CAVE OF DREAMS SNEAK PEEK: Beginning of Chapter 14

Cave of Dreams 

Sneak Peek: Beginning of Chapter 14

The white-ribboned highway stretched out across the emerald moors, valleys and mountains of the highlands, and Bea couldn’t help but enjoy the drive. She was thinking of her Uncle Ewan’s favorite road in the U. S. - Route 66. He’d always told her that he’d loved it because it was a driver’s sort of road, and a road trip across America would never be complete without doing a stretch of it.

A9, the road that Bea was traveling this early morning after leaving the Isle of Skye, was going to be part of Scotland’s answer to America’s Route 66. It was also a driver’s sort of road as it wound its way along the north coast of the highlands above Inverness, and this time of year was the perfect jot in time to be on it, especially on such a brilliant late autumn day. It was early enough for the sun’s rays to still break across the landscape, highlighting every tree, shrub, mountain, loch, or beach in the crisp and clear Kodachrome of late autumn; and it was also just late enough in the season for the road to be safely navigated at speeds just a bit above normal.

Her car was running great, and her tunes were vibrating the sideboard speakers with rhythm and base and melody. Using her gears, she took the corners and adjusted to the rise and fall of the road in a syncopated union that made she and her car one. With her left hand on the gearshift, her right grasping the steering wheel, and her eyes shifting from road to scenery and back again, she felt the exhilaration of being on her first road trip alone and free.

Her time on Skye had been more than she could have hoped for and had left her refreshed and ready to continue her journey. The change that she had sensed in herself the night before had solidified as she opened her eyes inside her tent at dawn in the middle of the Faerie Glen. A new element had been added to her body. New atoms were expanding who she was, and fresh neurons were firing in parts of her brain that she had never used before. And now…now she also understood and was fully aware that she was truly a woman - no longer just a daughter, a student, an athlete, a young Druid, a sister, or a granddaughter. She was a woman who had come of age and was much more ready to come to grips with this new self that she hadn’t even known existed until just fourteen days ago.