After the battle at Drumossie, James had not believed he could feel greater shame. But as the sky began to pale, he realised he had been wrong. All night, all the while he had been running, skidding, crawling up and down the sides of the hills towards Golspie, he had been followed by the shrieking scream of his sweetheart while he had watched in disbelief as John Mackay shot dead the wounded man. And then the repetitive wailing of his name as Mary's voice had faded. Mackay had been right in his assessment of the outlaw; he was indeed a coward. He had not always been this way. He had marched proudly under the royal banner of Prince Charles Stuart but following the sheer madness and the annihilation of so many men at Drumossie he had come to realise how rampant death was, and he was afraid to the point of terror regarding his own.
He clutched his arm and recalled, too, the skill of the shooter who had caught him with a bullet in the engulfing night. He thanked heaven that he had been more fortunate in its placing than his uncle, Robert Mackenzie, but with this thought he was reminded once more of those terrible events and he felt bowed down with shame. He missed his footing and fell, slithering down the wooded hillside until he crashed onto the rocks at the bottom. His senses felt numbed as he lifted his hand up to his head and felt the sticky blood which rushed from it. What a foolish death he would die here, but how fitting it should be an act of shame which killed him.
Somewhere, only a short distance from him, the sound of a waterfall could be heard, both heavy and gentle in a manner which made his head throb even more. It was the hard work and efforts of these falls which had carved out the ravine where he lay. The trees which had broken his fall on his way down, clung to the sheer sides and gave the April sky a peculiar criss-cross with their branches which, though budding, had not yet come into full leaf. He realised it was no longer raining. The ground around him was dry save for the spray from the waterfall which he noticed, with interest, was coming into view. He lifted his head up and, though it spun when he moved, he was surprised to find he was able to rise. At first, he felt his eyes were betraying him, and he screwed them closed before opening them once more, but the peculiar form of the waterfall was indeed beginning to take shape. Two hands with long watery fingers reached away from the rock and rolling from side to side on wide though fragile shoulders an ever-changing head appeared. It was queer, the manner in which this form looked so alive in its monochrome appearance, and James Og gave a slight cry as two large eye sockets appeared.
He would have liked to run, to have turned away and promised himself he had only imagined the whole apparition, but he could not take his eyes from it. It had no mouth, yet as it looked at him, he could hear its liquid voice, as though a peculiar form of telepathy existed between them.
"Jamie Og," it began, its soothing voice neither male nor female in tone. "Your coming here was far from misfortune."
James looked afraid as it addressed those thoughts he had held in private counsel. "What are you?"
"More than you can comprehend," came the mystical reply. "But you must rise, Jamie Og, you have work to do."
"No," he murmured. "No man ever survived such a fall as this."
"And yet you shall." There was almost no inflection to the voice and its statements were clearly non-negotiable. "You were guided here for a purpose, Jamie Og. You are no longer the person you were when you fell into this ravine. You have purpose, and a role which has been assigned to you."
"You do not know me," James sighed and would have shaken his head if he had been given the strength to. "I’ve fled from all those who needed me."
"But you shall no longer. Caledon needs you now and it is for her, and her alone, that you have been saved. Already you are feeling the healing power of the spring, are you not? You are given this purpose for you have a strength, a strength that even you cannot see. But you shall not have to do this alone, Jamie Og. Men from the scattered lands of Caledon shall help you, those of both Jacobean and Hanoverian calling. Do not seek them, Caledon shall bring them to you."
"How shall I know who to trust?"
"You will not know, you must discover. Take a little of this water, Jamie Og, for it has healing qualities. But be warned, you can use it only once, use it with care and on one you could not bear to lose, for its power is not only in recovery and healing but also protection, as you shall find."
He watched both relieved and horrified as the waterfall began, once again, to become a waterfall. "Wait!" he called out, so loud that his ears rang, and his head pounded. "How do I know what my task is?"
"To begin with, Jamie Og, you must journey westward. Your task shall find you."
There could be no further talking, for the waterfall was only that. He looked around and tried to ease his aching body, but it was too much for him and he felt the weariness of fear, disbelief and pain, pour down on him. He slipped from consciousness into a dark state where neither dreams nor rest await.
