Page 4 of I Loved You Then (Far From Home #12)
Into the Unknown
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The abbey was behind her now, its walls inexplicably whole, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back. If she looked, she might have to accept it, or would only grow more alarmed.
There had to be a simple explanation. Something had happened to separate her from Jason, to move her from the ruins she remembered to this other place, these walls less decayed.
She must have missed something—a stretch of time, a drive she couldn’t recall, Jason and her moving on to the next site while she’d drifted off in her thoughts.
That was the only answer. She hadn’t watched the past mend itself before her eyes. She couldn’t have.
She needed to find the car. Jason had to be waiting, probably irritated she’d taken too long. She could almost picture him now, tapping the steering wheel impatiently, phone in hand—more annoyed than worried.
But if he was still in the car... ugh, nothing made sense.
Her chest tightened. Maybe she’d blacked out, lost time somehow, walked off without realizing it. Maybe she was confused from dehydration, or worse, from some kind of dissociative episode. The idea chilled her. Was this what it felt like to come unmoored from reality?
It was fruitless trying to retrace her steps since she had no recollection of getting to what seemed like a newer, whole abbey.
She pulled her phone from her pocket for the tenth time, holding it up above her head, as if that extra two feet between her and some unseen satellite hundreds of miles away would make a difference.
Still no signal, and her battery was at twenty- six percent.
She’d forgotten to plug it into the charger while they’d been driving and she’d been using the map on her phone.
Having no idea what else to do, Claire walked.
The land unrolled before her in long green swells, broken by patches of woodland and stone.
There were no roads, no fences, no hum of tires on distant highways.
The air was sharp and clean, too clean, with no trace of exhaust, no faint buzz of wires strung across poles.
She told herself she was turned around, that she had left the ruins by the wrong side.
Scotland was full of open land, wasn’t it?
There would be a signpost, a cottage, something.
But hours passed, and nothing came. Only hills, only wind.
By late afternoon her legs ached and her throat burned with thirst. She had nothing but the small purse slung over her shoulder—phone, wallet, hotel key card, a pack of gum. She dug out a stick and chewed it until her jaw hurt, pretending it was food.
She crested a ridge and stopped short.
Nothing but mountains rose before her, as far as the eye could see.
The slopes were steep and covered with trees and heather, and in some parts with scree—small loose stones that form the sides of mountains, as she’d learned in her three-week mountain hiking course she’d taken years ago, but had rarely used since.
Claire frowned, though—she knew this place.
She had been here, she was sure. Only yesterday she and Jason had driven through it, along a road that cut a neat gray seam into the rock.
But now...there was no road, nothing but stone and slope and sky.
Maybe it wasn’t the same range she’d been thinking of, the one she recalled from yesterday.
Still, her stomach lurched, since she knew this was the same mountain range, with its very distinctive tree line, which ended where the elevation became too high for trees to grow.
The line between the forested lower slopes and the rocky peak had reminded Claire of an EKG strip of a healthy person, with a consistent repeating pattern of waves—good on an EKG but curious or unexpected in a mountain range, she’d thought yesterday, which had made it stand out.
She sighed, knowing she needed to be on the other side of that mountain. She glanced around, even more desperate now, hoping that compact white car would miraculously show itself now though it hadn’t for hours.
When it did not, her shoulders sagged and she marched forward, toward the mountain, all the while telling herself there had to be some explanation for all this....craziness.
The mountain loomed in front of her, daunting on foot, but not impossible. Up and over, she told herself, surely there would be something on the other side. She knew there was.
But then, she wasn’t actually certain of anything anymore.
“ You’re not crazy,” she muttered aloud.
Her legs carried her higher, though every step stole more strength.
The day wore on, the pale sun slanted low, shadows drawing long across the slopes.
She stumbled more than once, falling to her knees, her hands pushed against the earth, the skin of her palms scraped raw.
By the time true darkness had descended, she could climb no more.
Her chin trembled in fright and tears had long ago left trails down her scratched and dirtied cheeks.
When she found a hollow in the rocks, she sank gratefully into the mini-burrow, her limbs shaking with exhaustion and fear.
The cold came quickly. Not the damp chill of an air-conditioned hotel or even the cool summer evening she had expected—it was sharper, biting, the kind that sank into bone.
She wrapped her jacket tight, tucked her hands under her arms, and curled against the rock.
The sky above was unfamiliar, a scatter of stars so bright it seemed cruel.
Her thoughts blurred, spinning between terror and denial.
She told herself over and over she’d be all right, that she’d find the road—any road—or that Jason would come for her.
While he didn’t love her, he certainly didn’t hate her, wouldn’t leave her alone out here.
Sadly, she just couldn’t picture Jason coming to her rescue.
He’d never been—never seemed—the hero of any girl’s dreams; his was not the image a girl imagined if she did contemplate a hero riding in to save her.
No, Jason wasn’t the risk-life-or-limb type, not for her, or for anyone.
Sacrifice wasn’t in his nature; inconvenience alone usually pissed him off.
He hadn’t come or found her by now, she guessed, he wasn’t coming at all.
When sleep claimed her at last, it was not gentle. She drifted into feverish dreams, her body shivering against the cold, her lips cracked with thirst, unaware of days coming and going.
***
Ciaran dragged the bundle of spear shafts out from the armory and into the yard. Sweat trickled down his temple though the morning was cool. He set the spears against the wall and straightened, rolling his shoulders. Beside him, young Malcolm bent to stack them in order.
The gate had drawn a crowd. Villagers pressed close, their chatter rising to a buzz. Ciaran cast a glance over them, always a bit annoyed with the arrival of the tinker. He rubbed his hands free of grit and bent for another sheaf.
“What’s going on?”
He lifted his head and turned, finding Ivy Mitchell walking toward him, though her gaze was on the activity at the gate.
He couldn’t help it, that his jaw clenched, merely at the sound of her very English speech.
Alaric had tried to insist she was not an Englishwoman, but Ciaran believed everything he’d heard and seen said that she most certainly was.
“Seems the tinker's come to call,” he said, dusting his palms together.
Her brow furrowed as if puzzling it out, and he turned back to his work.
“The man’s a clackit tongue,” he added offhandedly. He hauled the next bundle against the wall with a grunt. “And he’s nae one for working while his lips wag. Folk dinna care to waste the day hearing his blather, so they crowd early, hoping to be quit of him fast.”
Ivy’s mouth curved faintly at that, though Ciaran hardly noticed.
The sound at the gates had swelled, then parted.
The cart creaked through, the tinker’s mule tossing its head.
Pots and scrap metal clanged against one another, the whole contraption groaning like it might come apart before it reached the bailey.
The tinker, brash as always, shouted greetings as though each villager were kin and anxious for his presence alone, while his patched coat flapped wildly behind him.
Ciaran turned away, wanting to finish his chore and move on, outside the bailey and away from the annoyance of the tinker’s presence, but a sharp cry split the air. A woman shrieked, stumbling back, her hand pressed to her mouth, a stream of Scots’ words tumbling incoherent from her lips.
“A body?” Ciaran repeated the most significant part of her statement.
The press of villagers surged forward, voices rising. Ciaran started toward the cart, every muscle coiled. What the bloody hell?
The tinker’s hands shot up, words spilling fast. “Found her, I did! In the mountains, sprawled like the dead across the heather. Thought her a ghost myself, till I felt her still breathing. I’ve brought her here for the laird to deal with, same as any honest man would!”
The crowd gasped and muttered, Ivy among them now, having scurried forward to see ‘the body’.
Ciaran rounded to the open end of the wagon, his eyes falling on the bundle sprawled between pots and cloth.
And his breath caught.
A woman lay crumpled there, her hair pale and shrouding most of her face, which appeared fair but colored by heat, a fever mayhap. Beneath a swath of her hair that shrouded the upper half of her face, her lips were faintly parted, the fragile look of one hovering between life and death.
Jesu!
He sent a ferocious glower to the tinker, for not having made haste with his approach, for not having advised of this situation first thing. Annoyance evolved to fury, and Ciaran hopped up into the wagon bed just as the tinker hopped down, over the side.
Found in the mountain, my arse , he thought, always having suspected the tinker of nefarious appetites and behaviors.