Night Visitor

by Melanie Jackson

  He nodded and returned his gaze to her face.

  “The human world was ever an ungenial one for female poets. Still, while one lives, so mayest one learn. Make the attempt now, daughter, to tell me of your thoughts and feelings—and I shall write for thee thine very own song to fit thy Iyrics.”

  There was a shiver overhead and Taffy stared up into the branches of the chestnut tree, not terribly surprised to see the feline she’d met in the forest lounging there, its large, orange head resting on folded paws.

  “Hello, cat.”

  The feline smiled in a very human way.

  “It’s simple. I love Malcolm,” Taffy said directly, looking back at Tomas, and recanting the last of her parental teachings which said that she should never speak of such vulgar things as her feelings for a man. “And I believe that he loves me, too.”

  There was a loud whine in the darkness and then a sharp bark.

  “Cu?”

  A moment later, Smokey came trotting out of the dark, snuffling with his nose to the floor as he searched for his master in this black place of strange smells and confusing byways.

  “So ye found me, hound,” Malcolm greeted him, pleased to have some company in the lonely blackness. “Let us see if yer nose can sniff out yer mistress, since mine own efforts have failed tae find the path.”

  But Smokey only sat on the floor and whined apologetically.

  “So she has no’ been this way? Well, I didnae expect this task tae be so simple. It never is when the still-folk are involved.” Malcolm patted Smokey’s head. “Come then, cu. Let us be off tae the south, and we’d best hope we shall no’ be needing a mattock or spade tae dig our way out, for I have little hope that any have been carelessly left about for us tae use.”

  Smokey rose eagerly to his feet and waited for Malcolm to point the way.

  “ ’Tis a pity that Taffy is still bespelled, for ‘twould be easiest if there was a voice tae follow the—” Malcolm stopped abruptly and slapped a palm to his head. “And the devil take me for a fool! There is someone whom we may follow.”

  Smokey whined and thumped his long tail twice against the wall.

  “But we must go softly, cu. I dare not frighten the bairn after her mother’s grievous hurt.” Using the greatest care, Malcolm cracked open the door in his mind where he had once glimpsed the child.

  “Mo nighean,” he whispered low and soft, calling to his daughter in the tongue of his ancestors. “I am with ye now, little one. How fare ye and your mother, child?”

  There was no verbal reply, for the babe was but barely formed, but she sensed her father’s presence and answered him with her tiny mind.

  She was in a garden now, so far away from him. Her mother was troubled, not herself, and the babe wanted the reassuring touch of her father’s attention now that Taffy’s was withdrawn.

  I am here, daughter, he said soothingly.

  The babe turned in the womb and smiled happily.

  Da?

  Here.

  Malcolm turned south and, hands stretched out before him, began trotting toward the tiny voice that called happily to him. His daughter’s tiny mind was a beautiful clarion call.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Malcolm was accustomed to traveling in the dark and moving along the faeries’ obscure trails, so he did not easily lose his sense of direction. But the path to Tomhnafurach was not straight and it was intersected many times by broad tunnels that felt to his sight-deprived senses every bit as likely as the one he traveled. Since he could not afford to be led astray on a false trail, he had to pause and assess each one he came across, which was exhausting to his faculties and ate away at his small store of precious time.

  The journey through the mountain could not truly be endless, for a part of Malcolm was keenly aware of the stars shifting in the skies overhead and bringing the dawn ever closer, but it was difficult for his body to make sense of the passage of time or distance he had traveled in the unchanging dark of the tunnels.

  He was somewhat relieved when the trail ceased descending into the bowels of the mountain and began a steady ascent toward the human world above. Doubtless the unpleasant notion of imminent death was all in his imagination, but the press of all the weight of the earth over his head was oppressive to the spirit and made the night-black atmosphere seem darker than the grave.

  Soon there were fewer intersections to confuse him, and he had just put on a burst of speed when suddenly the uphill path turned back downward. Malcolm was at once disappointed and concerned by the event. With cause, he discovered, for just three paces on, he trod in a streamlet of icy water that clutched at his brogues with icy claws that wriggled quickly into the skin of his feet.

  Instantly Malcolm halted, urging his gloomy hound to do the same.

  He laid a hand over Smokey’s muzzle and then stilled his own labored breathing. The sudden drop in temperature had the perspiration of his labors beading instantly upon his fevered skin, making him feel not only cold but clammy.

  As soon as he had ceased his panting, he began listening carefully for a clue about how deep and wide this underground pool might be. The noise was rather confusing as echoes rebounded off of echoes in the vast space that had opened around him.

  The water was not deep, he decided after a long moment of concentration, at least not near his feet. There was a drip from the unseen roof, marking the edge of the wet as it fell with the soft pings of an arrhythmic clock. It had not the low tone of water droplets plunging into a deep body. Yet—

  Malcolm breathed in, casting his tired mind out yet again to look over the water.

  The pool was enormous, freezing, and at one end there was an unpleasant boiling, which troubled the water. The aquatic disturbance hadn’t the sound of a spring filling a pond, but rather of something vast draining rapidly—as from the bottom of a stone sieve.

  Recalling the hollow sound of the cave’s rotten floor splintering beneath his feet, Malcolm decided that he had had enough of falling for one day and the watery noise was one he preferred to avoid if at all possible.

  Smokey whined softly, his troubled call echoing in the immense space.

  “We must go on, cu,” Malcolm said, stepping cautiously into the subterranean lake. He could not hold back a grimace of discomfort. The waters at the heart of the mountain were as cold as they could be and yet not be ice.

  Smokey hesitated.

  “Come away, cu. We’ve no other choice.”

  The dog shivered. He whined unhappily at the frigid temperature of the water that lapped at his paws, but the dark was worse even than the unseen lake, so he followed his master into the freezing wet—complaining all the way.

  Tomas played for Taffy on a pipe, a tune to gladden the heart and told of all the wonderful things about Malcolm that she had been unable to articulate. They’d had a day of music and verse, poems that set the stars afire and made mist burn. Chronicles of long-ago kings had been sung, as well as stories of worlds long since passed away. The faerie’s exquisite voice took the worst of her grief away and made her glad that she had known, if only for a while, the joy of being in love.

  So beguiled and distracted did she become by the song that she scarcely noticed the passing of the hours in Tomhnafurach—and was completely unaware of the decades that flew by on fleeting wings above them.

  There, in the human world, the rebellion ended. Lady Dunstaffnage died and became dust. Kings were crowned, they reigned and died and others replaced them. Wars were fought, railroads and steamer ships were born, and her father and mother also came into the world.

  But for Taffy, the events that marked the history books of the human world passed by unnoticed, buried under the sweetness of the faerie’s musical spell.

  Malcolm, afire with impatience and roused by a growing disquiet, again picked up the pace of travel. His lungs burned from trying to draw nourishment from the dark cavern’s air, and his eyes ached from staring at the nothingness about him.

  A tiring Smokey pro
tested their haste, for he did not care for the increasingly stagnant atmosphere either, nor the foreign smells that were increasingly riding on its odd oily currents. But Malcolm could no longer afford to spare his lungs, or to be cautious of hazards like snags in the floor, or low arches that might be waiting overhead. He did not slow for Smokey’s whines, even though they were now running through a darkness that had no equivalent this side of oblivion.

  Soon, Smokey ceased his fruitless complaints, cowed by the new changes he sensed in the atmosphere. In the distance, there was a knocking, an unnerving cadence whose vibrations traversed the very stones beneath his feet and filled the breathless air about him with painful concussions.

  Malcolm felt it, too. He was also alarmed because his daughter’s voice was growing increasingly more distant, and he knew that while time in Tomhnafurach was passing slowly for Taffy and the bairn, in the world beyond, the tides of change were roaring by like a river in spate.

  Even in his own world, he felt the shadowy lights of dawn stealing over the land. His time was running out. Soon, Taffy would be taken to a door that led into her world and she would be sent beyond his reach. And he would not be able to follow.

  Already, she was traversing the road back to her time. And though he tried again and again to reach her thoughts, he was defeated by the powerful faerie spells woven about her.

  How far and precisely where Taffy went she could not say, for she paid scant attention to the direction she and Tomas were walking as he showed her the lovely gardens where so many unknown species of flowers grew.

  It was, in fact, only as they left the river of Tomhnafurach far behind that some of the veils began parting in her mind, and she realized that they had been traveling along the same road for some extended period of time.

  “Didst thou enjoy the romaunt, child?” the faerie asked, his voice a pleasant and soothing murmur that would not wake a baby. Nevertheless, his question lapped at her brain.

  Had she enjoyed her romance? Her romance? She looked in question at Tomas.

  He said: “There often comes a time when the wheel turns and the change shall either snuff out the embers of passion, or else fan them to a blaze. If thou must remember, now is that time. Else say the word, and thou shalt forget that thou knewest love.”

  The words reverberated in her mind. Taffy, still walking—though more slowly—didn’t answer. Layers of swaddling were gradually unraveling from her brain, and she became aware again of the tiny life inside of her. Laying a hand over her abdomen where the child stirred restlessly, she made an effort to concentrate on what was causing the babe’s agitation.

  After a moment, she stopped in her tracks, momentarily disbelieving the babe’s sad message, then turned to look at Tomas Rimer.

  She blinked the worst spell from her brain and saw the faerie then with her human eyes, a creature of potent magic, ancient and unchangeable. He was beautiful, but also strange and dark and terrible.

  “Malcolm is alive,” she said accusingly.

  Tomas pulled on his chin with thumb and forefinger and watched her awakening senses with cool interest.

  “Aye,” he agreed. “He is.”

  “Take me to him,” she demanded.

  “I am.” He looked down at her hand, which cradled her belly and shook his head. The still-folk man sighed. “So he found the bairn and tracked thee that way? Our son is determined and clever. It makes thy choice all the more difficult, child.”

  What choice? Again, Taffy didn’t answer. She was reaching out with her mind, trying to find her husband. Wherever he was, it was a place so distant that she could scarcely sense him.

  “You lie. Malcolm isn’t anywhere near here.”

  Taffy took another step back from the faerie and drew in a deep breath. Her nose, much keener than when she had entered Tomhnafurach, was able to pick out the faint scent of smoke that clung to the air around her with its sticky, dirty fingers. It was not the windborne remains of peat fires that drifted by, but the smell of coal. The smell of her time.

  Malcolm might not be far from her geographically, but chronologically he was almost two hundred and forty-four years away.

  She turned about slowly, looking at the scenery with disenchanted eyes that saw beyond the bordering flowers that hedged the path they were on. She was shocked to find that they had traveled down a narrow gorge whose walls were split with exact precision by what she now recognized as sealed faerie portals.

  How had she failed to perceive all this? Was Tomas Rimer’s glamourie so strong that it blotted out all her senses?

  Their present path pointed toward a deep defile that ended on a narrow ledge, and at its edge sat a great granite door chased with wrought silver. As she watched in trepidation, the great stone shivered to life, and she became aware of a slow pounding in the earth beneath her feet.

  “Where is Malcolm?” She swung back around and faced the waiting Tomas. Her hands reached for her rowan spike, only to find that the weapon had been taken from her at some point when she was unaware. Her voice shook with anger: “I will not leave without him.”

  “Thou must,” he said simply. “Thou hast no more time. Thou must leave now, or leave never.”

  “Then I choose never,” she said flatly, ripping the last of the clouding shroud from her brain so that she was again in full possession of her senses.

  “A poor choice, my child, and a potentially cruel one.” Tomas’s fey eyes no longer twinkled. His voice was still beautiful, but now it made her shiver with fear.

  “And your choice isn’t?”

  “Mayhap.” The faerie shrugged. His failure to answer her more completely caused her unease to grow stronger.

  “Explain this to me, Tomas. I don’t understand. What do you mean my decision is cruel?” she asked reluctantly when he still did not answer. Though she was angered, she was also fearful that he would use his voice to work some new magic upon her reason and trick her into leaving Malcolm forever.

  Or worse yet, he would slay in her the hope for Malcolm’s survival that had been so newly reborn.

  Tomas’s eyes were as beautiful yet blank as highly polished silver. “Our son is lost in the tunnels beneath Tomhnafurach.“

  Taffy’s heart clenched at his words. She reached out again for Malcolm, trying to discover if what the faerie said was true. Alarm burst within, showering her with burning sparks that further cleared her mind of any doubts she may have had about her feelings or what she needed to do.

  “Then we must find him. At once!”

  “Thou cannot, child. He fell into the old tunnels from the cave where we took you.”

  “Then we’ll go back there and get him.”

  “The entrance to the cavern is now gone, crushed under the hill’s weight.”

  “You could open it again,” she insisted. “I know that you could. You open doors all the time—in time, even.”

  “Nay. We have no need to visit that time and place again. And to do so would be to place us all in peril. There are soldiers waiting there, hovering outside.”

  Taffy grappled with his words, weighing them for truth and reluctantly believing him to be sincere in his assessment of the danger.

  Tomas nodded an affirmation at her thought.

  “That way shall never be reopened. One by one, we have closed our doors to the human world, shutting out the ways of egress for humankind.” He gestured at the walls around them, at the dozens of doors shut seamlessly into the fabric of the mountain.

  “If that cavern was the entrance to a tunnel, then there must be an exit somewhere,” she reasoned with growing desperation.

  “There is. But the only remaining door from that tunnel opens into your time.”

  “When in my time? Now? A year? The day I die? When?” Her heart began to pound. It was partly nerves, but there was also some powerful magic beginning to disturb the air. It shimmered and sparkled with a cold fire.

  “This very afternoon. Before the sun has set in your sky,” Tomas promised.r />
  Taffy thought about this. She also recalled Malcolm’s story about faerie trickery, and was not inclined to entirely trust this being.

  “Why did you not tell me this before, Tomas? Why did you let me grieve for him as one dead?” she demanded, her suspicions plain.

  The faerie sighed.

  “Because I cannot promise you that Malcolm will arrive in time. I thought it kinder to take most of the painful memories away.”

  “Why wouldn’t he arrive?” Taffy demanded as she patted her stomach, a gesture done as much to reassure herself as the daughter who was growing steadily more agitated at her mother’s upset.

  “Because the road is confusing, black as death, and in poor repair. As we speak, it is collapsing, being swallowed by the mountain.”

  Taffy focused her senses on the trembling beneath her feet. The temblor was distant but growing stronger, rolling through the earth at a relentless pace.

  She stared at Tomas with horror.

  “And you left him there? Alone in the dark?” she whispered. “What sort of inhuman monster are you?”

  “An unhuman one,” he answered, with a brief flare of black dilating his eyes. His voice had all the cold of the howling winds of winter. “But not so monstrous as we deliberately placed our son there to die.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she whispered, causing the faerie’s eyes to flare again.

  “Believe this, lady, we will close that road forever this afternoon. Your kind have come too close to us with their pawing over the bones of the dead. We can wait no longer. Malcolm will escape today, or he will escape not at all. That is truth, and thou must accept it. If need be, I shall take these memories away.”

  Taffy shook her head in angry refusal.

  “Never. I will never let you back into my brain!”

  “Child—”

  “Just answer me one thing. Why did you bring me here?” she demanded, both furious and terrified for Malcolm. “Why make me fall in love Malcolm if you planned all along to kill him?”

  “Why art thou here? That babe in thy womb shall be our presence in the future. None of us could endure long in the world where thou lives. To survive now, we must retreat into the shians and wait for another age—one which is more conducive. Yet some of our blood must walk this earth as we did in times before humankind came to our lands with their savagery and cruel iron. Otherwise, we will not find our way back. You and your babe are our legacy. Malcolm too was our legacy—and we wished some joy to our son that he might awaken to who he truly was and decide how he wished to live.”