Healer

Chapter 25

The days after his departure are spent in silence, in a constant state of reminiscence. Whether I'm sowing or helping Ann in the kitchen or lying in bed late at night, my mind remains in a consistent memory. I'm unable to pull myself out.

His journal is my safe place. I read it everywhere. It's large- he started it at the age sixteen. His entries were merely scribbles of occurrences during the day. His uncle teaching him to become a healer, traveling from clan to clan with him, meeting new people and friends. There's even bits about girls he admired, harmless flirtations mostly.

As I read further, his words grew more accomplished, more profound as he became a man. Around seventeen, he left for university. And from what I could tell, he did nothing but study. He received many honors there. On multiple occasions, he assisted in important surgeries on his first and second years, unheard of. By the latter years, he was performing them on his own.

As I read on, I realized quickly why he is regarded as the best healer in Scotland. He left school and instead of coming home, traveled the country, going from village to village, healing anyone he could. The pages are filled with these people, with the land he covered, the obstacles that came along the way. I'm engulfed in his eloquent way of portraying his days, so much so that they become my days.

By the time I'm approaching his stay in Mor Castle, I begin to fear what my heart can take. He's given me the entryway into his heart, his mind, even his soul by giving me this journal. It's hard to read, just for the fact that his man, this beautiful man, isn't mine. I'll never see him again.

His words ache me to my core... and they haven't even been about me.

Hesitantly, I flip the pages until I catch my name. The first word of the page.

Gillian.

Gillian Grant Clarke... That's the name she said. I watched that man lay his hands on her and felt a rage I've never come to feel before. Of course, no man should touch a woman in that sense, and the thought passed my mind as I stood before them. But, in honesty, I'd never seen anything as beautiful as she... I felt as though I'd lay him flat right there, strike a blade through his chest. It wasn't usual- what I felt when she looked at me.

Her hair is crimson as a sparrow, her eyes green as freshly-grown blades of grass on a spring morning... She cannot be real. I felt her gaze to my feet. When she looked at me, tear-streaks pouring down her face like the fall of rushing water, I thought I'd kiss her then. I had an urge to.

Her nose is dusted in light freckles, her skin fair as milk. Her voice vibrated through my body the first time she truly spoke a word other than yes and thank ye. Her voice rolls in a deep tone, unlike any woman I've come across. It makes ye want to fall to your knees and kiss her feet. Or pick her up and ravage her like a wild beast.

She looks afraid to be here. Terribly afraid. Dinna ken why though.

But, I will find out.

I close my eyes, setting down the journal onto the nightstand, unable to go further as my vision blurs.

...

"Hand me the blade, Ann," I say, reaching out my hand. She does, slowly.

"Are ye alright, Gill?"

I don't answer her. I can't. The day is November 12th, 1715.

A day I know as The Battle of Preston, the battle that is the demise of the Jacobite Rebellion.

I received a letter this morning from Lachlan. A letter that turned my insides to stone.