Chapter 1
The winds swirling around Nora, teased her hair, loosening and pulling it from the coil she’d haphazardly pinned it in. The torn blouse and stained skirt she wore wrapped around her legs as the winds gave a last final blast for good measure before dissipating and giving Nora a chance to regain her balance and look around herself. Her mouth slowly fell open in shock, the circle of oaks that had moved her to this time and place, was not a circle of oaks. Instead she stood near a gate of sorts. It had stone supports with heavy wooden beams on either side, with an archway above, accented with a keystone in it. Feeling the remnants of a breeze through the gateway, or portal as it seemed to be, she stepped away from it, confident that the fates had sent her through it for a reason, and not willing to tempt them into sending her back too soon.
Assuring herself that all would be well without the circle of oaks she habitually moved through, she eyed the gated portal once more before wandering further away from it. “Me circle should still be here somewhere,” she muttered to herself. Eyeing the forest around her, she became a little worried. She was stupefied, looking around herself disbelievingly. All the times she’d been through time, there’d always been a circle of oaks. It was the only way she knew to get from one time to another. Why was it not here now?
Suddenly, raucous laughter and guttural voices caught her attention, giving her only a moment to realize she needed to hide herself away, and quickly.
Double checking for the canvas bag slung over her shoulder, and keeping her hold on the precious item concealed within the folds of her skirt, she darted from the portal she’d found herself beside and squatted within the dense foliage thirty feet away, completely hiding herself from whatever chaos was making its way toward her. It wasn’t long before she recognized their speech as ancient Gaelic, and she was able to see them approaching from her hiding spot. A band of Orcs, and their leader apparent, carried an unconscious woman in his arms. An unconscious human woman. As Nora watched, the woman woke, moaning as she slammed a hand over her mouth and began to retch. She was dropped unceremoniously to the ground and didn’t even try to control the nausea and vomiting that had overtaken her. When her body finally stopped its attack on her system, she remained on her hands and knees, her head hanging low as she took slow, ragged breaths.
“Must be a concussion,” Nora heard the woman mutter.
The male who’d dropped her to the ground, snatched her up once more, and despite another round of vomiting, the group of them resumed their trek once more, leaving Nora safely undetected.
Nora wondered at the scene she’d just witnessed. The woman’s clothing indicated she was from Nora’s time — modern times, yet here she was fighting the effects of a concussion, being carried through the forest by a group of Orcs, so many years in the past that it wasn’t even worth trying to count them without some kind of calculator.
Then realization struck. Nora’s eyes widened as she figured out what she’d just seen. “Maddie! That had to have been Maddie!” she whispered to herself. And if that was Maddie, the Orcs she’d seen were some of Gorta’s warriors. Which meant she was far away from where she needed to be. “Don’t worry, Mistress of the Beithioch, ye’ll be just fine,” she whispered as she peeked out of her hiding place to make sure there were no more Orcs traveling past before she stood and slipped quickly into the forests at her back. Tears slipped unchecked down her cheeks. Hope was a rare thing for Nora these days. She’d just about given up, but the fates, it seemed, had given her a break this time. “I have time, I made it in time!” she said, her words trembling as she made her way through the forest, her destination a village that was many days away. That village was the site of a battle that had yet to be fought, and she had to arrive and contrive a plan before it ever took place. She had to get there, find shelter, and settle in to wait until her destiny finally came calling. The lack of a circle of oaks to bring her and her male back home wouldn’t make a bit of difference if she wasn’t able to save him this time. This was the last chance she’d get — she knew it in her bones. And without him, she wouldn’t need to get back. Where she languished wouldn’t matter, the past, the present, somewhere in between, none of it made a bit of difference without Gorta.
~~~
After almost a week of wandering, Nora realized that the village wasn’t where she’d expected it to be. She’d traced and retraced her steps, and it simply wasn’t there. Either the village had packed up and moved away, taking care to erase any trace that it ever existed, or the shotgun coming to her through the circle of oaks wasn’t the only thing to have changed this time. And if the village wasn’t where it should have been, how could she save Gorta from something that may or may not happen this time? She stood on the edge of the moors alternately looking out over the forest behind her, and meadows up ahead. She’d already been through the forest, her only option now was to follow the meadows and keep going to the hills and trees she could just barely make out in the distance. Maybe there she’d find a clue as to what was next.
She kept moving for two more days until she found herself in a clearing looking at a small one room hut in the middle of a wooded glen, surrounded by tall wild grasses, trees and shrubbery. The thatched roof had long ago lost parts of itself, and the cracks in the sodden walls were almost wide enough to see through. But it mattered not to Nora. She’d recognized it immediately — this was home. Nora stood for a second or two, letting her memories of working with her brother to restore the cottage it would one day become flow through her.
“It’ll shelter me now, just as it shelters us then,” she said. Smiling at the soothing sense of home that enveloped her, she approached the hut. Tapping on the door frame she called out. “Hello? Is anyone here?” Nora smiled again. It was deserted, just as she expected. She grasped the edges of the wooden door and physically picked it up from where it leaned against the entrance to the small hut. There was nothing inside except a fireplace, right in the middle of the single room structure. The fireplace was built of stone, and its flue seemed to lift the roof to its highest point, like a tent with a tent pole in its center. She walked over to the fireplace and placed a hand on its stonework. “It’s good tah be home,” she said, sighing contentedly.
Nora looked around, making mental notes of all she had to do in order to make the hut a temporarily viable shelter. “I can do this,” she said confidently. She turned in a circle, slowly, trying to find a suitable place to hide the shotgun and shells she carried. With little choice, she finally decided to hide the gun in the thatches of the roof, and to stash the shotgun shells in the crevice of a wall not too far from the entrance. “Now, it’s time tah get tah work,” she said, smiling as she brushed her hands off and stepped outside the hut again. Curious, she wandered over to where the garden would one day stand and smiled when she found wild blackberry vines there. She knew she had several small fruit rolls in the pocket of her skirt, but there was no way they’d sustain her. Besides, they’d last longer than anything she found that would be fresh, so she liked to save them as long as possible. The berries were certainly a good thing to find. Nora picked a handful of them and ate them as she made an effort to clear away the weeds and tall dried grasses from the blackberry vines. In doing so, she found an old clay pail with a sturdy wooden handle run through holes in the top of it. Finishing off her blackberries, she picked up the pail and headed off in the direction of the stream.
As she emerged from the woods, she was surprised to find a steep river bank, and a fully flowing river as opposed to the strong stream it was in her time. After making her way down the bank, she knelt beside the water and took advantage of its power to thoroughly wash out the pail. She half filled it, drank her fill, filled it again, poured it over her head, then filled it again, grasped its wooden handle and carried it back to the hut. Leaving the pail of water near the doorway, she quickly gathered as many of the thatches on the floor of the inside of the hut, then gathered the tall grasses she’d cleared from the side of the hut and began lashing them together. After a few hours of harvesting more and lashing them together, too, she thought she had enough to at least make a go of repairing the hut’s small roof. But there was a problem… no way to get on top of the roof.
Nora went ‘round the back of the hut and noticed more than a few gray stones that seemed to be leftover from building the fireplace within the hut. Standing there with her thatches all ready to go onto the roof on the other side of the house. She looked around herself once more to be sure she wasn’t being watched, raised a hand in the direction of the haphazardly stacked stones and smiled as they all moved closer to each other. She swirled her fingers in their general direction again and watched as they arranged themselves in a neat mound against the back side of the hut. Nora tested the mound, taking a few steps up onto it and smiling when she saw that it did indeed place her high enough to reach the roof and pull herself the rest of the way up.
Tying her armload of thatches up in the length of her skirt, she tied the hem of the skirt into her waistband to secure them, then stepped up on the mound of stones and with no small amount of effort, pulled herself up onto the roof. Rather than walk on it and surely fall through, she stretched out across its edge, moving slowly and carefully as she reached for one lashed bundle after the other, placing them in the openings that had developed over time. When she was sure she’d done the best she could for now, she slid off the edge of the roof she lay upon and found footing on the mound of stones at the back wall of the hut. Looking critically at the uneven roof of her hut, she decided a little magic never hurt anything. Once again, lifting her hands to send her powers in the direction she pointed, she watched with a satisfied smile as the thatches evened out, seeming to weave to and cling to their neighbors until a better roof than she’d imagined stood to cover her head when inside the hut.
Next was the cracks in the sod walls of the hut. She chose a sturdy wooden stick and used it to dig into the clay across the clearing from the hut, then added water and some of the same dried grasses she’d repaired the roof with, and kept adding clay until she ended up with a sizable mess of what she believed could be used to fill in the holes and cracks. She wasted no time carrying it by the arm loads to the hut and used her hands to work it into the cracks and holes. Hours later she was exhausted, but satisfied when she finally stood back to look at her work. She’d done well. And now she knew she’d have a warm, dry place to sleep and shelter until the time came for her real purpose here — to save her male. She had no idea when, or where, since the village she always tracked him to was not standing where she expected it to be, but she’d be ready, and she’d be waiting for some indication to spur her toward her destiny.
She huffed tiredly when she realized she’d used all of her water to make the mud to patch the hut with, considered going to bed dirty, and decided that it would have to be okay for today. “Walking tah the river again today, just isn’t happening.” Instead, she brushed her hands off as best she could, splattered them with the little bit of water she had left, and ate another handful of berries before making herself a little mound of leftover thatches on the floor of her hut. She huffed out a breath and closed her eyes, bringing to mind a picture of the male that kept her moving forward every moment of every day since she’d first met him more than twenty-five years ago. As she lay there, thoughts of him flooding her mind, she couldn’t help but cry just a little, when she realized that when she saw him again this time, it would be like all the others — he wouldn’t know her. For him, it was like the first time, every time. And every time ended the same — with him dead in her arms. “Not this time. This time, I’m here already. This time things have changed. I don’t know how, but I’ll find you, and I’ll be ready, me love.”