Chapter 12 #4
‘Yes.’ The more I thought about it, the more it seemed only reasonable.
‘There has to be something, a reward or payback or something. You can’t get dragged out of your own time and dumped, because that’s not fair.
We have to find out what we need to do and then we’ll get sent back, because otherwise…
’ I bit my lip as I thought. ‘Because Time doesn’t want us here.
We’re like…’ I warmed to my theme. ‘We’re like the grit in the oyster. ’
Now Lachlan’s head had come completely off his knees and he was watching me with an intent expression, which gave me the feeling that I was on the right track. ‘Go on. There’s a Doctor Who plotline coming and I’m fascinated.’
‘Look, people disappear all the time, don’t they? You even said so.’
‘Did I?’ Lachlan sounded nonplussed.
‘You did. When I’d just arrived. Well, what if the ones who never came back are the ones who didn’t do what they were taken to do?’
I sat back, exhausted from channelling the stream of ideas.
There was a moment of quiet, into which the sea chanted its regular beat and the gulls screamed.
Then Lachlan sighed. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Pax,’ he said.
‘But some of those missing people turn up dead. Or they’ve had a psychotic break and they’ve run away from life. ’
‘No, no.’ My impatience made my voice shake. ‘I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the ones who completely vanish. No reason, no evidence, just – gone. I think, if they do what they are meant to, then they come back before anyone knows they even went.’
He shook his head. ‘This all sounds like the storyline to some improbable series that’s going to get cancelled three episodes in.’
I waved a rather over-excited hand to indicate the headland behind us. ‘Lachlan, this all sounds improbable! It is improbable. But it’s fact, we’re here and I think we have to sort out why and then time will spit us back out again.’
We were almost nose to nose now. My eagerness to communicate my ideas and his general slump meant I was on my knees in front of him and he still had his hand on my arm. ‘You know that oysters don’t spit pearls out, right?’
Our eyes locked. ‘Okay, maybe I was straining a metaphor. But I’m sure I’m right.’
When Lachlan leaned in that extra couple of centimetres, I leaned in too.
I didn’t care what would happen. I didn’t care that I’d had to brush my teeth with a twig or that my most recent meals had contained more carbohydrate than I was usually comfortable with.
Our lips met, gentle at first and then with a kind of ferocity that was powered by our lack of certainty about quite literally anything other than that this other person was here.
‘Oh, get a room, you two. Only you can’t because there aren’t any.’ Mal’s voice blew us apart in a rather shame-faced straightening up. ‘Unless you fancy snogging in a cellar. Come on, we’re getting under cover. It looks like a storm blowing in.’
When I stood up I realised he was right.
The sky had the blue-black tinge of heavy rain in waiting and the air tasted brackish and metallic, like a tin can full of salt.
Over at the stables, Fergus and two others were struggling to get the horses in under cover and people were snatching clothing and items of equipment off walls and drying posts, hurrying to get inside before the weather broke.
Jeannie stood at the doorway to the cottage, hands on her hips.
The older woman, ran towards her, pulling her all-enveloping blanket garment up over her head, and the two of them went inside, closing the door behind them.
I couldn’t see the other women. I hoped, in that tiny part of me that wanted my relative to be a decent guy, that they weren’t with the earl.
‘Come on!’ Mal shouted over a sudden clap of thunder that sent the cattle into paroxysms of alarm within their enclosure and nearly got the goat barged over.
The three of us slithered our way to the castle, where the door had been conclusively closed, through the pack of hounds sheltering under anything they could find, and down the rickety steps into the cellar, where David and Kaylinn were sitting around the table.
‘We couldn’t get to the earl now, even if we wanted to,’ Kaylinn said. ‘They’ve barred the doors on the inside and all the windows are closed.’
She was right. Unless we stood by the main door or the cellar door and waited for someone to open it, and I wasn’t prepared to stand out there in this rain, we couldn’t get into the castle. They’d even closed the shutters on the windows against the sleety rain.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll try tomorrow.’
Mal looked hopeful. ‘Do we have to steal you another load of clothes?’
I shook my head and the wet ends of my hair flapped. ‘No. I’m going to give it a try as myself.’
‘Oh. I just felt like James Bond, sneaking stuff out of houses.’
‘Hardly James Bond behaviour,’ David observed tartly. ‘More like the weirdo that goes round stealing women’s underwear off washing lines.’
‘Stop it, you two,’ Lachlan said mildly.
‘No, I don’t need you to do that,’ I said. ‘But I do have a different plan, which I might need your help with…’