#sbscollette

Collette Mackenzie || nymph || taken || Emilia Clarke

Collette’s first memory was running through mortar fire and the low, guttural screams of Scotsmen. She could hear Englishmen issue their orders and the clashing of metal. The smell of churned mud, gunpowder and blood filled her lungs. But she kept running with a broadsword clung to her chest.

Every evening she’d walk that same moor to watch the sun go down on the heather. She’d rarely wear shoes, each footstep grounding her to the moment she met Man. Men were born of blood and battle and would die by it. Sometimes she’d even hear the call of the men she tried to save. Of the one man who tried saving her. And of the men she killed in turn.

Time rolled on and those who visited went from Redcoats with shovels to grieving Scotsmen with flowers and their heads bowed. Then to American tourists with their cameras. All of those men swore they saw a woman in 18th Century dress walking the moor. And stories grew of the White Lady of Culloden. How wrong they were.

Collette rarely ventured further than the town (then city) of Inverness, always near to the battlefield and museum they erected in honour of the event. But after a downsizing in government funding, several artefacts from the battlefield were sold off to the highest bidder. One Mackenzie broadsword mislabelled as ‘The Sword of the Bonnie Prince’ was shipped off to a small town in Washington.

A few days of feeling unwell, as if the grips of death were on her, Collette awoke one morning to find herself laying in the middle of a museum. And before her was the Mackenzie broadsword behind glass.

How well do you take criticism? ‘People can have whatever opinion they want of me. If they decide to share a foul view, I reserve the right to retaliate. But if they’re right and I can see that, I’ll take it.’