Once Upon A Highland Legend Read Free Page B

Farbgel—Scotland’s answer to pepper spray—just in case—at Kate’s insistence, of course. But she wasn’t worried. The area was quite familiar to her, and it wasn’t her first time out. In fact, she felt as though she had been born in these hills. Today company would only have slowed her down. Plus, she really didn’t want to tell anyone what she was after—not yet.
    Only her father would have understood.
    She was excited by this. Of all the bait and switch theories, this was the only one that hadn’t been thoroughly pursued, probably in part due to the fact that the stone was “home” now after having been returned to Scotland in 1996. The Kingussie report had surfaced about the same time the stone had returned to Scotland. Apparently, some old woman on her deathbed claimed her brothers had stumbled into a cave while playing up in the hills as boys and there they had discovered a stone that sounded a lot like the Stone of Destiny. Unfortunately, her brothers were both dead now too—one killed in World War II and the other fell off a ladder in his hardware store and cracked his skull at the age of sixty-two. Neither was around to corroborate the woman’s story, but it didn’t matter. Annie only needed something a more solid to go on in order to ask for an official dispensation—a long-buried cave, maybe. That was why she was heading up to the “Demon’s Penis” today…to find her proof . After all, she didn’t need any special permission to hike these hills or to poke about unofficially, and if there were unexplored caverns in the area, she was bound and determined to find them.
    About an hour into her hike, she stopped at a burn, grateful that she’d worn her good hiking boots on the plane. Despite what Kate said, hiking the Cairngorms wasn’t for the fainthearted, even when you stuck to well-worn paths. Crossing the burn at the footbridge, she headed west until the peak of Bod an Deamhain greeted her like an old friend in the distance. The munro leaned to one side, looking far more like a woman’s breast than a demon’s penis, but the sight of it filled Annie with an unparalleled sense of satisfaction, even as it brought back bittersweet memories of hiking with her parents.
    While most parents might not have dragged their eight-year-old along on a hiking trip through some of the wildest terrain in Scotland, her father hadn’t blinked an eye, nor had her mother—which was entirely to be expected considering that her dad had climbed some of the most challenging peaks on the face of the earth and her mother had met the love of her life traveling the Trans-Siberian. Her parents had been fearless. They’d instilled the same attitude in Annie. The simple fact that they had jumped out of planes together, taken a sailboat out for six months on the Pacific and met the Dalai Lama twice, made their deaths feel all the more senseless. Run down by a drunk driver only three blocks from her grandmother’s house. On the way to pick her up, no less.
    But, like her obsessions, Annie came by her sense of adventure honestly. She supposed that was why Paul had found it so difficult to deal with her. He said she was stubborn, opinionated and too independent. How could anyone be too independent? And how the hell did that give him the right to sleep with her best friend? How cliché. He hadn’t even had the sense to cheat on her in an entirely original way. But the worst of it was that Annie had realized afterward how few true friends she actually had. Her life had been too wrapped up in her work, and if she got this new dig, that wasn’t about to change. But that was fine. Moving to Scotland would be a good change. Spending more time with Kate would be great as well.
    Today the walk was clearing her head, doing her good. In fact, by the time she emerged from the smattering of trees at the base of the corries, she already felt like a new woman. Up ahead, bright purple hues drew her inexorably toward them. On either