She was ever more firmly gripped. Black coal, ragged, rocky dirt dragged and tore at her. She was barely aware of it. She was in tears when she found herself falling back onto a pile of pure coal, freed from the shaft. She was pulled up.
She looked into the pitch-black of Alistair’s face, dimly recognizing her cousin only because of the startling blue of his eyes.
“The boy…” she whispered.
“Shhh…” he said, holding her against him.
Suddenly, they became aware of shouts from outside the tunnels, muffled as they entered into their underground world.
“What now?” Shawna heard the gruff demand come from Gawain.
“Alistair—” Lowell began.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got my cousin,” Alistair said.
“We can’t just leave!” she protested.
“Shawna,” Alistair said, “we can do no more.” He started forcing her along the pathway. They had barely left the caved-in area of the shaft before one of the miners hurried up to them. “Come out, come out, quickly now. The boy is outside. Sweet Jesus, little Danny Anderson is just outside the shaft.”
“What?” Gawain thundered. “’Tis true, he’s outside. The wee lad is alive.”
“How?” Shawna breathed.
“God alone knows,” the miner said. “For ’tis sure, there’s not a one of us can tell!”
Shawna tore out of the cave. Mark Menzies, as coal blackened as the rest of them, was kneeling down in the grass, a distance from the shaft, with the boy, while he was surrounded in an outer circle by miners and their families. A blanket had been placed around Danny, and his little face was smudged beyond recognition. His dark hair was soaked and plastered to his head. Shawna went running to the pair in the deep grasses, falling to her knees before the child, lifting his hair from his forehead to study his enormous blue eyes. “Danny, Danny…you are alive!” Impulsively, she hugged him tightly, then managed to sit back again, studying him. “Danny, how did you get out?”
“The beastie,” Danny said solemnly.
A cup was pressed against Shawna’s hands. Someone had brought warm, milk-laden tea. She forced it to the little boy’s lips, which were almost as blue as his eyes. He sipped the warm tea and his shivering somewhat subsided while his eyes remained on Shawna.
She was suddenly determined the boy wasn’t going back into the mines. She didn’t give a damn what happened in the rest of Scotland, Great Britain, or the world at large. They would be sending no more children into the mines at Craig Rock.
He finished the tea, returning the cup to her. Shawna looked up as a hand reached down to take the cup from her. GenaAnderson was standing there by her side, looking down at her and the boy solemnly. Shawna felt a twinge of guilt. The boy was supposedly one of Gena’s own brood of sisters and brothers, a child of Fergus and Charity Anderson, but Shawna was convinced that Gena was actually the child’s mother. She should step away and let Gena take the little boy into her arms to comfort him, but Gena didn’t seem to mind the attention she paid him.
“Danny, lad. What beastie was this that could pluck you from the tunnel?” Mark Menzies asked.
“The beastie that lives in the cave,” Danny said, as if explaining that the sun rose each morning. “He talks. He heard m’cryin’ he said, and he told me to come with him. I did, and he lifted me through the earth. He’s a huge beastie, but he’s not a mean one.”
“The tunnel is haunted by some spirit or creature!” came a woman’s fierce cry. It was Charity Anderson.
A shawl thrown over her graying hair, she broke through the crowd, kneeling by Shawna to give her a reproachful glare and take the boy tightly into her arms.
Danny seemed to struggle a bit against that hold, and Shawna quickly sat back. Charity Anderson was not an attractive woman, she never had been, though she and her husband had produced a handsome enough brood. Charity possessed a long, horse-like face. Her eyes were gray blue against her ashen coloring. Her hair had once been her only claim to beauty, but she cared nothing for it now, and it was merely wild and unkempt and gray. There was a strange look about the woman now. She half smiled, and yet she was grim. Her look seemed to say that Shawna might be the great lady, but she was the lad’s mother, and she was taking him, and that was that.
Shawna stood, aware that people around her had started whispering, and some were speaking more boldly.
“’Tis true, the damned mines are cursed in some way!” cried a miner.
“Haunted,” agreed another.
“Haunted, be damned!” Aidan suddenly cried out in aggravation.
“My cousin is right!” Alistair decreed. “My god, are you all daft? If any spirits reside in that mine, they are surely the most benign in all the world. A shaft caved in, yet all three men caught were dug out of it, and even a little mite of a lad caught in a narrow exploratory tunnel was miraculously saved—by some beastie. Sweet Jesus, if we’ve ghosts or the like, we’ve got the nicest group of the damned creatures in all of Scotland!”
It occurred to Shawna then that there was no mystical creature within the mine shafts.
David Douglas had found the boy, and David had saved him. David—who had risen out of the water like an ancient selkie just in time to save her. David, who managed, with incredible stealth, to be everywhere.