Night Visitor

by Melanie Jackson

  Tomas looked to the sky and then pointed at the door.

  “No more questions. Open it, child. Go forth to thy destiny. Malcolm shall join thee an he may.”

  “No. Not yet.” Taffy shook her head, trying to absorb what the faerie had said and quiet the confusion that was engulfing her brain. All around her, magic was rising in the air. “I must know.”

  She called again for Malcolm but he did not answer.

  “Wouldst thou have Malcolm arrive in your time, alone? Unversed in the dangers of that world? Condemned there until death without his love—the woman for whom he sacrifices everything? He is staking all on this throw, can you not do the same? Art thou so heartless as to do this to the man thou hast professed to love?” The faerie pressed her, bombarding her with questions that invoked guilt and fear.

  “I hate you! I must hate you,” she said to herself. “You’re cruel and heartless and you’ll deceive me if you can.”

  Tomas pointed again at the door. His eyes had gone black and his face was taut and blank.

  “Now, child. I can still time no longer.” The faerie’s voice was urgent.

  Feeling the ground rumble beneath her feet, Taffy staggered to the granite slab, which marked her path home.

  Malcolm are you there? she cried one last time.

  Are you coming, lass? A voice asked faintly.

  Her heart contracted.

  Yes. I’m coming, Malcolm.

  She reached out a reluctant hand. The touch of the moon metal in the archway beneath her palm sent a tingling through the veins of her trembling hands, up her arm, and went into her heart. Unable to stand the feel of pure faerie magic passing through her body, she pushed on the slab with her full weight.

  A long-fingered hand appeared beside her head and lent its great strength to her endeavor, shifting the massive stone.

  The door ground slowly opened under their combined efforts. In front of her was a wavering image of the cemetery at Kilmartin looking much as it might if seen through a defective looking glass.

  “Go,” Tomas urged, his voice no longer harsh, but still strained. “My blessings with thee, child. Make haste. This door shall not remain open for long.”

  Taffy looked back once at the ancient faerie, standing under the light of an unreal sun, and her heart turned over with remorse. If what Tomas said was true, then the faeries had been forced into their magic world because humans had taken the one above from them. The terms of their survival were cruel, but the still-folk had not set them.

  “I don’t hate you, Tomas. And I’m sorry,” she said, stepping through the door. Pushing through the magic barrier was a labor. “Good-bye.”

  Good-bye, whispered the wind as the mountain closed behind her with the hollow sound of old stone marrying itself to its own kind.

  Dizzy and slightly sick, Taffy stood swaying in front of the familiar barrows of Kilmartin. She had spent so many days with her camera here, and yet it seemed so long ago.

  Taffy stood trembling in every limb, unable to believe that she was actually back in her own time, safe from Campbells, Colkitto, and Covenanters, but without Malcolm at her side.

  Had she made the right decision about leaving Tomhnafurach?

  Sick and uncertain, she looked up toward the heavens, trying to judge the hour—and year—by the sun.

  Branches of one of the few remaining trees in the cemetery scarred her view of the sky, but the strong sunlight that flooded through the leaves was the golden fire of midday.

  “He didn’t lie about that,” she murmured, putting a hand to her brow, which was beaded with cold sweat.

  It was too early for Malcolm’s arrival, but she still looked about with anxious eyes, trying to judge from which tomb he might emerge.

  Her hunt was not a long one, as the faerie door was apparent to her trained eye, and also well marked by the neatly ordered pile of her missing possessions; her rifle, sacks, and even her camera were waiting in front of an undistinguished mound.

  She stared at the weapon, too tired to be angry at what it implied. If the faeries had found the rifle and returned it, then they could also have returned Malcolm. Couldn’t they?

  “Tomas, you’re a lying, evil faerie.”

  Then she saw another gift from the still-folk. Pipes. They had saved Malcolm’s pipes and brought them to this place! She took heart at their sight. It had to mean that the still-folk believed that Malcolm had at least a chance at survival.

  Weakened by her passage through the magic portal, and nearly sick with the mixture of hope and terror that churned in her brain, Taffy dropped to her knees beside the piled goods and closed her eyes against the harsh sun that beat upon her.

  Her vigil had begun and she would not move until…until Malcolm was there, or there was no more hope.

  No hope. She wondered how long that might be.

  She was gone! Malcolm could find not the slightest trace of either Taffy or the bairn.

  Nooooooooo! he shouted with his mind, causing the stones around him to rumble ominously with the added strain.

  It could not be too late! He would not believe that. But even as he swore it, the first seeds of doubt sprouted in his mind, setting down their roots, and starting the process of draining his will to live.

  Smokey, who had run ahead of his master, began an excited barking that pierced his self-absorption. Relieved to have his dark mood interrupted, Malcolm went forward swiftly to join the hound.

  He soon discovered why Smokey was in ecstasy. Their narrow path ended abruptly in a stone slab that marked a faerie door.

  “And the devil swallow it sideways,” he muttered to the hound, running his quickening hands over the stone, seeking a latch or bar.

  The beast continued to bark and snuffle, and Malcolm understood why. There was the faintest pencillings of light outlining the door. And in the air there hung a faint trace of some unknown smoke.

  Malcolm? The question burst upon him, full of alarm and healthy vigor. Was it coming from the other side of the stone?

  “Taffy, lass!” he shouted, dropping to the floor, and trying to be heard above Smokey’s enthusiastic howling. “Hush, ye brainless cu! I cannae hear a thing!”

  Malcolm, open the door! Hurry! Day is nearly gone. Tomas said the road would close forever at the end of day.

  Malcolm obeyed readily, again running his hands over the surface until he found what felt like an old lock. Behind him, to punctuate her fearful statement of time running short, the tunnel gave a heart-rending groan and swayed alarmingly.

  An apprehensive Smokey began a frantic effort to dig his way free.

  Is Smokey there?

  The hound howled another greeting and redoubled his frantic pawing.

  Malcolm’s fingers explored the lock hurriedly. Its key was gone and the metal rotted, freezing the tumblers in place. Swearing roughly, he pulled out his dirk, and using the pommel, he pounded on the latch, trying to coax it free of its moorings.

  Behind them, the tunnel shrieked and a length of ceiling fell to the floor with a deafening clap of tearing air.

  Malcolm!

  He could feel her fear as though it was his own.

  “I’m coming, lass!” he assured her.

  But the air was growing unbreathable and the mountain was coming down around him. There was no time for delicate coaxing. He could only hope to smash the lock completely and use brute strength to force the door.

  “Get back, cu.” Malcolm instructed the hound and then struck for his life, putting his whole might into the one blow.

  The assaulted lock clattered obligingly to the floor, but the shifting mountain settled heavily on the frame, snuffing out the tiny thread of light that had guided him, and refused thereafter to loosen the door no matter how he pushed against it.

  The tree, Malcolm. By the door! Make the tree pull out its roots! There will be a hole and you can crawl through the wall!

  Malcolm felt to the right of the lock and found the gnarled, hairy growth of ancient t
ree roots. Reaching down inside the well of ancient knowledge where faerie magic was made, he found the power he needed to work a spell and commanded the old limbs to shift themselves in the stony soil.

  For a long moment nothing happened. Then the tree’s knobby ropes trembled and then began to slide from their earth-bound moorings.

  It’s working!

  Behind them, the tunnel gave forth another boom, and particles of dust filled the air with a choking cloud of stinging sand. Malcolm laid hold of the transshifting roots and, taking a last breath, allowed himself to be pulled into the earth.

  No sound could overpower the rumble of the collapsing mountain, but Malcolm could feel the faithful hound digging beside him with frantic haste. He wondered if they would escape or if both of them would be buried alive while Taffy looked on.

  He shut his eyes and lips to the stony soil and ceased breathing. If this was death, it was a cruel one—and if rebirth, twice as harsh as the first had been.

  Then, when the eternal blackness of death seemed inevitable, familiar hands were about his wrists, his wife’s new strength adding itself to that of the falling tree. He heard Smokey give an exuberant howl and wriggle free of the strangling earth.

  Then he, too, was pulled out into the new world, and opened his caked eyes to witness the death of the sun and the eternal closure of the faerie’s deadly portal as the ancient burial mound sank into the earth and vanished forever.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Malcolm!” Taffy threw herself on top of him, heedless of the clotted earth that covered his clothing and the frantic hound who laved her face with a sticky tongue. She didn’t even the feel the heaved-up stones, which bruised her knees on their rough edges.

  “Taffy, lass,” he croaked, closing his arms about her in a fierce grip. His tired body came instantly alive and he began to cough the bad air from his lungs. After he had caught his breath he said: “I thought I wouldnae ever see yer bonnie face again.”

  “You still aren’t seeing me,” she said, tears spilling over her lashes and raining down on his filthy cheeks. She made a stab at brushing the worst of the soil away, an effort happily aided by an exuberant Smokey who tried to worm his way between them. “How can anyone so dirty look so wonderful?”

  A white smile split his muddy face and he tucked her wild hair back behind her ears so that he might better examine her.

  She looked tired, bedraggled, slightly swollen by crying and—utterly wonderful! He pulled her close again, and then feeling for the first time the accumulation of leaves and sap stuck to her back, he looked past her at the rest of the world.

  Night had overtaken the land, making it soft for his eyes. The terrain was at once familiar but also very different. This world was a less wooded one, but that was only the beginning of the differences that clamored for his attention.

  He breathed deeply. The atmosphere seemed expectant, waiting for his explorations. It was also, while far from tranquil with the sounds of many night birds and bats filling the air, a night that was filled with peace. There was no smell of burning crofts, no clashes of ringing steel. Had a lasting peace between the Scots and Sassenachs truly been called?

  Taffy stirred and then raised herself up to a sitting position. She pulled the equally filthy Smokey close and gave him a brief hug.

  “You must want a bath,” she said, looking from the muddy hound to her dirty husband. “And a meal. And to sleep for a month.”

  “Aye,” he agreed, sitting up slowly. His body was healing, but still very much aware that it had been dragged through a mountain. “But all in their good time, lass. Show me first this new world of ours.”

  “Well, this is the cemetery at Kilmartin,” Taffy said, rolling to her feet and offering Malcolm a hand. He took it, though he did not need her assistance to rise. “Not precisely paradise, is it?”

  Malcolm nodded. Through the dark, he could see not only the ancient barrows of Kilmartin, but in the distance he could make out a rail-fenced cemetery where the recent dead lay beneath ornate stones.

  He stared in wonder at the writing on the tombs. Though knowing what to expect, the dates still amazed him: 1847, 1872, 1881.

  “I kenned that we had traveled,” he said at last. “ ’Tis in the air. This is the same wind that ever blew, but now I sense in it a new gramacie. And the birks are gone.”

  “Yes,” she said sadly. “That birch was the last one growing here. What you smell is coal. It feeds machines as well as fires.”

  They looked at the uprooted tree that had saved Malcolm from death. It stretched its dying limbs up toward the night sky, shivering even though there was no breeze.

  “It wouldnae have survived the mountain’s fall,” he said consolingly, but went to lay hands upon the trembling roots until they ceased to quiver.

  “No,” Taffy shivered. Nothing living could have survived the mountain’s fall.

  Malcolm came away from the tree and quickly wrapped his arms about her. He pulled her to the comforting heat of his body.

  “You smell of earth,” she told him.

  “Aye and less pleasant things, as well. But it shall wash away soon enough. Now, when was the last time ye ate, lass, that yer so near tae swoonin’?” he asked with tender practicality. It made Taffy smile.

  “I don’t recall. Not since the cave, I think.”

  “Then I’d best be hunting up some supper.” He released her reluctantly.

  “There’s no need,” she answered, smiling happily. “We are not far from the inn. It is perhaps an hour’s walk from here. Let me gather our things—Oh! Malcolm, they brought your pipes, too.”

  “Mo pioban?” he repeated. “I didnae think tae see them again.”

  “They’re here,” she said, catching his hand and leading him to the familiar pile of belongings.

  “I have my lyart reed as well, so I may play for ye now.” He gave one of his rare and beautiful smiles.

  “I look forward to that—as long as it isn’t the song you played at Duntrune. I never want to hear that piece again.”

  “Nor I, lass. That sadness is behind us. Well, let us be off then.” Malcolm stooped and shouldered the packs and rifle, leaving the camera to its mistress’s care.

  The moon rising up slowly in the sky gave a soft, velvet light to the gloom about them.

  “The inn is west,” Taffy began. Then: “Oh! Malcolm, look! There’s a plate in the camera. Someone has taken a photograph.”

  “Mayhap the faeries sent ye a present.”

  “I wonder what it is a picture of,” she murmured.

  Malcolm laughed softly at her familiar distraction with her favorite tool. He could understand it, having much the same love for his pipes.

  “We shall discover it presently,” he promised, turning west and starting across the disturbed earth. His feet sank slightly into the loose soil and leaf mold that was all that was left of the faeries’ sunken portal.

  Taffy hurried after him, order happily restored to her universe.

  The gloom of night thinned away as they neared the inn’s brightly lit windows.

  “Are all men so forswunk here?” he asked, noting the high level of activity in the yard and the shadows of people within rushing about in confusion.

  “No, they aren’t.” Taffy took a deep breath. “Likely, they have discovered that I am missing and are going out to search for me.”

  The two looked at each other and started to laugh.

  “Well, they would have had a long hunt. But what do ye plan tae tell them.”

  “That a barrow collapsed with us on it.” She stopped laughing. “My father will have fits.”

  Malcolm ceased laughing.

  “We shall tell him that we are man and wife, and then there shall be no sin in our being together so late at night.

  “It isn’t my being with you that will anger him. It is the collapsed barrow.”

  Malcolm looked skeptical of her conclusion.

  “But I shall most certainly tell everyone
that we are married,” she assured him, for the first time feeling nervous about what they were to do.

  Smokey wagged his tail, ostensibly in support of the idea. He could smell the odor of cooking meat and was anxious to get to the place where it was coming from.

  “Very well,” Taffy murmured, and the three bedraggled companions walked into the light that lined the yard, causing all activity to stop.

  “Tafaline!”

  Her father strode out from the group of men and stopped a careful pace back from her muddy body. His expression was a mix of relief and horrified disapproval. Displeasure seemed dominant.

  “Hello, father. This is—” she began, only to be interrupted.

  “What on earth has happened to you, girl? You look a fright!”

  “I got married and had a mountain fall on me,” she snapped, suddenly angry. His reaction was what she had expected, but still it enraged her. And having faced murderous Campbells, her father’s petty wrath held no terror for her. “Now, I need a bath and—”

  “What mountain? Not one of the barrows!” he demanded in a tone of greatest horror.

  “Yes, a barrow,” she confirmed heartlessly.

  Taffy watched as her father clutched at his head, and she felt a little ill. The faerie had been right; this man, at least, was not her kind.

  “Have I taught you nothing?” he asked. “How could you be so careless—”

  At that, Malcolm took a step forward. He was an awesome sight by lantern light. Tall, well-knit, strongly made, and with an aspect of unknown danger about him. His expression as he looked upon his new father-in-law was a less than kindly one.

  “I am Malcolm MacLeod,” he said in a hypnotic voice that contained only a trace of Scots in its depths. There was a ripple of surprise through the men who had been preparing the search parties. “Your daughter, my wife, has been close to death this night. She is hungry and tired, and we both need tae bathe. Your questions will have tae wait.”