The Call of Distant Shores (15 page)

"Amen," Bobby Lee added, grinning.

Above, the stars shone brightly and Jasper could have sworn, as Bobby Lee pulled out of the parking lot, that the brilliant spots of light re-arranged themselves into a new shape.
 
A constellation he could believe in.
 
Popping the top on the beer Bobby handed him, Jasper saluted the sky, tracing the lines of stars with his graze and grinning.

"Look, Bobby Lee," he said softly.
 
"Ain't that constellation The Twins?"

The surface of the lake gave new and deeper meaning to the term '"placid."'
 
The water was so still, and so dark, that the very absence of sound and motion drew images from deep within Jonathan's mind that were anything but peaceful.

The shoreline stretched out to his right so far that it disappeared in the gloom, but Jonathan wasn't interested in that dark expanse.
 
His gaze wandered left to where the lake curved around a rocky outcropping that stretched down into the depths beyond.
 
The forest drew within about fifty feet of the shoreline, then stopped.
 
Nothing grew closer.
 
There were stone, sand, driftwood and the sun-bleached bones of dead fish littering the ground, but nothing moved.

From that flat, tide-slicked surface, the tower rose.
 
Brick upon brick of white stone made dark by wind, and rain, mud and slime.
 
Jonathan let his gaze slide up that wall, catching each glimmer as it reflected the moon's pale light.
 
The last of the sun's red-orange glow had faded from the skyline, and the moon rose slowly, silver-lining the damp stone.
 
Three quarters of the way up the wall, a window opened over the forest.
 
From within, Jonathan saw the soft glow of candlelight.

The moonlight dimmed, and Jonathan glanced up sharply.
 
Dark clouds had rolled in, and a ripple of lighting shot between them.
 
In that instant, the entire lighthouse snapped into view, stark against an outline of brilliant light and darkened sky.
 
Jonathan took a step back, bringing his hand to his heart.
 
A lighthouse – on a lake.
 
No ships to guide.
 
No wreckage lining the coral skeleton of dangerous reefs.
 
Black, dead-calm water and silence.

It was just as he had seen it as a child.
 
Just as the pictures had shown it reborn.
 
It was in the wrong place.

Jonathan tore his gaze from the tower and spun back to the lake.
 
The water rippled, undulating to the rhythm of the moon, oblivious to the tower and it's single, darkened eye.
 
No light flashed from the tower.
 
There was no wind to cause the ripple.

"Why did you do it, old man?" Jonathan whispered.
 
Turning back to the window, he added.
 
"What have you done?"

The wind had picked up with the approach of the storm, and Jonathan felt a sudden chill, despite the season.
 
He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets and strode across the slimy rocks toward the tower.
 
As he reached the rough-hewn wooden door and raised the cold steel knocker in one clenched hand, the beacon in the tower a hundred feet over his head snapped on, flashing in a brilliant, fog-cutting beam across the water.

Jonathan sat at an old wooden table, fingers gripping a steaming mug of coffee.
 
A fire raged in a small recess in the wall, hardly a fireplace, more an alcove with vents set too close to the floor to provide efficient heat, and before that blaze a man stood, hands clenched behind his back, staring into the flame. It could have been a scene from some Hollywood Scottish epic.
 
The man didn't wear a kilt, but somehow the rugged denim jeans and work boots conveyed the effect anyway.
 
Wild locks of deep red hair flowed over stooped shoulders, tinted with highlights of silver gray.

Angus was tall, taller than most men and thin so that his motions seemed to take forever, long, graceful patterns of coordination.
 
He would have seemed ungainly if it weren't for the preternatural grace of each gesture.
 
Jonathan watched, fascinated, as his uncle began to pace before the fire, shadows dancing along the walls like great predatory beasts.

Then, in the periphery of his vision, Jonathan caught another movement.
 
More subtle, more powerful and so close to the corner and the floor that he couldn't be certain he'd seen anything at all.
 
He turned quickly, his own motion a shorter, more slender version of his uncle.
 
If it weren't for his close-cut dark hair, Jonathan might have been a small re-composition of his Uncle's form.
 
When his father had been alive, the three of them had been a positively eerie sight, Angus too tall and wild-haired, Ewan, Jonathan's father, not quite as tall, but very angular, wide in the shoulders and a long, very narrow face – and Jonathan.
 
Smaller, younger, but so closely modeled after Angus as to seem a shadow if he walked behind the big man.

Jonathan stared into the empty corner, started to speak, then kept his silence.
 
Experience had taught him that in such an audience he would get but a certain number of opportunities to question.
 
It was important that the questions be fully formed before he gave them voice.
 
It was important that he stuff his emotions deep inside where they would not taint his speech.
 
Angus would know.
 
Back turned, shoulders hunched against a Scottish wind that no longer cut through the cracks in the ancient stones, Angus would see through to his soul.

"I carried every stone, Jonathan." Angus' voice cut through the silence suddenly, banishing it as if it had never existed.
 
"Aye, the men, they tore her down, but I carried every stone of her to the trucks, watched them wind into the distance leaving less and less behind each time they came.
 
Those were strong, strapping lads, but for every stone two of them lifted, I carried a second.
 
Bits of my heart, they trucked away."

"Why?"
 
Thoughts of carefully chosen words forgotten, Jonathan half-rose from his seat, then leaned back, gripping the mug so tightly that his knuckles whitened.
 
"Why Angus?
 
You know what she watches...and why.
 
How could you take her away?"
 
Even as he waited for his answer, images of Angus, huge blocks of stone hefted as easily as Jonathan remembered the big man shouldering barrels of ale, trudging from the lighthouse to the trucks, and back, the waves of the lock tossing foam and droplets of water at his boots and stinging his eyes.

"I've no more to do with it than you, boy," Angus growled, "If you think you know what she watched, then you must know that she watches still."

Again Jonathan held his silence.
 
The lake that lay beyond the tower's walls was ominous in its own right, but it was no Loch Drummond.
 
It was new, with the taint of a new world, recently civilized and ignorant in the ways of the older darkness.
 
It was water, and darkness, cut now by a swath of light that did not belong.
 
No more, no less.
 
Not so the Loch.

"Word is," Jonathan said softly, "that it is restless."

Angus' fingers tightened until Jonathan could see the skin turning white, but he didn't turn.
 
"It was not my choice, lad.
 
It has never been any man's choice."

Jonathan took a long swallow of the hot coffee, feeling it burn down his throat.

Angus whirled in anger.
 
His eyes blazed, green and brilliant and alive with sudden accusation.
 
"And what would you be
knowin
' of it?
 
Where were you when she watched The Loch, eh? When your father, rest his soul, and I stood in the tower?
 
London?
 
Paris?
 
Traipsin
' the streets of Las Vegas and
tellin
' drunk-boy stories on your crazy Uncle Angus?"

Jonathan stared into the swirling depths of his mug and held his silence.
 
It was the truth. He'd not seen The Loch since his boyhood days, when he'd played beside the Loch, young and carefree, never questioning why he couldn't sit on the stones and watch the soft slap of the waves after the sun had gone down.
 
He'd left with his mother at the age of eight and never looked back.
 
Not during the waking hours.

"I'm not here to tell you I understand more than you do," Jonathan answered at last.
 
"I'm not here to apologize for my life, either.
 
If I chose to leave, you chose to stay.
 
Or she chose you."

Angus stared a moment longer, deep green eyes boring into Jonathan's heart.
 
Spinning back to the fire, the old man growled.
 
"Damned if she didn't choose me."

No words were spoken for a few moments, but the silence had grown suddenly less tense.
 
Jonathan turned, glancing out the window over the forest.
 
In the distance he could make out the soft glow of the city.
 
There were no windows overlooking the lake.
 
To see that, there was only one vantage point.

"I want to see the tower," he said.
 
Too quickly, courage lost in the space of that breath.
 
The words dwindled to nothing, and there was no indication that Angus had heard them.
 
The old man stood still as a stone statue, staring into the glowing coals of the fire.
 
Then, when Jonathan had nearly given up, the old man turned, slowly, and without a word, strode to the door.

Jonathan rose, following quickly.

The stairs wound up and up, too-close set, as if designed for shorter feet and stronger toes.
 
Jonathan stumbled several times, trying to achieve some sort of rhythm, but whether he attempted one, two, or three of the old stone steps at a time, he could not make the climb more comfortable.
 
All his life he'd climbed stairs, but somehow these presented a new challenge. Angus had already disappeared around the upward curve.
 
Years of practice had acclimated the old man's muscles to the odd dimensions of the stairs.

Jonathan stumbled, cracking his shoulder painfully on the wall, and he hesitated for a moment, laying his forehead against the cold stone.
 
A sudden flash of insight nearly sent him reeling back and down.
 
Who had these stairs been built for?
 
Who would line up thousands and thousands of stairs so –
wrong
?

Long, sinuous bodies flowing upward, losing themselves in the turns and curves, hundreds of feet pounding, slapping wetly on stone, gripping and tugging the corners of the stairs.
 
The dimensions shifted, the windows confronted Jonathan at eye level, and the stairs became handhold after handhold after handhold drawing him upward into the light...

Jonathan shook his head and pressed off the stone.
 
Gritting his teeth, he began child-stepping up the stairs, no longer fighting the discomfort, but working through it.
 
The rhythm had shifted somehow, and what had seemed impossible grew more or less bearable as he pressed on up to the tower.

The door was just as Jonathan had heard it described.
 
As a child, he could have climbed those stairs a thousand times.
 
He'd seen his father, and his uncle, silhouetted against the brilliant beam of light as it snaked out over the Loch, keeping their silent vigil night after night without fail.
 
Jonathan had loved the mystery of it, but he'd felt no urge to unravel that mystery.
 
Something in the imposing stone walls and the expressions of those who entered had turned him aside each time.
 
No one had ever forced the issue.

Now he wished he'd been stronger.
 
Braver.
 
He stared at the oak panels and the knob, set too low for easy access.
 
Jonathan stopped once more, just short of the final step.
 
The latch bothered him.
 
The angle was wrong.
 
He could see, even from where he sat, that he would have to lean in close to grip the mechanism – very close.
 
Bent nearly double.

Before it could become more of an issue, the door swung wide, and Angus was there, hair a wild halo of grey-white framing deep red, and that framing a deeper scowl.
 
No words, only that stare, but Jonathan looked down to his feet and stepped forward hurriedly, tripping over the close-set stone stairs and tumbling into the chamber beyond.

Angus closed the door behind them with a quickly-spit word that could have expressed exasperation, or contempt. A word that made no sense, and perfect sense at the same time – foreign and familiar.
 
Jonathan tried to place it, but there was no opportunity.