Page 82 of Beyond Dreams

“Aye,” chimed in Aedan. “Inconceivable. Preposterous. Bluidy absurd, is it nae?”

“And still true,” said Lucas.

A mirthless chuckle escaped him. He considered his longtime friends. “Then you’re all mad as well. God love you.”

Lucas nodded, his gray eyes briefly filled with an inexplicable sorrow before he pushed open the door.

With a mild push from Aedan, Duncan followed Lucas inside the hut. The four men filled the tiny, cramped space. Duncan spied instantly an old crone on her haunches near the brazier in the middle of the room.

“She said he would come,” the woman said, her voice raspy with age. She did not rise to greet them, did not even turn her head but looked at something in the far, darkened corner.

Lucas walked around the old woman, beckoning Duncan to follow. He saw that a figure lay on the pallet there, too small to be Graeme, his confusion only increasing, and then more so when he recognized the eyes that stared back at him from the pallet.

“Bluidy hell,” he seethed, staring into the beady eyes of the hag who’d been at his wedding, who had identified herself as Holly’s aunt.

“Nigheanan sgàil,” said the crone near the fire.

Daughters of shadow.

Some hazy memory returned to Duncan, his mother speaking of thenigheanan sgàil, the witches of the Highlands, said to have retreated to the forests, though they still maintained a formidable presence on Scottish soil. But what had this to do with—?

“We start here,” Lucas said, pointing to the drowsy figure on the pallet, “and show ye her only so that ye ken that everything we say after has the potential to be true.”

His brain was muddled, and did not improve, only worsened when Lucas instructed the frail woman, “Show him.”

“Will sap what little strength she has,” chirped the old woman at the other side of the room.

The one on the pallet looked up at Duncan. “By Fate’s decree, she is yours.” Her voice was barely audible, her statement not so much baffling—she spoke of Holly, he presumed—as it was infuriating.

“Show him, “Lucas urged, his tone pitiless.

Duncan leapt backward in the next second, startled by a golden light that sprang from the hag. Realizing Lucas hadn’t moved but stared down with a great severity at the woman, as if he loathed what he’d bade her do, brought some measure of calm to Duncan. In front of his eyes, the light shrouded her figure completely before it diminished, revealing a much younger woman, closer to his own age. She was garbed in soft white robes and framed by a wealth of dark hair, and still shimmered with a bit of light.

It lasted but a moment before the light flashed once more and she was returned to the body of the old witch, her eyes closed now, her body limp.

“She’ll nae wake again now for another day,” predicted the woman in the middle in the hut. “She’ll nae be able to pull your man back from where she moved him.”

Duncan’s eyes widened. He jerked his gaze from the hunched crone to the witch on the pallet and then to Lucas.

Lucas lifted his hand, indicating they should depart. He said briefly, “Thank you, Goldie,” to the ancient woman near the brazier as they left.

Outside the small cottage, and while Duncan’s head spun, Aedan said, “And now you might listen with open ears to the tale we bring to you.”

“One that your lass began.”

Duncan was both speechless and mindless, his brain simply mush, unable to conceive or process what he’d just witnessed, what more might be told.

***

The waiting didn’tbother her so much. She knew that the telling would take time, and that the comprehension of what seemed impossible would require more time, and then that Duncan would need a bit of time to himself, with some attempt to process everything.

Cora, Kayla, and Gabby tried to keep her occupied for a while. They were absolutely lovely, and she was so glad to have found them. If she was going to be stuck here—God! How much easier it would be to know she was not alone.

They’d spent quite a bit of time with some attempt to distract here from what might be going on with their husbands and Duncan. They’d returned to Cora’s cozy solar and had started discussing all the things they missed from the twenty-first century.

Kayla ticked off a list on her fingers. “Let’s get past the obvious: running water, cars, indoor heat, modern healthcare.”

“Oh, but the luxuries,” Cora said, “that’s what I miss. A good and frothy cappuccino. My favorite boutique in Buffalo. Pizza! The theatre.”

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