Once Upon a Highland Legend

Book 1: Guardians of the Stone

by Tanya Anne Crosby

Genres: Historical Fantasy; Time Travel Romance; Historical Fiction; Medieval Romance; Scottish & Highlander

Synopsis

Embark on a journey into magical Medieval Scotland, to a time when the shadowy Picts are in danger of vanishing from the Highland tapestry, and Scotland itself will arise a nation from the ashes of betrayal.

In the year 2014, American-born Annie Ross has gone through her entire life a bit lost. She's about to find herself lost in time as well—all the way back to 878 A.D.—where she will take her place as a guardian of the Stone of Destiny, and find a way to restore the faith of a powerful Highland chieftain. Her discovery in ancient Scotland will open her eyes to truths about love and lore, and once there, she has a difficult choice to make. Is she brave enough to change the course of destiny? Will she win Callum's heart? 

Release date: July 21, 2014

Publisher: Oliver-Heber Books

Print pages: 233

Sample

Chapter 1

Kingussie Scotland, Present Day

 “Are ye in Kingussie for the festival, lass?” the shopkeeper asked.

Blinking, Annie Ross peered up from the crystal she held in her hand, momentarily disoriented. It took her a muddled instant to recall exactly where she was—in a curio shop on High Street, waiting for her cousin to arrive. It wasn’t like her to be so spacey. “No, actually…heading up to Devil’s Point.”

The old woman gave her a bit of a smirk but didn’t comment; still Annie sensed she was amused by the choice of phrasing.

Okay, so she was actually headed to Bod an Deamhain. She and Queen Victoria’s consort had something in common. Even in this twenty-first century, Annie had copped out, using the more modest name for a nearby mountain peak. The literal translation for anyone who knew better, was the “demon’s penis.” Apparently, despite the fact that vaginas now had plays named after them, Annie still couldn’t say the word penis to strangers. But how ridiculous was that? She was a scientist after all. She blamed her pang of modesty on the skirt she was wearing. Somehow, it seemed entirely inappropriate to utter the word penis while wearing a short, plaid schoolgirl-type skirt that might have been better suited to a fetish poster than a Catholic schoolgirl.

As though to affirm her thoughts, the shopkeeper’s gaze swept down to the hem of Annie’s borrowed skirt. “American, are ye?” she asked, lifting the brow of her one good eye. The other had a patch over it.

Annie frowned. For some reason, the question left her feeling a bit defensive. As though only an American could wear such a getup, right? Well, her cousin—the previous and current owner of the skirt—was Scots to the bone, thank you very much.

Annie heaved a sigh. Unfortunately, her bags had been lost on the way to Kingussie and she’d had to borrow a clean shirt and a skirt from her cousin Kate, who didn’t appear to own anything longer than six inches. For that matter, Kate’s blouses didn’t seem to have enough buttons either, and Annie had had to use a safety pin to keep her breasts from public display—not that her skirt length was any of the shopkeeper’s concern, however.

Thankfully, Annie didn’t much care about clothes one way or another. If it covered her bits, and kept her from getting arrested for indecent exposure, if it didn’t smell like the boozer sitting next to her on the plane, well then she didn’t care what she wore. Her own wardrobe was quite practical, and her long black hair usually found its way into a careless ponytail—the horsetail, her ex used to call it. That was why he was her ex—and not as Kate liked to put it, that Annie had commitment phobia. She was hardly afraid of men; she just had no patience for one-way relationships.

“My family’s from here,” she offered as she studied the crystal in her hand.

“Aye? Whereabouts?” the shopkeeper asked. “Ye dinna sound much like a Scot. I do hope ye’ve brought something warmer for the climb, lass,” she said, chattering on. “The wind’ll freeze your paps.”

Annie wasn’t entirely certain what paps were, nor was she inclined to ask, but she lifted the arm her sweater was draped over, hoping it would be enough to convince the old woman to put away her maternal genes.

“Humph!” the shopkeeper declared. “Ye’ll catch your death w’ that! Ye’ll need something warmer, dearie. We’ve tartans for sale,” she suggested. “Certainly, one of the lot will match you’re wee skirt.”

Nice sales pitch, lady, but no thanks, Annie thought. “Thanks,” she said, and went back to inspecting the crystal.

Bod an Deamhain was probably an eight-hour climb, but Annie didn’t intend to go all the way up today. Only as far as she needed to go in order to survey the surrounding area. But she didn’t volunteer that information because it wasn’t anybody’s business. She’d had enough of people trying to talk her out of it, including her cousin. “I’ll be fine,” she reassured.

“I’m sure ye will be,” the old woman replied, and fell silent—finally—while Annie went back to examining the strange rock in her hand.

Unlike the rest of the crystals in the basket on the display case, this one was perfectly and unnaturally round, as though it had been created from a mold of some type. But it was heavy—not plastic. Testing its weight in the palm of her hand, she examined the striations at its center—milky ribbons. The first time Annie had peered into it, it had seemed colorless, though now it seemed to be turning a slight green…changing colors…like a mood stone. She glanced up to see that the shopkeeper was watching. The woman’s one good eye flicked back and forth from the crystal in her hand to Annie’s face…as though waiting for some reaction.

“Pretty,” Annie remarked.

The shopkeeper nodded agreement.

Minerals weren’t precisely Annie’s forte, but she did like them, and in a way, it was how she had begun her career. As a child, she had completely annoyed her parents by collecting every ugly rock she had encountered. A visit to Mammoth Caves had been her childhood version of Disney World. And in a way, it still was, though as far as careers went she had taken an entirely different path. Archeology and Linguistic Anthropology were the cornerstones of her studies. Currently—as always—she was obsessing over the origins of Lia Fàil, otherwise known as the Stone of Destiny. It was the subject of her senior dissertation, but while it had netted her a passing grade for the thoroughness of her research, her professor had deemed it completely unoriginal and took off points.

Apparently—according to Professor Van Know-it-All—everyone was obsessed with the stone. Except that Annie wasn’t simply obsessed, she was consumed. Her father had been too. She came by her obsessions honestly, and perhaps after all these years, she was simply trying to find a connection to her parents. She missed them both terribly and somehow it seemed that visiting the past through its artifacts blurred the lines between life and death…maybe a little.

As for the Stone of Destiny, she wanted to prove once and for all that the stone now on display in Edinburgh Castle wasn’t the original—a gut feeling that just wouldn’t die. But to do so she had to find some sort of physical evidence. Unfortunately, the currently acceptable theories had all found dead ends…except for one. For years Annie had been drawn to a particularly obscure report of a sighting near Kingussie, which also happened to be her father’s birthplace—a happy coincidence, because Annie had been making yearly treks here since her childhood and she knew the area very well.

It made sense to her that the stone was hidden somewhere. Truly, if you were the abbot of Scone and the enemy was at your border, and you had three months to prepare for his arrival, knowing full well that he intended to steal Scotland’s most valued symbol of freedom, would you simply leave it in plain sight? Not to Annie’s way of thought. Who would do nothing and simply wait until Edward arrived? Not Annie. She would have hidden the stone somewhere in the hillside. And, in fact, the sandstone in the stone on display in Edinburgh had been quarried somewhere near Scone, while the original was supposed to have Biblical roots and had been hauled all the way from Ireland—supposedly. If that were true it would have been made of something entirely different. In general, there were just too many stories surrounding the stone, hinting at its inauthenticity, for there not to be some shred of truth in the legends…somewhere.

She kept hearing her dad whisper in her ear: “Where there’s smoke there’s fire, Anniepie.”

“Amen,” she muttered.

“What’s that, lass?”

“Where did you get this?” she asked the old woman, holding up the stone now, curious over its makeup.

The shopkeeper’s green eye sparkled. “Well, as legend would have it, these are the crystalized tears of Cailleach Bheur.” She waved a hand over the basket.

“Cailleach Bheur?”

“Aye, she was—is—the Mother of Winter, guardian of all the Highlands,” she explained. “These tears were born of her heartbreak, and she gave one to the keepers of the Old Ways, so that by its light all truths might be known.”

“Interesting,” Annie said. She hadn’t heard that one before. Was she supposed to believe someone cried perfectly round tears the size of a golf ball?

The old shopkeeper was still watching her, and she would have walked away to avoid further conversation but the crystal held her transfixed. The others in the basket looked nothing like this one. She turned it in her hand, fascinated by its strange properties. It seemed to glow…as though it had its own energy source, but Annie couldn’t see any seams in the crystal that might indicate it could be opened and a battery inserted—or even that one might have been placed inside and then sealed. Tapping the crystal carefully on the display case, she wondered if it was plastic. It looked and felt like solid quartz.

“Careful w’ that,” the old woman cautioned, her voice sounding as old as time itself. “It’s precious.”

Precious.

Annie smirked, flashing on Tolkien’s ring, described exactly that way by those obsessed with it. But this was just a rock, she reasoned, and she wasn’t obsessing over it. In fact, she already had enough obsessions. She didn’t need another. She set the crystal down gingerly into the basket and walked away to examine a display of pamphlets, wishing her cousin would hurry. Late Kate, they called her. She peered up at the clock on the wall: 10:17. Late again—as usual—which certainly had been a good thing yesterday while Annie had had to stick around the airport to fill out missing-bag reports. But this morning, it was simply annoying, because Annie couldn’t wait to get up into those hills.

Down the street she could hear the sounds of festivity beginning as people congregated for the coming parade. She wanted to get out of here before then. Apparently, there was a heritage festival going on to celebrate the town’s historic presence. Annie thought maybe Kingussie had been established sometime during the Eighteenth Century, and a glance at a pamphlet verified the fact. Before then, it had been nothing but pinewoods. Originally called Ceann a' Ghiùthsaich, Kingussie was Gaelic for “head of the Pine Forest”—the forest being the vast Caledonian pinewoods that had once witnessed King Arthur’s battles and the demise of the Picts—incredibly romantic histories that had been at the center of a million bedtime stories all shared by Annie’s father. The ancient woods, formed after the last ice age, were nearly vanished now. Annie read somewhere that they were down to something like thirty-eight sites, all spattered across the Highlands. The land surrounding Bod an Deamhain was nearly devoid of trees now, though Annie would have loved to see it the way it had appeared a thousand years ago.

She stared hard at the crystal, wishing with all her heart that she might have seen it for herself, and realized suddenly that she had unconsciously returned to the basket and had retrieved the crystal. This time while she held it she thought she detected threads of pink.

It was changing colors.

Mood stones were made of thermo tropic liquid crystals that responded to changes in temperature, altering the molecular structure so that light reflected through it as various colors—a bit like a prism. But this wasn’t exactly like a mood stone. The colored striations were too deep to be reacting to her body temperature, and the colors were vague, almost like an aura. She had never in her life encountered such a curious mineral.

She could feel the old woman’s one good eye burrowing into her. “Are ye by chance a Chattan?” the shopkeeper asked.

“Ross,” Annie said. “My father was born somewhere down the road,” she added, quite a bit distracted.

“Raigmore?” the woman persisted.

Annie met her gaze. The color of her eye was a little brighter than Annie’s, but green just the same. “Dunno. How much is this crystal?”

A tiny wry smile curved the old woman’s lips. “’Tisna for sale, lass. As I said, ’tis precious.”

Annie blinked, noting the orange price stickers on all the other crystals in the basket. Annoyed, she set the crystal down again, and managed to refrain from asking why it was in the basket to begin with if the woman didn’t intend to sell it.

“However…I’ve a feeling ye were meant to have it,” the shopkeeper announced before Annie could turn away.

Annie’s brow furrowed. If it was an attempt to wrangle more money out of the silly tourist, it wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t exactly your normal tourist anyway. “Thanks. I’m no longer interested,” she lied.

“Ach, ye mistake me, lass.” The shopkeeper hurried over to pick the crystal up out of the basket and reached across the counter, handing it to Annie. In the woman’s hands the striations seemed to turn green again. “’Tis yours for the taking, if ye’ll have it.”

Still Annie hesitated, not entirely certain she understood. But the scientist in her did a tiny little leap of glee. “You’re giving it to me?”

The woman nodded. “If ye wish.”

“But I thought—“

“The Winter Stone chooses who it wishes to keep it, it chooses ye.”

Annie stared at the crystal in the shopkeeper’s hand, blinking. The color now seemed to bleed into the rest of the crystal and even outside its translucent casing, casting a slight green hue on the woman’s face in the dim light of the shop. The shopkeeper’s green eye appeared all the greener by its light. Perfectly bizarre. Still Annie didn’t reach out to take it yet, because she couldn’t ascertain any logical reason why the woman would simply give it to her.

“Really?”

The woman nodded, her twinkling gaze almost as unnerving as the changing colors of the crystal.

Still insisting that she take it, the woman pushed it closer and Annie finally accepted it. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s sweet of you.” But the instant she wrapped her hand about the crystal, she felt a sudden jolt down the length of her arm, and the crystal’s colors altered sharply to shades of red and pink and back to green. Startled, Annie’s gaze flicked back to the shopkeeper’s.

The woman lifted a wiry white brow. “Fae magic,” she offered with a wink.

Annie might have laughed at the explanation…she might have…if she could have formed a single rational thought over the reaction—hardly imagined, because the shopkeeper had witnessed it as well. It hadn’t hurt, really, just a little zap like she sometimes got from static, only slightly stronger. “You should let me pay you,” Annie insisted, a little dumbfounded.

“I dinna need your money, lass.” The woman released the crystal into Annie’s keeping. “No’ everyone sees what ye see when ye peer into the keek stane.”

“Keek stane?”

“An auld word for a scrying stone, crystal ball.”

Annie smiled. “So what do I see?” she asked, testing the woman.

The woman tilted her head and seemed to think over her answer a moment, then said, “Truth, lies, and the destinies of men.”

Annie lifted both her brows and gave the woman a half smile. “All that, eh?”

The shopkeeper smiled knowingly. She must have sensed Annie was waffling, because she added, “Take it and see what I mean, lass. If ye dinna wish to keep it, ye can bring it back before the first new moon.”

Annie’s lips found a smile of their own accord, but fortunately she didn’t laugh at the woman’s gypsy-speak. “Okay, well…I would love to take a closer look, but I’m only in town for a few weeks.” She was too curious to turn down the offer, but she probably wouldn’t feel right keeping it after all. “Do you have a card? I can mail it back when I’m done.”

“If ye truly wish it, the Winter Stone will return on its own.”

The woman was serious. Her ancient, withered face didn’t crack a smile. Annie had a ridiculous vision in her mind of the crystal sprouting feet and walking back to the shop all by itself. Nevertheless, excited by the prospect of examining the crystal closer, she felt titillated by the offer. As odd as the entire situation might be, there was not much chance she would walk away without it. The scientist in her simply wouldn’t allow it. “Alright.” she agreed, but let me at least buy one of your tartan ponchos—how much did you say they were?”

“Forty nine, ninety nine, but it’s on sale today. I’ll gi’ it to ye for twenty nine.”

“Pounds?”

“Yes, of course!” the woman declared, and hurried over to pull the tartan poncho off the mannequin in the window. “Here ye go, lass. ’Twill serve ye well,” she said, and Annie paid her. Then, thank God, she heard the rev of a bike engine outside the shop, and her cousin’s boisterous voice, so she thanked the shopkeeper profusely and hurried outside.

Her cousin was still mounted on her bike, her short black skirt hiked up her leg to such a degree that Annie suffered a momentary pang of modesty at the thought of climbing on the back of the bike. The poncho would help at least.

Dressed all in black, from her shiny heeled boots to her black nails and purple lipstick, Kate was a beacon for every pair of male eyes in the vicinity. “Coorie up!” her cousin demanded. “We dinna ha’ much time!”

“Check this out.” Annie handed her the crystal while she pulled on her poncho.

Kate revved her bike with one hand as she examined the crystal. “What aboot it?”

“It changes colors.”

In her cousin’s hands, the crystal turned pink, but Kate didn’t seem to notice. “Yer daft.” she exclaimed, and shoved it back at Annie. “Get your bum on the bike. I’ve got a date.” She beamed. “This time it’s true love.”

“Every one is true love for you!”

Kate gave her a chiding look. “Would ye even know love if ye were faced with it, Annie?”

Annie frowned at her. “Anyway, I thought you had to get back to work?”

Kate winked. “Why d’ ye think I took the gig for, love? I’m working it.”

Annie laughed and took the crystal from her cousin, dropping it into her pack. She climbed on the back of the bike and barely had time to adjust her pack and put her arm around her cousin’s waist before Kate revved the bike and took off.

The wind tore strands of hair from Annie’s ponytail, whipping them into her face. Houses whizzed past as they raced out of town, leaving the sounds of the Heritage Festival in their wake. Kate turned onto Ruthven and somewhere along that road veered off down another narrow road. About forty-five minutes later, after nearly three spills, Annie insisted Kate drop her off beyond the last walk-about parking. There were only two cars here today. Hopefully, she wouldn’t run into other hikers. She slid off the bike, eager to be off Kate’s wild bike ride.

“You sure you’ll be alright?” Kate asked.

“Fine,” Annie insisted.

“Okay, but if ye’ll wait until t’morrow, I’ll come along w’ ye.”

Annie shook her head stubbornly. “You don’t have the gear.”

“’Tis no’ like ye’re climbing the Alps, mind ye. I’ve got boots.” Kate’s full lips turned into a grin and she hiked up her leg to show off her shiny black boots with the deadly heels.

Little wonder they had nearly kissed the ground. How could anyone ride with those? Annie laughed. “Great, we can use them as grappling hooks,” she suggested.

“Bloody hell! Ye’re a stubborn one,” Kate protested, but she laughed too. “Anyway, it’s not like ye’re rock climbing. It’s a lazy day walk aboot at best.”

Annie lifted a brow. “Thirty point nine kilometers if you do the entire pass.”

“Aye, but ye’re not,” Kate argued.

“Right. So I’ll hold you to it—tomorrow—but I’m going today too.”

“Alright, then. Meet me back here at six. Set your watch,” Kate insisted.

Annie didn’t wear a watch. Apparently her cousin hadn’t noticed, but she said anyway, “I will.” She planned to be back long before Late Kate turned up again.

Tugging her enormous bag off Kate’s bike, she watched in horror as the buckle in her strap caught her cousin’s crocheted pullover. Thankfully, it released its hold without rending her cousin’s flimsy sweater.

“Dinna fash yourself,” Kate insisted. “If I’m lucky, it’ll meet the same fate at Russell’s hands.” Annie laughed again and Kate grinned. “We’ll fix ye up t’morrow, love. It’s aboot time ye took that stick out of your arse and lived a wee bit.”

Annie threw her bag over her shoulder. “I didn’t come here for that,” she said. “I don’t need a man in my life—or new clothes—or a new haircut, but thanks anyway, Kate. I know you mean well.”

“Aye, ye do,” Kate persisted. “Be back here at six,” she reiterated, and then took off without giving Annie a chance to stand her ground.

Apparently, her cousin had already decided she was withering away after her breakup with Paul. But Annie was fine—more than fine. In fact, she was doing exactly what she wanted to do.

She watched as her cousin nearly took another spill, somehow saving herself as she turned and then zoomed past again, leaving Annie in her dust. Literally. Annie spat dust, and closed her eyes to ease the sting in her eyes. Kate was a trip—in a good way. However, they couldn’t be more different, she decided as her cousin’s brilliant mass of curls disappeared around the bend. The instant Annie was alone, she felt her tension melt away as she sucked in a breath of fresh air. And then she started on her way, eager to begin.

This time of the day, the sun had burned off most of the morning fog. The hills were a lovely string of emerald pearls. Most hikers just walked the Lairig Ghru pass, but this wasn’t a full-on hike as Kate had pointed out. Annie only needed a clear view of the area from somewhere up high, so she took a route west. The wind was mild today, and it was sunny. A perfect day for hiking. Still, she was glad for the poncho, because it was a bit brisk.

What do I see?

Truth, lies and the destinies of men.

Bullshit, Annie thought. Still she itched to take the crystal out of her bag for another look. However, she had much too much ground to cover to stand here ogling a rock. And yet she felt its presence acutely, like a force of energy emanating from the depths of her pack.

Determined to forget it for the time being, she adjusted the pack at her back, pleased that she had found her day pack at such a great price. She might not be much into Coach or Louis Vuitton but she loved her new day pack. If there was one thing she felt passionate about it was good gear.

Estimating that she had a good six or seven hours before she needed to be back at the meeting point, she abandoned the road and found herself climbing mostly on rutted tracks. The pass was clear for most of the hike, but higher up in the rockiest terrain it was a bit more difficult to traverse, especially during winter when the entire pass was snowbound. The last time she’d hiked through with Paul, they had taken the Lairig Ghru straight through from Speyside to Deeside. Today, she would play it by ear. As she’d told Kate, there would be plenty of time to cover all the ground she needed to cover during the next few weeks, with far more planning once all of her gear arrived from wherever the airline had decided to ship it.

Normally, she was prepared for everything, but for once in her life it felt good to take it as it came. She had a cellphone for emergencies, she had a sandwich, her notebook and her camera—and she had her Farbgel—Scotland’s answer to pepper spray—just in case—at Kate’s insistence, of course. But she wasn’t worried. The area was quite familiar to her, and it wasn’t her first time out. In fact, she felt as though she had been born in these hills. Today company would only have slowed her down. Plus, she really didn’t want to tell anyone what she was after—not yet.

Only her father would have understood.

She was excited by this. Of all the bait and switch theories, this was the only one that hadn’t been thoroughly pursued, probably in part due to the fact that the stone was “home” now after having been returned to Scotland in 1996. The Kingussie report had surfaced about the same time the stone had returned to Scotland. Apparently, some old woman on her deathbed claimed her brothers had stumbled into a cave while playing up in the hills as boys and there they had discovered a stone that sounded a lot like the Stone of Destiny. Unfortunately, her brothers were both dead now too—one killed in World War II and the other fell off a ladder in his hardware store and cracked his skull at the age of sixty-two. Neither was around to corroborate the woman’s story, but it didn’t matter. Annie only needed something more solid to go on in order to ask for an official dispensation—a long-buried cave, maybe. That was why she was heading up to the “Demon’s Penis” today…to find her proof. After all, she didn’t need any special permission to hike these hills or to poke about unofficially, and if there were unexplored caverns in the area, she was bound and determined to find them.

About an hour into her hike, she stopped at a burn, grateful that she’d worn her good hiking boots on the plane. Despite what Kate said, hiking the Cairngorms wasn’t for the fainthearted, even when you stuck to well-worn paths. Crossing the burn at the footbridge, she headed west until the peak of Bod an Deamhain greeted her like an old friend in the distance. The munro leaned to one side, looking far more like a woman’s breast than a demon’s penis, but the sight of it filled Annie with an unparalleled sense of satisfaction, even as it brought back bittersweet memories of hiking with her parents.

While most parents might not have dragged their eight-year-old along on a hiking trip through some of the wildest terrain in Scotland, her father hadn’t blinked an eye, nor had her mother—which was entirely to be expected considering that her dad had climbed some of the most challenging peaks on the face of the earth and her mother had met the love of her life traveling the Trans-Siberian. Her parents had been fearless. They’d instilled the same attitude in Annie. The simple fact that they had jumped out of planes together, taken a sailboat out for six months on the Pacific and met the Dalai Lama twice, made their deaths feel all the more senseless. Run down by a drunk driver only three blocks from her grandmother’s house. On the way to pick her up, no less.

But, like her obsessions, Annie came by her sense of adventure honestly. She supposed that was why Paul had found it so difficult to deal with her. He said she was stubborn, opinionated and too independent. How could anyone be too independent? And how the hell did that give him the right to sleep with her best friend? How cliché. He hadn’t even had the sense to cheat on her in an entirely original way. But the worst of it was that Annie had realized afterward how few true friends she actually had. Her life had been too wrapped up in her work, and if she got this new dig, that wasn’t about to change. But that was fine. Moving to Scotland would be a good change. Spending more time with Kate would be great as well.

Today the walk was clearing her head, doing her good. In fact, by the time she emerged from the smattering of trees at the base of the corries, she already felt like a new woman. Up ahead, bright purple hues drew her inexorably toward them. On either side of the worn path bluebells sprang from the ground, swaying gently with the summer breeze.

Up higher, the hillside felt spongy beneath her boots. These were not your typical mountains, more like elevated plateaus. The name itself, Cairngorms, was a misnomer. Translated from Gaelic, it meant “blue cairn.” However, made primarily of granite, the hills glowed red under the afternoon sun…a bit like the Winter Stone. It was why the old ones had named them the red hills—the Am Monadh Ruadh.

Stopping in the middle of a blooming field, she paused to take a look around. From here, she could spy the pine forest she’d come through down below. Sad to know that was all that was left of those amazing woodlands. Her stomach grumbled, so she picked a spot near a crumbling cairn, and pulled off her dry sack, then slid down to sit on the mossy ground, resting her back against a large boulder.

She must have been walking a good two hours or more, and she wasn’t anywhere near where she needed to be. To check the time, she took her cell phone out of her bag. 2:15. Okay, three hours, maybe a little more. She’d lost track. At this point, she’d be pushing it to get back to the meeting point by six, so she texted Kate to let her know her E.T.A. Then she fished her sandwich out of her bag, and along with it the Winter Stone, feeling a bit gleeful to be alone with her newfound treasure at last.

When she touched the crystal, the striations turned green.

Curioser and curioser.

Inspecting it as she finished her sandwich, she grabbed her canteen, took a sip of water, and then tossed everything but the stone aside to take a closer look at her prize…