Chapter 17 #2
When she woke next she was reasonably certain she was alive, which seemed rather unfortunate, as the sunlight tried to burn her eyes out.
The squawking had started up again—a cyclic sound, growing louder and then fading, only to come very close moments later.
Gillian tried to move, but her right arm was a fiery limb of agony and refused to obey. She pushed up with her left arm.
Distant mountains surrounded her, and below, a sheer drop. Gillian stared downward, her stomach lurching. Something screamed and dove at her, tangling in her hair. She shrieked and tried to scrabble away, falling flat again and wrenching her right arm. White-hot agony exploded through her.
She was under attack from a very large, very angry bird.
It clawed and tore at her hair. A sudden frigid breeze blew as she tried to protect her head with her left hand, only to have it brutally slashed.
The bird abruptly left with a squawk of terror.
But now Gillian’s head throbbed so she could barely see.
Ghost birds? Just her luck. She waited for the pain to subside, but it didn’t.
She moaned, pressing her cheek into the ledge, staring at her ravaged and bloody left hand, half curled beside her face.
Her mother’s ring glinted in the sunlight.
Her mother’s ring. And suddenly she understood. Gillian had never been cursed. But her mother’s ring had. Using her teeth and lips, she wrenched the cursed thing off her finger. It tinked onto the ledge. The pain immediately abated.
Gillian peeked back out at the vista before her. Two large birds soared nearby—not vultures but eagles. They circled, calling angrily to each other or at her, she didn’t know, but for the moment, they were staying away.
“They’ll not harm ye, so long as I’m here.”
Gillian screamed again and rolled toward the edge, catching herself before she rolled off into nothing but air.
A man was with her. Gillian had slowly deduced that when she’d fallen, she’d not plunged to the river or rocks below but had landed on a ledge, apparently home to a pair of angry eagles.
She had a hazy memory of hitting a bulge in the side of the mountain as she’d fallen and scratching desperately for purchase, only to roll and slide off it before crashing to the ground . . . or to this ledge.
The man sat against the cliff side, a plaid wrapped around him. It was very cold, and a strong breeze blew, yet it didn’t ruffle his dark auburn hair or make the ends of his plaid flutter. A ghost.
Gillian struggled to catch her breath as she stared at the man. He seemed a kindly enough ghost, his dark green eyes warm and friendly.
“Who are you?” Her voice was a croak, and her lips cracked painfully when she spoke. Her mouth tasted of grit and dried blood.
“Tomas Campbell, yer servant, my lady.”
“Oh, aye?” Gillian said, looking upward. The top of the cliff was completely hidden from view by the bulging rock she’d hit on her descent. It cast a partial shadow over the ledge.
Tomas Campbell hunkered in the shadows. “I tried to warn ye, but ye wouldna listen. I tried to help, but it’s no so easy anymore.
” He held his hands up and frowned at them.
“If I concentrate verra hard, sometimes I can feel ye and know I’m doing some good.
” He sighed and dropped his hands. “But this time it wasna enough. I havena a body, after all.”
“It’s been you all this time? The doll . . . the ballast . . . the writing?”
Tomas shook his head. “The ballast and cliff, aye that was me. I know nothing about a doll. The writing was a lad. I saw him briefly, but he didna see me. Most canna see me . . . and to be truthful, I canna always see them, either. It’s as if I see them from the corner of my eye, but when I turn, they’re gone, or just shadows.
I hear their voices clear sometimes, and others it’s but whisperings.
But you . . . I saw ye clearly from the time ye set foot in the castle.
Ye’re like a blazing torch. I kent that if I saw you, you must see me .
. . but it didna work the way I thought. Till now, that is.”
Gillian’s sluggish and anguished brain took a long moment to digest this. “What happened?”
Tomas leaned forward, face grim. “You were pushed, my lady. I tried to stop ye from falling as I’d stopped the ballast from causing ye any real harm, but yer attacker was most persistent.”
“Who attacked me?”
“I know not, my lady. I told ye—as most canna see me, neither can I see them. I only know the one who did this is a dark man . . . dark skin, dark hair . . . that is all I can see, I catch snatches of him from the corner of my eye . . . but when I turn, there’s naught there.
But he watches you, and his intentions are dark. ”
Gillian glanced back over the side of the cliff, at the soaring eagles, then back at Tomas. She decided he was harmless, so she painfully dragged herself away from the edge of the cliff. She shivered from the bracing wind.
“What am I going to do?” she said, more to herself than to Tomas.
“They’re looking for you. Call out to them.”
“How do you know if you can’t see them?”
“I can hear them sometimes, and there is another, not like you, but I see her— she’s like a shade. She mourns you.”
“Rose,” Gillian whispered.
She filled her lungs and screamed for help. But her screams were useless—the strong wind stole the words from her mouth and sent them away.
Her chest and throat burned with every labored breath. She clutched her arm to her side. It was broken. She must have landed on it. She tried not to panic but couldn’t help thinking she would die on this ledge, from starvation and exposure. The eagles would feast on her.
She screamed again, tears making mud of the grit on her cheeks.
Tomas watched her sadly. “I had hoped to save you from this.”
“Why do you want to save me?”
“It’s been so long since I’ve had someone to talk to. And if you die . . . you probably won’t stay here. Most don’t.”
“Are there others like you here?”
Tomas nodded. “I canna talk to some of them . . . they dinna see me anymore than the live ones do.”
She thought of Aileen in her cleaning and drinking circuit, oblivious to anything but that single moment in time.
She looked upward, straining to hear the voices Tomas claimed he heard calling for her, but all she heard was the rush of wind and call of eagles. She had to keep talking, or she would go mad. Her throat was raw from screaming, and the pain in her arm made her weak and sick.
“I saw another ghost, on the cliff. A woman. I think it was the late countess, Catriona. Can you see her?”
“Not really, my lady, though I felt her and caught brief snatches of her.” He sighed. “I wish I could speak to her.”
He seemed a very lonely fellow.
“Can you not leave?” Gillian asked. “Can you not go to heaven?”
His eyebrows drooped. “I dinna know how. I dinna know if I’m meant to.”
The wind whistled as it gusted over the ledge. An enormous nest was a few feet away. The soft, downy brown feathers lifted on the breeze and spun out into the air.
Gillian’s stomach rebelled from the pain in her arm. Her head whirled, gray crowding the edges of her vision.
“I’m going to lie down a bit,” Gillian said, her voice a bare whisper, and she slid down until her cheek pressed into the grit of the ledge.