Page 128 of A Scot in the Storm
Near the tower entrance, she paused, brushing gloved fingers lightly against the weathered stones as she stepped inside.
The interior smelled of cold rock and sea dampness while pale light filtered weakly through the narrow openings overhead. Snow had drifted in along the floor near the archway, gathering in uneven folds against stone worn smooth by centuries of wind and weather.
For one moment Abigail imagined all the people who had stood here before her. Watchmen, smugglers, women waiting for ships, and children daring one another into ghost stories.
What had Katherine thought when she’d first fallen through time? Had she stood somewhere like this? A woman out of time who choose love over her own century. Abigail understood her now in ways she almost wished she didn’t.
She crossed slowly toward the far side of the tower, and looked out at the rocks where Rory had found her, half-conscious and terrified. Even now, she still occasionally caught her tongue against the
chipped molar. Thankfully the edge wasn’t as sharp as it had been.
A laugh escaped because honestly, if anyone had told her this story as anything more than fiction, she would have recommended immediate sleep and possibly medical intervention.
Wind moved softly through the broken upper stones, then it, along with the waves, simply stopped. Abigail frowned. The North Sea did not stop. Ever.
Yet suddenly the silence around the tower deepened into something vast enough to press against her skin. The air changed, older somehow, like opening a sealed room untouched for centuries and finding the past still breathing quietly inside it.
After a moment, one long mournful line of fiddle music drifted softly through the stone.
Abigail’s blood went cold. The tune threaded through the stillness exactly as it had at Samhain, sorrowful and strange, carrying something beneath it that made the tiny hairs rise along the back of her neck. She remembered turnip lanterns bobbing through harbor fog, children laughing somewhere below the cliffs, and an old woman warning them that doors opened easier than they closed on certain nights of the year.
The music drifted again, thin and distant enough that Abigail felt it somewhere beneath her ribs before she consciously understood she was following it up to the top of the tower.
A voice behind her said mildly,
“Took ye long enough.”
Abigail spun so quickly her boots slipped slightly against the stones.
The Cailleach stood wrapped in black wool, silver hair lifting softly in a wind that touched her, and nothing else. Her eyes held the same terrible calm Abigail remembered from Samhain, though this morning the old woman looked faintly annoyed, which somehow made the entire situation substantially more alarming.
“You could’ve warned me before doing that,” Abigail blurted before good sense intervened.
The old woman blinked once. “And where would be the sport in warning folk?”
Abigail folded both arms tightly beneath her shawl while her pulse hammered painfully against her ribs.
The Cailleach studied her face for a long quiet moment while snow drifted lazily beyond the archway.
“Ah,” she said at last, sounding almost satisfied. “There it is.”
Abigail frowned. “What?”
“That look women get when they’ve fallen in love.”
Heat climbed abruptly into Abigail’s face despite the freezing air. The fiddle drifted softly through the dawn once more while the lighthouse beam swept gold across the snow outside before turning slowly out to sea again.
“You brought me here.”
The Cailleach looked out at the calm sea. It looked like a mirror, still and reflecting the now blue sky above. “I simply opened the door.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” The old woman’s gaze sharpened slightly. “It isna.”
Abigail looked toward the sea because it was easier than looking directly at the goddess standing in front of her.
“I don’t understand why you picked me.”
