CHAPTER 1
“You’re not really there, are you?”
There was a long silence, during which the little girl hoped with all her heart that there would be no reply.
“I’m here,” the man answered.
The little girl sighed.
“Why will you not leave me alone?”
“Because you are my only hope.”
“Your only hope? What do you mean?”
“I mean that there is nobody else but you who can help me.”
The little girl sighed, again. It was a long, dismal sigh. It was the sigh of a grown woman, well in advance of her few years of life. Cautiously, she looked around to see if there were anybody nearby who could overhear her. They were alone.
“I can hear when you sigh,” the man disclosed, his words coming closer to sounding like a complaint than he had intended.
“This is my life,” the little girl protested, “And I should be able to live it how I want.”
“This is my life, too,” he replied, “And I regret that I am a burden to you.”
This was the first time that he had ever apologised to her. He had woken her up at night with his loud voice. He had made her jump when he spoke unexpectedly while she was doing her chores. He had made her cry, several times, with his unkind words. She was weary of his unwelcome need for attention.
“I am sorry,” said the man, “I have not been myself for the last few days and I regret the way I have spoken to you.”
The little girl flinched, taken aback by the kindness, almost gentleness, in his tone. It was something that she had never heard before in all the times he had talked to her.
“I am desperate,” he confided.
She thought about the word ‘desperate.’ She had never heard it before. It was a grown-
“It means…” he began.
“I know what it means!” she snapped, cutting him off.
She looked around warily, just as she had done when he had first spoken to her, three long days ago. She did not expect to see him and she didn’t. He was never anywhere she could see him. He always seemed to be close by, but always out of sight.
“You are young,” he said, “I thought that you…”
“How have you not known that I am young?” she demanded.
“I am simply guessing by your voice. You have a young voice.”
“You cannot see me?”
“No.”
“Are you blind?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause as he appeared to think about his reply.
“I am blind,” he declared, “But I am not truly blind. I can see, but I cannot see you.”
She gritted her teeth and grimaced at the stupidity of his reply.
“You cannot see me,” she hissed, suddenly angry, “But why is it that I cannot see you?”
There was a long silence. This man of so many words, who day after day seemed like he could not shut up, was abruptly lost for words.
She looked around and took in the meadow where she was sitting. She began to hear the birds twittering in the trees and the bleating of the sheep. She knew that there was nowhere that he could be hiding, and yet he remained invisible to her.
She stood up and wiped grass seeds from her shabby, tattered clothing, setting her mind to ignoring him and not hearing him. She looked up at the bright sun and it dazzled her. She screwed up her eyes and wrinkled her nose. He wasn’t in the sky, as far as she could tell. She stamped her foot in frustration.
“You’re actually in my head!” she said.
“I suppose I am, but only as much as you are in mine.”
His words were tinged with a note of sadness.
At that moment, the sound of her father’s voice drifted to her ears on the wind. She stiffened. She was very much afraid of her father. She had seen him carrying a scythe, that morning, and he was busy down the hill in the big meadow, cutting grass for the landowner. She cupped both her hands to her ear, like a funnel, and listened intently, but – unable to hear the rhythmic swishing of his blade – she was relieved to realise that she was out of earshot from him.
She clenched her jaw and pushed her tongue against the back of her front teeth to stop it from moving. Then, thinking instead of saying, she put the following words into her mind: ‘You can hear me just as well when I think in my head as when I speak?’
She didn’t understand how she could know this, but she instinctively did know it. It was just another one of the many things that she did not understand about herself. It was just another thing that she would have to keep quiet about to her parents, that is if she were to avoid another beating for being ‘strange’ and ‘not like other children.’ Most seriously of all, and something that chilled her blood to think about it, she must avoid being called a witch. There was only one consequence of such an accusation, she knew, and that was death.
“Yes, I can hear you,” the man replied.
“Do you hear all of my thoughts?”
“No, only the ones that you mean for me to hear or….” he said, breaking into the most wonderful, merry chortle, “Or when you forget what you’re doing!”
They both laughed.
“I’m just a little girl,” she objected.
“You are, most of the time, but sometimes you are not.”
“What do you mean?”
There was another silence. This time, rather than endure it, she spoke up.
“I don’t like it when you stop talking, like that. For a man who has so much to say, it makes me worried when you go quiet.”
“I talk a lot?”
“Yes! You do!”
“How would you describe me?”
“Garrulous!” she grinned.
“Do you see what I mean?”
“No.”
“You said ‘garrulous’.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Does that sound like a word that a little girl like you would use?”
She thought about it and a sense of panic hit her.
“No! It doesn’t!” she said, before blurting out a word she had decided to never, ever say: “Am I a witch?”
“No, you’re not.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There isn’t really any such thing as a witch. It’s something made up to scare people. It’s a name invented by certain kinds of women to scare off people who might want to harm them. When those people hear the word ‘witch’ it makes them think twice about their actions.”
“I often know what is going to happen before it happens.”
“That doesn’t make you a witch, either.”
“I can hear….” she hesitated, worrying about what she was about to say, “I can hear the… the ‘Others’.”
“The others?”
“Yes.”
“Who are the Others?”
This time, it was her turn to be silent for a while.
“The Fynodderys,” she replied, at last.
“Who or what are they?”
“They are the tiny people in the forest. The faerie folk,” she explained, surprised that he did not know of them, “I have actually seen them.”
“I don’t think even that makes you a witch.”
“Yes, but the Fynodderys are the good faeries who are kind to people, but it isn’t just them that I have seen,” she cautioned, “I have also seen the Bogganys.”
“The Bogganys?”
“Yes. They are the bad faeries. They are completely wicked.”
The little girl rubbed her shoulder and winced with pain.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I hurt.” she said, “I hurt from a beating that my father gave me. He beat me for talking about the Bogganys.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He had beaten me when I had talked about the Fynodderys, a while back, but nowhere near as badly as for talking about the Bogganys. He said the Bogganys were evil. He said that to even mention them would bring bad luck.”
“You talk of faeries that I know nothing about. Where are you?”
“Where am I?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand. How could you not know? You are talking to me. I thought you would be able to tell where I am?”
“Do you know where I am, little girl?”
“No.”
“But you are talking to me.”
“We talk to each other aloud and we talk to each other in a whisper, all the time without me being able to see you. We talk to each other with your voice inside my head and, still, you are invisible to me. How would I ever know where you are if I cannot see you?”
“I don’t understand it, either.”
“Are you stood behind me?” she asked, suddenly spinning around, hoping to catch him unawares, “Maybe you are so quick that, no matter how fast I turn, you can stay at my back?
The man rested his head against the damp wall of his prison cell and closed his eyes in concentration, trying to make sense of everything. He had become aware of this little girl three days previously. He had sensed her presence. She was standing in his cell, always in the same corner, watching him. He couldn’t properly see her, but he knew that she was there.
“It was you who came to me,” he told her.
“No it wasn’t!” she admonished, “I was alone and then, all at once, you were with me. You spoke to me, right next to my ear. I was so shocked, I almost leapt out of my feet and left them stood on the floor!”
“You really don’t talk like a little girl!” he exclaimed, laughing.
“Nor, often, do I think like a little girl or act like a little girl, either, as far as I can tell.”
“How old are you?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?” she asked, “I’m a little girl. I can’t count.”
“You have no idea?”
“I don’t have much use for counting. I feed the pigs and the hens, I milk the goats, I gather up all the filth from the floor of the animal sheds, I make a pile of it in the yard and, then, I put down clean rushes across the floor. If I do it well, the owner gives my father enough coins that he doesn’t feel the need to beat me. If I don’t do it to his satisfaction, my father gets fewer coins and I get a strap or a rod across my hands, my legs or my back and I go to sleep with nothing in my belly.”
“I am sorry that your life is not better.”
“There may be another beating waiting for me. I am meant to be looking for a stray hen. It is what I was sent to do. Instead,” she said, defiantly, “I am sat, here, enjoying the sun. I have looked for that hen everywhere and I haven’t found it. That will surely merit a beating. When I have been away too long, my father will search for me and I will hear him calling. When I hear him, I will run up and across into the woods and come out, further down, as if I had been in there all the while.”
“Where are you, little girl? Where do you live?” the man asked, tactfully changing the subject, “I, myself, am in Scotland.”
She allowed her thoughts to dwell on the word ‘Scotland’ and it blossomed in her mind, like a flower, and she understood it. She had never questioned where she lived and nobody had ever asked her, so she began to think about it, deliberately concentrating, and the answer seemed to float into her mind.
“I am on an island called Ellan Vannin,” she answered, “In a tiny little place called Baldhoon.”
She thought about it some more.
“My island is in the sea between Ireland and Scotland. It’s half a day’s sailing out from England.”
“For a little girl who doesn’t know her numbers, you know a lot of everything else.”
“I don’t think I have always been a little girl,” she replied, the words coming out of nowhere and leaving her with no idea what was meant by them.
“I am a prisoner,” he said, “I am in a prison that looks like a castle.”
“And you are in almost complete darkness and there is a smell of smoke and bad water.”
“Yes!” he gasped, taken aback by her uncanny accuracy, “You are exactly right!”
“I think I may have dreamed about you.”
“Dreamed about me?”
“Yes, but not ordinary dreams, not like the kind of dreams that come on most nights. These dreams are special dreams.”
“What kind of dreams are they?”
“They are the kind of dreams….” she began, weighing up what she was about to say and whether he could be trusted to hear it. She decided that he could, “They are dreams that feel real. Dreams of either things that are already or of things that will be.”
A few days earlier, the man – Balgair McRory – would, without hesitation, have laughed at such an absurd notion. That was before, several nights in a row, he had begun to feel her presence.
A butterfly, fluttering across the grassy meadow, changed direction and landed on the little girl’s nose. She didn’t try to brush it away, but lowered herself backwards until her head was resting on the ground. Squinting up at it, she saw the creature start to slowly lower and raise its wings. As she watched, her eyelids seemed to become heavier and heavier. Within moments, she had fallen asleep.
Balgair McRory strained his eyes to peer into the darkness. As he looked, he began to discern the vaguest and most tentative shape of a little girl stood in the corner of his cell. Looking directly at her, he could make out only the most bleary hint of her, but casting his eyes to look either to the left or right of her, he was convinced that he could make out her form in the edge of his vision.
“I am asleep,” she told him.
“Deeply asleep?”
“I will be, soon.”
He waited and then he gave a little cry as she seemed to emerge out of the air and take form.
“I mean this kind of a dream,” she said.
“This is…”
“Impossible?”
“Yes!”
“I agree, but I seem to be here and so do you.”
“This cannot be real.”
“I have long since given up the futility of trying to determine what is and what isn’t real!”
The expression on his face told her that the words she had just spoken were absurdly too adult for her.
“You can only be five or six years old!” he gasped, “Perhaps seven at the very most!”
“Yes, true!” she agreed, looking down at herself and sharing his bafflement, “That would, indeed, appear to be the age of this body.”
He continued to gawp at her.
“Would you like me to go?” she asked, mischievously.
“No!” he cried, “Please stay!”
She smiled and nodded her agreement.
“You said, earlier, that I am your only hope.”
“Yes. You are.”
“Your only hope of what?”
“Of escape.”
“Why are you in this prison?” asked the little girl, the thought only just occurring to her.
“I was accused of killing somebody.”
“It was a crime you did not commit,” she said, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Yes. That’s correct. How do you know?”
“I know many things.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. It is just how it is,” she assured him.
Balgair McRory nodded as if he understood.
“And now,” she said, “You are going to be hanged.”
“Yes, I am. In a few days.”
“You told them that you are innocent.”
“Yes, but they did not believe me.”
“Because your accuser had given money to people to come and tell lies about you.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me,” she asked, slightly distracted, “How is it that I am going to help you escape?”
The man looked at her calmly and with no trace of worry or distraction, “It will happen,” he said with the most serene of smiles on his lips.
“It will?”
“Yes. This time it is I who am able to say that I don’t know how and that it is just how it is.”
She nodded, knowing that he was quoting her own words. She was all too familiar with the feeling he was describing. Suddenly, she jolted as if she had been stung and stood bolt upright. The man looked worried.
“What is it?” he asked, his panic undisguised.
“My father is calling me.”
“What will you do?”
“I must wake up.”
“How?”
“If I raise my fingers to my eyes,” she explained, demonstrating the motion, “And put the tips of my thumbs on my lower lids and the tips of my longest fingers on my upper lids,” she said, performing that very action, “And deliberately part them, then they will open in real life and I will…”
She did not finish her sentence, leaving the end of it unspoken, as – in an instant – she vanished completely, disappearing back into thin air from whence she had come.
CHAPTER 2
Greesha gave a little cry as the brightness of the sun pained her eyes. She took stock of herself and found that she was laid on her back, her face to a brilliant, cloudless sky, and her fingers frozen in the pose of forcing open her eyes.
It had worked! She had brought herself back from her dream. A dream that was real, wherever she had been. How had she known what to do? How, she asked herself, did she ever know what to do? She just knew.
The birds were still singing in the field at the top of the tiny dirt track with the grand name of Brech Woorlach Road. Greesha presumed that they had not stopped while she had been away.
“Greesha!” called her father, clearly becoming angry at her lack of reply, “Greesha! Where are you?”
She sprang to her feet and ran, as fast as her legs would carry her, to the top of the rise, across the ridge and into the woods. There, she dodged and weaved down through the trees until she reached the halfway point. Gathering her courage, she leapt out.
“Greesha!” bellowed her father, “Come here! Come here, this very moment!”
“I’m here!” she shouted, “I’m here! I’ve been chasing the hen in the woods, but it got away from me!”
“It got away from you?” he growled, rushing to her and sweeping her into the air by one of her arms, “Well you won’t get away from me and your back and your tush won’t get away from my strap!”
So saying, he gave her a preliminary blow with the flat of his hand, landing between the backs of her legs and her buttocks.
“Dare to strike her again and I will break your arm!” boomed a very loud voice, filled with fury.
Her father dropped her to the ground and whirled about to face the source of the voice. Greesha sped off and took refuge behind a clump of brambles.
“Who is that?” her father challenged, crouching into a defensive stance.
There was no reply.
“Who is there?” her father called.
No answer.
Her father looked around, turning slowly to cover a full circle, breathing heavily, adrenalin flowing through his veins, and bared his teeth.
“I am the Warrior of the Gods!” the voice roared, now very much closer, “Harm her and I will show you their vengeance!”
Greesha’s father quaked. She had never seen him cower before, but he was definitely doing it now. She rolled to the ground, pretending to faint, terrified for what kind of lashing she might receive for witnessing this event, but she kept on listening.
In his cell, in the prison at Keel Bheir in Scotland, Balgair McRory was shaken at his own words. He had known, somehow, that the little girl was about to be beaten by her father. He had been unable to contain his anger at it. When he had found himself shouting at the top of his lungs, he had been every bit as surprised as the girl’s father. It had been like a canon going off. His voice had echoed off the stone walls of the prison and down the stone corridors loud enough to wake the dead. The girl’s father had heard it and, now, in the deepest recess of the prison, came the reply of the burly guard who was Balgair’s jailer. Cursing and swearing, the jailer stormed towards his cell.
“Warrior of the Gods, is it?” he cried, “I’ll give you Warrior of the Gods when I thump you in the throat with my fist!”
The prisoner began to cringe at the verbal onslaught, but then, without warning, he slumped over and started to writhe and moan as sweat poured from his body and soaked his shirt.
The guard’s approach was punctuated by a stream of angry obscenities. They ended only when he reached Balgair McRory’s cell. Pressing his face against the bars the guard jeered and snarled at the man inside.
“For your sake, I hope you’re having a nightmare,” he shouted, “Or I will flog you so hard that the stripes my whip will leave on you, will make your back look like it’s been stitched with red rope!”
Grabbing a tiny, guttering candle from an alcove in the wall, the guard shielded it to prevent the draft from blowing it out. He carried it to a nearby torch and set it ablaze. Waiting until the flames began to take hold, he held it up to the bars. The light from the torch flooded the cell, illuminating the prisoner on a pile of dank straw and wood shavings, arching his back and contorting himself in pain. His shirt was almost entirely black from sweat.
“Lord save us!” beseeched the guard, making the sign of the cross with the tips of his fingers, “It’s the sewer fever!”
The jailer considered sending for a priest, but decided against it, reasoning that the prisoner might not have long enough to live to make the priest’s journey worthwhile.
Presently, beginning to regain consciousness, Balgair McRory’s eyes fluttered. Then he began to blink. The torch lit by the guard had been extinguished, but the door to a box containing a tall, slender candle had been left ajar. The orange and yellow glow from it allowed enough light for the prisoner to survey his soaking wet shirt with dismay.
“I’m sorry about that,” whispered the little girl in his ear, “But I had to do something quickly or you might have been beaten to death for your outburst.”
Balgair mumbled something semi-
“Thank you,” she said, “For your intervention. Your shouting at my father prevented a sound beating of my own.”
“My intervention?”
“Yes, your intervention.”
“For such a young girl, you have a splendid vocabulary!”
Greesha thought, first, about the word ‘intervention’ and, then, about the word ‘vocabulary.’ Once their meanings had come into her mind, she gave a little laugh as she replied.
“Yes, I suppose I have,” she agreed.
“What happened after my shouting?” he enquired in a hushed voice.
“Once my father had recovered himself, he began to drag me back to our croft by my arm. After just a few steps he let go of me, thinking better of it, and gave me a half-
“Did he seem afraid?”
“Yes, he did. He was very much afraid.”
“Good.”
“It isn’t every day that a man finds himself being shouted at by a Warrior of the Gods!”
They both started to laugh, but promptly stifled themselves, each fearing being overheard at their respective ends of their conversation.
“You said I should help you escape.”
“I did.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You have?”
“Yes. I have had an idea. Well, the beginning of one.”
“What is it?”
“When I am awake, I find it very difficult to be anywhere other than where I am. It’s not like when I am asleep, when I find it much easier. So, I need to practice transporting myself to another place when I am awake.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I need to get much better at doing it when I am wakeful, so that I do not have to rely upon going to sleep to do it.”
“That is a good idea.”
“Thankyou.”
“An impeccably good idea.”
She clicked her tongue with annoyance.
“I am going to stop listening to your grown up words when you use them!” she scolded, “Because I have to pause, so that I can draw their meaning into my head, and it is…”
She hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Infuriating?” he suggested.
She made a very good approximation of the ‘Scottish Noise’ – a throaty grumbling sound – to show her displeasure. He found it perturbing, coming from one so young, but made no mention of it.
After pausing to summon the meaning of the word ‘infuriating’, she gave an exasperated sigh.
“Yes. Most definitely infuriating,” she declared.
She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, as a parent might while trying to hold their temper with an unruly child. He smiled at her bizarre maturity, but held his tongue.
“There are dogs at your prison,” she said.
“Yes, there are.”
“The dogs smell out people who are ill.”
He nodded, but then felt awkward, not knowing if she could tell that he was nodding. It appeared that she could, for she continued as if she had taken the nod into account.
“The dogs can smell things that people wouldn’t even know were there,” she said, “They can tell if people are ill in a very particular way.”
He was about to say ‘Sewer Fever’, but decided against it.
“The dogs smell for Sewer Fever,” she told him.
He felt inexplicably irked, having held back the urge to suggest the word. This did not evade her notice. He could tell.
“If one person has Sewer Fever,” she explained in a tolerant, patient, very grown up tone, “Then a lot of people can end up dying from it.”
“Yes,” he agreed, apologetically.
“I have found,” she said, with sudden glee, “That if I stare at a hen and concentrate really hard, I can make it run away from me.”
He knotted his brows in confusion.
“What I am saying,” she explained, being instantly aware of his expression, “Is that if I can do that with a hen, which has only a small head and, therefore, nothing much in it, perhaps, I could do the same thing with a dog.”
He made a noise to indicate that he was following her.
“Dogs have much bigger heads than hens, so they must have room inside them for far more contents to do a lot more thinking.”
He made the noise again.
“I hope to be able to persuade a dog to do something for me – or, more correctly, for you – if I can concentrate and think at it very strongly.”
“Do the hens come back again?”
“Yes, they do,” she laughed, “But it is a while before they dare approach me and they look a little timid when they do.”
He gave a chuckle.
“You will be kinder to the dogs?”
“Yes, I will. Dogs are good. A dog would rather die than let someone down. They have truly beautiful hearts.”
“Which creature has the most beautiful heart?” he asked, thinking – for some strange reason – that she would know.”
“Horses,” she said, without hesitation.
“Not people?”
“No!” she giggled, “Most definitely not people!”
“Have you ever owned a horse?”
The stunned silence that greeted this question made him feel immediately idiotic. What could he possibly have been thinking? He tried to phrase a sufficiently abject apology, but he was not quick enough. Her reply was stinging.
“I could no more hope to own a horse than I could a mansion. I am lucky – and I mean very lucky – if I eat in a morning. I usually only get to eat when the sun is straight above us and, many times, I do not get to eat again for the rest of the day.”
“I’m…”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’m very…”
“Yes, I know.”
“I wouldn’t ever…”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
He opened his mouth to speak, again, but closed it. Words, it seemed, were entirely superfluous.
“I am able to know the sort of man that you are,” she said, kindly.
He opened his mouth to reply, but closed it.
She gave another one of her melancholy sighs and, for no reason he could grasp, he sensed that she had a tear in her eye.
“I wish you were my father,” she blurted.
He exhaled, sharply, the wind taken out of him.
“I wish you were my daughter.”
They both shed a tear and he wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassed.
“I won’t spy into your past,” she said, “I will leave that private.”
“Thank you. I am grateful.”
“You have endured a lot,” she told him.
He took a deep breath and fought to control his emotions.
“Not like you, I haven’t.”
“That’s kind of you to say.”
This time, he resisted the urge to open his mouth. She smiled. He could tell that she smiled.
“You only need to think, you know. That is, if you think towards me,” she paused, struggling to describe what she meant, “If you think at me, I mean.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Yes, you do,” she said, and they both laughed.
“This is very strange, isn’t it?” he suggested.
“Yes, it is, but I think we’re both getting better at it.”
“Slowly.”
“Slowly,” she agreed.
“Me, slower than you, little girl.”
“I’ve been doing this kind of thing longer.”
“You have?”
“Yes, but I’m not referring to talking to people who aren’t there. I mean other things. Different things that get me into trouble. Things that get me…”
“Beaten?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe not so much, any more.”
“Maybe not at all, from the way my father looks at me. So
long as he doesn’t beat one of my brothers or my sister, instead.”
“That, too, might risk angering the gods.”
“Really?”
“Oh, I guarantee it!”
They both laughed. He could tell that she was wiping the tears from her eyes. He did the same.
“I want you to know something,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I want you to know that how I have suffered, and how I will suffer, is nothing that you could prevent.”
“If it were, then I would.”
He knew that she was nodding.
“Oh!” she said, as if an idea had just come to her.
“What?”
“I will own a horse, one day!”
“You will?”
“Yes, I will. It will be when I ride with the queen with the golden hair.”
“When will that be?”
“Hundreds of years from now.”
“What!” he cried in astonishment, “How is that possible?”
“All things are possible.”
He knew that she was right.
“The queen,” she told him, “Will have something in particular that she says.”
“What will she say?”
“Let us do this thing!”
He screwed up his face in puzzlement.
“You can’t tell if it’s me saying it or if I am quoting her,” she declared.
“You’re right.”
“Let us do this thing!” she said, again, this time sounding very grand.
“That time it was definitely a quote!”
They laughed.
“You have a bad habit,” she told him.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“What is my bad habit?”
“I am talking to you in Manx.”
“You are?” he exclaimed.
“Manx is my native language, but you…”
“But I?” he encouraged.
“But you speak Scottish Gaelic, for the most part, until you change to English, often mid-
“Some words are better in English. Some are better in Gaelic.”
“I understand.”
“How do you know what I’m saying, if I don’t speak….”
“Manx,” she said, helpfully.
“Manx,” he agreed, “If I don’t speak in Manx, how do you understand what I am saying?”
“My father understood what you were saying.”
“Good Lord! So he did!”
“I think, perhaps, it’s that….”
She trailed off into a long silence and he decided not to interrupt her, in either language.
“I think, perhaps,” she resumed, “That the act of thinking is a language of its own. Perhaps, whether somebody is speaking or whether they are thinking, the thought inside their head is, in itself, something pure. Something that can be freely understood without translation.”
“Wise words for a six year old!”
She snorted. They both knew that she was of no particular age.
“If I can talk to the dog,” she advised, “I feel I can convince it to lead you to the tunnel that it uses to go outside when it needs to pass water.”
“Will I fit through that tunnel?”
“Yes, you will. I have seen it in my mind.”
“You can see the clothing I am wearing?”
“Yes, I can.”
“My own clothes were taken away from me, when I was brought here, and I was given these. Can you, maybe, get my cloak and cap, back?”
“Your things are gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, gone. The jailer sells the belongings of prisoners.”
The little girl could sense his indignation, so offered him an explanation.
“The dead have no need of clothing.”
He gave an involuntary shudder at her disclosure.
“You could have told me this more gently!” he protested.
“A man has no need of his worldly goods,” she said with exaggerated solemnity, “Once he is beyond the realm of worldly cares.”
Balgair McRory opened his mouth to tell her that he had been making a jest, but closed it when he heard her giggle. It was plain that she already knew.
“You will have no trouble with clothing once you are free of here,” she assured him.
“How will that be?”
“The man in whose name you were brought here will provide you with clothes.”
“Who? The king?” he asked, incredulously.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance as if she were enduring the ramblings of an idiot.
“The constable.”
“The constable?!!” he exclaimed, in the same tone as before.
She pursed her lips and gave him a stoney look which, even over a distance of one hundred and thirty miles, squarely reached him.
“The constable is a good man and he is one of your people.”
“One of my people?”
“Yes. He is one of your people.”
“He is Scottish?”
“Yes, he is Scottish,” she confirmed, “But he has a whole lot about him that is English.”
“I am the same. I was schooled in England. First in Salisbury and, then, in Winchester. Is that what makes him one of my people?”
“No. He is more than that.”
“How?”
“He is of the same tribe as you.”
“The same tribe?”
He pondered her use of the word for a moment. Then, it hit him.
“You mean Clan, I think, little girl. Am I right?”
“No, I think I mean tribe.”
“Tribe? Are you sure?”
“No. Perhaps I don’t mean tribe. You are not hearing the same word that I am using in Manx.”
She closed her eyes and waited for inspiration.
“You and he share the same belief.”
“He believes in God?”
“No!” she snapped, evidently frustrated, “I mean yes, he believes in God, but no, that isn’t what makes him the same as you.”
He took a sharp intake of breath, suddenly afraid.
“Little girl,” he demanded, “Are you able to know everything about me?”
“No. Of course not. That isn’t how it works. I would need to behave badly to do that. I would have to be intrusive. I would have to pry. I would never do that.”
“The group to which I belong,” he told her, “There is danger in it. It could easily cost someone their life if anyone knew of it!”
“The good man is a member of your order,” she assured him, now completely certain that she had the right word.
“That is impossible!” he exclaimed.
She said nothing.
“Little girl, there could be nobody in authority, here, who is of the same order as I. Anybody who knew of my order would, very likely, want to have me killed!”
Her reply was slow and deliberate with heavy emphasis on every word.
“The good man is a member of your order,” she insisted, “You and he are members of the same order.”
He groaned, partly because he had to accept her assurance and partly because he did not want, at any cost, for her to be right.
“My order is an ancient one that dates back eight centuries.”
She did not reply, but appeared to be slightly worried.
“My order…” he started to say, but then broke off, picking up on her anxiety, “Wait!” he said, suddenly afraid, again, “When I said or thought Scotland, what did you hear?”
She concentrated with all her might, focusing with huge effort on his words.
“I heard you say Alba,” she said.
“That hasn’t been the name of this country for a long, long while.”
“How old is the order to which you belong?” she asked.
“My order,” he said proudly, “Dates back to the time of the Vikings.”
Instead of Vikings, she heard the word Norse. He sensed it. Simultaneously they both let out a loud groan. They both leaned forward and gripped their heads between their hands. They had both realised the very same thing, at the very same moment.
“You say it, please,” she begged, “Say it for both of us.”
He said it.
“We have asked each other where we are. You know where I am. I know where you are,” he said, “The thing we forgot to ask is not where we are, but when we are!”
CHAPTER 3
“I am in the year 1622,” said Balgair McRory.
“That is just a number to me,” replied Greesha, “Numbers have no more meaning to me than the grunts and squeals of animals.”
“What if you were to think about the number?”
There was a pause.
“Oh!” she said, in surprise, having just done as he asked, “That, for me, is a very long time away from now.”
“How long?”
There was another pause as she thought, again.
“Around eight hundred years.”
“Eight hundred years!” he cried, “When exactly is now, for you, I wonder?”
“I am mostly a child,” she mused, “So you will have to let me close my eyes and concentrate.”
There was a much longer pause.
“It is the year 793.”
Balgair took a sharp intake of breath at this news.
“What is wrong?” she asked, sensing his shock.
“You said that you sometimes know what is going to happen before it happens?”
“Yes.”
“Something is going to happen in the year 798. That is not so far in your future.”
“Judging from your dismay,” she observed, “It is not a good thing that is going to happen.”
“No, it is a very, very bad thing. Do not think about it.”
It was too late. Greesha had already closed her eyes, pushed her mind five years into the future and opened them. She made a cry of alarm.
“What is it?” asked Balgair.
“Across the next field, there is a dwelling with its thatched roof ablaze. There is screaming and shouting. There is smoke. There are men with golden hair. They are killing people. These are the Norse you spoke about. They are hacking people to pieces. They are enjoying it. They enjoy killing.”
“Stop!” Balgair cried.
Greesha jolted back to the present.
“It was horrible!” she sobbed.
“They will invade your island in the year 798. They will be brutal. They will be merciless.”
“Wait,” said Greesha, closing her eyes.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “You’re not thinking about them, again, are you?”
“No, I am thinking about some of your words. I am making sense of them.”
He waited until she resumed speaking.
“If the Vikings are brutal and merciless, as you describe, then my family are in terrible danger.”
“Yes, they are. I’m sorry.”
“Do not worry,” she sighed, “For some things can be prevented and some things cannot. These things will happen whatever I do.”
“I’m sorry. I should not have said.”
“No, you should. You would have regretted not telling me. I can put this right, for own self. I can feel it.”
There was a silence and Balgair could sense that she had her fingers pressed against her temples and could hear a noise as if she were straining to do something.
“It is done,” she said, “Whatever it was that these Norse did, I have washed it from my head. I no longer know it.”
“That is good.”
“Am I right in saying that the people in your country who fought the Vikings were something to do with your cult?”
“My order.”
“Call it what you will.”
“My order – if I pluck up the courage to dare speak its name – is the Brydda.”
“The Brydda?” she asked, obviously puzzled.
“Yes, the Brydda,” he confirmed, “What do you hear when I say their name?”
“I hear the word nuisance!” she laughed.
“Then that is right, for in the language of the Vikings that word means nuisance.”
“You fear to call yourself a nuisance?” she smirked.
This time, it was he who laughed.
“Yes, I do fear to call myself that, because my people – who were Picts and Scotti and Gaels – were a nuisance to the Vikings. They would attack them, over and over again, to weaken them and wear them down. They would have few big battles – though there were some – for they preferred, instead, to do their enemy the most harm they could, while risking the smallest loss of their own soldiers.”
“I have something to tell you,” she said, with a quietness and a sincerity that made him quake.
“What is it?” he asked, filled with trepidation.
She sensed his fear and unease and shared it. When she replied, she spoke in a flat tone, without emotion.
“The time you speak about. The time of your order. The time of the Brydda.”
“Yes?”
As if she had conjured it, the wind that had been blustering and buffeting outside the tiny window of Balgair McRory’s prison cell, suddenly erupted into a high-
As suddenly as it had started, the noise ended.
“Balgair,” said the little girl, addressing him for the first time by his name, one he had never told her, “The time you mention – the time when your order began – and my lifetime, here and now, where I exist, are one and the same. The time when the Brydda was born is right now. It is happening as we speak.”
There was a clap of thunder and a brilliant flash of lightning outside the window of Balgair’s cell, illuminating the whole of its interior for a single second. In the corner, as clearly as if it were daylight, he could see Greesha. She was stood with her hands by her side. There was no mistake and no question about it. His friend across the centuries was no longer a little girl. She was at least twenty years old. A grown woman.
He jumped up and rushed over to her, but she had already disappeared. Through the soles of his bare feet, he could feel that the stone floor where she had just been stood. It was still warm.
“Twenty years old,” he said to himself, “How can this be? Twenty years and not a day younger.”
He turned as he heard the approaching sound of a dog’s nails clacking on the flags beyond his cell. With it came the flickering, dancing light of a lantern that painted the walls yellow and orange. With the animal came the jailor, a short distance behind it.
“He’s here. Just a little further,” the jailor said to somebody.
The other person grunted.
“He was soaked in sweat,” the jailor advised.
“Let me set my eyes on him, then,” replied the physician, “For the dog appears not the least bit convinced of his ailment.”
“The dog has lost its brain, then, or – at the very least – the use of its damned nose.”
A moment later, the two men and the dog were at the bars of his cell. The physician took one glance at the prisoner and looked at the jailor with pitiful disbelief. The beast, who had alerted the jailor to the prisoner’s ailment not fifteen minutes earlier, was now competing with him to see which one could look the most baffled.
“This man does not have Sewer Fever!” the medical man announced in a scathing tone, “What in the name of everything holy gave you that idea?”
“The dog!” the jailor cried, “The dog knew he had it! He smelled it on him!”
The dog lowered its head and slank away.
“When the dog came to me,” the jailor complained, “I rushed to look for myself and there was no doubt about it. None at all! He was sweating like a pig on a spit!”
“Well, he’s not sweating, now.”
“I tell you he had the fever!”
“The only one who has a fever around here is you and it’s a fever of that lump of wood that sits on top of your shoulders.”
The jailor raised both palms to the roof, as if appealing for reason, but quickly let them flop back down, again, as the other man glowered at him. The jailor shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in disbelief, muttering excuses.
“I have better things to do than wander around the tunnels of this stinking pit and listen to your ramblings!” the physician vented.
With this, he strode off, the jailor following along in his wake, still mumbling his grievances.
Balgair McRory struggled upright, propped himself against the wall of his cell and waited for quiet to return. Then, he tried to process what he had happened, only a minute or so earlier.
“I saw her and she was six years old,” he said, holding out his left hand, “Then, I saw her and she was twenty years old,” he said, holding out his right hand.
He held up his hands, side by side with their assigned ages, and looked back and forth from one to the other.
“Maybe I really have had a fever,” he pondered, “That could explain why I have been imagining things.”
“I prefer the hand where I am six,” announced a voice behind him, “Compared to the one where I am old.”
Balgair turned and there, grinning at him, was Greesha, back to her younger age.
“Old!” he scoffed, “You regard twenty years of age as old?”
The little girl’s grin grew larger, still.
“Ancient!” she enthused.
“I quake to think, then, how broken and worn out you must regard me, at my age!”
“Just remember,” she cautioned, “That to a child of five, even someone eleven years of age is an adult!”
“And how old are you, now?” he enquired.
“Right this minute, as I speak, I am eight or nine, possibly even ten,” she trilled, “Which is a splendid age to be!”
He looked at her, studying her face closely, for a few moments, before pulling back and yelping in surprise.
“I can see you!”
“Yes, you can.”
“You were vague and misty, before.”
“Just like I said earlier, we’re both getting better at this. You are getting better at seeing me and I am getting better at being seen.”
They laughed.
“Tell me,“ he asked, cupping his chin in contemplation, “How is it that I see you at different ages?”
“That is because, I think, that I appear to you during the different stages of my life. Time is not the same for you as it is for me. For you, each minute takes a minute, each hour takes an hour and each day takes a day. For me, I do this – that is, I appear to you – from time to time. I always know what age I am in your terms, and I always know what we have just said to each other. Even so, time is strangely different for me.”
“I have never known time, in all my twenty eight years of life from boy to man, to be anything other than it has always been.”
“I would have said the same, were it not for my strange experience of living in my past, my present and my future.”
He nodded, despite the fact that her words did not make total sense to him.
“I have discovered,” she continued, “That time is not always like a river, where the water flows from one place, upstream, to another place downstream, and where it passes all the points along its way in their proper order. Instead, even though time passes at the same rate for both of us during our conversations, the gaps between them and the order in which they occur, for me, are strangely distorted.”
“And this allows you to know what is going to happen before it happens?”
She laughed.
“Yes,” she agreed, “I know what is going to happen because I will look back on it – at some point in the future – as something that is in the past.”
“How far forward can you go and still continue to see into the past?”
“Until I am thirty.”
“Is that when you…”
He stopped, unwilling to say the word he meant.
“When I?” she teased, already knowing the word.
“When you…”
He still didn’t want to say it.
“When I die?”
“Yes.”
She laughed at him, but not with any malice.
“Tell me,” she asked, “If I took off a coat I was wearing and cast it aside, would you hold a funeral for the coat?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then why, when I shed this garment,” she asked, gesturing to her body, “Would you mourn it, but you would not mourn the coat?”
“The coat isn’t you.”
“The coat is as much me as my body is me.”
“A coat is just a coat.”
“This temporary flesh is no more than a coat we don at birth and cast aside when our use for it is finished.”
“When we die.”
“When we die!” she guffawed, finding his words hilarious.
Realising that she had offended him, she adopted a more conciliatory tone.
“We don’t die,” she informed him, gently, “For if we did, it would mean that we had ceased to exist. All we do is simply stop being as we are right now and become something else.”
His face betrayed genuine confusion.
“Balgair, you were something before you were alive. You will become that something, again, when your span of living is over.”
“I find that very comforting,” he said, blatantly meaning not one word of it.
“If sarcasm were a blade,” she chuckled, “You could slash a bedsheet into ribbons.”
The two howled with laughter. When they had both regained control of themselves, Balgair McRory’s voice took on a more sober tone.
“You said that you would have your own horse when you rode with the queen with golden hair.”
“I recall saying that.”
“I asked you when it would be and you said in hundreds of years.”
“Yes, I did.”
“How many years will it be?”
She closed her eyes to concentrate before replying.
“Over eight hundred and twenty nine years.”
They both fell silent, neither mistaking the tremendous significance of what she had just said.
“Over eight hundred years,” he observed, “Takes you something close to my time.”
“No, Balgair. It doesn’t simply take me close to your time.”
He froze and found himself holding his breath. He knew, instinctively, that what she was about to say was something momentous.
“Balgair, the truth is that I am already in your time. I spend a good while, there. I am there often, just fourteen days into what is your future.”
With this, she disappeared.
CHAPTER 4
Balgair McRory was astonished. He sat, with his mouth open wide, gaping like a witless fool. His mind attempted to make sense of what he had heard but, the harder he tried, the less he succeeded.
“I don’t understand,” he said, at last.
In an instant, she was back.
“It is, very likely, far more complicated that any of us could ever truly understand,” she told him, “But, having experienced it, I am starting to see a pattern in the way that things happen.”
“A pattern?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Yes,” she replied, “It is a pattern of sorts.”
Balgair continued to look mystified.
“Little girl…” he began.
“My name is Greesha,” she said, offering him a smile.
“Greesha,” he corrected, “I have a bad feeling that you’re not telling me everything. Why do you think that might be?”
“Because I’m not,” she replied with disconcerting frankness.
He drew in a breath, preparing himself for bad news.
“The thing I have not mentioned would seem outrageous to you.”
“More outrageous than what I have already seen and learned?”
“I will serve my queen with the golden hair both in your time – the time just ahead of where you are now – and in my own time, here, where I am in your past.”
“The same queen?”
“The very same queen.”
“The same person?”
“Exactly the same person.”
“Surely, Greesha, that is completely impossible!”
“It should be.”
“It is!”
“Any more impossible than this?” she asked suddenly disappearing and re-
He shook his head in disbelief. She was, now, around six years old, again.
“This, Balgair, is how I will be when I meet her.”
“You will be that age in eight hundred years’ time?”
“I did say that it was outrageous.”
Balgair McRory rubbed his forehead, wearily, with the palm of his hand, as if overwhelmed by inexplicable tiredness. She waited, giving him time to gather himself, before speaking again.
“Tell me, Balgair, why have you not mentioned something important to me?”
“I’ve told you everything!” he insisted, adamantly.
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“You have left nothing out?”
“No!”
She waited for him to change his mind, but he didn’t.
“The queen with the golden hair is not unknown to you, is she?”
He jumped as if she had jabbed him with a pin.
“I never thought!” he yelped.
“Really?”
“I seriously never thought! It is as if my mind has been playing tricks on me.”
He gripped his head between his hands and looked genuinely appalled.
“She is known to me,” he gasped, “Of course she is known to me. How could she not be known to me? She is a hero and an inspiration. Her title – both here right now, as well as for hundreds of years before – is ‘Queen of the West’. She is the queen of Western Scotland in the Highlands.”
“What is it that she says?”
He didn’t need to think, he knew immediately, and did not hesitate in his reply.
“Let us do this thing!”
“Yes.”
“Yet I did not recognise her words when you spoke them to me, earlier.”
“Now do you understand, Balgair?”
“Understand? Understand what?”
“That at one moment, you know nothing of her. Then, the next moment, you know all about her.”
“It distresses me even to think of it!”
“You need to understand that there is no limit, no restriction and no end to what can happen when it must happen and when it needs to happen.”
He was gripped by a feeling of panic, for he did not want to contemplate what he feared she meant, so monumental might be the point she was about to make.
“There will be a time,” she declared, “When all the things that are needed will come about and happen.”
“The Quickening,” he said in a small voice.
“Yes, The Quickening.”
“A lot of people say that it is just an inspiring story for foolish people.”
“What do you say, Balgair?”
“The Quickening is a wonderful idea, but I have no proof that it is anything more than fanciful thinking.”
“Is that what your heart tells you?”
“I dare to hope,” he replied.
“But you hold a loyalty and a belief that could get you killed.”
“My family, for countless generations have been secret members of the Brydda. It is a tradition passed down from father to son and from mother to daughter.”
“In my time, Balgair, in the year 793, who is the queen who rallied her followers to fight back against the Norse invaders?”
“How could I possibly not know that?”
“I want to know how this time is remembered in your time.”
“It was Queen Kiffan. She was known as ‘Kiffan the Defiant’. That was the name given to her by the Vikings because she would not give in.”
“Kiffan did not merely have hope. She believed.”
“Yes, she did, but surely her belief was not in ‘The Quickening’?”
“She may not have called it ‘The Quickening’, but she definitely believed in it. She proclaimed that those things that needed to happen would happen and that those people who needed to come together, would all find each other.”
Balgair became nostalgic.
“I remember the stories of Kiffan’s bravery. They were the earliest stories I ever heard. My mother and my father would tell them to me before I could even understand them. They continued to tell them to me until I did and I had the pleasure of them retelling me the earlier accounts of her that I couldn’t quite recall.”
“Do you remember the sign she received?”
“Yes,” he replied, almost in a whisper.
His thoughts whirled and tumbled, causing him to lapse into silence. She did not speak, not wishing to interrupt him in his reverie. She waited. Once his concentration had returned, he realised that she wanted the answer.
“It was a flame,” he replied.
“Yes. It was.”
“An exquisitely beautiful flame.”
“Yes.”
Neither spoke for a long moment, both of them now lost in their thoughts. Neither felt the need to break the silence, because it was a comfortable and relaxed silence between friends.
“You hope, Balgair, but you do not believe,” she said, finally.
He looked offended.
“You do not truly believe.”
He lowered his head and felt ashamed.
“I need you to believe, Balgair. Alba – or Scotland as you call it – needs you to believe.”
He raised his head and saw that Greesha’s image had grown absolutely crystal clear. She was, now, more sharply defined and perfectly focused than he had ever seen her.
“Hold up your finger, Balgair,” she instructed.
He extended his index finger and looked at it.
“Believe, Balgair McRory, believe,” she said, “For these are not children’s crib tales you have been told.”
He held his finger higher. Instantly a golden haze began to form around the tip of it. The haze gathered itself together, like powdered scratchings of iron leaping to a magnet, and blossomed into the most enchantingly lovely golden flame.
“No!” he sobbed, dropping to his knees.
“Yes,” Greesha assured him.
“It cannot be!”
“It is.”
“But I am unworthy!”
“In the Paradise beyond this life, Balgair, in the sight of Our Creator, the most meek, the most lowly and the most humble are the ones He raises up to be kings and queens and to be angels.”
“I had no chance to bathe or prepare myself before you let this happen,” he complained.
“You are cleaner in your filthy skin and your dirty rags than even the most glorious emperor in his silk, his lace and his gold thread.”
“This is a dream!” he shouted, “This isn’t really happening. I am imagining this!”
“You have never been more awake in your entire life than you are now.”
Balgair McRory, staring into the blissful flame, gave a little whimper and a tear rolled down his cheek, but he did not feel ashamed.
She took a step towards him and brought her face close to the flame to admire it. Forming her lips into a circle, she blew gently into the flame. Immediately, the flame grew in height and in brightness.
“Blow into the flame, Balgair.”
He blew. The effect was instantaneous and exactly the same.
“The breath of a righteous man,” she said.
He looked at the flame, incredulously, and brought it closer to his face.
“Balgair McRory, you have been called,” she told him.
He took a deep breath and let it out as a protracted sigh.
“I honestly and sincerely believe,” he replied.
CHAPTER 5
Balgair McRory eventually relaxed his hand and dropped it. He felt a pang of disappointment as the flame extinguished.
“The queen that I know,” he recounted, “The one here and now, in this time, is Queen Annis, daughter of Queen Cydara.”
“Her mother was murdered,” Greesha responded.
“Yes. It was a scandal.”
“It was the doing of the men of Clan Campbell.”
“Yes, that was the news I heard.”
“Have you ever wondered why she trusted the Campbells to be her Honour Guard?” she asked.
“I must confess that, at the time, it certainly did vex me to think of it. The Campbells, after all, are the only clan who are more hated and more reviled than the Clan Grant!”
She raised her eyebrows before replying.
“The new Chief of the Campbells made great play of being contrite and remorseful for the conduct of his forebears,” she pointed out.
He rolled his eyes at her adult choice of words and she answered with a contorted, fake smile before continuing.
“In his speeches, when he attended gatherings and events around the Scottish Highlands, he came as within a whisker of actually declaring himself to be ashamed of past events. In private, in the ear of several clan chiefs, and most definitely in the ear of the queen, he actually said so outright. Short of putting ashes in his hair and donning sackcloth, he could have done no more to express his sorrow for the Campbells’ wicked past.”
“His people’s shame was short lived,” Balgair snorted, “Since they turned upon her and slew her before the year was out.”
“The Chief of the Clan Campbell, by making such a public exhibition of seeking Queen Cydara’s forgiveness, had put her in a very awkward position. When he offered to assemble an Honour Guard for her from amongst his very best troops, she was almost obliged to accept.”
“The glory and splendour of an Honour Guard and the huge prestige that it bestows must present an enormous temptation for any monarch.”
“Yes and, this being the case, spurning such a grand gift would have been an almost unthinkable act and would, potentially, have been catastrophic for any chance of building a new era of friendship.”
“She should have told him to go to Hell.”
“Annis needed to be Queen.”
“Annis wanted her mother’s crown?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So her mother wanted to die?”
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t make sense,” he replied, making a grumbling noise in frustration.
“Queen Cydara was a beautiful woman, make no mistake about it, but she wasn’t merely beautiful on the outside. She was a beautiful person starting from the inside.”
“As far as I have heard, everybody who met her said the same.”
“Cydara and her daughter may have shared the same looks, the same kind heart and the same courage, but it is important to know that Queen Cydara carefully cultivated and developed a particular edge to Princess Annis.”
Balgair raised an eyebrow in question.
“She ensured that her daughter, when required, would be able to be firmer and harsher in her resolve than she, herself, had been. Cydara often confessed that her soft heart had been a burden to her at those times when she needed to be ruthless and cold.”
Balgair nodded, knowing exactly what she meant, having had to deal with the very same issue himself.
“There is another thing I should mention,” Greesha confided with a twinkle in her eye, “Annis inherited a very particular quality from her mother that flourished and blossomed to a whole new level in her. It was something of which she has remained broadly unaware, but – against some people – it is a potent weapon.”
This time, Balgair raised both of his eyebrows in question.
“The weapon I describe is that Queen Annis possesses what can only be described as a feminine allure.”
Balgair raised his eyebrows once more, but this time, in appreciation.
“Annis,” she purred, “Has a charm and a loveliness that is completely beguiling to most men. She is hardly even conscious of it, but she can capture a man’s heart with absolutely no wish or intention to do so. This makes the soldiers who guard and protect her feel not just loyalty, but total and absolute commitment to her. They quite simply adore her.”
“She sounds wonderful!”
“You can judge for yourself.”
“What?” he snorted, “No! Surely you jest!”
“Not at all.”
“I will never meet a queen!”
“You will meet this queen.”
Balgair shook his head, completely dazed.
“If you do not meet her, then all is lost.”
“What?”
“As I have told you, Balgair McRory, you are being called. The force that calls you, is not of this world, but beyond this world. Whatever needs to be, will be.”
Lost in his thoughts, he stared into the middle distance, not seeing what was in front of him, mulling over the things she had said.
After a while, he turned to her with what sounded almost like an accusation.
“I am disgraced. What would a queen want with a soldier who has lost his honour?”
“You need to go home, Balgair.”
“I would not dare, even if I could.”
“You must.”
“I have brought shame on my family,” he insisted, “I have brought shame on my mother, shame on my father and I have inflicted shame and loss of face on my very proud grandmother.”
“While you have been gone, the shame has soaked away, like the rain into the soil.”
Balgair looked at her sceptically.
“You may give me that look, if you please, but your grandmother will soon be very much elevated in her status, thanks to you, and your parents will almost burst with pride in you.”
Ignoring her reply, he continued to press his case.
“My family is of the Clan MacDonald and I have disgraced myself in the eyes of the Clan Chieftain.”
“This is all about a horse, isn’t it?” she asked.
Balgair nodded, sullenly.
“And you outlawed yourself over it.”
“I outlawed myself because I am a horse thief,” he grimaced, “I could have ended up being hung for my crime.”
“The horse was always yours. It was pledged to you by your grandfather.”
“Yes, but in the end, I had no proof of that.”
“Not long ago, a document was presented to the Clan Council by the local priest. It was a signed statement clearly indicating that your grandfather wanted the horse to be yours.”
For the second time, Balgair’s jaw fell open and he gawped.
“You say this truly?” he asked, almost afraid to believe her.
“I do.”
“My grandfather died without ever writing a will.”
“He wrote a will, Balgair, but the day before your grandfather died, the priest who was given charge of it fell ill with the fever. It was many months before the priest fully recovered. He was close to death on more than one occasion. Only when he had returned from the infirmary at the abbey of Coupar Angus, did the document come to light. You could not have stolen a horse that had been given to you as your own property.”
Balgair covered his mouth and his eyes misted over.
“Go home, Balgair. Your father cannot sleep properly since you went away and your mother’s heart is breaking. She cries every day.”
Balgair opened his arms and Greesha stepped into his embrace. Balgair suddenly jumped in surprise, his eyes wide in amazement.
“I can feel you!” he gasped, “I can touch you!”
He stroked her cheek and touched her chin.
“I am always real,” she said, “But sometimes I can become even more real.”
“How can this be?”
She contorted her face, as this was something she did not entirely understand, yet.
“From what I can tell, if I spend time in a place and have good reason to be there – having formed a connection, I suppose – then it seems to be that I can very nearly take full physical form.”
“Everything that has happened, lately, is strange and unusual,” he confessed, “But this is far beyond anything I had ever imagined!”
“It is said,” she quoted, “That: ‘There are more things in this world and the world beyond this world’…”
“Yes!” he interjected, “Far more things, indeed, it appears!”
“You are worthy.”
“Thank you,” he said, his voice almost breaking.
“I have done nothing.”
“You have done more than you could ever guess, Greesha.”
“And so have you, Balgair.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you fled, you encountered a young woman in distress. She had been set upon by a group of men.”
“Yes. It is true, but I only did what any other man would have done.”
“The truth is that, in a situation of one man against four, most men would have turned away and ignored her plight.”
“I did what was right.”
“The Chief of the Clan MacDonald agrees. He feels a debt of gratitude to you.”
“Why?”
“That young woman was his daughter, Heather. He feels a debt to you that he can never repay.”
“She was The MacDonald’s daughter?” he cried.
“She was.”
“I had no idea!”
“She knew that. It is why you are far more of a hero than if you had known her identity. Those men would have ransomed her and may possibly have felt it necessary to kill her, if they feared discovery.”
“I have gone from horse thief to hero!”
“When you return, you will go from hero to something that you have always dreamed of, as a boy.”
“And what is that?” he asked, suspiciously.
“A lieutenant of the MacDonald Cavalry.”
“Impossible!”
“Yes, indeed. Isn’t everything?”
He looked at her reproachfully for her teasing.
“But, me, a lieutenant!”
“And more, besides, but I won’t spoil it for you.”
“More besides?”
“Yes.”
“What more?”
“Your promotion in rank will be meteoric, to say the least.”
His jaw, now well accustomed to the position, obligingly dropped open.
“Surely not!”
“Surely so!” she contradicted.
“I can hardly believe it. It is baffling to think that all these things will happen.”
Her reply to him was slow and measured.
“You can be absolutely guaranteed that these things will happen.”
“Yes. Of course. I’m sorry.”
“I know that they will all happen because I can sense a difference between those things that are possible or are only probable and those things that are certain.”
Balgair looked sad.
“Knowing my future,” he said, “Means that none of these things will come as a surprise to me.”
Greesha smirked.
“Oh, don’t worry, you will be surprised!”
“How so?” he asked, looking puzzled.
“If you were to remember the things I have told you, events in the future may not occur as they should.”
“I am hardly likely to forget these things, am I?” he cried.
She threw back her head and laughed.
“Forgetting them will not be a problem for you!”
Balgair contorted his face in confusion.
She waved a hand, dismissively, to indicate that it was nothing that need concern him. Then, walking up to the bars of his cell, she closed her eyes and stood motionless. After a full minute of silence, Balgair could bear it no longer.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked, suddenly worried.
She turned, her eyes still shut, and a long moment elapsed before she opened them and spoke.
“It is time that we got you out of here,” she said, as if that were a perfectly good explanation.
She closed her eyes, again, and Balgair waited, patiently, for her to finish whatever it was she was doing.
“The jailer’s dog is coming,” she said, at last, “And he brings a gift.”
The dog in question obediently padded up to the cell door and carefully placed a leather pouch into Greesha’s outstretched palm.
“Thank you,” she told the creature.
The dog squirmed with joy. Greesha unwound a cord from the neck of the pouch and upturned it over her hand. An iron key fell out.
“This,” she announced, handing him the key, “Will get you out of the cell and the dog will show you the route for your escape.”
Almost unable to believe what was happening, Balgair reach through a gap in the bars and, after some difficulty, inserted the key into the lock of the cell door. He turned the key and the lock opened. Pushing the door ajar, he looked back to Greesha in amazement.
“Go,” she whispered, “Unless, of course, you have grown too fond of your accommodation to wish to leave?”
“You don’t need to tell me twice!”
He deftly stepped out of the cell, closed the door and, locking it, handed the key back. Greesha returned it to the pouch, looped the cord back around its neck and held it out to the dog. The dog took it and headed off back the way it had come.
Watching the dog go, Balgair’s face dropped.
“He’ll be back,” Greesha assured.
In a little over a minute, the dog returned, looking thoroughly pleased with itself.
Balgair patted the dog on its head and stroked its coat. He managed to hide most of his disgust as the dog licked his hand, copiously. With a tiny whimper, which could have been either eagerness or anxiety, the dog set off, away from where it had come. Balgair made to follow but, after just a couple of strides, he stopped and spun around.
Just as he did so, Greesha disappeared. Undeterred, he addressed the vacant space.
“Will I see you again?”
There was no reply. His heart sank. Then, she answered.
“In the future. Soon in the future.”
