Page 41 of Crown of Tides and Fury

“Not what I meant at all, love. Just that ye’re in each other’s hearts, and I fear we’ll never see either of ye out again, despite his frustration.”

“I thought that was supposed to be the whole point of our existence. To find someone to love.”

“Aye, lass. It is. Else why are we here? But a painless love has never been promised to any of us.”

16

A Meeting Of The Mists

Wickham gripped Kitch’s arms and stepped out ofTime. When they stepped back in, they were three hundred fifty years in the past. He didn’t want to deal with the conflicts of the Jacobite Rebellions, nor would he risk going so far back that the auld man wouldn’t have any answers for them. The year 1673 fell somewhere in the middle since James wouldn’t lose the throne for another 16 years, which would kick off the Jacobite cause.

He and Kitch stood on a hillside above the Muirsglen entrance to the tunnel. The village spread out before them was a mere fraction of the town they’d left burning. Now, the smoke in the sky came from leisurely tendrils slipping out of a hundred chimneys.

They were spotted long before they reached the bottom of the incline. Somewhere behind them, above the spot where they’d appeared, someone blew a horn. They kept moving, slow and confident so as not to raise an alarm. True strangers could have never found the place, let alone walk into town as if they knew their purpose.

Down the center of the main road that ran west to east, they found a man watching them with his mouth hanging open. He stood beside a bread cart the size of a hurlie-barrow. His wife sat on the ground, slumped against the wheel on the far side, sleeping. The bread looked dry and lumpy, as if it had been passed through many hands, and Wickham was glad they’d started the morning with a hearty breakfast. It might be some time before they ate again.

He was careful to only speak Gaelic. “Good day, sir.”

“Auch, sir, he says.” The man glanced at his wife, to share his amusement, but she heard nothing. “Fancy a loaf?” He pointed to the contents of his wagon but didn’t seem too proud of what remained.

“We seek theSeanair.”

The man nodded, relieved, as if all his curiosity had been instantly satisfied. “Big house,” he said, pointing off to the north. “Dead owl in the yard. Guess that’ll be yer doin’.”

Wickham nodded his thanks. If the bloke took it as an admission that he was responsible for a dead owl, so be it.

He and Kitch cut between a house and a barn, following a familiar path north. Folks popped out of doors to see them, but most hurried back inside, some crossing themselves as they retreated. One woman sat on a porch, rocking and puffing on her pipe in a matching rhythm. She grinned and pulled the stem from between her teeth. “Finally, he can get rid of that owl!”

* * *

After passing a dozen nicer cottages,they came to the only house that could be considered big, on roughly the same patch of land where the old man’s future house would stand. And sure enough, in the middle of the yard, just outside the door, the large carcass of a white owl lay untouched, the breeze teasing the feathers back and forth, as if trying to resurrect it.

At the corner of the cottage, sitting in the shade of a small Rowan tree, sat the Grandfather. He was dressed much the same as always, with layers of leather and wool to keep his aged bones warm. The gray hair was a bit thicker, his brown face younger, and his body much thinner than he’d been when Wickham had met him in the twenty-first century. A collection of beauty marks were much more prominent than Wickham remembered.

Though perfectly upright, his eyes were closed, his hands crossed and resting atop the handle of a cane. A familiar pose.

“Seanair,” Wickham said, as if continuing a conversation from moments before. No need to put the man off right away. Besides, he wasn’t sleeping. He rarely slept, and certainly not out in the open.

The old eyes opened. He looked Wickham over slowly, from head to toe and back again. “Garbhach.”Grandson. “I’ve been waiting.”

“The owl told ye?”

“Naturally.” The old man looked pointedly at Kitch, waiting for an introduction.

Wickham obliged. “This is Dominic. Ye may call me Muir.”

The man scoffed, then closed his eyes again. “Brave,” he said, “to bring just the one.”

He was fishing. Wickham knew his tactics well. A distraction would be next, and a hope to loosen Wickham’s tongue.

Like clockwork, the door to the house flew open and two women, mid-fifties, stepped out. They chattered away, pretending not to notice they had visitors. And all the while Wickham watched, he felt the old one’s eyes upon him, studying. If he stood any closer, the man would have likely tried to search his sporran.

Finally, the women could pretend no longer and gasped in feigned surprise.

“Mr. Muir, Dominic, these are my wives.”

Two wives? Shocking if true. Yet another distraction.

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