Until the Knight Comes by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Page A

scars seaming his left cheek, a forever reminder of days he didn’t care to speak of, but would never forget.
    Dark days that ended on a cold, rainy night last spring when he’d slept in Dun Telve’s inner courtyard, his heart aching at the unexpected loss of his mother, his good Scots siller stashed within the broch’s walls, guilt flooding him for having trespassed on such a sacred place.
    Then, as now, the strange stone tower loomed dark against the lowering sky, its strength, even in ruin, filling him with awe.
    Knowing better than to rush his movements, he dismounted with care, swinging down onto the black, peat-rich earth as respectfully as he could.
    He turned toward the broch, the soft patter of rain on stone and the whispered murmurings of a thousand ancient voices greeting him . . . even if their acceptance came tinged with caution.
    Kenneth didn’t blame them.
    He, too, practiced prudence.
    But he could feel them all around him, those broch-dwellers of old, their time here long past, their faces and names as shadowy and distant as the dark of the moon.
    Once, they’d danced, sung, and told tales here, yet now they simply watched and guarded, mere shadows of the past, keeping vigil, he sensed, in the deep, ferny woods surrounding the broch.
    Ever-present, but quick to melt into the mist if one looked their way too long.
    Sure of it, he dipped his head to enter the low-ceilinged entry passage and, as always, his skin prickled when he stepped into the dank, circular interior. The dim enclosure held all the wet chill of autumn, and he welcomed the thin, gray light yet sifting into the roofless ruin, filtering in through tiny gaps in the walls.
    He looked round, breathing in the earth-rich scent of leaf mold and cold ash, faint traces of ancient fires, long extinguished and never to burn again.
    With luck, nothing more ominous than the echoing drip of rain would join him and he’d be able to retrieve the coin he needed and be gone before his fancies got the better of him.
    Worldly-wise as he considered himself, only those totally lacking caution would forget that some believed such brochs were older than man.
    Sithean,
the superstitious called them.
    Fairy knowes, or forts.
    Thin places, where the veil between the worlds might prove a bit translucent. Mysterious portals into the realm of the
Sidhe,
and the point of no return for those unfortunate souls carried off by fairies after darkness falls.
    Even so, his susceptibility to such hazards was well tempered—especially with a lusty, willing-armed widow awaiting him.
    Leastways, his uncle had assured him she’d welcome his attentions, urging him to visit the buxom, well-made Gunna of the Glen if ever certain manly needs became overpowering.
    By all accounts well bitten by the letch herself, the widow was reputed capable of slaking a man’s most lascivious thirsts.
    A cure Kenneth meant to sample—so soon as possible!
    To that end, he made straight for the broch’s guard chamber, a tiny cell built into the thickness of the wall near the entrance passage.
    Here, too, shadows greeted him, and air thick with the smell of damp, lichened stone. Meager light revealed his hiding place secure, each stone intact—just as he’d left them.
    Again, relief washed through him and he squared his shoulders, flexing his fingers before laying his work-scarred hands on sacred stones.
    A grave error for the instant he did, an unearthly light streamed out from the cavity he’d opened—a glow not only illuminating his undisturbed coin pouches, but also his much younger-looking and scar-free hands!
    Kenneth froze, his heart slamming against his ribs.
    The light pulsed and eddied, no longer coming from the wall, but now slanting down from a summer sun shining through the trees, its golden rays warming the stones beneath his youthful fingers.
    Frantic fingers digging ever faster into the fake stone burial cairn he’d built behind
her
cottage.
    A wee thatched cottage he could see