The Pictish Child
Page 8
“Whoosh!” said Jennifer. “Like a snake swallowing its tail! She lived here and so, with Maggie’s help, knew in the past what to do to make the future safe.”
Gran smiled. “Yer quick, my lass. I’m pleased with ye.”
Jennifer beamed.
“Ninia certainly didna die young,” Gran continued. “There was no grave in the cemetery for her. And there’s always been a child’s grave there, as far back as I can remember—which is very far, indeed.” She handed Jennifer a towel for drying.
“I’m glad,” said Jennifer. “Though it seems strange to be happy about something that happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I mean—however Ninia’s life turned out, it’s in the way far past.”
“We are all someone else’s past,” said Gran. She began to wash the dishes. The white cat suddenly appeared in the doorway and came over to twine around her legs.
Jennifer considered what Gran had said for a long moment, wondering whose past she could possibly be.
“Gran …” Jennifer at last said slowly. “What do you think the dark mist was?”
“Concentrated history,” said Gran, handing Jennifer a dish. “And tied somehow to the little stone, the focus of MacAlpin power. When the stone was given to Molly and then you took it up with your raw, untrained American magic, that history began to unravel and Ninia got flung forward to knit it up again.”
“To get the stone?”
“To get what the stone was sent for, hand to hand over the years.”
“Then it was a race, really, between the stone’s wishes and the mist’s wishes?”
“Something like that,” said Gran, handing more dishes to Jennifer. “Though neither stone nor mist actually wished anything. It was Ninia’s wish—the grown-up Ninia’s, as well as the child’s—that used both stone and mist to get what was needed. The stone to change things, the mist to open the gates of time.”
“And Bridei?” Jennifer said, swiping at the dishes with her cloth.
Gran sighed. “Ah—Bridei. I think Ninia hoped when he appeared that he might win. But she was taking no chances. He had lost before in the past, so why should he win here? She sent herself into the future, her child self, and Bridei simply followed.” Gran turned off the faucet and dried her hands.
“So the past got more than it bargained for,” Jennifer said.
“Och—aye, that it certainly did. It got Maggie MacAlpin.” She suddenly put her apron over her eyes, and her shoulders shook.
Jennifer set the dishes down and went over to Gran and hugged her. “Don’t cry, Gran. I know Maggie’s having a good time. Surely better than in the Eventide Home.”
“Och, I ken that, all right,” said Gran. “But I am going to miss her sorely. We’ve been the best of friends since childhood, and noo she’s gone away. As far away as ever she could.”
“And you wish she were back?”
“Maybe I just wish I were with her!” said Gran. She dried her eyes with the apron. “And dinna ye be telling Da I said so, or I’ll have a year of explaining to do.”
Just then they heard a key turning in the lock. “Speak of the auld de’il himself,” said Gran. “What a story we shall have at tea!”
And they did, too, though no one quite believed it. Not even themselves.
A Scottish Glossary
aboot—about
ain—own
auld—old
bairn—child
besom—unpleasant woman
blether—nonsense
bricht—beautiful (as in a beautiful woman)
brolly—umbrella
canna—cannot
carline—old woman, witch
clan—one’s extended family
crisps—potato chips
cummer—witch
dab—light, soft, fine
daft—crazy
de’il—devil
didna—did not
dinna—do not
dreech—wet, dreary
fash—bother, annoy
fob—to palm (off) something
glundie—a fool
gomeril—loud-talking fool
gormless—stupid
greetin—crying, weeping
greetin teenie—someone who is always complaining
haar—a sea mist
hae—have
havering—going on and on about something
hokeypokey—ice cream; hocus pocus
honk—throw up, vomit
keep us—God keep us safe
ken—know
kin—relatives
lad, laddie—a boy
laiging—gossiping
lang—long
lass, lassie—a girl or young woman
midden—dung heap
muckle—great
nae—not, no
nain—none
noo—now
puir—poor
sommat—somewhat, something
tea—can be used to mean supper
wardrobe—a stand-alone closet
wee—little, very little
wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous—from the Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse,” it means “small, sleek, cowering, frightened”
weel—well
wellies—short for “Wellingtons,” rubber boots
willna—will not
wi’oot—without
A Personal History by Jane Yolen
I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison’s birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!
We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army’s secret radio.
When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.
I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book, Owl Moon—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.
And I am still writing.
I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in Newsweek close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.
The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I’ve also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called Once Upon a Time.
These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including Not All Princesses Dress in Pink and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like Wild Wings and Color Me a Rhyme.
Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don’t shine!
Also of note—in case you find yourself in a children’s book trivia contest—I lost my fencing foil in Grand Central Station during a date, fell overboard while whitewater rafting in the Colorado River, and rode in a dog sled in Alaska one March day.
And yes—I am still writing.
At a Yolen cousins reunion as a child, holding up a photograph of myself. In the photo, I am about one year old, maybe two.
Sitting on the statue of Hans Christian Andersen in Central Park in New York in 1961, when I was twenty-two. (Photo by David Stemple.)
Enjoying Dirleton Castle in Scotland in 2010.
Signing my Caldecott Medal–winning book Owl Moon in 2011.
Reading for an audience at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2012.
Visiting Andrew Lang’s gravesite at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Scotland in 2011.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Jane Yolen
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2108-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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