“It’s not witchcraft. It’s…” She paused, realizing she had no idea how a camera actually worked. “It’s complicated but it’s not witchcraft.”
“Why are you showing me these?”
“Because you had a mom same as me. I want you to see mine and to know I want more than anything to make your house look like it does now to make both of you happy.”
“What? Have it filled with weeds and dust?”
She laughed. “No, filled with life. With a proper roof and walls and those Celtic marks your grandfather made.”
“What for?”
“To remember you when I go back.”
“Because I’m dead in your time, I ken.” His voice was quieter than before. “Tis strange to think of a world so far in the future yet so nearby.”
She put the photos away again. It wasn’t quite the reaction she’d been expecting but then she had somehow not been able to say what she wanted.
She wanted him to see she had nothing to hide, no secrets she was keeping, no matter how small. She trusted him and wanted him to trust her. He had hidden the locket when he hadn’t had to, he had looked after her from the moment she’d arrived in the Highlands.
She wanted to tell him something she was keeping to herself and that had been the perfect moment to do it but now the moment had passed and instead she’d talked about doing up the house. She’d been able to introduce him to her mother, in a sense, but she hadn’t been able to say the one thing she wanted to.
“Come on,” he said, getting out of the chair and crossing to the doorway. “Before our steed decides to make his own way to MacIntyre Castle.”
Later that day Lindsey encountered real penury, the kind she had never seen in her life. She and her mom might have been short of cash at times, but nothing could have prepared her for the wretched hovel they passed in the late afternoon.
They’d just about worked their way through a broad valley surrounded by thin looking cattle and come out the other side to waste. The ground here was unused, no farms or signs of life anywhere.
They were high above sea level having gradually climbed for most of the day. Surrounding them in the distance were high mountains that cast the valley into shadow. At the far end of the valley, the land began to rise again.
Halfway up the hill, there was a glen that dipped toward a small pond. Beside it was a tumbledown building that looked one stiff breeze away from collapse.
At first, Lindsey thought the hovel was abandoned but then she heard a crying baby from inside. “We have to stop,” she said.
“Why?” Tavish grunted behind her.
“It might be alone in there.”
He didn’t say anything else, but he did turn the horse off the trail and toward the building. The nearer they got the more Lindsey’s nose began to wrinkle.
The smell rising from the place was awful. The stones were crumbling, rotten wood all that was holding up the roof of moldy straw. The baby’s cry continued as she slid from the horse and ran to the door, knocking loudly. “Anyone in?”
It opened at once, sending a darker smell out that was so strong she staggered back. From the gloom inside a figure emerged, a wraith, so thin her bones were visible through her ragged clothes.
“We’ve nothing to steal,” the figure said, not looking Lindsey in the eye. “Be on your way.”
A second figure emerged, leaning heavily on the doorframe. “Whit dae ye want?” It was a man, skin so pale it was almost see-through, eyes watering as he stared through her into the distance. Was he blind?
“Have you anything for the bairn?” the woman asked. “She starves and the crop was burned by the MacIntyre laird. They took ma husband’s eyes and all the food we had. Please, I beg you, help us.”
“Wait there,” Lindsey said, running back to Tavish who was still sitting on the horse. “We have to go back,” she said.
“What? Go back where? To the well?”
“Not the well, your house.”
“Why? What for?”
“To get the locket.” She was managing to hold back her tears but only just. “They need it.”
