by L. L. Muir
Cold drops shocked and stung his skin like hail, and though it was exhilarating to feel such sensations once more, he would have welcomed a small wattle and daub cottage to shelter in.
Since the large drops of water flew at him from the south, he made his way to the north of the rise, sat upon a wayward stone, and pressed his back against the high curb of rocks that surrounded Odin’s Helmet. The trajectory spared him from taking gallons of water to the face by the time the storm moved on to teach humility to someone else.
Surely, Soni did not hold dominion over the weather.
Surely.
Aye, and it wouldn’t have been Soni who bashed his head in twain, either.
Thanks to the rain, Hamish assumed he was no longer being watched by his assailants. The sun had completely abandoned the mountain. And, due to the drastic turn of the weather, he expected that whoever had struck him had enjoyed plenty of time to return to his shelter and hide from the storm.
Blue-gray clouds blocked his view of Heaven, but he guessed the time to be four o’clock in the afternoon. The rain left no trails to follow. The rowans would only poison him if he ate many more of their berries, and the day would likely end with his deed left undone. He could either find shelter nearby and starve the night through or return to the old woman’s house and try to convince her that he was not, in fact, the one who had been stealing food from her after all. But could she spare just one more pie?
Neither option was tempting, but he could not think of a third. If he remained where he was, at least he wouldn’t have to climb back up in the morning. And sadly, that would leave no time to travel to the east glen in search of his old home.
When imagining the miserable night ahead, however, it cheered him to consider it another complaint to lay at Bonnie Prince Charlie’s feet. In less than two days’ time, he would be granted his boon—for the noble deed of ridding the mountain of thieves—and would lay a good many complaints at the prince’s feet, grievances he’d been enumerating for a great long while. Of course, he would also have the option of showing the royal bastard his disappointment instead of telling him.
In truth, Hamish knew he was the impatient type who would choose the latter in the end. If he remembered Soni’s promises aright, the prince would be capable of feeling, and bleeding, should any of Culloden’s 79 desire to speak with their fists.
In his mind, he imagined applying one last right cross to Charles Stuart’s chin while explaining, “And this is for that recent night I huddled atop a mountain in the rain, starving.” The image pleased him so much, he imagined it half a dozen times over before his sore head grew weary from the effort. “And another for my aching head,” he muttered aloud.
A sneeze came from the rocky cairn at his back.
He turned cautiously while drawing his dagger, but nothing stared back at him but thousands of stones, faceless and grey. He placed his hand upon one rough surface, but it felt as solid as it looked. He lifted it, slammed it back in place, and gave it a thump for good measure, but there was nothing hollow about it.
He peered up at the trees and wondered if the sound might have originated there, then echoed off the rock to give a sense of misdirection, but nothing stared back from the shadows and the branches hung weary and wet, unmoved by dog-sized animals. In the rowans, he saw nothing but green and purple leaves dipping and swaying, trying to lure the breeze back again.
He stared at the great mound again. The sneeze had been no phantom.
A picture began forming in his head, unbidden. So many clues he’d missed or chosen not to examine at all. But one clue in particular was still at hand. One clue he hadn’t thought twice about, what with all the other distractions.
He pushed to his feet and placed his boot upon the rock, pulled his great kilt out of the way, and examined his abused leg. Despite the scrape through the center of it, there was a clearly defined circle of teeth. The small unmistakable bite mark from a child.
A child’s sneeze.
A child’s whisper to go away.
The gasp. The attempt to distract. A heavy stone used as a desperate weapon.
A fur-covered beast the size of a large dog.
“Time to come out, children,” he called to the rocks. “Ye’ll come to no harm, ye have my word.” And though it made him feel like the sort of man children were rightfully warned about, he couldn’t resist the taunt. “Perhaps ye’d care for another blaeberry tart, aye? One for each of ye?”
Considering the silence that followed, he deduced these children were either well trained to avoid men promising treats, or they knew he didn’t have more pies to share with them. But no matter. He was certain he could outlast them. He needed only to wait.
He climbed half a dozen feet up the side of the cairn and found a relatively smooth cradle for his backside, and once again flipped the top half of his kilt over his head, pulled it tight around his shoulders, and began his stakeout. Of course, he’d rather be seated comfortably in an auto, as they did on the telly—drinking hot coffee and eating those sweet rolls with holes in the center of them, but he would have to make do. He only wished he had some music as a distraction from his thoughts…
Thoughts about wayward children and what he might do with a pair of them once he caught them. If he delivered them to the old woman, who was to say she wouldn’t beat them within an inch of their lives? Or would she demand they be punished by the authorities?
Where were their parents, for pity’s sake? Were the mites simply lost and fending for themselves? And would he have enough time to see them home again before Soni summoned him to collect his boon?
He closed his eyes and separated the sounds all about him, straining to hear…music. And damn it all if he didn’t hear it.
~ ~ ~
Sam’s mountain turned out to be a lonely, spooky place. In the half hour since she’d arrived at the top, the birds had suddenly stopped singing—mid-song—half a dozen times, even when she wasn’t moving around. All at once, sound would freeze as if all the woodland creatures were following the same maestro.
Something out there was definitely making them nervous, which naturally made her nervous too. But no matter how long she sat still and listened, she heard nothing moving through the underbrush, saw nothing creeping through the trees. And after a while, she started to wonder if the birds were just messing with her.
Yeah, it was a pretty ridiculous thought, but she would much rather believe that than to wonder if three little kids were stalking her.
Just in case, though, she decided to take Alison’s advice and play for them. She was dying to figure out the acoustics of the place, with so much rock in front of her, trees to her back, and open sky to each side of her where the mountain fell away. Maybe Willa Farquharson played there for a reason that had nothing to do with Redcoats and Jacobites.
She was done resting from the hike and stood. The large, fallen pine made a fine table for the violin case and she popped it open. The first thing that caught her eye was a small red pocketknife she’d tucked into the lining and forgotten about. It was hardly dangerous enough to cut her finger, let alone defend her from a charging boar, but tucking it into her pocket gave her a nice shot of reassurance.
Her mind pushed out everything but the sound of the strings while she tuned them. The ritual did things to her blood—like a lifeless puddle of water coming to life and turning into a bubbling stream.
There. That’s it. Perfect.
A few deep breaths, and her muscle memories took over. She was so surprised a few seconds later that she almost stopped playing—a cloud had descended low enough to push itself through the trees. If it hadn’t pushed on past, like a mesmerized crowd all dressed in white, she might have suspected it had come to listen.
Without thinking about the notes to the concerto, she slowly turned and watched the cloud’s progress, lowering here, rising there. And soon, the acoustics of the mountaintop were swallowed up, but she played on.
Sam turned back to see how
much of Odin’s Helmet might still be visible. The two tall standing stones poked up through the white swells, but the gray mound was too pale to see—all but a spot about halfway up. As she watched, though, the spot never moved, even though the mist changed all around it.
It almost looked like someone was sitting there, watching her, listening… Though her heart stopped, her right hand kept moving.
Man or woman, she couldn’t be sure. Judging by the shape, the head was covered. Was it Willa? Had she come to see who played on her mountain? Did she approve?
Sam poured her alarm into the piece as if it were the most important performance of her life. A misplaced note didn’t matter when she was bowing with her soul, summoning Vivaldi from the f-holes.
She had to get her passion under control as the first movement came to an end and the second, slower one began. As it did with many works, her down-bow became a pen in her hand, writing out a love letter that would never be delivered. And once again, she submerged into the music, almost forgetting the shadow on the hill.
The mist around her paused like it had decided to rest for a while, but when Sam looked up from her strings again, it was gone. All of it. And the shadow on the hillside was gone too. In that exact spot, pale gray stones proved that it couldn’t have just been a shadow. Something real had been sitting there, watching.
She usually resisted the temptation to stop before a piece was finished, but she was too freaked out to play the last, up-tempo movement. Besides, her hands were shaking too hard to make a decent note.
Food. She needed food. Maybe low blood sugar made people see things that weren’t there, right?
She tugged open her day pack and dug through the food. For a distraction, she popped some almonds into her mouth, then dug out the sandwich. It didn’t matter that she had no appetite, she just needed to do something…human.
“Shake it off,” she said. “Shake it off.”
With the sandwich in one hand and her water bottle in the other, she headed for the stones to prove to herself that she wasn’t afraid. Apparently, her imagination had lain dormant most of her life and the fresh air of Scotland had brought it to life. All she had to do was prove it had been her imagination, and she’d be good. Never again would she have to worry what was up on her mountain.
“That’s right,” she told whoever was listening. “It’s my mountain.”
It took a minute or two to walk all the way around the mound and take a good look at the standing stones that surrounded it. They were pretty small stones compared to ones she’d seen on the internet, but it was still cool to see how precisely they’d been placed, like a ring of teeth.
“Next time,” she said, determined there would be a next time, “I’ll have to bring up Bertie and Rob.” Maybe they could explain the place.
With the mist and the spooks chased away, she returned to the downed tree and picked up her violin again, ready to finish the concerto after all. She fingered the high e and took a deep breath, but before she could apply her bow, she heard a voice.
There, see? It wasn’t a ghost.
She allowed the chinrest to fall away and hurried to the edge of the trees. Standing near the base of the rocks was a man in a kilt talking to the ground at his feet.
She asked him what he was doing, who he was talking to, but she couldn’t remember the details. She was too freaked out by the fact that he disappeared. Into thin air. Like—maybe he hadn’t been there in the first place.
“Hey!” Shouting at someone who wasn’t there didn’t earn her any points for sanity, but she didn’t care. “If you see those kids,” she lowered her voice a little out of embarrassment, “tell them… Tell them I’m not a Redcoat!”
CHAPTER SIX
Hamish held perfectly still and willed the strains of the violin to return to him. To his delight, the mournful cry of a violin returned, drifting in and out like ocean waves on the wind. So faint was the sound, he questioned whether or not it came from his imagination each time it faded. Then, when it returned, he wanted to cry out. “It is real! I hear it! I do!”
Then it would go away again.
In the early years, upon the moor at Culloden, he knew what he listened for. But later, as time ceased to exist, he remembered only the ritual of closing his eyes and listening. When all hope faded away, when he knew she would not be coming, his memory faded too.
Like a leisurely butterfly, the piercing strains returned yet again. “It’s real,” he mouthed, not quite a whisper. “I hear it. I do.” But it couldn’t be what he imagined—unless Willa was a ghost, too.
He leaned to the side and begged his mind to quiet, his body to rest. With his head against the stone, a sound came again. But this time it was not the cry of a violin, but the cry of a child. He turned and pressed his ear flush against the rock and the sound carried even better. Muffled, but better.
One child complained. Though the words were muddled, Hamish the Complainer, knew the tone well enough. Another voice tried to soothe the first with hushed singing but the wee’un would have none of it. Another complained he was hungry. At least it sounded like “I’m hungry.” For all Hamish knew, they were plotting his murder in the night. Another blow or two from their heavy rock should do him in easily enough.
And through all of it, never did he hear the voice of an adult.
~ ~ ~
Unless the children were phantoms, as Hamish had been until that day, they had to be hiding inside Odin’s Helmet. The stone cairn, therefore, could not be as solid as it looked. After all, cairns were often graves in addition to being monuments, and some of the more famous ones had entrances to the chambers below.
Hadn’t he stood in the center of such a formation just a mile to the south of Culloden? Without it’s crown, sure, but hadn’t it been constructed much like the cairn he sat upon?
He regarded one of the two tall stones that jutted out of the sides and appeared from afar as Odin’s wings. Without them, the original mound was obvious. The top-most portion was of older, solid stuff that looked like an old man’s pate that weather had worn the hair and skin from.
How many ages must it have taken to rub that head bald, he wondered. Perhaps three hundred years was not such an impressive portion of time after all.
As quietly and carefully as possible, Hamish made his way off the rocks. Then, he walked a circuit around the mound. Just as he expected, there was another circle of thirty stones placed three paces out from the base. Some of them were worn nearly level with the ground, but there was no mistake. This was a ceremonial cairn, and the formation of Odin’s Helmet would be hollow beneath, just like the Clava Cairns.
Passage graves, chambered cairns, whatever they were called, he knew there would be an entrance somewhere. And that entrance would likely align with the Spring Equinox. Since it wasn’t possible to wait for March to come ‘round again and point it out, Hamish would simply have to find it himself.
Guessing where the sun had set, he then estimated where it had risen and called it east. But since he was no student of astronomy, he’d no ken how to adjust for the five months that had passed since the spring festivals. In the end, he could only narrow the search to the quarter that might face the morning sun.
Irksome hedges of gorse blocked a large portion, and near that, rose willow prevented him from examining the curb too closely. He kicked at the roots, tested the firmness of the ground, and hoped for a miracle.
Not there. There was nothing there.
It was possible the spring entrance had never been uncovered, but the autumn?
Further south, he searched again. It was his best guess, as a farmer. His father had been a man who watched the birds when the seasons changed, took note of the thickness of their nests, noted how bare the brambles grew when those same birds stored up for a rough winter.
He was no seaman, familiar with the stars and their seasons. No prophet, to read signs in the heavens. But he did know enough about Scotland’s ancient discoveries to know there was a hole
somewhere. There had to be. Only a ghost could make himself be heard from inside a rock.
“Nay,” he said aloud. They were as real as he—at the moment in any case. No wee ghostie could have lifted the stone large and heavy enough to bash his skull as they’d done.
He’d promised to remove them from the mountain, and so he would. But even without the vow, he couldn’t leave them there to suffer when there would be women in Killiecrankie willing to help them. And since they would no longer need their hidey hole, what did it matter if he exposed the entrance?
A blackthorn pierced his hand and he hissed. “I will pull out every bush if necessary.”
He grabbed onto the base of a gorse bush, protecting his hands by holding the roots and not the barbed branches when he pulled. His hands slipped on wet mud and he was impaled by half a dozen mean barbs. He cursed in full voice.
A gasp sounded nearby and he forgot his wounds in favor of his prey. He stomped about, for there was nothing more than dead grass and weeds beneath him. Or so he thought before something crumbled beneath his boot! He stepped aside to lift the yellowing sod and found a large chunk of bark, nearly two inches thick, buried beneath the growth. And beneath that, a dark hole about the size of his waist.
Something moved within, and though he knew it was merely a child, his instincts demanded he pull his dagger. Still, he resisted.
“Come out, laddie,” he said calmly. “I mean ye no harm.”
The child answered with a laugh that echoed farther into the ground than he would have imagined. “Nay, my lord. Why do ye not come inside.”
Apparently, the child knew the size of his waist as well, and not only that, the size of his shoulders and backside that would clearly not fit through the rabbit hole.
“Well,” he said, flinging the covering aside. “I have no choice but to make yer hole bigger. Though I suppose it will be difficult indeed to hide it once I’ve made my mess…”