The Locket of Dreams (3 page)

Nell was lying curled up, whimpering in pain. Her face was white and icy cold. Her dress and hair were saturated.

Alexander Mackenzie leapt from his horse.

‘Och, my darling, what have you done?’ he whispered softly.

He felt her forehead and ran his hands over her arms and legs, gently feeling for damage. He tenderly lifted her head and removed the petticoat pillow.

‘Duncan, do you have your knife?’

‘Aye, my laird.’

He used the knife to cut the petticoat into a wide strip to make a sling to immobilise Nell’s arm.

Nell winced and shuddered but barely opened her eyes. As her father removed his jacket and covered her, Duncan quickly followed with his rough wool coat.

Charlotte shivered with wet and cold and anxiety. A trickle of water ran into her collar and down her spine.

‘Papa, will Nell be all right?’ she asked tremulously.

‘I think she will survive,’ he reassured her. ‘Let us get her back home and in front of the fire.’

Laird Mackenzie carefully gathered Nell up into his arms, avoiding her injured side, and strode off towards the road, followed by the subdued and damp riders. They were soon met by Angus bringing the carriage.

While Laird Mackenzie and Duncan struggled to make Nell comfortable, Charlotte went to stand by Angus, burying her cold, wet fingers in the carriage horse’s mane.

‘Is Bess all right, Angus?’ Charlotte asked in a small voice.

‘Aye, but ’tis a wonder she was no’ hurt as well,’ Angus muttered. ‘What were ye lassies thinking? And more than likely ’twill be me that gets a licking o’er your antics, no’ ye.’

Charlotte looked at him imploringly, her eyes wide with shock.

‘I am sorry, Angus. I did not mean for you to be in trouble.’

‘Och, Miss Charlotte,’ he whispered. ‘I were only jesting. Do no’ fret, lassie, Miss Eleanor will be fine, ye’ll see.’

Laird Mackenzie called to Charlotte impatiently from the carriage, cradling Nell’s head in his lap. Charlotte scrambled into the vehicle beside him.

‘I am very sorry, Papa,’ Charlotte cried impetuously, clutching her father’s sleeve with both hands. ‘I did not mean for Nell to be injured; and please, please do not punish Angus. He did not know we were going riding. We crept out while he was wheeling the stable waste out to the kitchen garden.’

Laird Mackenzie gazed carefully at his eldest child. He loved her dearly but was sorely worried by her mischievous streak.

‘I should punish Angus with a good lashing,’ Laird Mackenzie declared. ‘One of Angus’s jobs is to look after you girls while you go out riding so that you are safe. A thrashing will teach him to remember his responsibilities; and his punishment will remind you to behave as befits your rank.’

Charlotte sobbed, her face pale and streaked with tears.

‘Please, no, Papa,’ Charlotte begged. ‘I promise we will never ride out without Angus again.’

‘You are not a crofter’s urchin,’ Laird Mackenzie continued sternly. ‘You are a Mackenzie of Dungorm, and that role brings with it much responsibility. We must look after every person, every animal, every plant and every clod of earth upon this land.’

Charlotte nodded slowly, her face grave.

‘I think it is time you learnt about this responsibility,’ Laird Mackenzie added. ‘Tomorrow you can ride with me around the estate to study what is required of the Mackenzies of Dungorm.’

‘Yes, Papa,’ murmured Charlotte, her eyes aglow with pleasure at the thought of riding with her beloved papa. ‘But what about Angus?’

Laird Mackenzie pulled her to him and kissed her forehead gently. ‘Angus will suffer a severe tongue lashing from Duncan, but I trust he will not be harmed.’

Soon after, the carriage trundled into the stable courtyard with Nell inside, wrapped in blankets and held in her father’s arms, with Charlotte huddled next to them. The grooms led Rosie and the laird’s tall hunter. A flurry of activity greeted their arrival.

An older woman, her grey hair piled under a lace cap,
darted from the front door wringing her hands. ‘Where’s my puir wee bairn?’

‘Here she is, Nanny,’ replied Laird Mackenzie soothingly, ‘suffering nothing worse than a broken arm, I trust.’

Sophie floated above the scene, watching the bustling activity with interest. No-one seemed to be able to see her. She floated down to the carriage and watched Nell being lifted out and carried up to the house, Charlotte clambering after.

Charlotte turned suddenly and looked up as if she felt the stare of a stranger above her, but she looked right through Sophie as if she were a wisp of mist. Sophie ducked instinctively, shooting behind the carriage and hiding.

Charlotte hurried after her sister, her shoulders hunched with misery. Sophie did not follow but watched in fascination at the activity outside.

Horses were tied to grooming bars, unsaddled, brushed and combed; their hooves were picked; then they were led into the cool darkness of the stables. Sophie could not resist stroking Rosie, her grey flanks wet with sweat. Rosie rolled her eyes in fear and sidled away from Sophie, snorting and shivering.

‘Whoa, bonnie girl,’ soothed Angus. ‘Are ye seeing wee ghaisties again?’

Sophie’s attention wandered from the stable yard to the house itself. She decided to explore, her body following her mind’s suggestion by zooming through the air, around the corner of the house and round to the front.

The house was grand and huge, a rectangle of warm,
golden stone. Rounded turrets guarded each corner, topped with grey slate roofs. Wide, gracious windows overlooked the expanse of lawns, hedges and flowerbeds rolling down to the grey waters of the loch.

From here, the view of the loch and island was spectacular, the partially ruined keep of the castle soaring against the leaden sky. Sophie flew towards the island, skimming above the water, droplets of salt water soaking her nightdress.

She floated above the tumbledown rocks of the castle ruins, choked with weeds, and spiralled around the tower keep, climbing higher and faster so the golden stones blurred. Then she was speeding up through the grey clouds, the mist damp and clammy in her nostrils, through the black tunnel, back to the warm cocoon of her own bed.

The next morning Sophie woke early, her dream vivid in her memory. She jumped out of bed eager to tell Jessica about it. The locket bumped against her chest. Quickly she took it off and slipped it back inside the wooden chest. Her hands felt sticky and sweaty.

‘Jess,’ called Sophie softly. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Mmmm?’ answered Jessica sleepily.

‘I had an amazing dream last night,’ Sophie continued. ‘I dreamt about Scotland and Charlotte Mackenzie and the castle of Dungorm.’

Jessica rolled over, her eyes slowly focusing on her sister.

‘And Charlotte’s sister Nell fell off her pony and broke her arm.’

‘Sophie?’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s that all over your nightdress?’ asked Jessica, pointing at Sophie.

Sophie looked down where Jessica had pointed. There was a large splash of what looked like dried mud. Sophie picked at it in shock, the mud crumbling off beneath her nail.

‘It’s mud,’ Sophie answered in surprise.

‘How did you get mud all over your nightie?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sophie turned her right hand over to examine the dried flakes of dirt.

Then she noticed something else. Her hand was covered in short white hairs. She sniffed her hand. The smell was unmistakeable: salt, sweat and horse. Her hand was sprinkled with fine white horsehairs. Sophie sat down suddenly on the edge of Jessica’s bed.

‘I dreamt I could fly,’ she finished in wonder.

‘That’s nice,’ Jessica muttered, rolling over and pulling the pillow over her dark head. ‘But why did you have to wake me up to tell me that?’

All day Sophie kept having flashbacks to her ‘dream’ of the night before. Had it been a dream? It had seemed so real. Yet she could fly and no-one could see her, as if she were a ghost.

The mud on her nightdress was definitely real, as were the horsehairs on her hand. But they couldn’t be; it wasn’t possible to travel back in time.
How had it happened? Could it somehow have been the old locket? Was it magic? Could it happen again?

Nonnie had taken the girls out shopping, then for afternoon tea to her favourite café. Jessica was chattering nonstop, telling Nonnie about her friends at school and a trick they had played on the music teacher.

‘Sophie?’ asked Nonnie, interrupting Sophie’s reverie. ‘Are you all right? You’ve hardly said anything all afternoon, and you haven’t eaten a morsel. Are you worrying about your father’s job?’

Jessica stopped eating her banana cake, dropping her fork with a clatter.

‘No. I mean, yes,’ replied Sophie, her mind reluctantly switching back to the present.

Sophie thought of the last few months, when their world had been turned upside down. She didn’t really want to think about it. She smiled brightly at Nonnie and Jessica. ‘Did Jess tell you she scored an A for her science project, building a boat out of recycled material?’

‘I made the hulls out of plastic bottles, lashed with twine, and the sails out of plastic shopping bags,’ added Jess, bouncing up and down. ‘We had to race the boats across the ocean pool at Manly and mine won by metres. It ran over Lucy’s boat and sank it.’

That evening Sophie hurried through her dinner, brushed her teeth, changed into her freshly washed nightdress and kissed Nonnie goodnight.

‘Ready for bed already?’ laughed Nonnie, hugging her tight. ‘That’s not like you, Sophie darling. You must be exhausted. What about your usual litany of excuses?’

‘I do feel tired tonight,’ Sophie fibbed, her heart pounding with excitement.

Nonnie frowned, feeling Sophie’s forehead with her hand.

‘Do you feel all right, darling? You look a little flushed. I hope you’re not coming down with a fever or something.’

‘No, I’m not sick. Just a little tired; it’s been a busy day,’ Sophie assured her grandmother, not wanting her to worry.

Sophie hugged Nonnie again and raced to her room. She opened the chest, took out Charlotte Mackenzie’s locket
with trembling fingers and slipped it around her neck and inside her nightdress.

She climbed into bed. Jess came racing in after her and bounced up and down on her bed.

‘What should we do tomorrow?’ begged Jessica. ‘Nonnie says we could go and see a movie, and we haven’t been to the movies for
months.
We could see that new spy film, or the 3D one, although I think Nonnie would rather see that boring one. What do you think? Or we could go to Chatswood, or the library, or if it’s a beautiful day we should really go to the beach.’

Sophie hid her head under the pillow in frustration.

‘I’d like to go to sleep, if you would just stop talking,’ groaned Sophie impatiently.

‘
Sophie
,’ complained Jess. ‘This is important.’

‘Why do you have to be
so
annoying
all
the time?’ asked Sophie, glaring at Jess.

‘I’m not annoying, I just asked you a simple question about going to the movies,’ huffed Jess. ‘You’re the one who’s being annoying.’

‘Could you just be
quiet
?’ barked Sophie, turning her head to the wall. Jessica threw her pillow at Sophie, hitting her on the back. Sophie threw it back again forcefully, hitting Jess square in the face.

‘Yow,’ yelled Jess, rubbing her screwed-up face. ‘That really hurt.’

‘Well, you threw it first,’ retorted Sophie, a trifle guiltily. ‘If you’d just left me alone, it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘
Sorry
,’ grumbled Jess, turning her back and pulling off her jeans. ‘
Princess Sophie
needs her
beauty
sleep.’

‘Hmmph,’ snorted Sophie, rolling over and hitching up the doona.

Sophie tossed and turned, trying to forget her irritating spat with Jessica and make her mind slip into sleep. She thought about Charlotte and Nell, and the contents of the box.
Where did the box come from? Was Nell all right after her fall?

Of course, sleep took a long time to come. Finally she felt the familiar sensation of her mind slipping and sliding away from consciousness down towards the comforting darkness of slumber.

The light was pale and soft, the sun sailing slowly through a cloud-scudded sky. Down below, Sophie could see a small dinghy being rowed by Angus, the stableboy she recognised from last night, or was it yesterday?

In the boat were a number of passengers, who Sophie recognised as Charlotte, Nell with her arm in a sling, the Laird of Dungorm, Flossie the dog and a striking woman holding a green parasol to shade her pale face. Between them were a huge wicker basket and a pile of tartan rugs.

Sophie swooped down on a gentle breeze and followed the boat, scrutinising each of the passengers in excited curiosity.

Flossie the dog saw Sophie’s fluttering white nightdress and barked loudly, leaping to her paws to stand in the stern of the boat, one ear pricked and one ear flopping over her left eye.

‘Shh, Flossie,’ soothed Charlotte, patting her thick ruff of fur. ‘What can you see, a seagull?’

Flossie wagged her tail but continued to stand watch in the boat, her hackles raised. Sophie dropped back a little, not wanting to antagonise the black-and-white dog.

The two girls in the boat wore bonnets trimmed with coloured ribbon, white dresses that reached their mid-calves and had long full sleeves, black stockings and buttoned-up boots. Nell had her arm cradled in a sling but seemed quite recovered from her ordeal.

‘Mama, look, a seal,’ called Charlotte, pointing into the loch.

A small brown face with twitching whiskers peered at the boat, its brown eyes curious and alert. The seal glided towards the boat, on its side, one flipper raised in the air like a sail. It splashed the water hard with its flipper, sending droplets of water flying towards the boat, then dived under the hull and disappeared.

‘I wonder if that’s a selkie,’ cried Charlotte. ‘You know, a sea person hidden in a sealskin. Nanny tells us stories about selkies all the time.’

Alexander Mackenzie snorted in disapproval. ‘Nanny fills your head with too many fairytales,’ he retorted, but his smile was indulgent.

‘Alexander,’ reproved the girls’ mother gently, ‘Nanny is a wonderful woman and a great help.’

‘Eliza, the girls are old enough to have a proper governess now,’ Alexander replied, obviously repeating a well-worn argument. ‘A governess who will not fill their heads with nonsense.’

Eliza sighed, stretching her back.

‘We have discussed this before, Alexander,’ she said evenly. ‘The last governess knew hardly more than the
girls do. She taught them nothing but needlework, dance steps and pianoforte.’

Charlotte and Nell rolled their eyes at each other, pulling faces at their shared memory of the governess.

‘At least I can teach them most things they need to learn,’ Eliza continued. ‘It is important in this day and age for girls to be well educated. When they are older, they will go away to school, a good school. But until then I will direct their education myself.’

The Laird of Dungorm smiled at his wife lovingly, admitting defeat.

‘Let us not argue about this on such a beautiful and special day,’ Eliza said, smiling at Charlotte and squeezing her hand.

‘Yes, it is my birthday,’ crowed Charlotte, tossing her copper ringlets.

‘As if we could have forgotten,’ replied Nell, pulling a face. ‘You must have mentioned it at least fifty times today.’

‘So, for my darling girl’s twelfth birthday we will have a delicious picnic on Eilean Dungorm with all your favourite treats, a sail on the loch and a special supper, and have I forgotten something?’ asked her father with a mock frown.

‘Presents!’ squealed Charlotte, pointing to a mysterious bundle partially hidden by the rugs in the bottom of the boat.

‘Charlotte, not so wild,’ reproved Eliza mildly. ‘Remember, you are a lady and should behave like one now you are a very grown-up twelve-year-old.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ agreed Charlotte dutifully, ‘but when can I open my presents?’

Eliza laughed, shrugging her shoulders gracefully. ‘After our picnic luncheon, you
enfant terrible
,’ she replied, kissing Charlotte on the cheek. ‘If you can wait that long.’

Angus the stableboy pulled strongly, riding a small wave up onto the shingle beach of the island, Eilean Dungorm. He held the boat steady while the laird climbed out and solicitously helped out Eliza. Eliza climbed out awkwardly, gathering up her heavy silk skirts.

Sophie flew ahead – her bare feet skimming the top of the waves, the water splashing her toes – then alighted on the beach.

Charlotte and Nell scrambled out, not heeding their father’s outstretched arm, and ran up the beach towards the ruins of the castle. Flossie the dog jumped out eagerly, woofing happily, and chased them up the shingle.

Angus pulled out a small anchor and secured the boat, then gathered up the heavy basket, parcel and rugs and slowly followed his master and mistress towards the ruins.

Angus spread one rug over a low stone wall that formed a perfect bench, then flung another over a flat slab that formed a natural low table.

‘Thank you, Angus,’ Laird Mackenzie said kindly. ‘We will not eat for a while. Could you keep a watch on Miss Charlotte and Miss Eleanor, please?’

‘Yes, m’ laird,’ Angus mumbled, bobbing his head, and scampered after the girls. Sophie floated along behind, looking around the island in awe.

Charlotte, Nell and Flossie were exploring the ruins of the castle, climbing over the piles of fallen rocks, brushing past tall pink hollyhocks and crushing yellow buttercups
under their boots. Sophie hung back, cautious of Flossie, who turned to stare at her constantly, barking loudly.

‘Look, Angus,’ Charlotte called, pointing to a bird soaring above the tower. ‘A sea eagle.’

Creeping up the side of one wall could be seen the ruin of an old stone staircase. Another staircase wound up inside the stone keep, crumbling and dangerous. The girls ran on towards the shore on the other side of the island, facing towards the west and the loch’s narrow opening to the sea.

Angus and Flossie, then Sophie, followed close behind. Angus picked up several flat pebbles and expertly skimmed them across the water, where they jumped six or seven times before sinking into the depths.

‘Can you show me how to do that, Angus?’ begged Charlotte, as her stones sank without a skip. ‘Please?’

Patiently Angus showed the two girls how to skim stones across the water.

‘Ye must practise,’ he encouraged quietly. ‘’Tis easy once ye know how.’

Sophie watched the children curiously. She wondered if she could skim a stone too. She bent down and touched a pebble. It felt cool and smooth under her ghostly fingers. Sophie tried to pick it up. Nothing happened. It was as if the tiny pebble weighed a tonne. It was immovable. Sophie gave up in annoyance.

Charlotte squealed and jumped with excitement when one of her pebbles skipped once before sinking.

‘Did you see the seal, Angus?’ asked Charlotte. ‘Do you think it could be a selkie?’

‘I do no’ know,’ Angus answered seriously. ‘My mam saw selkies when she was a lass.’

Angus sat down on the shale and stared over the loch as though seeing magical creatures no-one else could see.

‘Truly?’ asked Nell, plopping down beside him. ‘What did they look like? Was she frightened?’

Flossie stretched out with a sigh, while Sophie floated a little closer to listen.

‘It was here on Eilean Dungorm, one midsummer eve. She was gathering oysters and cockles for supper when she heard a strange sound o’ fighting and wailing.’

The girls leant forward in anticipation. Angus always told a good story. Charlotte wound her hand in the thick fur of Flossie’s ruff. Sophie sat down beside them on the shingle.

‘Mam crept behind the rocks as quiet as a mouseling,’ Angus continued. ‘And there on the beach she saw a family o’ seals squabbling and fighting. They were so busy crying and wailing that they did no’ spy my mam. She crept closer and then she saw the seals using their flippers to peel off their fur coats as easily as you would peel off your own jacket.

‘The seals tossed their dark fur coats in a pile and stretched and lolled in the sun. Under their sealskins they looked just like humans, the maids with long black hair and the menfolk strong and lithe, but with no human clothes.’

The girls squirmed in embarrassment at the talk of naked bodies, but Angus continued.

‘My mam crept to the pile o’ pelts and stretched out to touch one. She said they looked as soft and fine as French velvet. She had heard that if you take the pelt o’ a selkie they can ne’er go back to the sea.

‘In the old days the fisherfolk used to marry a selkie lass or laddie quite often by stealing their pelts and hiding them so they could no’ go back to the sea. I fancy my mam
thought she could catch a handsome selkie man and wed him.