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Men were unloading nets full of fish—herring, from what she could tell. And then she remembered reading somewhere that Loch Duich, one of the three lochs that Eilean Donan lay on, was a major herring loch. Could her dream really be that specific? Yes, she knew a lot about history, but would she dream in such detail?

A drop of sweat snaked down her spine and chilled her as an icy gust of wind slammed into her. The old man helped her get out, and, by a sheer habit, she opened her clutch to pay him. There was her phone, and a tiny, elegant wallet with a couple of banknotes and credit cards. She licked her lips.

He didn’t look like he accepted credit cards.

She removed a twenty-pound banknote. That was probably much more than the fare was worth, but he had helped her get away from that would-be rapist. Besides, if generosity would make a difference in a dream, it was well worth it.

She held out the banknote, and he took it. He turned it in his hands as though he’d never seen anything like it in his life.

“Thank you,” she said.

He blinked and nodded, still looking baffled. She made her way down the jetty towards the village.

“Didna ye say ye were robbed?” the man mumbled after her, but she didn’t look back.

She wasn’t a great liar, that was for sure.

Her heels, which now had clumps of mud sticking to them, knocked against the wood as she walked. Fishermen stared at her and followed her with puzzled expressions and frowns, and she had an urge to put on a burlap sack that would cover her head to toe.

As she entered the village, the ground was even muddier, and she now was sinking into cold, soft muck. Her dressed was torn and stained with dank water and covered in mud—completely ruined. She sighed.

What was she going to do? If this was a dream, she needed to will herself to wake up now.

Come on, Rogene, wake up!

But she still saw the same gray stone houses with thatched roofs, the same people dressed in tunics and long, baggy dresses. She looked back. The castle on the island was still the same, too, and now she saw several birlinns—boats from the Western Islands of Scotland—at the water gate on the other end of the island, too.

’Tis a Pictish carving that opens a tunnel through time.

Oh, puh-lease.

She’d never heard or read about any myths like that. And her mom would have known.

Rogene was making her way through the busy streets. The mostly windowless houses were separated by small fences. Everywhere, people followed her with heavy, puzzled, and even antagonistic gazes.

But despite her skepticism, the farther she went, the more this felt like reality and not like a dream. There were too many details, too many things happening at once. And things were logical, whereas her dreams were often pure emotion with little coherence.

She made her way towards the church and discovered that it had a small marketplace. There stood carts and booths with vegetables; bread; candles; textiles; fresh, smoked, and salted fish; baked pastries; and even silver and iron jewelry. This must have been a rather big village, then. It did look bigger than the current Dornie.

Next to the church stood a priest dressed in a long black robe, with a simple rope belt around his waist and a coif of the same color. He was a man of fifty or so, with an almost bald head and a grayish beard. He was talking to a woman, but when his glance fell on Rogene, his eyes widened and he hurried to her.

“Child, my dear lass,” he said. “Are ye well?”

Rogene felt a sudden sense of relief that someone was taking a more caring interest in her.

“I’m fine. A bit lost.”

“Did someone harm ye? I ken the women of yer trade get harmed so often.”

Her trade? Another reference to her clothes? That was enough. This dream had to end, but she didn’t seem able to wake up.

“I was robbed on my way to Caithness,” she said. “That’s all.”

His soft brown eyes widened in astonishment, and she almost swallowed her tongue, suddenly aware that robbery wasn’t something one referred to as “that’s all.”

Part of her knew that—as crazy as it sounded—if she had indeed traveled in time, she had to be very careful and come up with something believable.

She knew she needed to present herself as a noble lady to be taken seriously. She heard that she had an accent when she spoke Gaelic, and she wondered if she could pass as a Lowlander.