On a Highland Shore

PROLOGUE

Lammas Night at the edge of the world

August 1254

The sky was still blue this August evening, the gray sides of the towering mountain peaks of western Scotland were still lit by the sun, but the long day was at last ending. To the east the light was fading in the deep glens and forests, the wind sighing through the branches, lifting drops of water from the tumbling streams onto nearby ferns, where they would linger through the short summer night. The sun moved ever downward in the west, changing the sea from blue to molten silver, and the cobalt of the offshore islands to a muted gray. Waves hurried to claim the shingle, lacy white foam flying from their crests to join with the descending evening.

The young girl who hurried up the headland saw none of it; she saw only the old woman ahead of her moving steadily away, and she increased her speed anxiously. Seals lifted their heads from the water and shorebirds dipped down to get a closer look at the two figures below. But the young girl did not look.

She wanted to see the future.

She was a beautiful child, with long bones an ... read full excerpt from On a Highland Shore ebook