The Call

The thing about living in the past is, you're haunted by the future. Ghosts of people and things yet to be are just as spooky as the ones who have passed on, and they meet you around just as many corners, and await you behind just as many slowly creaking doors. There is just as much uncertainty – did you really see that, or just imagine it? Was that an image from a dream, or from reality? Do you really remember what they were wearing, or did you invent that shirt, or those shoes, or that scarf? There is just as much of a desire to shrug it off, say it's impossible, that ghosts aren't real, that the world works in a certain way because that is the way you've always been told the world works, and to come to know any differently is to risk losing the ability to know anything at all.

There is just as much fear. Just as much raw, creeping dread.

There are things the Human mind is not wired to know. Things the Human body is not meant to survive. Things the Human soul was not built to experience.

And if somehow you do, and live on, the only rational response is to run.

The difference is – ghosts of the past come from the outside. They may be with you for some time, but all their paths lead away from you. All your paths lead away from them. You are destined to part.

But ghosts of the future come from the inside. All of their paths are tangled up in your own mind. You are destined to meet. For however long they exist, you have no place to run.

The room that Jamie leads me to is the same room Mrs. Graham gave me my first night here.

Flashes of vivid yet-to-be-memories had followed me out of the Rover, into the manse, and all the way up the stairs. The images of Mr. and Mrs. Graham, and Uncle Lamb, and brimstone moths, and tea leaves, and spiced milk, and oatcakes, and rowanberry jam, and more and more and more, hovered over every side table, in front of every bookshelf, along every staircase, and around every brass doorknob.

But even all those are nothing compared to what awaits inside this room.

For in this room, are many ghosts of me.

Jamie and the landlady exchange a few pleasantries at the door, words I do not hear and cannot recall. The ghosts crowd in upon me, and all I can hear are echoes.

Who I was two hundred years in the future grins at me from every bedpost, from every oaken wall panel, from every cheap knickknack and decorative chunk of soap. It doesn't matter how many details are different, the bones of it are all the same, and they rattle and shift, like skeletons in a box.

I suppose, in the end, I was always going to end up haunting myself. It's one of the risks you take when you step beyond the boundaries of Time. Though, perhaps we all do, in a way. Every time we look in a mirror, every time we hope for the future, we construct a life, a spirit, a soul we will inhabit one day, only to look back from who we are then and say - that person is no more. We are not continuous beings.

We are merely points of light, where past and future meet. . .

It's impossible for me not to dissociate, for me not to become the very ghosts I have already been. For even the sight of a water jug, or a small velvet pillow to reduce me to a state of empty, floating shock.

I stare at everything like it isn't there, and don't react to anything unless it happens directly in front of me.

Jamie, bless him, takes it all in stride, and with remarkable grace - though even in my current state I can tell he is as terrified and baffled by my reactions as any fond husband would be.

Distantly, I hear him tell me we'll be staying here almost a week, since we won't be going to the live debates in Inverness.

"Three months ago," I say, and see him start. It takes me a moment, but then I realize they're the first words I've said in at least fifteen minutes. "I saw this building three months ago. Before you. Before Murtagh. Before Black Jack. It was empty then." I look into his deeply concerned blue eyes, only to see there yet another spirit of what was and is yet to be. I shiver, and look away, "Why is it a hotel now?"

He shrugs, at so much of a loss that some detached part of me cannot believe he's holding himself together, "Dinnae ken. I c'n ask if ye want."

"No, it's not important."

"It is if ye-"

"Please Jamie-" I reach out to him, and he's at my side instantly. I clutch at his jacket and bury my face in his chest, grounding myself in the feel and scent of him, "Just don't go."

"Aye, lass. I'm no' goin' annywhear. Nae fear."

He sits down next to me on the bed, and briefly does something with his com, before lightly tossing it aside. Then he gathers me into his arms, and strokes my hair.

I can feel the questions backed up inside his throat, held in restraint by the heavy sinews of his neck, a determinedly clenched jaw, and his sheer, stubborn Scottish will.

He asks me nothing, only holds me, rhythmically stroking my hair and my back and my sides, until at last I solidify into something more substantial than a cloud.

"Jamie darling, the past few days have been. . . a lot," I take a deep breath of his light cologne, "Even the things I wouldn't change."

"Aye, that's true enough."

"I think I need to sleep."

"Good idea."

He kneels and removes my shoes, but won't let me change clothes, saying rightly that it's unnecessary, and would only tire me more. He tucks me under the covers, then gets under them with me, and tucks me into the long, welcoming curve of his body. There are still questions waiting in the tension of his limbs, but he doesn't let them out, only holding me like a fragile, precious thing sheltering away from storms and waves and buffetings that he can't see, but that are rocking him just as harshly as they are me.

I feel like a thin film of dust across a tabletop, that can't be seen unless the light hits it just right.

In the Gàidhlig, Claire is Sorcha.

Sorcha means light.

I close my eyes, so I might be in the dark, and have no name.

The next few days are a blurred mist. Even now I am unsure how many nights it takes, they blend so into the days. I sleep more than I wake, more terrified of the dreams that await me in the light than in the dark.

I do not know how Jamie survives it.

I am used to my cloud moods, my journeys to the depths of blankness, my cold and barren inner heart. My soul of Stygian Blue.

But Jamie?

He's seen me like this before, to be sure, but we hadn't declared our love for each other then. We hadn't taken each other to new heights of pleasure, or such plummeting depths of joy.

We hadn't become one another's heart.

He brings me food, makes me eat. Leads me to the bathroom, makes me wash. He sits with me, and tries to talk, though mostly he holds me while I sleep.

At last it is the night of the full moon, though I have no idea how I know it. My sleeping and my waking have blent into each other all day, in grays and soft blues, and half-dreams, and partial reality.

The night is no different, as I sit up in bed, and see the room in black and white, all silvered over with the light of the moon, even though the long, heavy drapes are shut.

I stand up, and my clothes transform into a long white shift, and green, woolen cloak.

I am barefoot in the grass, tiny white lilies growing at every step I take. A grove of rowan trees clothes itself in flowers as I approach, and blazes into blood-red fruit as I pass. The sky is full of golden primrose petals, and the lantern in my hand glows cyan-blue. Patches of clover and wolfsbane grow in unequal harmony, and a necklace of cuckoo flowers coils round my neck. A girdle of forget-me-nots settles around my hips, far heavier than it should be, like the weight of a child in the womb. The high piping of birds and the low singing of frogs chorus into a sky of silver and gold.

I climb a hill, small but steep, and stand in the midst of its crown of standing stones.

A distant voice calls from the central stone, nearer and nearer, and louder and louder.

"Claire? . . . Claire? . . . Claire?"

It is a name I do not know.

I am the Lady Of Light, made of stars, and lamb's wool, and the wax of bees.

"Claire?"

A man emerges from the stones, like a ghost drawn in charcoal. His face is old, but mostly unlined, and bears a pair of eyes that glow like the moon the moment before dawn.

Something in me knows those eyes. . .

"Claire! You're here, at last!" he says, and smiles, so warm and kindly I wish he was my sire. . .

"We've been looking for you for weeks, my dear, and I fear there isn't much time, even now. You must find an Oldmother – she will be able to help you back to us. I know that's not much to give you, but we mustn't disturb the continuum too much either." His eyes grow concerned, "Claire? Can you not hear me? Or can't you speak?"

I haven't tried yet. But there is only one thing I can say.

"Tell the bees that I am gone."

His eyes grow sad, but still he smiles, "I was afraid of that. Ah well. It was to be expected, I suppose. You will make him very happy, I know you will. You may give him my blessing, if he cares for it." His spectral hand reaches towards my cheek, but he cannot make contact with me, "And you have my blessing as well, though I know you'd never need to ask."

I smile back at him, grateful for such familial loyalty, "Thank you, my Merlin. We won't forget you."

His eyes light up with joy, "Do you really think-"

"Claire!"

It is a different voice, from a different time. My drifting mind pulls away, searching, searching for that voice that calls my name. . .

"Claire!"

I blink, and wake up. Or maybe the world does.

Lamb winks out of existence, and the whole world descends into the silvery black of a moonlit midnight.

"Claire!"

I have just enough time to register the fact that I am, in fact, in the middle of the stones of Craigh na Dun, and actually wearing my linen shift and woolen cloak, before the shape and sound of Jamie barrel right into me, scooping me up and and carrying me off into the dark.