“I want to say something to you,” he said, frowning as she kept her fist clenched. “What’s this you’ve got?” He forced her fingers apart, spotting the key at once. “What is this?”
“I found it over there,” she said. “I thought I’d keep it as a souvenir.”
“As a what?”
“A keepsake, a memento of the night we spent here together.”
He picked up the key, looking at it closely, his expression changing, as if he was about to say something. Then he smiled, handing her the key back. “We should be going.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve a bag or something I can keep this in?”
“Aye.” He tapped the saddlebag on the side of the horse. “That do for now?”
She thought about refusing but realized there was no reason she could give that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. “All right,” she said at last, placing the key in the bag as Gavin held it open. “Don’t let me forget it’s in there.”
“I would never forget that key,” he replied, his voice sounding strange. “We should be on our way. We are falling behind.” He helped her up onto the horse before joining her. “Must give him some water first,” he said as they set off toward the loch.
Once there the horse drank its fill and they did the same, Heather copying Gavin, cupping her hands to scoop up mouthfuls of icy cold crystal clear loch water.
When they were all done, they set off in earnest, heading up the mountain pass, Heather trying to ignore her rumbling stomach and how dirty she was starting to feel.
How did these people cope without showers? She felt like running back to the loch to get clean despite how cold it had been.
One more thing to ignore, she told herself as they climbed gradually up the mountain pass, the slopes on either side of them getting steeper, the sun vanishing from view. Focus on getting the knife and then get home and you can take all the showers you want.
“What’s that over there?” she asked, noticing something to the left of them.
Gavin looked where she was pointing. “I see nothing.”
“Look, there.”
He turned the horse in that direction. “Smoke,” he said a moment later. “I could not see it for the morning mist. You have keen eyes.”
“Why would there be smoke up here? What is there to burn?”
“I sense a darkness to this,” he replied, slowing the horse down. “We must be cautious.”
As they grew nearer to the source of the smoke Heather’s sense of foreboding grew. There was something ahead of them that was bad. She could tell it deep inside her bones. Whatever was there was evil.
All of a sudden she wanted to turn back. She didn’t want the knife. She didn’t care what happened to her ancestors. She just wanted to grab the key and go home. If there had been a door nearby she would not have hesitated to use the key and return to her own time, get as far away from here as she could.
But there was no door. She was on the back of a huge horse and getting closer to the smoke all the time. The light became darker despite the rising of the sun. It was as if they had entered a forbidden space, somewhere people were never supposed to go.
“What is up here?” she asked quietly, not liking how nervous her voice sounded.
“There should be only rocks.”
“You’re not telling me something. What is it?”
“There are some who think this mountain pass is where the barefoot man came from, rising up from a crack between the rocks, coming out of the bowels of the earth to haunt the highlands long before the clans even existed.
“What barefoot man? I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?”
“It doesnae matter. He is dead and buried thanks to my father and there are now few who remember him despite the harm he did to the world.”
“Who was he?”
“I dinnae ken. A man? A demon? Something darker, something older maybe. All I ken is that it cannae be him up ahead of us and yet this darkness is as it used to be described. I pray he has not returned.”
