The current was too strong for her to do anything but hold onto the unconscious woman and pray they both made it out of the river alive.
She had no idea how long they floated through the churning torrent but after an eternity of fighting for breath and spitting out foam the current finally began to slow and she was able to look around her. On both sides were trees lining the bank. The smoke from the fire at the old hall was nowhere to be seen. The only sound was the river and her own labored breathing.
Rolling onto her back, she kicked with her legs, keeping her arm around the old woman who still hadn’t moved. Eventually she made it to the bank, using the last of her strength to drag her companion onto the grass.
Utterly exhausted she laid back, her eyes closing at once. The sound of the river faded away.
The next thing she knew she was lying in a lumpy bed hearing someone say “She’s alive. I know she is.”
Opening her eyes, she said, “Who’s alive?”
She was in some kind of large hall,
“My daughter,” the old woman next to her said. “She’s at MacIntyre hall.”
“That’s a coincidence,” Kerry replied, sitting up and looking around her. Who was the woman next to her? She knew her from somewhere. “That’s where I was headed. Where am I?”
“Crossraguel abbey apparently.”
“How do you know that?”
“The abbot just left. Is it true that you dragged me out of the river?”
All of a sudden the memories came flooding back. “I remember. You fell in and I went in after you. It had gone for a moment but now I remember.”
“What’s your name?”
She knew that without having to think. She knew everything that had happened from falling out of the window in MacCleod castle to that moment. “Kerry Sutherland.”
“Janet Dagless. Thank you, for getting me out of the river I mean.”
“Don’t mention it. Any idea how we got here?”
“I think one of the monks found us on his way to a grange.”
“A grange?”
“Like a farm but run by the abbey monks instead of tenant farmers.”
“Oh, I see. So we’re in an abbey. Is that allowed, us being women and all?”
“I heard them talking about that very subject. They want to move us to the guesthouse when we’re well enough.”
“I feel fine now. How about you?”
“All I want to do is get back to MacIntyre hall and find my daughter.”
“Your daughter. What did she look like?”
“Like me but younger and with fewer wrinkles.”
“What was she wearing?”
Janet described perfectly the woman that Kerry had seen walking out of the inferno moments after her mother. “I saw her,” she said when the older woman was done. “She came out right after you.”
“So she’s alive? Thank god. I have to go find her.”
“Hold on. You’re heading up to MacIntyre hall?”
