“This is so beautiful.” I paused to take it in. Where the small white thatched fisherman’s cottage usually sat was now shadowed in darkness, the early stretches of the predawn light unable to penetrate the dark woods that flanked all sides.
I continued my walk down to Dunvegan, determined to dip my toes in the cool water at least once a day while I was at Leith.
Gratitude washed over me as I thought of the mess I’d left behind in America. My indecisive and often rebellious nature had me shifting my degree at the University of Ohio twice in the last year, my revolving circle of friends hard to depend on and becoming even more frustrating to talk to as my studies became my only priority. My parents hadn’t questioned my change of plans—from prelaw to evolutionary biology—much at first, but the less I answered their messages and the more I talked of applying to programs out of the country, the more they’d expressed doubts.
Sitting at the edge of Dunvegan Loch made it all worth it, though.
I dipped my toes into the water. Smooth lake stones in a rainbow of colors spread along the shore as I stepped farther into the loch. My skin adjusted to the cool water as it lapped at my ankles. I took a few more steps, enjoying the way the chilly rush invigorated every cell in my body. I stepped deeper into the water until it reached my thighs. The rocks under my bare feet were smooth and shiny, like tiny gemstones glimmering under just the right angle of morning sunlight.
A faceted stone caught my eye, and I bent, attempting to grab it without submerging more of myself beneath the water than I had to. The stone was out of reach, so I paused, attempting to kick it to a shallower depth, when the currents shifted around me. I groaned, ready to abandon my hunt for the stone altogether, when another, even stronger current pushed against my legs and caused me to stumble with an incredible lack of grace right back into the same spot I’d been hunting for the stone.
I blinked once, attempting to catch my bearings before the current washed against my thighs again, a warm wind behind it causing the water immediately surrounding me to whirlpool with gathering strength. Fear worked its way into my throat as I tried to gasp for air when my feet slipped against the wet stones. I’d been marveling at their shiny uniqueness just moments ago, and now the tiny gems might prove to be the death of me.
“Help!” I gulped, struggling against the force of the current. A soft boom of thunder shook the atmosphere before the cloud above Dunvegan and Leith lit with static electricity. My heart pounded with anxiety as I struggled to lift my arms and fight the current back to shore. The force of the water pulled me away from the shallows, my lungs starting to beg for air. I gathered all my strength, forcing my head above the rough waters a final time and gasping for the largest breath I could gather.
With my lungs bursting at the seams, I slipped under the waves and sliced through the whirlpool, determined to reach calmer currents closer to shore. Keeping my eyes open, I moved away from the darker shadows at my back and swam for the brighter shades of stones that decorated the shallow shoreline. I searched frantically for any pattern of stones that might unlock the path I’d taken in from shore, but they all bled together in color and shape. From my new perspective, they were all the same.
My eyes landed on the purple stone I’d been hunting for earlier. It lay just out of my reach, and I could see now upon closer inspection that it wasn’t a stone at all, but some sort of jewelry piece. The dull sparkle of the amethyst gem was now clearly nestled in the divot of a soft white stone. It looked like the type of pendant a Viking invader or gypsy traveller might wear. With my lungs beginning to scream for oxygen, I swiped at the piece. I couldn’t tell if I’d caught it or not because the flurry of darkness my disturbance created in the water shaded everything.
My entire vision now black, I spun in place, eyes searching frantically for shore. My lungs began to split apart fiber by fiber as they pleaded for more air. I screamed inside my head, struggling to push off the ground with my feet because of the slippery film that lay like invisible carpet on the colorful stones.
Beware the loch, lass. ’Tis deceptive, like love, I s’pose.
I felt Keats’s warning in every shrieking cell of my body.
Dark warmth covered me then, the loch enveloping me in a veil of relief. My nerve endings fired with heat, my limbs weighted with lead as a slow creeping sense of overwhelming numbness covered me.
No.
No.
No.
Alder
Her skin sparkles under the rare Scottish sunshine. Goose bumps pebble her otherwise unmarred creamy flesh as her chest rises and sinks in shallow breaths.
“I’ve got you,” I hum as I run my thumb along her wrist again to reassure myself that she is real—her pulsing energy vibrating loud and clear.
I wipe the chilly waters of Dunvegan off her forehead and then push my heavy woolen shirt over my shoulders and tuck it around her form. She breathes steadily, eyelids fluttering as she seems to dream feverishly.
Maybe she’s in shock. Maybe I should run up to Leith Hall and tell Keats to call the first responders.
I frown when I realize her left palm, the one nearest to me, is clutching something tightly. I try to ease her fingers off the object, but doing so must be just enough stimulus to jolt her out of her unresponsive state.
“Get away!” She holds the clenched fist with the object at her chest, eyes wild as she takes me in for the first time.
I probably look crazy to her, bent over like I’m ready to feast on her.
“Does that meanthanks for saving my lifein America?”
Her eyes widen as I offer her a hand up. “I’m Alder Maclean. I live on the south shore of Dunvegan.”
Her warm golden eyes graze my two-day stubbled jaw, down the wide expanse of my shoulders, and out to my callused palm. She shakes her head once and then brushes her free hand on her wet thigh and pushes herself up from the damp shore.
“It’s just me and Keats on this end of the loch.”
“Andme—at least for the summer anyway.”
