Chapter Six
The day’s exhaustion had been a mercy, a physical wall against the rising panic.
The trek, the climb, the sheer terror—it had all been a distraction from the larger, impossible truth.
But sitting now, in the quiet, the questions returned.
She’d eaten and had some water. And with the stillness came the gnawing, terrifying thought: she still had no idea what had happened to her.
“What were ye doing in the forest, lass?” he asked quietly.
She huffed a small laugh for his perfect timing. “I was just wondering the same exact thing.”
He turned a quizzical frown her way.
“Like I said—I think I said this earlier, I can’t remember now—I was in York, in town, on Museum Street. I was... talking with this guy I’d just met, was standing next to a bookstore and then... and then I wasn’t. I was standing in the woods, and you were running toward me.”
“But why are ye garbed as ye are?”
Garbed? “Do you mean why am I dressed like this? These are my clothes—I... well, my sister did once tell me this skirt was kind of matronly, but I like it. It’s comfortable.”
The silence stretched, thick with unspoken questions. He watched the darkened valley, his profile like something carved from stone. She took a breath, marshaling the courage to ask again, to find an answer that made sense.
“So, you said you were imprisoned because you fought for Scotland, but what does that mean? Fought for Scotland... how? In what capacity?” Or was fought for Scotland prison slang for some felony assault?
He considered her for a long moment. “Which of the words dinna ye comprehend?”
Her startled gaze swung sharply toward him at her side, not sure if he were trying to be humorous—he didn’t strike her as the type—or if condescension simply came naturally to him.
“All of them. Any of them.”
“Ye ken there’s a war?”
“A war?”
“Scotland is at war with England—surely, ye have been made aware.”
“I was not made aware—but that certainly seems like something I would have known. You’re just...” she paused, wondering if he were joking. “What are you talking about? Scotland and England have been... united, I guess, for what, hundreds of years, right?”
He stared at her, a hard, incredulous expression darkening his features.
“Ye said ye came to England—when was that?”
“Three days ago.”
“And yer... A-mer-i-ca—this place is far away?”
“What? America—United States.” What, like he’d never heard of it? “Yes, across the ocean, thousands of miles away.”
Bram nodded slowly, as though something had finally begun to make sense. “Then word hasnae reached yer homeland.”
“What word?”
“About the war.”
“I feel like we’re talking about two different things—or talking in circles. There is no war between England and Scotland—I would have heard of it, obviously. It would have been all over the news. I probably wouldn’t have been able to fly into London, would I?”
“Fly to London?”
“Oh, my God, why are you doing this? Pretending you don’t know what or where America is, pretending you’ve never seen a granola bar or a plastic water bottle or that you don’t know what fly means?”
“I dinna pretend to nae understand.”
“Are you like...” she paused and winced, but couldn’t stop from asking, “do you have some disability?—I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be rude, but how do you not know these things?
And for that matter, why are you dressed like Robinson Crusoe and why are those handcuffs so ancient looking?
I mean, your clothes are tattered, you’re barefoot, you have this long beard and this ridiculous chain—were you shipwrecked on a deserted island, and just...
washed ashore in England today?” Her tone strongly suggested sarcasm, but truthfully, she was beyond frustrated, since he seemed to be trying to annoy her.
“It’s like we’re having two completely different conversations,” she grumbled.
To which the man, after thinking about it for a moment, said quietly, “Aye.”
Anna scoffed her annoyance. “At least we agree on something.”
“I dinna understand half of what ye say,” he remarked next.
“I don’t understand half of what you say!” She sighed, blowing out a breath with some volume. “This is maddening.”
“Mayhap start at the beginning.”
“The beginning? Of what? Before today? Before I came to England? Before that? In ‘98 when I was born?”
“Born in ‘98?” he questioned and then decided, “Ye were nae born in ninety-eight.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was born in ninety-eight and why would you question that?”
He said with great skepticism, “That would mean ye’ve seen naught but seven summers?”
She stared, aghast. “What?” How could he—what was wrong with him? “That doesn’t even make sense. Oh, my God—were you marooned somewhere? Do you not even know what year it is?”
“I ken the year well enough—”
She spoke at exactly the same time. “It’s 2026. I was born in 1998. I’m twenty-eight.”
“—the Lord’s year, thirteen hundred and five.”
Anna froze, the impossible year hanging in the twilight between them.
His blue eyes glittered, his certainty absolute.
A wave of pity washed over her—the poor man was clearly unwell.
But a cold unease followed close behind.
She was alone with him, miles from anywhere.
Was he dangerous? The thought, which she’d pushed aside all day, now screamed for attention.
Or worse, was this some cruel, elaborate joke?
“What did you say?” she asked at last.
He repeated the same impossible year, slowly enough that there could be no question she had misheard him.
“Right,” Anna murmured, her voice sounding oddly small.
She tightened her grip on the long strap of her crossbody bag and rose quickly to her feet.
“Um, you know what? I have to—I should probably make use of um. nature’s privy,” she stammered, stepping out from beneath the shelter of the rock ledge. “I’ll be right back.”
“Dinna stray too far in the dark, lass,” he cautioned.
“Yep,” she called over her shoulder as she carefully stepped off the rock and onto the wet grass of the hillside. “Gotcha.”
She scrambled down the rain-softened slope, her feet slipping as her mind raced.
Thirteen-oh-five. The number was absurd, a historical date from a textbook.
He had to be delusional. But how could a man so clearly competent—so aware of his surroundings, so logical in his choices—be so completely detached from reality?
He navigated the wilderness with certainty, reacted to every sound, yet he believed he was living seven hundred years in the past. It didn’t fit. Nothing fit.
She moved farther down the slope until the overhang and the man—Bram, she kept having to remind herself, but now had to wonder if that was even his actual name—were hidden from view, then stopped beside a scrubby patch of brush, using the private moment less for its intended purpose than to gather herself.
She pressed a hand against her forehead and closed her eyes, trying to force the scattered pieces into some order.
Almost without thinking, Anna dug into her bag and pulled out her phone. She held the power button down and waited, but nothing happened.
“Come on,” she whispered, pressing it again and holding it longer this time.
The screen remained black, the battery probably dead. Anna stared at her own dim reflection in the useless screen before letting her hand fall.
Deflated, she shoved it back into her bag.
He’d said he fought for Scotland. He’d been imprisoned. He wore an iron shackle around one wrist and scars that spoke plainly of terrible treatment. He was underfed, exhausted, and wary of every distant noise. Perhaps those details, taken together, offered an explanation after all.
The thought started as a flicker, a desperate attempt to make it make sense.
A soldier. Captured somewhere? Held in some primitive camp where iron restraints and handmade clothes were the norm?
If he’d escaped recently, deeply traumatized, maybe his mind had just...
snapped. Maybe it clung to an imagined history because the truth was too horrific to face.
It was a stretch, but it could explain the scars, the shackle, the constant, hunted vigilance.
It could even explain why he thought seven centuries had simply vanished.
Anna had little experience with PTSD, but she was distantly familiar with it, enough to know that it did not always announce itself clearly.
The father of one of her former students had returned from Afghanistan outwardly capable, still able to work, drive, and care for his family, yet certain sounds could pull him abruptly into another place and time.
She remembered the boy telling her, with the solemn honesty of an eight-year-old, that his father sometimes woke convinced that he was still overseas.
Bram’s behavior was not the same, but the idea gave her something to hold onto.
A man could function, reason, and appear entirely in command of himself while some part of his mind remained trapped inside the trauma of his ordeal.
The thought should have terrified her—she was completely unqualified to handle this.
And yet, focusing on him felt easier than confronting her own impossible situation.
If she could fix him, just for a moment, she wouldn’t have to think about how she’d gotten from a city street to this hillside in the blink of an eye.
She could frighten herself senseless trying to understand her own problem, but what was the point? She had no answers.
Maybe she should—or needed to—stay with Bram until they found a road, a town, or anyone capable of summoning proper help.
She would get him to a hospital or a police station, have the shackle removed, and make certain someone contacted whatever family, regiment, or government agency might be searching for him.
She wouldn’t challenge him about the year again tonight, and she wouldn’t press him to abandon whatever belief currently allowed him to function.