by Bess McBride
“So, this is to be the last dig,” Dylan said, walking beside me.
The usual morning fog had lifted slightly, though still clung to the mounds that dotted Dun Eistean’s tabletop.
“Yes.”
He turned and paused.
“Congratulations on your graduation!”
“Thank you.”
“Are your plans unchanged? Will you be seeking a position at the university as you had talked about last year?”
I shook my head.
“No, I’m going home. I’ll look for something Colonial maybe. I might have to take another few classes, but I’m going home.”
I resumed walking, unwilling to talk about my lack of plans. I’d always dreamed of a career studying and teaching medieval Scotland, but my heartbreak at the hands of a Scot—sweet though he was—was enough to send me scurrying home to my own people. I simply did not understand the Scots, I didn’t understand Dylan, and I didn’t understand men.
Dylan opened his mouth to speak, but I preempted him.
“It’s done. Everything is done. Everything is okay. There’s no need to say anything.”
I could feel it. I was still smarting, still hurt.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Debra,” Dylan said softly.
I paused and turned to him.
“I can’t spend six weeks on this dig if you and I can’t put that behind us. I’m not hurt! It’s over, and I know that. We need to let this go, Dylan. I need to let it go. Please.”
Dylan grimaced and nodded.
I returned the nod and marched up to where the usual tables had been set up for examining and cataloguing artifacts. I stowed my backpack underneath a table, ignoring the memory of Cynthia sitting there cataloguing the previous year. Rubbing my hands together briskly, I turned to Dylan and several other archaeological students who awaited instructions.
“Okay, what are we working on?” I asked.
Several hours of backbreaking, painstaking digging later, I straightened and looked up at the sky. Bright and blue, only a few clouds hovered. Still cool given the earliness of the season, I longed to feel some warmth.
I decided to break for lunch. I returned to the table where I had stowed my backpack, withdrew a sandwich and water and thrust them into my jacket pockets before heading toward the path leading to the beach. I was hopeful the pebbles retained enough heat from the sun to warm me.
I descended the path and crossed over the rocks to sit down just short of where boisterous waves lapped at the beach. No sooner had I settled in and taken a bite of my sandwich than I heard a familiar voice behind me.
“I see we had the same idea. May I join you?”
I looked up to see Dylan, absent his watch cap, blond curls sparkling almost white under the sun’s rays. He had tied his dark-blue sweater around his waist, revealing a bland gray T-shirt. Like my jeans, his were muddy at the knees.
“Sure,” I said without enthusiasm. I still liked Dylan very much, but I didn’t want to feel bad anymore. “We’re not going to talk about personal things though, right?”
“Not if you don’t wish to,” he said, taking a seat beside me and lowering his backpack. He crossed his legs and rummaged in his bag. The sight of Dylan and that bag... I couldn’t help myself.
“Did you take the dagger, Dylan?”
He paused in the act of unwrapping his sandwich and looked at me.
“I miss our friendship, Debra.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about personal things.”
“Yes, I thought so too, but then you started.”
“What? The dagger? That’s not a personal thing.”
Dylan smiled. I remembered his smile.
“Yes, I took the dagger, and I gave it to Cynthia. She didn’t want to take it at first. She was afraid of—”
I nodded and interrupted him. “I thought I saw you give her something metal. I assumed it was the dagger. Why would you do that? It’s incredibly valuable. Did she plan to sell it or...”
“No, not sell it. If anything, Cynthia has more right to the dagger than any of us do...did.”
“Why would you say that? Why would Cynthia have any particular right to a medieval French dagger found at an island stronghold in Scotland?”
Dylan bit into his sandwich and looked out to sea. I watched him for a moment, then resumed eating. We had taken a baby step forward but it seemed as if he was shutting down again.
“Okay,” I said, my longtime habit of having the last word surfacing.
Dylan gave me a knowing look. “Are you done?”
“No?”
He chuckled, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Dylan, you know that I have trust issues. I told you a long time ago when we first met that my parents lied...a lot. If Santa Claus had been their only lie, that would have been great. But they lied about whether they loved each other, they lied about their infidelities with other people, and they lied to me, making me believe that I was crazy because I knew they were seeing other people though they kept pretending that they were together. I don’t think they meant to confuse me. I think they meant to raise me in some facsimile of a happy family, even while they pretended the whole time. But all they did was confuse me with their lies.
“I just hate lying. You know that. And you keep doing it...to me. Maybe what happened to Cynthia is none of my business. I get that. But I trusted you, and you turned away from me rather than tell me the truth.”
“Actually, you turned from me, Debra, because I didn’t feel I could tell you the truth.”
I shrugged. “Semantics, I suppose.”
“Aye.”
I resumed eating my food, not one of those people whose appetite was affected by strong emotion. And I was feeling strong emotions at the moment, especially reliving the happy family lie that was my childhood.
Dylan laid a hand on my knee. I looked down at his long, slender fingers but remained mute. He removed his hand and took a deep breath.
“The dagger is some sort of device that instigates time travel,” he said. “If all went well, Cynthia is in the sixteenth century, here at Dun Eistean, happily married to a man named Torq.”
I heard Dylan’s words without breathing. A loud thumping in my ears reminded me to drag in some air...or faint.
“Time travel?” I murmured. “Like...traveling through time?”
Dylan’s lips curved again. “The same.”
I had seen Cynthia come and go, had seen her vanish. I remembered the word Torq, her words about the dagger, her historically authentic skirts. I wasn’t flabbergasted...totally. I had known something supernatural had happened to Cynthia, and I’d certainly had time to wonder about it. Still...time travel? I dragged in another gulp of air, still forgetting to breathe.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Neither did I,” Dylan said.
“Tell me everything.”
Dylan told me then about Ann Borodell, about Cynthia and about their lives on the tabletop fortress. He told me that Ann had married John Morrison, a name I recognized as a sixteenth-century laird of the Morrisons on the Isle of Lewis. Dylan further explained that Cynthia had returned to a Scot named Torq Morrison, the man she loved.
“So that’s where the mysterious Ann went!” I exclaimed. “Wow, have I been in the dark! And you’ve known this for a couple of years now.”
Dylan nodded.
“The keeper of the secret,” I murmured.
Dylan grimaced with another nod.
“Does anyone else know about this...time travel?”
Dylan shook his head mutely.
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could tell me,” I murmured softly. “I wish you could have trusted me enough. What a burden that knowledge must have been.”
This time, I laid my hand over his, resting on his knee. He squeezed my hand.
“Are you in love with Cynthia?” I asked. “I mean...were you?”
Dylan glanced at me out of the corner of hi
s eyes. “A little bit, I think. Maybe. But I knew she was in love with a sixteenth-century Scot.”
I nodded, the twinge of hurt not as painful as it once had been. I withdrew my hand gently, though Dylan tried to hang on to it.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too,” he responded, looking at me.
“So the dagger is gone? With Cynthia?”
“Aye, it would seem so. Yet that really doesn’t make sense. Though the dagger vanished with Cynthia, it was instrumental in facilitating the time travel for both Ann and Cynthia...suggesting that it continued to exist through time. Unless the silver was melted down, you would think it would still exist somewhere.”
“You’re right. You said that Ann and Cynthia both found the dagger here on the island...buried.”
“Aye.”
“We can’t possibly have uncovered every nook and cranny of this tabletop.”
“No, but this is our last season here, so there isn’t much time left. Why? Do you want to find the dagger?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Dylan said with a shake of his head. “I think it is best buried. The last thing the Morrisons need...or needed...was a string of twenty-first-century people parading in and out of their lives.”
I looked over my shoulder toward the tabletop.
“Because they were doing so well on their own?”
Dylan followed my eyes.
“Well, if we returned with military-style weapons, maybe we would be useful.” He grinned.
I laughed. “Or at least one more medieval French dagger.”
“Aye, there is that!”
“I want to look for the dagger!” I exclaimed.
Dylan shook his head in amusement. “Where would you start, Debra?”
“I don’t know! You said Ann found it at the base of the keep both times, Cynthia found it inside the keep the first time, and it was found at the bottom of the keep the second time?”
“Aye, but those areas were reexamined and continually excavated last year long after Cynthia had disappeared. I don’t think the dagger is there. It is likely that the dagger was buried by one of the men so that the women were not likely to find it and travel back in time by accident. Cynthia mentioned they attempted to do that before.”
“So, where would they bury a dagger?”
“If it were me, I would have thrown it out to sea.”
“Ooohhh, I don’t know about that. If I were transported through time, I would never want to burn my bridges...so to speak.”
“It could be anywhere,” Dylan said, “or quite possibly no longer here at the stronghold.”
“I think it’s still here,” I said with a certainty of inexplicable origin.
“Where?”
“Right here! Here on the beach somewhere.”
“Here?” Dylan said incredulously, looking around. “It would have washed away to sea by now.”
“What if...” My heart was pounding. “What if Cynthia was found right where she disappeared? Right here! Isn’t this where you guys were sitting when she vanished? Why would she have turned up somewhere else? And the dagger went with her. So in this spot, she travels to the sixteenth century—I still can’t believe I’m actually saying that—with the dagger, and she has to leave the dagger where it is. She can’t touch it...or she would have traveled back again. So someone gets the dagger and buries it?”
“That is just too fantastical, Debra.”
I jumped to my feet and surveyed the spot. Thousands, bazillions of rounded pebbles eyed me, daring me to dig through them.
“Oh, come on, Dylan!” I wheedled.
He looked around again. “Without a shovel? Even a trowel? Speaking of a needle in a haystack!”
“I know, right? Dig in!”
I dropped to my knees and started clawing through the pebbles, pushing them aside as I dug. I could have wished for a pair of gloves to protect my fingertips, but I wasn’t about to run up the hill and grab a pair. That sounded too organized, too logical. I wasn’t known for either.
I looked over my shoulder to see Dylan staring at me as if I were crazy. I didn’t pause though.
“So you’re not going to dig?” I asked, starting to pant with the exertion.
“Ye’re aff yer heid, Debra!” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes of this, but that’s all. We have work to do up at the stronghold. We cannot dig up the entire beach.”
Dylan rose onto his knees and came to dig beside me, half-laughing, half-muttering. Every now and then, I glanced up to assess the size and scope of the beach, from the walls of the cliff and out toward the sea—with the thought that Dylan was right. Finding the dagger would be no easier than finding a needle in a haystack.
I yelped as my fingers encountered something sharp. Pulling back, I looked down at the blood dripping from the middle two fingers on my left hand. The wounds were minimal with no likelihood that I would bleed to death.
“Something bit me!” I said.
“Bit you?”
Dylan grabbed my hand to examine it, and with my free hand, I tentatively pushed two blood-spattered rocks aside. There, poking out of the rocks, half-buried in a layer of sand, was the business end of a tarnished piece of metal.
I dug around the base and pulled the dagger up from the sand.
Dylan, wrapping his hands around my bleeding fingers, exclaimed,
“Debra! The dagger!”
The hilt of the dagger flamed, and the world went black.
Chapter Three
I opened my eyes to see seagulls flying overhead, soaring under the bright-blue sky. With a gasp, I jerked upright from my prone position. Brisk waves smashed against the beach near my feet. I didn’t know if I had fainted or what had happened, but the roiling sea was much closer than it had been, and had I not awakened, I think I might have soon drowned.
I tried to rub my eyes free of a hazy cloud, but could move only one hand. My left hand was immobile in a warm cocoon.
Dylan!
I looked down to see him seemingly asleep or unconscious, one hand holding mine. Like me, he lay on his back.
To my right, the dagger twinkled on the rocks where I must have dropped it, the metal suddenly gleaming as if it had been polished.
Movement out of the corner of my eyes distracted me from my immediate surroundings, and I turned to look out to the white-capped sea. The tail end of a Viking-style boat disappeared from view around the northern end of the tidal stack, sails billowing in the wind.
“Dylan!” I said, jerking my hand free. A quick glance showed that the blood from my wounds had already started to clot. I shook his shoulder.
He bolted upright as I had, blinking, rubbing at his eyes.
“What happened? Did I faint?”
“Well, if you did, then I did too! Did you see that boat? That looks like a birlinn!”
“What boat?”
The boat was gone, and I didn’t take the time to describe it. Waves rolled up onto the beach again as the tide rose. I eyed the dagger, momentarily afraid of touching the thing. Something made me look over my shoulder toward the top of the cliff.
Two women, long red skirts flapping in the wind, stood there, several children clinging to them. Even from here, I recognized one of them instantly.
“Dylan,” I muttered. “I think we found Cynthia...and Ann.”
Dylan looked over his shoulder, and his eyes widened. He jumped up. A smile broke out on his face, and he shouted toward the women, waving his arms without restraint.
“Cynthia! Ann! Ann!”
I rose more slowly.
The women looked at us for a moment before Cynthia, holding what looked like a blanketed infant in her arms, held up a hand and waved. At her side, Ann held not one but two infants.
I turned to Dylan and grabbed his arm.
“Do you realize what has happened?”
He looked down at me, the white flecks in his blue eyes sparkling like happy diamonds.
/>
“Oh, I do! I do! Though I don’t know how!”
“Dylan!” one of the women called down to the beach.
“Well, you’ve touched the dagger before, right? And nothing happened?” I asked. “So I’m guessing you must have traveled with me because you had hold of me?”
“I really cannot say at the moment! Could we talk about this later? Let’s go greet Ann and Cynthia!”
Dylan turned toward the cliff, and I grabbed his arm.
“Wait! The dagger! The tide is coming in.”
As I spoke, a rogue wave swept up onto the rocks and pulled the dagger with it.
“Dylan!” I screeched. “The dagger! We need it to get home!”
Dylan turned toward the cliff and then back to the water, as if torn between his desire to greet Ann and Cynthia and grabbing the dagger.
“I’ll go!” I said. I ran toward the water, but the foaming waves blocked the dagger from view.
“Help me, Dylan!”
Dylan rushed into the waves, slipping as one caught him from underneath. Falling onto his backside, he appeared to search the rocks beneath him.
“I can’t find it!” he cried out.
I waded in, struggling against the powerful incoming waves that threatened to drag me out to sea. I knelt on my hands and knees, searching, hoping this time to feel the sharp point of the blade. A wave blasted over me, and as it withdrew, it dragged me with it. Unable to regain control, I slipped off some sort of rocky shelf and fell into deeper water.
“Help!” I screamed through a water-filled mouth.
A hand grabbed me by my jacket and hauled me out of the water to land on top of him. Dylan struggled to his knees and dragged me with him out of the surf.
“The dagger!” I shouted.
“Let it go for now! Let it go! We’re going to drown if we don’t get out of here!”
Dylan and I crawled out of reach of the waves and paused for a moment, watching as the surf hid the knife. I doubted that such a heavy item would float out to sea, but for now, it was out of reach.