Highland Tales Series Box Set

by Rory B. Byrne

  Others joined around the first and moved off with my knife. I saw flashes of intelligence in the wide eyes. The small black snouts and sharp teeth made their fury faces look more animal than humanoid.

  They walked upright on two legs and busied themselves with the rabbit fur. I saw more wandering over the deerskin. There were hundreds of creatures. For whatever reason, they crawled all over everything else except my blankets. I preferred that distancing.

  The creatures appeared from nowhere and set about the rest of the night on their determined business. I think the rabbit leftovers called them out from hiding. Even if they wandered off with my knife, I wondered how long I had left in the strange land with or without it.

  A curious one got closer to my face. I tucked my hand under my cheek and turned in the blanket to face it. Suddenly, I saw a few small faces turn in my direction. Eyes blinking rapidly, none appeared worried about my moving around.

  “What are you,” I whispered. I watched them. They focused on clearing the guts, devouring the bones. They had a particular interest in the rabbit fur and the deerskin. “You’re welcome to that; I don’t have any use for it.”

  The one with the dirk didn’t go far. It pulled the blade free of the cover and took an interest in the black edge.

  “Careful with that,” I said. “It’s sharp.”

  I watched while they swarmed over everything in the cabin. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had nothing to lose. Eventually, sleep claimed me again, and the creatures worked through the rest of the night in the dark.

  Glaistig

  A songbird called from outside. I saw slivers of sunlight stabbing through the sod roof and around the door. I scanned the area. There was no sign of the creatures. My clothes, the bowls, even the dagger, all remained in the cabin. I reached for the knife and examined it.

  Immediately, I understood what the creatures had been doing throughout the night. They had cleaned the carved handle and the cover. I pulled the blade free of the sheath. The polished metal had a mirror finish. The bowls at the hearth were spotless—the iron pot I’d used for washing was empty and clean.

  I looked for the rabbit fur and the deerskin. I didn’t see either of the items. Perhaps they had accepted the hides for the meals I gave them. Either way, I didn’t have to get rid of the animal guts and fur.

  Then I climbed from the blanket and grabbed my sweatshirt.

  Inside the hood there was now a plush layer of rabbit fur. Same with the cuffs of the sweatshirt, all had more rabbit fur lining. I grabbed the jacket. The creatures had attached the cleaned deerskin as an insulated liner for the coat. It was cleaned and permanently attached.

  “This is wonderful,” I said. I slipped on the hooded sweatshirt, which was now clean with a fur-lined hood. “Thank you so much.” I figured I didn’t have to shout. Wherever the creatures hid in the daylight, I suspected they were nearby.

  I got dressed and went outside. I stood in the quiet of the woodland. The wind whispered through the pine needles around me.

  “What I need is a sign, something that makes sense to me.”

  I thought about Mom and her work. She had a scientific repertoire that had no basis for what I experienced. I suspected if she came to the same lands, she went through similar adventures. Primitive clansmen struggled for survival and managed to coexist with various creatures, unlike anything in my world. It convinced me that wherever I ended up, it wasn’t in the past.

  What was my purpose? Did I have to forage to live, leaving no time to look for Mom?

  Birds swarmed the treetops. A red squirrel with tufted and perky ears hopped along a fallen log. Its flickering tail darted in the air. It stopped to look at me, as if asking where its rabbit friend went in the night and why the inside of my hood seemed vaguely familiar.

  Staying in one place wasn’t going to find Mom. I decided to do what Airman Hillyard did—go and find my way. Perhaps he found a way out again. I wasn’t looking for a way out as much as I was trying to locate Mom. I think I lost focus on that because I had access to people who knew the land, who knew a lot more than I did. I could’ve asked them. I decided that the next time I encountered a man who rose from the dirt floor or an old washerwoman, I’d ask if they had seen my mother.

  I spent the better part of the day following the stream that passed by the cabin. I shouldered the haversack that had the journal. I had the rolled blankets tied off with the strap of the case. I walked through the underbrush, around the tall trees, and found the edge of open prairie land with moss-covered foothills. I climbed out of the swampy ground that ran parallel to the water’s edge and peered across the deep valley. The sun scraped the mountains against the western sky.

  I took a deep breath in and sat in the tall grass, chewing on a reed.

  I needed to find a place to sleep. I needed a fixed direction. I wanted some sense of where to go. I scanned the nearby bushes for my skulking friend. The Cat Sìth showed some signs of its presence with the tail rising above the forests. It consistently followed me but didn’t get too close to make friends. I don’t know who brought me dinner the night before, but I didn’t know if I’d get another easy meal.

  Very briefly, I saw the sleek head and wondrous blue eyes of the Cat Sìth as its head rose from the vegetation like a living periscope. It looked at me from several meters away.

  “Are you waiting to eat me, or do you want to make friends?” I asked.

  It blinked at me. I saw its tail flicker around its head. Then it sensed something. Its ears curved back against its head, and its eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if it looked at me or something behind me.

  When I glanced over my shoulder, that’s when I knew I was in serious trouble.

  Head trauma from a knockout was a brand new experience for me. I didn’t see it coming, and I didn’t expect it. Someone had taken advantage of my distraction. My head felt like a lead glob on the painful stick that was my neck. When I tried to reach for the wound, I found my wrists tied together. I still wore my pants and the sweatshirt. But someone took my boots and jacket. The rest of my supplies, including my dagger, had all been confiscated.

  I tried to focus on my bare feet. I didn’t move when I woke because I heard male voices talking over me. The place had a strong stench of stagnant water and manly sweat. I smelled smoke from a fire. I lay with my head against something that shifted when I stiffened.

  A young man wearing a wrap over his shoulder, a ragged tartan of blue and gold, stared down at me. Apparently, I had been using his ankle as a pillow. There was someone else besides us. I saw he wore bindings like mine.

  I heard the crunch of gravel, and the young man stared at me without words. I knew that look. It said: don’t move. My fingers curled around a palm-sized rock under me. I waited to see what would happen next. They got the drop on me once; I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

  “Get up, witch.” One foot kicked gravel in my face. I flinched.

  When I jerked back my head, I gave away my consciousness. The guy hooked his fingers under my elbow and wrenched me off the ground. My head swooned.

  The meaty hand pulled me. My ankles were linked with braided hemp rope, but they gave me enough line to make small steps. Staggering from the manhandling, the cave around me spun from the head injury. The smelly guy pulled me out of the mouth of the cave.

  It was full daylight, and the sun hid behind a thin blanket of clouds. There wasn’t a lot of vegetation in the rocky area. It looked as though the cave opening was part of a long-established encampment.

  Outside, men huddled around a few small fires. There was the smell of something cooking. I saw something that looked like a sizable skinned cat on a spit over the fire. A man poked at its charred flesh with a stick. Juices dripped from the animal and sizzled in the fire pit. I didn’t want to think that it was my Cat Sìth, but what else could it be?

  The guy was muscula
r and hauled me into the open like I weighed nothing. Hands bound in front of me, I kept the rock hidden against my waist. I counted seven men, not one of them seemed too interested in me. I saw my dagger in the hands of one of the men. He used the tip to whittle spikes from wood poles. Another had my wool blankets. Someone tried on my jacket, which was way too small and tight for him, leaving him a fat guy in a little jacket. I wore my jeans and the sweatshirt with the rabbit fur-lined hood.

  “You are a witch,” a guy said. He was larger than the others. Not fat, just hulking. “You will be our witch.” It wasn’t a request.

  The guy pulled at my elbow like my arm was about to rip from the socket.

  “You are a seer. We will need you now that our seer is sick.”

  There was something I missed in my time knocked out. The area didn’t look like anything I saw before. These men were filthy and undisciplined. They had no typical politeness. The smell was worse than the inside of a junior-high boys’ locker room in the middle of summer without air conditioning. It took a long time for me to comprehend what had happened while I was away.

  The ache in my skull was impossible to miss. Every time the guy jostled me around, I got another flaring pain.

  I saw something lying on the ground at the edge of the camp. It was bound tight with staked hemp rope around its back and neck. Its elbows were pulled together behind its back. I saw thin wrists chafed with rope burns. More stakes kept it from moving around. I saw its skin a mottled pale white with black blotches. There was no symmetry to the markings. The flesh looked slick, as if coated with slime. I saw hair, short with thick strands and braids with shells in the hair. Its breathing was extremely labored.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “What did you do to her?”

  The guy pulled at my elbow again. This time I dropped to my knees, lifted my hands overhead, and slammed the rock in my hand down on his toes. Fur booties had no protection over the toes. I didn’t aim. I just did it.

  He bellowed in pain, and I heard the cracked bone. I dove for the girl. She barely moved. Her skin was hot to the touch, the slickness coating my hands as I touched her and she turned to me. Her face wasn’t quite human, more snout-like. Her eyes were larger and sturdy whiskers came out of her cheeks around her mouth. She gasped at me.

  “What did you do to her?”

  The girl wasn’t entirely human, but I saw that keen intelligence in her eyes. She was sickly, and she needed help. These men had taken her dignity and her clothes.

  “You will see for us,” the guy said.

  The one with the broken toe limped over to me. When he lifted his arm in a backhanded arch, the leader stopped him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “You are a witch, you will see for us.”

  “No, I’m not a witch.”

  That’s when the one holding my knife lifted it for me to see.

  “You wield a witch weapon. You are a witch.”

  “That was a gift from a friend. It’s just a knife. Use it to stab your friend. You’ll see, it works just like a knife.”

  Surrounded by men and defenseless, I wasn’t going to give in to any of their whims. When Mr. Broken Toe tried grabbing for me again, I showed him what two hands bound together could do for a straight shot to the groin.

  He doubled over in pain. I knuckled his chin. I heard laughter from the others as I pulled at the bindings on the girl. There was nowhere to go. I saw the girl blinking at me. The feminine face was slender and had a beauty that I found enchanting.

  There were bruises on her shoulders and face. It told a tale of pain and torture. I saw long strips across her shoulder blades that looked like strap marks from a lashing.

  “You will see for us, or we will peel the skin from your bones,” the leader said.

  “First, we strip her.” It came just ahead of the other males’ snickering that sounded like growls. The fat one had given up trying to squeeze into my jacket.

  “We will cook you if you don’t see for us. Right after we cook the selkie and the boy.”

  I was way outside of my comfort zone. What started a little ominous in the beginning just notched up to overload pervy creep zone. I didn’t know what they wanted, and I had to think fast.

  So far, I was alive and outnumbered. I had to rely on 21st century thinking in a stone-aged world. They were brutish and ignorant. I didn’t know who the boy was in the cave or what a selkie was, but I suspected it had something to do with the naked girl by the leader’s feet.

  I saw the burning anger of Mr. Broken Toe leering at me. It was only a matter of time before he dished out some harsh payback. All I had was my wits and Mom’s intelligence. When the time came, I’d know it.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. It took me a little effort to stand up because of the ropes. I pointed at the selkie. “If you kill her, I will destroy all of you.”

  “You have no power,” the leader said.

  One of them waggled the dagger. As if a small knife against seven guys wasn’t going to get me or the others free.

  “You think I don’t have power. But what if I’m holding back from killing the lot of you?”

  I saw them exchanging looks. I had something they didn’t expect. They let out raucous laughter. Even Mr. Broken Toe with a swollen groin forgot his discomfort to join in the laughter, like a lemming missing the joke.

  One of the men started trying on my hiking boots. It was a lost cause; his feet were three sizes bigger than mine.

  “Ghillie Dhu sends his regards,” I said.

  That did it. I saw fierce, angry faces change at my words. The amusement stopped. The leader glanced at the other six men. They stared at him as if expecting a snappy comeback.

  “Nicneven comes,” I whispered. I poured it on thick. I figured if I had to play the part, I needed to sound good. “Bean Nighe says the Black Hand is coming for us all.”

  The leader shifted on the rock, and I saw the girl stirring a little beside him. I didn’t know how long she’d sustained their torment, but by the looks of her, she had only days left to live without any help.

  “Fine, we’ll spare her,” the leader said. “But we’ll eat the boy—”

  “Spare the boy,” I said quickly. “Or the Cat Sìth will eat your souls in the night. I know, for I am the Glaistig.” It felt good that I had paid attention to the tales I had heard from Clan Slora.

  One of them looked at my bare feet as if expecting cloven hooves or webbed toes. I had neither, only flaking toenail paint on my piggies.

  They had me bound, but I think that whatever I said to the marauders was enough to make them think twice about harming any of us. I felt, at least for the moment, I had earned a reprieve. I didn’t know how long it would last, and I still didn’t know what they wanted from me. Somehow I had managed to make a great big sticky bed, and now I had to lie in it.

  Fire Beasts

  Alice woke sometime in the night, gasping for air. It was hot and smoky in the small bedroom. She felt the heat and fear that gripped her. She rolled out of bed and hit the floor. Somewhere in the guesthouse, a fire raged. She pulled the pillow from the bed and yanked the pillowcase from the feather pillow. She coughed into the pillowcase and kept it over her mouth and nose.

  Alice squinted in the smoky room as she crawled to the door. She pressed her hand on the door. It was warm, but not hot to the touch. Alice tested the doorknob before opening it. The hallway was a black bubbling caldron of roiling smoke. She crawled on her belly out the door toward the stairwell. Her eyes burned. She wanted a lungful of clean air but forced herself to take shallow breaths through the cotton covering her face. Alice went downstairs on her belly. She tried to call out, trying to alert Beth and Rory.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the heat was intense. The paint on the door blistered. She saw the glowing orange monster had consum
ed the kitchen. The doorknob sizzled.

  Alice wanted to go through that door at the bottom of the staircase, but against her will, against her animal instinct, she instead climbed upstairs again. She had to find a way out. There was no other way than through a window from the second floor. If Rory and Beth had survived the smoke, Alice hoped they would also manage to get out. Her brain worked overtime to understand what was happening.

  By the time she reached the second-floor landing, Alice had choked into the pillowcase. She felt the smoke clawing at her eyes. It was impossible to see. Even memorizing the hallway was impossible. Her mind worked to figure out why the smoke detectors didn’t go off. She pressed her shoulder to the wall and belly-crawled on the floor. It became even harder to breathe. She had one hand holding the pillowcase to her face, the other palm tracing a path along the landing.

  If there was a way out, she had to find the doors. It felt like the walls went on forever without a doorway. She squeezed her eyes shut. Alice heaved into the pillowcase, fighting the instinct to pull away from the pillowcase to take a breath. It was a matter of seconds before her body collapsed from smoke inhalation. It wasn’t the fire that killed most victims in burning houses; it was the thick smoke that crawled down the throat and tore at the lungs.

  She collapsed onto the floor. The thin hallway runner under her cheek felt hot. Alice tried pulling away from the blistering heat of the stairwell. The monstrous flames consumed the door at the bottom of the stairs. The fiery creature licked the walls and stairs with flaming tongues. The faltering images in Alice’s head made her feel like the smoke demons and fire beasts that razed the house were no match for a humble police inspector.

  There was an explosion downstairs. Something pressurized in the kitchen detonated. She felt the rush of heat on her back. Alice’s scorched lungs refused to take in more poisoned air. Eyes closed, Alice waited for death, hoping the smoke killed her before the flames reached her body.