Page 8
The echo greeted her back.
She searched with her left hand against the rough wall and found a switch. A single electric bulb suspended from an arched ceiling illuminated the space, which resembled a dungeon, minus the iron grating and torture instruments. A pile of boulders and rocks rose to her right. Steel columns supported the ceiling.
Rogene shivered and huddled into her bolero.
To her left and straight ahead, the walls of rough stone and mortar were whole. Curious, she walked farther into the room, her heels sinking into the packed-earth floor. She held the edges of the bolero closed over her chest, but the wet cold crept into the marrow of her bones. Her knees shook, but she couldn’t say if it was from cold or from excitement.
With her eyes on the pile of stones, she approached it and went completely still. Among rubble, dirt, and sand, a carving on a flat rock caught her attention, and something else…
A handprint?
She gasped and her echo gasped with her. Sinking to her knees, she began clearing the rock. When the carving and the handprint were clearly visible, she tasted dust on her tongue. She realized she was touching her mouth with her dirty hand.
Light-headed, she felt the ground shift. Gently, she brushed the carving with her palm, every indent distinct against her fingers. There were three wavy lines and then a straight line and a handprint, just like the footprint on the inauguration stone of the Kings of Dál Riata in Argyll.
“Wow…” she whispered.
“Do ye ken what that is?” a woman said behind her.
Rogene jerked, lost her balance, and fell right on her behind. A woman in a green hooded cloak stood a few steps away from her.
Rogene sighed out. “Jesus Christ, you gave me a heart attack.”
The woman came closer and stretched her hand out. When Rogene accepted her hand, the woman pulled her to stand up.
“Sorry,” the woman said with a Scottish burr. “I didna mean to frighten ye. I always forget ye humans get so startled.”
Ye humans? She must be the castle worker and had probably gotten a bit too into her role or something.
“I’m probably not supposed to be here,” Rogene said.
“’Tis all right,” the woman said. “I dinna mind. My name is Sìneag, by the way. And ye are?”
“Rogene Wakeley.”
“Well, Rogene, ye found a fascinating stone.” Her eyes sparkled in the yellow semidarkness.
Rogene distantly wondered why a castle worker didn’t scold her for being in a prohibited area. Perhaps Sìneag was a bit more chill about the rules…and maybe this basement wasn’t as dangerous as it looked.
Sìneag lowered her hood, and Rogene marveled at her pretty pale face and beautiful red hair that cascaded in soft waves down her shoulders.
“’Tis a Pictish carving that opens a tunnel through time,” Sìneag said.
A tunnel through time? Rogene frowned.
“I’ve never heard of a time-travel myth,” she said. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, aye.” She nodded. “Very sure. The three waves are the river of time, and this line is the tunnel through it. A druid carved it.”
Rogene bent down and studied the lines and the curves. “Hm. It does look ancient. Picts, huh? So, between sixth and eighth centuries, probably.”
“Aye. That druid believed ye can fall through time and find the person ye’re truly destined to be with. The one person ye love. Do ye ken?”
Now Sìneag was clearly inventing things. Picts didn’t have written language, so they had no way of leaving such messages. The only tiny accounts of them came from the Romans and Christian monks, who wrote chronicles that were concerned with battles and wars. Not myths of romantic love.
“One romantic druid, huh?” she mumbled, not wanting to confront the woman.
“Aye. He was. This stone has always caused curiosity. When clan Mackenzie owned the castle in the fourteenth century, a certain Angus Mackenzie wondered what this carving could mean.”
