Though he was at pains to conceal it from Keith, he was troubled, and had been ever since he had called home. There was gossip going around the farm about Maura and Gerol, another male a few years older than Holl. They were spending a lot of time together, and the attraction seemed to be both obvious and mutual. She hadn’t said anything to Calla to the effect that her ‘understanding’ with Holl was off, but that was the way many of their clan read it. Holl was very hurt. He had taken on this quest so he would have the right to ask her to marry when he returned, following all the traditional forms. Apparently, she had taken his departure as a rejection. The impulse returned again and again that he should go home immediately; abandon the search for the white bellflowers. But did he give up his quest, thereby abrogating his right to be headman of the village one day? That was never an ambition he had intended for himself. It was merely what others had always expected of him. They were counting on him. If he went home now, there would be others who would lack the bellflowers for their weddings, and he felt somewhat guilty about that, but he didn’t want to be outmatched by a rival when he couldn’t be there to defend his suit. The Conservatives would attack him as a culture-killing Progressive, sucking up to Big ways, but he wondered if he cared about that if he lost Maura. Still, the Elf Master had made it a condition of his proposal to find the flowers before he could marry Maura. Holl wished he had taken her aside and told her his intentions before he had left, but that wasn’t the way the Little Folk did things. Until her parents said he had their permission, he had to hold his tongue.
There wasn’t so much bad about the Big Folks’ life. Would he wed instead after their fashion, making up their own ceremonies when it suited them, and when convention couldn’t apply? They seemed to get along fine. And yet, had Maura rejected the old ways? Was she choosing her own mate over her long-time suitor in defiance of tradition? He wished he could talk to Keith about his worries, but he wanted to think it through further first. It was important not to let the situation at home drag down his spirits.
“We are now passing over the River Ness,” Miss Anderson put in. The sunshine was brilliantly reflected off the flowing water. Small, black-headed gulls swooped around the coach as it drove over an iron bridge.
“Have they ever decided what it is that so many people report seeing in the Loch?” Holl inquired, and wondered why everyone else laughed.
“Do you mean Nessie?” Miss Anderson asked brightly. “No, there are ten times as many theories as there are reported sightings. You’ll have a chance to look for yourselves. You’re on your own for today, ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Stroud would prefer that we start with him Tuesday. He wants only his team on site this afternoon. I believe they are at a delicate stage of the proceedings. I am sure you wouldn’t want to interfere.”
There was a chorus of amiable protest. “We’re more like day trippers to the profs,” Edwin said, speaking for them all. “If they’re doing something serious, we won’t get in the way.”
“Somewhat inelegantly put,” Mrs. Green added, smiling over her shoulder at the tall young man, “but essentially what I would have said.”
“Those of you taking this for credit are not excused from your essays, though,” the tour director warned. “But allow me to suggest a topic you might explore. Picture yourself as far forward in the future as we are now to our Bronze Age subjects. What would you be likely to find left of Inverness in the 60th century?
“I think you will find Inverness worth your exploration. I have a schedule of day tours available, if anyone would care to inspect it, and there are more to be had from the Tourist Information Centre. We’ll be staying in a guesthouse this time, instead of a residence hall. Evening meals will be provided for you as well as breakfast. If you want to make your own arrangements for supper, please let the owner know early in the day.”
The weather was fine and warm, with a hot sun persuading the tourists to leave their coats behind in the guesthouse, and a breeze promising that the heat wouldn’t be too oppressive. Keith found a reasonably respectable tee shirt to wear among his belongings, and joined his friends on their way out for a look around.
From their lodgings to the city center it was downhill, via a long flight of narrow stone steps and a broader, sharply turning staircase. From the head of the twisting steps, they found they were on a level with the red stone castle, which gave them a good view to the east. Most of the section of Inverness in which they were staying appeared to be laid out along a similar plan to provide access to the higher neighborhoods. Down on the long High Street, Keith would catch sight of endless stairs reaching up and back into the shadows between buildings.
As in Glasgow, the traffic was fast, with taxis taking death-dealing turns around corners under the noses of wary pedestrians. Except for the perils of traffic, Inverness was easy to get around in. Keith found it cheerful and clean. The group stopped for lunch in a small family style restaurant by the side of the River Ness, just out of the shadow of the main bridge spanning it. The Hearty Trencherman boasted a sign showing a plump, happy diner beaming over a huge plate and brandishing a knife and fork.
Matthew made a face at the sign. “Ooh, I hate campy adverts.”
“I’d call it the Trench, for short,” Martin suggested, as they pushed inside. “Look at the high banks of the river, surrounding us. We’re in the bottom of a pit.”
“Well, if you look at it that way, anything good you get here’ll be a nice surprise,” Keith reasoned. He sat down and accepted a menu from the female server standing beside their table. “Hi, beautiful. What’s good here, besides the service?”
The waitress tossed a light-brown ponytail and dimpled prettily. “Nearly anything,” she said. “The salmon’s off, but all the rest is ready.”
Keith waggled his eyebrows at her outrageously, collecting a blush. “So’m I.”
“Keith Doyle!” Holl exclaimed, shocked. “What would Diane say?”
“Diane?” Keith, surprised, turned innocent hazel eyes on him. “What’s this got to do with her? We’re just having a conversation. It doesn’t mean anything.” He promptly went back to flirting, and Holl turned a hot red in embarrassment. The waitress seemed to take the whole business in stride, all the time noting down orders and dispensing drinks.
The menu was predictable, including the ubiquitous “and peas,” but the food was well-prepared. The young men leaned back from their empty plates with satisfaction, waiting for the bill.
Keith peered out of the plate glass window at the river. “This would be a good place to watch the sun set.”
“Aye,” said Matthew. “This is just into Midsummer, and we’re far enough north that the sun nearly never sets. We’ll go and have a sit down in the nearest local, and when the publican cries closing time at eleven, we’ll know it’s sunset.”
The others agreed that it was a good plan. They paid the bill and walked out into the sunlight. At the first sign of a likely pub, most of the young men turned in. “Aren’t you coming in with us?” Max asked Keith, holding open the door.
“Nope,” Keith replied, grinning. “We’re going to take a tour down to the Loch and look for the monster.”
“Oh. Happy fishing,” Edwin said sarcastically.
“See you later,” Keith promised. “I’ll look for you guys here around sunset.”
Directed by Miss Anderson to look for the signs with the small script i, Keith located the Tourist Information Centre on a street perpendicular to the main thoroughfare not far from the Trench. The TICs provided numerous services for travelers, including directions, event schedules, lodging arrangements, maps, and an assembly point for tours.
“The next one sets out in twenty minutes,” the woman in the glass-fronted booth told Keith. “You can pay for your tickets now or on the coach.”
With time to kill, Keith studied the wall map of the city, while Holl perused displays of handcrafted knickknacks for sale in the front of the Centre. Keith compared the scale from the city to Loch Ness, th
e long, narrow stretch of water angling southwest from the river which bisected Inverness. It was a curious shape, long and narrow like a spear.
“Keith Doyle?” Holl’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Can you come here for a minute?”
Holl gestured him quietly to a small display case which contained ceramic pieces. Behind a tiny card which said “Nessie” were ranged a half dozen separate pieces: a head, four semicircular loops with ridges over the back, and a tiny squib of a pointed tail, which made it appear as if the monster was swimming with half its length submerged in the table. “Is that what it looks like?”
“That’s what most of the people who have seen her say,” Keith said. “They don’t have any concrete proof, of course. Some of the pictures they’ve got suggest that descendants of plesiosaurs are living in the Loch.” Holl’s eyes went wide. “The legends also say she might be a selkie, which is a sort of magical seagoing horse. Does that look like a horse to you?”
“Don’t you go talking down aur Nessie,” the clerk chided them playfully from the other side of the shop. “We’re fond of her in these parts.”
Keith clapped his spread fingertips to his chest. “Me? I believe in her,” he assured the clerk earnestly. “I know of stranger things in real life. But it’s not like she’s ever appeared on the evening news.”
“There are those who believe and those who doubt,” the clerk said offhandedly. “But you’ll prove it to yourself at the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition. Queue up for the coach just outside the door.”
The Official Monster Exhibition was in Drumnadrochit, several miles southwest of Inverness. The guide doing the presentation offered them walls filled with blurred photographs and written eyewitness accounts as proof of the monster’s existence. The multimedia program was more interesting, and dropped delicious hints that investigating scientists were on the edge of making an announcement as to Nessie’s species and location. They showed the audience films taken by spotters, who had accidentally caught sight of the mysterious denizen of the Loch. After glancing at the displays, which held far less scientific theory than they had hoped, Keith and Holl made their way through the turnstile to the book and gift shop.
“Now here’s something that looks like home,” Holl said, spreading his arms out to the walls of books.
“Are you going to have trouble living on the farm, since it’s exposed and all?” Keith asked. “I mean after living underground in a library, anything is going to feel less solid.”
“No, but the walls are awfully bare without books. We’re budgeting to start our own collection of books. The Conservatives insist that we get a good grounding of textbooks, to keep up our education. The Progressives want literature, with an emphasis on science fiction. It’s still in negotiation.”
Outside the Exhibition hall was a pond, in which a twenty-foot concrete dinosaur model was posed swimming. “It’s a plesiosaur, all right,” Holl agreed. “But is that really what’s in the Loch?”
“No one really knows,” Keith said thoughtfully. “But I might come back someday and try to find out.”
The tour’s next stop was the ruin of Urquhart Castle, a fabulous ruin on the west side of the Loch. Keith slapped a new roll of film into his camera, and crawled all over the stones taking pictures. Holl followed him more sedately, stopping to inspect the layout and read the small signs describing what used to lie in each part of the castle.
“Keith, let me take one picture of you,” Holl suggested, when Keith stopped to reload. “That way, you’ll have at least one piece of proof you were here along with your camera, instead of it having a nice vacation on its own.”
“Great idea,” Keith said. “Let’s go back up the road so you can get most of the castle into the frame with me.” Together, they trotted over the rise and up toward the road.
They gazed appreciatively around them at the scenery outside of the castle grounds. In the thick grass on the roadside, small blossoms of pink and yellow grew abundantly. Urquhart Castle was downhill from the road, so they had to walk some distance from the grounds to where they could see it again.
“I have to have you take a picture so it looks like I’m holding the castle on the palm of my hand, or my father’ll be disappointed,” Keith explained. “It’s an old family tradition.”
“Ah,” Holl acknowledged, amused. “How about seeming to pick it up between your thumb and forefinger? It’s already a ruin. You can do it no more damage.”
“Ha, ha,” Keith said. He posed, and Holl snapped the picture.
“How are you feeling now? It’s only been about three days since you got out of bed again. I haven’t given up on trying to find your flowers for you,” Keith said solicitously.
“I’m well enough,” Holl replied. “I’d prefer that you didn’t go charging up fairy mounds and the like again.”
“Well, if I see one, I’ll go up it myself, with you out at a safe distance,” Keith insisted, “in case there’s something mean that just doesn’t like other magical folk. I guess I’m immune to whatever hit you in the first site, so you point, and I’ll fetch. Okay?”
“Okay. So where’s your monster?” Holl asked teasingly, gesturing with a sweep of his arm. “Now that we have seen the amazingly over-painted model, we know what to look for.”
“I’ve got the bait right here,” Keith said, pulling half of a cheese sandwich out of his pocket and unwrapping it. “Just you wait. Here, Nessie, Nessie, Nessie,” he called, hurling a corner of it out over the loch. A seagull came out of midair and snagged the scrap of food. “Whoops. Took my bait. I’ll have to try again.”
Holl grinned sheepishly. “Oh, you can’t be serious, Keith Doyle.”
“Never more than half,” Keith assured him, unquenchably, breaking off a piece of the sandwich and giving it to Holl. “But wouldn’t they be amazed if it worked?”
“You’ll never die of hypertension, that’s certain,” Holl said. “Your frivolity is quite an act. You give an amazing imitation of a grasshopper, Keith Doyle, but I have always suspected you of being mostly ant.”
They threw crumbs into the loch for a while, in no hurry to go back to the castle and rejoin the tour.
“I wish I could drive a car over here,” Keith said wistfully, watching the spare traffic race past the lay-by in which they were standing. “If we’re going to have a lot of time to kill, I want to get out and see some more of the countryside. It’s beautiful here.”
“It is,” Holl agreed, taking a deep breath of the fragrant air. “I wish I could show some of the others more of the world. They wouldn’t be so fearful of going out into it once in a while.”
Keith made a noise that sounded sympathetic and derisive at the same time. “It could be 99 percent wonderful, and they’d hate it because of one percent of things that would be off kilter.”
“You’ve shown more than one percent of going wrong, and they still accept you,” Holl pointed out.
“By the way, I hope you notice I’ve been good, not trying out you-know-what in front of other people,” Keith said defensively.
“And for which I’m grateful. Such behavior deserves reward, is that your thought?” Holl asked shrewdly. “Never mind. It’s all right with me. Since Enoch isn’t here to continue your education, I’ll give you the next lesson. I’ve wanted a quiet moment to listen for home. You may as well learn something about that.”
“What do you mean?” Keith asked eagerly, sitting down on a low boulder at the edge of the road and pulling his knees up. He glanced around. Behind him, it was almost a sheer drop to the Loch. He scooted forward, keeping as much of the rock between him and the precipice as he could. Holl sat on a rock next to him.
“Concentrate and sit quietly, and think in the direction that the Folk are,” Holl instructed him, closing his own eyes. “Send your knowledge toward them. See them.”
“With your third eye?” Keith inquired, screwing his eyes shut.
“No, you innocent,” Holl said, rapping him on the head wit
h his knuckles. “With your heart. Think of the ones dearest to you to make the best link.”
“Well, you’re my best friend and the one I know best. Hmm. I don’t think I can use the Master as a focus. I think he’d disapprove.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Holl agreed. “How about Maura? You know her well.”
Keith thought for a second, looking uneasy. He cracked one eye and peered at his friend. “Maybe not. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her with you here.”
“Eh?”
“Well, it’s like homing in on your date,” he explained lamely. “I may flirt, but I don’t poach.”
Holl snorted. “You’re amazing, Keith Doyle. I wish everyone had your scruples. How about Dola? She’s fond of you.”
“Okay. I’ll give it a try.” Keith concentrated, letting his body relax. He knew that thousands of miles to the southwest, sort of along the axis of the Great Glen, across the ocean in America, lay the village. He thought for a moment that he could see an infinitesimal golden spark on the horizon that felt right, in the correct direction. “I think I’ve got—what did you call it—a link? But there’s something like radio interference in the way. I’m not sensing anybody particular. Of course, I haven’t got tons of magical energy to use.”
“All you need is practice, widdy, not tons.” Holl closed his eyes again and let his muscles go slack. After a few minutes, he sighed. “You’re right,” he said, disappointed. “We’re so far away I can’t touch them properly. There’s too much of the world between us. Something’s in the way.”
“Ireland,” said Keith wisely. “Ireland’s that way, too.” They sat for a moment, quietly concentrating. Holl’s forehead was drawn down and troubled.
After a long silence, Keith spoke up. “That sounded significant, the part about scruples,” he put in gently. “That reminded me: when you were talking to your mother, you sounded angry. I didn’t know what was up.”
Holl clicked his tongue. “It was rude of us to speak in a different tongue in front of you.”
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