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How bad could it really be? I'd been plenty of places, quirky and all, so a Downton Abbey cosplay didn't sound all that bad. The dresses, the hats, the handsome men in eye-catching suits.

I shrugged away the doubt and took a few more photos before climbing back in the car. Archie greeted me with "Just let me know if ya need another snap or two. I got all day."

I narrowed my eyes at him, fighting a smile. "I bet you do." 

He laughed before steering the car down the hill.

I avoided asking him to stop yet another time within five minutes, although the views kept captivating me. Something inexpressible wove among the forests and mountains of this place. A strange sort of magic. It had gripped me as soon as I'd stepped off the plane in Inverness and breathed the crisp, Scottish morning air for the first time. Kind of like that feeling I had right before a good cry when I wasn't at liberty to let the tears free yet. Not bad necessarily. Not good either. From the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my grandpa (a proud Scots-Irish Presbyterian who owned a kilt, collected historic Scottish weapons, and played a bagpipe poorly) raved about this country of his kindred, so maybe a little bit of preconditioned déjà vu inspired the strange feelings coursing through me as we drove through the diverse countryside. But I couldn't shake it.

I'd traveled to dozens of countries, stepped off even more airplanes, but had never felt as if I'd walked into a scene of my own life that had been waiting for me to live it.

Is it possible to feel a genetic link to a place you've never visited?

Whatever it was, some strange swoosh of welcome blasted through me as if every one of my grandfather's ancestors had risen from their battlefield deaths and shouted a hearty and ironic, "Lang may yer lum reek!" a phrase Grandpa translated as "May you live long and prosper!"—a Scottish version of Star Trek's Spock's famous salutation.

Maybe "quirky" just went hand in hand with Scotland, which, for some reason, helped me feel even more prepared for the adventure ahead.

"You'll have to visit Tobermory once you get tucked in, Ms. Campbell."

I looked up from scanning over my photos and registered the village name in my mind from research. Aha! The capital of the small island.

"It's the place with all the colorful houses along the coastline, isn't it?" 

"Aye," came Archie's warm reply. "But there are quite a few villages with the same. Glenkirk is no far from Craighill and is one of the few villages along Loch na Keal."

With the island being so small, I didn't imagine a massive number of villages, but as the hills grew in size and breadth, the wide-open emptiness of the vista resurrected the unsettling feeling I kept trying to ignore.

"There's Briggs Mussel Farm," Archie announced. "We're close now." He slowed the car's speed for my ogling pleasure—and likely a few extra coins in his purse.

Another mussel farm. Probably the fourth one I'd seen since disembarking the ferry at Craignure. Yep, this island maintained its fishing town persona. Maybe that's what gave it an untouched, old feeling.

The green hillsides framed the loch on two sides with taller, more barren mountains rising behind those in imposing hues of gray and olive. And yet, the desolation created its own sort of mesmerizing beauty.

I bit back another request to stop. Craighill House's website mentioned that Glenkirk was only a mile away, and Salen another five after that, but more populous villages like Calgary and Tobermory were over fifteen and Dervaig was upward of twenty, so I'd have to hire a car to visit places like the capital of the isle and perhaps Iona.

Besides, within a couple of weeks, Tobermory would be hosting the Mull Highland Games, and my readers/followers would love an inside look at something as classically Scottish as the games. But for now it was time to settle into my temporary home and—I braced my shoulders—the early twentieth century.

We followed Loch na Keal for another mile, and then we turned toward a forest, slipping into the shadows of trees. For some reason, the sudden darkness of the forest closing in on all sides caused my spine to tingle. Anticipation? Warning? Something else?

I stared into the passing woods. No—I released the hold on my breath—it felt more like the sense I'd experienced when I stood before the Giza pyramids for the first time or when I stepped inside Rome's massive Colosseum. The weight of centuries lingered in the atmosphere, lives lived and histories haunting the breeze.

The farther away from Craignure we drove, the deeper the sense of... something else pulled through me. Something old and familiar and just out of reach of identity. I shot Archie a glance, as if he could use his native powers to give me a clue, but he just kept his face forward as he whistled some happy tune.