MacKinnons' Hope: A Highland Christmas Carol Read Free

no longer hanging upon his shoulders and the wind forced its way past his flesh, straight to his bones.
    He recognized this place.
    It was Aldergh’s cemetery, but the chapel that had once stood beside it was now demolished. All that remained were bricks stained with black ash. In the distance, Aldergh Castle was no more.
    And there, at his feet, lay a solitary tombstone, overturned, evidently forgotten amidst the weeds. He couldn’t quite read the inscription. But behind that tomb lay row upon row of his ancestors’ graves, none lay next to it, and none in advance of it. Beyond that lone gravestone were only wicked looking briars.
    “Tis cold,” he complained, giving the ghost a sideways glance.
    Eleanore smiled a knowing smile. “Colder yet ye’ll find ye be, Hugh FitzSimon, though I shall give ye sunshine if ’tis what ye please.”
    Without ever moving Hugh found himself in a place he’d not visited in many years: Chreagach Mhor . It was springtime now—but how could that be?
    Children laughed along the bluff-side, racing through rows and rows of dancing blue bonnets. One. Two. Three. Four. They came running past—and through him. One little boy ran directly through Hugh, laughing as he ran.
    Hugh spun about to watch them race away, toward an old stone keep at the top of the hill—the ancient seat of the MacKinnon lairds.
    Soaring high upon a gently sloping hill, Chreagach Mhor was a rugged fortress seated upon a violet mantle. The heather bloomed a brilliant violet against a vivid carpet of green and scattered across the lush landscape, rugged stones stood like proud sentries to guard the mammoth tower. Small thatch-roofed buildings spattered the hillside.
    Another boy came racing past, perhaps this one no more than twelve. “Mother says to come along,” he shouted at the escaping girls. “Tis time to sup.”
    The girls all squealed as the boy reached the hindmost runner, trying in vain to grasp the little girl’s golden hair.
    “Constance!” the boy screamed, when the child managed to escape, and then all the girls laughed and scurried away.
    Was this some form of hell, to glimpse a life he was never privy to?
    Once again, Hugh FitzSimon slapped his burdened chest. “Dear Lord, Eleanore! Am I already dead?”
    In truth, he did not feel so well this eve.
    Eleanore smiled yet again, not quite warm, not quite cold. Hugh could barely look at her for the brightness of her eyes. “Not yet, Hugh. Not yet.”
    And then they were no longer standing upon the hillside. They were in a barren field. It was sunny still, but now it seemed they’d somehow happened into the middle of a celebration, surrounded by happy folk the likes of which Hugh had never beheld.
    His wife reappeared by his side, not alive, not quite dead. “Is this for real?” he asked. “What of ye? What do ye be?”
    The blue glow in Eleanore’s eyes dimmed—just enough so that he could spy the true color of her eyes: hazel green. “For love of ye, I come bearing gifts.”
    Hugh screwed his face. “From beyond the grave?”
    Eleanore nodded wistfully, looking more like herself than the specter she had been. “Love, you see, is quite the hopeful thing.”
    Hugh remained confused. “B-But I did not love ye well enough!” he said.
    “This I know.”
    “And yet ye loved me still?”
    She nodded again and bade him to look about once more, so he could see what she had brought him there to see.
    And there she was—his daughter, Page. Older now, with soft tendrils of sun-kissed hair framing a lovely grown-up face. After all these many years, she’d kept her beauty—just like her lady mother. But Hugh peered from mother to daughter, and realized with a start that Page had more of him than she had of Eleanore.
    She had his face, not her lady mother’s.
    Amazed by the sight of his daughter, he watched her hug a little girl—his granddaughter, Hugh supposed. And then another child came to tug her skirts. With a smile, Page bent to meet the