Burns Night

by Amy Hoff

  But such is the compulsion of addiction.

  In the darkness of the trees, she had groaned her way through her body making its various repairs. She was thankful that the War had been fought so viciously nearby that no one had attempted to drag her away and give her a proper burial, or whatever the Fae equivalent would be.

  Eventually, one day, she rose to her feet, her army uniform torn and dirty, her face caked with mud and blood, but those old green eyes burned ancient embers all the same.

  She inspected the earth around where she had fallen. In triumph, she discovered the delicate stem of her white churchwarden’s pipe. Some sixth sense told her that Iain had intended it to be a requiem.

  But Death was no friend to baobhan sith or vampire. Not everyone knew it, and so a plan formed in her mind. She had hoped against hope that they would not find her again, believing her dead.

  And so she ran, like a coward. Or perhaps, just someone tired of the fighting.

  Later on, after her exile despite her return to the battle, after the great explosion when she was certain she had lost everyone, Iain and Gregoire the medic among them, she would wonder why she had ever taken the pains to return to a Fae world that only knew how to take things away from her. She was not acknowledged, she received no medals of valour nor favours from any of the various kings and queens of Faerie. No, exile was her gift, and she returned to Scotland despite it, out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Nobody trusts a vampire, and nobody was willing to admit that without Desdemona, the world would look very different, and the War would not have been won. Peace was not brokered through faerie wiles, but the exhausted centuries of fighting commanded by one world-weary vampire while all others lived in peace. And for this, she received the punishment of exile, without a single Fae creature celebrating her name.

  “Desdemona!” Robert called, his eyes stinging from the smoke. Gunfire laced with opium, he coughed as his throat stung with the acrid flavour, parts of his mind spiralling off as the Smoke insinuated itself into his lungs, wrapped in gunpowder. Everything was hot, and loud; disoriented, he stumbled across a body and nearly fell headfirst onto a form crouched on the ground, shoulders bowed.

  “Des?” asked Robert, cautious. Her face was more drawn than he had ever seen it, the familiar lines folded down into a grimace. He had a sudden mad desire to stroke the lines of her face, to relax them, to see her rest, but pulled his hand away just in time.

  “We’ve lost, Robert,” said Desdemona, defeat in her voice. Cannon thudded around them, and gunfire, and explosions of magic. Robert looked down and saw Gregoire lying still beside some monster he had been trying to patch up.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder, cautiously. She did not respond.

  “Where’s Iain?” he asked. She turned to look at him, and his heart was struck through by the suffering he could not lift from her. She would not let him try to make her world an easier one. Robert nodded, and instead of moving away, sat down beside her as the fire rained down all around them and the night seemed endless. He knew she would not accept help and knew she did not love him; but he could do this for her, at least.

  And of course, out of all the Fae, Robert had found her, again and again and again.

  ***

  When Desdemona had decided to return to the New World after her near death by the loch during the War, she was certain she had left it all behind, and had gone where no one could follow. The monsters of the New World were utterly foreign to those in the Old, and besides, most people wouldn’t find their way this far inland without a real reason to do so.

  Desdemona had woken, early that first evening after her escape from Scotland and Fae Wars and everything else in her life, smiling as she stretched out luxuriously. The scent of the dark pine forest surrounded her, a living, breathing thing in the quiet twilight. This was the place, the wild place where she now felt more at home than where the baobhan sith, long-vanished into their Highland caves, eked out a strange existence under the watery silver sun.

  Desdemona was faintly aware of the lake nearby, on her left, as she rose from her sleep. Minnesota, the Anishinaabe call it. Land where the water is so clear it reflects the sky. A place that would always be the same, past, present, future: wild.

  The Fae Wars were far behind her, both in physical reality and in the sense that the European land of Faerie was a long way off. She refused to think of the screams of her people, dying around her.

  The war she had lost.

  Not that she hadn’t won many battles. She could go back, one day. She might.

  She breathed, free and deep. There was nothing of Scotland here, not in this wide new world.

  She rolled over and found herself looking into a pair of deep, sad brown eyes.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Robert?!”

  He gave her a wistful stare, and hesitant smile.

  Desdemona groaned, and fell back on her bedroll.

  Robert, forever Robert, who could not be stopped by war or fire or death itself.

  ***

  “A haunted wood, a monster with wide eyes under a black loch, what are we, Desdemona, but stardust and dreams or nightmares?” asked Robert, walking to and fro beside the campfire in a Shakespearean march, gesturing wildly into the night. “What could have led me to you, and an eternal life of darkness and poetry by your side?”

  Desdemona watched him.

  “You’re not exactly the terror in the night most people expect from vampires, you know, Robert,” she said.

  “But don’t you see?” he exclaimed. “This is what every writer lives for! Drama and pain and heartache beneath the endless march of stars! To show his loyalty and love and dedication even in the face of rejection! It’s romance at its finest.”

  “If you say so.”

  Robert fell silent for a while, pacing. Desdemona hoped this was an indication that she could go back to sleep, and she sank down into her bedroll.

  “Well. It just seems lonely, is all.”

  Desdemona rolled over, irritable. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, but off in another direction, and then up at the stars.

  “You can’t remember your beginning,” he murmured, like he was writing, like he wasn’t even speaking to her, “but you were there. There before the Picts, before the Scots, before Wallace and Bruce and independence and Culloden. You were there all those centuries and you were alone. Even if you had been with other baobhan sith you said you left a long time ago to walk among humans. And in all that time the only company you’ve had is a foolish poet from the countryside with more money than sense.”

  Desdemona raised an eyebrow. Robert was apparently not speaking to her at all – just to himself? To the sky?

  “No wonder it isn’t enough,” Robert said, shaking his head, “No wonder I’m not enough. Well. It is all I have to offer and it is better than being alone.”

  Desdemona spoke then, and he turned to her, surprised she had overheard him.

  “It’s why I’m here, you know,” Desdemona told him. “I’ve seen the follies of Scotland over the centuries. This is a land that will not renounce its independence for anything. There are terrible problems here and there always will be for such a young nation, but I remember when all nations were young. The Fae Wars tire me, Scotland tires me with its inability to accept self-determination. I stayed here because this is what should have happened there. And I think this will be my home for some time.”

  It was not to be, unfortunately. The world had other plans for Desdemona, and would drag her and Robert right back into the wars they thought they had left behind.

  ***

  Robert was reminded of a conversation he’d had, not so long ago, with Desdemona. They had been standing in the local saloon, where so many of the townspeople went of an evening.

  “Why did you not turn, when we were at war?” he asked.

  “Turn?” she replied.

  “Yes, you know - become the baobhan sith,” Robert said.

  She had turned to look at
him and appraised him in silence.

  “I’ve been a monster far longer than I’ve been in this human shape,” she said. “Long was the time I hunted young men like you on the lonely roads of the Highlands. I was Death, come for them.”

  “Aye,” said Robert. “So why not use it?”

  Desdemona sighed.

  “Because, Robert,” she said. “I’m afraid I may not find my way back.”

  She stared off into a past he could not see.

  “Just as I’m afraid this war will never end.”

  ***

  Iain stood respectfully at attention before them, incongruous in the little wooden bunkhouse Robert had come to hesitatingly call home.

  “War’s not going well,” he addressed Desdemona, ignoring Robert. “Will you come?”

  Robert watched as Desdemona’s jaw tightened. In an instant, she handed her gun to her lieutenant, butt-first.

  “I’m out,” she said, and turned away from him.

  “We’re losing without you,” said Iain tightly, and it was clear how much restraint he was showing, fear and anguish bursting at the seams.

  Desdemona’s body went slack. Her usual proud, stately bearing collapsed in upon itself like a dying star.

  “No matter how far I go, it always finds me,” she muttered, almost to herself.

  Then she lifted her head, and he saw the conviction glass over her bright green eyes. Here was the soldier, the warrior, the strategist. Here was Desdemona, again reduced to the sum of only a few of her parts.

  She looked at him, and he thought he could discern in the one glance all the grief and horror of this knowledge; of her own responsibility, of never getting out.

  “Come on, Robert,” she said.

  And he followed her. Of course.

  ***

  Leah stood from where she had been sitting on a comfortable settee.

  This tour of the interior furnishings of the minds of both Robert and Desdemona was highly entertaining, but every instinct in her screamed that they would be lost forever if this continued much longer. She couldn’t even tell the delineation between dreams and reality anymore.

  There was one thing she knew for certain.

  This wasn’t Glasgow, and she wanted to know who or what was keeping them away from their city by drowning them in dreams and memories. Robert’s longing was palpable, but she couldn’t help thinking there was something sinister in it.

  And just like that, things began fall into place in Leah’s mind, so very like the tumblers in a lock.

  These aren’t dreams or nightmares, she’d said on the bridge. These things are the opposite of desire. Insecurities.

  She’d seen Desdemona fall in the war, then run and hide; she’d seen these memories of Robert’s as if they were the only reality that mattered. All while she was well-aware they’d never left Glasgow at all.

  And a certainty fell into her then, and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  These are flashbacks, she realised. Not nightmares, not dreams, none of that. These are the things you never wanted to confront, love and loss and fear –

  No.

  They are all about love. What is it that we fear losing the most?

  Leah turned toward the door.

  Time to save the poet from himself, she thought, and walked out after them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SALOON

  Leah saw them mount their horses and was determined to follow. She couldn’t lose Robert, not now.

  “Your friend, Nour,” Robert was saying as they rode their horses towards the town, “she said you call yourself Desdemona now. What did you used to call yourself?”

  Desdemona looked at him.

  “I am very old, Robert,” she said, “Only Nour is older than me, and that by only a few years. We met as children, in a situation I hope we never see again.”

  “What happened?” Robert asked.

  “Slavers caught us,” she said simply. “When we were children. I was kidnapped before my Naming Ceremony, and I carried the title all baobhan sith children did at the time. It was Nour’s first rebirth; she saved us both. It was a very long time ago. We’ve been friends ever since.”

  They dismounted and tied their horses to the posts outside the saloon. Leah followed them inside as Desdemona continued to explain.

  “We’ve adopted many different names over the centuries,” said Desdemona, “but they’ve always meant the same thing in some way. For her, Fire, and for me, Fallen.”

  “Fallen?” asked Robert. “That’s what they called the children of your tribe? But you escaped – didn’t you return for your Naming ceremony?”

  “Of course,” said Desdemona, “but by that time my clan had been slaughtered. Scotland has never been kind. Nour and I were gone a long time, and by then, we were both alone.”

  Robert looked at her as if his entire being was filling with tears.

  “Thank you, Des,” he said, his voice syrupy with love and concern.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said automatically. “What for?”

  “For telling me,” he replied.

  Desdemona only sighed and shook her head.

  “It was a piece of good luck, in a way,” said Desdemona. “The slavers didn’t realise that we weren’t normal female human children. Not until it was too late.”

  “Slavers–” Robert began, before it dawned on him. He looked around himself with horror, as if he could defend Desdemona from something that had happened many thousands of years before.

  “Keep your mind on the problems of the present, Robert,” said Desdemona. “These things still happen every day, unfortunately. Even more unfortunately, they don’t kidnap a vampire and a phoenix every time.”

  Robert still wouldn’t look at her, which was strange enough to be alarming.

  “I almost came here before, you know,” he said softly.

  “To Minnesota?” Desdemona asked.

  “To America,” he replied, “To the New World, before...my poetry was published.”

  Desdemona gave him an indescribable look.

  “Yes, I’d heard,” she said. “You wanted to become a slave-trader.”

  Robert looked down at his hands.

  “I needed the money,” he replied, almost inaudibly.

  Desdemona didn’t even honour this with a reply. There was nothing to say.

  “I am glad you were published,” she said finally, anger and betrayal dripping from her words.

  There were not words that could have broken Robert’s heart more, and he was filled with shame.

  You’re not a good man, a voice insinuated itself into the room. Not really.

  And what was all that talk about equality? Poetry? A man’s a man for a’ that, unless he’s a slave, Robert Burns? Revolution unless it endangers an exciseman’s job? Hypocrite.

  “Desdemona–” he began, but she was gone.

  ***

  Leah joined Robert at the bar of the saloon as the pieces of the dream began to disjoint and fade away.

  “Oh, Leah, I–” he began.

  “I know, Robert,” Leah said sourly. “Everyone knows. That’s what fame gets you, the ugly parts along with the love songs.”

  “But–” he tried to start again, and she held up her hand.

  “There are some things you’ve done that can’t be excused,” said Leah. “But what I want to know is – did you hear that voice?”

  Robert stared at her, troubled.

  “Voice?” he asked.

  “Yeah, the – exciseman, hypocrite – that voice!”

  “You heard it too?” he asked. Leah nodded.

  “Both here and on Kelvin Bridge, we’ve got to – “

  ***

  And suddenly, Leah was in front of Interpol.

  Fludge ran up to her, and she picked him up; she wondered where he’d vanished off to, during their trip to unreality.

  Then she noticed Robert was no longer standing by her side.

  “Ro
bert?” she called. “Robert!”

  Fludge looked up at her from his perch on her arm.

  “Well, I guess it’s just you and me.”

  ***

  Robert was surprised to find himself on Kelvin Bridge again, although not as surprised as he might once have been, the cedar-and-pine air of Minnesota replaced by the Glasgow fug of the brewery and the iron-tin wind. The mist was gathering once more, and he wondered if he’d see Sherlock Holmes again. If he did, he was going to recruit the man to help him solve one of the most puzzling mysteries he’d encountered since returning to Glasgow and meeting the detectives of Caledonia Interpol. He had known Sir Arthur Conan Doyle quite well. He smiled ruefully as he thought of what the man would say if he knew his most hated creation was now one of the most popular characters in the world.

  But Robert was disappointed. The bridge remained empty of Sherlock Holmes, not to mention other people. He turned around, looking for Leah, who had vanished.

  “Leah?” he ventured, but there was no answering call.

  Instead, he could vaguely make out the shadow of a large man standing in front of the Kelvinbridge tube station.

  “Hello?”

  Robert made his way toward the shadowy figure.

  “Welcome to the entrance to the River Styx,” said the figure. “Or something like it, anyway.”

  Robert glanced from the figure to the darkness of the subway beyond.

  “And what is this? A judgment?” asked Robert.

  “More than that,” said the figure. “Your fears. Your history, Robert Burns. Your curiosity about what might befall you, once you have the bravery to truly cross to the other side. Were you really a good man? Are all those wonderful things they say about you really true? Does it matter, when a man has one foot in heaven and the other in hell?”