“Sorry,” I said. I lay flat on the ground and closed my eyes, hoping I wouldn’t throw up. The sky was spinning in one direction, my stomach in the other.
“Away, dog!” Ian said.
I opened one eye to see what was going on, and saw Ian firmly shooing Rollo away from the skull, which I had insisted he bring with us.
Seen in daylight, it was hardly a prepossessing object. Stained and discolored by the soil in which it had been buried, from a distance it resembled a smooth stone, scooped and gouged by wind and weather. Several of the teeth had been chipped or broken, though the skull showed no other damage.
“Just what do ye mean to do wi’ Prince Charming there?” Jamie asked, eyeing my acquisition rather critically. His color had faded, and he had got his breath back. He glanced down at me, reached over and smoothed the hair out of my eyes, smiling.
“All right, Sassenach?”
“Better,” I assured him, sitting up. The countryside had not quite stopped moving round me, but the brandy sloshing through my veins now gave the movement a rather pleasant quality, like the soothing rush of trees past the window of a railway carriage.
“I suppose we ought to take him home and give him Christian burial, at least?” Ian eyed the skull dubiously.
“I shouldn’t think he’d appreciate it; I don’t believe he was a Christian.” I fought back a vivid recollection of the man I had seen in the hollow. While it was true that some Indians had been converted by missionaries, this particular naked gentleman, with his black-painted face and feathered hair, had given me the impression that he was about as pagan as they come.
I fumbled in the pocket of my skirt, my fingers numb and stiff.
“This was buried with him.”
I drew out the flat stone I had unearthed. It was dirty brown in color, an irregular oval half the size of my palm. It was flattened on one side, rounded on the other, and smooth as though it had come from a streambed. I turned it over on my palm and gasped.
The flattened face was indeed incised with a carving, as I had thought. It was a glyph in the shape of a spiral, coiling in on itself. But it wasn’t the carving that brought both Jamie and Ian to peer into my hand, heads nearly touching.
Where the smooth surface had been chipped away, the rock within glowed with a lambent fire, little flames of green and orange and red all fighting fiercely for the light.
“My God, what is it?” Ian asked, sounding awed.
“It’s an opal—and a damned big one, at that,” Jamie said. He poked the stone with a large, blunt forefinger, as though checking to ensure that it was real. It was.
He rubbed a hand through his hair, thinking, then glanced at me.
“They do say that opals are unlucky stones, Sassenach.” I thought he was joking, but he looked uneasy. A widely traveled, well-educated man, still he had been born a Highlander, and I knew he had a deeply superstitious streak, though it didn’t often show.
Ha, I thought to myself. You’ve spent the night with a ghost and you think he’s superstitious?
“Nonsense,” I said, with rather more conviction than I felt. “It’s only a rock.”
“Well, it’s no so much they’re unlucky, Uncle Jamie,” Ian put in. “My Mam has a wee opal ring her mother left her—though it’s nothing like this!” Ian touched the stone reverently. “She did say as how an opal takes on something of its owner, though—so if ye had an opal that belonged to a good person before ye, then all was well, and you’d have good luck of it. But if not—” He shrugged.
“Aye, well,” Jamie said dryly. He jerked his head toward the skull, pointing with his chin. “If it belonged to this fellow, it doesna seem as if it was ower-lucky for him.”
“At least we know nobody killed him for it,” I pointed out.
“Perhaps they didna want it because they kent it was bad luck,” Ian suggested. He was frowning at the stone, a worried line between his eyes. “Maybe we should put it back, Auntie.”
I rubbed my nose and looked at Jamie.
“It’s probably rather valuable,” I said.
“Ah.” The two of them stood in contemplation for a moment, torn between superstition and pragmatism.
“Aye well,” Jamie said finally, “I suppose it will do no harm to keep it for a bit.” One side of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Let me carry it, Sassenach; if I’m struck by lightning on the way home, ye can put it back.”
I got awkwardly to my feet, holding on to Jamie’s arm to keep my balance. I blinked and swayed, but stayed upright. Jamie took the stone from my hand and slipped it back into his sporran.
“I’ll show it to Nayawenne,” I said. “She might know what the carving means, at least.”
“A good thought, Sassenach,” Jamie approved. “And if Prince Charming should be her kinsman, she can have him, with my blessing.” He nodded toward a small stand of maple trees a hundred yards away, their green barely tinged with yellow.
“The horses are tied just yonder. Can ye walk, Sassenach?”
I looked down at my feet, considering. They seemed a lot farther away than I was used to.
“I’m not sure,” I said, “I think I’m really rather drunk.”
“Och, no, Auntie,” Ian assured me kindly. “My Da says you’re never drunk, so long as ye can hold on to the floor.”
Jamie laughed at this, and threw the end of his plaid over his shoulder.
“My Da used to say ye werena drunk, so long as ye could find your arse with both hands.” He eyed my backside with a lifted brow, but wisely thought better of whatever else he might have been going to say.
Ian choked on a giggle and coughed, recovering himself.
“Aye, well. It’s no much farther, Auntie. Are ye sure ye canna walk?”
“Well, I’m no going to pick her up again, I’ll tell ye,” Jamie said, not waiting for my answer. “I dinna want to rupture my back.” He took the skull from Ian, holding it between the tips of his fingers, and placed it delicately in my lap. “Wait here wi’ your wee friend, Sassenach,” he said. “Ian and I will fetch the horses.”
* * *
By the time we reached Fraser’s Ridge, it was early afternoon. I had been cold, wet, and without food for nearly two days, and was feeling distinctly light-headed; a feeling exaggerated both by more infusions of brandywine and by my efforts to explain the events of the night before to Ian and Jamie. Viewed in the light of day, the entire night seemed unreal.
But then, almost everything seemed unreal, viewed through a haze of exhaustion, hunger, and mild drunkenness. Consequently, when we turned into the clearing, I thought at first that the smoke from the chimney was a hallucination—until the tang of burning hickory wood struck my nose.
“I thought you said you smoored the fire,” I said to Jamie. “Lucky you didn’t burn down the house.” Such accidents were common; I had heard of more than one wooden cabin burned to the ground as the result of a poorly tended hearth.
“I did smoor it,” he said briefly, swinging down from the saddle. “Someone’s here. D’ye ken the horse, Ian?”
Ian stood in his stirrups to look down into the penfold.