The air feels suddenly colder. Are these buried Campbells my ancestors? I remember Una’s strange comment.It’s enough to forgive your mum for beinga Campbell.
What did the Campbells do that needed forgiving?
I glance up. The angel looms overhead, face frozen in silent judgment. Then the clouds shift, and sunlight slashes across her features.
I recoil.
Her eyes—blank before—aren’t blank at all. Deep gouges form a pair of irises, shadows pooling inside them. Following me. Watching.
“Freaky.” I step closer but stumble, falling to my knees onto gross, mucky soil. I flick mud from my hands and glance back to see what tripped me: a flat, square stone, nearly buried in the grass. As I wipe away the grime, ancient, curling script emerges beneath my fingers.
The Burrying Place.
The letters, nearly worn away, have been here for centuries.
I push to my feet, wiping my hands on my dress, which is past dirty anyway. A strange stillness settles over the graveyard, the air thick with something I can’t name.
My gaze drifts to the nearest intact gravestone. Its edges have decayed to black, but the inscription remains legible.
Here lyes Cora
Dere wife, Dere mother
Departed this lyfe 19 February 1619
Her infant rests by her Side
Under my feet lies someone’sdere wife, dere mother.
Enough of that.
I head for another grave, taller and more prominent. Whoever was buried here must have mattered, with a long inscription carved deep into the rock.
Young Hamish, Braw Lad
Here he Lyes
Straight limb’d and tall
Hamish, Pride of Campbell
His enemies shant live to tell
A peculiar sadness swamps me. What happened to Hamish? How young a lad was he?
I shake off the thought. Even if he lived to ninety-nine, he’d still be long dead now.
I wander to a pile of gray stones, tumbled and jagged. As I spin a slow circle, it dawns on me. I’m standing in the remains of a castle. A Campbell castle, if the family graveyard is any indication. “Cool.”
I step over the rubble, weaving through what’s left of the halls, and it’s like walking through the ghost of a home. Walls reduced to shards, doorways leading to nowhere.
In one room, semicircular niches and narrow shelves line soot-blackened walls. A kitchen, I decide.
At the far end of the ruins, two tiny chambers sit side by side. Bedrooms?
The air hums with history. People lived here. Loved here. Laughed, fought, dreamed.
Now, only silence remains.
