by Annis Reid
He backed away from her then and told himself it was the sun which made his body warm all over. “Dinna take your time with it,” he warned, trying to sound stern and demanding when he felt anything but.
He forced himself to stare into the distance, to steady himself especially when he heard her splashing in the water. Clenching his fists until they hurt. Anything to keep himself under control, to keep his thoughts from straying too far from his duty to the clan.
“Are ye well?” he asked. “Dinna remain silent for long. I want to hear ye and know ye remain there.”
“I’m here,” she snapped. “Jeez, why can’t you take me at my word?”
“Because it will not be your precious bits cut off if I allow ye to escape, and that is the fact of it.”
She laughed. “Precious bits. That’s a new term for them.”
“Ye know what I speak of,” he growled. A certain part of his body which was still far too interested in the notion of what an undressed woman did not twenty feet from where he stood, suffering the pangs of thwarted desire.
“I do. We don’t call them that.”
“I would rather not speak of it.”
“You brought it up.”
“Just the same,” he growled, closing his eyes again. She was a fever in his brain, nothing less. The reason he rose from his bed in the morning, the reason he visited the stables every evening. Were it not for him, she would have nothing to eat and no choice but to relieve herself in her trousers. No one cared.
Why should they? They looked upon her and saw a witch.
He looked upon her and saw… he was not certain what he saw, not yet. A lass on her own, frightened. That much was certain.
And if not from the future, at least from a home far different from his own. No one could dream up the things she had described to him. Instantly communicating with people on the other side of the world, looking into a device and seeing their face, hearing their voice when thousands of miles separated them. Listening to music someone had played a hundred years earlier, seeing and hearing them on a screen as if they were alive and present—when they were long dead.
It was all so wondrous and strange and mystical. She could not possibly have imagined it all. No one could.
Did that make it real, however?
“I guess you’ve never heard of shampoo,” she muttered from the stream.
“Shampoo?”
“To wash my hair. Never mind.” More splashing.
“Ye would wash your hair with this shampoo?” he asked, nearly laughing at himself as he repeated the ridiculous word.
When she did not answer, he repeated himself.
She still did not answer.
“Anna,” he called out, stepping from behind the tree with his heart in his throat. It was not that he feared her running away, he realized as he crashed through the brush near the water’s edge, but that he feared her slipping and falling into the water.
She stood as he reached the place where she bathed, her hair hanging in a black waterfall. She’d dunked her head beneath the surface, hence her being unable to hear him.
He froze, unsure of what to do. She was unaware of him, squeezing water from her tresses, her back turned to grant him a glorious view of her bare body. Those markings of hers stretched halfway down her back—letters, symbols, words. A pair of wings, one over each shoulder blade.
He took it all in at once, his mind in a fever, his mouth going dry.
He turned away, cursing his weak and foolish nature while the image of water running over smooth, white skin burned itself into his memory. “I believed ye had fallen in,” he announced in too loud a voice.
She squealed and splashed. “Go away!”
“I will!” he grunted, crashing through the brush once again. He was fleeing her, and he knew it, but there was nothing else to be done.
“You said you would give me privacy!” she hissed.
“I thought ye had injured yourself, woman! What would ye have me do? Leave ye to drown? Ye should have told me ye would dunk your head that way!”
“I thought it was implied when I talked about washing my hair.”
“It was not.”
“Obviously!”
The woman was determined to drive him mad. “I shall remember from now on not to be concerned for your well-being,” he barked over his shoulder while she hurried about, making a great deal of noise as if to better express her anger and embarrassment. As if he were not also embarrassed.
“Fine! That would be just great, thanks.” Then, before she had time to take a breath, she cried out. “Ouch!”
“What is it?” he asked, rushing to her once again before remembering what had just left his mouth.
He found her seated on the rock on which he’d left his clothing for her, now fully dressed, one leg crossed over the other. She held her foot in her hands, wincing at the sight of blood trickling down the sole.
“I stepped on a stone,” she grimaced, pushing him away when he reached out. “Don’t touch! Ouch!”
“Is the stone in your foot?” he asked, then brushed her hands aside when she tried to keep him away. “For the love of all that’s holy, woman, cease this at once. I wish to help ye and ye push me away, as a bairn would.”
“You’re calling me a child?”
“Aye, that I am.” He closed one hand around her ankle—slim, delicate—and reached out to take a handful of clear water from the stream which he poured over the wound. “It seems a bit of stone is lodged in there.”
She turned a peculiar shade of green. “Can you… I mean, would you…”
“Now ye wish for my assistance,” he murmured, taking a strange delight in her needing him.
“Don’t be that way, okay? Just…”
“Tell me about what ye sing,” he suggested. “Can ye sing something for me?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t just randomly sing for free, out of nowhere, out in the middle of nowhere with only one person listening to me, that’s why. Besides, you would probably hate it. Music has changed a lot in the last four hundred-plus years.”
“No doubt.” He sat back on his heels. “Finished.”
“Wait.” She looked down at her foot, then back to him. “What?”
He held up the tiny stone which he’d pulled from her foot while she’d berated him. “Here ye are. And ye didna feel it.”
“Sneaky,” she muttered, looking down at what was little more than a scratch. “I guess I’ll have to be careful with this. The last thing I need is an infection.”
“Because of—” He searched his memory for the strange-sounding word. “Bacteria.”
He had not expected her to smile from ear to ear, her already bonny face taking on an air of otherworldly beauty. “Aye,” she laughed, using one of his words as he had used one of hers. “Because of bacteria.”
She was so lovely. Enough to make his chest ache. Enough to make him want nothing more than to protect her from the cruelty of the world. His world. A world in which she was a witch, something to fear.
Fear touched him then, too, though it was not fear of her. It was fear for her.
He could not have kept himself from reaching out to touch her if his life depended upon it. Her hair hung loose, wet, in clumps around her face. He pushed them aside, over her shoulders, before taking her face between his hands and staring into her clear, wise, shining eyes.
“Ye have eyes a man could lose himself in,” he murmured, knowing it was likely not as skillful as she might have heard from a man of her time and place, but that made it no less true. He could have swum in those eyes. He could have drowned in them and would have been glad to do so.
Her cheeks colored, but she did not flinch back or laugh at his clumsiness. Instead, she leaned in when he did and met his kiss with her own. Her lips were warm, yielding, as sweet as he’d imagined in his dreams, and the impulse to crush her against him nearly knocked him sideways.
But
he did not. He could not. This would have to be enough, this sweet, slow, tentative kiss which was somehow still enough to send fire racing through his veins.
Only the thought of Kirk and those iron shackles waiting to be placed upon her wrists brought the kiss to an end. He pulled back, breathless and craving more but knowing it was not to be. “We ought to return,” he breathed, shaking with desire and strain.
She swayed slightly, eyes half-closed, lips parted. “Okay,” she whispered, her breath hot and sweet on his face. “If you’ll help me. I don’t want to walk on this.”
Her foot. Naturally.
It would be no great trouble to carry her in his arms, holding her against him.
No trouble at all.
9
The joy of not wearing skinny jeans anymore.
Sure, Kaden’s clothes hung on her like ship sails, but danged if she wasn’t more comfortable in them than she’d been in just about anything she’d ever worn.
Now, if she could spend a night sleeping in a bed instead of on a pile of straw, life would be just great.
She did what she could to arrange herself in a way that wouldn’t put so much stress on her hips and shoulders, but it was no use. Straw or no straw, she was basically sleeping on a floor.
Maybe Kaden would bring her more.
Just thinking of him, just saying his name in her head, made her blush. So maybe the kiss wasn’t the best idea, since now she couldn’t help but count the minutes until she saw him again.
Though she doubted anybody could blame her for that. What else did she have to look forward to? Absolutely nothing. The sound of horses, of boys coming in and out to take them from their stalls and put them back in.
Sometimes she overheard their conversations, but they may as well have been speaking Greek. There was no way for her to understand them, even after a week spent talking with Kaden. It was nice to hear their voices, anyway. To feel like she wasn’t so alone, even if they never came to see her.
Nobody did except for Kaden. He brought her food, sat and talked with her. He didn’t treat her like she carried the plague.
Like she was a witch.
Stupid, superstitious people. What did they think happened? Did they believe women wandered the night, looking to steal babies and drink their blood? That they sacrificed men under the full moon? That they actually talked to the devil who, by the way, they thought was a real person?
But then again, they had never heard of bacteria. Or any of the other million things that had been clarified since the mid-seventeenth century.
Something had to happen soon, didn’t it? Somebody would order her to prove herself. Amazing that it hadn’t happened yet, she guessed. What was this MacGregor guy waiting for?
There was no sense in trying to sleep. She sat up, stretching as best she could, groaning as her muscles let her know exactly what they thought of her after being cramped up for so long. What a miserable place this was. What a miserable time.
To think, she thought she had problems back home.
What was her father doing without her? Even while she was kissing Kaden—a Top Five Of All Time kiss, for sure—she was thinking about her dad. Hating herself for even enjoying something as simple as a kiss when he was waiting for her. Needing her to come back.
Where did the band think she went? People didn’t disappear without a trace, not in modern times. But she had.
Was this what happened to people who disappeared? Did they just suddenly, out of nowhere and with no explanation, get sucked into a different time? And why?
That was the biggest question. Why was she here if they were just going to kill her anyway? Stupid her, not wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck and a bare face the day she stumbled into seventeenth-century Scotland.
What would they do back home if she died here, before she had the chance to get back to them? How long would they go on looking for her? Would anybody think to take care of Dad for her?
How long would it be before they forgot she had ever existed? Maybe one day in the not-too-distant-yet-incredibly-distant future, somebody in the twenty-first century would stumble over her unmarked grave. And by then she would’ve turned to dust.
It was enough to make her head throb. She lowered it onto her arms, crossed over her bent knees, and let herself cry. Only once a day did she let herself cry, or else she might never stop. It wasn’t even dawn yet, so there might be plenty more reasons to do it, but she decided to take her chances and get it out of the way early.
“Daddy,” she whispered between gasps for breath. Her aching shoulders shook with each wracking sob. Did he even miss her? Would anybody ever tell him she was missing? She hoped not. If there was any mercy in life, any at all, he would never know she was gone.
Mercy. That was a laugh. There was no such thing. Hadn’t she learned that again and again? Losing her mom. The stroke. This complete insanity, this hopelessness, this prison she had somehow stumbled into. All because she hadn’t been smart enough to stay away from the wiring on the stage.
“Why are ye cryin’ so?”
Her head was still in her arms, her face hidden. She couldn’t see who stood outside the wooden bars, but it wasn’t Kaden. Kaden had a nice voice—deep, resonant, like warm honey on her ears.
This voice was hard. Coarse. And the man it belonged to didn’t like her very much, that was obvious.
She stopped crying like somebody had flipped a switch. Funny how she was the only person in the whole world now who would understand that reference.
Her head lifted, her watery eyes taking in the sight of the man who watched her from outside the pen. He reminded her of a predator watching its prey. She knew him. They had met when she first ended up in this place.
Kirk MacGregor. She didn’t say a word, settled for looking at him. Silent. No way was she going to let him pry her open and poke around inside, and the look on his face made her think that was exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to find out what made her tick.
And he had come to her in the middle of the night, when nobody else would stroll past the stables. Her chest clenched tighter than it had already been as she sobbed her heart out. What was he planning to do?
There she was, wrists in iron, unable to defend herself.
“I asked ye a question, witch,” he spat. “Why are ye cryin’?”
She sneered. “I want to go home.”
“And where would that be?” His eyes narrowed beneath thick, bushy brows. “Are there more of yer kind there?”
“Oh, yes,” she snickered. “We’re all over the place. Everywhere. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting somebody like me.”
His eyes narrowed even further. “What? Why would ye wish to do that?”
“It’s the kind of thing people like me do,” she whispered. “What? Do you wanna lock more of us away? Maybe we can have a party.”
“Aye,” he smiled. “That is precisely what I have in mind, ye wicked woman. I want more of ye.”
“Why?” she asked, dropping the act. “Looking for women to kill?”
“Looking for women to assist me,” he explained. “Ye will be what saves this clan, I am certain of it. I have done a good deal of prayin’ over the matter, and I know I am in the right.”
“You lost me,” she shrugged. “How could I save your clan? There’s nothing I can do.”
“Dinna play with me, woman,” he growled. “I am not Kaden. Ye canna use me as ye use him.”
“What? Use him?”
“Dinna waste your time lying, either,” he warned. “It matters not, for he has been using ye for my purposes just as ye have tried to use him.”
Using her? She did what she could to hide the pain this brought to life in her gut. Like a flower blooming, pain spread all through her body and managed to top what she had already been going through before Kirk paid his visit.
Was it true?
Why would it not be true? She was just a witch to them. Something evil and wicked and worthy of death. Why woul
d Kaden have sincerely grown close with her? Clearly, Kirk had put him up to it, and she had been the world’s biggest idiot to fall into their trap.
“Whatever,” she sighed. “You’re boring me now. Tell me something worth my time, or I’m going to try to go back to sleep. Or maybe I’ll cry some more. Either way, I would like to be alone while I do it.”
He snickered. “Aye, perhaps ye will feel this is worthy of yer time. Yer going to have to prove yourself to me. Soon. Perhaps on the morrow, perhaps the day after. I have not decided yet. But ye will show me what ye can do, witch, and then I will know how to best use ye for my purposes.”
That didn’t sound good. “What purposes?”
“Ye shall find out soon enough. Dinna rush me. Clan Fraser ought to arrive in three days’ time, and ye will prove yourself before then.”
“Who is that? What do you want me to do to them?” She struggled to her feet. “Tell me. What do you expect me to do?”
“What ye do as a witch. Stop pretendin’ ye dinna ken, woman.”
“But I don’t. I’m telling you, I’m not a witch.”
“Then why are ye marked as ye are? Why do ye speak as ye do? Why? Tell me that.”
She couldn’t, because he’d just think she was a witch anyway. To people of his time, a woman who claimed to come from the future could only be a witch or insane.
Though all thing considered, insanity might be a better defense than witchcraft. She didn’t think mentally ill people were executed just because of the way they were, but who knew? Not for the first time did she wish she had paid better attention in history class.
“Just because I don’t look like you or speak like you doesn’t make me a witch. You think people everywhere in the world look and talk the way you do? That doesn’t make them evil, or witches.”
“Enough with yer lies,” he growled, spitting on the ground. Men of this time liked to spit to make a point, she noticed. “’Tis tired of the sound of yer voice I am. Prepare yourself to show me what ye can do on the morrow. I will wait no longer.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then I have no use for ye and ye will die on the morrow.” He grumbled to himself as he left, his feet slapping the ground.