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“Jamie?”
“An unintelligent enemy is far less dangerous than an intelligent one, Jamie. Just act stupid. Do you think you can manage that?”
“Well, at least you didn’t think of X-rays. That would have been awful.”
“We should learn to obey. The Doctor’s causing trouble. I’m going to turn him in.”
“It was horrible. It was so strong!”
“You’re not far wrong. We’d better keep going. The laboratory can’t be too far away.”
“Jamie, son of Donald McCrimmon. A piper, like his father and his father’s father.”
“I won’t forget ye, ye know.”
“Jamie?”
Mòrag carefully wrapped the last of the strip of cloth around his forearm, securing it in the correct position with an old kilt pin. You won’t be needing it anymore, she said when he’d asked why she’d decided to use it for this purpose, they’ve banned Highland Dress.
She could have been lying, like he’d done when he’d said he got the wound from a fall, but Morag had never been one to lie about something as serious as that. Even as a bairn she’d been deathly serious, standing stoically like a rock in stormy weather, smile not touching her face until there was nothing left to focus on. In contrast, he’d never been able to stay in one place too long – whether it was running through the woods with the Duncans or stepping into that big blue-
“That dinnae look like a wound ye’d get from cuttin’ ye arm on a tree.” Her voice brought him back from his head with a jolt. His sister had never been one to skirt around a subject either. “I’ve dressed enough musket wounds in the past year tae know what they look like. Do ye have anythin’ tae tell me?”
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite meet her piercing gaze. “Nae. I fell.”
In response she began to pack away her sewing kit, failing to hide the pursed lips and fire in her eyes much like he’d failed to hide the lies. How long had it been since he’d seen that look? How long had it been since they’d been alone like this, with the fire roaring in the hearth and the rain beating the ground outside?
“Six months.” Mind reading was also one of her skills. He’d forgotten that – how could he have forgotten that? “Six months without word, without lettin’ me know that ye were safe, and ye can’t even be bothered to tell the truth.”
Six months? It felt far longer than that, for his memory of her face before the moment she’d dragged him out of the cold had been nothing more than an imprint that had been pored over too many times. Had she always had that mole on her left cheek? Had she always had that scar above her right eye? Tiny details long forgotten until brought back into sharp focus, akin to years of separation rather than months, even though that was impossible.
“I’m sorry.” He murmured. I dinnae know the truth myself.
“We all thought ye’d gone tae France with the Laird & Kirsty.” She spoke softly, treading her words carefully. “It was the only thin’ that made sense.”
The Laird? Kirsty? Their faces came swimming back in front of his eyes, and Alexander’s. Alexander, who’d-
“Alexander’s dead.” He muttered.
“I know.” said Mòrag. “We heard word from Kirsty no’ too lon’ ago. And she said that ye’d nae gone with them.”
Everything that had happened between the Laird, Kirsty and that wee Von Wer chappie seemed a distant memory, again, just like the rest of his home. Wherever he’d been, however, that was a different beastie altogether
“Where have ye been, Jamie?” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Were ye in prison?”
Perhaps he had been. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he was hanging upside down by his ankles in some dark dungeon and only dreaming of his little sister speaking to him. He was twenty-two but he felt like he was one hundred and three, the weight of not knowing threatening to drown him under the next high tide. He hung his head, gripping his legs with the strength he had left and desperately wishing he could understand what was wrong with him.
“I’m tired.” He said, feeling Mòrag’s expression fall. “It was a lon’ walk tae find ye, and I think I need to get some rest.”
Knowing her brother well enough to know that she wasn’t going to get any more out of him - at least, not tonight, Morag rose to her feet and moved towards the window. Outside, the rain swirled in a pale imitation of the storm he felt inside his own body.
“Don’t lie on the injury, you’ll only make the pain worse.” He did still have common sense, he knew that much, but he knew she was just frightened for him. “We’ll speak more in the mornin’. You’ll probably have more head then.”
He knew deep down that he wouldn’t, but it was nice to have that small shard of hope to cling to when everything felt so uncertain.
He was awake with the dawn. Light filtered through the cottage’s windows in beautiful patterns as he turned his head – refractions, his head kept wanting to call them -, bringing with them a new day. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the morning pass over Mòrag’s face, over the dark hair that they shared and the point of her chin that was identical to their mother’s.
Mathair was long gone, that was finally something he was certain of. Over five years ago, now, he’d missed the anniversary during his missing period. She was buried with Athair, Oisean and Eubh in Tulloch, many miles away from here, and he wondered for a split-second if he’d thought to remember them all when he’d been away. He must have done, surely?
Mòrag had laid out clothes for him before she went to her own bed. A linen shirt, waistcoat, jacket, trousers. He eyed the last with the utmost resentment - they just weren’t practical to move in, however would he defend himself wearing something so close to the skin? Everything he’d clung to in the past three years, everything he’d taken from his home – his dirk, his kilt – they were being wiped from the earth, and all because he’d fought for what he believed was right.
He dressed anyway. Better uncomfortable than not free.
Mòrag found him walking circles around her home not more than half an hour later. The dew had soaked through the leather into his socks, leaving them without feeling at all. He’d been unable to take his eyes off the beauty of the land surrounding him, how good it felt to be back, but he still couldn’t stop his heart for pining for the unknown. He only knew she was there because of the exasperated sigh she let out.
“Ye were strange when we were bairns, but this is somethin’ completely different.” She remarked.
He paused, looked towards her and back to the sunlight streaking towards the horizon.
“It’s so beautiful here.” He breathed.
She came up to his shoulder, arms folded as she watched the scene with him. “It’s just a sunrise. Ye see them everyday.”
“Aye, but this one feels special. I dinnae know why.” He took in a large breath, the smell of the dirt and the stone and the woodsmoke and the earth after the rain. “Petrichor.”
“Eh?”
“It’s what ye call the smell of dirt after rain.” He told her.
“How do ye know a term like that?” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m supposed tae be the clever one here.”
Yes, she was, it came back to him in drips and drabs the more he stood with her, the more he stared at her face. Memories that he hadn’t thought about for such a long time. Athair’s favourite, the girl he got taught to read despite her gender, who used to pore over the books in the Laird’s library. Gaelic poetry, French literature – things he had no chance of ever understanding, the third of four surviving boys. His talents lay in the rhythm of music, in the common sense he held close to his heart.
“I dinnae know how, I just know it’s the correct word.” He murmured, turning his head away from her.
“It’s nice.” She remarked. “I just wasn’t expectin’ ye to come out with it.”
Her head joined his shoulder, his body stiffening at the sudden physical contact but soon relaxing into the gentle movement of their breath in sync.
“I missed ye, ye know.” She said softly. “It’s been lonely, just me and the goat.”
“I’m nae goin’ anywhere.” He spoke.
“You’re definitely not until that arm of yours heals.”
“Nae, I mean – I’m not goin’ anywhere.” He grabbed her hand. “I’m nae goin’ tae leave you.”
She swallowed, almost took her hand away. “But…there’s so much out there. Ye need tae find a wife, and more and more are goin’ out tae the colonies. It’s nae very safe here, Jamie, especially for someone like ye.”
“Ye’ve stayed.” He shrugged. “And I’m waitin’ for someone.”
As those words left his lips, he knew – he knew that that was what he was supposed to do. He squeezed his sister’s hand to hit the point across.
“Waitin’ for someone?”
“Aye.” He smiled wistfully. “They’ll come back for me, I know they will.”
Silence fell upon the siblings, until Mòrag broke it with a well-timed sigh.
“Well, if ye’re stayin’ ye need tae make yerself useful. Do ye still remember how tae milk a goat?”
Days passed – a week of domestic drudgery, of trying to fit himself back into the world like a shoe that was too small for his foot.
Nothing came back. At least, nothing more than the certainty that he had to stay. The past six months were but a black gap, one that filled him with so many emotions that he found it hard to explain because he couldn’t remember what they were attached to. He milked Maggie the goat, helped collect the apples from the trees and tried not to look so closely at his hands, at the scars he couldn’t remember acquiring.
“That’s a funny one ye got there.” Mòrag pointed at his knee, at a puckered one that looked like a musket but not quite. “What is it?”
It was October; the last of the summer heat was dying but it was still warm enough to walk around in his plaid. If anyone important saw him he’d be in trouble, but no one came out here. It was the McCrimmon’s private world.
“I dinnae know.” He murmured. “I cannae remember.”
Mòrag had come to be used to this answer in the days they’d spent together. She backed away.
“Ye really cannae remember anythin’?”
“Aye.” He grumbled.
“How strange.” She sighed, placing down her cup and wandering over to the bookshelf in the corner of the room. Precious books that Athair had bought for her long before the forty-five.
“Do ye remember when I used tae read for ye?”
He chuckled. “Aye, of course. But I’m much too old for that now.”
He’d been telling himself that he was still twenty-two, that the face that stared at him in the reflection in the lake was still that of a man that had only recently reached adulthood, even if he knew better. To face that he might be far older than he thought he was scared him to no end.
“Ah! You used to love this one.” She showed him the cover, a burgundy bound thing. “Gulliver’s Travels.”
“Aye, I can tell.” He spoke.
“What do ye mean, ye can tell?”
The letters on the front of the leather made sense for the first time in his life. Clearly, it said “Gulliver’s Travels”.
“I can read it.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Ye can read it?”
“Aye, give it here.” She held out the manuscript to him apprehensively.
“My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons-” A shiver went down his spine as Mòrag snatched the book back from him.
“That’s impossible. Ye’ve never been able tae read.” She flicked to the back. “Read this for me, then. We never used to get to this part, ye used tae get bored. Ye won’t know this.”
His eyes scanned the words, becoming understandable. “I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served the inhabitants only as a foot-path-“
Again, the book was snatched as her eyes widened.
“Ye can read.”
“Aye, it seems that way.”
She closed the book quietly and placed it onto the table. A sallow expression in her eyes as she gazed at him, one that was becoming more and more familiar the longer he stayed with her.
“Athair never let me teach ye, so who did?”
What does that spell out? J – A – M – I – E! It’s your name!
A voice chattered loudly in his ear, one of a young lass’, sweet and high and ever-so-familiar, though he couldn’t for the life of him think of why. He didn’t even realise he was crying until the tear hit the back of his hand.
“I dinnae know.” He murmured. His heart felt stamped, pulled upon with the urge to remember. “I think I loved her though. Just like I love you.”
Mòrag grabbed his hand in hers, the one with the damp patch on it.
“Where is she now?”
“Gone.” He chuckled a wee bit. “I know that much.”
He desperately wished he could remember her name – she deserved the common courtesy of that, at least, if she’d been another sister to him - but even that evaded his tongue. Mòrag sat back, the wood of the chair creaking with her weight, his hand still clasped between her palms.
“Do ye still want me tae read tae ye?” She asked softly, once again treading her words with the utmost care.
He tipped his head to the side and smiled warmly at her, to her obvious surprise.
“How about I read tae ye for a change, if ye’d like?”
She returned the smile as a response and let his hand go free.
“Aye, I would.” She spoke. “Mathair would have loved the fact ye could read, ye know.”
His eyes turned to the first worn page.
“Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift.”
He should have known this was coming. He didn’t think it would be so soon, though.
“Hurry up, Jamie. The shops’ll be closed by the time we get there at this rate.”
A week and a half since he’d found his way back to Mòrag. Twelve days of watching the sun rise over the ragged country of his home, drinking in the way the sunlight reflected off the grass and the beautiful colours of the leaves. In a few weeks they’d all be gone, replaced by bare branches and the soft crunch of frost beneath his feet. He grinned at the thought of seeing winter in Scotland.
What he didn’t grin about, however, was having to wear trousers on a horse. Or the scratchy stubble Mòrag had insisted he grow out over the past two days.
“I’m ready now.” He called, tucking the last of his lunch into his knapsack and slinging it over his back.
She was standing in the bright morning sunlight just beyond the door with the horse, the wind catching the flyaway strands of her otherwise-neat hair. At the sight of him, her face broke into a slightly-teasing smile.
“Ye look different in this light.” She nodded. “Healthy.”
“Thank ye.”
She shrugged, tapped the side of the horse. “This is Dòmhnall.”
He was a fine stallion with a silky dark coat and beady eyes, not unlike the man he was named for. Mòrag mounted his back and he joined her, wrapping his arms around her waist tight.
“I know how tae ride a horse, Jamie. Did ye forget?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Nae. Of course no’. This is just for me, it’s been a lon’ time since I was last on one.”
For once, she didn’t prod further.
“Remember. Ye’re no’ my brother Jamie McCrimmon. Ye’re Robbie Baird, my cousin.”
Give it another six months, she’d told him over breakfast that morning, it’ll be safer by then and ye can be yerself outside again.
“Robbie Baird.” His tongue rolled around the unfamiliar words, words which had to be his name to keep him here. “Got it.”
“That’s good.” She whipped the reigns and the horse began to move; his stomach flipped at the sudden jolting.
He’d forgotten how lovely the fields looked from perched on top of a horse’s back, especially as he was a passenger for once. The craggy mountains stretched on endlessly into the distance, parts covered with the wilting forest and the sounds of wildlife moving beneath their branches.
“There’s the old Drummond house.” Morag pointed over to a weathered cottage set a few metres from the path. “They left a couple of weeks ago for the Americas.”
“Have a lot of people left?”
Mòrag nodded. “Aye, more and more each day. The government’s sending Jacobite prisoners over there too – it’s why ye cannae say who ye are for now, especially if ye want tae stay, they’ll have ye in a moment.”
“Why’d ye take me then?”
“I need an extra pair of hands for shoppin’. Ye can carry much more than me.” She grinned back at him.
He smirked in response. “Ye’re endangering my life so ye can buy more flour?”
“Aye, who wouldn’t?” She turned her head back. “It’s nice tae have the company. Besides we look different enough, especially with that stubble of yers.”
She was right. When cleanshaven, their similarities were too numerous to count. Same eyes, same dark hair. But, with the stubble, he looked far too much like Athair for comfort, and the dress Mòrag wore made her look the spit of Mathair. Thirty years ago, perhaps they rode over these very same fields together in much the same way.
The village had worn dirt paths with deep slicks of mud and leaves underfoot, the stalls lining it filling the air with once-familiar smells and light Gaelic chatter. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, it certainly wasn’t this, but the sound of his first language being spoken by so many warmed his aching heart. Wherever he’d been, there clearly hadn’t been much of it there.
“We could do with some offal.” Mòrag told him as she tied up Dòmnhall. “Ye can get it from Mr McOwen, over there.”
She pointed in the direction of a small building not more than a few feet away, a sign hanging outside its door. A leg of meat, it looked like.
“I’m goin’ tae the mill. Meet me there once ye’ve got the offal.”
She gestured to a building on the opposite side of the path, marked out by a large water wheel, and then she was gone, disappearing deep into the crowd where he couldn’t see her. He walked up the few steps to the butcher’s and pushed his way in through the door.
“Good mornin’, sir. What can I get fer ye?”
Mr McOwen was a stout man with greying hair at the roots. He looked kindly enough, in his opinion, though he still didn’t entirely trust him. No one here could be trusted.
He cleared his throat. “My cousin wants some offal. She’s makin’ haggis.”
“Ah, of course.” Mc McOwen moved behind his table. “How much will she be needing?”
“Enough for two.”
Mc McOwen began weighing out the meat on a pair of old brass scales.
What’s haggis? Is that actual meat?
We had a lot back at home, it’s quite tasty. Ye might like it.
I’d rather stick with the synthesised things, I think.
“Sir?” Mr McOwen was staring at him. “Are ye alright?”
“Oh, aye.” He swallowed. “It’s nothin’.”
“Who’s ye cousin?” Perhaps small talk was for the best.
“Mòrag McCrimmon. She lives a few miles away.” He answered.
“Ah, yes. I know her. Rather a feisty one, but she knows her own mind, which sometimes isn’t so bad in a woman.”
“Aye, I know.” I’ve met many like that. “She’s been like that since we were bairns, I assure ye.”
McOwen chuckled. “I suspected she was. It takes something big to subdue someone like her.”
Something as big as a battle? Something as big as losing most of your family in five years, and having to watch all their culture stripped away? He was surprised that she’d kept it together for this long without fail. He certainly knew he was just clinging on.
“It’s nice to meet your, Mr…”
“Oh! Robbie. Robbie Baird.” Mr McOwen placed the wrapped package in the centre of the table. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d been wrapping it.
“It’s pleasant tae make ye acquaintance, Mr Baird. Please give my regards tae ye cousin.”
He nodded. “I shall.”
Outside, he rested his head against the wall as his heart thumped inside. Who had he remembered now? It hadn’t been the lass who’d taught him to read, he’d know her voice anywhere, but it had been another lassie – and he had loved her in just the same way.
“Robbie!” He blinked, looking around at the sound of the voice. Was it talking to him? “Robbie?”
Mòrag was there, a grounding influence by his side as always. She slipped her hand into his.
“Another one?”
“Aye. A lassie, talkin’ about some strange things.” She wouldn’t understand them, despite her education.
Mòrag jerked his shoulder. “The tavern’s round the corner. Come on, let’s get a drink before we go home.”
Home. Such a sweet word to hear ringing through his head, synonymous with words he’d never be able to force out.
He didn’t leave the grounds of the cottage for months after that day, preferring instead to stay with the wild and the known than face the world beyond the hills. He knew it was strange, for he’d never wanted to do something like that before, but he was waiting – so here he stayed. The siblings found a strange rhythm of living, working around each other, making meals together and singing in harmony in the evenings.
It was a simple life. It was what he needed, truly, for if he had been stuck in some place like Glasgow working for someone else he’d have had more time to dwell on his missing past. Forging a peaceful existence allowed him distractions, and to also leave it where it was. The cause he’d fought for was lost. The only thing he could think of to do was move on.
Apart from the fact he couldn’t.
Each day that passed he’d find himself staring out of the window, dreaming of…something. The world? If he was still here, they’d have been gone already.
Who was he?
Eventually, he found the courage within him to tell his sister one of the undeniable truths. They were making soup together with the fire roaring in the grate behind, Mòrag skinning the chicken while he sliced the carrots. He had to watch his hands while he did it, had to see the lines marking them that he tried to ignore – and it was that fact that finally pushed him to tell her.
“I’m no’ twenty-two.” He blurted, stilling the motion of his knife as he looked to see her reaction. “I dinnae know how old I am, but I know I’m nae younger than twenty-six.”
She paused her own work, and for a heavy moment all that he could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat and the water bubbling in the saucepan.
“Aye. I know.” She replied softly. “I’ve known ever since ye came back.”
He blinked as what she said hit him fully.
“Ye knew?”
“There was a difference, even though ye were so injured. The last I saw ye, ye still had the look of a bairn in ye eyes. When ye came back…ye looked like a man.” She smiled wistfully. “I almost though ye were Athair, back from the dead.”
“I dinnae look that much like him, do I?” He wrinkled his nose at the thought. When bairns, it had always been Iomhar that had been compared to their father, being the eldest and all. Mòrag and he had been lumped in together as their mother’s children.
“Nae, ye don’t. At least, no’ in the way ye’re thinkin’.” Mòrag said hurriedly. “He’d seen a lot, and ye could see it in his eyes – and when ye came back, I could see that same look.”
“I wish I could remember what I saw.” He murmured.
“Perhaps it’s for the best that ye dinnae.” She shrugged. “Ye’re tryin’ tae move on, right? It’s a lot easier to let emotions be pushed tae the back of ye head, especially if ye can’t remember what exactly it was, and let it be. It’s what Athair did after the Fifteen.”
“It dinnae bother ye that I’m over six years older than ye now?”
“Ye’re still my brother Jamie, and that’s what truly matters.” She sighed. “We’d better get the soup goin’ before too long, it looks like it’s goin’ tae be a cold night tonight.”
Aye, it did. And it was, so cold that the two of them sat on blankets in front of the fire warming their toes as the first snowfall of the winter fell outside. He sat holding his sister’s head to his shoulder, telling her fantastical stories of crabs and ice and metal men, until they slipped off into dark oblivion still clutching each other as if they could never let each other go.
Kirsty McLaren appeared at the door of their cottage in the second month of winter, stomach swollen with the early stages of a bairn and eyes rounded with shock as she saw the man standing before her.
“Jamie?” She breathed. “But I thought ye’d gone with the Doctor.”
“Oh, aye.” He blinked as the true meaning of her words sunk in. Gone with the Doctor. “Eh?”
“Kirsty!” Mòrag greeted from inside, stepping into the sunlight with her arms crossed. “I dinnae think ye’d be back so soon.”
“My father sent me home. He said I could nae stay in France, and anyway I’m glad tae be back.” Her hands went to her visible stomach.
“Oh, I can see why.” Mòrag swallowed and nodded to herself. “Ye’d better come inside.”
Unmarried and not too much older than Mòrag herself, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. If it had been before Culloden, he’d have been scandalised to even be associated with her, but something inside him had clearly softened since.
“How’s Ben and Polly?” She asked out of the blue. “I was a wee bit worried, they were very different people tae anyone I’d met before.”
“Ben and Polly?” The words felt right rolling over his tongue, if accompanied by the bitter tang of sadness.
“Aye.” She said. “Dinnae tell me ye don’t remember?”
“He’s had trouble with memory for a few months now.” Added Mòrag before he could get a word in.
“I remember them with Doctor Von Wer, but I did nae go with them.”
Kirsty chuckled. “Aye, ye did, or at least that’s what I always thought. Ye waved goodbye to tae the Annabelle with them.”
One half of his head wanted to believe that he’d gone with them – except he couldn’t have, because he’d gone on the Annabelle with them, and he couldn’t have done that either because he’d found himself in a field six months after the conclusion of Culloden miles away from any shore.
“Jamie? Are ye alright?” A soft hand on his shoulder. “Ye look very pale.”
“I’m fine. Just…”
“What do ye need, Kirsty?” Mòrag asked abrasively. “It’s nice tae see ye, but no one makes the journey out here on purpose.”
Kirsty’s eyes dipped to the table, hands turning white from gripping each other.
“I need ye help.”
They married less than two months later. Her baby needed a father, a home to call its own where Kirsty had none to go to anymore, and after a wee bit of thought he was happy to let have her make this patch of land home too. Mòrag agreed, slightly hesitantly, but concurred with his point that if he could could raise a child in this country that was loved then he’d be doing some good for this planet.
“It’ll be hard work, a bairn.” She warned. “I looked after some when ye were gone.”
He needed to stay, Kirsty needed to stay, and he had all the love in the world to give to a child. Better to have a father who couldn’t remember three years of his own life than no father at all - and who knew, perhaps one day he’d share some of that love with Kirsty as well.
Fiona arrived in the summer, perfectly formed with soft hair as golden as the fields outside. The midwife who handed her to him for the first time looked like she knew that she wasn’t his, with none of the McCrimmon bones lining her body and the eyes of another man, but from the moment he held her he knew that no matter who’d made her she was his daughter and always would be.
“She has ye nose.” He told Kirsty, running a finger along Fiona’s cheek.
“Aye. And Alexander’s mouth.” She murmured, a sad smile tracing her lips. “Fiona Alexandra Zoe McCrimmon.”
Fionnaghal NicCrumein, he translated in his head. A strong name. Zoe had been his idea, for while a strange choice he felt it would suit her. His daughter wailed in her mother’s arms and she brought her close to her chest.
“Welcome to the world.” He spoke.
One day, perhaps, she’d see beyond the stars.
Mòrag was right. Raising a bairn was hard, but he loved it all the same. Showing Fiona the world through a child’s eyes helped him to move a step on from whatever he’d been grieving, for now he could revel in her joy at seeing the first leaves of autumn fall and the beauty of her first snow. In a way, they were both growing up together, learning how to live in the world where they’d been absent, growing together.
“Ye’d never be able to tell that she wasnae yers if it wasnae for the hair.” Mòrag remarked at Hogmanay. “She has some of ye manners already.”
He bounced her on his knee, threading his fingers through the soft strands and kissing her forehead. He’d give anything for her and it had only been a few months since she’d arrived. The Scotland she’d live in would be completely different from the one he had, though, she’d never know how it felt to have her culture celebrated and dripping from every wall.
Despite the ache lessening, still he waited. He would always wait. Kirsty would take Fiona into the village and he’d stay in the cottage, pottering about for he could never bear to leave it. If he did, then where would he find him?
“Once, there was an old man. A very old man, mind ye, much older than ye mother or I, and he lived in a box.”
“A box, Da?”
“Aye. A very strangely coloured box, with lots of glass, and even though it was very small on the outside it could carry lots of people inside it. This box could travel anywhere in the sky, but the man could never control where it was going to land – but he knew that wherever he was, he was needed for one reason or another.”
“Tell me more!”
“One day, this man landed in a cave. Him and his friends left the box to find that they were on a completely different world, with machines and knowledge far above our own, but the planet was still populated with humans in a place called a Colony. And this colony was controlled by a man without a moving face, that was everywhere in the Colony-“
“Jamie, it’s time for Fiona tae go tae bed. It’s very late.”
“Oh.”
“Aye, so it is. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.”
“Ye promise?”
“Of course. Sleep well.”
“I love ye, Da.”
Seasons passed, four cycles quick in turn. They passed so swiftly he didn’t entirely know where the time had gone, for it didn’t feel right that life could pick up speed so easily, but he was thirty and Fiona was four and the world continued to turn. Autumn had arrived once again at their cottage and he’d taken her into the forest to show her how to scrump for apples.
“Be back before sunset!” Mòrag had called.
It was a far way before sunset, the sun still hung high in the trees as he walked the woods trailing behind Fiona. He’d had to carry her in his arms some of the way to stop her going in so deep she’d hurt herself.
“That’s what we’re looking for.” He pointed with his free hand to a beautiful tree loaded with the fruit. “If we get enough, Ma can make an apple pie later.”
“Da! Look at that one!” She was as active as he’d been at that age, struggling in his arms to reach up to grab one far out of her range.
“Aye, it’s a very nice one.” He said, taking it for her and placing it in her hands. “It’s good. Ye can eat it now.”
“Now?” He placed her on the ground, and she took a large bite out of it – large for a four-year-old girl, that was. The tree was large, but not unclimbable. Perhaps there was some different ones that would be more suited to a girl her size.
He watched her, ruffled her waves with one hand as he surveyed the rest of the surrounding area for more, before-
Vroom. Vroom.
The sound slammed into his head as he bent over, swimming with emotions that he hadn’t thought of for so long. He knew that sound, he’d heard it so many times, but he still couldn’t remember where and that simple fact made him want to keel over. He reached out a hand against the grounding trunk of a tree as his head pounded with longing.
A creak of a wooden door. A figure behind him; a man even though Jamie couldn’t see he knew had dark hair and battered old frock coat hanging about his body.
“Da, who’s that?”
“Ah.” The crunch of leaves beneath soft leather boots as the shadow kneeled in front of his daughter. “Hello. I’m the Doctor, who are you?”