Beyond the Highland Myst(365)

He walked with a gait that bespoke confidence, strength, and the ability to make hard decisions. He was reasonably intelligent and well-spoken—his strange inflection and vocabulary aside.

He hadn't known the way out of the cave, and when they had emerged, Gwen hadn't missed the significance of the collapsed tunnel and the overgrowth of foliage.

Och, Christ, they're all dead, he'd whispered.

She shivered. The engine had cooled, the remnants of heat gone.

Occam's Razor promulgated that the simplest explanation that fit the majority of the facts was most likely true. The simplest explanation here was… he was telling the truth. He'd somehow been put into a deep sleep five hundred years ago against his will, perhaps via some lost science, and she'd awakened him by falling on him.

Impossible, her mind exclaimed.

Tired of trying to coax the jury to deliver a consensus, she reluctantly accepted the hung verdict and admitted that she couldn't leave him. What if the impossible was possible? What if tomorrow he offered her some concrete proof that he had been frozen in time for nearly five hundred years? Perhaps he planned to show her how it had been done, some advanced cryogenics mat had been lost over time. She wasn't vacating the premises if there was even a remote possibility of finding out such a thing. Oh, admit it, Gwen, despite having "dropped out" on the profession that has been eternally crammed down your throat, despite refusing to continue your research, you're still fascinated by science, and you'd love to know how a man could somehow sleep for five centuries and wake up healthy and whole. You'd never publish it, but you'd still love to know.

But it was more than just scientific curiosity, and she suspected it had something to do with his sock and her eggs and a desire she couldn't attribute solely to the mandate programmed into her genes that clamored for survival of her race. No other man had ever incited such a response in her.

Science couldn't explain the tenderness she'd felt at the sight of tears in his eyes. Nor the desire she'd had to cradle his head against her chest—not to have her cherry once and truly plucked, but for his comfort.

Oh, her heart was engaged, and it both alarmed and elated her.

Tucking her bangs behind an ear, she slid off the hood and started up the hill. He'd had enough time alone. It was time to talk.

* * * * *

"Drustan." Gwen's voice cut like a light through the darkness around him.

He met her gaze levelly. The poor wee lass looked terrified, yet bristled with resolve.

She looked directly into his eyes then and, if she felt fear, she rose above it. He admired that about her, that despite her misgivings she forged on with the valor of a knight entering battle. When he'd chased her off, he worried that she might simply jump in her metal beast and drive away. The relief he'd felt when he glimpsed her heading toward him through the stones had been intense. Whatever she'd decided to think of him, she'd resolved to stick by his side—he could see it in her eyes.

"Drustan?" Hesitant, yet firm.

"Aye, lass?"

"Are you feeling better now?" she asked warily.

"I have made a tentative peace with my feelings," he said dryly. "Fear not, I doona plan to leap up and avenge the loss of my people." Yet.

She gave him a brisk nod. "Good."

He could tell that she didn't wish to discuss it, and rather than accuse him of being deluded when he was clearly distraught, she was going to scuttle around it in some circuitous manner. He narrowed his eyes, wondering what she was up to.

"Drustan, I memorized your poem, now it's your turn to grant me a favor."

"As you wish, Gwen. Only tell me what you want of me."

"A few simple questions."

"I will answer them to the best of my ability," he replied.

"How much dirt is in a hole a foot wide, nine inches long, and three and a half feet deep?"

"That is your question?" he asked, baffled. Of all things she might have asked…

"One of them," she said hastily.

He smiled faintly. Her question was one of his favorite puzzles. His priest, Nevin, had agonized for half an hour trying to calculate exactly how much dirt would be in such a space before seeing the obvious. "There is no dirt in a hole," he replied easily.

"Oh, well, that was a trick puzzle and doesn't tell me much. You may have heard it before. How about this one: A boat lies at anchor with a rope ladder hanging over the side. The rungs in the rope ladder are nine inches apart. The tide rises at a rate of six inches per hour and then falls at the same rate. If one rung of the ladder is just touching the water when the tide begins to rise, how many rungs will be covered after eight hours?"

Drustan ran through a swift series of calculations, then laughed softly, at a time when he thought he might not laugh again. He suddenly understood why she had chosen such questions, and his regard for her increased. When an apprentice petitioned a Druid to be accepted and trained, he was put through a similar series of problems designed to reveal how the lad's mind worked and what he was capable of.