Night Visitor

by Melanie Jackson

  Even as she fought against her invisible abductors in the smothering dark, she knew that she was being half-dragged and half-carried down another faerie road. Her eyes were wide open, but through her streaming tears she could see nothing more of her surroundings than several points of dancing golden light, like torches being carried at a great distance on a foggy night.

  She grieved without cease, but after her throat had been rasped raw, she stopped calling for Malcolm and fighting so vigorously. She calmed enough to realize that she was not being taken back upon the road that brought her to this time. Unlike that journey, when she had traveled from her time to Malcolm’s, there was no sound around her, except the eerie padding of nearly silent feet slapping on hard stone.

  She was minimally relieved to know that they were not returning her home yet, and she tried to pay attention to her surroundings. But strive as she might, Taffy could see no one in the dark, not even great shadows moving against lesser ones. Foiled by the lack of light, she recoursed then to her other senses, and from her sensitive ears she deducted that the echoing noises about her came from such a multitude of directions that she must be in the midst of a party of enormous size.

  She had screamed herself into a voiceless state and wearied her body, but she still continued to periodically try and free herself. There was always the hope that she might return to Malcolm. In the meanwhile, she continued calling for him with her heart and mind, hoping against the evidence of her eyes and ears—and the silence in her mind—that he might still live.

  But her captors did not allow her to escape, never relenting their hold until she finally collapsed from her exhausting struggles and went limp, and it seemed to her that somehow they were muffling her thoughts and appeals to her love.

  When she hung heavily in her living shackle, which had not loosened their pitiless grip no matter how she struggled and pleaded, the raiding party finally paused in their hurried travels.

  She sensed that they had met up with another band of still-folk and were exchanging news. As her body folded in on itself, they released their hold on her arms and stepped back from her.

  Do not run.

  Taffy ignored the alien voice in her head. She was no sooner freed from her living bonds then she summoned a last bit of strength and clumsily attempted to run back through the darkness to where she had last seen Malcolm.

  But before she was more than a step away, something viney tangled about her ankles, and her hobbled legs gave way beneath her.

  She put out her arms and screamed again—this time with fear for her child—but without any sound coming from her ruined throat.

  There was a breath of displaced air and someone caught her about the waist before she hit the floor. Her rescuer lowered her gently onto the ground and after a moment padded away.

  There was a quick whisper of voices that sounded more like the rustling of leaves than human speech.

  The padding steps quickly returned to her side. Rather than continue to drag her along in her now supine state, as she half-expected they might, someone untangled her hobbled legs, and before she could kick out, she was taken up in one of her captors’ arms.

  Taffy thrashed feebly and tried to speak with her broken voice, but was held tight against a narrow chest with limbs that were whipcord lean and impossibly strong. Struggle feebly though she did, those arms allowed her no leeway, except what she could achieve by movement of her neck.

  The journey resumed. The black went on for what seemed miles, but eventually began to change in tone, taking on a reddish hue. Occasionally, a breeze would pass over the party and a stray lock of her abductor’s hair would brush over her face. It was insubstantial, soft…not human.

  And yet, in a way, her captor was also familiar. And it was the comfort of this familiarity that allowed her to drop down into kind oblivion when a soft, dark breath whispered to her: Sleep, lady, do not fear.

  Fear? she thought. She did not fear. Grief would kill her before anything else could.

  Nay, thou shalt live. And with those words some comforting swaddling was drawn over her brain and she let go of consciousness in favor of the veil of forgetfulness that was offered.

  When Malcolm opened his eyes, it was to a blackness so near complete that he was not certain that he had truly awakened. It took a moment for him to recall what had happened in the cave.

  “Taffy?” he asked immediately, even then knowing that she was not there.

  Head swimming, he groped about for a moment with clumsy hands to look for the faerie who had grabbed on in an attempt to save him from a fall into the void. His senses told him that he was alone, but still he searched for a body and also to assure himself that the floor about him was where it was supposed to be.

  Presently, feeling nothing but firm, cold stone around him, Malcolm slowly and cautiously rose to his feet, then continued his investigation of the rough face of the wall before him.

  There was a pungent smell of fresh sap in the air, dying quickly with every breath he pulled into his lungs. The odor explained why he was alive and the faerie was not lying broken beside him. The deepest roots of the ancient trees had lifted up through the mountain’s stone at the faeries’ command to save them, even at the cost of damage to their subterranean limbs.

  “Tapadh leibh,” he thanked them in the old tongue.

  Malcolm tried to orient himself, but it was difficult in the dark when his swimming head said that the tunnel was turning and his eyes could not lie to his other senses. He could only guess at where he was and what direction to travel. Tomhnafurach was to the south. It was the largest of the fairy strongholds and the nearest. That was the way he would go.

  Still, he hesitated to leave his place without the certainty that he was moving truly toward Taffy rather than away. It was entirely possible that she was being carried to one of the smaller shians. Seeking confirmation of his plan, he went into the corner of his mind where Taffy dwelled and searched for her presence.

  Nothing.

  Taffy? he asked automatically, hunting for her with his full attention.

  Taffy lass, where are ye?

  He peered south and called again. And then again.

  When there continued to be no answer, he became alarmed and then nearly frantic that he couldn’t discover a trace of her mind.

  Always, he had been able to find her when he looked. Now there was nothing, not even an echo of her thoughts that he might follow.

  Night was falling above him, he sensed, and taking hold of his fraying patience, he waited for the sun to leave the sky. The night belonged to his kind, faerie kin that he was. He would be stronger then, he assured himself, able to track her.

  Malcolm refrained from pacing, but only with great difficulty, as his nerves demanded that he start after her immediately.

  Until this hour, some part of him had always resisted the pull of the still-folk’s magic. Just as a part of him had been closed off to his father’s kin for their hostility to his faerie blood, so too had part of him been kept from his mother’s unhuman kind. But he fought the ancient magic no longer. If faerie magic would take him to Taffy, then he would surrender to the pull and embrace it with his whole being.

  Darkness. Malcolm felt it settle upon the world.

  Taking a deep breath, he turned inward again and looked out through the window in his mind. He began hunting ruthlessly for his wife.

  Ah! He had her. He couldn’t speak to her because she was deep in sleep, a dreamless state that was so drugged as to seem near death.

  He gave thanks that she was still in his world, that the still-folk had not yet placed her beyond his reach in some other time.

  He tried next to rouse her with a soft call, growing impatient and demanding when she failed to respond. For some reason she clung to her coma with desperation, as though terrified of waking.

  Taffy, lass, awake, he pleaded—needing to touch her alert mind so that he could assure himself that she was well, not wounded, bespelled, or drugged with s
ome dangerous faerie decoction.

  Malcolm frowned as he concentrated, again feeling the birth of alarm. The last glimpse he’d had of her, she had been in the still-folk’s keeping. They should have got her safe away from the band of Campbells that had invaded the cave.

  But perhaps they had been caught in the shifting earth that caused the cavern floor to give way and were somehow trapped in the ground. Perhaps the faeries had deadened her senses so she would not panic.

  Horrified that Taffy might also be lost, alone but for her captors and terrified in the thick dark of the underground, he strained outward with his mind, striving with all his will to know more of her circumstance.

  Again, with the new effort, he was able to push past barriers and see through the window in his mind.

  She was well, he saw—just exhausted and under a calming spell. The still-folk were carrying her sleeping body to Tomhnafurach.

  One of her guardians felt very familiar to Malcolm, though he could not say just where he had encountered this faerie before.

  “Taffy, lass,” he whispered to her, this time gently and deep in her mind where dreams were made. “Ha’e I no’ told ye tae listen not tae yer despair? Ye’ll break yer heart for sure.”

  Malcolm?

  The touch was tentative, weak, sluggish, and wrenchingly disbelieving.

  “Aye, Taffy, lass. ‘Tis yer husband.”

  “You are a ghost again, Malcolm,” she cried, her brain painted with black grief as she struggled toward wakefulness. “You are lost! Lost!”

  “Nay, lass. I am well,” he assured her. “The still-folk are taking ye to Tomhnafurach. I shall find ye there. Soon.”

  “Malcolm, love, come to me, even if you are but a ghost…” The thread was growing fainter as Taffy slid back toward comforting oblivion.

  “Sleep then, lass,” he told her, wanting to cling to the sweet brush of her thoughts, however despairing, but fearful that such prolonged anguish might be damaging to her. He said soothingly: “Rest and heal, Taffy, lass. I shall be wi’ ye soon.”

  He wasn’t certain how he would keep this promise, lost as he was in some forgotten faerie maze, but Malcolm knew that he would find her. Or he would die trying.

  When Taffy awoke, she was curled on her side resting near a tiny streamlet that seemed almost to sing as it danced over its bed of sparkling crystal pebbles. Her fingers told her that she lay on cerements of soft green velvet. Her nose breathed happily of the faint scent of living moss and heather.

  Someone had bathed her face, for chilling droplets still clung to her skin, cooling the fever of her tears, which had swollen her eyes to mere slits.

  She rolled slowly onto her back and looked up into the sky. It was a perfect light blue, cloudless, but unnatural in its stillness. Not a swallow, thrush, or blackbird used these untrue heavens, or disturbed the silence with their summer song.

  Tomhnafurach.

  Yes, that seemed right. She had heard Malcolm’s ghost whispering to her that she would be taken here.

  So, this was the faeries’ kingdom, where they dwelled beyond the call of human habitation, buried a fathom deep within the sheltering earth.

  Aye, child.

  Curiously unalarmed, Taffy turned her head and studied the tall, lean man seated beneath a giant flowering chestnut. He was dressed in a modest cloak of green camlet spotted carelessly with a spray of spent heather blossom. He had an aquiline face—unlined but definitely lived-in. It was a face of seeming youth, but his eyes, silver and fey, were very old. And wise. Yet she had learned not to be deceived by the trappings of pretty faerie magic. Nothing about the still-folk was ever at it seemed.

  “Do I not appear sufficiently benevolent?” the faerie asked in a soft voice, shaded with the music of every song that had ever been sung. It was so beautiful! So very like Malcolm’s voice that had she any tears left, she would have wept. “I could slump and age if you would find an old man less frightening.”

  “I’m not frightened,” she croaked. And it was true, for there was nothing left to fear.

  The man frowned at the harsh rasp of her voice. He rose gracefully and went to the stream. Taking a silver dipper from out of his pocket, he ladled up a small measure of water and then came to kneel at her side.

  “Drink, child. Mend thy voice.”

  Feeling how the magicked waters had drawn the swelling from her skin, Taffy gladly swallowed the healing potion, forcing the cold liquid past the tight muscles of her tender throat.

  “We feared for thy life, child. And that of your babe. Would thou grieve this man so violently that you endangered both your lives? Even when he commanded otherwise?”

  “I have no life anymore,” she whispered, her voice already growing stronger. Perhaps it was the magic water, which held the waiting despair at bay as they spoke of her husband. She knew it was still out there, ready to wrap its icy arms about her heart and drown her in its endless sea as soon as the protection was withdrawn from her senses.

  “And your daughter? Is she to have no life either?”

  Daughter?

  Taffy laid a hand over her belly and stroked it gently.

  “Then so too must thou live, child.”

  “Will you keep me here?” she asked, not caring particularly what the answer might be.

  “Only if there is no other choice.” The chestnut shivered at his words and blossoms rained down, dancing in the still air to some unseen tune.

  Taffy watched the flowers twirl overhead and then said: “It’s very pretty here.”

  “Aye, when thou looks upon it with your new eyes. But what says thy heart, child?”

  Taffy looked up at the empty sky where tiny blossoms flew upward without any breeze.

  “That it isn’t real.”

  “And couldst thou live forever in such an unreal place?”

  “I don’t know.” Taffy swallowed. Her throat was nearly healed.

  “I believe that in time it would disturb thee. And given centuries, small cankers grow into terrible wounds. Thou wouldst not be happy here, daughter.”

  “Centuries?”

  “Aye.”

  “I shan’t be happy in my world either,” she told him. “Not now.”

  “Thou art certain of that?”

  Taffy nodded once.

  “I was not happy before. It was only that I didn’t know it then.”

  The faerie tipped his head to one side and studied her for a long moment.

  “That is often the way of your kind, to be born, to live and die without ever truly awaking. You walk in beauty, but see it not. Thou art surrounded by music, but thou dost not hear it.”

  “I was afraid,” she explained, sitting up slowly and drawing the cloak about her. She was not cold but needed comfort. She pushed her loosened hair behind her ears, for once uncaring that they showed. “We all are, I think: the women I know.”

  “What didst thou fear?”

  “Everything.” She waved a hand at her surroundings. “The entire world. But mostly I feared to fail in my—my external life.”

  “The life thou hast shown to thy family and friends.”

  She nodded.

  “And all of society.”

  “Ah.” The faerie nodded.

  “So fearful was I of that failure that I never once thought to question if I was faulting my spirit—my heart. If I was compromising my…" She trailed off, unable to find the words.

  “Your soul?”

  “Yes, but I don’t mean the soul that goes to Heaven—the one the church talks about. I mean—” she paused, frustrated at her inadequacy at finding the words she needed.

  “Your internal life,” the faerie suggested. “The part of thee that hears the music of the waters there and sees the sunshine dance when it glints in the shallows and weeps for the beauty of it. The part that seeks the quiet of the forest rather than the chatter of men. The part of you that loves passionately, even when the mind has been taught that such love should not be.”

  “Yes
, that’s right. But I have started to feel otherwise in the past days. Malcolm changed that. He showed me—” Taffy stopped and looked deep into the faerie’s ancient, silvered eyes. “Who are you, faerie? You seem familiar to me.”

  “My name is Tomas.” The man smiled. His face was covered in a radiant beauty.

  “Tomas Rimer?” she asked, feeling the vague stirrings of awe. Some of her senses were awakening.

  “So have some of your kind called me.”

  “I’m honored,” she said, and then laughed once at the polite conventionality of her words. It was only a small sound, her brief laughter, but somehow it rolled the tide of waiting grief further away from them.

  Tomas laughed, too, setting more chestnut blossoms flying into the blue crystal sky.

  “Come, daughter, tell me now of this internal life thou hast found. Tell me of our son, Malcolm. And then I shall play you a song. One of happiness, or love, or forgetfulness—whatever thou desires. I can givest thee complete oblivion to all that has passed in thy visit to this age, an thou wishes it.”

  “I don’t know if I can tell you of Malcolm,” she answered after a long moment, waiting fearfully for grief to overwhelm her at the mention of his name. But when the dam held she went on: “I can speak many languages, have read all the great love poems—”

  “Of human creation.”

  “Yes, of my people.”

  Tomas did not bother to correct her, but she sensed his inward amusement at her continuing denial of kinship to his kind.

  “And thou hast sung many songs. But thou hast never written thine own? Why not, child? Thou had songs within thee. All MacLeods of faerie blood do.”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged helplessly at the question, dropping her hands into her lap.

  “But then, for all thy reading and thy blood, thou hast been raised with an impoverished vocabulary in an often cruel land.” He looked up into the heavens above them as though he could see past them and into her world.

  “I fear so. Though it was not so cruel as this one.”