When the Heart Calls

The Stones

Summer 2014

A harsh cool wind whipped my long dark auburn over my slender shoulders, sending my wild loose waves to flail about before settling back just below the small of my back. Before me stood the stones, I couldn't think of them as anything else. They'd held such a large looming presence in my life. My glade green eyes took in the ancient sight before me and as always they seemed almost mesmerizing as someone walked up behind me. I turned at the footsteps finding my grandmother with her unbound blonde hair full of white whipping about like my own as she climbed to stand behind me. Everyone in my family was so tall, but I wasn't. She dwarfed me, and had the family smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, another thing I didn't have. I also lacked the milk pale skin that turned red long before tanning instead my skin was golden and sunkissed all year long. But our eyes were shaped the same, large and slanted though hers were dark blue to my bright green.

"Mind the stones my wee bonnie lassie," grandma said with a playful laugh, as she always did when we visited the stone, her thick Scottish accent brought a smile to my lips.

"Or else the faeries will take me," I finished for her with a bit of a giggle, my accent American and the product of growing up mostly in Connecticut—though France and Scotland would always be my second homes.

"It's not nice to laugh at your elders, Moira-Rose," grandma chided. "I'd have thought your Da would have taught you that one. Lord knows I beat it into him enough as a child." Of course she'd bring up Da. I kicked at the earth with my boot.

"Can you not talk about him?" I crossed my arms, fiddling with the edge of my off the shoulder sleeve. A hard gust blew, catching the mini skirt of my white linen dress and ruffling it against my thighs.

"Sooner or later you're going to have to talk to him and about him. Men never grieve long." She sighed heavily, eyes dancing over the stones. "Besides, they say the faster someone remarries the more in love they were." Though she said it, it didn't sound like she believed it, at least not to me.

"Mom's only been dead two years," I countered turning my head to face her.

"Yes, and he's only been with Mary for nine months." Again she defended the indefensible.

"That's nice, but I'm not going back and you can't make me talk to him." Lifting my chin I crossed my arms.

"Oh, I'm well aware how stubborn you are. That's some of your MacKenzie blood." She snorted a bit. "You even rushed through high school at a record pace to get away. It's been five months, Lass. Like I said when you showed up on my doorstep, you're more than welcome to stay as long as you like and putter about my garden. But you need to talk to your Da and think about University."

"Grandpa's been dead longer than I've been alive and you never remarried."

"Things were different. I'm married to Scotland now." She smirked, it was the answer she always gave. She'd been the head of the History Department at the University of the Highlands and the Islands, as long as I could remember but she retired around the time my mother died. "Let's head back to the pub for some supper." She tugged at the ends of my foxpelt hair a bit like she used to do when I was younger.

"Fine." Kicking at the ground with my knee-high boot I started back down the hill toward the parking lot. "And I guess I wouldn't mind if you told me the story of the woman and the faeries again on the walk back." I flashed grandma a smile, it was a story we both loved and bonded over.

"Long ago, when I was a wee bonnie lassie myself, there was woman from England who came to honeymoon here in Inverness with her husband Frank Randall..."