Read on Twitter
I have always dreamed quite vividly. Most dreams, I am not myself but a character in a story. I've lived many alternate lives in my sleep. As a child, my dreams were fairytales or adventure stories wi happy ever after endings. But puberty changed things & I began to feel unsafe. https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1251322980849848327
One night when I was 11, afraid to fall to sleep after a spate of bad nightmares, a heavy fog descended into the liminal space between waking and sleeping. Out of the swirling mist rode a knight on a large gray horse. He was rumpled, dirty, and rough shaven. His surcoat bore...
...a jagged plus-sign. "I am Sinclair," he said with a Scottish burr, "I've come to escort ye to your dreams. In the morning, I'll bring ye home again." He held out a gloved hand. I took it & he swung me up postern, spurred his mount, and we galloped off into the mist.
I don't remember my dream, but I recall Sinclair showing up to bring me back thru the mist to safety. Every night for 6 years he came. The only words he ever said to me were " No thing shall harm ye on my watch." I'm not sure why this Wyoming cowgirl dreamt...
...of a knight from the crusades. One dawn, just after I turned 17, Sinclair told me our time together was at an end. "Our paths diverge here. You are strong enough now. It has been my honor to serve ye." I didn't credit the moment, assuming that after all this time...
... he was going to talk to me. Iwas devastated for many, many nights, as Sinclair failed to show. Gradually, the pain at his absence eased. I learned to think of my knight as an elaborate, childish, fantasy. 20 years later, on a trip to Scotland I visited Rosslyn Chapel and...
...came face to face with my blip in the matrix. Henry St Clair, the 2nd Baron of Rosslyn, knight & crusader. What I had seen as a jagged plus sign was the barbed cross on the St Clair coat of arms. Shook, I went into the Trust office. The lovely officer on duty was at first...
...indulgent of this crazy American, but when I described my Sinclair, his eyes grew round. "Follow me," he whispered wi a conspiratorial air. He took me to the office, shutting the door behind us. He pulled a large, somewhat dusty, photo album off a shelf and searched a moment.
When he found the page he was looking for, he opened the book, keeping the spine towards me & said, "Describe your Sinclair again?" So I told of his surcoat, the shape of his helm, his shield, the tack, and the horse's dappled coat. With shaking hands, the officer of the trust...
...turned the book, and there, in a hand painted illustration, was MY Sinclair. "That's not possible," I said, grasping for straws. "This illustration says Saint Clair." "Ah, but lassie," he replied "In Scottish, it is pronounced Sinclair." The world tilted on it's axis.
Noticing my distress, the kindly officer got up to get me tea. "The family has a bit of a reputation for haunting," he said, " don't let it trouble you, lass." He asked me to write my story and then took me on a personal tour of the chapel, regaling me with stories of ghosts...
...and haunts, of magic and unexplainable carvings, of legacies and connections. The final piece of the puzzle dropped when we got back to the trust shop. I asked to buy a print of the illustration. I reasoned maybe I'd seen it in a book or something as a kid.
"Oh, I'm sorry, but that book is a St Clair family heirloom. They've never made prints of those paintings. As far as I know, this is the only visual record of The 2nd Baron." THE END
