Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
One of the widow’s men pushed aside the vines covering the walled garden entrance.
The black iron gate creaked open on rusted hinges as I was roughly shoved through, into something unexpected.
The garden was even more beautiful than in my own time.
Part of me had expected it to be twisted and ugly, like something out of a horror movie.
The garden was lush with tropical flowers—hibiscus in shades of crimson and gold, birds of paradise stretching toward the sky, orchids cascading from ancient trees in waterfalls of purple and white.
Mango trees heavy with fruit. Papaya trees with their distinctive palms spread wide.
The air hung thick with their sweetness, with the green scent of growing things and rich earth.
It should have been paradise.
Instead, it was too still.
No birds sang in those fruit-laden branches. No insects hummed among the flowers. No lizards skittered through the undergrowth. Just silence, broken only by the whisper of the wind through the leaves.
“Dear God,” Brodie breathed beside me.
At the garden’s heart stood a circle of standing stones, ancient and weathered.
I recognized the center stone immediately—the same one that would stand alone in my time, covered in strange markings that archaeologists couldn’t explain.
But here, now, it was surrounded by six other stones that looked new, with symbols that looked like copies of the center stone.
And next to that center stone was an altar. Waist-high, also made of stone and stained with rust-colored streaks that I knew, with a sick certainty, weren’t rust at all.
Brodie’s hand tightened on mine. His jaw had gone tight, the way it did when he was trying to control his rage.
Around the altar, carved into the earth itself: spirals and symbols I recognized from books. Celtic knots. Paths that doubled back on themselves. Words in old languages. And names. So many names scratched into the stones, carved into the earth, etched into the ancient rock.
Duncan.
His name stood out fresh and raw, the letters still sharp-edged against the weathered stone.
“He was here.” My voice cracked. “She brought him here.”
“Not just him.” Brodie’s voice had gone flat. He pointed to another name. Then another. “Look.”
Mary. John. Thomas—not our Thomas, a different one. Catherine. Manu, Swanna, James. On and on, a catalog of the missing scratched into stone and earth. Some names weathered almost smooth, decades old. Others fresh as yesterday’s wound.
Twenty years of names. Twenty years of sacrifices. Twenty years of people who thought they could survive if they just worked hard enough.
“She’s been doing this for over twenty years,” I whispered. How many names? How many lives? But the numbers wouldn’t come, just horror stacking on horror.
“Aye.” Brodie’s jaw was tight enough to crack teeth. “And we’re meant to be next.”
Footsteps crunched on the path behind us.
We spun around. The widow stood at the garden entrance, flanked by four guards. And beside her was her awful son, Philippe, dressed in immaculate white despite the heat, his small face calm and interested as he surveyed the garden of death his mother had created.
“How lovely we’re all here together,” the widow said, stepping into the stone circle. Her smile hadn’t changed—still elegant, still controlled, still absolutely terrifying. “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it? The garden thrives like nowhere else on the island.”
“Because you’ve been feeding it blood,” I said. The words came out flat. “Twenty years of murder.”
“Murder is such a crude word, Miss Carter. I’ve been surviving.
Thriving. Maintaining what I’ve built.” She moved toward the center stone with an easy familiarity, running one hand over the carved surface with something almost like affection.
“Do you know what these stones can do? What they’ve given me? ”
“Nothing.” My voice shook, but I forced it to steady. “They’ve given you nothing. You took everything yourself. Their lives. Their futures. Their—”
“Their power.” The widow’s eyes glinted. “Every life given to the stones strengthens them. And in return, they strengthen me. My youth. My beauty. My position. Everything I have, I earned through these stones.”
“You earned nothing.” Brodie’s voice cut like broken glass. “Ye stole it. From people who couldna fight back.”
“They were my property, for me to do with as I wish.” The widow waved one dismissive hand. “Indentured. Enslaved. What did their lives matter compared to mine?”
“Everything,” I said. “Their lives mattered.”
She laughed—that crystalline sound I’d found so elegant when I first arrived. Now it just sounded hollow. Dead. “How very modern of you, Miss Carter. Where did you really come from? Who sent you to spy on me?”
“No one sent me.”
“Then why are you here?” She stepped closer, amber eyes narrowed. “Why you, specifically at this exact moment? How did you know about the stones?”
“I didn’t know.” The truth felt dangerous, but what did I have left to lose? “I found them by accident. I didn’t mean to come here. I didn’t choose this.”
“Everyone chooses.” The widow’s hand shot out, grabbing my arm with surprising strength. “You touched the stones, didn’t you? That’s how you arrived. Tell me—what happened when you touched them?”
The desperation in her voice finally registered. She wasn’t just asking about my arrival. She wanted something.
“They brought you through time,” the widow breathed, pulling me closer.
“That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? When you babbled about not belonging here, about your strange words and stranger knowledge.
You came from another time. I’ve heard stories whispered amongst the Africans and the Scots, talking about the power of the stones. ”
My silence was answer enough.
“Show me.” The widow’s grip tightened, nails digging into my arm. “Show me how to use them. How to walk through the door between worlds. I’ve fed these stones for twenty years, given them blood and life and power. They owe me passage. They owe me immortality.”
“They don’t owe you anything,” I said. “And I can’t show you how. I don’t know how it works. It just … happened.”
“Liar!” She shoved me toward the stones. Guards moved to flank Brodie, blades drawn. “Touch them. Touch the stones and open the doorway.”
Philippe watched with his mother’s amber eyes, cold, calculating, curious. He looked at the stones like someone examining an interesting insect.
My hands shook as I approached the center stone.
The same stone I’d touched in 2025. The same stone that had somehow dragged me backward through three centuries.
What would happen if I touched it now? Would it send me back?
Would it trap me here forever? Would it do nothing at all, revealing me as a liar and sealing both our fates?
The stone was quiet as I reached out. Let my palm rest against the cold surface.
Nothing.
No light. No pull. No sensation of doors opening or time bending. Just cold stone under my hand and the widow’s frustrated breathing behind me.
“Why isn’t it working?” The widow’s voice rose, shrill and sharp. She turned to Philippe. “Check the symbols. Make sure everything is correct.”
“It’s all correct, Maman.” Philippe’s voice held no emotion as he examined the carvings. “Just like always.” He looked at me with those flat, cold eyes. “Perhaps she’s lying.”
“I’m not lying!” But my voice came out too defensive, too desperate. “I told you—I don’t control them. They brought me here, but I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I just … I just touched them. That’s all. I didn’t do anything.”
The stones had brought me here. To this time, where I’d met Brodie. To this plantation, this widow, this moment.
But I hadn’t chosen the stones. They had no claim on me.
“Why isn’t it working?” The widow grabbed my face, forcing me to look at her. “What are you? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said. And it was true. “I just touched them. That’s all. I didn’t do anything.”
“Liar!” She shoved me away from the stone, then pressed her own hands against it, running her palms frantically over the carvings. “You did something. You’re blocking it somehow. The stones always work. They always—”
Thunder cracked overhead.
Not distant rumbling, but immediate, violent, a sound that shook the ground beneath us. The sky boiled with clouds that hadn’t been there seconds before.
The widow froze, hands still pressed to the stone as it turned bright blue. “What—”
Lightning forked across the sky, illuminating everything in stark white light. And in that flash—there.
Standing at the garden gate.
The old woman from the beach. The Cailleach. Storm-gray eyes and a cloak that moved like living shadow—no, that was shadow, shifting and folding around her like cloth made of darkness itself.
“You,” the widow breathed. “But you’re—you can’t be—”
“I can be anywhere the stones are.” The Cailleach’s voice was thunder and ancient ice, the sound of mountains breaking. “And you have used my gift for abomination long enough.”
She stepped into the garden. With each step, the flowers seemed to brighten, the fruit growing larger on the trees, as if the garden itself recognized something older and more powerful than the widow’s corruption.
The stones hummed—not with hunger anymore, but with something else. Recognition. Relief.
“These are not yours to corrupt,” the Cailleach said. “They open doors for those who seek. They offer passage to those who choose. They do not feed vanity. They do not sustain murder.”
“I—” The widow’s elegant confidence cracked like old porcelain. She looked suddenly old, suddenly small, backing away from the stones with shaking hands. “I was only—”
“You were only thinking of yourself. Your beauty. Your power. Your immortality.” The Cailleach moved closer, storm clouds swirling in the sky above her head. “And for that, you will pay the price you’ve made others pay.”
“No.” The widow’s voice broke. “No, I didn’t—I never meant—”
The widow’s men rushed forward, but the Cailleach threw out a hand, and the wind blew them out of the garden, the gate slamming shut.
“You meant every death. Chose every victim. Fed the stones with blood and called it necessity.”
The Cailleach’s hand touched the center stone, and it blazed with light—not the sickly glow the widow had described, but something clean and pure, sharp as the dawn breaking. “Now the stones will take what you owe.”
“Please.” All the cruelty was stripped away, leaving only the desperate, frightened woman beneath. “Please, I’ll stop. I’ll never use them again. I’ll—”
“Too late.”
The Cailleach pressed her palm flat against the stone.
The widow’s scream echoed through the garden.
Light blazed from the stones—not a sickly glow, but something clean and terrible, bright enough to burn afterimages into my vision even through closed eyelids. The widow writhed where she stood, hands clawing at her face, her throat, her arms. And before my eyes, she aged.
Not slowly. Not naturally.
Her smooth golden skin cracked and withered like old parchment left in the sun.
Her glossy dark hair turned white, then gray, then fell away in clumps that scattered on the wind.
Her straight spine curved, her shoulders hunched, her strong hands became skeletal claws.
The amber eyes that had watched me with such cold calculation sank deep into her skull, milky and confused.
All the youth she’d stolen through twenty years of murder was stripped away in seconds. The beauty she’d maintained through blood, gone. The stones took back every year, every life, every drop of power she’d claimed.
She collapsed at the base of the stones. No longer the elegant widow who’d bought Brodie like property, who’d threatened us with civilized smiles and casual cruelty. Just a withered old woman, too weak to stand, staring at her skeletal hands with dawning horror.
I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t process what I’d just witnessed—justice, yes, but the kind that left you hollowed out inside. The kind that showed you exactly what evil looked like when it was stripped of its elegant mask.
“Maddie.” Brodie’s voice was rough and careful. His hand was on my arm, warm and solid. “Breathe.”
I dragged in air. Realized I’d been holding my breath, my lungs burning.
The Cailleach looked at the widow with something that might have been pity if it wasn’t so cold. “The stones remember. Magic knows its debts.”
Then she turned to face us fully, and I saw the weight of the centuries in her storm-gray eyes. “She is finished. The garden is cleansed. The stones will claim no more victims.”
“What about him?” Brodie nodded toward Philippe, who stood frozen at the garden’s edge, staring at his mother’s withered form with an expression I couldn’t read. Not horror. Not grief. Just … calculation.
“The boy’s path is his own to choose,” the Cailleach said. “Magic cannot force righteousness, only punish corruption. What he becomes is his decision.”
Philippe’s gaze shifted to us. Then, slowly, deliberately, he smiled. His mother’s smile, on a child’s face.
“My mother has fallen gravely ill,” he said, his voice carrying the same cold calm. “Malaria, I think. How tragic. As her only heir, I will of course ensure she receives the best care.” His eyes glittered. “In her chambers. Where she can rest. Quietly.”
He was going to lock her away. Take control of the plantation. Become everything she’d been, but worse because he’d learned from her mistakes.
Brodie moved toward him, but the Cailleach raised one hand. “Let him go. His choices will find him soon enough. Yours lie elsewhere.”
Philippe turned and walked away, calling to the guards to pick up his mother. Faces pale, they obeyed.
Leaving us alone in a garden that should have been paradise but had witnessed horrors for decades.
“Come,” the Cailleach said, gesturing toward the path that led away from the stones. “This place needs time to heal. And you both need to leave before the boy decides you’re a threat to his new power.”
Brodie helped me stand. My legs shook but held.
Some endings you had to witness. But you didn’t have to watch them forever.
We followed the Cailleach out of the garden, leaving Duncan’s name and all the others carved into stone and earth. A memorial along with a warning. A promise that someone finally had borne witness to what happened here.
And as we walked away, the first drops of rain began to fall.