around her neck.
With her hands free, she could take care of business while he kept his back turned. It was still humiliating, having him there with her, but somebody had to guard her in case she tried to escape.
Though where she would escape to, she had no idea. If anything, she was safer where she was. Which struck her as so ridiculous, she had to laugh.
“What do ye find so amusing about the situation?” he asked, his voice gruff.
She was still chuckling to herself as she buttoned her jeans and dropped straw into the bucket to hopefully conceal some of what was inside. Seriously, how did these people live? “I was just thinking to myself that even if I could escape, I wouldn’t have the first idea where to go. I’m actually safer here.”
He pointed down at the floor, where the food still waited. “Ye had better not let anyone else hear ye speak that way,” he warned. “Of escape, ye ken.”
She shrugged as she sat cross-legged in front of the bowl. “Sorry. I just felt like I could trust you with that. Like you might understand, since you already know the truth about me. By the way, I would appreciate it if you didn’t share that with anybody else.”
He laughed out loud, and it wasn’t an unpleasant sound. “As if I would breathe a word. No one would believe ye. Even I dinna believe ye.”
“You have to.” Not like she was surprised. She didn’t really expect him to believe she was from the future. Even she barely believed it, and she was the one going through it.
But every minute she spent there was one minute she spent away from her own time and her own people. The people around her right now were real, living, breathing people. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a trick of her imagination.
There was just no other explanation that made any sense.
“No one tells me what I do and dinna have to do,” he grumbled, folding his thick arms over his impressive chest. He still wore that linen tunic of his, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he looked like underneath.
She picked up the wooden bowl and lifted it to her lips, sniffing it before tipping it back so she could drink the broth. It wasn’t terrible, though it could have used a little seasoning. “Sure,” she muttered, picking at the vegetables with her filthy hands. She should’ve thought to ask if she could wash them first, but where would she do that?
“You dinna sound as though ye believe me.”
She settled for tipping the bowl toward her mouth again, catching the vegetables as they hit her lips. “Because I don’t,” she replied with a mouthful of carrots. “You said it yourself. You don’t make the decisions. The MacGregor makes the decisions, and it’s up to you to do what he says.”
He snickered, shaking his head as he leaned against the far wall. She felt him observing her as she ate and decided she didn’t much care. Let him stare at her. Something told her it would’ve been much worse if she was anyplace else, with anyone else. At least he wasn’t screaming or threatening or torturing her.
She was never much of a student of history, but she knew witches weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms in these times.
“What time are ye from, then? Ye say ye are from some time in the future. When did ye come from?”
Oh, this would be fun. “Two thousand and nineteen.”
He burst out laughing. “Ye expect me to believe that?”
She shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“And where do ye come from? Edinburgh?”
She shook her head. “A place you haven’t heard of yet. I think there are settlements there right now, but I don’t know for sure. I’m trying to think of my history lessons. I do know that right now, they’re English colonies.”
He spat upon the floor, telling her all she needed to know about his feelings towards the English. “The New World, then,” he muttered, his brows drawing together when he frowned.
“Yeah, and they’ll be under British rule for another hundred years or so. Things are gonna change after that. They’ll become their own country, and it’ll spread all the way out to the West Coast. I think right now that land belongs to Mexico, but don’t quote me on it. That’s where I was born, but we moved to Chicago when my mom died. My dad had family out there. He needed help with me and my little sister, you know. It was hard raising us by himself.”
It never occurred to her how much it hurt to talk about him, even to a stranger and even in the most casual way. Her throat tightened, and she looked at the floor, turning the empty bowl around and around because she needed to do something, anything other than think about her dad.
“Chicago?” he asked, sounding the word out.
She chuckled. “It’s a long story. It’s all a very long story. And it doesn’t matter, does it? Because nobody will believe me.”
“How do ye know that?”
She looked up at him through lowered lashes. “Because you’re the one person most likely to believe me, and you don’t. I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t believe me, either. And I sure didn’t want to believe that I had gone back in time. I called you cosplayers, larpers. Because that was all I could imagine.”
“What is a cosplayer? What is a larper?”
She laughed. “It seems like the more I say, the more I confused you. Maybe we shouldn’t talk at all.”
A slight smile, making his dimples pop out. “I would not go that far.”
She almost wished he wouldn’t be so nice to her, because it couldn’t last forever. He was still her jailer, even if she wasn’t technically in a jail and even if he wasn’t the one making the decisions. No amount of soup or water changed that. No amount of kindness.
He stepped away from the wall, bending to pick up the shackles he’d left on the floor. Her heart sank. Even a little bit of freedom had been nice for a few minutes.
“I shall bring ye more to eat at midday. I have work to attend to now.” He seemed to be careful not to look at her as he closed the iron bands around her wrists.
“Kaden. Will I ever going to get out of here? Without them killing me, I mean?”
He sighed, his breath warm on her hand. “I wish I could say. It would be best if ye could perform magic for them, for him. He must see that ye are of use to him.”
“But I don’t know any magic.”
He patted her hand just once before he left it in her lap and stood. “Then I suppose ye have a bit of trouble ahead of you,” he announced before leaving her alone again.
Alone to think, and fear, and pray like she had never prayed before.
8
T’was a strange thing. Truly.
Kaden had never been the sort to welcome change. His days wen
t about their way in an orderly manner, one following the next, all of them filled with work and orders. He patrolled the lands outside the village, ensuring the safety of those who lived within. He upheld the honor of the name MacGregor, would kill any man who threatened the lives or safety of those who’d accepted the protection of Kirk MacGregor and his men.
Mornings were then spent on horseback, riding hither and yon. He enjoyed the solitude, the chance to hear himself think. Were it up to him, he would live far from all others. Entirely on his own, answering to no one but himself. Doing just as he pleased all the while. It was as close to the notion of heaven as anything he could imagine.
After his midday meal, he would then give his services to anyone in need. Often Kirk would send him riding to meet a messenger, or to deliver word to someone or another in the village. He would bring them to the house to meet with Kirk, standing nearby in case the MacGregor should need his assistance.
Yet the time never came, most likely because everyone in their right mind knew he was not one to be trifled with. If anyone dared lay a hand upon the MacGregor or even raised her voice to him, they would have Kaden to answer to.
If they were not set to ride out on a mission, and there were no meetings to be had with the other men in regards to a matter of importance, he normally chose to be alone in his home. Little more than a single room with a fire and a thin, straw-filled tick in the corner, but it was enough for him. He was a simple man who required little.
There had been many times when he’d grumbled to himself after someone had dared disturb the pattern of his day. While he would never hesitate to assist a man or woman in need, and while he would certainly never refuse a request his chieftain made, he did not enjoy having his time taken by others.
That had changed. Now that she was here, the witch whose name he had only just learned, there was new purpose to his time. New life in his days. A reason to rise earlier than normal, to go to his uncle’s or even to the MacGregor’s household that he might get food together for her.
They would spend time talking. At times, it was nothing of more importance than the weather and what life in the village was like. She did seem interested in that, asking questions one after another.
There were times when her thoughts and questions left him stammering, even blushing a bit. She seemed very interested in how often the villagers bathed, for one. As if he would know any such thing.
He was certainly not of a mind to share his personal practices with her.
Other times, he asked her questions. No matter how she explained, nothing she said made sense. She left him more confused than ever, and with more questions to be asked. It seemed she lived in a rather exciting time, in an exciting place.
It had been a week by his estimation when he sat on the floor across from her and decided to ask a question which had plagued him for days. “What is your name?” Such a simple question, the sort a person normally asked when he first met another, but theirs had been anything but a normal first meeting.
She gaped at him, mouth hanging open, then laughed. “Oh, my God. I’ve never told you my name?”
“I never asked. There was hardly time to share names.”
She shook her head. “You’re right about that. It’s Anna. Anna Cooper.”
Now, he could think of her as Anna. Not that woman, the lass, the witch. Anna. It suited her. For there was a softness underneath the hard shell she wore against the rest of the world.
He could hardly blame her for wanting to protect herself, seeing as how a group of strangers had locked her in shackles minutes after meeting her and accused her of being a witch.
That was the past. Around him, she allowed herself to relax somewhat.
“What do ye do, Anna? In this world of yours, in the future?”
She beamed, clearly proud. “I’m a singer. Well, I used to study to be a pharmacologist.”
“A what now?” She often gave him trouble because of his brogue, telling him she could hardly understand what he said. Yet long, confusing words trickled from her tongue so easily.
“A pharmacologist,” she grinned. “We study the effects drugs have on people. What they do to their brains, their bodies.”
As ever, this brought on a new question. “What do ye mean by drugs?”
“Medicine. You know. The things people use when they’re sick or hurting or whatever.”
“And how do ye know? What these medicines do to people? How can ye tell? Ye mentioned their brain—how do ye know what happens inside a person’s brain?”
She shrugged her painted shoulders. “I don’t know if you would understand no matter how many times I tried to explain it. There are so many things that have been invented, even in the last hundred years—for me, I mean. In my time. Machines that scan a person’s brain without even having to look inside their head. Blood tests and tissue tests and microscopes and all kinds of things. I wouldn’t know where to start telling you all about it.”
“I canna say I’m certain I wish for ye to do so,” he admitted.
She laughed softly. “Imagine how I feel. This world is so different for me. I have no idea how to live without the conveniences I’m used to. I was raised with microwaves and refrigerators, and yes, I know you don’t have the first clue what I mean. But it’s other things, too. Like how you manage to stay alive, living the way you do.”
He was uncertain what this meant, but it hardly sounded like a compliment. “What does that mean?”
“For one thing, most of you are filthy.” She looked down at herself, her nose wrinkling. “I stink. I’ve been wearing these clothes for a week, literally a week without taking them off. I shudder to think how many germs are crawling around on me right now.”
He peeked down at his own garb but said nothing.
She glanced his way. “I know you don’t know what germs are. Think of them like little bugs that are too small for us to see with our eyes. Bacteria. They’re what make a person sick. You know what infection is, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course I do.”
“Okay, don’t get snippy with me. I was just wondering. Okay, so you know what they are. Bacteria is what causes the infection. It’s in the dirt, for instance, that gets into a cut. Or they can be in the air, like if somebody who’s sick coughs or sneezes on an open wound and that wound doesn’t get cleaned, so bacteria gets into the blood. Or if the wound was made by a dirty knife, let’s say. The wound gets infected. And it’s the tiny bacteria that cause the infection.”
Truly, if she were not from this future time she spoke of, she had a vivid imagination, for this was unlike anything he could have dreamed up. “I think I follow ye.”
“This bacteria is around us all the time, and some of it is good for us. Most of it, even. But there’s some that’s bad, that’s the kind that makes us sick. I haven’t even washed my hands very well in a week. I try to splash a little water on them before I eat, but that’s not good enough.” She held them up for inspection, and he saw that the paint she used on her nails had chipped away.
In fact, her hands did not look much unlike his own, dirt under the nails and such.
“Ye mean to tell me that in your world, people have clean hands all the time? How do they ever get anything else done during the day if they are always washing their hands?”
She laughed, not unkindly. “Not all of us work the way you do. Machines do much of our work for us.”
“It sounds as though a person must be bored of it, and that’s a fact.”
She laughed again, clapping her hands together. “Oh, yeah. Now that you mention it, we fill our time with a bunch of things. Like checking social media, playing stupid games on our phones…”
“Ye have lost me again.”
“I know,” she sighed. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” He did not ask what an iceberg was.
He wanted to do something for her. Why he had not thought of this before, he could not say. “Ye should at least be allowed to bathe. T
here is a stream a short distance from here where ye might be able to do so. And your garments,” he said, gesturing to what was once a white shirtwaist but was now streaked with filth. “Perhaps I can ask Blair or another woman to wash them for ye. Ye might have something of mine, if ye wish.”
She smiled, looking him up and down. “I would swim in anything of yours.”
“Aye, and as such a tunic would serve as a dress, would it not?”
“I guess I can’t argue with that logic.”
* * *
She rolled her hands in circles once he’d unlocked the shackles. “God, that feels good,” she whispered, looking down at her hands as if she’d never seen them before.
“Dinna make me regret removing them,” he warned, dropping the irons to the ground where it landed with a heavy thud. “I can just as quickly replace them.”
“But then you would need to bathe me.” There was a saucy tone to her voice, and in her expression as she regarded him out of the corner of her eye. “We couldn’t do that.”
“Nay, we could not,” he grunted, turning away that she might not see his face. Or the way his body stirred at the suggestion. He dropped the folded tunic and trousers on a sun-warmed rock. “Ye might wear these. I brought along a length of rope to tie about your waist, as well.”
“Thank you. I guess you’ll, what, hang out behind a tree or something?”
“Aye, I might do such a thing. Dinna make me regret this.” What would Kirk say or do if he knew his treasured witch had escaped, and during something as unnecessary as bathing? But she had seemed so uncomfortable, and he saw no sense in adding to her misery.
Kirk would not agree.
“I won’t. I swear. Besides,” she added, lifting a brow. “Where would I go? How would I survive? I’d be dead without you.”
He reminded himself that this was not a compliment, nor was it anything to take pride in. It was simply a fact. If she truly was from the future—he was beginning to believe it more and more with each conversation they had—she would not know the first thing about survival in his day. Just as he would likely have not the first idea how to live in her time.
