Jamie seemed to have a definite idea where we were going. At length he stopped at the foot of a huge rock, some twenty feet high, warty with lumps and jagged cracks. Tansy and eglantine had taken root in the cracks, and waved in precarious yellow flags against the stone. He took my hand and nodded at the rock face before us.
"D'ye see the steps, there, Sassenach? Think ye can manage it?" There were, in fact, faintly marked protuberances in the stone, rising at an angle across the face of the rock. Some were bona fide ledges, and others merely a foothold for lichens. I couldn't tell whether they were natural, or perhaps had known some assistance in their forming, but I thought it might just be possible to climb them, even in a full-length skirt and tight bodice.
With some slippages and scares, and with Jamie pushing helpfully from the rear on occasion, I made it to the top of the rock, and paused to look around. The view was spectacular. The dark bulk of a mountain rose to the east, while far below to the south the foothills ran out into a vast, barren moorland. The top of the rock sloped inward from all sides, forming a shallow dish. In the center of the dish was a blackened circle, with the sooty remnants of charred sticks. We were not the first visitors, then.
"You knew this place?" Jamie stood to one side a little, observing me and taking pleasure in my raptness. He shrugged, deprecating.
"Oh, aye. I know most places through this part of the Highlands. Come here, there's a spot ye can sit, and see down to where the road comes past the hill." The inn also was visible from here, reduced from doll-house to child's building-block by the distance. A few tethered horses were clustered under the trees by the road, small blobs of brown and black from here.
No trees grew on the top of the rock, and the sun was hot on my back. We sat side by side, legs dangling over the edge, and companionably shared one of the bottles of ale that Jamie had thoughtfully lifted from the well in the inn yard as we left. There were no trees atop the rock, but the smaller plants, the ones that could gain a foothold in the precarious cracks and root themselves in meager soil, sprouted here and there, raising their faces bravely to the hot spring sun. There was a small clump of daisies sheltering in the lee of an outcrop near my hand, and I reached to pluck one.
There was a faint whir, and the daisy leapt off its stem and landed on my knee. I stared stupidly, my mind unable to make sense of this bizarre behavior. Jamie, a good deal faster than I in his apprehensions, had flung himself flat on the rock.
"Get down!" he said. A large hand fastened on my elbow and jerked me flat beside him. As I hit the spongy moss, I saw the shaft of the arrow, still quivering above my face, where it had struck home in a cleft of the outcrop.
I froze, afraid even to look around, and tried to press myself still flatter against the ground. Jamie was motionless at my side, so still that he might have been a stone himself. Even the birds and insects seemed to have paused in their song, and the air hung breathless and waiting. Suddenly Jamie began to laugh.
He sat up, and grasping the arrow by the shaft, twisted it carefully out of the rock. It was fletched with the split tail-feathers of a woodpecker, I saw, and banded with blue thread, wrapped in a line half an inch wide below the quills.
Laying the arrow aside, Jamie cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a remarkably good imitation of the call of a green woodpecker. He lowered his hands and waited. In a moment, the call was answered from the grove below, and a broad smile spread across his face.
"A friend of yours?" I guessed. He nodded, eyes intent on the narrow path up the rock-face.
"Hugh Munro, unless someone else has taken to making arrows in his style."
We waited a moment longer, but no one appeared on the path below.
"Ah," said Jamie softly, and whirled around, just in time to confront a head, rising slowly above the edge of the rock behind us.
The head burst into a jack-o'-lantern grin, snaggle-toothed and jolly, beaming with pleasure at surprising us. The head itself was roughly pumpkin-shaped, the impression enhanced by the orange-brown, leathery skin that covered not only the face but the round, bald crown of the head as well. Few pumpkins, however, could boast such a luxuriant growth of beard, nor such a pair of bright blue eyes. Stubby hands with filthy nails planted themselves beneath the beard and swiftly hoisted the remainder of the jack-o'-lantern up into view.
The body rather matched the head, having a distinct look of the Halloween goblin about it. The shoulders were very broad, but hunched and slanted, one being considerably higher than the other. One leg, too, seemed somewhat shorter than its fellow, giving the man a rather hopping, hitching sort of gait.