Highlander Cursed: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Read online

  She leaned over it, inhaling the scent of timber with a blissed-out smile drifting across her face. This was the kind of desk that award-winning books got written at and no mistake. Maybe she could draw on her savings a little and stay on for a few weeks, just to really get a dent put in the project... maybe stay as long as summer, then head down to Edinburgh to meet up with her friends, full of stories of her academic successes…

  But first things first — her stomach had been growling since Maggie had mentioned the idea of breakfast. Her poor body had no idea what time it was or where they were, but no matter what, she'd always have an appetite for eggs. And sure enough, when she'd put her things away and climbed back down the creaky staircase, there was an enormous platter of breakfast waiting for her, one place set at a huge dining table in the room adjacent to the foyer. Eggs, bacon, baked beans, toast, fried mushrooms — at Maggie's urging, Delilah set about the meal, feeling like a medieval lord sitting down to a feast. Or should she say Laird? Maggie kept her company, chatting away about the village. She'd chosen a quiet time to come and stay — they got their fair share of tourists, some drawn by stories about witches, most just wanting a quiet getaway.

  “A lot of artists and writers and such,” she explained. “Sometimes people who think they've got some grand ancestral connection with the place. Still, keeps me in business so I shan't complain.”

  Delilah, mouth full of beans, decided to keep her own rumored family connection to Clan MacClaran to herself. Her academic titles had given her cred — she didn't want to be reduced to just another tourist in this strident woman's eyes. Besides, though it was interesting to trace her own personal connection to the place, that wasn’t why she was so interested in the castle. It was a professional interest, first and foremost. The personal connection was just a fun little bit of icing on the cake.

  The food restored her good spirits, which had been flagging a little with the jetlag and the long journey. She hadn't planned to start work for a couple of days, but the momentum of travel was burning a hole through the soles of her feet, and she knew that if she made herself stay home, she'd wind up taking a long sleep in the afternoon and making her jetlag worse. Having perused Google Maps extensively in the lead-up to the trip, she knew that there was a road that followed a winding path up the hill toward the low rise on which Castle MacClaran was perched — a place of great strategic advantage in medieval times. From the castle, it was understood, you could see all the surrounding territory for miles — very useful when it came to fending off invasions, from other Lairds or from invading powers like the English.

  She wanted to finally see that view for herself — in person, not just through other people’s photographs, or blurry satellite pictures from Google Maps.

  Delilah stepped out of the tavern in her warmest jacket and her new scarf, her eyes on the horizon and her heart full of excitement at the prospect of finally seeing the castle in real life. Just a quick visit — she'd walk around the castle, get a sense of the lay of the land, leaving the major exploration for the week ahead. Maggie waved a cheerful farewell from behind the counter in the foyer, and Delilah smiled back, looking forward to getting to know the woman during her stay.

  It would be the last time they ever saw each other.

  Chapter 2

  God, Scotland was beautiful. Delilah had known it, of course, academically at least — she'd pored over photos, read about the climate and the history, the country's rich poetic tradition. But as was so often the case with stories and folklore, actually being somewhere in the flesh was a completely different experience. She walked slowly, not in any rush — she had the whole day to while away, after all, and the longer she spent outside, the easier it would be to stay up until a reasonable bedtime. Her brother had given her that particular tip. Sam was a travel writer (among other things) and he spent more time on international flights than anyone else. You had to be strict with your sleeping pattern or the jetlag would hang around for your whole trip. And she needed to be as fresh and focused as she could.

  And what a beautiful place to kill time in. The road was quiet, with only a very occasional car or truck interrupting the serenity of the countryside. The fields rolled and undulated beside the winding road, sometimes interrupted by little stands of trees, but mostly cleared and cultivated by farmers over the decades. They were interesting trees, and she wandered off the road more than once, curious. She wished she knew a little more about plants and herbs and such. Her ancestors probably knew every single thing that grew in these woods, she thought, kneeling to examine a strange-looking herb. Did it have healing powers? Or perhaps it was tasty when added to a stew? She had no way of knowing. A project for another time, perhaps — once she’d finished work on her current project, perhaps she could get another grant to head out and study the plant life. She chuckled to herself, alone in the wilderness. That might be a bit of a stretch — though there were plenty of anthropological studies on plants and food and the like.

  She straightened, dusting her hands off, and wandered back to the road, her eyes tracing the trunks of the trees around her. Delilah wondered, not for the first time, what the place would have looked like centuries ago — more trees, she'd imagine, and of course the road wouldn't be paved the way it was, but aside from that, it was easy to imagine herself back in time. She was so lost in these reflections that when she reached the top of the rise, she was almost surprised not to see a huge castle, looming over the trees as it had in her dreams.

  But no proud castle stood here any longer. Delilah felt a surprising pang of something like sorrow as she looked at the place where the castle had once stood. She had read so many stories of the huge, proud castle, surrounded by impenetrable walls, gazing down on the land for miles around — protecting its people from the English, from disease, from anything that dared to challenge it. And though she'd seen pictures of the site, it seemed somehow so... incomplete. She stood on the road and gazed at where the castle had once been. It all looked so ordinary. There were the remains of the walls — occasional stones and pieces jutting out of the ground, overgrown by plant life and worn and weathered by the centuries. She could make out the circle that enclosed the castle — a huge perimeter, admittedly — but it had more to do with the signs and fences that had been erected to keep locals away from the historic site than it did with the structural integrity of the ancient wall. Otherwise, it just looked like a big flat meadow… a boring old plain with a few rocks on it, to an untrained eye.

  But hers wasn’t an untrained eye.

  Delilah moved off the road and began to circle the ruin, following the line of the plastic fences that had been erected. Within the perimeter of the walls, she could see where the courtyard had been — she let herself imagine men training with wooden swords, just the way she trained with her friends at the SCA — although for very different purposes. The foundations of a building were visible, overgrown only a little by plant life (had someone come through to keep the plants in order over the years, Delilah wondered?) and she realized it must have been the stables. Room for a dozen horses at least — and there were indications of another building behind that one.

  But the castle itself was what she was most excited to see. Toward the back of the perimeter of the fence, the wall was at its most derelict — not much more than foundations remained, with the occasional knee-high stone, covered with moss. The castle walls were more intact, it seemed — perhaps they'd been protected over the years by the outer walls, or simply built to last. Delilah knew that the castle had once reached high into the sky, but the upper stories hadn't survived. Still, there were a few rooms still standing, dotted around the carcass of the building. She could see through into what must have once been a grand entry hall, with the ruins of a staircase leading upwards. Next to it, the remnants of a dining hall. Not that much remained of it that would indicate what its purpose was, but she'd looked at schematics from local historians, read the various arguments and conjecture about what parts of the castle
had been used for what. And behind the dining hall, a section of the castle that had remained intact — a part of the kitchen, perhaps. Even the ceiling remained on that part, and the walls were still up, protecting the inside from her view.

  Delilah hesitated at the perimeter of the historic site, her palms itching. She knew she should stay where she was — maybe finish a lap of the building, then walk back into town, find some other way to spend the rest of her day. Maggie would certainly have some advice. Delilah's hostess was clearly a local expert. She’d have plenty of time for this kind of exploration… it would be better to come back when she was fresh and rested, not jetlagged and full of adrenaline…

  “Come on, then,” she murmured aloud to herself, her voice sounding oddly loud in the quiet morning air. She wasn't supposed to be here, exactly. But there was nobody else here... and no traffic passing... and at any rate, what was the difference between having a quick look now and having an ‘official’ look tomorrow, when she'd be accompanied by her local contacts from the town?

  Not letting herself think too much about it, Delilah ducked under the fence and covered the ground in short, rapid strides. Just a quick poke around in that mostly intact room — the kitchen, or the larder, or whatever it was. It occurred to her briefly that the ceiling might collapse on her, and that nobody knew where she was — but the idea of stopping now that she'd decided to have a look was just beyond reason. She'd be careful. At the first sign of a cave-in, she'd bail. And after all, the castle had stood for hundreds of years like this — was it really that likely that it would choose today of all days to come crashing down on her? Of course not. If it was going to collapse, it would’ve collapsed on some of the hundreds of teenagers who must’ve come here on dares and dates over the centuries. No amount of fencing would keep kids away — in fact, it would probably serve to draw them with all the more curiosity. But there’d never been a story of anyone being harmed by a cave-in or a collapse. It was wind and weather that had slowly demolished the castle, not human disturbances. She’d be perfectly safe. The room seemed to beckon her, inviting — she could see the gap in the wall where a door must once have stood, and before she could stop herself, she stepped through and into the cool, dark air beyond.

  A little bit of sunlight filtered through the holes in the roof, but Delilah's eyes still took a while to adjust to the gloom. It was hard to tell what the space would once have looked like, it was so dark and close… and so utterly ruined. Blinking, she pulled her phone from her pocket and switched on the flashlight, glancing around the space. A lot of rubble and wreckage, mostly — but something in the junk toward the back of the space glinted dully in the light of her phone's flashlight. Delilah moved toward it, very careful of where she stepped. This must have been the larder, from what she could remember of the schematics she'd looked at. Then what was that, glinting in the light from her phone?

  “I should really wait until tomorrow,” she whispered to herself, voice echoing a little from the stones. Then she knelt down, carefully cleared a little of the debris, and examined what she'd found. Some kind of box, made of dull metal. Not a recent invention, by any means. Could it have been left here since the castle stood? Heart pounding with excitement, she traced a finger down the cool surface of the box, finding the seam where it opened. Sure enough, the lid was easy enough to lever off, though it protested a little as she lifted it.

  “Wow,” she breathed, staring into the box. It wasn't empty, as she'd worried — there were a few small cloth bags, the fabric weathered and rotted with time, but seemingly protected a little by the box. And beneath the box... she frowned, tapping on her phone screen to try to turn the brightness of the flashlight up. That couldn't be right. That almost looked like — glass. Flat, smooth glass. A rectangular shape, not dissimilar to the one she was holding in her hand right now. If she hadn't known better, she'd have sworn it was a smartphone. She could even make out something that looked like a button, only half-hidden by the fabric of the cloth bag that half-obscured the shape. But that was ridiculous. Even if someone had decided to hide their phone here for some silly reason, how had they gotten it into the box without disturbing the other items? There had been a thick coating of dust and debris covering the thing — Delilah would have noticed any recent disturbance.

  Frowning, she took a couple of quick photos on her phone in case she needed to refer back to how the box had been when she found it. Then, very carefully, she reached into the box, nudging aside the cloth. Her suspicions were confirmed by the way the fabric disintegrated at her touch. Nobody could have wedged a phone in this box in recent history. Whatever this strange object was, it wasn't a modern cellphone — it had to have been in here for centuries at least.

  Then what could it be? What kind of glasswork would have produced an object like this — and why would it have been stored away so carefully? And how hasn’t it been found by any explorers, she thought, her forehead crinkling. Could it be that the stories of curses and witchcraft had kept people away? That was unusual… but she didn’t know how strong the superstitions were among the townsfolk. The fact that her cab driver had known immediately that the castle was famous for witches could be an indicator that people took Castle MacClaran a bit more seriously than she’d anticipated. Seriously enough that nobody had even found this little artefact… could she be the first person to have come into this room? Perhaps it really was dangerous. But it was far too late to go back now…

  Her fingers closed around the edges of the object and she began to withdraw it from the box. It really was for all the world like a smartphone — a little thicker than hers was, true, maybe more like a model from a few years ago, but a familiar shape. Her mind flicked through everything she knew about medieval Scottish cooking, but all she could imagine it could be was a very strange, flat meat tenderizer.

  Delilah stared down at the dust-covered thing in her hands — ancient, worn down by time, but unmistakable. It was — it had to be — it was a phone. The button at the bottom, the scratched and dusty but still intact glass screen. She turned it over, ran a fingertip over the back — sure enough, there were the raised bumps where a serial number had once been.

  “How on Earth—”

  Fog. Darkness. Cold, wet air — a rushing sensation, a roaring in her ears like the plane had made when it touched down on the runway in Inverness — her own phone fell from her fingertips, the light spiraling away into the black, though her fist locked tight around the ancient device she'd pulled from the box. And suddenly she felt wet ground beneath her back, soaking through her jacket, damp grass tickling the back of her neck. The dull orange light of sunset tinged the gray sky above her. Had she passed out? She didn't remember falling. Hadn't she been standing in the larder? There was only debris and rubble behind her, not wet grass — and a worn stone ceiling above her, not the open sky. And how could it be sunset? It was midmorning.

  Delilah struggled to move, but there was a dull thumping in her ears that suggested that it was a bad idea. It felt like the worst hangover she'd ever had, and she'd had some shockers (her friends at the SCA drank as hard as they trained, and keeping up with them was a risk she'd taken more than once.) Fear clutched at her stomach as she realized she was flat on her back and helpless. Had the ceiling caved in after all? Was she in the grips of some terrible concussion? She was able to raise one hand to her head and she gently felt around, searching for signs of blood, but found nothing to be concerned about. Just that strange, hungover feeling — nauseous, like motion sickness, and a fatigue so deep in her bones that she didn't dare risk sitting up again any time soon.

  But she had her field of vision to work with, and she could tell already that something was wrong. There was a wall in her peripheries. A stone wall. Not the worn, half-broken-down wall of the larder she'd been investigating, or the sad outcrops of rock that were all that remained of the castle's perimeter wall, but a proper wall, stretching right up into the sky and out of sight (when she tried to follow it with her eyes she
felt a lurching sense of vertigo.) That couldn't be right. There were no walls like that within any distance of where she'd been before she passed out. Had someone moved her, perhaps? Or had she moved herself? Had a rock struck her on the head and prompted some kind of fugue state, in which she'd walked to this wall and then collapsed? She knew how the mind could play tricks on a person. And it would certainly explain the change of time — the orange light of sunset was definitely not in keeping with her midmorning stroll.

  At any rate, she needed help. Perhaps she'd known that, in her addled state, and that was why she'd dragged herself to this wall. Gathering all of her strength (and there wasn't a lot of that) she took a deep breath and raised her voice, alarmed at how weak and fragile it sounded in the cool Scottish air.

  “Hello? Is anyone there? I need help!”

  Delilah listened out for a response, weakened by the effort that shouting had cost her. But sure enough, she heard a low baritone call back in response — a Scottish accent, even thicker than the cab driver's had been. A rural variant on the accent, perhaps? She could hardly make out what he was saying. But then another voice joined his, and she realized they weren't speaking to her. They sounded far away, like they were calling down from above her, somehow. Could it be that they were on top of this wall? That hardly seemed safe, she thought muzzily, imagining one of them falling.

  The voices faded, and she shut her eyes, trying to gather the strength for another call. Perhaps they hadn't heard her. But before she got a chance, she heard footsteps approaching, dull and rhythmic in the early evening air. Delilah propped herself up on her elbows, dizzy with even that small effort, and narrowed her eyes, trying to see — was there something wrong with her vision, too? Sure enough, a handful of men were walking toward her across the grass, but these men looked — strange. It clicked as they got closer — they were wearing armor. Armor? Really? For a moment Delilah almost believed she was back home in San Francisco at a reenactment — but that was ridiculous. Had she stumbled upon a Scottish LARP club? She gazed up in wonder at the men, who stood around her, talking in low voices. They'd really committed, she noticed with approval — their boots didn't look like they'd been made in a factory, no sign of any brand markings or shortcuts taken with the accuracy. There was a guy in her club who specialized in shoemaking — maybe these guys had a similar member. She squinted up at the man closest to her, examining the chainmail that hung down across his body — it looked handmade. No small effort, that. Chainmail took ages and ages. She’d made some once, more for the experience than for the finished product — bending each loop by hand was exhausting and tedious work. And there was a scabbard at his side! She itched to examine the sword it contained — swords had always been her favorite subject.