Highland Tales Series Box Set

by Rory B. Byrne

  “My purpose?” Alice repeated.

  The rocking chair stopped squeaking. Marcia stared up at Alice as she wavered on her bare feet.

  “I took you into my home. I have offered you life and shared secrets. You are a police officer; I was a guardian of the gates. We are interested in the same things: We want to protect our people. I am the last pech in Scotland, as far as I know. The Weatherspoons accepted me as one of their family. I keep them close because their blood is Elphame, and they have the right to pass through any gate, even the illegal doorways. It wasn’t only pech who believed in protecting Elphame. The past generations of Weatherspoons felt the same as I do.

  “Their clan is vanishing. Harper and her mother, Beth and Rory, they are the last of the family line. Now two Weatherspoons passed into Elphame. Your father, he was a good man, he witnessed another Weatherspoon pass through the fairy mound. I believe that girl did not know her origins.

  “Your father never gave up looking for weeks. I know his strength courses through you. I need you to uphold your life for this task. Once it is complete, you will have the approval of the queen forever.

  “If you chose to return to Scotland, Nicneven will grant your preference, so long as you keep her secret safe. The gates must remain closed, Alice. Humans are too cruel, too ignorant to have access to Elphame. My people and the fairy folk do not have weapons such as those the army want to take into Elphame. I know even the powerful Coin-Sìth will fall to their war machines.”

  “So, you saved me because you need me to find the queen?” Alice asked.

  “I saved you because I believe life is precious even if human life is so fleeting. Humans spend their short days on earth, wasting away time with their little gadgets and ignoring the world around them. I watched thousands of people die before they lived. I see some of your father in you, Alice. I see some of me in you. I know you are a good person with a kind soul. You will do what is right when the time comes.”

  It was a lot for Alice to understand. Yet, the more time she spent in the company of the pech, the more Alice began to see things a little differently. Perhaps it was the healing sewage Marcia slathered on her wounds or the tea-stuff in the cup, but Alice’s eyes were open, and she began to see and hear things she didn’t think possible. The shuffling of the spiders in the webs, the hushed flapping of the moth wings as it fluttered near the lampshade, these things were impossible. Somehow, Alice heard them. And her eyesight improved dramatically. She saw more of the room. The dim light became something of a nuisance, too bright to look at directly.

  The sight of Marcia surprised Alice most of all. The creature pretended to be human, and it had worked for millennia. After consuming the foul nectar of Elphame, Alice saw the pech for what it was, and it wasn’t close to a human at all.

  “It’s the fairy magic,” Marcia said. It came following Alice’s prolonged staring at the older adult in the chair. “The power of the queen has what you consider fairy magic. I know not what else to call it. I understand you see me for what I am now.”

  Alice sat gingerly on the bed again, facing Marcia.

  “Tell me, Marcia. The queen, has anyone tried to assassinate her? What happens if those men have sniper rifles and find her?”

  Marcia considered the question carefully. It was in the way her large eyes rolled around inside the fleshy mask. Marcia wore the guise of a human much like she wore the ragged housecoat; it was something she put on every day, so people didn’t see a fat old naked woman hobbling around the neighborhood.

  “There is a story my father told of Nicneven meeting with a Roman legion in the Highlands. She faced off with the legion’s commander. Now, my father said the commander, Quintus, had a dagger hidden in his tunic at the time of their meeting. When he learned his legion fell to Nicneven’s armies, Quintus stabbed the queen.”

  “Did she live?” Alice asked quickly. “Well, yeah, you said she lived.”

  “Aye, lass, but this is an old story. No one knows exactly what happened when she met the commander of the Ninth Legion. Some say he wounded the queen. Others believe she is immortal, and the dagger could not pierce her flesh. I know as a child, I thought anyone who found the dagger of Quintus had the power of the queen. It was a good story, one my father told us often by firelight.”

  “Do you believe there was a dagger? I think I recall something about a missing Roman legion. They disappeared after they passed over Hadrian’s Wall.”

  “I believe if such a dagger existed, if it touched the body of the queen, it’d have some of her power still. Just like inside you now.”

  Alice considered the story and the idea that her life belonged to a monarchy she didn’t know and never saw before. Marcia had an agenda when she saved Alice’s safe. Now Alice had to follow through out of obligation and with a new purpose that went beyond the oath she swore as a law enforcement officer.

  “When will we go?” she whispered.

  “We will go when it is time,” Marcia said. Another cryptic response Alice had to learn to live with, followed by, “More tea, dear?”

  Simon’s Secrets

  The plan called for the mercenaries to test the portal within two days. That gave Simon enough time to test his theories about the blood of the Weatherspoons. While Fraser and Brian felt they needed to spill blood and had no compunction about doing it, Simon suspected it wasn’t as dramatic. It had to do with the area around the archeological dig. They found the circle of Gaelic symbols in the ground, but no remains, human or otherwise. That told Simon the gateway between the two worlds wasn’t a violent passage.

  It was still a very new territory, but it was hard to feel excitement considering that Brian intended to make it accessible to the wealthy, and no one in the scientific fields, biology, ecology, and otherwise would know of its existence until after Brian established the groundwork on who and how people went through to Elphame. It all had to do with Fraser and his team. Simon had no control over the site. He had no say in how they planned their first excursion into the new world. He didn’t even know if they intended to allow Simon through the gate at all.

  Simon took a deep breath and lightly knocked on the door. After a half-minute, the door opened. Karen stood before Simon wearing something other than the usual surgical scrubs she wore during the day. Her ash-blonde hair fell over her shoulders. The hallway lighting reflected in her eyes.

  “Simon, is everything alright?” she whispered. “It’s very late.”

  “I know, Karen, I’m sorry. I need to talk to you. Has Brian or Cole had a conversation with you?”

  It was well after midnight, and the rest of the crews had finished with the construction of the tunnel. Most everyone had retired to their barracks. A few stragglers stayed inside the fairy mound chamber to finish light work. Simon knew it was to make sure he didn’t enter the room alone. Fraser planned to phase out anyone he saw as a threat to the operation.

  “I wanted to show you something. I don’t think we’ll have time again after today.” Simon stood in the doorway and sighed. Karen had showered since the last time they were together earlier. Her hair looked damp, and she smelled like apple shampoo. “I think Brian intends to release you from your contract here before the end of the week. This is the only opportunity I have for you to see something terrifying and marvelous.”

  Karen stepped away from the door. She left it open, and Simon watched her collect a black cardigan sweater. She slipped it on over the scoop top loose shirt. She wore black yoga pants and returned to the door barefoot.

  “You should put on shoes,” Simon said, noticing her pale bare feet.

  “I will be fine. Even outside. I feel more comfortable without shoes.” Karen gave Simon a look and swept the wispy hair away from her face. It was enough for him.

  “We need to hurry.”

  As Simon stepped away from the door, Karen took his robotic hand. He stopped walking.

>   “You shouldn’t do that,” he said. “I like that you want to hold my hand, but I am afraid I’ll hurt your hand.”

  Karen squeezed the digits of the right hand. She pressed her other hand against the formed polymer forearm. “You need not be ashamed of your new arm, Simon. It is good for you to know how to control it. This is a wonderful and innovative piece of technology.” She lifted her left hand, fingers laced between the digits of the foreign hand. Simon couldn’t feel her holding him, only the tension in the limb responding to her movements. “I am not afraid of you.”

  It was enough to encourage him to move forward. They traveled beyond locked doorways where Karen wasn’t permitted to go. Each time Simon used his access card and punched the code, he worried that Brian had deactivated his authorization. They moved deeper into the restricted areas.

  “I apologize for the smell. It’s from the animal I want to show you. We must keep back from the cage. It is extremely dangerous. But I want you to see it. I want to share it with someone before it is gone forever.”

  Simon looked at Karen. Her face showed a mask of intrigue. The amber eyes widened. Her pace slowed, and underfoot, Simon saw debris that she didn’t notice stepping over.

  “It’s one of a kind. We don’t have a name for it.” They had reached the final door. Simon knew the other corridor to the left led to where Fraser and Brian housed their prisoners. At that hour, Amy Miller and Beth and Rory Weatherspoon, were either asleep or exhausted from shouting for help that would never arrive. He scanned the pass card and punched in the code. The door did not open, the security panel buzzed. He tried it again. “Damn them,” Simon whispered. “They changed my code. I can’t get into the room.”

  He saw Karen staring at the closed door. She didn’t hear what he said. Simon stood close enough to her to see her nostrils open, inhaling the ripe stench of the beast and its waste. The caretaker fed the creature once a day if they had the livestock. Sometimes it went a few days without food. It was inhumane, and no one but Simon seemed to notice or care.

  “I’m sorry I can’t show you. It is unlike anything you’ve seen before.”

  Karen pulled her left hand free of the robotic limb. She pressed her palms against the locked door. Simon saw her eyes close. She breathed deeply again. When Karen spoke, her vocal pattern changed, deepened, her features darkened.

  “Is e coin-sìth a th’ ann,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Simon recognized some of the phrases.

  Before Karen said anything else, she reached out to the thick door’s security panel. She extended her index finger and touched the card key box. The door unlocked. Karen pushed it open.

  Simon stood in awe as Karen walked through the open door. Inside the room, there was a heavily secured cage. It had 50,000 volts running through the metal mesh to keep the creature from clawing at the chain link and thick steel bars.

  Simon followed Karen into the dungeon holding the monster. It had minimal lighting. The creature hadn’t been outside the cage in almost eight years since they captured it on the compound property. Simon remembered they had lost a few facility workers in the process. Brian paid off their families to buy their beliefs. It was always industrial accidents that killed the men. No one outside the remote Equinox Technologies complex knew of the creature.

  “Please, Karen, not too close.” Simon feared the beast. He entered the room but stayed clear of the cage. The faded yellow line on the floor around the enclosure was the limit to the cage. Only the animal’s caretaker got closer. The creature understood enough not to attack the man when he dumped sheep and goat carcasses into the pen.

  “No, don’t, it’s electrified.” Simon reached out a hand but didn’t approach. He saw the unbridled rage of the monster. He knew the beast could tear limbs and bite chunks from torsos. Simon was a grown man but a coward.

  “You wounded him.” Karen’s voice sounded far away. She didn’t turn around to speak. Instead, she stared at the creature.

  Since they arrived inside its enclosure, it had curled up in the far corner, only its blackened and scaly hide showed. Its head and feet tucked against its underside, turned away from the doorway.

  Karen spoke to the creature. She spoke a language that Simon didn’t recognize. It sounded guttural and ancient. It wasn’t Gaelic, and it wasn’t Norse. The thick bristles and plates on the animals back shuttered. It was a sound like something caught in a fan blade. It wasn’t a sound that came from the creature any other time Simon knew. It unfurrowed its head and neck, turning its huge primordial eyes on Karen.

  She squatted and turned her head slightly. She spoke to it again. Unbelievably, the creature responded with a mournful cooing.

  “What are you doing?” Simon whispered.

  The creature growled and snapped, hearing him.

  “Stay calm,” Karen said. “It’s alone and afraid. It misses its kind.”

  Sill squatting, facing the cage, inches from the electrified chain link fence, Karen looked over her shoulder at Simon. “Why is he in there?”

  “You know this thing? How?”

  “It is a Cù-Sìth,” Karen said. “It is alone, and you’ve mistreated it.”

  “They captured it on the grounds years ago. Karen, how do you know—” It was in her eyes, the way the amber brightened. Her face altered slightly. It was as if Simon stared at something that pretended to be human. He gaped at Karen.

  She turned from the cage, spinning on a heel, standing, and as she did, the illusion wore off. Standing before Simon in department store clothing was a being that resembled a human female but was something so much more extraordinary.

  “You’re from the other side of the portal.” He needed to say it because Simon wanted to hear it aloud. Like the beast in the cage, the woman came from the other side of the fairy mound.

  “Yes, Simon.”

  She closed the distance between them. It happened in a heartbeat. She was a little taller, lanky with elongated arms that stretched beyond the thick sleeves of the sweater. Her fingers were twice as long as an average human. Her skin was stark alabaster and as smooth as marble. Karen was something that had infiltrated the compound and used Simon to get close to the mound. He knew it the moment it revealed itself to him.

  “What are you?” he asked. He had to know after all his years of studying the folklore and background about creatures from the far side of the portal who once mingled with humans before people began recording history. “You come from Elphame.”

  It was in the name. Karen tilted her head. The pointed ear slipped through the thin ash-blond hair, tall pointed ears with a blonde downy fur. “You know of Elphame. I am impressed.” Without taking her amber eyes from Simon, Karen reached behind her and pointed at the cage. “Why is the Cù-Sìth in there? You must release it.”

  “I can’t let it out,” Simon said. “It will kill us all.”

  “It needs to return to Elphame. It needs to go home.” She sighed. Simon felt her elongated finger trace his cheekbone. “I want to return home.”

  “They’re going through the portal.” Simon didn’t know why he confessed to Karen. Perhaps it had to do with her understanding the secret of the mound. Why hide something she already knew existed.

  “You have the Weatherspoons nearby, don’t you?”

  “How—how do you know that?”

  “Simon, we must go through the portal. We must go now. I feel something is coming. I think she is awakening.”

  “Who? What are you—”

  Before he finished talking, Karen pressed her mouth against Simon’s mouth. It was in the kiss. Something was intoxicating about her. She wasn’t human, and for the first time in Simon’s life, he felt there was someone who truly understood his purpose. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t human.

  “I am a baobhan sìth,” Karen whispered once she broke the kiss. “I cannot pas
s through the gate without the gatekeepers. I know you have Weatherspoons nearby. I can taste it on you. I can smell them in your clothes.”

  “Yes,” Simon whispered.

  Karen drew close to him again. Her lips were hovering close to his. She breathed in his breath. It took something from him. She stole something from Simon, a hint of his life passed from him into her. The color of Karen’s flesh brightened, gained a reddish hue.

  “You will take us through, Simon,” Karen said. It wasn’t a request. It was a statement. He felt her inside him. Even the robotic arm responded to Karen.

  “Baobhan sìth,” Simon repeated. “That’s a vam—”

  But Karen stole his breath again and with it, the rest of Simon’s words. A little more of Simon passed into her. The color of her flared, almost luminescent in the limited light. The Cù-Sìth clawed at the concrete floor. It growled, sensing Karen’s power and control over Simon.

  “Open the cage,” Karen said.

  Simon had no key to the power box that controlled the electric current for the chain link. Even the caretaker didn’t turn off the power grid when feeding the Cù-Sìth. Simon moved toward the junction box on the wall. He looked from the beast inside the cage, its hungry eyes glaring at him, and back to Karen, standing like a lanky she-creature in her ethereal splendor.

  “Do it,” she commanded.

  It took nothing, not even the arm’s compression, as the limb punched into the steel box for the power. He peeled away the cover like it was aluminum. Simon reached into the junction box and disconnected the power to the cage.

  An alarm sounded.

  Karen moved to the latching mechanism. It still needed a key to open. With the spindly fingers, she pulled at the latch on the gate to the cage. It came open. Simon gasped.

  “It’s okay, Simon. He wants to go home, and so do I.”

  Simon saw wonderful and mysterious things in his life. He felt honored to know that humans weren’t the dominant species on the planet. Something more powerful existed elsewhere, and Simon saw a strange interaction between the gigantic creature and the baobhan sìth. Karen leaned into the Cù-Sìth and pressed her hands against its massive snout. The beast snorted and cooed at the touch. Its large eyes closed at the kindness.