Darkness claimed him before he could say one final prayer.
***
Abby’s heart beat against her ribs so vigorously, she thought it would bounce out of her chest at any moment. Her eyes took in a strange vista, but her shattered mind could make no sense of it. Where was she? As if her hearing had caught up with the rest of her vision, a crack blasted through the stillness of the night. She jumped and screamed, but more blasts covered her shrill voice. She pressed her hand over her mouth; she had to stay in control of her fear. She couldn’t be sure another scream wouldn’t be heard.
Drizzly rain fell on Abby’s head and on the open land before her. The lush marshland was objectively beautiful, but it sent a spike of dread through her nonetheless, and she shivered from the cold or shock—she wasn’t sure which. Where was she? She should have been with her sisters and brother, warm and cozy, not freezing to death in the great outdoors ofwho only knew where. Her head ached, and burning tears fell from her eyes.
Abby squeezed her eyes shut as more blasts vibrated through her body. Guns. The blasts were from guns. Her eyes snapped open, and with her other hand over her heart, she twisted her head in all directions. Definitely gunfire, and there were a lot of them. Louder booms sounded. Her eyes widened, and she froze. Cannons? It sounded like cannons. Stifling another scream with her hand, she dove for cover, and an icy fist of fear tightened around her chest.
She silently thanked the lone pine tree now in front of her for giving her some cover as she huddled under low yellow-flowered shrubbery.
As her gaze flitted around her, she discovered she was on the edge of a battlefield. Realizing her breathing had become pants, she tried to slow her breaths.
She inhaled deeply and forced herself to exhale slowly, but her heart kept pounding against her ribcage and cold sweat beaded across her forehead. She peered through the foliage, frantically scanning the chaotic scene before her. Thankfully, she was some distance away from the battle, but as she watched men fall to the ground, a retch escaped her throat. It quickly blended with the cacophony of battle cries, gunshots, and clanging swords echoing across the field.
If there had been any doubt about her predicament, the screams and anguished cries coming from all directions made it perfectly clear that she had been thrust into a situation of life and death. She covered her face with her hands. “I want to go home.”
She dragged her head up. Wishing wasn’t going to get her home. The orb. That was the last thing she’d touched at home. She stared at her shaking hands. Where was the orb?
Careful not to make any sudden moves that might bring attention to her location, she bent her head, shook out thecloak, and patted down her clothes. Her heart picked up its pace as she felt the surrounding ground. She needed the orb to go back home.
More gunshots and cannon blasts out-roared an army of men’s screams.
She looked over her shoulder through the back of her hiding spot to a couple trees and more low shrubs. She should go there to try to distance herself further from the battle, but the overwhelming noise had her rooted to the spot, and she stared once again at the battlefield.
Her every nerve trembled with fear. Her eyes bulged as more combatants became visible. Men in tartan were on foot and on horses. Scottish men, some holding long muskets, some with axes, scythes, or pitchforks, fighting mounted Redcoats. The English. She tried to think of places in the American Revolution that looked like her surroundings. She couldn’t think of any, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. She didn’t want to believe it, but she was smack dab in the middle of a crazed battle during the American Revolution.
A bullet whizzed past her ear, breaking her stupor.
She pushed the cloak into her mouth to stifle a scream. She had to move as far away from the battle raging in front of her as she could. She pushed through the back of the shrub and crawled as fast as she could around and behind a bigger shrub.
Once she was behind the foliage, she kept her head down. The guns and their reports echoed in her head, and she jammed her hands into her armpits in a self-embrace. Now and then, a mortar would fire and have her heart nearly jumping out of her chest.
Blinking and trying to make sense of the sensory overload, Abby wanted to scream, but she knew once she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She had to keep control, think of what to do, but the only choices that came to her werefight or flight. She couldn’t fight, and she was too scared to try flight.
The ongoing fire from the guns made her constantly jump, and the boom from the cannons shook the ground under her. The swords clashing and the chorus of screams sounded like a dreadful song. With every noise, her temples throbbed and her whole body shook. Keeping the cloak over her nose and mouth, she stretched out on her stomach, hoping no one could see her there.
Abby forced her brain to grasp for more information about the men, but she couldn’t make out what they were yelling. Their shouts weren’t in English. A loud crash of cannon fire had her snapping her head up. She hugged the damp ground and inched to the side of the brush just far enough to peer through the outer leaves. The contraption had no wheels. It wasn’t a cannon; it was a mortar. Mortars had smaller ammunition than cannons, but to Abby, they were just as loud.
The details of what she was seeing made her heart flip.
To her right was what was left of one side of an army and a lone man still valiantly holding a flag. It was emblazoned with a thistle and St. Andrew’s cross, with Latin script in a ribbon above. She murmured the rough translation without conscious thought. “No one provokes me with impunity.”Or something like that.It was definitely a Jacobite flag.
Men in kilts, the English army, and a wet, bloody field. No, it was a moor. A moor in Scotland.
Battles of Scotland and England flitted through Abby’s mind as she realized she wasn’t in America anymore. She was in Scotland. She didn’t know what battle it was, and she didn’t care. All she wanted was to get as far away from the death and destruction as possible.
But without meaning to, her thoughts raced even faster atthe possibilities of her location. The names of the combatants filled her mind.
Charles Stuart, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, otherwise known as the Young Pretender, and he had wanted the throne of England.
She was certain she was right on the edge of the Battle of Culloden, but that would mean she had gone back in time. She wiped her hands hard down her face. Had she really time traveled, or was she asleep and all this was a dream? Or maybe she was in a coma. She couldn’t remember having an accident, but she recalled the feeling when she touched the orb. That could have been her fainting.
Abby pinched her clammy cheeks. Surely it wasn’t possible. Her parents’ faces emerged in her mind. Had they really spent their lives traveling throughout time, collecting artifacts, and seeing history as it was being made? The orb. She scanned the area where she’d first arrived, hoping to see the slightest glint of the device in the few sunbeams that managed to hit the ground. Her chest tightened. Had she dropped the orb when she passed out?
No. Through the cacophony of horror around her, her logical mind surmised the orb had to have traveled with her. How else would her parents have returned home?
The ground was wet and muddy. Maybe she dropped it when she landed and fell on it. Maybe she pushed it into the mud. She had to go back and look for it. She had to get it.
