A Highlander's Home (29 page)

             
Mac clutched the book in his hand and pulled it closer to his chest.  He stared into the dying fire and smiled.  The prophecy was coming true and the girl was the key to everything.  Already, she had killed Alisdair and save Hell’s Gate once.  She would save it again.

             
“Rise, my lady,” came the deep voice in
Raine’s
ear. 

             
She shook her head and buried herself deeper into the warmth of the body next to her. 

             
Warm lips found hers and she smiled.  Then she bolted upright, remembering where she was and what would happen today.  She was going home!  Finally the excitement that had
eluded
her before had finally caught up.

             
She leaned over and kissed Leith full on the mouth.  “Good morning
, my lord,” she answered and giggled. 

             
“Ye’re very happy,” he noticed.

             
“I guess so.  I will miss this place, but I miss my home too. 
My home
.  My microwave, my
TV
, my rocking chair, my jeans.  Oh, the first thing I’m going to do is take a long hot shower.”

             
Her face was practically glowing.  Perhaps he had misjudged her.  He had thought that she had adjusted well here in his land with his people.  Six months they had been here, fighting, shouting, laughing, loving.  Perhaps he had read too much into it.  A small part of him had hoped that she would stay.  She did make a decent wife even if she couldn’t cook worth a damn.  

             
“What is a my-crow-wiv?” he inquired.

             
“Oh, it’s this box that cooks food
in just minutes
.  It really is quite wonderful,” she sighed as if in bliss just thinking about it.

             
A box that can cook?  No wonder her food tasted worst than what they fed the horses.  She had cooking boxes.

             
She laughed.  “It’s not as strange as it seems.  If you could see my world, you would learn to love it.”

             
He stilled in the process of pulling up the blanket.  “I love my world, lass.  I have no desire to leave it.”

             
She looked up from
straightening
her skirts.  “I didn’t mean that your world is any less than mine.  I was just saying that there is so much more in my world.  Things that make life much easier and enjoyable.”

             
He cocked his head.  “My life is enjoyable.”

             
The guards had begun to pack up the camp and averted their gaze from the two.  She shook her head, “No, I meant that there is technology that my people have that would astound you!  It would make you stand in disbelief at how much fun you could have
and how you could enjoy everything so much better.”

             
Folding his arms over his chest, he asked her, “Do ye think I don’t enjoy my life now?  Have ye not seen my people have fun?  Were ye not present at the celebration and laugh with until near dawn?”

             
He tightened his boots.  “Nay, lass, I don’t think ye’re world has much to offer me.”

             
He walked away and left her standing there.  She hadn’t meant to insult him.  She was just thinking of all the wonderful things that she would be able to do once again.  Stand up in a shower rather than sit in a hard wooden circular tub by the fire in the castle.  She could throw a
TV
dinner in the microwave and watch a sitcom in her rocking chair rather than dine in the great hall on fresh seasoned pheasant and be
entertained
by poets and
bards
.

             
They
mounted
their horses and started southeast over the ridge.  By noon they should arrive at the stones.  Raine watched as the gray mist moved and swayed ever so slowly over the mountains.  It hugged the mountains with its long straggly fingers so lightly, leaving only whispers of itself behind.  The sun broke over the jagged blue snow-tipped peaks and pierced the ghostlike mist.  She couldn’t take her eyes off of it.
  Colorado was beautiful, but she had never witnessed a sunrise remotely similar or as
wondrous
as this.  Was it really this place or was it because she realized that she had just witnessed this incredible feature with the Scottish laird of the castle she had called home for the last six month. 

             
They rode without stopping, coming to a clearing in the forest.  The trees suddenly stopped, as if they had been perfectly planted to reach no further than this point.

             
Leith pulled his horse next to hers.  “There.”

             
He pointed through the openness and there, as majestic as anything she had ever seen were
the prodigal stones.

             
They were massive monoliths stretching towards the sky.  They formed a large outer
circle with a smaller circle in
side.  On top of those inner stones were more squarish stones forming a bridge connecting them all.  The sun shone inside the circle, casting a strange pattern on the ground.  The sky was bright for a winter day and seemed warmer the closer they got to the structure.

             
Raine squinted.  She shot Leith a look and then back at the stones then back at him.

             
“Stonehenge?  You brought me to Stonehenge?” she asked
incredulously
.

             
He sat tall in his saddle looking straight ahead.  “These are the stones of the ancients.  Ye can thank my mother for navigating us here.  I was here once when I was boy at the summer solstice.”  He glanced at her.  “I was not impressed.”

             
“These are the stones that you’re mother spoke about?  These are the magic stones that are going to send me back home?” she asked, her voice getting louder.

             
“Do ye know of these stones?” he asked, frowning.

             
She threw her hands in the air and let them smack as they landed on her thighs. 

             
“For crying out loud, Leith!  Everybody knows about Stonehenge!  It’s a tourist attraction!  The Druid
priests
used to come here and hold religious ceremonies.”  She took a deep breath and hung her head.

             
She raised defeated eyes to him.  “These are not magic stones.  They won’t take me home.”

             
Lady MacGregor trotted up to them.  “I beg to differ, young lady.  My father took me here when I was a little girl.  And his father took him.  These stones have power.  I do not know of this ‘too rist’ place you speak of, but this is not it.  You want to return to your time?  Then this is the place.”  She kicked her mount and rode off ahead of them.

             
Leith watched her go.  “Hmm.  What have he done to offend my mother so, lass?”

             
Raine said
innocently
, “I didn’t do
anything
.  She has barely spoken to me the entire trip.”

             
He met her gaze.  “Hmmm.”

             
She pursed her lips.  “
Don’t
hmmm
me.  I said I didn’t do anything.”

             
He watched his mother’s retreating back.  “Perhaps that the problem.”

             
Her mouth
opened
and closed several times, resembling that of a fish out of water, but he rode away before she could flog him with her tongue. 

             
The group dismounted and did indeed resemble a group of tourists.  They all stood in a line, heads cocked back, staring at the huge monolithic stones.  The snow had not stopped falling for days and they looked as if they were candy sticks dipped into white icing and then stuck back into the ground.

             
Leith made his way to Raine and stared at her.  She returned his stare, neither wanting to break the silence.  The holiness of this place hung heavy in the air for all of them, even Raine since it signified her way home.

             
They held hands for a moment, blue eyes meeting green eyes, each basking in the other’s presence.

             
“Do you know the words?” came the question from Lady MacGregor.

             
Raine thought, closing her eyes, trying to remember.  She had repeated these words to herself for months hoping to get them in the right order.  The Professor was the one who had found them in the book and probably reread them until he could say them in his sleep.

             
She nodded her head and said confidently, “Yes, I know them.”

             
Mac came forward, his long brown robe flipping up around his knees as he trudged through the snow.  “Now, wait lass.  Ye must say the words in the perfect order.  If ye do not, then there is no telling where the good Lord will send ye.”

             
“How shall we do this, Mac?” Leith asked trying to hide the
emptiness that was already starting to seep into his very core.  This lass had been nothing but trouble since she first landed atop him in the forest those many months ago.  She had served as a worthy opponent in bed, but other than that she had caused him one headache after another.  He should be glad be finally be rid of her.

             
Mac cleared his throat and threw his arms wide.  “Everybody find a stone and stand before it.  Lass, ye stand in the middle away from all of us.  I wouldn’t want ye to take anyone with ye now.”

             
Leith frowned at the man’s poor sense of humor, and Mac’s smile slightly faltered.  He shouldn’t be so bloody jovial right now. 

             
Searching the sky, Mac announced,
“W
hen I signal to ye, lass, ye must say the words – the very words! – that ye did when ye were brought here.  The sun is almost in position.  Just a few more moments.  The stones will open their magic to us and we will let you go.”

             
We will let you go.
 

             
Raine moved to the large center of the circle and stood there, clenching and unclenching her hands.  This was it.  She was finally going home.  Home.  To her home.  She looked at the sun, high in the sky fighting the clouds that were still releasing their fluffy flakes of snow to the earth.  She stuck her tongue out and caught one, then giggled.  She hadn’t done that since she was just a child.  She had forgotten how fun it could be.

             
They were all in position, as Mac had instructed them, and all eyes were on her waiting for the magic to begin so they could pass this tale of supernatural happenings on to their children.  Her hand went to her belly.  Would she be able to tell her child of this story?  No, she thought to herself, or they would put her in the mental institution for sure. 

Leith stood next his mother and Mac, watching her.  That oversized, over bearing, cocky Scotsman who drove her absolutely mad.  Lady MacGregor who had befriended her and
took her under her wing, teaching her the
running’s
of a castle and urged her every day to produce an heir for her son and a grandchild for her.  And Mac, with his wild hair, and oddly calm temperament.  He had accepted the fact that his laird would take a strange, unknown, woman from the future as his bride without any calamity simply because his books said that it was alright.

             
Even the guards watched her, wondering what their eyes would behold in just a few more minutes.  She looked up at the sky. The sun had hidden behind a cloud, casting a gloom on them.

             
Leith ran his fingers through his hair and let out a deep breath.  Bloody hell.  What was he doing?!

             
He ran to her and scooped her up in his arms, squeezing her until she grunted with alarm for lack of oxygen.

             
“What are you doing?!” she screamed at him.  “Get away!  You could be sucked into this thing!”

             
He took her hands roughly in his and clasped them to his chest.  “I cannot allow ye to leave without telling ye what I’m thinking, lass.”

             
Lady MacGregor called desperately, “Leith! Get out of there!”

             
He shook his head sadly, turning his gaze back to Raine.  “Ye drive me insane, woman.  Ye can rouse my anger like no other.  Ye make my blood boil as no other can.  I’ve never wanted to wrap my fingers around the neck of another person and strangle them as I have ye.”