by Jane Stain
Amber tried to get him away from her.
“Tomas, ye dinna hae tae go with her. Just tell her tae—”
But it was too late. As soon as Sulis whispered in his ear, Tomas’s eyes clouded up again. His posture became listless — he became a zombie again.
Amber tried to talk to him, to snap him out of it.
“Tomas? Tomas!”
But Sulis was standing right there. Her close proximity to him must have made the spell stronger. He just stood there by his mistress’s side, staring into space.
Not so with Sulis. She tossed her blonde hair back and then stood there regally with her pretty nose in the air, subtly but effectively snarling at Amber.
“Ye had yer try at getting him back, and ye failed. He wants me, na ye. Stay away from him, or I will see that ye dae, permanently.”
Sulis went up the stairs as she said this, just about dragging Tomas behind her by the hand.
Amber followed them, even as they reached the top of the stairs and went walking toward the main castle entrance. Sulis’s legs were longer than hers, though. She wouldn’t be able to catch up without running after them, and that was far too undignified for what Amber had in mind.
Only slightly aware of the guards at the top of the stairs looking at her curiously, she called after Sulis.
“Ye better na harm him, or I will see that ye never harm anyone again — permanently.”
The druidess merely threw up her other hand in a dramatic flair in response, just before she reached the castle gate and made Tomas open it for her. And then the two of them disappeared together into the great hall where the feast in Sulis’s honor had been the night before.
Amber’s stomach growled.
The guard behind her snickered at that.
She turned around and looked at him. He was eating an apple.
“Are they serving the midday meal in the great hall nae?”
He nodded.
“Aye, howsoever, ‘tis only for them as live in the castle, and the guards.”
She gave him her most mischievous grin and glanced sideways at the kitchen door she and Tomas had come out of a few minutes before.
“Thank ye.”
Before he had time to say you’re welcome, she scrunched her nose at him and ran toward the kitchen door. She needed to break the spell Sulis had over Tomas. While he and Sulis were busy eating, maybe she could find something in Tomas’s room that would help.
Deich (10)
Shocking the same women she had a few minutes ago when she and Tomas ran through the castle kitchen, Amber ran right through there again, not stopping when she got into the cold stone hallway but running all the way down to Tomas’s pointy-topped bedroom door, opening it, and hastening to close it behind her.
She paused with her back against it. Breathing heavily. Expecting any moment to hear a castle resident ask what business she had in this room. And toss her out on her ear.
After a few minutes, she caught her breath. She was lucky today. She didn’t hear anyone coming.
Nodding with pride in the instinct which had told her to run through the castle, thus giving people the least chance of seeing her, she turned to the room at hand.
Maybe Sulis had made some sort of voodoo doll of Tomas and hidden it here in this room, controlling him. Amber itched to find it — or anything that would help her break the spell.
First, she searched the chest of drawers. Five clean linen shirts, two clean kilts, two clean plaid overdresses, and five clean pairs of socks later, she moved on to the bed. It had been made, but she turned down the covers and searched between the blankets and even between the handmade mattress and the wooden platform it sat on before making the bed up again, having found nothing.
Finally, she lay down on the cold stone floor and looked under the bed. Ah, there were Tomas’s weapons — his large claymore and his bow & quiver. She had drawn out the quiver and was searching among the arrows when she heard the door open.
Ready for a fight with Sulis, Amber got up with defiance in her eyes.
But it was Tomas. His glazed-over eyes traveled the room, then finally zeroed in on his quiver in her hand. The faintest hint of half a dozen different emotions passed over his face one by one in the next few moments: shock, unbelief, anger, fear, cunning — and was that last one … hope?
When he spoke, his voice was low and breathy, almost a whisper — like he was just as afraid as she was, of being overheard by people outside the room in the rest of the castle.
Like the two of them were in this together.
But his words were contrary.
“What are ye doing in here going through my stuff?” He pointed to the quiver. “Put that back where ye found it.”
Not taking her eyes off his, she squatted and did as she was told. There hadn’t been anything in the quiver but arrows, anyway. And then, seeing how this might be the last time she saw him, the last chance she got, she stood again and just laid it all out on the line for him. Quietly.
“I was trying tae find some aught that will get rid o this horrible influence she has ower ye, Tomas. Ye are na the same when she’s aroond. Ye were weird and grumpy this morning, but the longer we bided together today, the more normal ye got. Ye were almost yer usual self — right afore she showed up. There has tae be some sort o… some aught she’s using tae keep this hold on ye, and I was looking for it. I did na find it, though.”
He stood still for a moment, and again she could almost see the wheels turning behind his eyes in his mind, processing what she had said. Even though his eyes were glazed over in that infernal zombiehood, she thought she detected the barest glimpses of a dozen emotions running through his eyes quickly, like the spinning wheels of a mechanical slot machine.
Unfortunately, this time they landed on anger.
He leaned into her face and pointed at the door. At odds with his angry mood, however, he still kept his voice down.
“I was ready tae just accept that ye were a nosy person in here poking intae my business as some-aught o an auld friend. I was gaun'ae just let ye go and na think any more o it — excepting tae say dinna dae it again. But now ye hae gone and dragged Sulis intae this. Ye shouldna be badmouthing her. ’Tis unattractive. It makes me want tae tell ye tae leave and never come back.”
Amber growled the tiniest bit.
In an attempt to let off the steam his little speech had built up inside her, she stomped her feet and brought her arms down with force to her sides.
“I shouldna be badmouthing Sulis? Tomas, that woman tried tae make me jump off a cliff! She has ye doing a job ye are na fit tae do, just tae satisfy her drive for material things. She has ye fighting with yer brother, whom I know ye love more than ye could ever love a woman ye hae only known a few months. That woman is evil, Tomas, evil and conniving and ruthless! And she’s manipulating ye. Canna ye see that?”
Oh, it was on, now.
He got in her face.
His own face looked angry, but his body was still slumped and zombielike. His hand that had been pointing to the door dropped to his side. Contrary to his posture, his voice came out like an angry hiss, and he lapsed into English.
“She didn’t make you go to that cliff, Amber. Do you know how stupid that sounds? She is not manipulating me. She’s my girlfriend, and I’m with her now. We’ve been together three months.”
Amber put her hands on her hips and stood up straight. His zombified brain was denying reality, but his body seemed to remember her. Maybe if she appealed to his body, his brain would snap out of it. And if it did, then heck with this long-time-ago place.
Once Tomas snapped out of his zombie coma, she was going to go find Tavish and have him take them back to their time. She would get Tomas on a plane far away from here. Just keep running and never let Sulis near him again — or take him to his parents’ faire. They would help her protect him.
She didn’t dare touch him yet, though. She needed to soften him up a little more, like she had this morning.
Gazing into his eyes with all the emotion she felt — all the love bottled up inside her — she lapsed into English as well and made her voice as soft and loving as she could, considering her frustration.
“Tomas, I care about you, or I would’ve gone home as soon as I saw…”
No, don’t continue along those lines. Better not to mention the B witch. She tried again.
“Don’t you remember half an hour ago, Tomas? When you and I were talking like old times? You showed me around the castle and we both really liked the rocking horse in the nursery?”
His face bunched up in grumpiness like when they had met out in front of the castle this morning, and one side of his mouth rose in an ironic smile, as if what she said couldn’t possibly be true.
But his body turned away from the door and toward her.
And his eyes stayed on her. They weren’t nearly as glazed over as they had been this morning. Was she imagining it, was there a glimmer of recognition in them?
He evaded her question, but when he spoke, he didn’t sound angry anymore, just determined.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here, Amber, but in this time, do you realize how dangerous it is to barge into a man’s room uninvited? This castle is a fortress full of guards who mean business and train with swords every day to keep in shape for fending off the Raiders — who are other Scots. These people fight against each other all the time. This isn’t some game. This is a real castle and there are real guards outside and they have real weapons, Amber.”
The earnestness in his voice was at such odds with the way his body stood limp that for a moment she was at a loss for what to say. But she decided it was good that he was still talking to her, and that she should encourage him to keep on doing so.
Almost like he was programmed, he seemed to shy away from some subjects, while other subjects were fine. She guessed at which subjects might be fine.
“But I should be safe now that you’re here. I mean, you’re the captain of the guards, so they’ll do as you say.”
He stood stock still again, and then he nodded the tiniest little bit, while at the same time moving closer to her so that they were standing side by side, both facing the door. What he said didn’t make sense at first.
“Yes, I am the captain of the guards who work in the underground castle. They do as I say most of the time, but there have been times when I didn’t feel like I was in charge.”
He sounded so puzzled and confused and lost. She longed to hug him and tell him he didn’t need to be in charge of these guards, that the two of them would go back to the future and have a life together with nothing to do with all this. He had the business aspects of the Renaissance Fairee to run, and when he was himself, he was really keen on running them.
Soon.
Soon she would be able to hold him and say these things. He was coming out of the funk, just as he had this morning. Each moment, he was less zombified and more like the Tomas she knew and loved.
She just had to keep him talking a while longer.
“Well it makes sense that they wouldn’t completely think of you as their captain. I mean, you’ve only been here a week, but the other captain — Alfred is it?”
He nodded once.
She shrugged and gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Well, Alfred is someone they’ve known their whole lives, so of course they’re going to follow his orders more readily than they follow those of a relative stranger—”
His body was stock still and slumped, but his head was shaking ‘no,’ vigorously— and then he touched the back of her hand, and she stopped speaking out of shock more than anything. His touch felt so wonderful, like coming home after a hard day at work to a surprise party with all your favorite friends and family — and a homemade cake. A simple touch from him sent that kind of warmth through her.
With a mind of its own, her hand turned to hold his, palm to palm, and they stood there like that quietly for several moments. She was dying to ask him if this meant they were getting back together, but something weird was going on. The real Tomas seemed to have control of his body, the Tomas who was going home to see to the business side of the faire.
But his speech and his thoughts? Amber hadn’t snapped those away from the zombie Sulis had recreated inside Tomas’s head half an hour ago, undoing all the progress Amber had made this morning. Not just yet. Amber would have to give it a little while. But in the meantime, holding hands with him was comforting.
But he had interrupted her for a reason, and soon he spoke again, his face so confused it made her heart ache.
“It isn’t because I’m not Alfred. That’s not why they sometimes don’t listen to me. They do it to him too. We’ve talked about it. We don’t really know what it is, but something’s going on. I think it has to do with that Lachlan the Dark. Tavish and I have a plan to catch the man, and then we’ll question him and find out.”
A pang of guilt hit Amber, for keeping the secret of Sasha’s wedding vision from Tomas. Still holding his hand, she longed to sit down with him on the bed and get comfortable, but it seemed like anything that hinted at being more than friends set off some sort of trigger that brought back Sulis’s zombie full force. Amber had to keep reminding herself that it had taken a couple hours to bring him out of the zombie state this morning.
And it had taken Sulis just one whisper in his ear to put him right back there.
But where was the B witch now?
Ha. Apparently, it had taken Sulis so much magic to zombify Tomas again that she was back out in the woods now, sinking her teeth into trees. Or whatever she did to soak up more of that druid magic.
Amber gently squeezed Tomas’s hand.
“You’re probably right. It probably does have something to do with Lachlan. You’ll fix that soon. I know you will.”
There was a lull in their conversation then. Still clinging to his hand, Amber fished around in her mind for another innocuous thing to talk about. But maybe it was better if they didn’t talk. Maybe now was the time to see if her body could bring his out of the stupor. As friends, so that she didn’t set off the zombie alarm.
She looked up into his eyes.
They were doing that slot machine thing again.
Better make her move before they settled on any one emotion. She slowly moved in for a hug, raising her arms up over his shoulders so that she could clasp them around the back of his neck. This was going to work, she could feel it in her bones. Especially once they were hugging.
Ah. Peace at last.
Settling down for a deep rest in his embrace, she laid her head against his chest and held him close. They stood there for the longest time, and it was heaven when his arms moved around her waist to hug her too. They started to rock back and forth slowly, slow dancing with no music.
She had him back. Tears came to her eyes, and then whispered into his ear the question that had been on her mind for seven years.
“What happened on your eighteenth birthday, Tomas? Why did you disappear out of my life?
He trembled as soon as she started whispering.
Elation went through her body, making her tingle all over. She clung to him in return and spoke the thoughts of her heart.
“Can we get back together again?”
But he was no longer returning her embrace.
And he didn’t answer, just stumbled away from her and hurried out the door.
Aon Deug (11)
Tomas had to find Sulis. If he didn’t go look for her right this minute, something horrible would happen. It could not be allowed to happen. He had to find Sulis. Right now. Or he would be sorry.
What would happen, anyway?
Pain shot into his head from his eyes.
He had to find Sulis…
She wasn’t in the great hall anymore.
How about if he asked this man—
As soon as he had that thought, he heard her Southern accent in his head.
“Tomas honey, in these times you cannot let
anyone think you don’t know where everything is and where you need to be.”
He had to find Sulis by himself.
He went toward the stairway down into the underground palace. She was often down there. It was sort of a long way though. And he had to find her soon, her terrible consequences would ensue. Better hurry.
But as soon as he thought of running, he heard her words again.
“Tomas honey, you know you really must set a stately example for the men under your command.”
Walking, it was.
And all the while he looked for her, the story his dad had told him and Tavish on their eighteenth birthday played over and over again in Tomas’s mind.
~*~
Oor ancestor Sean MacGregor was between a rock and a hard place. You see, Sean liked gambling. It didna matter what he gambled on. Oh sure, he would play games o dice, but even the little things in life were subject tae gambling for him. How soon were the lambs gaun'ae come? How soon was the snow gaun'ae fall? How many kittens would be in the next litter?
The will tae gamble put Sean intae a fever, it did. And as is always the case with men who hae a weakness such as gambling, there were those who took advantage o him. They baited him tae gamble, knowing he couldna always win and that they would hae his money.
Because o his gambling, Sean owed more money than he would ever make in his lifetime, and no one would give him loans anymore.
Now Sean had three sons and two daughters tae feed, as wull as his wife and his maw and his wife’s maw. The clan would help, aye, but as all MacGregors are, he was a proud man who didna want the charity o others.
One gloomy Scottish day on the moor, Sean was out gathering peat for the family fire. He had gone farther than he normally would, because 'twas an exceptionally cauld winter, and all the fuel nearby had already been burned. He was all by himself, and verra far out o earshot from anyone he knew.
He was getting close tae the mountain when he noticed there were some wee lights up there. With naught left tae lose, he slung his large sack with a few clumps o peat ower his shoulder and climbed up tae see what they were.