“What does that mean?” Isla wondered, feeling terror seize her lungs. But the woman only smiled and turned her back, dismissing Isla from her tent once and for all.
Isla tried to ignore her strange words as she exited the tent. She lifted her hands on her cheeks to hide her reddened skin as her friends rushed toward her.
“How was it?” Ada asked.
“What was your fortune?” Penny continued.
“Will you meet a handsome Highlander? Is there a prince in the story?’
Isla shook her head. “Stop it,” she said in a sterner and louder voice to get them to stop rambling and making her feel more nervous that she already did. When her friends quieted down, she continued, “That woman in there is a crazy fraud. A witch. And you shouldn’t listen to anything she’s told you. She’s insane.” She felt bad at the defeated look on her friends’ faces, but they had forced her into something she didn’t want to do, and now she was terrified of her own future.
Isla walked away from them after that. She no longer felt the need to explore or enjoy the fair. Right now, she just wanted to get back to the bed and breakfast and sleep the night off.
2
It rained heavily that night while Isla tried to force herself to sleep. Nothing could take the strange woman’s words out of her head or the chill that raced up her spine while she spoke to them.
The man ye meet shall be yer everything, and yer demise from the world.
As she tossed in her bed, she forced her eyes to close again and willed her mind to shut down. A rumble of thunder from outside jarred her awake again, and this time, Isla sat up in her bed with a loud groan.
She pushed the sheets covering her body away and combed her fingers through her thick mass of black hair.
What did she mean? Who was that woman anyway?
Her eyes wandered around the room. It landed on the medallion on her nightstand. The green stone in the middle of a gold casing stared back at her until she felt a bit light headed.
I have seen this medallion before.Isla had explored history so much that it was hard for her to remember where exactly she had read of it.
The same creeping sensation she had felt earlier while at the fair returned, and this one brought a tremble to Isla’s nerves and muscles. Knots formed in the pit of her stomach, the hairs on her skin stood, and strangely it felt again like she had seen the stone before.
She closed her eyes and searched her mind. Isla consumed a lot of history books, and she was certain she had read about a precious medallion in the Birlet Shallows’ history somewhere. She just couldn’t place it.
When she opened her eyes again and stared at the stone, it finally dawned on her.
Clan Kirkpatrick.An ancient Scottish clan whose entire family was wiped out in a disastrous storm that plagued the Highlands in the 1400’s. Isla remembered the story as soon as the Clan’s name came to mind.
She had read about them while studying the history of the United Kingdom. She remembered the wife of Laird Kirkpatrick was an English woman, Maleah Calloway; and it was rumored to be a spelled medallion she brought to the Highlands with her.
The Clan’s people never truly accepted her as one of them and it was even rumored that the disaster that led to their death was caused by one of her children.
After the disastrous storm that raged their land and took lives, the Clan had lost a lot, but some men had survived. Those who survived remained on the land while others migrated from their homes toward the sea and dedicated their lives to fishing and watching the borders.
The Calloways ended up being a major sea merchants in the Scottish Highlands.
Isla shivered as she slowly picked the medallion up and looked at it deeply.Could it be the same medallion I’ve seen in the books?
A deep laugh rumbled past her lips then. Isla felt her chest tighten further as she thought of the woman’s words again. Did that mean that the old woman claiming to be a gypsy was a descendant of the Kirkpatrick Clan? How else did she get this medallion?
How insane.She decided to toss the woman’s words out of her mind and get a goodnight’s rest. Her travel through Scotland had only lasted a few weeks, and Isla was not yet ready to part with the lovely Highlands.
Isla kept staring at the medallion, thinking, until she finally decided.
So be it,I’ll find out if it’s real for myself,she thought and got out of bed to head for the famous dried-up Loch Leven only a mile away from her bed and breakfast.
* * *
By the time Isla made it to the loch the rain had subsided into a drizzle. She got out of her car and walked the rest of the distance. The sky was still dark, and she could hear the chirps of birds in the sky they came out of their hiding place.