Page 9 of Proven By The Highlander (Highlander Forever #15)
CHAPTER 9
T he Keep was surprisingly busy. Leanne could feel curious eyes falling on her as people bustled back and forth, fetching and carrying things, conducting all the work that kept a place like this running, she supposed. As they walked through the corridors, Ivy explained that the staff and servants of Clan Grant were very used to the parade of newcomers to the land at this point… which didn’t stop them being curious about them and the strange places they’d come from. She overheard a couple of girls whispering in one corridor, and they both squeaked and straightened up when she caught them looking at them.
“Nobody’s ever been this interested in me and my life before,” Leanne said drily, winning a laugh from Ivy.
“I doubt that’s true.”
Before long, they were all sitting at a long table in what Nancy called the Great Hall, a huge room just off the entrance to the Keep that seemed to be a kind of communal dining hall for the entire Keep. It reminded her a little of the mess hall at the summer camp she’d been to when she was a kid… though the decorations in here were a lot more regal, the tapestries on the wall, the rushes that covered the thick flagstones at their feet. Two curious-looking servants emerged from an adjoining room, and the scent of freshly baked bread rising from the baskets in their arms made Leanne’s mouth water and her stomach growl.
“Woah,” she said, blinking in surprise. “I’m hungrier than I thought I was.”
“That’s always the way,” Ivy said with a grin. “Stress takes over. Fight or flight reflexes. Eat,” she added, nodding toward the plate in front of Leanne. “No need to stand on ceremony here.”
The food just kept coming… first the bread rolls, then bowls of a fragrant, meaty soup that seemed to be exactly what her body was craving, then wedges of sharp, flaky cheese that were absolutely delicious. Somehow, she kept finding room for more food, filling her plate again and again as she focused hard on listening to the stories the women were telling her about their own arrivals at the Keep. She was surprised by how much more dramatic the other women’s arrivals had been than her own. Nancy’s terrifying underwater adventure — scuba diving in a cave, only to encounter a cave-in that forced her to swim deeper and deeper into the cave in the hopes of finding a different exit. Ivy had been in a car accident, a drunk driver going far too fast in the wrong direction down a one way street. For Julia, it had been a hunting accident that had claimed her life, or tried to… a nature photographer, she’d been capturing images of the changing leaves in a national park when the sound of a gunshot had echoed through the trees. Somehow, the Sidhe had intervened just in time.
“I don’t know how they did it,” Julia admitted, her mouth full of cheese. “Like, I heard the shot. That must mean it made contact — which means they were able to heal me.”
“Maybe it’s a time thing,” Nancy said with a shrug. “Like, they can move us through time, right? Maybe they know when the accident’s going to happen, so they can pull you out at exactly the right moment.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Ivy said, though she was frowning a little. “I remember the impact, though. And it felt like … I don’t know. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it definitely felt like they were healing me.”
“Yeah,” Leanne said, and as the women all turned to look at her she realized she hadn’t said anything for quite a while. She flushed a little, swallowing her mouthful of bread before she continued. “Yeah, I think… they must have done something, at least to me.”
“Do you know what happened to you?” Nancy’s eyes were huge and worried.
Ivy put a hand on her wrist. “It’s okay if you’d prefer not to talk about it. It’s a pretty big subject, and you’re going through a lot as it is.”
“It’s okay,” Leanne said with a quick shake of her head. “I, um… yeah, they must have healed me, because I’m pretty sure that what was going on with me was a massive stroke.”
There was stunned silence at the table, the women exchanging shocked glances. “That’s — fascinating,” Ivy said softly. “A stroke? At your age?”
“Family history,” Leanne said with a shrug. “I mean, this is all just a theory, obviously, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I mean, if the Sidhe only take people who are about to die… I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing that explains what was going on with me. The same thing happened to my dad,” she added, feeling the familiar pang of grief at the mention of him. Then a strange thought occurred to her and she grinned. “Hey, maybe the same thing happened to him. Haven’t had any middle-aged men come through lately, have you?”
Ivy smiled sympathetically. “I’m afraid not.”
“Fair enough. That’d be pushing my luck, probably.”
Nancy shrugged, her mouth full of soup. “I mean, maybe there’s other Sidhe somewhere else in the world. There’s a lot of history out there. Maybe your dad got dropped in… I don’t know, renaissance Italy or something.”
Leanne couldn’t help laughing at that, surprised by how good it felt. “He’d love that. He was always a big history buff. Maybe that’s where I got it from.”
“Is that what you do?” Nancy leaned forward, looking curious. “You’re a historian?”
“Sort of.” She grinned, feeling very strange about such a quotidian conversation taking place in such a strange setting. “I’m a paleontologist. So — it’s a kind of history, I guess, though it runs a little further back than your usual. I guess that’s why I’m handling the sixteenth century. On paleontology timeframes, this is basically yesterday.” She gestured vaguely around the room, her smile fading. “On me as a person timeframes, though…”
“The personal and the professional are pretty different, huh?” Ivy was smiling.
“That’s why you called Nessie a plesiosaurus, huh?” Nancy’s eyes were bright. “Do you think that’s what she is? A dinosaur?”
“Could be,” Leanne said with a shrug. “I mean, that’s one of the theories about the Loch Ness Monster, right? That somehow a family of dinosaurs survived all the way from the late Jurassic, hidden away deep in the Loch… not a particularly believable one, of course.”
“Let me tell you something embarrassing,” Nancy said with a shy grin. “I was super into cryptozoology, back in the future. Like, all the cryptids and stuff — Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, the whole deal.”
Leanne’s jaw dropped.
Nancy flushed. “I know you probably hate all that crap, being a real academic and everything, but?—”
“Are you kidding?” Leanne blurted out. “I love that stuff. I’ve always loved that stuff. Hell, half the reason I was able to keep paying my bills after grad school was writing for cryptid enthusiasts. It’s not hard science, or anything, but…” She shrugged, pleased by the enormous smile that had broken out over Nancy’s face. “I don’t know, I think it’s fine to remember that we don’t know everything about the world yet. Case in point,” she added, gesturing around the room again with a peculiar sense of unreality. “I mean, everything that’s happened to me in the last twenty-four hours would absolutely revolutionize the field of cryptozoology?—”
“That’s what I kept saying!” Nancy looked absolutely overjoyed to have found someone who shared this interest… and Leanne could tell from the bemused looks the other women were exchanging that it was a strong passion of hers. “God, what I wouldn’t give to be able to go back just long enough to write one article or something…”
Leanne felt her smile fade a little, troubled by the resigned look on Nancy’s face, the unsettling implications of what she’d said. “To go back…?”
The women were exchanging worried looks now, and Leanne braced herself against the suspicion that she was about to hear some more bad news. “Yeah,” Nancy said softly, glancing along the table at Ivy. “That’s, um. About that.”
“The Sidhe brought us here to save our lives,” Ivy explained softly. “And from what we can tell, that basically means it’s a one-way trip. There’s no way to return to our own time — not that any of us have ever discovered, anyway.”
“Oh,” Leanne said faintly, trying to let this piece of information take its place among all the rest. “Okay. No going back, huh?” Her voice sounded strange and hollow in her ears, and she could tell from the way Ivy was looking at her that her casual tone wasn’t fooling anyone. “That — I guess that makes sense.”
“For what it’s worth,” Ivy said softly, “you’re safe here. I know that might not be much consolation now but know that you have a roof over your head and a safe home here for as long as you want it. There’s no way back… but there’s a future here for you, Leanne. We promise.”
She nodded, feeling strangely numb. There was a half-eaten bread roll in her hand, and she stared down at it, feeling her appetite suddenly leave her as abruptly as it had arrived. In its place was only a deep, awful numbness. The other women were exchanging worried looks, and she tried to hoist a smile onto her face as she looked up at them.
“Sorry. I think it’s all catching up with me.”
“You must be exhausted,” Nancy agreed, reaching out to squeeze her hand.
The gesture was comforting, and Leanne felt herself smile a little, for real this time.
“Let’s get you back to your room for some rest, huh?”
Now they mentioned it, all she could think about was how good it would feel to lie down in that cozy little bed she’d seen and to pull the blankets over her head. And maybe, if she fell asleep for long enough, she might just wake up to realize that all of this had been some horrible dream.