FIC: The Last Reign :: Chapter One :: The Rebellion Escapees
So I was thinking of my novel (what a concept) and how bloody thick my note binder is, and if my Idea isn't completely crap, and and.... oh, hell, I'm posting it anyway.
Foreword
Almost like a dance, our spirits are captured by a music that sings of the nature that calls to us. A nature that, surprisingly, speaks in whispers of magic that transports us from world to world. Stones, described as dull solid things, belong to a transient world that also belongs to ours. Crafting them is an art; we have to speak their language to create beautiful sculptures out of them.
I heard them speak their language once, in a faraway silence transported by slumber. I heard them whisper their pulling riddles.
Take the sea… I will wait for thee.
Hear my song… It shall be long.
Ride me… I will make you see.
Far beyond your wildest dreams.
Far beyond my strong barriers.
Chapter One
The Rebellion Escapees
Blood-curdling screams pierced through the air, slashing their way through the ears of those sitting, listening to them without moving for fear of being discovered. The stench of smouldering ashes and gunpowder wafted its way into the nostrils of the innocent, the children. From here, from their place of hiding, four pairs of eyes surveyed the abysmal defeat of the Jacobites in the small port town of Inverness, riveted.
To those eyes, the war looked like Hell on Earth. Here and now and always, always, someone screamed. Dying, suffering or simply killing or fearing death, someone screamed out at the evening. The children recognised the war cries but not the faces anymore, for the faces of the remaining survivors seemed painted with death itself and carried the lost hope that all had garnered before the warriors had uttered the first impassioned cry for the people of the Highlands.
An explosion went off near the four children. Mairi Cameron, the oldest girl, stopped the startled cry from escaping her little sister's mouth, but she herself had very nearly screamed with fright.
Iain Davidson, the older and approaching his tenth autumn, quietened the girls with one hand and warily looked around the corner of the tavern behind which they were hidden. A stack of hay was concealing them for the moment being, but they were quickly becoming aware of the danger of exposing themselves in the middle of the town. They had to find a way out of there.
Gunfire exploded and broke a window over little William's head. Mairi, though far from being his sister, gathered what strength was left in her and pulled him closer under her filthy arisaidh to protect his dark head of curls. "What -" she started to ask, but Iain cut her off with the speed of a gull speeding to the black depths.
"Dinna," he whispered urgently. A moment later a large, dark shadow moved across the tavern's wall. The little girl concealed under Mairi's arm moaned under her breath. Mairi's arm tightened over her sister's waist and Morag stared up frightfully into Mairi's eyes, reflecting the fear Mairi felt deep in her entrails. Be quiet, Mairi thought, hoping helplessly that the message would translate into her eyes.
Finally the figure disappeared on his horse, leaving them scrambling for their meagre possessions to also disappear from sight. However, at the same moment, the man on the horse, now recognisable as a Dragoon from his red coat and vest, reappeared with a kilted man on foot running from the horseman's dripping blade.
Mairi leapt to her feet as Iain jerked her back to the ground. Startled, the breath knocked out of her, she pushed against him, attempting to disentangle herself away from him. "No! You dinna ken! He's -" Scrambling from her skirts and friend's grasp, she climbed to her feet again. Iain saw her face change from that of resolve to… "No!"
Suddenly she broke into a run, hoisting her tattered skirts up to her scrawny knees, and Iain scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding to his throat. There were Redcoats everywhere in town! She would be seen! "Mairi! Come back! Mairi, no!"
The Dragoon was gone, along with its horse. Mairi ran to the fallen figure on the ground and cradled his head. "Father. Father, please." Tears were beginning to gather at her cheeks when Niall Cameron's eyes fluttered open, brown so like hers. Morag's little feet carried her beside her older sister, and she gave a confused little cry as she saw her father, disfigured as he was with black-and-blue bruises and blood spattered upon his sweat-lined leine shirt and muddied breeches, and rapidly caking on his plaid.
The scent of dried blood was on him, as well as fresh blood. A deep cut had been driven deep into his ribs, suffocating him for a moment, but his breath still harvested past his lips. Another incision had been cut into his leg, showing him incapable of moving to his feet. His sweat had gathered in a thick layer upon his face, rendering him almost a reflective matter. The scent of fear and gunpowder lingered in and on him, but what alerted Mairi was the smell of doom that remained in his gaunt expression.
Niall Cameron lifted his eyes. A haunted gaze met Mairi's. Swallowing a tight knot of bile, Mairi silently tended to her father's wounds, discovering that the bullet had penetrated through and through, a small hole pierced below his clavicle. There were other scratches leaving large gashes through his quickly paling skin. Pressing onto his wounded chest with all her might, Mairi ordered Iain to tear a long piece from her petticoat. Without another word, she banded her father's chest, refusing to meet her father's eyes again.
Iain appeared at her shoulder, his little cousin William at his side and crying. "We should be going," he whispered warily.
Niall Cameron's eyes panned to his daughter's childhood friend, considering the young boy. "Aye, the wee mannie's right," he wheezed out between raspy breaths. Mairi glanced at her father, seeing the troubled dullness in his eyes again, and looked away, biting her lip to keep herself from losing her cold head. "Follow me." Her father leaned onto his hand to rise to his feet, trembling dangerously as he did. He shuffled out of the dirty street and progressed slowly toward the port.
"Come on, Willie," Iain coaxed his cousin before grasping his hand and following a man he hadn't ever met outside of the crops.
Morag tugged her sister's torn and dirty dress and raised frightened eyes to her. Mairi shook herself out of her torpor and stole away after their father, a man who was a stranger to them since the raising of the war.
Iain and Mairi rowed the boat, but they were mostly pulled by the Ness's current leading them from the sheltered Inverness to…
"Where are we going?" Iain finally asked, planting his oar firmly to the bottom of the boat and leaning his chin on the rest. He was looking at her with a piercing gaze, eyes trained to hers but also surveying the murky water's unexpected thrashes as he did. Despite their young age, Mairi had to admit that Iain often acted and looked much older; truly it was his expressive green eyes that constantly reminded her of this troubling thought. Rather than being rail-like, Iain's shape brought forth images of solid vigour hidden deep within his small muscles. Fishing with his uncle from a very young age had made him more than capable beyond his years.
Father raised his head from the half slumber he had been enjoying and swept his eyes over the quickly thinning strap of land behind them. With a wheezing cough he wrapped the spare arisaidh tighter around him. The weather had turned colder with the darkening skies. Now that the sun rested precariously atop a mountaintop, cold drafts were turning into winds that caressed the Highlands with deliberate force, washing away its grim spectacle. But Mairi couldn't ignore the misery crossing her father's face at a speed that tormented her for some time. She had brought the fabric for her mother in the case she had survived the ambush at Inverness. But she hadn't, and the large piece of cloth had no use but to be used as a spare sheet to keep warm. Niall Cameron breathed in deeply, the cool air scalding his intact lung.
"There are tales aboot a bonnie island west of Islay," he said simply, then promptly fell back into a fitful sleep.
Mairi frowned, absently patting Morag's head as the wean shifted beside her in her rest. The bairns had gone limp from wear, surely from the exhaustion of the day's rather gloomy activities. Mairi envied their disinterest in anything beyond food and warmth and family. Likely they didn't care that Niall Cameron had certainly lost his head.
She had heard of these tales, by Mother. But… these tales were specially told by mothers who wanted to reassure their children that not all tales were horrific. And yet, in these stories, no one ever came back from this idyllic island, trapped forever into its world. What was so perpetually beautiful about it that it had resisted oblivion.
Iain was looking at her with a serious, piercing expression. "What island is he talking about?"
Mairi remained obscurely silent, then grabbed her oar again and shrugged as they approached a tight passage, nodding the danger to him. "The Stone Isle," she replied dourly as the current drove them toward high, particularly deadly rocks. Her father was surely ill. And he was driving them toward an untimely death. Perfect.
Staring flabbergasted at Mairi even as he rowed maniacally, mouth agape and all, Iain's expression of consternation didn't brook any argument as to what he thought of the whole affair. They remained quiet for some time, save for the groaning splashes that sent them rocking to and fro in the tight channel. Well past the passage, though, he wiped his brow and then put down his carefully, a pensive expression flitting over his features. With some finality he finally shook his head, frowning suspiciously. He didn't believe a thing of it either. "Fit?" he asked incredulously after some time.
Sighing, Mairi wondered why on earth they had suddenly embarked on this wild and demented quest. Then she fixed her gaze on Iain's as he scratched at a particularly large freckle unknowingly. "Ye ken the lore, Iain. Ye ken the Stone Isle stories," she said chafingly.
Feeling suddenly very old though she was not - a mere ten summers! - Mairi sighed again, full of small Scottish groans. "About fair braw men making for the Stone Isle and ne'er returning back to tell the tale. But people see 'em disappearing… or that's what they tell ye." She cast her eyes downward, wiping her still-gory hands on the skirt of her dress and pausing as she regarded them bleakly. "Ma used to tell me the stories after the men raved about their hunting exploits and the gods of war, before I went to sleep."
"I never kent my Mum," Iain confided, blushing. "She died giving birth to me, ken. And then Da left with a hunting party in the Moray and sent me to live with me Auntie MacKenna."
Mairi contemplated the form of little William MacKenna, curled up at Iain Davidson's feet and smiled, thinking of all the good memories she and Iain had accumulated together as children because of Iain's misfortune. Truly she was lucky. Mairi smiled warmly as his embarrassed blush subsided, as his gaze returned a similar expression.
"D'ye think it's real? The island, I mean," Iain asked suddenly from the darkening evening, his voice sounding eerie even to her ears. The sun had now gone down, casting a lugubrious light on him.
Mairi swallowed tightly and rowed on, wishing she could know anything anymore. "I dinna know."
With a surreal sense of floating, Iain awoke from a restless sleep to find Willie dangling dangerously off the side of the boat. The wean had on a radiant grin and was reaching out toward the lustrous water with unequalled desire. Iain decided it was high time Mr Willie was pulled back from imminent drowning.
Willie, brusquely wrenched back from starboard, began wailing, thus tearing a very Scottish grunt from Mr Cameron who nevertheless didn't wake, and an unladylike snort from Mairi as she was pulled from beatific sleep. Morag, thank the Lord, merely frowned reproachfully at the intruder through closed eyes and very fitful sleep.
"What's with him?" Mairi moaned as she rubbed her eyelids to full attention.
Iain set his cousin down between his knees on the damp floor of the boat once more, sending him sprawling with a warning glare that shut him up instantly. "Pulled him back from drownin', is what I did," he explained briefly with a short smile of good morning. Then, spying her filthy apron. "Would ye no have aught to eat?"
Mairi winced; in the wake of hearing men start in all directions from Cameron Lodge, Mairi had left the bread to burn in the fire and grabbed what remained of the oatmeal cookies she had just finished cooking and stuffed them into her apron; Morag had eaten the rest as Mairi had yanked her here and there, the cookie a blessing for Morag remained quiet and relatively calm. Presently Mairi dug into her browned apron and produced one with myriad cookie crumbs falling into the creases of her hand. "Aye, that's all there is, m'afraid."
"Och." Iain's throat closed up painfully at the notion. His stomach gave a lurch as he reached out toward the one cookie. With a bite at his lips, however, he contented himself with a small portion of cookie crumbs that dropped scorching at his throat, dust-like, and fell heavily into his empty stomach.
With a good imitation of her father's grunt, he then bent over the side of the boat and scooped up a handsful of water, then another, into his mouth. And then, ladling a last time, he rinsed his face and smacked his lips thoughtfully together. When he dropped back into place he already had his humid hands tangled in the knots of his hair and was flattening it down as Mairi gobbled the last of the crumbs.
"How are ye?" he asked, stretching contentedly after this operation.
Mairi chuckled to herself for a moment, shaking her head at him, and then busied herself with breaking a little piece of cookie for William who, naturally, craved more, and then for Morag who, with the sound of cookie crumbs falling in every which way, had roused to demand her portion of the small treasure.
As for her father… Mairi studied the pattern of his breathing and came to the conclusion that he was asleep, yes, but a laborious sleep. She frowned and leaned toward him, washed with a wave of nausea as she came in sufficient distance: the gashes had not dried, she smelled, and were producing a sweet sort of tangy waft that indicated rotting.
Mother had healed a man come from the sea once, and from the old blackening wound on his knee had oozed an amber liquid as a result of her careful punctures. She had removed the dirty rags that had served as a bandage of sorts. The leg had had to be severed.
Father's leg was rotting under her careful bandages.
Mairi darkly contemplated this issue when Iain stepped off onto the rocky shore from which they had tied a rope around a sufficiently large boulder for the night. Vaguely she assessed that he had hopped off to remove the tightly-wound rope. They would continue the voyage through the firth. Mairi's mind once more ran galloping through the tiny bits of knowledge gleaned from her mother. Pity she hadn't assimilated much. She really did like healing, but for the required training.
"Wait!" Iain's hands paused around the knot as the boat shivered under the waves created by his stepping off. "Can ye find me some comfrey? Da's wounds…"
"Hmm." He looked up, comprehension written all over his face. "Can ye maybe describe it for me?"
"Och, yes." Oval leaves, the base stalked, its long yellow flowers somewhat similar to antlers. As she described it for him, her mind milled faster than it had ever. Da wanted to get quickly to this fairy tale island. Would there be someone there able to mend him? Why was he bringing them there? Was it safer? Had the Risings reached this land or would it be spared for to keep it from war? Was it real? Coming back to question this last every time, she finally decided to let the issue alone. So long as the Sassenachs and their supporters couldn't find them.
Iain disappeared like thunder; she heard the leaves and branches rustle as he scurried into the thick of the forest, comfrey in mind. Then, nothing.
"Baboom?" inquired a dribbling Willie as Morag farted, scowling jealously for Mairi's attention had been drawn to him first.
"No. No baboom here," she replied with some finality, wiping his mouth and chin with the corner of her arisaidh. Then she turned to her sister, delving back into the bitterness of her thoughts. "Wherever we are going'… I hope they dinna have any blasted cannons." Blushing at her choice of coarse words, she spared a look at the wheeze-snoring figure of her father and sighed lamentably.
The sun was still at an angle when Iain came back with the leaves clutched in his hands, a worried expression crossing his brows. "You asked these?"
Mairi lifted her head from dully examining the reflection of the skies in the rippling water. "Yes," she glowed. "Thank you. Let's go."
Wincing, she removed the roll of bandage from round her father's leg and reminded herself to breathe through her mouth as she placed the leaves carefully onto the blackening wounds. Comfrey worked on mere infections in small wounds, but Mairi hoped the leaves would perhaps keep the wounds from infecting further. Recognising this as wishful thinking, she retreated back to her place and picked up an oar after having put a fresh roll of petticoats around his faintly heaving chest.
Pierced lung invaded with blood, broken ribs back and front, gangrene working under the leaves. Mairi couldn't help the helplessness from settling in unwanted. Clinging to the oar as her only support from falling from grace, she took comfort in the easy manoeuvre rowing demanded. Blotting out the whisper in her father's lungs, the whinging of the two bairns… Yes, she could manage a dreamlike state that constantly reminded her this was not a dream she was swimming in, but a state of convoluted chaos that screamed at her to find the weirdness in the situation. The truth was, she had found it, but couldn't, or wouldn't, face it now. She simply couldn't.
Iain sighed behind her; her straight back hid naught.
"It's opening'."
"Did ye expect otherwise?"
"Weel, no. But we just came through yon Cameron clan territory," Mairi answered with a shrug.
Iain turned to her, surprised. "How d'ye know?"
"I was still a wean then, but I remember the creek what we passed through. My mum bathed me there. I still kent the scent." Mairi grinned at the flow of memories connected to that particular sweet perfume. "Freshwater and pines wi' a dab o' mud," she breathed, amazed at her power of recollection.
They were now letting the boat go wherever it pleased; there had been some straining and moments when, faced with a less than harmless little fall, they had been obliged to wake Mairi's father and transport the boat to a safer spot near said fall, but past it, below. As it appeared now, they would not need to rouse her father for a good while. The ripples were now dead calm.
Having gone on for three days, most parties present were happy to report that nothing significant had happened in way of scratches or wounds. Mairi, herself just a tad seasick, had doubled overboard at least three times after the fiercer, rockier moments. Morag often demanded her mother, as did wee Willie, but also considerable amounts of food.
Iain, rather annoyed at her, had finally borrowed a line from a broken fishing gear that had been laid abandoned near shore with a crimson red tartan left in tatters, and constructed a new fishing rod from which he had taken many small but edible fish in the evening to eat the next. They smoked it throughout the night, taking turns to tend the fire before it coughed out.
None of them had seen the English armies roam the lochs. Or perhaps they were moving northwards, toward the higher Highlands. Nevertheless, they did hear startled cries, subsiding in the night. Mairi and Iain hoped they were animals, however little of them resided in Scotland.
Niall Cameron lifted his head at their hushed talk, grunted a little at the pain in his entrails and disregarded it altogether as he gazed at the Firth of Lora opening before them like a curtain of dark sea. His eyes opened wide with unmasked surprise as he realised that his little girl and her friend had taken them all safely away to the other side of the country. God bless them, he thought faintly, the wee bairns takin' me to the Stone.
There, he thought again as pain lanced through his spine, there my pains will be taken care of. And the bairns, safely awa' from strife and the Sassenachs.
There, the Stone awaited them, still far past the island of Islay, biding its time. One more barrier lay between them and it, though; the angry ocean roared far before the tiny structure of the boat.
It appeared to them far away as quite the pebble, but nothing rather as exciting as the lore had painted it. Still Iain and Mairi rowed on, tired from the strength the sea exerted against them. They couldn't wait to get closer and get a proper peep and wouldn't that impress everyone back home.
Closer, though, the Stone looked quite the show. Tall, granite-like and untouched by the hand of man, it was a crude large stone that nevertheless instilled fear deep within the children, even the younger ones, as they stared stunned at the magnificence that stood unmoving as a giant paralysed from the entrails of the sea.
Iain wondered how the men from Islay had never all gone on there to test the veracity of the stories. Wouldn't they all be imprisoned inside, then? Did the lore change from eastern to western coast? Didn't everybody know about it?
"Get closer, closer," Mr Cameron kept repeating under a painful breath as they neared the façade of the rock.
He looked truly weak, sickly, and Iain had bravely chanced a look at the wounds when Mairi had changed his bandages - the petticoats under her skirt didn't have much use anymore, being so short and all; he could see her legs, pale and scratched from their episode in the dirt. The stretching hole reminded Iain of a particularly menacing mouth that would eat him up any minute.
Every morning he went in search of more comfrey, but every time the sight of the plants themselves made him nearly vomit what little they ate each day. Only seeing them once removed from the lesions proved to be very good cause for never joining an army of any sort.
"Aye, verra good," Mr Cameron whispered again. Iain leaned closer to him, very careful to breathe through his mouth, and saw what the man was pleased at. An inscription was written in Gaelic: "Come, be tested true, live peaceful. Leave with the Storm in thy Hand." Mr Cameron straightened painfully and threw over his shoulder to Iain, "I wouldn't count on the last. Many men ha' said as they'd come back and tell. They didna."
Iain bit his lip pensively. "Perhaps they only didna want to leave," he pointed out to the first line.
Mr Cameron smiled back at him, eyebrow raised in appreciation. "Maybe ye're right, mannie." Suddenly his face decomposed and he hissed a breath in. "On wi' it," he gasped, tapping the side of the boat forcefully.
The surface of the water sent ripples toward the Stone. On the waves travelled and toward it, and never once bumped against the cool, rough texture of the rock. Not one ripple did come back toward the boat. Iain stood frigid in his seat. Only, then, Mr Cameron's foot connected with his shin and he yelped, startled from unnatural fright, and picked up the oars with a quick prayer to the Saints and Brigid.
Faintly he heard the two weans bawl over for nothing Mairi couldn't handle he was sure, and then he rowed toward the Stone, always toward it and those wicked words gleaming abnormally from the craggy, bumpy surface. It taunted him, penetrating his brain and etching the words into his mind, made of fire and always terrorising. Iain was certain he would remember them forever burning in his mind.
Some rational part of his brain reminded him coolly that no solid matter could collide with a solid matter and not cause a crash and lots of wetness in this instance. The other, the fascinated side of him that truly desired to believe in myths, cajoled him and urged him toward what was unknown - and surely wouldn't be much longer anymore - and fantastic. These fought vehemently for a good moment before he finally realised he'd closed his eyes against the impending collision.
Silence met his ears all around. He heard Mairi gasp sharply behind him.
Iain chanced one eye, and then cried out. The other.
No Stone. Not a pebble.
Groped by a strong sense of hilarity, he turned to Mairi to tell her his stupidity in believing her father's fishhook tales when, out of the water behind her, a huge dark cavern risen from the loch they had journeyed into appeared to him.
Breath-taken, he could only stare at the beauty that expanded everywhere around them. Flowers in the lake, too! One danced in Mairi's hair, another in Morag's hungry mouth. Will, well, little Will was destroying one with renewed glee. The flowers were raining down on them. Or rather, the wind dropped them onto the children.
"We've made it," Iain observed dazedly, fascinated.
Mairi beamed and drew him into her arms, then froze, looking over his shoulder. "No all of us, no," she replied tightly, devoid of expression. Iain knew her well enough…
No… Mr Cameron's face held an expression of pure bliss, but something was amiss. Heartbeat. "No." Niall's chest did not heave any longer, so faint a movement as it had once been during the voyage. The expression was frozen, Iain thought, because of the happiness he had felt at travelling through the Stone. "No."
Iain turned to Mairi, truly expressing his dismay only with his eyes, but he expressed it with words to quench the unpleasant silence that swallowed them. "Mairi, I'm that sorry."
She didn't cry, didn't look one last time as they touched soil, but he did notice her crossing herself with her eyes heavenward. A last respect to the father she had known and loved. Together they took the weans to firm land and turned to find an old woman dressed in most peculiar robes, a thin gauzy veil wrapped around her head and over her eyes. Thin, long white hair travelled down her back and chest and toward her feet; they seemed heavy to carry.
"Hector, Hector," she was saying, voice shaken by tremors. "Are they there, now?"
Hector, a small-limbed man with a long black beard that swept over his feet, jumped excitedly. "Yes, mum, yes, mum!" He uttered a small screeching laugh and squatted to look at Morag and William, terrified under Mairi's skirts. "Four o' them, by the looks of it, mum!"
"Five," Mairi objected, glaring. "There were five o us." She glowered at the dwarf and then at the old lady, a vicious one that time. "The cavern killed my father," she spat out, tightening her grip on Morag.
The old woman blinked under her veils, put a white parched hand upon Mairi's dishevelled red hair and gingerly took the dwarf's proffered arm. She began walking up a slope toward a small wooden shack. Mairi suddenly realised how truly daft she had sounded. Cavern… Killing… No, Niall Cameron had quite simply died… naturally.
The children followed though they could not reason why. Their feet carried them limply to the top of the hill, where small trees seemed dead and couldn't possibly grow. And yet they did. Dry and knobbly, leaves still clung to their branches.
"Now, now," she was saying, "come in, come in and we'll talk all about it. How long has it been since we had visit last?" she wondered out loud, to which the dwarf hopped excitedly on his feet. "Years and years, mum! And counting! Fifteen!"
The old maid laughed tenderly and then threw out her hand, reaching blindly for the knob to a ratty old home. The undersized man jumped again and turned it amiably for her.
She stepped cautiously inside, helping herself with a gnarled long stick that she tapped left and right, leading herself to a stuffed chair. "Now, now, we'll get this - and you! - all sorted out. In a moment. Tell me about yourselves first, darlings, and be very precise."
Tell me what you think...?
Foreword
Almost like a dance, our spirits are captured by a music that sings of the nature that calls to us. A nature that, surprisingly, speaks in whispers of magic that transports us from world to world. Stones, described as dull solid things, belong to a transient world that also belongs to ours. Crafting them is an art; we have to speak their language to create beautiful sculptures out of them.
I heard them speak their language once, in a faraway silence transported by slumber. I heard them whisper their pulling riddles.
Take the sea… I will wait for thee.
Hear my song… It shall be long.
Ride me… I will make you see.
Far beyond your wildest dreams.
Far beyond my strong barriers.
Chapter One
The Rebellion Escapees
Blood-curdling screams pierced through the air, slashing their way through the ears of those sitting, listening to them without moving for fear of being discovered. The stench of smouldering ashes and gunpowder wafted its way into the nostrils of the innocent, the children. From here, from their place of hiding, four pairs of eyes surveyed the abysmal defeat of the Jacobites in the small port town of Inverness, riveted.
To those eyes, the war looked like Hell on Earth. Here and now and always, always, someone screamed. Dying, suffering or simply killing or fearing death, someone screamed out at the evening. The children recognised the war cries but not the faces anymore, for the faces of the remaining survivors seemed painted with death itself and carried the lost hope that all had garnered before the warriors had uttered the first impassioned cry for the people of the Highlands.
An explosion went off near the four children. Mairi Cameron, the oldest girl, stopped the startled cry from escaping her little sister's mouth, but she herself had very nearly screamed with fright.
Iain Davidson, the older and approaching his tenth autumn, quietened the girls with one hand and warily looked around the corner of the tavern behind which they were hidden. A stack of hay was concealing them for the moment being, but they were quickly becoming aware of the danger of exposing themselves in the middle of the town. They had to find a way out of there.
Gunfire exploded and broke a window over little William's head. Mairi, though far from being his sister, gathered what strength was left in her and pulled him closer under her filthy arisaidh to protect his dark head of curls. "What -" she started to ask, but Iain cut her off with the speed of a gull speeding to the black depths.
"Dinna," he whispered urgently. A moment later a large, dark shadow moved across the tavern's wall. The little girl concealed under Mairi's arm moaned under her breath. Mairi's arm tightened over her sister's waist and Morag stared up frightfully into Mairi's eyes, reflecting the fear Mairi felt deep in her entrails. Be quiet, Mairi thought, hoping helplessly that the message would translate into her eyes.
Finally the figure disappeared on his horse, leaving them scrambling for their meagre possessions to also disappear from sight. However, at the same moment, the man on the horse, now recognisable as a Dragoon from his red coat and vest, reappeared with a kilted man on foot running from the horseman's dripping blade.
Mairi leapt to her feet as Iain jerked her back to the ground. Startled, the breath knocked out of her, she pushed against him, attempting to disentangle herself away from him. "No! You dinna ken! He's -" Scrambling from her skirts and friend's grasp, she climbed to her feet again. Iain saw her face change from that of resolve to… "No!"
Suddenly she broke into a run, hoisting her tattered skirts up to her scrawny knees, and Iain scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding to his throat. There were Redcoats everywhere in town! She would be seen! "Mairi! Come back! Mairi, no!"
The Dragoon was gone, along with its horse. Mairi ran to the fallen figure on the ground and cradled his head. "Father. Father, please." Tears were beginning to gather at her cheeks when Niall Cameron's eyes fluttered open, brown so like hers. Morag's little feet carried her beside her older sister, and she gave a confused little cry as she saw her father, disfigured as he was with black-and-blue bruises and blood spattered upon his sweat-lined leine shirt and muddied breeches, and rapidly caking on his plaid.
The scent of dried blood was on him, as well as fresh blood. A deep cut had been driven deep into his ribs, suffocating him for a moment, but his breath still harvested past his lips. Another incision had been cut into his leg, showing him incapable of moving to his feet. His sweat had gathered in a thick layer upon his face, rendering him almost a reflective matter. The scent of fear and gunpowder lingered in and on him, but what alerted Mairi was the smell of doom that remained in his gaunt expression.
Niall Cameron lifted his eyes. A haunted gaze met Mairi's. Swallowing a tight knot of bile, Mairi silently tended to her father's wounds, discovering that the bullet had penetrated through and through, a small hole pierced below his clavicle. There were other scratches leaving large gashes through his quickly paling skin. Pressing onto his wounded chest with all her might, Mairi ordered Iain to tear a long piece from her petticoat. Without another word, she banded her father's chest, refusing to meet her father's eyes again.
Iain appeared at her shoulder, his little cousin William at his side and crying. "We should be going," he whispered warily.
Niall Cameron's eyes panned to his daughter's childhood friend, considering the young boy. "Aye, the wee mannie's right," he wheezed out between raspy breaths. Mairi glanced at her father, seeing the troubled dullness in his eyes again, and looked away, biting her lip to keep herself from losing her cold head. "Follow me." Her father leaned onto his hand to rise to his feet, trembling dangerously as he did. He shuffled out of the dirty street and progressed slowly toward the port.
"Come on, Willie," Iain coaxed his cousin before grasping his hand and following a man he hadn't ever met outside of the crops.
Morag tugged her sister's torn and dirty dress and raised frightened eyes to her. Mairi shook herself out of her torpor and stole away after their father, a man who was a stranger to them since the raising of the war.
Iain and Mairi rowed the boat, but they were mostly pulled by the Ness's current leading them from the sheltered Inverness to…
"Where are we going?" Iain finally asked, planting his oar firmly to the bottom of the boat and leaning his chin on the rest. He was looking at her with a piercing gaze, eyes trained to hers but also surveying the murky water's unexpected thrashes as he did. Despite their young age, Mairi had to admit that Iain often acted and looked much older; truly it was his expressive green eyes that constantly reminded her of this troubling thought. Rather than being rail-like, Iain's shape brought forth images of solid vigour hidden deep within his small muscles. Fishing with his uncle from a very young age had made him more than capable beyond his years.
Father raised his head from the half slumber he had been enjoying and swept his eyes over the quickly thinning strap of land behind them. With a wheezing cough he wrapped the spare arisaidh tighter around him. The weather had turned colder with the darkening skies. Now that the sun rested precariously atop a mountaintop, cold drafts were turning into winds that caressed the Highlands with deliberate force, washing away its grim spectacle. But Mairi couldn't ignore the misery crossing her father's face at a speed that tormented her for some time. She had brought the fabric for her mother in the case she had survived the ambush at Inverness. But she hadn't, and the large piece of cloth had no use but to be used as a spare sheet to keep warm. Niall Cameron breathed in deeply, the cool air scalding his intact lung.
"There are tales aboot a bonnie island west of Islay," he said simply, then promptly fell back into a fitful sleep.
Mairi frowned, absently patting Morag's head as the wean shifted beside her in her rest. The bairns had gone limp from wear, surely from the exhaustion of the day's rather gloomy activities. Mairi envied their disinterest in anything beyond food and warmth and family. Likely they didn't care that Niall Cameron had certainly lost his head.
She had heard of these tales, by Mother. But… these tales were specially told by mothers who wanted to reassure their children that not all tales were horrific. And yet, in these stories, no one ever came back from this idyllic island, trapped forever into its world. What was so perpetually beautiful about it that it had resisted oblivion.
Iain was looking at her with a serious, piercing expression. "What island is he talking about?"
Mairi remained obscurely silent, then grabbed her oar again and shrugged as they approached a tight passage, nodding the danger to him. "The Stone Isle," she replied dourly as the current drove them toward high, particularly deadly rocks. Her father was surely ill. And he was driving them toward an untimely death. Perfect.
Staring flabbergasted at Mairi even as he rowed maniacally, mouth agape and all, Iain's expression of consternation didn't brook any argument as to what he thought of the whole affair. They remained quiet for some time, save for the groaning splashes that sent them rocking to and fro in the tight channel. Well past the passage, though, he wiped his brow and then put down his carefully, a pensive expression flitting over his features. With some finality he finally shook his head, frowning suspiciously. He didn't believe a thing of it either. "Fit?" he asked incredulously after some time.
Sighing, Mairi wondered why on earth they had suddenly embarked on this wild and demented quest. Then she fixed her gaze on Iain's as he scratched at a particularly large freckle unknowingly. "Ye ken the lore, Iain. Ye ken the Stone Isle stories," she said chafingly.
Feeling suddenly very old though she was not - a mere ten summers! - Mairi sighed again, full of small Scottish groans. "About fair braw men making for the Stone Isle and ne'er returning back to tell the tale. But people see 'em disappearing… or that's what they tell ye." She cast her eyes downward, wiping her still-gory hands on the skirt of her dress and pausing as she regarded them bleakly. "Ma used to tell me the stories after the men raved about their hunting exploits and the gods of war, before I went to sleep."
"I never kent my Mum," Iain confided, blushing. "She died giving birth to me, ken. And then Da left with a hunting party in the Moray and sent me to live with me Auntie MacKenna."
Mairi contemplated the form of little William MacKenna, curled up at Iain Davidson's feet and smiled, thinking of all the good memories she and Iain had accumulated together as children because of Iain's misfortune. Truly she was lucky. Mairi smiled warmly as his embarrassed blush subsided, as his gaze returned a similar expression.
"D'ye think it's real? The island, I mean," Iain asked suddenly from the darkening evening, his voice sounding eerie even to her ears. The sun had now gone down, casting a lugubrious light on him.
Mairi swallowed tightly and rowed on, wishing she could know anything anymore. "I dinna know."
With a surreal sense of floating, Iain awoke from a restless sleep to find Willie dangling dangerously off the side of the boat. The wean had on a radiant grin and was reaching out toward the lustrous water with unequalled desire. Iain decided it was high time Mr Willie was pulled back from imminent drowning.
Willie, brusquely wrenched back from starboard, began wailing, thus tearing a very Scottish grunt from Mr Cameron who nevertheless didn't wake, and an unladylike snort from Mairi as she was pulled from beatific sleep. Morag, thank the Lord, merely frowned reproachfully at the intruder through closed eyes and very fitful sleep.
"What's with him?" Mairi moaned as she rubbed her eyelids to full attention.
Iain set his cousin down between his knees on the damp floor of the boat once more, sending him sprawling with a warning glare that shut him up instantly. "Pulled him back from drownin', is what I did," he explained briefly with a short smile of good morning. Then, spying her filthy apron. "Would ye no have aught to eat?"
Mairi winced; in the wake of hearing men start in all directions from Cameron Lodge, Mairi had left the bread to burn in the fire and grabbed what remained of the oatmeal cookies she had just finished cooking and stuffed them into her apron; Morag had eaten the rest as Mairi had yanked her here and there, the cookie a blessing for Morag remained quiet and relatively calm. Presently Mairi dug into her browned apron and produced one with myriad cookie crumbs falling into the creases of her hand. "Aye, that's all there is, m'afraid."
"Och." Iain's throat closed up painfully at the notion. His stomach gave a lurch as he reached out toward the one cookie. With a bite at his lips, however, he contented himself with a small portion of cookie crumbs that dropped scorching at his throat, dust-like, and fell heavily into his empty stomach.
With a good imitation of her father's grunt, he then bent over the side of the boat and scooped up a handsful of water, then another, into his mouth. And then, ladling a last time, he rinsed his face and smacked his lips thoughtfully together. When he dropped back into place he already had his humid hands tangled in the knots of his hair and was flattening it down as Mairi gobbled the last of the crumbs.
"How are ye?" he asked, stretching contentedly after this operation.
Mairi chuckled to herself for a moment, shaking her head at him, and then busied herself with breaking a little piece of cookie for William who, naturally, craved more, and then for Morag who, with the sound of cookie crumbs falling in every which way, had roused to demand her portion of the small treasure.
As for her father… Mairi studied the pattern of his breathing and came to the conclusion that he was asleep, yes, but a laborious sleep. She frowned and leaned toward him, washed with a wave of nausea as she came in sufficient distance: the gashes had not dried, she smelled, and were producing a sweet sort of tangy waft that indicated rotting.
Mother had healed a man come from the sea once, and from the old blackening wound on his knee had oozed an amber liquid as a result of her careful punctures. She had removed the dirty rags that had served as a bandage of sorts. The leg had had to be severed.
Father's leg was rotting under her careful bandages.
Mairi darkly contemplated this issue when Iain stepped off onto the rocky shore from which they had tied a rope around a sufficiently large boulder for the night. Vaguely she assessed that he had hopped off to remove the tightly-wound rope. They would continue the voyage through the firth. Mairi's mind once more ran galloping through the tiny bits of knowledge gleaned from her mother. Pity she hadn't assimilated much. She really did like healing, but for the required training.
"Wait!" Iain's hands paused around the knot as the boat shivered under the waves created by his stepping off. "Can ye find me some comfrey? Da's wounds…"
"Hmm." He looked up, comprehension written all over his face. "Can ye maybe describe it for me?"
"Och, yes." Oval leaves, the base stalked, its long yellow flowers somewhat similar to antlers. As she described it for him, her mind milled faster than it had ever. Da wanted to get quickly to this fairy tale island. Would there be someone there able to mend him? Why was he bringing them there? Was it safer? Had the Risings reached this land or would it be spared for to keep it from war? Was it real? Coming back to question this last every time, she finally decided to let the issue alone. So long as the Sassenachs and their supporters couldn't find them.
Iain disappeared like thunder; she heard the leaves and branches rustle as he scurried into the thick of the forest, comfrey in mind. Then, nothing.
"Baboom?" inquired a dribbling Willie as Morag farted, scowling jealously for Mairi's attention had been drawn to him first.
"No. No baboom here," she replied with some finality, wiping his mouth and chin with the corner of her arisaidh. Then she turned to her sister, delving back into the bitterness of her thoughts. "Wherever we are going'… I hope they dinna have any blasted cannons." Blushing at her choice of coarse words, she spared a look at the wheeze-snoring figure of her father and sighed lamentably.
The sun was still at an angle when Iain came back with the leaves clutched in his hands, a worried expression crossing his brows. "You asked these?"
Mairi lifted her head from dully examining the reflection of the skies in the rippling water. "Yes," she glowed. "Thank you. Let's go."
Wincing, she removed the roll of bandage from round her father's leg and reminded herself to breathe through her mouth as she placed the leaves carefully onto the blackening wounds. Comfrey worked on mere infections in small wounds, but Mairi hoped the leaves would perhaps keep the wounds from infecting further. Recognising this as wishful thinking, she retreated back to her place and picked up an oar after having put a fresh roll of petticoats around his faintly heaving chest.
Pierced lung invaded with blood, broken ribs back and front, gangrene working under the leaves. Mairi couldn't help the helplessness from settling in unwanted. Clinging to the oar as her only support from falling from grace, she took comfort in the easy manoeuvre rowing demanded. Blotting out the whisper in her father's lungs, the whinging of the two bairns… Yes, she could manage a dreamlike state that constantly reminded her this was not a dream she was swimming in, but a state of convoluted chaos that screamed at her to find the weirdness in the situation. The truth was, she had found it, but couldn't, or wouldn't, face it now. She simply couldn't.
Iain sighed behind her; her straight back hid naught.
"It's opening'."
"Did ye expect otherwise?"
"Weel, no. But we just came through yon Cameron clan territory," Mairi answered with a shrug.
Iain turned to her, surprised. "How d'ye know?"
"I was still a wean then, but I remember the creek what we passed through. My mum bathed me there. I still kent the scent." Mairi grinned at the flow of memories connected to that particular sweet perfume. "Freshwater and pines wi' a dab o' mud," she breathed, amazed at her power of recollection.
They were now letting the boat go wherever it pleased; there had been some straining and moments when, faced with a less than harmless little fall, they had been obliged to wake Mairi's father and transport the boat to a safer spot near said fall, but past it, below. As it appeared now, they would not need to rouse her father for a good while. The ripples were now dead calm.
Having gone on for three days, most parties present were happy to report that nothing significant had happened in way of scratches or wounds. Mairi, herself just a tad seasick, had doubled overboard at least three times after the fiercer, rockier moments. Morag often demanded her mother, as did wee Willie, but also considerable amounts of food.
Iain, rather annoyed at her, had finally borrowed a line from a broken fishing gear that had been laid abandoned near shore with a crimson red tartan left in tatters, and constructed a new fishing rod from which he had taken many small but edible fish in the evening to eat the next. They smoked it throughout the night, taking turns to tend the fire before it coughed out.
None of them had seen the English armies roam the lochs. Or perhaps they were moving northwards, toward the higher Highlands. Nevertheless, they did hear startled cries, subsiding in the night. Mairi and Iain hoped they were animals, however little of them resided in Scotland.
Niall Cameron lifted his head at their hushed talk, grunted a little at the pain in his entrails and disregarded it altogether as he gazed at the Firth of Lora opening before them like a curtain of dark sea. His eyes opened wide with unmasked surprise as he realised that his little girl and her friend had taken them all safely away to the other side of the country. God bless them, he thought faintly, the wee bairns takin' me to the Stone.
There, he thought again as pain lanced through his spine, there my pains will be taken care of. And the bairns, safely awa' from strife and the Sassenachs.
There, the Stone awaited them, still far past the island of Islay, biding its time. One more barrier lay between them and it, though; the angry ocean roared far before the tiny structure of the boat.
It appeared to them far away as quite the pebble, but nothing rather as exciting as the lore had painted it. Still Iain and Mairi rowed on, tired from the strength the sea exerted against them. They couldn't wait to get closer and get a proper peep and wouldn't that impress everyone back home.
Closer, though, the Stone looked quite the show. Tall, granite-like and untouched by the hand of man, it was a crude large stone that nevertheless instilled fear deep within the children, even the younger ones, as they stared stunned at the magnificence that stood unmoving as a giant paralysed from the entrails of the sea.
Iain wondered how the men from Islay had never all gone on there to test the veracity of the stories. Wouldn't they all be imprisoned inside, then? Did the lore change from eastern to western coast? Didn't everybody know about it?
"Get closer, closer," Mr Cameron kept repeating under a painful breath as they neared the façade of the rock.
He looked truly weak, sickly, and Iain had bravely chanced a look at the wounds when Mairi had changed his bandages - the petticoats under her skirt didn't have much use anymore, being so short and all; he could see her legs, pale and scratched from their episode in the dirt. The stretching hole reminded Iain of a particularly menacing mouth that would eat him up any minute.
Every morning he went in search of more comfrey, but every time the sight of the plants themselves made him nearly vomit what little they ate each day. Only seeing them once removed from the lesions proved to be very good cause for never joining an army of any sort.
"Aye, verra good," Mr Cameron whispered again. Iain leaned closer to him, very careful to breathe through his mouth, and saw what the man was pleased at. An inscription was written in Gaelic: "Come, be tested true, live peaceful. Leave with the Storm in thy Hand." Mr Cameron straightened painfully and threw over his shoulder to Iain, "I wouldn't count on the last. Many men ha' said as they'd come back and tell. They didna."
Iain bit his lip pensively. "Perhaps they only didna want to leave," he pointed out to the first line.
Mr Cameron smiled back at him, eyebrow raised in appreciation. "Maybe ye're right, mannie." Suddenly his face decomposed and he hissed a breath in. "On wi' it," he gasped, tapping the side of the boat forcefully.
The surface of the water sent ripples toward the Stone. On the waves travelled and toward it, and never once bumped against the cool, rough texture of the rock. Not one ripple did come back toward the boat. Iain stood frigid in his seat. Only, then, Mr Cameron's foot connected with his shin and he yelped, startled from unnatural fright, and picked up the oars with a quick prayer to the Saints and Brigid.
Faintly he heard the two weans bawl over for nothing Mairi couldn't handle he was sure, and then he rowed toward the Stone, always toward it and those wicked words gleaming abnormally from the craggy, bumpy surface. It taunted him, penetrating his brain and etching the words into his mind, made of fire and always terrorising. Iain was certain he would remember them forever burning in his mind.
Some rational part of his brain reminded him coolly that no solid matter could collide with a solid matter and not cause a crash and lots of wetness in this instance. The other, the fascinated side of him that truly desired to believe in myths, cajoled him and urged him toward what was unknown - and surely wouldn't be much longer anymore - and fantastic. These fought vehemently for a good moment before he finally realised he'd closed his eyes against the impending collision.
Silence met his ears all around. He heard Mairi gasp sharply behind him.
Iain chanced one eye, and then cried out. The other.
No Stone. Not a pebble.
Groped by a strong sense of hilarity, he turned to Mairi to tell her his stupidity in believing her father's fishhook tales when, out of the water behind her, a huge dark cavern risen from the loch they had journeyed into appeared to him.
Breath-taken, he could only stare at the beauty that expanded everywhere around them. Flowers in the lake, too! One danced in Mairi's hair, another in Morag's hungry mouth. Will, well, little Will was destroying one with renewed glee. The flowers were raining down on them. Or rather, the wind dropped them onto the children.
"We've made it," Iain observed dazedly, fascinated.
Mairi beamed and drew him into her arms, then froze, looking over his shoulder. "No all of us, no," she replied tightly, devoid of expression. Iain knew her well enough…
No… Mr Cameron's face held an expression of pure bliss, but something was amiss. Heartbeat. "No." Niall's chest did not heave any longer, so faint a movement as it had once been during the voyage. The expression was frozen, Iain thought, because of the happiness he had felt at travelling through the Stone. "No."
Iain turned to Mairi, truly expressing his dismay only with his eyes, but he expressed it with words to quench the unpleasant silence that swallowed them. "Mairi, I'm that sorry."
She didn't cry, didn't look one last time as they touched soil, but he did notice her crossing herself with her eyes heavenward. A last respect to the father she had known and loved. Together they took the weans to firm land and turned to find an old woman dressed in most peculiar robes, a thin gauzy veil wrapped around her head and over her eyes. Thin, long white hair travelled down her back and chest and toward her feet; they seemed heavy to carry.
"Hector, Hector," she was saying, voice shaken by tremors. "Are they there, now?"
Hector, a small-limbed man with a long black beard that swept over his feet, jumped excitedly. "Yes, mum, yes, mum!" He uttered a small screeching laugh and squatted to look at Morag and William, terrified under Mairi's skirts. "Four o' them, by the looks of it, mum!"
"Five," Mairi objected, glaring. "There were five o us." She glowered at the dwarf and then at the old lady, a vicious one that time. "The cavern killed my father," she spat out, tightening her grip on Morag.
The old woman blinked under her veils, put a white parched hand upon Mairi's dishevelled red hair and gingerly took the dwarf's proffered arm. She began walking up a slope toward a small wooden shack. Mairi suddenly realised how truly daft she had sounded. Cavern… Killing… No, Niall Cameron had quite simply died… naturally.
The children followed though they could not reason why. Their feet carried them limply to the top of the hill, where small trees seemed dead and couldn't possibly grow. And yet they did. Dry and knobbly, leaves still clung to their branches.
"Now, now," she was saying, "come in, come in and we'll talk all about it. How long has it been since we had visit last?" she wondered out loud, to which the dwarf hopped excitedly on his feet. "Years and years, mum! And counting! Fifteen!"
The old maid laughed tenderly and then threw out her hand, reaching blindly for the knob to a ratty old home. The undersized man jumped again and turned it amiably for her.
She stepped cautiously inside, helping herself with a gnarled long stick that she tapped left and right, leading herself to a stuffed chair. "Now, now, we'll get this - and you! - all sorted out. In a moment. Tell me about yourselves first, darlings, and be very precise."
Tell me what you think...?