Sparks of Light

by Janet B. Taylor

  Apparently, Dad had made his decision. And it was just one more thing to pile on. One more punch to the gut, along with everything else Mom had suffered. Well, maybe I couldn’t protect her from this, but I sure as hell would protect her from Celia Alvarez.

  I crumpled the pages in my fist as I turned back around.

  “Mom?” I said, my voice fierce and low as she raised her bloodshot eyes to mine. “I—​I love you, Mom.”

  Chapter 3

  “BLADE!”

  By the time I managed to snatch my dagger from its hidden sheath in my boot and bring it up, it was far too late. My attacker’s sword whipped down, so close I felt the breeze on my cheek and heard the weapon slice the air next to my ear. A few dark curls floated to the muddy ground and disappeared into the muck.

  Heart slamming, I tried to dance away. But the tight waist of the practice gown had long ago stolen what little breath I had. The full skirts tripped me up, and I went down hard. In seconds the cold, boggy ground seeped through the thick layers of wool and muslin.

  I scuttled back on my butt, boot heels making divots in the mud.

  “Stop. Can’t brea—” The sword tip nudged my throat. Cold, sharp, stinging.

  Ignoring the raindrops that pattered my cheeks and eyelashes, I glowered up at the grin spreading across my opponent’s broad, freckled face.

  “Better.” Collum MacPherson sheathed the short gladiator sword that had once belonged to his father. “You drew quick enough that time.” He offered me a hand up. All pride gone, I took it.

  “But you paused,” Collum went on. “And you can’t hesitate, Hope. Not for an instant. Not when you’re under attack.”

  “But,” I said, my voice just south of a whine. “I could’ve cut you.”

  Collum’s blond eyebrows quirked puppy-like over his eyes, though he was kind enough to hide the smile. “Unlikely.”

  That was true enough, though it irked me to no end that he had to look so damn smug about it. Despite weeks of endless training, I was still clunky and awkward with any and every type of weapon. Besides, I’d never seen anyone faster with a sword than Collum MacPherson.

  Well . . . that part wasn’t exactly true. But before the image of a dark-haired figure whipping two curved blades like they were extensions of his own body could fully form, I pushed it away.

  “What?” Collum’s hazel eyes narrowed on me.

  “Nothing. Just cold.” I shivered for effect.

  “Cold?” he queried. “In July?”

  “It’s a Scottish Highland July. What is it, like sixty-eight, seventy degrees? It’s ninety-eight in Arkansas right now. In the shade. Plus,” I added, gesturing to the mud that was congealing on the back of my skirts. “Ick.”

  “Ick?” Collum closed his eyes and pinched the creased skin between his sandy brows. “So what you’re saying is that when you get into trouble on a mission, you’ll simply . . . what? Call a time-out?” His voice went high-pitched in the worst American accent I’d ever heard. “‘Excuse me! Hello, all you murderers. Could you stop swinging at me for a moment, please? I’ve a muddy bum.’”

  “Well, I—”

  “No.” He picked up my blade and handed it to me, hilt first. “Again. And again and again. And never mind the ‘ick.’”

  In the two months since my abrupt return from the past, Collum had been relentless. Two hours. Every day. Tired or exhausted. Rain or . . . well, less rain, I was dragged outdoors to defend myself—​in costume, no less—​against an opponent of his choosing.

  With Phoebe, a much more patient and gentle teacher, I learned how to use my opponent’s larger size against them. Only for me, that happened about one out of every hundred times, and usually because my feet got accidentally tangled with theirs.

  Phoebe had trained almost since she’d left the womb, in an insane regimen and with a variety of martial arts. With a body weight of a hundred pounds dripping wet, my petite “bestie” could put down any attacker. Usually in less than five moves. Watching her send Collum crashing to the mud was one of the joys of my life.

  I wasn’t any better at knife throwing, Phoebe’s other exquisitely honed skill. As Mac often said, “My granddaughter can peel the wings off a fly at thirty paces, she can.”

  After days, weeks, two months of kicks and punches, knife chunks and bow twangs. After countless nicks from steel objects—​mostly self-inflicted. After hours in Moira’s Epsom salt baths, trying to soak the feeling back into my numb muscles, you’d think I’d have become at least somewhat less pathetic.

  You would be wrong.

  “Argh! I can’t do this!”

  I threw the light practice sword away in disgust. It twirled through the air, hit the mud point first, and stuck there.

  “Hey!” I called to Collum as I watched the part that wasn’t sunk in the mud sway back and forth. “Kinda stuck the landing, didn’t I? I mean, sure, it was an accident and all. But you gotta admit, it was kinda cool, was—”

  From twenty yards away, Collum rushed me. Like his woad-painted ancestors before him, he raised his sword and shrieked an ancient battle cry as his large feet pounded across the stable yard.

  It happened without conscious thought. A translucent film, tinged neon green, overlaid my vision. Multiple arcs drew themselves from every angle, tracing out possible escape routes and countermeasures. Instantaneously, my mind filtered through every lesson, every bit of training, calculating each possible outcome of this scenario.

  As two hundred pounds of bellowing Celtic warrior descended on me, my mind discarded one idea after another after another until . . .

  I stepped aside and stuck out my foot.

  Collum’s speed was such that he couldn’t veer off in time. His trajectory took him straight into my path, where he tumbled over my outstretched leg and splatted, face first, into the mud.

  “Ow!” I hopped on one foot, trying to rub the already bruising flesh where the toe of his boot had cracked against my ankle.

  He rose slowly while hunks of slimy earth slid down to glop back onto the ground. Collum MacPherson swiped at his eyes, flinging mud from his fingers as he glared at me for a long moment. All I could see of his face were two clear hazel eyes amid the brown gunk.

  “Um.” I grimaced. “Sorry?”

  White flashed amid the rich ocher as he grinned. Grinned and began to laugh.

  And then I was laughing too because well, it was all so utterly, utterly ridiculous. All of it.

  “You . . .” I wheezed. “Covered in . . . And holy crap, we . . . freaking time travelers.” I bent, breathless as I let it all go in a long, soundless spasm that I was sure would burst every blood vessel in my brain. “How . . . st-stupid is that?”

  “Aye.” Collum hiccupped. “And damn my eyes if you don’t look like a wee barbarian yerself with yer hair all stuck to one side of yer head!”

  We laughed. We laughed until we couldn’t laugh anymore. Until tears tracked through the mud on our faces and the sun peeked through the clouds to infiltrate the raindrops.

  “They say when the sun shines through the rain it’s the devil beating his wife,” Collum said as we headed toward the house.

  “Well, that is so not cool.” I climbed the steps to the screened porch. “Mrs. Satan should file a restraining order against that ass-hat.”

  He snorted and reached out to pluck something from my hair. Turning his palm over, I saw it was a solid clump of stable yard mud or . . . what I sincerely hoped was mud. Above us, the mountaintop had disappeared behind a cloak of white mist. The air around us had turned an odd peachy plum, as if each droplet emitted its own tiny rainbow.

  Collum sighed. “Oh, but I do love this time of day,” he said. “When the day rests her bones beneath night’s soft cloak.”

  “Why, Collum MacPherson,” I said. “Were you just being poetic? Hang on, I need a pencil and paper. Someone has to notate this auspicious occasion.”

  Collum’s always-windburned cheeks went neon as he bumped me with his shou
lder. And despite the mud and the rain and the sore muscles . . . as we both smiled, I felt something peaceful and comforting settle around me, a warm blanket to chase away the chill.

  “Might be that a shower is in order.” He gave the dark clump a dubious look.

  “Right back atcha,” I threw over my shoulder as we headed inside. “’Cause you look like a golem.”

  We were still laughing as we went upstairs.

  Chapter 4

  EVEN IN OUR MODERN AGE OF SMARTPHONES, delivery by drone, and social media addiction, there is apparently nothing more sacred to the average Scottish Highlander than the Gathering.

  “Here. Put this on.”

  I eyed the teensy scrap of red and green tartan Phoebe was holding out to me.

  “What, uh . . . What is it, exactly?”

  Phoebe just shook her head and tossed the fabric in my direction so that I had no choice but to catch it. Wrinkling my nose, I shook out the scant folds of soft wool, holding them tight with two fingers as if some errant breeze might—​at any moment—​come along and blow them away.

  I gave her a look like, You have got to be kidding.

  “But,” I tried to argue, as I looked down at the knee-length skirt Moira had altered for me the day before. “I already have a skirt.”

  Phoebe raised a hand to silence my protests as she stepped back to give the modest, loose-hanging plaid I currently wore a scathing once-over. “You’re having one over on me, aren’t you?” she said. “You can’t really be planning on wearing that old thing? You’re sixteen, Hope, not fifty.”

  When I only looked at her, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “No,” she said. “No way I’m letting you out of the house in that . . . that horrible granny garment. You’ll wear this one, and you’ll look brilliant.” She marched to my closet and rummaged through, snorting at the selection. Finally, she emerged with a cropped ivory top with cap sleeves and a low neckline. “This’ll do. And you can just quit shaking your bloody head at me, missy. Trust Auntie Phoebe. You’ve got great legs. It’s time to show them off.”

  My friend had no issue whatsoever with the amount of skin she displayed. Her own skirt—​patterned in the red, blue, and yellow tartan that had clothed generations of MacPhersons—​barely covered the necessities.

  I cringed as her critical gaze roamed me up and down. My hair, though freshly washed, was pulled up in its usual tight pony. And my face hadn’t seen more than a lick of mascara in weeks.

  I hadn’t seen the need. Not when most of my day was filled with endless hours in the library, broken up only by the occasional mud-soaked farce that was my so-called weapons training.

  “You know what it’s time for, don’t you?” she said, her blue eyes narrowing as she stalked toward me.

  “No-o.” I backed up, stepping on poor Hecty’s tail in my fruitless attempt at escape.

  Yowling, the tiny cat shot under the bed and turned to glare at me from the shadows.

  “Oh, aye. It’s makeover time.” With a firm grip on my arm, Phoebe marched me toward the bathroom. “Let’s be on with it, then. We’re running out of time and you—​my darlin’ girl—​are sadly in need of an expert hand.”

  In the passenger seat of the battered old Range Rover, I spent most of the hour-long drive yanking at the soft, loose curls that whipped about in the wind, and tugging on the short skirt that seemed determined to ride up.

  Thing was, I hadn’t really felt like doing much of anything lately. Even racing across the moors on Ethel’s back had done little to penetrate the gray film that seemed to coat my senses like a dirty shroud.

  As Phoebe and Doug chattered and giggled in the back seat, the yeasty, savory scent of Moira’s meat pies rose from the neatly packed boxes in the floorboard. With this batch, Moira had sworn she’d at last beat out “that braggart Catriona MacLean,” for the blue ribbon.

  I folded and refolded the square of crinkled wax paper that had held a sample of her entry for Scottish tablet, a buttery, sugary confection I’d scarfed down within five minutes of getting in the car.

  Even Collum was in rare form.

  “Sure, and there are bigger fairs around,” he said, eyes pinned on the winding road ahead as he followed Mac’s truck up into the glory of the Highlands. “Braeburn and Atholl, for instance. But they’ve become so damn commercial. Food trucks that sell junk like corn dogs and burgers and chicken on a stick, for God’s sake. None of which can match Archie Gordon’s bannock and bangers, mind. And they bring in ringers from other countries, so locals have little chance to place in any of the competitions.”

  Traffic had come to an abrupt halt as we joined the line of cars attempting to crawl through the tiny, quaint village that had played host to the ancestral gathering for a thousand years or more. An enormous ruin loomed atop a nearby hill. Only the ghosts of its noble occupants now watched over town and fields and glassy loch. Even smaller and older than the village near Christopher Manor, the sidewalks before the homes and businesses that lined the town’s only street now bustled with strolling Highlanders.

  When we eventually reached the grassy field that served as a parking lot, the sun was just peeping over the mist-cloaked mountains to the east. As the guys moved off with a roll of striped canvas and poles, to set the Carlyle tent among the other clans, I reveled in the fragrance of the cool early air that sieved around us.

  Deep water. Highland pine. Ancient mysteries that would remain forever unsolved.

  I’d never seen any of the guys in a kilt. But as they greeted old friends on the way to our assigned spot, they looked oddly natural among all the other kilted lads. Collum’s back muscles bulged beneath the blue and white rugby jersey as he pounded tent stakes in the ground. By the time they’d pulled the canvas taut, Doug’s gold-framed glasses were opaque with steam, and beads of sweat dripped from his finger-length dreads to trail down his face.

  Collum swiped a handkerchief over his face. “Think that’s it, then. If you’re done with us, Gran, we’ll be off.”

  If Collum and Doug blended the ancient with the modern in their T-shirts, tartans, and plain sporrans . . . when Mac MacPherson stepped into the newly erected tent, he looked like something out of a storybook.

  “Whoa, Mac!” I gaped at his intricate attire. “You look magnificent!”

  “As well he should.” Moira playfully bumped her husband with a hip on her way to rearranging the last of the food. “Representin’ our house in the march, what with Lu feeling peaky, now isn’t he?”

  “And judging the sheepdog trials again,” Phoebe said, scrunching her nose at her grinning grandfather. “Though I still think that darling one-eyed bloke should’ve won last year.”

  “Aw, go on w’ you now.” Mac, in kilt, furred sporran, and military-style black cap, waved his wife away when she fussed with the silver broach that fastened the formal plaid at his shoulder. It draped over one side of the formal blue jacket, just skirting Mac’s knobby knees. “You kids better get on with it, ’fore Moira here finds more chores that need doing.”

  “Now you mention it . . .” Moira tapped her fingers thoughtfully against her lips as she eyed the stacked jars of jam and strategically arranged baskets of baked goods.

  “Go. Go. Go.” Collum, one eye on his grandmother, shooed the rest of us out before Moira could come up with any more tasks.

  “Wise of ye to get while the gettin’s good.” Mac chuckled as he followed us out the open tent flap. “No daft children did I raise, even if I say so myself.” He turned to the boys. “And which heavies will you lads compete in today?”

  “The caber, of course,” Doug replied, slinging an arm around Phoebe’s shoulders. “I’ll likely sign for the sheaf toss as well. And Coll’s for the hammer, I think?”

  “Aye,” Collum agreed. “And we’d best go or we’ll be so far down on the list we won’t compete till sunset. See you, Mac.”

  “Good luck to ye, son.” When Mac clapped Collum on the shoulder, I saw the glow of pride in the older man�
�s careworn face as he grinned at his grandson. “And don’t forget what your da and I taught ye. With the caber, ’tis not distance that matters, but accuracy, aye?”

  Collum’s windburned cheeks flushed an even deeper red as he bestowed one of his rare and lovely smiles on his grandfather. “Aye, Mac,” he said, his voice so gruff he had to clear it. “I remember.”

  As I watched the two of them, my own throat tightened a bit. I’d seen the photos. Little Collum—​all big teeth and chipmunk cheeks—​crushed between his dad and grand-father. Scattered all over the manor were snapshots of the three of them, the two men hoisting the freckled little boy on their shoulders. Grinning, sporting poles and matching fishing hats, the three of them setting off on manly fishing trips.

  According to Moira, Collum and Phoebe’s mom had been a silly, selfish woman who’d run off with another man shortly after Phoebe’s birth. “And better off we are without that one,” she’d declared more than once.

  But their dad, Michael MacPherson, was another story. Even after twelve long years, his absence was a painful, palpable thing.

  And whose fault was that?

  If—​twelve years ago—​they’d simply left me to freeze to death in that forest, Michael would be here now, filling this gaping hole in their lives.

  Their family would be intact. Happy and whole.

  I was the reason it all went to crap. Me . . . and no one else.

  “Hope?”

  I jerked my chin up to find Mac gone and Collum standing only a foot away, hazel eyes narrowed as they peered into mine. “What’s the matter, then? You’re awfully far away.”