I chuckled. “I do like the sound of that, but I would have died.”
“Nae, I could hae come with the same settings, I could hae come but with the knowledge of how tae rescue ye. Instead I was cocky and impulsive. I had the chance tae strap on a parachute, tis what they are called?”
I nodded.
He finished, “Instead I jumped without one.”
“Oh, my love, you are feeling it.”
“I am, tis why I canna listen tae ye cry. Our bairn need ye and I hae taken ye away from them.”
I reached for his hand, entwining our fingers between us, our hands resting on the tent floor of a very wrong century. “I don’t know what to say.”
He shook his head. “I warned ye when we spoke of getting married, that tae love me was a death sentence.”
I gave him a sad smile. “You sir, are being very dismal. You did say that, but I married you anyway, and in our vows we promised to love each other till death do us part. Everyone has that in their vows. If you manage to stay married that is the final outcome, the death of one or the other. Now that I think about it the whole thing is pretty fucking dark, but also there’s nothing special about you. I told you I would love you until death do us part and there’s nothing about that that I regret.”
“Ye are missin’ yer bairn.”
“Yeah, I am. She’s in one century, I’m in the other. These things aren’t making me special either. History is fucking full of mothers who have empty arms and bairn who are orphaned. My heart is broken. But guess what? I’m alive, she’s alive. We’re just in an impossible situation. There is grieving to be done. Grief has highs and grief has lows. But I promise you, my grief about Isla isn’t blaming you.”
We sat very still and just sat thinking.
“Ye daena blame me for strandin’ ye here?”
I stared off into space for a moment, thinking about it. Then I said, “My silence was me checking. I checked all the corners of my heart, room by room. There is no blame hiding anywhere there, not tucked in drawers, not under the floorboards. None. Do you know what is there?”
“Nae.”
“A bed, right in the middle.” My voice cracked. “And Isla is sweetly sleeping in the center and you and I are there beside her and Archie is climbing across us saying, ‘Wake up Da!’ And you and I have our fingers entwined and we are smiling at each other and that smile is always our promise— do you know what the promise is?”
“I want ye tae remind me.”
“That we will always do our best to come home.” I smiled at him. “Were you trying to bring me home?”
“Aye.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t blame you my love, not at all. And Isla is alive, Archie is safe. And if we have to keep waiting, then we will keep waiting, and if we never get to go home, well then...” I shook my head. “We’ll keep hoping.”
“If we can stay alive until the date when the vessels arrived we could take one then.”
“That’s six years...” I watched his face, sad and desolate, and changed my tack. “But you’re right, that’s something — the vessels will come. If no one has come for us we can get one, we can travel to the day after we left and though it will have been years, Isla wouldn’t even know we had been gone.” I added, “Yeah, probably.”
I looked down on him. “I’m really sorry.”
“I am sorry as well, mo reul-iuil. For all of it.”
“I know, my love.” I folded forward and curled under his arm. “You can’t solve this with action, you are in the ‘waiting place.’ It sucks, but it’s true. I accept your apology, by the way, that might have been the biggest fight we ever had.”
“Twas bigger when ye came with me tae the past the first time.”
I pulled my head up with my eyes wide. “Remember when I told you I was going to live in the forest and you said you were going to live in a tent? This is just like that.”
“Perhaps, except ye hae decided tae live in the tent alongside me and there inna enough chocolate.”
“You sure you don’t have anymore chocolate?”
“Nae, ye ate it in the first three days.”
“I hate myself sometimes. More fish?”
“I think we should move toward Edinburgh.”
“Is that a place in this time period?”
“Aye, and Sir Colin said there is a Queen. If I remember m’history twould be Mary Stuart, though she is at this time verra young. We hae enough gold tae take a room. The transmitter will work there as well as here. We can buy food. I am verra tired of fish, I would like some bread.”
“It’s a deal, let’s do that, beginning tomorrow, for tonight I want to introduce you to the fun of makeup sex.”
“What dost that mean?”
“Sex after a fight, it’s good because it’s a way of asking for forgiveness.”
He smiled. “We hae forgiven each other, but I would like tae try harder in the askin’.”
Forty-eight - Kaitlyn
I had been fishing. The stream we camped near had a wide low rock. I stood on it, holding the fishing pole Magnus had fashioned. This was something that had become routine but also terrifying. What stood between me and food, between Magnus and food, was this pole and my abilities.
Luckily it was something I could do.
I was so tired of trout.
I was growing used to being alone out here now. Magnus would go to hunt. We had the two-way radios and he never went too far. I loved our life now. There was something really beautiful about this stage in our lives. We had never ever ever in any lifetime been alone like this, day in and day out.
But, my arms were empty, and there was a longing. In the beginning when I was alone at the edge of the water I would cry, but overtime my grief got all cried out. Like there were no more tears left. Magnus and I felt our grief settle, past the acute stage and into chronic. We both felt responsible. But also it was something that we couldn’t help. Not really. Some days I soothed him, kissing his temple, telling him things like, “You did everything you could,” and on some he comforted me. His strong arms holding me. His whispers warming me. Together we talked and laughed, but there were spaces where we held hands and were quiet.
I would put my forehead against his shoulder and we would just breathe. Loss was all around us, weighing us down, but we were so fucking lucky to be together.
I stared out at the stream, holding my pole, rhyming babbling brook with things like ‘I mistook,’ and ‘what I would cook,’ rapping to keep my mind busy. “Yo yo yo, streaming stream... Why ya gotta be so mean? Why ya can’t give me a fish — it is my most fervent wish, but actually now that I imagine, what I really want is giant cannon, to shoot me to the moon! You know what’s on the moon? Cheese, cheesy wheezy wheeze, man I want some cheese...”
My pole jerked, the familiar tug of ‘something for dinner.’ I pulled the fish to shore and landed it beside the other. Two trout would do for our calorie consumption for the rest of the day. Though Magnus was looking thin. I peered down into the eddy and saw another trout, right there... I cast my line into the water again.