by A. B. Bloom
Discarding my cotton nightdress and pulling my warmest dress over my shoulders, I splashed water over my face, breathing in the fresh herbs that had been left to seep in the water overnight, then I stole out of the small house before I had a chance to be caught. I wanted to see if I could find Heather. I needed answers and I knew she would have more than my father. She’d guided me more than anyone else; her cryptic words always hinting at a deeper understanding of my power and abilities I hadn’t yet understood. I also wanted a chance to sit on the earth and to try to learn what I could of the coming days.
Time was passing too quick. A sense of approaching doom tightened my chest, making it near impossible to shake the feeling that Tristram and I were both going to die. My dreams had echoed it back to me. Although the images had been blurred—almost impossible to work out—the words of my dream had been clear, ‘I think we died on those stones’.
Slipping out into the dawn, I made my way to the stones, sure that they were waiting for me. I placed my hand on one and it thrummed under my palm, almost a deep pulling sensation like someone or something was tugging my hand. “I know,” I whispered, “but I don’t know what you are telling me.”
Settling on the ground, I folded my legs and rested my back against the stone. Closing my eyes, I felt inside me for the gold thread which tied my skill and magic with me. Father had explained that the old ways of magic were bound with gold. That gold ran in my veins. Those who lead, those who seek power but never truly own it, they were tied with a thread of red, their blood running with the crimson blood of man.
Tristram was red. I was gold. Yet my dreams were full of him like they’d always been, ever since childhood. Once we’d stood by the river and made a childish promise to one another. Could that promise now withstand the red of his blood and the gold of mine?
Feeling out of myself, using my senses to drive through the earth and extending my vision from what I could feel to what I could sense using the plants and trees with their interconnecting roots, I searched for a path that could save us all. No matter which way I sought a route of safety for us, all I found was the approach of the marching army from foreign shores. Men in red were coming for us, a steady arrow of marching soldiers sweeping across the land adjacent to ours. At their tip was the familiar black figure, her cloak sweeping behind as she forged a pathway of destruction towards me—her ultimate goal. I shrugged back, pushing against the stone. It warmed against me, heating my spine, gently vibrating. Taking in a deep breath, I prepared to open my eyes. To leave the vision behind and to start on my mission of the day, to heal my people, so I could have them fit and well to outrun the coming threat. Instead, the stone vibrated, and a loud keening screech split the air. Catching my breath, I clasped the purple pendant.
What was happening?
I looked above me where the sky stretched a vibrant blue and small clouds of candyfloss fluff floated across its wide expanse. Candyfloss? My eyes fell on the line of the trees from my forest finding them desperate and aged. They bent towards the ground as though they had long ago given up the strength of their roots to stand upright.
When I’d shut my eyes, my forest had been alive, bare with winter’s frosty touch, but alive. Now it was dead; decimated with age. Peering through the trees, I tried to seek out the distant smoke of the settlement waking. People would be rising now, and I should be there playing my part. A movement closer to hand caught my attention. My breath catching in my throat, I scurried against the stone.
His name escaped my mouth before I could stop it. “Tristram?”
“Mae? What are you doing here?”
He stepped towards me as my gaze fell from his face and onto his clothes. Instead of the tunic with its wide leather belt decorated with his hunting knife, his legs were encased in dark denim, his wide shoulders bore a top with a hood. His eyes though were the same. Dark with endless depths of soulful thoughtfulness. He was not the Tristram who’d carried me home just yesterday.
I pressed away from him as he scrunched across the dried twigs and leaves to get closer.
“Mae,” he said, a warm smile spreading across his face. “You’re back far quicker than I thought. Did you manage it? Did you learn your magic?” Dropping to his knees, he lifted my hand, squeezing my fingers tight as he skimmed his lips across my knuckles. The purple gem at my throat heated and vibrated with his touch and my heart raced. “The Mage and your father escaped, along with most of the staff of Fire Stone. This whole nightmare has all been for you. The school—everything. Lots of the kids have gone home.” He stopped talking as my silence spread around us. “Mae?”
Lowering slowly, he bent to look me in the eye. “Mae?”
I blinked my eyelids shut. The smell of him. It burrowed into my senses, earth and forest, soap and warm skin. It tangled somewhere deep in the recess of my brain. Reaching a hand, I felt around his face as a blind woman would feel the shape of a love one.
“Tristan, it’s you?”
My eyes flew open as he moved, his actions abrupt, almost knocking me off balance as he put space between us. “Mae, do you not know who I am?”
A wild sob built in my throat as I stared at him, at the trees, at the death and desolation surrounding us. I knew where I was—back where I should be: Scotland 2019. “I’m home. I’ve come back through the stones?”
Everything came hurtling to a single pinpoint of clarity. I was Mae Adams. I’d lived in Queens, New York all my life until I came to the Scottish Highlands. Here I met Tristan and we wanted to kill one another, until I found the necklace and found the skeletons on the stones…. My heart stuttered, my stomach squeezing so tight. Until I’d found us.
Oh God.
“Tristan.” I stared at him wildly, my hands slipping around his neck, my body rising until I was on my knees and able to press myself into the firm surface of his chest. “Oh God, Tristan. I don’t remember who I am when I step through. I’ve done nothing, achieved nothing.”
“You’ve been gone for days, Mae. I’ve been sat here waiting for you to come back, though worried out of my mind.” He scrubbed a hand through his golden hair. “I didn’t want anyone to harm you. The guardian’s family and I have been taking it in turns to guard the stones while Mrs Cox,” he hesitated, “does whatever she does.”
Tears prickled my eyes. The thought of this beautiful boy waiting for me to step through, knowing I was somewhere lost in time, pulled a deep and strong wave of emotion from me.
Lost in time. That’s what I was. The girl lost in time.
“Tristan.” My lips skimmed his cheek, the warmth of his flesh against my mouth warmed me from the inside out. “I don’t know who I am when I go through. I don’t remember that I’m Mae Adams.” A searing tight grasp of panic worked its way around my chest. “I think I’ve only been there one day. But I honestly can’t remember.”
“One day! You can’t have been.”
My body fell limp and he caught me in his arms, grasping me tight and pinning me into an embrace. “I don’t know how I can do this. How can I learn anything and bring it back with me when my idea of who I am extinguishes with every step through the stones?”
Tristan shook his head, his lips turned down in disapproval. “You can’t go back there, Mae. It’s too dangerous. I won’t allow it. We will find another way.”
My heart beat heavy. “How can I not go back? I still know nothing. I haven’t managed to change a damn thing and I still don’t know who I am.”
“I won’t let you go.” His fingers tangled with mine like he was going to tether me to him. In many ways I wished he would.
“We are still going to die on those stones.” A horrific vision of my final moments in the twenty first century painted themselves in vibrant and appalling detail in my mind. “Phil will still die.” A sob built in my throat and I tried to swallow around it. I’d stepped through the stones and forgotten my friend had died, and that it was all my fault. Everything was my fault. Everything.
“I’ve got to
go back. I just don’t know what to do. It’s impossible to achieve anything if I forget who I am.”
“Have you healed Mary yet and set in motion the chain of guardians?” Tristan cocked his head, his dark onyx eyes thoughtful.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. I shook my head trying to make sense of what limited memory I had of the day before, the day that had actually happened two thousand years before. God, I couldn’t afford to think about it too much or I would be sick in front of Tristan. “Mae’s father is keeping her close. She’s not allowed to talk to Tristram.”
I raised my eyes at the faint hiss that escaped from his lips.
“To you.” I smiled and lifted up, brushing my lips against his. His arms snatched around me, pulling me tighter, his mouth hard on mine, his tongue probing between my teeth. A kiss that was everything; it stole every worry I had. I submitted freely, allowing my body to cave against his, for our chests to push together with our breath. The more I seeped into him, the more of myself I remembered. The flight from the States, the days in the Fire Stone, the miserable dank castle that seemed to be settled where Mae and her people used to live. I gasped into his mouth as I recalled the initial fiery hatred we’d maintained for one another. My fingers tangled in his hair and ran through the silky strands.
Eventually, I pulled away. With every memory I reawakened, my reasoning for stepping through the stones intensified until it burned within me. At the moment I was neither Mae from Queens nor the Mae who had once had the power of magic in her veins.
I was a girl in between.
Now I knew why I had jumped time.
It was simple. I needed to know who I was, why I was called to this place, why others wanted me.
“I’m scared, Tris.” The shortened nickname from thousands of years before rolled easily off my tongue and his eyes warmed as they skimmed my face.
“I know. And I’m petrified, having you apart from me, it’s like physical torture.” The skin around his eyes crinkled and he winced, as though he were still in pain. “But we have been reunited in this life, Mae. All these generations, all these many, many years that have spanned between the us of then and the us of now, it’s got to be for a reason. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
I nodded. “I know.”
I fought the tears that stung my eyes, but it was impossible. One tear slipped along my cheek, followed by another.
“What if I can’t remember who I am? What if I just step through and lose myself again?”
Tristan Prince’s fingers squeezed my shoulders, his nose almost brushing mine as he stared into my eyes. “You have got to trust me in the past life, Mae. I know what that Druid bastard is telling you, but it’s not true. You and I are connected, I can feel it now and in my dreams. I can sense it all the way from back then.”
“Are you still dreaming, even though I’m not here?” Damn the way my words caught in my throat. I hate weakness. Hate being sympathised with. I’m a fighter… at least I always have been.
“I’ve been dreaming about you all my life.” His lips curved into the most delicious smile which for a snatched second eased my fears.
“What did you dream last night?” I asked.
“You. I found you by the stones. You’d been missing for a while, but I was cross, frustrated almost, because I knew you were hiding something from me. It hurts.”
“I will never hide a single thing from you.”
He laughed, his hand soiling me close into a tight embrace. “I know. But tell that to me then.” His smile dropped. “Mae, you have to go back, and you need to tell him everything.”
“What if I forget again? What if I never remember who I truly am, or that I have to come back here to you?”
“I don’t believe that’s possible.”
“But…”
His lips landed on mine, firm and deep. The kiss delved, stretching out with a life of its own as his hand skimmed along the dress I’d put on that morning, two thousand years before. Under his touch, with nothing more than rough wool between us, my skin sparked to life. I wanted more. I wanted all of him. My body heated and liquified as I shifted closer into his space.
“I love you, Mae. With all of me; heart and soul.”
He was trying to say goodbye. I refused to let go, clinging to him, breathing in his scent. Warm desire licking inside my tummy. “I can’t. I’m scared.” I whispered the words into his mouth. “Scared of losing me, scared of losing you. What if I never come back?”
His dark gaze held mine. Deep and reassuring, it drilled into my soul. “I believe you will come back to me.” His fingers grabbed my pendant. “Show Tristram this. Tell him it means something and that he has to get you back to the stones.”
“I won’t even remember that.”
“You will. I believe in you.” He pushed me gently until my back was against the stones.
“Tristan, don’t make me go.”
“You don’t belong here. I know that now.”
“Tristan, please.” A wild sob filled my chest.
“Mae. You’ve to go otherwise all of this will be for nothing.” He snatched at the ground at our feet, plucking a purple flower and pressing it into my hand. “Just make sure you come back to me. Now go and find the guardian. You’ve got to set the chain of events into place.”
“And if we die on the stones still?”
“We won’t.”
His lips pressed all too briefly against mine. Then with a dark and tormented gaze, he pushed away.
“I love you,” I whispered, but my hands were already on the stones and I could feel the power of them rumble beneath my touch.
I would remember who I was. I would remember who I was. I would remember.
Chapter Three
The damp earth pushed into my knees and I winced as I stood. My head spun as I licked my lips. I lifted my hands to them, they were sore, as though they were bruised, tingling almost.
In my other hand was a purple flower though there were no flowers around in the wintery soil.
There was something I was supposed to remember.
The taste on my lips was there to remind me.
I stumbled towards the settlement trying to bury deep within my thoughts. There was something I was supposed to remember, and it was deep within me.
I needed to tell Tristram something.
I rounded into the settlement, coming around the back of a small round house. The settlement had been fenced off and guarded for weeks now, ever since Alen, Tristram’s father and our chief, had been killed, but I knew my way around.
Deacon, who was on duty in the early dawn air, turned his back to me as I walked along. It was better that way. If he didn’t see me then he wouldn’t have to pretend otherwise when questioned by my father, or worse the chief.
My eyes sought out Tristram through the smoky air. Since father had separated us and the chasm of space had deepened between us, it was my worst moment of the day when I would worry he would saunter out of another woman’s house. It would be his prerogative. But it would hurt nonetheless.
There he was, staring by the fire, laughing at something someone was saying. His laughter tickled my ears and lifted my heart. His dark gaze rested on me as I walked in and I knew he would be asking me why I was wandering again without a guard.
Dropping my gaze, I picked a path. I needed to tell him something, but I had no idea what and even the sight of him stole any words I might have.
A shout to my right called my attention. A young boy called in distress and I glanced over. It was Mary and her son. His face was a picture of concern as she limped towards the fire, her own expression a grim mask of pain.
I could help her.
I knew it.
Deep within me a positive affirmation forced me forward. “Mary,” I called, my cheeks blushing slightly knowing Tristram was still watching me. I caught up with her, and before I’d even got close, I could smell the stench of rotting flesh. “Let me look at your ulcer, Mary.”
“I insist.”
Her face dropped and she lifted the hem of her dress, revealing an angry red welt across her shin. The skin shone in the dim light as it stretched with the infection and at the centre of the wound sickened flesh festered with a green and black tinge.
“Mary!” I exclaimed. “Why haven’t you shown this to me before?”
For the briefest moment her eyes darted to my face. “You have been busy, My Lady, with your father. Things are changing, I can feel it.”
I looked at her keenly, my own face blushing slightly. “That may be, but I always have time for everyone in this settlement. You should have come to me. What would your Deacon or Isobel do without you if this spread?”
A niggling thought banged at the back of my head…what would I do if I didn’t heal her? It seemed imperative to me that I should, although for the life of me I couldn’t explain why.
“Let’s get you settled, and I shall go and seep the correct herbs.” I helped her to a low stool near the fire and then set about warming water and flicking through my supply of herbs in my belt around my hips. My eyes were drawn to the swirl of my father’s white cloak, and that of others of our order. Their cloaks, red like mine, were gathered around him, and in the midst of it all stood Tristram, his hair glinting with gold. They were circled tight together, their faces grave. All I could hope was that Father was telling them what I’d suggested—that we moved the clan and searched for arable land that would yield us food. A place we could learn where to sustain ourselves. I knew the earth would give us what we needed.
Absentmindedly, my focus still half trained on the chief of our clan and his shining bright hair, I slipped my hand into my herb pouch to seek out the herbs I would need for Mary’s leg.