Page 56 of Entangled With You

“Aw man, I shouldn’t have drunk so much whisky.” I hiccuped to punctuate my distress.

“Ye deserved it after the days ye have had...”

“You too though, and now you don’t get to sleep?”

“Ye will sleep for both of us, I will take mine when I’m relieved.”

I dropped my backpack off my back to the ground and scrounged through it. Here’s your walkie-talkie.”

Magnus chuckled. “Tis a funny name.”

“You remember how to use it?”

He nodded and clipped it to the belt across his chest.

“Okay,” I pulled my tartan around my shoulders and climbed into the bed. It was more uncomfortable than it looked, being not much wider than an ironing board. Magnus tucked my blankets in around me. “G’night, mo reul-iuil.”

I asked, “You aren’t going anywhere? Just outside?”

“Aye, just outside. And we will speak on the walkytalk.”

“Perfect.”

He left the room and it was pitch black and so quiet I couldn’t hear a thing at all. I clutched the walkie-talkie to my chest. And though I tried to be a big girl about it I turned it on and pressed the button. It made a loud squawking sound that threatened to wake up the whole house. I scrambled to turn down the volume and whispered. “Hi.”

There was a second of waiting, longer than I thought I could bear, and from the static-y inside of the apparatus, Magnus’s voice. “Sleep well, mo reul-iuil, I am just outside.”

A tear rolled down my cheek, but I found myself able to sleep.

28 - KAITLYN

When my eyes opened in the morning it was ice cold in the room. Ice cold. Shivering. I tightened my blanket, my head was pounding. I needed aspirin and water, pronto. A deep breathing met my ear and I looked down, Magnus was on the ground beside the bed: flat on his back, his tartan wrapped around his shoulders, frosty breath coming from his mouth.

I decided not to wake him especially because I had no idea how long he had been there. I quietly stepped across his broad chest and pulled open the door with the loudest god-dammed creeeeeeak. I checked him.

He groggily said, “Where?”

“I’m going to see Lizbeth, keep sleeping, I’m sorry I woke you.”

He mumbled, “Good,” and threw his arm over his face and went back to sleep right there on the floor.

I tiptoed down the hall. There were three closed doors.

I crept down the stairs and found myself face to face with an older woman in the kitchen. She was plump and grey haired, dressed in a wool dress and wrapped in a shawl with an apron over the whole thing. She drew down her brow. “Ye must be the Young Magnus’s wife then?”

I nodded.

She looked at me skeptically. “Ye are quite young tae be the cause of all this devilishness. I have heard ye called many a name, but here ye stand afore me, a young bride, not much older than m’self at the beginning.”

I mumbled, “What kind of names are they...”

She threw down a dish towel. “Tis nae important the flappin’ mouths of simple minds, daena ye worry on it. Lizbeth Campbell says, and says it quite loudly and firmly that ye are a godly woman, as pious and good as they come, and I have a mind tae help her in the cause of it. I am Madame Greer. You and I are friends from this day forward. You need a friend, I can see it.”

I smiled widely. “Okay, definitely. Friends, yes.”

“I have been told that I can think what I want and because I daena shut up about it I get my way in most things, so I want ye tae listen tae me on this: Tis your life we are speakin’ on. You are a guest in my home, but I’ll see ye pray here every mornin’ beggin’ God tae look after us all.” She gestured to a small bit of wool fabric on the stone in a corner in front of a small cross.

“Oh, yes, of course.” I went to the corner and knelt on the fabric.