by Jane Stain
Once all the food was eaten and quite a bit of wine had been drunk, and the men were relaxing with their pipes while the women turned toward each other and traded memories, Tomas squeezed Amber's arm as a sort of goodbye for a moment and got up and went over to Tavish's side of Kelsey.
Interesting. What was Tomas going to say to his brother?
To top it off, Tomas’s face was all scrunched up with worry, and he didn't ask for his twin brother’s attention, but rather just stood there quietly until Tavish noticed him and turned to him.
Tomas gestured, and with one accord, Tomas, Amber, Tavish, and Kelsey walked to the cliff, where the sound of the sea hitting the rocks would keep their voices from carrying back to the tables.
When Tomas finally spoke, a hush had come upon their group.
"Tavish, I’ve been under a terrible sense of envy for you ever since I found out about the curse and that you would be the one who got to time travel. I wanted to be the one. All I thought about was the fun of it and the adventure of it and what might be gained from it. I never once considered how awful it must be to have to answer to the druids as their slave. These past few months I've gotten a small taste of what you must be living with, and brother I've got to say I'm so, so sorry. You have it worse than I ever imagined or gave you credit for, and I'm here now to ask your forgiveness. If I hadn't felt so envious of you, I never would have fallen under Sulis’s spell. She was able to get me because of my envy. It was my strongest motivation, and she used it to trap me. Again, Tavish, will you forgive me?"
Tavish embraced his brother, and the two of them hugged and slapped each other's backs, but Amber could see that Tomas was crying silently as Tavish spoke his pardon.
"Of course I forgive you. You're my brother, and I'll always be there for you. I'm so, so glad to have you back!"
Amber and Kelsey laughed and clapped and cheered at that. And then the musicians got up and played, and they all joined in on the set dances, even Deirdre, who laughed when the men picked her up to twirl her around instead of linking elbows with her.
Once the dancing was well underway, Tomas took Amber by the hand and led her back to the edge of the cliff, where they stood hand-in-hand watching the sea. It was cloudy as usual, but they could just make out Ireland in the distance over the water, and Amber wondered how soon Mr. Blair would get that motorboat so they could go explore. What a great honeymoon that would make.
Tomas startled her out of her reverie.
"What's on your mind, Mrs. MacGregor?"
For a moment, Amber looked around to see who he was talking to. And then she saw the teasing look on his face and laughed.
"I'm eager to get on with being married, Mr. McGregor."
He kissed her then, a warm loving kiss full of promise, and then turned them back toward the wedding party area.
"It looks like you're not the only one."
Sure enough, Kelsey & Tavish and Sasha & Seumas were all headed toward the stairs that went down into the underground palace.
Tomas put his arm around Amber's waist and turned them toward the stairs too.
"I think we'd better catch up with them, because I'm not sure they'll wait for us."
Laughing, Amber hustled off arm-in-arm with her husband, toward their future.
Fichead (20)
Amber sat awkwardly on the bed in the room she now shared with Tomas in the trailer, resting her bare foot on a folded pillow so she could paint her toenails dark blue. On her cell speaker she was also talking with Jaelle, their faire friend who had still been with John until six months ago.
“Yeah, the Scottish skies were sunny for once, and we had a beautiful old time wedding on the cliff overlooking the Irish Sea—and then we all high-tailed it back here to the present.”
“But no one in the present knew you were married, and no time had passed in order for you to get married in. How did you deal with that?”
Forgetting she was talking on the phone and not in person —or perhaps just accustomed to being flamboyant when she spoke—Amber gestured wildly, and a blob of blue nail polish fell off the brush. Good thing she had put a paper towel down on the pillow. Wait, what was she thinking?
Amber laughed.
Jaelle sounded amused.
“Must be a good story.”
Amber grabbed up the paper towel, wadded it, and made a basket into the trashcan. She just barely remembered she still had the brush in her hand before she raised her arms up high and declared a score— and got nail polish who knew where.
“No, no. I was laughing because I splattered some nail polish.”
“Huh?”
“It could’ve gotten on the pillowcase if it weren’t for this paper towel, but with the amount Mr. Blair is paying me for helping Kelsey out with her cataloging system for the dig, I could buy a thousand pillowcases, so what am I worried about?”
They laughed together for a moment, and then Jaelle cleared her throat.
Amber snorted to let her old friend know she’d received the subtle hint to get on with her story.
“Okay, I know you don’t want to hear about that. We made our marriage legal two days after we got back to the present. We just flew back home and saw a justice of the peace.”
“Aw, that’s too bad—”
“No, I wanted it that way. Over and done with as quickly as possible so we could get on with married life, already—”
Jaelle burst into a loud peal of laughter.
Amber growled at her playfully.
“Oh, would you get your mind out of the gutter for once. My family were all there to witness my happiness, and getting married to Tomas was all that really mattered to me. It wasn’t about the dress, or the ring, or having to dance to a certain song at a reception, cutting the cake, throwing the bouquet, riding in a limousine, or picking out bridesmaids’ dresses. It was about declaring in front of witnesses our intention to spend the rest of our lives together as husband and wife.”
To Amber’s puzzlement, Jaelle’s voice sounded clipped when she spoke next.
“Did you at least get a honeymoon?”
Huh. Where was that coming from?
“Tavish & Kelsey and Seumas & Sasha had plane tickets to Hawaii already, so they were all gone for two weeks. Me and Tomas were bummed we couldn’t go along — until Mr. Blair showed up with the motorboat he’d been promising everyone.”
Jaelle blew her nose. Maybe she was getting sick. That would explain her tone. A runny nose would make anyone impatient. Yeah, that must be it. She sounded stuffed up when she spoke.
“Wow, cool.”
Amber brought the pillow forward a little bit so it was easier to reach her toes, and then she put down a fresh paper towel and repositioned her foot on it. This time when she dipped the brush back in, she was much more careful to wipe off the glob at the end of it against the bottleneck.
“You can say that again. It has a cabin and everything, and when he heard we just got married, he let us take it over to Ireland for a week, all by ourselves. We docked at a different port every night and went sight-seeing every day, not to mention all the pub crawling we did. Couldn’t have planned a better honeymoon if I tried. —And like I said before, on Tuesday we’re headed ‘down unda’ to Australia to learn the business-end of the faire. When I hear myself say that, I just can’t believe it. I get Tomas in the fair in Australia and Dall and Emily back as my friends… All my dreams are coming true!”
Jaelle had been quiet longer than usual.
Guilt grabbed Amber’s heart and yanked on it till it hurt.
“Listen to me, going on about how happy Tomas and I are. How are you doing? I can’t believe you and John defied his parents, let alone broke up after seven years of defiance together. Really, how are you doing?”
Jaelle sniffled.
“Thanks for shutting up about you and Tomas. Now shut up about me and John.” She laughed a little.
Amber laughed a little, too.
“Sorry. That was really stupid
of me. All of it. What kind of friend am I?”
“No, I get it. And I’m really happy for you. You and Tomas are both great people, and I know how in love you are. And I’m one of the few who know why you were apart these past seven years. I know you never really broke up, how Dall and Emily dropped a bomb on him and Tavish on their eighteenth birthday and he disappeared from your life to protect you. Dall and Emily thought they were doing the right thing, you know, not telling him until then. You do know that, right? Because I don’t hate them, and you shouldn’t either.”
“I don’t hate them. I know it’s not their fault. He told me the story about their ancestor with a gambling problem — uh oh, I hope I’m not saying something you don’t already know.” She laughed her exaggerated nervous laugh.
“Yeah, that story. I bet it was a lot easier for you to believe than it was for me, after what you just went through. I’m having trouble believing your story, and I’ve known the gambling story for seven years now.” Jaelle laughed again, and this time there was actually joy in it.
“Heh,” said Amber, “I wouldn’t believe my story if I hadn’t lived it, so I know what you mean. But here we are talking about me again. I really want to know if you’re okay, and if there’s anything I can do to help you. I’m not even above going over and giving John a piece of my mind, if that will help.”
Jaelle cleared her throat.
“About that.”
“What?”
“Well, has Tomas told you how he’s related to John?”
“Huh? We’ve always known.”
“Okay, we always thought we knew, but Amber, John’s dad isn’t just some random part of Dall’s fifteenth century MacGregor clan. He’s Tomas and Tavish’s brother.”
“Nuh uh! He can’t be. He’s Dall’s same age.”
“Right, but now you know this is a time-traveling family.”
“So?”
“So Dall was born in the early 1500s. He got married when he was young and had three children: Peadar, Peigi, and Dombnall. His wife died when they were twenty three. Then Dall turned twenty five and started his servitude with the druids. They picked Emily out for him among some others and brought her and the others back to his time for him to bond with her. When she got back to her own time, she didn’t remember that. They had cursed her so that she wouldn’t remember time travel unless she joined with him—”
Amber cut in.
“Get to the point already. What does that have to do with John’s dad Peadar?”
“I’m getting to that. Just listen.”
“Okay, but get to it faster.”
“Very funny. So anyway, Dall and Emily got together, right, and then they started experimenting with time travel. They had a lot more freedom to time travel than John and Tavish do, because they had an app on their cell phone that enabled them to go to any time and any place where a loved one was—”
Amber gasped.
“You’re kidding.”
Jaelle laughed.
“You and Tomas sure haven’t been doing very much talking.”
Amber laughed too.
“Shut up. Yeah, we’re a married couple who should know all these things about each other, but we only just now got back together. There hasn’t been time to talk about everything.”
“Uh huh. So anyway, Dall and Emily could go to any time or place where one of their loved ones was. The druids had Tavish living mostly in our time, but Emily told Dall about how the MacGregor name would soon be outlawed back in his time. So they sought out his son Peadar when he was twenty-five, to make sure he was okay. Vange went with them, and as soon as she met Peadar — well, you know how in love those two are.”
There was a scraping noise on Jaelle’s end of the line.
“What was that?”
“Oh sorry. I told you John let me keep his house after he broke off our engagement, right?”
“Yeah, you did. And I have to admit, that was really nice of him. Most guys wouldn’t even let you keep the ring.”
Jaelle snorted a laugh.
“It’s not like he’s still paying the rent. Anyway, I’m going through the boxes of junk he left in the basement, and some of this stuff is really cool. Here, I’ll take a picture of this helmet I just found so you can see.”
Amber waited, and then she got a text with a picture. The helmet was really dark, like an iron skillet.
“Wow, that is cool.”
“Isn’t it? Here, I’m going into video chat to try it on so you can see.”
Amber laughed.
“Okay.”
There was a pause as Jaelle set the phone down and ran around in front of the camera holding the helmet.
“Are you watching? I can’t tell.”
“Yeah, I can see you.”
Jaelle held the helmet over her head.
“Here goes.”
Amber thought this whole idea of trying on the helmet was silly, but Jaelle was hurting inside from losing John, even though she tried to play it off like she wasn’t. So Amber humored her. She felt terrible about going on and on about herself and Tomas.
But she soon forgot all about those worries.
And then some.
Because as soon as Jaelle put the helmet on…
She disappeared.
Amber screamed.
Kelsey came running in.
“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost — and I certainly hope you haven’t discovered that ghosts are real. Please tell me they aren’t.” Her friend had been smiling up to that point, but now her face grew serious. “Wow, something’s really spooked you. What is it?”
Too shocked to even speak, Amber pushed play on the video of the call and handed her phone to Kelsey.
Kelsey gasped.
“Well, at least we’ll be able to see it in her dreams.”
“Huh? See what?”
“That was a Roman helmet Jaelle put on, from the period when they were building Hadrian’s Wall.”
Amber made a sour face.
“I’m not excited about the Romans.”
Kelsey’s face had cracked into a huge grin.
“Me neither, but the Romans built that wall to keep out of England the people they called savages.”
“And?”
“And Jaelle just went back to the time of the Celts.”
~*~
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Time of the Celts