IntoEternity (2 page)

She plummeted downward. A whispering voice sounded in her
head, growing louder and louder the farther Gusty fell until the annoying
murmuring seemed to be right next to her. Suddenly she could make out the sound
of a child whimpering in fear, calling to someone. Why didn’t anyone come to
comfort him? Surely his mother could hear how insistent the high-pitched voice
was.

Answer
him!

The words seemed to fill her head and she was not sure if
she had shouted them or someone else had. The boy needed help, why wasn’t
someone answering him? And then she decided she was dead and the boy had died
with her. It was the only possibility that made sense. But if she was dead,
would her head throb so painfully? Would her body feel as if it were one big bruise?

The whimpering had to be coming from the boy she had knocked
off the bicycle…or had it been a horse? Her mind really was having a hard time
functioning properly. She had managed to pull the young boy out of the path of
the speeding car. But had he been hurt? Why couldn’t she hear police sirens? It
was so quiet. Too quiet! Where were the sounds of street traffic or the people
on the sidewalk? The whimpering was the only thing she heard and it continued
until she could stand it no more.

Where was Michael?

She remembered him bellowing at her from the curb but his
voice had faded away as she had succumbed to the blackness that claimed her.
Gusty moved her head and a low groan broke from her lips. She must have hit
hard when she fell. Cautiously, tentatively, she moved first her hands and arms
and then her feet and legs. With a sigh of relief she found she had no broken
bones. She raised her hand and found the goose egg on her throbbing forehead.
With that and a few bruises, she had managed to survive being hit by the car
without any serious injuries.

“Lady, wake up! Please, lady, wake up! We have to hide!”

The boy again. He was there, kneeling at her side, pulling
at her arm frantically. The urgency in his tone had her opening her eyes and in
that moment she realized two very important things. The first, she was not on
the cold, hard pavement of a city street. She was in fact lying on the grassy
ground in a small clearing of a forest, staring up at the green foliage of
trees and the darkening blue of the sky above her.

The second thing she noticed was the young boy at her side
was indeed dressed in Scottish attire and his clothing was somehow vaguely
familiar to her. Though she did not recall the youngster having that wicked-looking
dagger sheathed at his belt when she had shoved him out of the way of the
speeding car. But then again, she had not been taking in such minor details when
she flung herself into the street to save him.

His clothing was a good replica of a costume representative
of the Scottish Middle Ages, but she wondered why a child of his age would
choose such odd attire or be permitted to carry such a weapon. His mother must
not have been paying attention to her son’s choice of accessories when he left
home.

Gusty had seen many pictures depicting period costumes in
the history books her grandmother owned. Grammy had used them to reproduce the
costumes for Gusty and Michael last year. The books had been part of an odd
collection of items stored away in her grandparents’ trunks. She had spent a
lot of time going through their possessions after they died and she had found
many things that puzzled her. Some had her staring in stunned disbelief, items
she could not bring herself to discuss even with Michael, not sure if she
should take them seriously herself. The only thing her brother had been the
least bit interested in were some Gaelic documents she had unearthed and shown
to him.

A small hand suddenly clutched at her sleeve, trying to pull
her up. Gusty came to her feet but dizziness nearly flattened her. She stood
for a moment on shaking legs, trying to get her eyes to focus. The boy grabbed
her wrist, pulling her forward. She stumbled along after him, listening to his
mutterings, not understanding a word he said. All of a sudden, beneath her feet
the ground began to vibrate. The sound of thunder brought her head around and
she attempted to see through the underbrush that surrounded them. The noise
sounded like…hooves. Horses’ hooves, beating on the hard ground.

Her gaze settled on the young boy at her side and she
finally understood he was trying to get her to hide before the riders came into
view. She took a few more steps on unsteady legs. He pulled at her arm and she
bent down as they made their way deeper into the undergrowth.

“Hurry!”

His frantic endeavors to get her to move faster had her
worried about from whom they were fleeing. But before she could question him,
he pulled her into a thick stand of trees and drew her down beside him.

“Shhhh!”

A moment later, the threat appeared. The riders zoomed past
and disappeared through the trees, but not before Gusty caught a glimpse of
them. The band of very large, wild-looking Scotsmen on horseback looked as if
they were out for blood. Whose blood, she did not even want to surmise. But by
the way the boy huddled close to her side, she guessed he might know. The men
all wore plaids similar to the one the boy had on but of a different color. The
child wore a kilt woven of a multitude of blue and green threads, while the
group who had just ridden by wore red and black.

The boy clutched her hand tightly. Gusty looked down and was
surprised by the very adult look in his eyes, despite his young age. She
quickly realized he was holding her hand to comfort her. She nearly smiled at
his gallantry.
What
a
little
gentleman!

“Thank you, little man, for saving me from the thundering
horde.” She smiled down at him.

At her words, the boy stared at her strangely. “Don’t worry,
lady. The Ross’ men will follow Caesar. They will not notice I am not riding
him until it is too late.”

His statement, made in heavily accented English, took Gusty
completely by surprise. For a moment she stared at him and then she shook her
head. Pain pierced her brain and she barely suppressed a moan as stars danced
before her eyes from her careless action.

“And Caesar is…?” Gusty gingerly touched the raised, damp
lump on her forehead, wondering just how badly she was injured. She drew back
blood-covered fingertips. She winced at the stinging and the blood but she didn’t
think the cut was too serious. Somewhere she had heard head wounds often bleed
excessively. It was a concussion that could cause her a problem. She just hoped
she didn’t have one.

The boy left her side to walk back onto the path the
horsemen had cut through the foliage. He glanced in the direction the riders
had taken and then back the way they had come. He looked worried as he came
back to stand before her.

“Caesar is my horse. Are you all right, lady?”

“Yes of course I am.” She paused at the look of disbelief on
his face then said, “Does it look that bad?”

She bent down so he could examine her forehead. With grubby
little fingers he prodded around a bit. She winced but he didn’t seem to
notice.

“Come. I know where there is a stream. You can wash off the
blood there. You don’t want that wound to become inflamed.”

“Thank you…” she replied dryly, pausing to give him time to
supply his name. He didn’t take the hint so she introduced herself. “My name is
Gusty.”

Again she waited for him to give his name but he just kept
walking. She followed him—for now she had little choice in the matter. Every so
often he stopped and cocked his head as if he was listening for something.

“You have an odd name. Are you from the Lowlands? Maybe the
Isles? Aye, I bet you’re from the Isles. Nobody but those crazies would name
somebody after the wind. It is too amusing.” He laughed until he snorted then
he snickered some more.

Gusty tried to ignore his rudeness as she followed behind
him for several minutes. Not only was he making fun of her name, he had not yet
supplied her with his. As he rambled on and on about the Isles she came to a
sudden stop.

“What do you mean ‘the Isles’?”

“Aye, you sound odd and you don’t speak the Gaelic. My
cousin doesn’t really like the Isle clans but he’d probably like you. You are
very beautiful and you saved my life, after all. But then I saved yours too. I
guess we’re even, lady.”

“Hold on a minute, kid. What are you talking about?”

“What?” The boy looked truly perplexed.

“I want to know what you are talking about.”

“We’re even. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and so
on. Alexander would say it was an even trade. But I will still take you back to
your holding.” He paused then added, “As long as it’s not the Ross’ holding.”

He started to walk away, seemingly impervious to the
troubled look Gusty gave him.

“What the hell’s going on here? Where am I?” She whispered
to herself. Something told her she might not be where she was supposed to be.
For the first time since she had opened her eyes back there on the grassy
ground she realized she wasn’t in Idaho any longer. She had no idea what had
happened but it looked as if she was not even on the same continent.

“You’re on the mainland of course,” the boy answered, obviously
having heard her quiet self-inquiry. “Come on.”

She refused to take another step until she got some answers.
“What mainland?” Her voice shook a bit as her composure slipped.

The boy turned and came back to stand in front of Gusty, his
hands on his slender hips, his head tilted at a rakish angle. He looked up at
her with the most beautiful, silver-colored eyes she had ever seen.

“You must have hit your head hard, lady.” He still didn’t
use her name. “You’re in the Highlands. On Ross land to be exact.”

“The Highlands? As in the
Scottish
Highlands?” She
could barely get the words out. Her stomach did a somersault and the throbbing
pain in her head was increasing by the second. Maybe she had hit her head
harder than she had realized.
Perhaps this is all just one of my bad dreams
,
she thought but then paused and shook her head in denial. She could almost
believe that was exactly what she was experiencing if it weren’t for the fact
her body hurt so much. All her bruises and scrapes ached and she was beginning
to pant. Her tongue darted out to wet her suddenly dry lips as she awaited the
boy’s answer.

“Aye, in Scotia. Lady, are you all right?”

For the first time since she had awakened, the boy’s
composure seemed to falter. Perhaps her nervousness was catching. Or maybe he
just didn’t want to be left out in the middle of the dark woods with a woman
who seemed to be out of her mind, had a bleeding head and who kept mumbling to
herself.

Gusty did not want to believe what was happening to her. She
gave her arm a hard pinch and squeaked in pain, but she needed something more
to prove to herself that she wasn’t just dreaming and this was not one of her
nightmares.

“Where’s that stream you were going to show me? I need some
refreshingly cold water.”

He gave her an odd look that said he thought she was crazy but
he just made a grunting noise in the back of his throat and motioned for her to
follow him.

“It is not far, a short distance. Just over the next
hillock.”

The short distance to the stream turned out to be farther
than he’d led her to believe. They walked for what seemed like an hour before
they finally came to a small creek that meandered its way through the
ever-darkening woods.

Gusty fell to her knees on the bank, hurting and exhausted.
The knock she had taken on her head left her with a headache and the damn boots
she had been so pleased with when she bought them were certainly not made for
hiking in the woods. Her toes felt pinched and she was developing blisters on
her heels. She reached down and swished her hands in the clear, inviting water
to wash some of the dirt from them and then paused.

What the…?

She turned her hand over and stared at her empty finger.
Oh
no!
Her mother’s ring was gone. When had she lost it? She had it on when
she was sitting on the bench waiting for Michael. But then…?

Gusty was too exhausted to think straight. With a sigh she
cupped her hands, splashed a good portion of water onto her face. The
chilliness of the water had her gasping and she began to shiver. The
realization of what was happening to her had her mind skidding about for an acceptable
explanation. But the truth seemed plain—the water would not feel so icy if this
were simply a dream. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Gusty
had to concede she was no longer in control of her life. For some unexplainable
reason she had been transported to another place and time. The famous lines
from an old movie came to mind and she whispered them as she stared at her
reflection in the stream.

“I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,Toto.”

Eyes bored into her back—the boy must’ve been watching her.
Any further conversation at the moment was beyond her capabilities so she
busied herself by washing her hands and face in the icy water. She did not want
to accept what was happening to her. The fact that she had somehow ended up in
the Highlands of Scotland in the company of a boy whom she had, only an hour
before, pushed out of the way of a speeding car was more than enough to swallow
right now. She still had to determine exactly what year she had landed in. If
the outfit the boy wore was anything to go by, she guessed she would soon learn
what it was like to live in the Middle Ages.

She needed time to gather her thoughts and form a game plan
to get her home.

A
pair
of
ruby
slippers
would
certainly
come
in
handy.