As she moved down the stairs, she frowned a little. This was the main entrance hall, it seemed — and it was strikingly similar to Castle MacClaran’s main hall. The staircase, the entrance area, the huge wooden doors, standing slightly ajar to allow men to filter in and out from the yard... but if there was an intact replica of Castle MacClaran, she hadn't heard about it. Nor had she heard of any similar castles in the area. Delilah thought back to the schematics she'd studied, even to the ruins she'd stood in for a few minutes before she'd had her little fainting spell — everything so far was right in line with the paperwork. Even the doors to her left, which stood wide open and opened onto a huge hall full of great long wooden tables where dozens of people were bustling about. Delilah stood in the doorway, shocked by the sheer numbers of people. No game on Earth was this big, surely — their highest attendance had been fifty-two, and that had been the weekend of a big convention, where dozens of interstate people had flown in especially for a special event. This was — this was unbelievable. How could there be such a huge LARP, so close to where she was staying in Scotland that nobody had told her about? And how could this castle be so similar to the one she’d spent so long studying? It wasn’t like castles were all designed by the same committee…
“Watch out, lassie.” An enormous man bumped into her as she stood staring into the entrance hall — she jumped and glanced up at him. He was enormous, like Gavin, but where Gavin had green eyes, this man's were a dark brown. He was wearing a set of armor a little like what Gavin had been wearing, too, and she got the idea that this man must be playing some kind of guard, or soldier. The suspicion was confirmed when she saw the sheathed sword at his side. He squinted at her face for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Ach, you must be the new one. Welcome to Castle MacClaran. I'm Eamon MacClaran —”
“Oh, I'm not staying, sorry,” Delilah said apologetically, raising her right hand with her fingers crossed — it was the usual symbol for out-of-character. The man blinked at her curiously, his eyes flicking to her hand and then back to her face with no sign that he had any idea what the signal meant. Her concern began to grow.
“Where d'ye intend to go?”
“Well, I've got a grant to study the ruin of Castle MacClaran,” she explained, “so as much as all this is wonderful, I really must be heading off. I'm worried Maggie in the village will be worried about me. I’m staying with her, you see — I didn’t mention I’d be out, I’m worried she’ll have set up a search party…”
But Eamon didn’t seem to be listening to her concerns about Maggie. Rather, he was fixed on something she’d said early on, a frown on his face. “Ruin? You're standin' in it, lassie.” Eamon tilted his head to the side. “It's no ruin yet. Or haven't ye figured out what's happened to ye?”
“Is he bullying you?” A tall woman with straight black hair and a regal disposition appeared beside Eamon. She was taller than Delilah, with fine features — a striking woman, and there was something very mysterious about her smile. She wore a green dress that set off her eyes, and Delilah resisted the familiar urge to quiz her about its origins. This wasn't a costume recon mission. “You must be Delilah. Fiona's told us all about you. I'm Marianne.”
“Again, I'm not here to play,” Delilah said, a little testy. These two were wasting their time on her. She gestured more firmly with her hand. “Out-of-character. See?”
“Oh, no. You still think this is a game?” The woman shut her eyes briefly. “Not sure how to talk you out of that one. Um, let's see. Can you ride a horse?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Marianne, I don't know if —” Eamon put his hand on the woman’s arm, but she shrugged it off without looking at him, her green eyes gleaming as she looked at Delilah.
“C'mon. We're going for a ride.”
Did they seriously not have any vehicles at this place? Delilah had been intending to ask for a lift back to the village, but if they were that die-hard about their commitment to the bit, it looked like she was going to have to ride. Good thing she'd learned in her early twenties. Her branch of the SCA rarely played with horses — it tended to stretch the budget a little further than they were able to manage, though the few games they’d brought horses for had been a huge amount of fun. But maybe this was the players' way of getting her out of the game? They were clearly refusing to break character, which was fine, if a little more intense than she usually got — but it seemed like this Marianne (real name or character name, Delilah wondered idly?) was at least trying to get her someplace. She'd take it. And hey, there were worse ways to spend a morning than on a horse ride in the Scottish countryside.
Marianne took her firmly by the arm and all but frog marched her toward the huge double doors at the front of the hall. Delilah's eyes widened as her companion heaved both doors open, revealing a stunning sight to them both. There was a huge courtyard outside, dust in the air as men and horses crossed back and forth — if there were dozens of people inside, there were at least as many out here, too. Just how big is this game?
Castle walls towered high and proud beyond the courtyard — she saw a group of men running sword fighting drills, another group practicing hand-to-hand combat, still more saddling a team of horses for some purpose or other. She couldn't help but stare around — and sure enough, to her left was a low building that must have been a stable. Two low buildings.
There was something familiar about this. Something uncomfortably familiar. Delilah looked over her shoulder, back into the hall. If the walls were there, and the stable building was there, and the castle itself was here... sure enough, her estimation of the kitchen's placement put it ... exactly where she'd been when she'd passed out. This wasn't just like Castle MacClaran. This was exactly like Castle MacClaran — only instead of a ruin, it was a thriving, functional community. How had she not heard about this? How could something like this exist without her knowledge? She was probably among maybe a dozen world-leading experts on this castle, and here was a working scale rebuilding of the thing that she’d never even suspected existed? How?
Marianne was staring at her closely, as if waiting with bated breath for her to make some kind of realization. Feeling a little embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “This is — this is the exact same layout as the ruin I'm studying.”
“There's a reason for that.” Marianne grabbed her elbow and led her down the steps toward the stables. “C'mon.”
The buildings were cool and smelled sweetly of hay and horse — Delilah couldn't help but take an appreciative breath. She'd always loved horse riding. It was a shame the SCA didn't have enough funding to maintain a stable — re-enactments with horses were way more fun, even if it was a bit of a headache getting all the liability insurance sorted out. This must have cost them a fortune — she counted at least six horses in the stalls, not including the ones outside. Did they live here all the time, she wondered? Who cared for them when this busy LARP society wasn’t in session? Locals, she supposed. Or maybe some branch of the game was always running? God, the budget they must have! Perhaps they were sponsored by the Scottish government? Maybe they sold tickets to schools and the like… her mind ticked furiously, trying to work out how something like this could afford to support itself.
While she was thinking, Marianne quickly saddled two animals, working with an impressive competence and speed — Delilah helped as much as she could, though she was still staggered by the scope of the operation. The woman refused to respond to her comments about the game — and fair enough, too. This was clearly one of those 'break character only in extreme emergencies' kinds of games. God, she wished she'd come a week or two early so she could play with them. This was fantastic. It was still troubling her, though, that she'd managed to avoid hearing about this organization. She hoped Marianne or someone would at least find a way to get a business card to her before they parted ways.
They rode out into the courtyard. Marianne signaled to a couple of guards, stationed high up on the walls, who opened the gates to the castle f
or them — then they were out on the road. Not paved, like the road to the ruin — but Delilah began to feel concern stirring in her chest. How far were they from where she was staying? She hadn't seen any dirt roads on her trip at all... and this one seemed to extend in both directions for a good long way. There were far more trees, too, than had been around when she'd walked up to the ruin the day before. And yet... and yet, something so familiar about the path the road took. Delilah had a decent memory for directions and places — something her father had drilled into her with orienteering practice as a girl. This road... this road was the same shape as the road to Castle MacClaran. The same hills and valleys, the same rises and falls. But it couldn’t be the same road, unless it had somehow been unpaved the night before. Even a LARP society this size didn’t have that kind of budget, Delilah thought, almost laughing at the idea of unpaving a road to prank someone.
But where was she, then?
Delilah rode in silence, the frown on her face getting stronger as they travelled — the horses took long, easy strides, clearly happy to take their time on this beautiful morning. Marianne was watching her, patiently, with a half-smile on her sharp features.
“D'you believe it yet? No problems if not. We've got the village to look at still.”
“This is —” She wished she had her phone, to look at a map of Scotland, find where they could possibly be. “This isn't possible.”
“You walked up to the castle from the village, right? Did you pass a little stream?” Marianne nodded to where the road deviated just slightly to avoid the curving bend of a stream. Delilah's eyes widened. “Listen — I admire your skepticism. Really, I do. But you're going to have to accept a few things pretty soon. One of them is that magic's real. Another is that you're in medieval Scotland, and those clothes aren't going to cut it if you don't want to draw attention. Woah,” she added, pulling back gently on her horse's reins. They had cleared a small rise, from the top of which they could look down and see...
The village. It was the village. Delilah couldn't deny it any more. This was where she'd stopped to look back down over the village — this was where she'd found the tavern where she was staying, tried to pick out the window to her room. But while the layout of the town had stayed more or less the same, everything else was different. There were no paved roads... no sign of telephone poles or electricity. No cars on the road. Nothing.
Marianne reined her horse a little closer to Delilah's, and put her hand on her shoulder. She stared down over the village, her mind somehow racing wildly and completely empty. This wasn't a game. This was...
“I should have brought my sword,” she whispered.
They rode back to the castle in companionable silence. Now that she'd convinced Delilah of the truth, Marianne seemed happy enough to leave her to process what was happening — she made a point of telling her that she was welcome to stay at the castle as long as she wanted to, and that she'd always have friends there, before leaving her to think. Delilah appreciated it, numbly, on some level. There was a lot to deal with, here, and she didn't seem to be doing a great job of handling any of it. It felt like her mind was nothing but radio static — every time she tried to gather her thoughts, the howling of white noise drowned them all out again.
As the castle gates were opening again (not actors, Delilah thought blankly — actual, honest-to-God medieval guardsmen) Marianne gave her a sidelong look. “One thing at a time, that's my recommendation,” she said softly as the guards waved them through. “Just focus on the next little step. Maybe breakfast?”
To her surprise, Delilah felt her stomach grumble fiercely at that suggestion. Breakfast. Well, here she was in (despite her strongest resistance) medieval Scotland, surrounded by an apparent coven of fellow time-travelers. That was more than enough to digest for the time being. Perhaps breakfast was the biggest achievement she could hope for, at least for now, until she could get the hang of thinking again. She rode her horse back into the stables in a daze, hopped down from the saddle and automatically began untacking it. Marianne showed her where to put the saddle and bridle — the woman seemed to have switched tracks to being a lot kinder and more supportive now that her message about when and where they truly were had seemed to land.
Delilah found herself fighting the truth repeatedly — it had been so much more comforting to believe she was among actors, among people with the same interests as her who just happened to be playing games in a castle a lot like the one she'd spent her life studying.
She'd spent her life studying this castle! What good was that if she was — here? What was she going to do with herself?
She staggered a little on her feet. Marianne was by her side immediately, steadying her. “You need some food, Delilah,” she said softly. “Food and a bit of a sit-down will help a lot, I promise. I know you're overwhelmed, but I swear to you — you're not alone here. There are six of us, now. We've all helped each other through exactly what you're going through now, and we all know exactly what it's like. So however you're feeling, there's help where you need it, okay?”
“Okay,” Delilah said hollowly. “I — wow. I should be —” She couldn't help but laugh a little bit. “You'd think I'd adapt quicker. I spent a lot of my life... playing games like this,” she added, gesturing around the courtyard. “Studying folklore and stories.”
“Work and hobbies don't help much, honestly. I was a phone psychic and I didn't see this coming,” Marianne said dryly.
Delilah looked at her blankly. If she’d guessed for a hundred years, she wouldn’t have picked that career for this fearsome woman. But Marianne smiled at her, and suddenly she wasn’t as intimidating as all that anymore.
“C'mon,” she said softly. “Let's get you fed.”
Chapter 6
Delilah had to admit — food did help. Marianne led her back into the entrance hall, then through the great double doors that led to the dining hall. She stared around at it, trying to impress everything onto her senses — this was real, she was here, these were the precise dimensions of the dining hall of the castle. She'd walked through the ruins of this space not long ago, in fact. Well, in some way, she had. In another way, she hadn't — and wouldn't for hundreds of years. Delilah giggled a little at that, but there wasn't much humor in the sound. Will I lose my mind? she wondered.
It was certainly possible. Surely the human mind wasn't built to cope with this kind of upheaval. People snapped over much less — had complete nervous breakdowns over much less, in fact. And she still wasn't convinced that this wasn't a particularly realistic dream. After all, she seemed to have lost the knack of controlling them as if she'd always been able to. Or maybe there had been a terrible accident, and she was in a coma somewhere, dreaming all of this?
Well, what are you going to do, Delilah? she asked herself crossly as Marianne sat her down at the now mostly empty breakfast table in the great hall. It was still laden with plates and bowls, and she mechanically reached out to serve herself a bowl of oatmeal. What's the plan? Are you going to just spend the rest of your time here imagining that it's all a hallucination and none of it's real? Or are you going to be practical? Occam's Razor, babe. The simplest solution is always the best.
And the simplest solution here... God, it wasn't very simple, was it? But did it make more or less sense than an elaborate hallucination, or an incredibly detailed kidnapping and historical re-enactment, or ... God, maybe she was dead and this was the afterlife. Pretty weird afterlife.
No. However strange it was... she was just going to have to accept, for the time being at least, that she'd literally time travelled to the fifteenth century, and behave as though that wasn't completely insane. She almost laughed again to think of what her SCA comrades would have said — they'd all probably be furiously jealous, when she thought about it. Even a semi-realistic dream about medieval Scotland kept those guys happy for weeks on end... they'd probably collapse with joy if they woke up here. Why was she digging her heels in like this? There was so much opport
unity for fun here… didn’t she do this for a hobby? Wasn’t this, in some way, what she’d spent her whole life preparing for?
“How's the cogitating going, sweetheart?” Marianne leaned across the table, a kind look on her face.
Delilah started, realizing that she hadn't touched her oatmeal.
“Uh. I've basically come to the conclusion that I should... stop worrying and have some fun? Even though this is all completely ridiculous?”
Marianne clapped her hands together and laughed, the peal of sound bouncing off the roof of the dining cavern and startling some nearby men, who had already cast a few strange looks over at Delilah's strange clothing. “That's my girl!” she cackled, eyes alight. “It took me ages to get to that point! Fantastic. Why not have fun, indeed. We're stuck here, may as well make the most of it.”
“Stuck?”
“Yeah. Better to rip that Band-Aid off quickly, that's what Fiona always says. There's no way back, Delilah. We're all here for the long haul. Forever, whatever that means.”
Delilah let that sink in, let it shift around in her mind. To her surprise, it didn’t engender much of a reaction. Perhaps she was still in shock. Perhaps most of her was still working on believing that she was here in the first place.
Highlander Cursed: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 5