Together they shoved the table away and found the rest of her students, choking and bleeding. Peter Elgin was the first to come to his senses. As he staggered to his feet, he took hold of Ty’s arm andpulled. When his friend remained rooted where he’d fallen, Peter shouted, “Help me!”
Sarah crawled over rubble, grabbed Ty’s left arm and hauled the stunned kid to his feet.
Tears streaming, Peter told her, “His parents died like this.”
Sarah nodded, frantically searching for a way out. “I know … in Indonesia. There, behind you. There’s a door. Take him out that way. I’ll follow with the others.”
She had her students on their feet and at the doorway before realizing the door didn’t lead to a back alley as she’d hoped but into a cellar. Bitter bile rose in her throat. “Shit.”
Peter called from the bottom of the stairs. “Down here, Miss Colbert! There’s a way out.”
At the bottom she found Peter and Ty standing hip deep in rushing water.
“Oh, God. A water main must have broken.” Above them rafters screeched then collapsed, sending more dust, debris and smoke raining down the shaky staircase. Several of the boys cried out seeing the doorway they’d just passed through fill with rubble. There was no going back.
“Peter, did you see a door, a bulkhead?”
“No, but I can see daylight over there.” He pointed to his right past an ancient cast-iron coal burner. “A window.”
The frigid water continued to rise, now lapped at their chests. “OK. Can everyone swim?” When only Peter nodded, she screamed, “Answer me, damn it! Can everyone swim?”
She wasn’t about to pull them from a fiery hell only to have them drowned in a flooding cellar. At her elbow, Jeremy said, “Ya, we all can.”
“Good. OK. We can do this.”Please God.
She knocked a floating carton out of her way. More debris took its place, the water starting to churn around their shoulders, their necks. “Everyone follow Peter. Swim towards the light.” She’d take the rear. Make sure they all got out alive. And maybe she would too.
Heart thudding, she slogged past the burner and saw the window only to gasp when the stone wall behind them gave way and thousands of gallons of high-pressured water swept her off her feet. As water closed over her head, she prayed the pressureof so much water would blow out the window, for her children to survive. If only she’d learned how to swim …
Two
Hamish MacDuff jumped into what he’d come to think of as his magical pool, scrubbed his skin, then surfaced. Raking his wet hair back, he turned his face to the sun and sighed. ’Twould be another glorious day. “And sad that only I get to enjoy this place.”
Aye, but ’twas safest.
Plush hemlock and pine surrounded his wee glen and pool, but they hadn’t when he’d first arrived ten summers past. Then there were no birds or hares, no bees or hedgehogs. The only sounds to be heard then were those made by his ragged breathing and pounding feet.
Wounded, bleeding, parched and panicked, he’d somehow managed to outrun his enemies – the only one to survive out of more than 2,000 clansmen – only to stumble and fall face first in this very spot where a wee bit of cool water had soothed his slashed face. Had he the strength he would have laughed. He’d landed in a puddle no bigger than his fist, the only water he’d seen in days. He drank his fill from what he now knew to be a spring and then passed out.
He awoke to find wispy columns rising like ghosts from charred timber for as far as the eye could see. Not a soul stirred save him and a few beetles and the many-legged meggy monyfeet sifting through ash and charred branches, all that was left of the ancient forest after the Norman-set fires had done their worst. And the wee puddle had grown to the size of his head.
Deplete of strength, no longer having hear th or kin after the battle, having had his fill of grasping incompetent princes and kings, of fire and war, he remained, surviving on water and whatever hapless creatures happened to venture close to the pool.
With time his wounds became scars and his renowned strength returned. And as he mended, so did the land. Grass sprouted and scraggily saplings became bushy boughs. He cleared the dead wood from around the pool and his wee glen began to take shape. And the crystal clear pool continued to grow. ’Twas now the breadth of two oxen standing nose to tail, was bottomless at its core and loaded with fish and happy he was for them.
His middle rumbled. He climbed out of the water and wrapped his woollenfeileadh-mhorabout his waist then over his shoulder and across his chest. Securing it with his belt, he again noted its holes and sighed. A new garment would come dear and require a trip to Edinburgh, something he was loath to do. His middle rumbled again and he picked up his fishing pole. As he readied to cast his line, the normally calm water at his feet began to bubble and roll. Startled, he dropped the pole. “What’s this?”
Before he could contemplate a reason for the water roiling, a thrashing lad popped to the surface gasping for air.
“St Columba’s God and the fairies!”
Would wonders never cease?
He grabbed the tow-headed lad by the scruff and tossed him on to the grass like a landed fish.
Staring down at the dripping, gasping pup of a man he asked, “And who the hell might ye be?”
“What? I don’t understand.”
