Page 7 of Beyond Dreams

“Will someone tell me what is going on?” She asked with some heat, roused by both fear and impatience for these people, acting as if she were only a thing and not a person, confused and terrified. “Where am I and where are my clothes and my purse?”

They didn’t so much as ignore her as they were distracted by the return of the younger man. And while they seemed pleased to see who came with him, Holly didn’t know whether to be relieved or more panicked for the arrival of that same old woman who’d appeared to her at the broch.

What the hell is happening here?

“You!” She accused, really freaked out now. “What did you do to me? And where am—”

The older of the two men began to speak to the old woman at the same time. Both Holly and him stopped speaking when the woman expressed her displeasure at being just about attacked the second she’d stepped into the room, flapping her arms at both of them, her actions asking for calm. Thankfully, she turned her back to the gray-haired man and approached Holly.

Good. Maybe now she would get some answers.

She imagined she sounded quite pitiful when she begged of the woman, “Please tell me what is going on.”

“Aye, child,” she said, her voice soft, almost soothing even though it was a bit hoarse. “We will figure all of it out for you. I am Sidheag,” she introduced herself, “and the MacHeth asked me to—"

“But where am I?” Holly didn’t want a backstory. She wanted the most important facts revealed.

“Close to where ye were.”

“I’m sorry but this is no time to play games,” Holly said shortly, “or be so vague. What happened? And where are my clothes?”

Standing beside the bed, more near the head than foot, the old woman used her hand to ask again for calm. “The broch has nae moved, and ye nae so far. You can see the ancient stones from the wall on a clear day, ’tis so close. Ye’ve gone further through time, child, than ye have in distance.”

“Oh,” was all she said until she caught on. “Did I bump my head? Was I knocked out for a while?”

“Nae more than a few hours.”

“Then I don’t know what you mean, gone further through time.”

“’Tis nae the same time now, here, as it was there, then.”

Her vagueness was super annoying.

Through clenched teeth, Holly asked, “Could you expound on that? What are you talking about?”

“When were ye born lass?”

“What does that have—” she stopped herself, wanting answers to the questions already posed, not meaning to add more to the confusion. “February 1996,” she told Sidheag, aware of the others in the room hovering close, but a little behind the old woman, save for the older man who stood at the foot of the bed again and seemed quite intent on the conversation, though Holly wasn’t sure he understood her any more than she had him earlier.

The old woman turned and pointed to the younger man. “That’d be Wedast, born nearly seven hundred years before ye. His brother here, Hugh MacHeth,” she said pointing to the older man, “was bornmorethan seven hundred years before ye.”

Holly said nothing to this—really, how did one respond to such nonsense? It was incredible. A hoax. Some stupid joke practiced on unsuspecting tourists. The greater part of her brain believed just that, it was all just a really awful, really unfunny joke.

But a smaller part of her recalled exactly what she’d seen at the broch, Arnold being...overtaken first by the man of her dreams and then this old...witch, she supposed she would be. And the others on the bus with her—the bus itself—had all disappeared. And that white light that had blinded her but was felt from the inside.

“Moved through time,” said the old woman with a negligent shrug, “nae more difficult than hauling fish into the net.”

“You did this?” Holly railed at her. “Yes, you did,” she decided, her tone laced with recrimination. “I saw you there. You were there at the broch—in the twenty-first century. What were you doing there? Aside from shape-shifting or whatever you call it. First it was Arnold, then that guy from my dreams, then you, all in the same body.”

“I ken ye would come,” said the woman. “The MacHeth needs ye. The MacQuillan comes for ye.”

Holly snorted. “I don’t care who comes or what they need. I don’t want to be here. I didn’t agree to this. I want to go home.”

“Ye canna go home, Ceri—”

“Ceri?”

“Ye are Ceri—"

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