Now . . .
She couldn’t have wished for a more perfect day.
Eager to plunge right into it, she rolled her shoulders and splayed, then wriggled her fingers, before starting down the narrow steps to the rocky little bay and the cave at the base of the cliff.
Her descent raised the hair at the nape of her neck, made her breathing difficult. She’d only gone a short way when her scalp tingled and, in a momentary flicker, her long flaxen braid swung round from behind her, bouncing against her hip and into her sight. She stopped in her tracks, her blood freezing.
She didn’t have long flaxen hair.
And she hadn’t even worn braids as a child.
Her hair was auburn and reached just past her shoulders. At the moment, it was caught back by a clip, because of the wind and how much it annoyed her to have the strands fly across her face, whipping into her eyes.
She knuckled her eyes now.
She couldn’t have mistaken her hair for a long blonde braid. She’d surely just caught a reflection of the sun glancing off the water. It wasn’t a bright day, but there were moments when the cloud cover parted a bit.
Even so . ..
She shivered and rubbed her arms, glad when she again caught the sharp barking of a dog. She liked dogs. And this one’s barks lent an air of normalcy to a day that was beginning to turn just a tad too unusual for her liking.
She saw the dog then. And when she did, she knew such a strong rush of relief that she almost laughed out loud at her nervousness.
Huge, grey and scruffy, the dog looked old. He wasn’t wearing a collar and a tag either. But he seemed to be enjoying himself as he trotted along the damp shingle, pausing now and then to sniff at tide pools near the dark-yawning entrance to the cave.
Hoping to catch a good picture of him – after all , such a shot would look grand as an accompaniment for herArmchair Enthusiast’schapter on Smoo Cave – she dug into her jacket pocket for her digitalcamera.
Just as she pulled it free, something caught her eye and she glanced around, sure it’d been one of the seabirds she’d seen earlier.
She didn’t see any birds, but she did note a heavy bank of thick, roiling mist far out at sea, its drifting, grey mass almost blotting the horizon.
Lindy stared, shivering.
The wind felt icier now. And she was sure her imagination had kicked into overdrive but she’d swear the air smelled different. It seemed tinged with a deeper, brittle kind of cold one might expect to find in Iceland.
It was definitely a crisp, Nordic type of cold.
Lindy frowned.
She could almost taste the snow. She half expected to see little sparkly bits of frost clinging to her jacket sleeves when she looked down to examine them.
But, of course, she saw no such thing.
Yet she did see something extraordinary when she glanced up again.
Three large open-hulled boats were pulled up at the water’s edge, their elaborately carved prows and rowing oars proclaiming their identity. Not to mention their square sails, raised and ready, and the colourfully painted shields hanging along the wooden sides.
They were exquisite replicas of Viking longboats.
Lindy stared, eyes rounding.
They looked so real.
The bulky fur-wrapped packages and wooden barrels and crates crammed into the narrow space between their rowing benches looked equally authentic. Clearly provisions, the supply goods indicated that the re-enactors were about to embark on a staged journey and not a warring raid.
Only . . .
Lindy gulped.
