When we were done with the protective plaid, William and I walked back to our croft. We were both so tired we didn’t talk much at first. William put his arm around my shoulders and I leaned against him, grateful for his strength and warmth. I looked up at his face, which still glowed with the light of the tartan—and with something else. Today I’d watched him tending to the sick, carrying the bodies of the dead to burial, rallying the young men to seek out every household in the town and every ailing citizen. He was no longer the young boy I’d saved from the Fairy Queen. He’d changed shapes then—to a snake, a lion, and a firebrand—but now he’d changed into a man.
“Do you think the town will be safe?” I asked when we got to the top of the hill. For answer, he turned me around to face Ballydoon. For a moment it seemed the sun was rising, even though it was cold winter dusk. Nestled in the folds of the surrounding snow-rimmed hills, the village glowed like a handful of jewels cupped in a velvet cloth. All the colors of the tartan I’d woven with Nan and Una had spread throughout the town, burning like rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and yellow citrines. Rays of the jeweled light soared up into the sky and swirled together like the aurora borealis—beacons in the dark, shielding the town from harm and proclaiming its survival.
But above the town still loomed the ominous shape of Castle Coldclough, like a black crow perched over its prey.
“What do you think they’ll do when they see the tartan?” I asked.
“I think they’ll come for us—but not until tomorrow, the darkest day of the year. But we’ll be ready, because of you.”
I felt something cool kiss my cheek and then William’s hand brushing a snowflake away from my face. I turned and looked at him, his face glowing in the swirling snow like a lamp lit in a window. Snowflakes clung to his hair and eyelashes. “Not because of me,” I said. “You rallied the men.”
“Aye, but only because I had your magic tartan.”
I shook my head and stepped forward to brush the snow from his hair. “I wove the tartan by thinking of you.”
As our eyes met, I felt something click inside me, like a key turning over the tumblers of a lock. Unlocking something. I heard the words of the spell I’d said to become the hallow door. I open myself to love. For a second, I wanted to turn the key back. If I loved William, I would open myself to pain. I stepped into William’s arms and lifted my face to his. He pulled me to him, crushing me against his chest. His mouth latched on to mine so hungrily that for a moment I thought he was the incubus, come to suck the very life out of my flesh. But then I was returning his kiss with equal force. His hands slid down my back and pressed me so hard against him that my feet came off the ground and I thought we would fall, but we didn’t. We were surrounded by a cocoon of warmth and light. The tartan I’d woven out of my love—and that he wore, I saw now, out of his love for me—wound around us like a fiery cloud, buoying us above the ground and sheltering us from the now-driving snow. I felt as if we had been lifted above the hills—above Ballydoon and the horrible sickness we’d seen today, far away from the monsters we’d have to face tomorrow, and outside time itself, so that the man I kissed contained the man he would become, the man I’d someday love. But when I looked at him, I saw and loved only William.
There was a moment after we came back to the cottage when William paused uncertainly by the hearth, where he usually unrolled his sheepskin pallet, but I held out my hand to him and drew him upstairs to the bedroom. Outside, the blizzard raged, but in our bedroom William and I made our own heat, burrowed beneath soft layers of sheepskin and wool, like two animals gone to ground beneath the snowdrifts. We had been given this brief time together before we would have to deal with the nephilim. In the pale white light of our snow cave, he touched me and looked at me as though he was trying to memorize my body. I traced his long lean back, his hips, his thighs, as if I could read his future in the lines of his body. When he hovered over me, his face blurry in the dim snow-lit room, I felt for a moment that if I took my eyes off him he might vanish. He must have seen the fear in my eyes, because suddenly we were surrounded by the tartan glow. It illuminated his face, and as he came inside me he said, “I’m here with you, lass. I’m not going anywhere else.”
We made love surrounded by the tartan glow, the multihued threads binding us. By dawn we had woven something new between us, a tapestry of our history together—our past, present, and future—indelibly written on our skin. Outside, the world appeared to have been unwritten by the snow. Staring out the bedroom window past William’s bare shoulder as he slept, I entertained the hope that the world had vanished. Ballydoon, Castle Coldclough, Fairwick … I would have traded it all for a few more hours here in this room with William, watching the glow of dawn climb up his legs, gild the ridges of his ribs, wash up the curving muscles of his arms, and limn the planes of his face. But when the glow reached his face, he stirred and opened his eyes. He met my gaze and smiled.
“So you’re not a dream,” he said, reaching out for me. Halfway to my face, his hand turned deep red. He twirled it in the light, a puzzled look on his face, then turned toward the window. Streams of crimson, yellow, and blue were pouring between the curtains and through the unglazed window. As William rose to his feet, his skin was bathed in light, as if he’d already put on his battle tartan. I watched him walk to the window, feeling as if I was watching him walk across a battlefield.
“They’re here,” he said, turning back to me, every bit of the boy washed out of his face. I’d lost that boy forever. Today would tell me if I would lose the man, as well.
We quickly dressed without speaking and went down to meet the brigade. There were more men than yesterday—at least two dozen—and they all wore the glowing tartan over their homespun breeks and shirts.
“Did Nan give the rest of you the tartan?” I asked.
Jamie McPhee stepped forward and shook his head. “Nay, we passed it one to the other. The witch hunters came this morning and took Nan and Una. They vow to burn the witches today at sunset. My ma’s one of them …” Jamie’s voice wavered, his brave façade of manhood faltering, but then one of the other men—his brother, I guessed from the family resemblance—clapped his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, and the tartan glowed more fiercely. Jamie straightened up, the tears on his face reflecting the blue and crimson glow.
“We’ll get her back,” Jamie’s brother said.
“Aye,” William said, “we will not let these monsters take our women. We’ll march against the bastards today!”
He pumped his fist in the air, and the two dozen men let out a deafening cheer. Their faces were all streaked with red and crimson now, like the war paint and blue woad tattoos their ancestors the Picts had worn when they went up against the Romans. I had no doubt that they would have stormed Castle Coldclough right this minute, but, remembering the fate of those warriors—and several other doomed Scottish campaigns—I had another thought.
“What say you all come inside and we talk strategy over breakfast?”
Making breakfast for two dozen Scotsmen pretty much exhausted our meager stores, but as I scooped out the last bit of oatmeal from the bin, I realized that if our plan worked I might not be coming back to the cottage. William and I had convinced the men that it made no sense to storm the castle walls, since the whole village had been summoned to the castle for the burning. We would simply join the procession from the village. Once inside the castle walls, the men would form a cordon around the witch hunters. At my signal, they would isolate the other witch hunters and I would take the angel stone from Endicott. Once I had it, I would be able to destroy the nephilim.