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Hands trembling, unable to breathe, I look. I see a clear Scottish Highland day. The Colquhouns are gathered in force and armed to the teeth. The MacGregor army charges and at the lead of it is Duncan.
Shots are fired, puffs of smoke rising over the battlefield. Duncan, leading the charge, takes a bullet in the chest. Blood explodes in slow motion. He’s lifted up and thrown backwards, dropping to the ground as others charge past him.
“No!” I scream, throwing the bucket. It flies off the table, water spilling everywhere, and clatters against the wall. “Send me back. Now. I have to save him.”
The old woman leans her head back and laughs. The laugh becomes a cackle, echoing in my ears, invoking despair. Then she sets her dark gaze on me, and her tone turns grave. “You’re too late.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Caill resumes her laughing. She holds her sides, shaking her head and showing her yellow-brown teeth. The sound of her laugh is nails on a chalkboard. Screeching, cutting through my head, shredding at my sanity.
“Stop,” I say, covering my ears in a vain attempt to block her out.
Her laughter won’t be denied, piercing through my hands and driving into my eardrums like an ice pick.
The image of Duncan dying replays in my head, over and over like a movie looping in slow motion. His mouth opens and he yells his battle cry. He leads the charge and the sun glints off the edge of his claymore. Then the bullet slams into him. The spray of blood, individual droplets catching the sun's rays and dispersing tiny rainbows around each one of them. His eyes widen as his body is thrown back by the force of the bullet.
“No. No. No.” I squeeze my eyes tight, clench my jaw, and ball my fists. “No.”
Destiny? How can it be that my destiny is to save these fairies I don’t know or save the ones I love?
Tears fall, unstoppable. A black pit swirls in my core, swallowing everything. Something cool, yet warm touches my skin, almost as if someone is spreading menthol on me. As the icy warmth soaks in, the blackness of despair swallows the warmth, but more of the warmth pours in until at last the blackness recedes, only a little, but as it goes, I can breathe.
“Stop it,” I growl.
I open my eyes and glare at Caill.
My protest only seems to fuel her amusement. She laughs harder, wiping tears of joy from her glistening eyes.
“Stop it?” She guffaws. “That’s not my domain, now is it, lass? Oh no, it’s not. Stop it, she demands.”
The raven’s cawing joins her laughter, accenting it. The sounds of their mirth fill the space with discordance. While they laugh, the coolness and the warmth reaches into my core surrounding the blackness, pressing in on it. And then the blackness compresses and becomes a hard ball.
No. I ball my hands into tight fists and grit my teeth. No. This is no choice. There must be another way.
Resolve coalesces and the stronger that becomes the more it presses in on the blackness. Pressure builds in my core, higher and higher. I tremble, struggling to contain it. The darkness explodes, pushing Caill back. The furniture of her home clatters as it’s thrown against the walls.
“Stop!” I scream.
My voice echoes in my ears as if I’m yelling into a deep, black cave. My skin thrums as if every nerve is newly alive. Something crackles across my body, lifting every tiny hair, causing goose pimples to race along my limbs and a chill to trail down my spine. I straighten and I feel taller. Bigger. I feel as if I’m somehow more.
Caill stops laughing. Her laughter and amusement turns into a dour grimace. Her eyes widen and her mouth full of rotten teeth hangs open.
“You dare,” she hisses.
She rises, impossibly tall; the room seems to expand to accommodate her but I’m becoming every bit as tall and consuming as she. The icy-blue of her face darkens towards a stormy gray, rich with an impending storm. Lightning crackles between her fingers and her eyes burn like twin flames.
I should be scared. a small, rational, part of me whispers.
I’m not. Not in the slightest. Fear is there. I know it, but only in the way I know the things in my bedroom. Aware of them but they don’t require my attention and neither, in this case, does fear. I’m not even sure I’m angry. This is something beyond the simplicity of emotions.
I’m powerful. Power pours into my body. As it does, my awareness expands. I’m more aware of the tree outside this hut. It’s a way off, but I feel it. Feel its light. Feel the life that pulses in its veins and the rot that encroaches on it slowly, threatening its existence.
The tree calls to me, though. It calls and I answer, reaching out to it. The power that flows through it is mine, if I want it. In some way that I don’t understand, I'm connected to the tree. I claim the power, accepting it. As I do, the life-beat of the tree slows.
Caill and I are bigger than the hut. In some strange way, we’re both inside of its containment and outside at the same time. Clouds roil in the sky above us. Deep gray, wintry ones clashing against the black clouds of a raging storm. Lightning flashes, bolts streaking across the sky and colliding with each other. As they hit, thunderous booms blast the land below.
People scream but the sound of their terror is distant. Caill dominates the space in front of me but in my head, I see Duncan. I see him die, over and over. The loop is stuck on repeat and every single time my heart shatters. Every time I watch him hit by the bullet and see that spray of blood, the pain is as new and as fresh and as deep. It tears me apart, shredding my insides with claws as sharp as razors.
