Master of the Highlands

Page 3

All those years at work and she had never even made any real friends. The MBA types blurred together in a sea of khaki and navy blue, people distinguishable mostly by which color BMW they chose or whether they hung Stanford or Harvard pennants in their offices.
There was one guy she saw for a few months last spring—a computer programmer who was a bit on the nerdy side. It was pleasant enough, until he got transferred to the corporate headquarters in Boston. Somehow the topic of Lily putting in for her own transfer never came up, and the relationship fizzled as blandly as it had begun.
Reflecting on her career, she was left with a sour taste in her mouth. Years of denying herself a life, and for what? A pile of worthless stock options?
And she ’d done it at the expense of the one person in the world whom she truly loved and who truly loved and understood her. All the sacrifices her grandmother had made, and the only way Lily had ever repaid her was to become so consumed by some meaningless job that she prioritized Gram right out of her life.
She replayed in her head all the vacations that were cut short by her demanding schedule. All the times she put off returning Gram ’s call for a day or two, caught up as she was in some work-related project. All of Gram’s home-cooked dinners she backed out of, wanting instead to stay late and catch up on e -mail.
She had even been too busy to properly mourn her Gram ’s death.
At the time, Lily had a thousand ways to justify it to herself. She had been the lead on a creative pitch to the board members, asking for one last round of funding to save her company. The meeting happened to be the day after Gram’s funeral. Lily rationalized that Gram would’ve wanted her to press on with her life, especially as this was a prized task she’d been handed.
So she hadn’t even taken a day to grieve.
Now the only people Lily had left in her life were a mother and stepfather who were veritable strangers and a handful of college buddies she played phone tag with every six months or so.
Lily wadded up the tartan blanket she ’d brought to insulate her from the damp Scottish hillside, shoved it into her pack, and got to her feet. Spinning slowly around, she sought her next landscape subject. A shift in focus might be just the thing to clear her mind. If only one of those stately bucks that roamed the hillsides would stand still long enough for her to sketch. She ’d even settle for a shaggy old Highland cow.
Spying what looked like a small footpath in the distance, Lily set off down a particularly rough hillside. Although she was headed away from her cottage, she figured that the best way to get out of her own head would be to take a brisk hike. She could do with a little adventure, and if she got lost, the mountains and the loch would serve as a reference point to get her back by dark.
She smiled when she caught herself humming a tune that she hadn’t thought of since she was young. Whenever Lily had a hard time falling asleep as a child, her grandmother would stroke her hair and sing her favorite lullaby, with words that had passed down through generations of Gram’s own Clan MacMartin, telling of a fairy lad mysteriously come to Lochaber and made a hero. Lily would listen in wonder to the story she knew better than any other, hearing it as if for the first time. Or sometimes she would just drift off to sleep, hearing only the mesmerizing lilt of her grandmother’s voice.
She could hear that voice in her head now, Gram ’s rich alto brogue, as clear to her as if it had just been yesterday.
Regardless that she had sung the song hundreds of times, Gram would always begin the same: “My wee bonny bàn, now here’s a tale of a young lad, bookish but braw he was”—Lily smiled at the memory of Gram and how she ’d always elongate the word braw into an extended crescendo “— your long- ago cousin on the MacMartin side. ” As if any family had existed for the elderly woman other than her own Clan MacMartin.
Then she’d always stroke Lily’s hair, slowly singing,
“He was a fey lad and not so old
With hair spun from rings of gold.
Upon Letterfinlay soil he did land,
Claiming he came from a future grand.
A MacMartin lad who knew no fear,
Clan Cameron took and held him dear.
“A sidhe lad
In red and green plaid
And charming to behold.
“One day tragedy learnt his name
In a skirmish with men in coats of flame.
To protect the laird whom he called his brother,
He gave a gift he could give no other.
On a bonny hill the lad met his ruin,
When he took a bullet meant for Sir Ewen.
“A sidhe lad
In red and green plaid
Died before he was old.
“The fearsome laird and his hounds did forgive
Any trespasses the fey lad did give.
For known as but a lettered young man,
He proved himself worthy of clan.
Honored is he until this day,
For a most precious price he did pay.
“Lochaber lasses still grieve for the lad, A MacMartin hero in Cameron plaid. ”
Lily took a deep breath, moved to see that very Lochaber land for herself. Tears stung her eyes as she thought of how happy it would have made Gram to stand once again on Scottish soil. Serenity washed over Lily, as if some imaginary force that had constricted her chest suddenly released. A feeling of connection overcame her. Shaking her head, she savored the paradox.
Standing on one of the loneliest spots on earth made her feel she ’d come home.
Chapter 3
A solid hour had gone by and Lily still couldn ’t find the right spot to round out the day’s drawing. She had followed the path down a steep incline, winding between large rocks, stopping every now and then to pick one of the tiny wildflowers that grew along the hills to press into her sketchbook, and worked her way along what she thought was the base of the hill that she’d perched upon all morning, the spot that had afforded her such a glorious panorama yet so many unsatisfying sketches. Stopping short, Lily looked back and realized that she had traveled much farther than the circumference of the original hill, and the valley she’d been hiking through had gradually narrowed into a deep gorge.
It was past noon and the sun was already starting to throw elongated shadows. Thanks to a rocky outcropping rising sharply above her, patches in the trail ahead were cloaked in darkness. Tenacious clumps of yellow brush forced their way up between the rocks at her feet, making the path jut out at precarious angles, while in other spots years of uncontrolled growth obscured it altogether, forcing Lily to slow her pace in order to pick her way along. She pulled her sweater tightly around her neck and told herself that it was merely a chill and not uneasiness that made her flesh shiver.
Just when she was about to curse her earlier expansive mood and all the sentimentality that had well and truly gotten her lost, Lily saw it. Just ahead on the right, set into the rock, so matter-of-fact, yet defying all logic.
A doorway.
She had been so focused on not stumbling along the uneven path, she hadn’t been paying attention to the rock formation that shadowed her, reaching higher as the trail narrowed. She studied it more closely now, and what had seemed like solid granite resolved into a pattern of hundreds of individual quarried rocks, stacked tightly, each unique shape wedged perfectly along the next to form a massive man-made wall reaching two stories high, and likely once as solid as bricks and mortar.
Blooms of lichen and moss that had seemed to protect it in a curtain of white and green were actually ravaging the ancient stone, working in tandem with gravity to wear down carefully ordered slabs of masonry into crumbling ruins. The mottled colors blended into the lush, dark greenery that was visible just within the doorway, and had camouflaged the entrance when viewed from afar.
Closer now, she saw it clearly. Its presence was announced by a massive lintel bisecting the rock. A disembodied breeze rustled the leaves of whatever plant life grew within, making the gateway seem to hum with a life of its own.
She knew the sensible thing would be to turn around while she could still backtrack along her original trail, but the artist in Lily clamored to discover something beyond the ordinary. A unique subject to inspire her long-neglected creative energies. Ignoring her better judgment, she veered from the path.
The doorway was wide but low, and Lily was forced to stoop as she carefully pushed her way through the ferns that shrouded the entry. The walls were staggeringly thick, and it took two steps to walk through the entrance. Although there was no roof overhead, it took Lily’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gray filtered light that illuminated the space in a surreal haze. The walls were actually curved to form a massive circular structure, and she wondered if she hadn’t stumbled upon the remains of a great tower or ancient broch.
The greenery that had been visible through the doorway was in fact an immense hedge. It clung close to the stone, curving to echo the shape of the rounded enclosure. Towering close to seven feet overhead, it filled Lily’s line of vision.
At first glance, the plant beckoned to her. Dark berries the size of cherries bobbed gently among bushy leaves fluttering lazily in the breeze. Flowers dotted the branches and the plant appeared decorated with small purple bells. Smiling, Lily stepped closer, thinking to pluck one of the happy blooms to press in her sketchbook.
Her hand froze in midair as nasty little aspects of the plant revealed themselves. The flowers, though purple, were a dingy shade like the color of a day-old bruise. The leaves were also drab, and laced with dark veins that eerily suggested a life force beyond that of a simple plant. But for the fruit that shone a deep black, the entire hedge was dulled by short, bristly down that only furthered the sensation that an otherworldly spirit pulsed within.
Lily tried to look through the greenery, but the plant was dense with immoveable gnarled branches, ancient and woody at the base, growing into fleshy outer limbs the color of rotten eggplant .
A thin path wound its way to her right and left, matted with loamy brown moss and remarkably clear of roots or other debris. A few steps in, Lily noticed a gap in the plant. She had almost missed it, as the opening merely revealed more of the same unending green shrubbery. She leaned on one foot to look in and caught her breath. Long corridors split off to either side, off of which were more openings, which she assumed led to even more corridors, like a colossal labyrinth. She had seen pictures of gardenmazes when she ’d studied European architecture in college, but the quaint, whimsical topiaries found in