Cam added helpfully.
There was silence again within the garage. Cam sighed.
“Well, if you won’t come out on your own, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt. As she neared the open garage door, a strange smell hit her, and she backed away. It was the smell of a person who had not washed in a long time. Had some homeless person found their way into her carriage house? Once, in Charleston, two men had used her car to sleep in. They hadn’t left too much of a mess, but there had been a definite aroma for weeks.
“Okay,” she said decisively. “I’ll have to call the police now, and they’ll come take you away.” She backed up slowly toward the house.
“Please,” said a soft, quavering voice inside the garage. This was not what Cam had expected at all. Maybe there was a lost child in there.
“Are you okay? Please come out. I won’t hurt you,” she offered again, and waited.
Finally, after what seemed like eternity, a small brown creature peeked around the door. Cameron realized it was a woman, a girl really, of about nineteen. She was filthy, her pale hair matted, and her eyes wild.
“Please,” she whispered again, “d’ye ken where the gate is? I mun get back to Ian and my bairnie.”
Cam strained to understand the strange speech. It sounded like the girl was speaking English, but her accent was thick and hard to comprehend. Cam shook her head.
“What gate? I don’t have a gate,” she pointed out. “I have a hedge.”
The girl waved her hands wildly in the air. “The Faeries’ Gate! Where I come through, to get awa’ from the savages! They took me awa’ but I tricked them and run! But I dinna ken how to get back to the gate after I come through it!”
Cam was having second thoughts about not calling 911 in the first place. “What’s your name?” she asked politely. By now the girl had crept out of the shadows, and Cam was able to get a good look at her. She was wearing the tattered remnants of what must have been a long skirt at one time, a brown shawl, and worn moccasins. Cam couldn’t help but notice that her legs needed a good bout with a razor.
Great , she thought, I have an escaped mental patient living in my garage.
A thought struck her. “Are you the one who tried to break into my shop this morning?”
The girl nodded, obviously terrified. “I saw Da’s sword, and Mollie’s book that she always be scribblin’ in. I tried to get them, but then there was a great fierce wailin’ sound…. I gashed me hand,” she said sadly. She held her hand up for Cam to see, and she had indeed gashed it. She had wrapped a stained rag around it, and Cam cringed at the thought of what bacteria could be lurking in the torn strip of linen.
“Well, let’s get you cleaned up, then,” she offered, “and then we can figure out who to call to come get you.” The girl didn’t seem dangerous, just terribly confused. Cameron took her by the uninjured hand and led her up the back steps. Once inside, the girl gazed around in awe.
“Ye ha’ lanterns that come on by their selves! Be it magic?” she whispered.
“Um, no. It’s electricity,” murmured Cam, as she hunted for some clean gauze pads in the kitchen drawer. Maybe this girl had gotten lost, and come down from the mountains, Cam thought. She knew there were parts of Virginia and Tennessee where there was still no electricity or running water, and the residents still spoke a dialect much like the traditional Scotch-Irish of their ancestors.
“Okay, miss, um, what did you say your name was?” asked Cam again.
“Sarah. Sarah MacFarlane,” the girl murmured. She was staring around, terrified. “Ye’re a woman, then, are ye?”
Cam was startled. “A woman? Of course I am!”
The girl scowled. “Ye be wearing breeks on yer legs like a man. It ain’t fittin’. An’ yer hair is shorter than a woman’s.”
Cam ran a hand through her tangled dark blonde hair and glared back