Chapter Twenty-Five
Easing around an outcrop of rock, Evan scrambled upward to a rough ledge. From there, the ridge resumed, leveling out, then swerving and dipping—to one side a gap like a gorge, to the other, the soar of the mountain. He studied it, then turned to look at Catriona.
“Place your feet where I place mine. What holds me will hold you.”
She came up behind him, her skirt and plaid snapping and billowing in the wind. Evan led her over the spiny ridge and down into the gorge. Overhead, the clouds grew darker and heavier.
“Rain.” He felt the insistent push and moisture in every gust. “We’d best hurry.”
Moving ahead, he picked his way cautiously, balancing each step. She did the same. He felt a swell of pride, and love, too, warm and filling, to see her calm and brave.
“You might not like risk, lass,” he said, “but you manage it well. I may call you Catriona Dana. Brave Catriona.”
She laughed. “Your Gaelic is better than I thought.”
“I have a little,” he called.
“I thought you were still unhappy with me.”
He paused. In what needed done on the mountain, he had all but forgotten what seemed temporary and unimportant now.
“Never unhappy. I just wanted to feel I belonged in the glen, I think.”
“You do,” she said. “Very much. I was wrong to hold back.”
“So was I. Trust me, aye?” He reached for her hand.
Scrambling up the sharp incline composed of variegated rock coated with moss and dabbed with snow like patches of paint, he moved on with her.
The higher they went, the more he could feel the immense primeval power of the mountain.
Respecting that power was part of the secret, he realized, to finding harmony as well as safety up here.
With Catriona behind him, he felt again a deep need to protect her on her quest to find the crystal, and keep her safe all the way down and home again.
Pausing to catch his breath, he resisted the urge to look down and instead, he looked out and far away, along the mirrored sweep of the long loch and beyond.
A drop of rain spattered his hand, then more.
The clouds were so close that the air he breathed felt damp and soft.
Beside him now, Catriona took slow deep breaths and nodded to him.
“Shall we look in that great dark crevice?” he asked. “Seems a good place for fairies to store their finest crystals.”
“Aye so,” she said breathlessly, and they moved on toward the Black Notch.
The split in the lower part of the peak created twin cliffs, dangerous and dark and jagged, frosted with snow. Their path took them to the right side of the divide, where Evan knelt to peer into the towering cleft. Beside him, Catriona knelt, then gasped.
“Ach Dhia! I’ve never seen the inside so close.”
“It looks rather wicked,” he murmured.
The interior of the crevice seemed composed of raw black gneiss, craggy and slick in places, bristly in others.
Hundreds of feet deep, the two cliffsides plunged straight down.
Wind gusts whistled through the separation, a span of fifty feet or more.
The floor of snow-coated rubble hurtled downward at a precipitous angle to join the mountain face again.
“Did you come this far when you were here?” she asked.
“Fool that I am, I did. I managed to come partly up the other cliffside, then fell. I hit the bottom slope and finally landed on a ledge far below. Somehow, I made my way to the drover’s track, where you found me.”
“And I am eternally glad I did.” She sighed. “My brother died here.”
“Just here?” He stood, sat on a large rock, and pulled her down beside him.
“A bit farther down. He had fallen while attempting to scale the Notch. Finlay and my father found him days later. He was not as lucky as you,” she whispered.
He brought her gloved hand to his lips. “I am very lucky,” he murmured. The wind whipped past, blowing into his coat, ruffling her skirt, a gust strong enough to waver them where they sat.
He had so much to say, but there was no time for it now. He ached to tell her how much he loved her, that in falling from these cliffs, he had fallen into the rest of his life.
Time enough for that later. First, her quest. Then they would go home to start again in peace.
He leaned to kiss her, sitting near the top of their world, the place he wanted to share with her forever.
Now he knew that he could never sell Kildonan and Glen Shee.
His heart would never allow it. Somehow, he would find a way to resolve the debts.
Only his solicitors knew of his promise to support the families affected by tragedy when his bridge had collapsed years back.
His lawyers sent cheques regularly to three widows and their children, and he had set up bank trusts for them which would increase once the Kildonan debts were paid; he thought that would require selling land.
But he would find another way. The tragedy suddenly seemed very distant, as if it had happened to a different man. Yet it was still achingly important to him.
Perched on the crest of this strangely magical mountain, looking down into what seemed the center of the earth, he felt as if the great gash in his soul was finally healing.
Loving Catriona, easing the stubborn nature that he had used to protect his heart, he felt a miracle at work, like a light shining upon shadow to reveal what he had lost.
He kissed her again, felt her arms wrap around him, felt her forgiveness rinse over him. He drew back.
“Let’s find your fairy bauble,” he said, “and get down from this wicked height. I want to get you home, where we can be alone in a much more comfortable place.”
She gave a little weepy laugh. “We can do that. Flora said the fairy crystals exist only on Ben Shee, but I saw no more crystal clusters as we came up here.”
“I wonder.” He sank to his knees to peer into the abyss. “Those gneiss walls are the perfect bed for crystals—lots of creases and niches, eons old. Crystals seed themselves somehow to grow in such places, so it’s thought. It’s not well understood.”
Catriona knelt too, then flattened on her stomach to extend her arm down into the gap, groping with her fingers. “I think there are crystals here. I can feel them, but I cannot see them, or grab them. See if you can.”
He stretched his arm down too, and felt an encrustation of crystal growths along the creases and folds in the rock. His fingertips touched the delicate planes of crystals sprouting there. “I can get down there fairly easily.”
He sat up, took up the knapsack he had set aside, and pulled out a length of rope with an iron claw, similar to the ones Finlay had used to help the group along.
While Catriona watched—and protested—he knotted part of the long rope as a sling for his feet, tested and tied it, then pounded the serrated iron claw into a crevice in the rock just below the edge.
He was glad to be wearing thick tweed trousers for the day’s climb—he did not need a kilt billowing about him just now.
Shifting, he slipped over the side of the cliff, hanging fast to the rope. The wind buffeted and lashed at him. Catriona reached for him.
“Evan, don’t! It’s only a crystal. What if you fall?”
What if he fell? He regarded her, steady on the rope, an arm’s reach away from her.
“If I fall,” he said, “do not come after me, love. I will manage.”
Sliding down, half sinking, half clambering, he glanced into the black chimney beneath him and saw the risk of plummeting to his death. And he realized that in the past years, he had challenged himself to fall in different ways, different places.
Falling toward death, falling into love—either way, one could slip loose the knots the world imposed and find blessed freedom.
But he knew why he climbed, dived, fell, got up again.
People had fallen from the bridge he had designed, and for a long while after, he could not let go of the grief and remorse of that.
He sank lower, keeping a boot on the black rockface. The bridge materials had been faulty, the committee had informed him later. He was not to blame for flawed rivets and girders ordered in good faith and delivered in trust.
But he did blame himself. He had been unable to pull enough people from the water.
He had risked a dive from an immense height, not knowing if he could survive the jump, and he had done all he could.
Ever since, he had jumped and dived, climbed and fallen from bridges, mountains, lighthouses, and under the sea.
He looked up at Catriona and raised a thumb. Someday he would tell her more about the bridge, about those who had been lost, including friends who had died. He might even confess why he drove himself to climb the heights and dive the depths. He was constantly seeking challenge and forgiveness.
Only recently had he found what he sought, but in a most unexpected way. He had not found healing in challenges and danger. Somehow, he had found it in love.
Pushing away from the wall, he felt the slack in the rope feed over the edge. He felt the drop in his stomach and the lurch as the iron claw caught and held the rope. He swung for a few moments, then braced a foot against rock with a hobnailed boot and looked up.
Above, Catriona leaned over the edge, beautiful, pale, frightened.
He waved and set about looking for crystals—and saw them everywhere.
They glittered in the gloom, sparkling like diamonds against the dark stone.
Reaching out, he plucked a few free, snapping them with his fingers.
Wrapping them in a handkerchief, he tucked the bundle inside his shirt beneath vest and coat.
Moving along, he used the small axe to harvest more. They twinkled willingly into his hand, lovely, drusy things, coruscated and lustrous. Some were silky bits of clear stone, others had traces of color: purple amethyst, pale-brown Cairngorms.
But he had not yet seen what Catriona had climbed here to find—a crystal that glowed with an inner light. Pushing away, swinging a bit, he glimpsed a wink in the darkness like a star. A vertical crevice deeper than most that creased the rock.
Inside the niche, a cluster of crystals shone like a soft, tiny light. Finding a foothold on the jagged cliff face, he balanced there and extended his arm. The light glistened just past his fingertips.
Stretching deeper, he closed his fingers around the little glow and tugged. It came into his hand like a picked flower. Withdrawing his hand, he opened his fingers.
Luminous and lovely, it glowed like a perfect natural jewel.
Clear as glass, the crystal held another crystal inside itself.
A pink glow, like a perfect heart, a droplet of color in the clear stone that gave off a rosy light.
Phantom stones, he remembered these were called, and he knew they were rare.
Yet it had been sitting on its tiny ledge in the fairy mountain, waiting.
The fairies had been busy stashing their treasures away indeed.
He laughed softly and held it up toward the misty light coming from above. It was exquisite. He slipped it into his pocket and looked up.
Catriona was there, face and hands visible over the edge. She was not alone.
A man knelt beside her, with his hand on her shoulder.
“Kildonan!” Kenneth Grant called. “Come up.”