They backed out of the stables, and he angled them towards the dungeon.
Eejit. Eejit. Eejit. The word kept time with their steps in Ceana’s head. They’d handed him the perfect revenge. He didn’t even know how perfect. If he locked them away in the dungeon, by the time one of the MacDonalds discovered what happened to them, Gavran’s corpse would be long past fresh.
“That’s alright,” Gavran said in a mock whisper. “I’m happy enough to have a dry bed and food brought to me while I rest.”
She could have kissed him. If they could goad Hugh into kicking them out of Duntulm Castle instead of locking them away, they’d at least still have a chance. “Aye, without the horses, it’d be a long walk back to Dunvegan.”
“To the left,” Hugh said from behind them. “You’re not headed to the dungeon. We’re headed to the gates.”
Praise be to the Almighty. Hugh’s desire not to feed “beggars” or “spies” seemed stronger than his common sense. Now they just needed to figure out how to find weapons and, if they survived the nuckalevee, sneak back into a castle from which they’d been exiled.
Gavran parted the branches of the trees so he and Ceana could better see the graveyard. He bit back a curse. The gravedigger had already finished and gone.
When he watched the funeral procession earlier, he’d tried to take careful note of where the new hole lay, but he hadn’t had time to wait and mark the spot for fear his memories would fade too much for him to remember what he needed to do. He’d assumed that they’d also have the aid of making it back before the gravedigger finished his task.
Up close, more than one recently-dug grave looked like it could have been in the place he noted from his distant vantage point earlier, and the downpour had made it near impossible to tell which had been filled this day and which earlier in the week.
He touched Ceana’s shoulder, and she jumped. “We still need shovels.”
“We’ll have to borrow one.” She trailed along after him. He heard more than saw her scuff the toe of her shoe into the ground. “Assuming we make it through this alive, what will you do once we break the wishes? Will you return home and marry Brighde?”
He blew a long breath out through his teeth. A week ago, he would have said aye. His dadaidh made an agreement with Tavish, and he wasn’t going to ask him to go back on his word. But without the wishes, everything would be different. He was already different.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem fair to hold her to it when she might not have wanted to marry me if I hadn’t been blessed by your wishes. We weren’t promised before, were we?”
Ceana’s upper body became unnaturally still. “You weren’t promised to anyone, despite half the families in the kirk wanting you for their daughters.”
“Sure enough you’re exaggerating.” Though perhaps not. He never lacked for partners at a dance or supper. “If I had so many fishing for me, why hadn’t I let one catch me?”
Ceana kept her profile to him. A pulse beat a flutter at her temple. She didn’t answer.
They came over the top of a hill, and she pointed ahead to a darkened cottage. The yard was deserted except for a single chicken scratching in the grass and two sheep that looked like they wore more wool than meat on them.
“Let’s find the shovels,” she said.
They slunk through the yard and peered into the lean-to. Only one shovel.
Gavran picked it up. “Should we keep looking for another?”
Ceana nodded and wove her way across the yard toward a small barn. “It was because of me.”
He glanced back at the cottage. Still no sign of movement. Either they didn’t have a dog to warn them of trespass or the family had been wiped out by the Death. “What was because of you?”
“I think…I think you hadn’t married because you felt you needed to care for me, and you knew you wouldn’t be able to once you had the responsibilities of your own wife and bairns.”
He jammed the tip of the shovel into the ground. In the dream, he’d told her it was past time she found someone to care for her. Trying to remember his dream in detail, though, was like trying to speak a language he’d never learned. He couldn’t hope to know his past motives. If the feelings that clung to him like echoes now could be trusted, however, what he meant was he wanted to be the one to care for her—permanently. “If I did, it was my choice, and I don’t regret it.”
She tugged on the barn door. The rickety structure trembled, but the door held. “You can’t say that. You might have. My dadaidh always said I was a burden.”
She spoke the last words softly, as if it were an admission of guilt.
He couldn’t even imagine what having a dadaidh like that did to a person. Maybe it explained why she was so willing to throw her life away. “We all need help sometimes.”
She yanked on the door again, and it flung open. She ducked inside.
“Found one.” She emerged from the barn holding a shovel with a broken-off handle. “Do you think it’s worth taking?”
At least they’d have a backup if the whole shovel broke. “Best we get out of sight before they wake or return.”
Darkness pushed the last threads of purple and red from the sky, and the new moon hovered low, seeming to struggle to rise. The lanterns in the church were finally out, and the buzz of mosquitoes had replaced the drone of late-evening flies.
Shovels in hand, they picked their way across the slippery graveyard. If his mamaidh was wrong and ghosts did haunt the graveyard until the next funeral, this man would sure enough come back to plague them while they stole his body.
Ceana stopped at the edge of the rectangle of bare earth. Her brow furrowed. “Is this the right one?”
Gavran squinted, but blackness blocked his view past where Ceana stood. He laid the shovel aside and went further into the graveyard. His feet sank into another plot of soil recently dug. “There’s another here that looks fresh. How do we tell which one is his?”
Ceana joined him, her broken shovel still in hand. “Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as they’re both recently dead.”
He dug into the dirt with the toe of his boot. “With all that rain, could be this one’s already a week beyond. I’m certain a fortnight won’t count as fresh.”
Ceana motioned towards the interior of the graveyard. “I’ll check some of the others. You’re sure it was around here?”
“Aye. It was this side of the church, by the break in the fence. It has to be within the first two rows.” He knelt and scooped up a hand of dirt. It clumped in his fingers, almost holding its structure. He went back to the other plot and did the same. The clump felt looser. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, and it smeared, more mud than dirt. “I think this is it.”
“I see a few others that look recent, but none that look newer than those two.” Ceana’s voice floated on the darkness like a specter.
“Then we’ll have to take a chance.”
She appeared at his side. The wind kicked up, wailing through the trees in a mimicry of the keener’s cry. “Do you think we can catch the Death from the body?”
He’d asked her almost that very thing about the nuckalevee, and he had no better answer to give. “I’ve no idea how it spreads. We’ll have to pray the Almighty protects us.” He pushed the shovel into the earth with his foot and dug up the first scoop, carrying the weight of it on his good arm. “Sooner started, sooner done.”
Ceana dug her broken shovel into the ground beside him. She was short enough she didn’t even need to bend over to use it. The scratch and plop of shoveled dirt gave him something to focus on other than the wind rattling through the branches near them.
They removed layer after layer of dirt and sunk into the ground.
Ceana stopped and leaned on her shovel. She wiped an arm across her brow, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I’m still so weak.”
They couldn’t be more than a few inches from the coffin now. He punched his shovel down again and hit something solid. “We’re nearly there. Yo
u rest while I clean the top off.”
She climbed out and dropped into the grass next to the plot. He scraped the remaining inches of dirt from the lid of the coffin and laid the shovel up on the edge of the hole.
Ceana peered over the side. “How are we going to get him out? I’m not strong enough to haul him up on my own or to lift him up to you.”
Gavran rubbed a grimy knuckle across his chin. The grains of dirt scratched his skin. “If you can hold him in place long enough, I’ll climb out and help you drag him up.”
She flopped down on her belly, her arms hanging over the edge.
He drew a slow breath and wrapped his fingers around the lip of the coffin. He pried at it, ignoring the searing pain in his injured shoulder. The lid didn’t budge. Nailed shut. “Toss me a shovel.”
She lowered a shovel over the edge. He raked moist dirt from the side to give himself more room for leverage and wedged the shovel tip under the lid. He leaned back on the handle, and the lid groaned and then cracked. The sound bounced out of the hole, off the church, and ricocheted over the fields. He flinched.
Ceana glanced backward. “Do you think anyone heard that?”
Most people would be asleep. If the noise woke them, no one was likely to connect it with a violated coffin. He peeled the board back with his hands, and it broke.
A stench worse than rotted vegetables hit him in the face. He stumbled back and choked down the bile burning his throat. Above him, Ceana gagged and rolled away from the hole.
He held his breath and leaned over the gap in the coffin lid. The stiff, bloated face of a woman stared back at him.
The sound of retching from up top stilled, and Ceana’s pale face appeared at the edge again. “It’s not the right grave, is it?”
He shook his head. However long this woman had been dead, she was well past fresh flesh.
“What do we do now?” Ceana’s voice shook.
The moon had managed to creep its way directly overhead of them. “We still have time. We’ll dig out the other grave. It must be that one.” Gavran rubbed his aching shoulder. Assuming the strength in his arm held out that long. Grave-robbing wouldn’t be on the physician’s list of approved activity for his shoulder any more than wielding a Lochabar was. “I need to rest a bit first, though.”
Light skittered across the right side of Ceana’s face. Her head snapped in the direction of the source, and a curse fit for a dockworker slipped from her mouth. She reached down, not looking in his direction. “Get out. Quick.”
He seized her hand with his good left one. “What’s wrong?”
“The priest is coming.”
The light swayed as if the priest were running, and a holler loud enough to raise the village ruptured the otherwise quiet night. She leaned back, and his toes scratched the edge. He tumbled on top of her and rolled to the side.
The lantern light hit him straight in the face, blinding him. As the light swung away and his eyes adjusted, he glimpsed a burly man brandishing a lantern in one hand and a thick staff in the other.
Ceana grabbed his hand and half helped, half hauled him to his feet. They left the shovels beside the hole and sprinted from the graveyard without looking back.
“I’ve seen you,” the priest yelled after them. “I know what you look like. You’ll be called to account for this desecration.”
Chapter 25
The pressure in Ceana’s chest felt like she had to cry or she wouldn’t be able to breathe. Like the tears needed to come out or they’d flood her lungs, drowning her.
But she’d rather stop breathing, rather drown, than allow herself to cry. Hadn’t her dadaidh beaten it into her that crying never changed anything?
She sat shoulder to shoulder with Gavran in a patch of scrub brush far enough from Duntulm that the villagers wouldn’t find them on their torch-and-pitchfork hunt.
Gavran snapped a long blade of grass between his fingers. “Do you think he thought we were fae? The priest, I mean.”
“Why would fae rob a grave?”
Gavran shrugged, barely more than a jiggle of his shoulders.
She let the silence fall again. They needed to talk about what would happen next, with no flesh to lure the nuckalevee. But for a few minutes more she wanted to pretend like they had another choice and rested here to catch their breath before pursuing it.
“How much do you think we need?” Gavran’s voice was rough.
He could mean only one thing, but she didn’t want to answer him. “Flesh?”
His head dipped once.
Was a nuckalevee like a shark who couldn’t resist a drop of blood in the water, or more like a wolf who’d need an entire fresh carcass before it’d risk coming out into the open? Given the way the MacDonalds described it, it was like to be more ravenous shark than skittish wolf. And while she’d been willing to die for this, she’d much rather lose only a part of herself. “Not a whole body, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He snapped the blade of grass so hard it broke. “An arm then, or could we get by with a hand.”
It’d been the same thing she wondered since the priest ran them off. She could survive with one hand. It’d limit the work she could do, but the MacDonalds surely wouldn’t turn her out after all of this. Her marriage prospects were nil since the wishes anyway, so losing a hand, or even an arm, wouldn’t leave her any worse off in that area than before.
There was one problem. “If we take only the hand, and it’s not enough, then we’ve cut off the hand for nothing.”
The weak moonlight reflected off Gavran’s face, making him pale as an albino. He gave a sharp nod. “The whole arm then.”
A chill carried up her fingers and into her arms. She tucked her hands under her armpits. He’d agreed to that easily. He’d proven that he wasn’t indifferent or selfish, so that couldn’t be the cause. It must be that she’d intended to kill herself earlier. Perhaps he was simply glad she’d agreed to a lesser butchery.
He climbed to his feet slowly, stiffly, reminding her of an old man. He plodded out of their hiding place.
She scrambled after him. He headed in the wrong direction. “Where are you going?”
“MacDonald castle. We’ll need an axe.”
They’d be eejits to waste a day walking back to MacDonald castle, not to mention the obstacle of getting back in since, on their way out, Hugh ordered the gate guards to bar them entry, and the MacDonalds didn’t know of it. “We can steal one, same as we did the shovels.”
“The priest raised the whole village over us violating the graves.” He ground out the words. “And we’ll need to cauterize the wound with something hot.”
His irritation seemed out of proportion, but, then again, Gavran’d always been a touch short-tempered when exhaustion hit him. They were both far past exhaustion. Let him have it his way. Her brain already felt full of sheep’s wool and spider webs, so she wasn’t the best judge at the moment.
Their feet crunched across the dry grass, and to their left, wind swirled the loose soil up into funnels like it hadn’t poured rain only hours ago. In the near perfect dark, the funnels looked like angry spirits rising from the ground to chase them.
She shook herself but couldn’t clear the feeling. It must be the silence of the walk. “Feels like a storm coming.”
“You’ll need to tie the tourniquet tight.”
She tripped and righted herself. He was still thinking about what they had to do. “Aye.”
“With the arm gone, there’s a risk of bleeding to death otherwise.”
And infection. And shock. She clamped her teeth together as if that would block off the thoughts. No sense in ruminating on them like a goat on old cud. This had to be done. They needed flesh. “Won’t you take care of that? The tourniquet.”
His eyebrows dipped down, darkening his eyes, and he gave her an are-we-talking-about-the-same-thing look. “How do you expect me to tie it on my own arm?”
She stumbled back a step. “What do you mean your arm? I
thought we were going to cut off my arm.”
“That’s why you didn’t argue with me.” He spoke the words slowly, drawing them out as if processing the idea as he said them. Relief and something else she couldn’t identify warred with each other on his face. “I thought you didn’t care if I chopped off my arm, and I started to think maybe I’d been…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong.”
She pressed a fist over her mouth and closed her eyes. He hadn’t disagreed with her because he hadn’t realized what she meant to do. “I thought you weren’t arguing with me because of how I’ve berated you when you didn’t give me my way. And because I offered to sacrifice my whole self before.”
When she opened her eyes again, he had the kind of half-committed smile on his face that said I’m not sure I should find this funny but I do. “Have we always been like two bairns learning to talk when it came to communicating?”
She smiled to give him permission to joke about it. His half smile grew into a full one. It was so easy to forget that he didn’t remember their history. All the times they’d fought and reconciled, debated and come to a compromise. “We did tend to assume the other person knew what we meant, and so we oft ran ahead, thinking we were on the same path when we weren’t. We always figured it out eventually.”
Almost always. Neither of them had broached the topic of their relationship before the wishes. They’d been the best of friends, as close as family, and there were moments when she thought he wanted more. She’d catch him looking at her lips. He’d choose her company over that of other women at community events. But neither of them spoke about it. Her hints went unanswered.
And then it was too late.
She pulled her shoulders back into a no-argument line. Enough dwelling on the past. He had no memory of what once was, and they had bigger problems now. “We’re not cutting off your arm.”
“We agreed a hand might not be enough. And if it isn’t, I’ve lost my hand for nothing.”
She had no intention of chopping off any part of him. “No hand, either. How do you expect to fight the nuckalevee one-handed? If we cut off a part of one of us, then it should be me. I’m the weaker fighter, and if this doesn’t work, I’m worthless anyway.”
Cursed Wishes (Three Wishes Book 1) Page 17