Eoghanan struggled to sit up but was restrained by Morna’s hand moving to press his shoulder back down onto the bed, causing his frustration to rise even further. “I doona believe ye. Is it no yer magic that no only brought me here but sends me back now? What I canna figure out is the purpose behind it. Why no send me back to a time earlier, but still in this verra spot if I canna yet go home? I doona know where I have been the last two times, but it wasna Scotland. I’d bet me verra life on that fact.”
Eoghanan watched as resignation washed over his bed nurse. The lines of her face softened slightly. He hoped answers might finally come to him.
“Ach, ye are a stubborn lad, are ye no? But still…I suppose ye deserve an explanation, so that I shall try to give to ye.” She pulled the cloth away from the top of Eoghanan’s shoulder, her once red hair now graying from the effects of time, dipping into the water as she reached over the basin sitting beside her to ring it out before draping it over the side of the bowl. Hands free, she leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms before continuing. “Though, I’ll no lay blame on meself for not providing ye one earlier. Ye were in such a rush to travel back to yer home, that ye wouldna have listened to anything that I said. Ye dinna even allow me the chance to tell ye that yer first travel wouldna be to the time ye wished it.”
Eoghanan succeeded in sitting up this time, determined to look at Morna straight on as she spoke to him. His own red hair hung frustratingly in his face, covering his green eyes. He blew the strands upward to clear his vision before he spoke. “Aye, I am in a hurry to return home. Me brother’s wife is with child, and I doona wish to miss the bairn’s arrival. I have stayed too long here.”
Morna’s head shook forcefully in denial of what he’d said. “No. Ye havena stayed nearly long enough. Do ye no remember what happened to ye the first time I sent ye back? Why yer wound split partially open, and ye nearly died…again! If I were ye, I wouldna wish to go knocking on death’s door another time. Ye probably havena heard it, but there’s something that people say in this time—third time’s a charm. Ye go visiting death again, and he might just decide to answer the door.” She paused momentarily, lowering her voice which had grown rather excited. “That being said, I will do all that I can to make sure ye will be strong enough to return home before the child’s arrival, but in order for ye to be so, we must keep working to send ye back, but no so far so quickly.”
A fortnight earlier, after spending months nearly entirely bedridden, Morna’s announcement that she was ready to use her magic on him had indeed excited him so much that he’d not allowed any further instruction or explanation. He demanded that she use it on him at once.
The result was an experience so shocking and strange that Eoghanan still could not fully process all that he’d seen, only holding on to the one piece of serenity he’d found in the chaotic world he’d been sent to—the beautiful lass and the young boy by her side.
For as the spell had begun, Eoghanan expected to arrive back on the shore of McMillan Castle’s lake in precisely the same year that he’d left—1647. Instead he’d landed in a frightening and very noisy jungle filled with tall structures and foul smells. Thankfully, he woke in the shadows and went unnoticed, free to observe the oddities so foreign from all that he’d known.
Pushing thoughts of the experience aside for a moment, he returned to the conversation at hand. “Aye, I doona wish to meet death any time soon. I do wish, however, that ye’d silenced me long enough to warn me of what I would see. I’d like to think that I am no a man easily frightened, but arriving in a place so different from what I expected…” His lack of comprehension stopped him, “was…verra unsettling. But never mind. Tell me about the magic, for if ye doona keep sending me to the same lass, why is it that I end up in her presence each time?”
Morna sat quietly for a moment. Eoghanan assumed she wondered how best to try to explain it to him. Eventually, she spoke. “Do ye remember the stone that brought ye here?”
He nodded, though the memory was a vague one. There’d not been much life in him when he traveled forward. “Aye, I do. What of it?”
“That stone is verra much me own magic. Created by me for the use of yer sister-in-law Mitsy, and now for yerself. But the stone is tied directly to one location and time—yer own. I know enough of how the time travel works and what it does to one’s body, essentially ripping ye fair apart before placing ye back together, to know that yer wounds were no healed enough to take ye all the way back that many centuries. I thought it best to use spells already in place for many years, created by others with magic, to allow ye to build up yer strength before such a long travel. They allow me to decide just how far back I wish ye to go, but there are powers greater than me own that choose just exactly where ye end up.”
Eoghanan’s brows pulled in, displaying his doubt before he had a chance to mask it. “And just what powers are these?”
“I suppose everyone thinks of such a power differently. Ye could call it fate, I suppose. Perhaps, ye are meant to know the lass?”