Page 6 of Proven By The Highlander (Highlander Forever #15)
CHAPTER 6
S he stared down at him, not sure whether she felt more like laughing or crying. Maybe both. The sixteenth century? Laughter felt like it was going to win out. For a moment, she was tempted to let it. She’d been on the knife-edge of what felt like hysteria ever since she’d woken up in that strange, dark liminal space between worlds, with those glowing figures all around her. Glowing figures… the Sidhe, he’d called them. Faeries who’d used their magic to pluck her from her own world and plonk her down in this one… nearly drowning her in the process, at that. But why? Why her, of all the people on the planet? It had been one thing when she’d thought it was simply a matter of being physically transported to another country… ridiculous, of course, and borderline unbelievable for a start, but somehow that was easier to get her head around than this.
“The sixteenth century,” she repeated, when it felt like the silence was going to swallow her whole and the look on Caelan’s face was beginning to shift from dismay to real worry. “It’s the sixteenth century, now.”
“It is,” he said. “I understand that’ll be hard to believe.”
“It makes sense of your equipment, I suppose,” she said faintly, gesturing to the dirk that was sheathed at his hip, to the crossbow slung over his back. “I suppose it’d be too much for you to be a ren faire enthusiast as well as a … guardian of the faerie world.” There it was again, that dark surge of hysteria — she heard a laugh rip itself from her throat and recoiled a little at how hoarse and frenzied she sounded. “Sorry. This is all… ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.” She took a few deep breaths, which seemed to head off the sharp edge of madness a little, but she still didn’t feel good as her pulse began to settle.
“What century are you from?” Caelan asked, a little awkwardly.
Doing his best, she realized faintly. He was doing his best to make her feel okay about all of this. A sudden burning curiosity rose up in her.
“Why are you fine with this?” she demanded. “If this is sixteenth century Scotland, why are you acting like it’s basically normal for some wet woman with a weird accent to come out of the lake? Why aren’t you freaking out about me?”
“I would be,” Caelan acknowledged. “If you were the first, or even the second or third to come through, I don’t doubt I’d be startled. We certainly were when it all began.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not the first — what do you mean?”
“More than a dozen women have found their way to us over the years,” Caelan explained patiently. “Women with voices like yours, stories like yours… stories of being near death, then waking up with the Sidhe restoring them to health then sending them out through the Burgh. They all arrive dripping wet, too,” he added with a rueful shake of his head. “I wish the Sidhe could see to the Burgh door being relocated, at least for these purposes…”
“More than a dozen women have time traveled to here?” She opened her mouth to demand to know why she hadn’t heard about this in her own time… but something else he’d said was demanding her attention, too. “Wait a moment. What do you mean, stories of being near death?”
Caelan sighed, loosening his grip on the horse’s reins to allow the patient creature to lower its head to nibble at the grass beneath its hooves. Fair enough, too, Leanne though faintly. She wasn’t traveling another blasted step until she’d had a few more of her questions answered.
“The other women,” Caelan explained. “When the Sidhe pulled them out of their own world, they were all close to some kind of fatal incident. The Laird believes that’s why they choose the women they choose — his own lady wife was the first traveler to come through, you see,” he added. “The Sidhe save their lives by doing what they do.”
“They didn’t save my life,” Leanne said blankly. “I wasn’t doing anything dangerous, last I checked.”
“Do you remember?” Caelan tilted his head to the side curiously. “A few of the women didn’t remember, at first, what was happening to them when the Sidhe took them…”
“I do,” she said firmly. “I was dreaming. I was fast asleep in my bed at home.”
Caelan considered this for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps you’re the exception, Leanne. Or perhaps something was afoot that you weren’t privy to. At any rate, nobody fully understands what the Sidhe get up to. We’re always working on our best guess, and that’s mine. Now,” he added firmly. “If you don’t mind, I want to get you to the Keep as soon as possible. The Laird will want to meet you, and I don’t doubt you’ll appreciate a proper change of clothes.”
She tugged at the shirt he’d lent her, smiling faintly, but her mind was troubled as they set off again down the winding dirt road that led along the coast of the Loch. Had she really been near death? How was that possible? She hadn’t had so much as a cold in years… nothing at all had been wrong with her when she’d gone to bed. Was it possible someone had broken in to murder her? Was that what these faeries were protecting her from? But why her? Hers wasn’t the nicest neighborhood, but it was hardly the crime capital of the country…
And then a chill ran down her spine, so strong that she involuntarily tightened her legs around the horse, which huffed slightly and accelerated its pace in response. Clicking her tongue to soothe it, she stared unseeing out over the ruffled waters of the Loch, her mind racing and a horrible certainty settled into place in her ribcage. No sign whatsoever that anything was wrong, an otherwise healthy lifestyle, a sudden and inexplicable death… this described what had happened to her father down to a T. A massive stroke, completely unforeseeable, so the doctors said. Leanne had asked, through the haze of confusion and grief, whether it was something genetic, something she should be concerned about. Whatever answer the doctor had given had been swallowed in a gray haze of numbness and loss, though she faintly remembered him saying she should avoid risk factors like smoking.
Was it really possible that she’d suffered the exact same fate as her father? She wasn’t even thirty yet… but then again, strange things did happen. And with a family history of the same kind of disease… she could feel her heart pounding hard in her chest, that old panic threatening to rise up to the surface again. What could she have done? How could she have stopped it? The memory of the troubling little headache she’d had all night suddenly reared up in her head and she clapped a hand over her mouth, inhaling sharply with shock. Had that been what had killed her? That tiny, niggling little headache, barely noticeable at first?
Caelan was looking over his shoulder at her, and she could see from his face that he was worried about her. But what could she do about it? He was right to be worried. She had a fatal medical condition. She could feel the edges of her vision darkening and she gasped for breath, and then Caelan was at her side again, one reassuring hand on her leg and the other reaching up to steady her by the arm.
“Leanne, what’s the matter?”
“I — I died,” she said faintly, shaking her head in a hopeless attempt to clear it. “I died. I went to bed and I died in my sleep?—”
“No, lass,” he said, his brow furrowed and his expression sad. “You didn’t die, that’s just the thing. The Sidhe caught you just in time.”
“But how could they have stopped me from having a stroke? There was nothing they could have done for my father, nothing, even if it had happened to him in a hospital—” She knew she was ranting now, knew that Caelan had no way of understanding what she was talking about… but it didn’t seem to matter. He squeezed her arm with his hand, firm and warm, and she tried to focus on the contact and the pressure to calm her down.
“The Sidhe have power we can barely fathom, lass,” he told her softly. “I’ve seen Fae magic heal men of injuries they’ve no right not dying of. They wanted to save you, and so they did.” A strange shadow passed over his face that he seemed to be doing his best to dispel. “Just keep in mind that they take life away as easily as they give it…”
“They saved me,” she whispered, hardly daring to believe it. But the memory of the strange room with the glowing figures was difficult to put away. She thought of the way one of them had slid its strange, glowing fingers through her hair, the way her scalp had tingled beneath that caress… the way they’d all been clustered around the head of the table she was lying on, as though taking a special interest in her head… was it possible? Had a cohort of otherworldly surgeons stepped in to save her from the same kind of massive stroke that had taken her father away from her? She was alive. Something had happened to her that should have killed her… but instead, it had brought her here.
Leanne hoped that she’d remember how to feel grateful for that, instead of just plain terrified.