by Jane Stain
More importantly, had anyone else seen them?
Taran scrutinized everyone, including Laird Donald, looking for any sign that they'd seen the lasses. What would they do if they did? He was so afraid for Lauren that he was in danger of swooning like a woman, but he relaxed a bit when he saw that Laird Donald hadn't seen the lasses. Whew, his men weren’t reacting, either.
Luag and Leif looked at Taran with questions in their eyes, but Taran didn't dare take his attention off their enemies. What if the evil druid revealed the lasses again? He had to be ready to defend them.
However, while Donald hadn't noticed the lasses, it soon became quite apparent he noticed Taran staring at him.
Donald stepped out into the area between his three men and Alasdair’s, glaring at Taran.
"I see the challenge in yer stare." He drew his sword from the harness on his back and stood ready. "If ye are sae brave, come and fight me one-on-one. We shall let that determine the outcome o’ oor differences."
Donald was now facing the place where Lauren had appeared with her friends.
Taran ran in between Donald and the lasses. He did it without waiting to see what Alasdair thought. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have stared at the laird so openly. He would protect them.
Behind Taran, Alasdair's voice rang out for all to hear.
"Surely ye want the lands for goods that ye are na able tae grow on the isles. Let us work up trade routes, instead o’ shedding each other’s blood.…"
But Donald didn't even look at Alasdair. He attacked.
Before Taran could finish drawing his sword, he felt a pain across his belly, doubled over, and went down.
Chapter Seven
Lauren tried to scream when Taran was cut down, but Jessica put a hand over her mouth. Lauren tried to run to Taran, but Katherine held her by the elbows. The three of them had lain down after Taran saw them, hiding in the tall grass just in case. Through Galdus, they communicated inside their minds, where they didn’t need to speak Gaelic.
"Let me go!" Lauren cried.
Jessica's hold on Lauren's mouth was gentle but firm. "Not yet. Wait till the others go away."
Lauren struggled, crying out in her mind, "He's still breathing! We can save him if we hurry! You’re a nurse, Jessica. Didn’t you take an oath that says you have to help when someone needs it? Taran needs help, and you can save him! Even I know that every minute counts when someone's bleeding out. We have to go now! We have to!"
Katherine kept a firm hold on Lauren, preventing her from getting up. "Lauren, think! Galdus revealed us to the men once. He can do it again. Nothing says he has to keep on hiding us at all. We will go to Taran, but Jess is right. Wait till the other men are gone. I know you love Taran, but you need to stay safe. Think!"
Lauren was sobbing fat, heavy tears now, through her nose because Jessica was still covering her mouth. The two friends hugged her close and held her while she cried for what seemed like hours.
At long last, the other men had left the field and only Leif was with Taran.
“I will go and get a litter tae carry him home,” Luag said as he left. He didn’t look hopeful, but he didn’t know the extent of modern medicine.
So sure was she that they could save Taran if they only got there in time that Lauren dropped her friends’ hands to run to him faster.
She could still hear their thoughts. Galdus only needed contact in order to make them invisible. He could telepathically reach anyone she had ever touched, up to a radius of ten feet from her. Even inside a man-made structure, he wasn't limited in the ways that corporal druids were. The dagger acted like a battery, storing up magical energy that he could use whenever. No, Galdus's limitation was that he needed a human to carry him around. He lacked mobility on his own.
As soon as Lauren saw how bad Taran was hurt, she screamed out to Jessica in her mind, "Do something!"
But Jessica was crying too, shaking her head and raising up her hands in a helpless gesture to both Leif and Lauren. "'Oh Lauren, ‘tis far worse than I thought. I canna save him. He can still hear ye though. ‘Tis best ye say yer goodbyes.”
Lauren and Leif both threw themselves down on the ground near Taran's head, the only place it looked like they wouldn't hurt him by touching him. Leif took his brother’s hand, while as gently as she could, Lauren cradled Taran’s face in her lap.
And then tears cascaded down her face, because although Taran was too injured to speak, she could now hear his thoughts in her mind.
"Leif, carry on for me, my brother. Lauren! Och, Lauren. I wanted tae marry ye and for us tae live in the wee cottage together, happy the rest o’ oor days. It is na tae be. Ye must go home tae yer own time and yer own people sae ye will be safe from all this bloodshed. I love ye, and I will see ye in Heaven one day. Till then, live yer life happily. Dinna mourn for me. Dinna try tae remain faithful tae my memory. ‘Tis a waste o’ the time ye hae tae live. Be happy for me, for I'm going home. God be with ye, Lauren. Remember, be happy."
But Lauren didn't want to let go of him. She wanted the life he had designed for them together. Not knowing if she was screaming out loud or her in her mind —and not caring— she screamed nonetheless, bending down to kiss Taran’s mouth with such anguish that Leif let go and stood up again to hold his own wife and give Lauren and his brother what privacy he could.
"Galdus, do something!" Lauren screamed inside her mind at the druid in her dagger.
He gave her his evil chuckle. "Och, now ye need me."
Now in Leif’s arms, comforting him rather than being comforted, Jessica dug around in her purse. "I have some aught I can give him for the pain, but ‘tis all I can do.”
But Katherine grabbed Lauren by the arms and tried to pull her away from Taran. "They hae seen us! They return! We hae tae go!"
At the same time as Katherine said this, the world started swirling, blurring, and whirling past Lauren, Katherine, and Taran as if they were in a whirlpool underwater, and Lauren smiled, hoping they were traveling back in time to when Taran wasn't injured. She knew it for certain when she saw Taran's wound mending, and once it was no longer bleeding, she clutched at him in a joy that overwhelmed all the despair she had felt moments before.
Luag screamed in shock. All of a sudden Katherine was right there in front of him, hunched over between him and Donald. He lunged, grabbing hold of her waist and trying to pull her away to safety as she clung to something there on the ground. What was it?
But then Luag forgot about whatever lay on the ground.
He could hear Katherine's thoughts!
"I’ve had enough and want to go home!" she pleaded in her mind, thinking of the strangest place ever. It had the largest beaches, but it was a city of metal and glass. A pier jutted out into the ocean, and on it were brightly lit monstrosities that moved! The sign at the top of it read Santa Monica. Was it in Spain, then? She thought of her home, and it was like a spot on a shelf above a cafe between two shops, which were themselves squished into a row of shops which were all in one enormous long building that faced another such building across a huge stone walkway. She couldn’t see the ocean from her home, but she could smell it, so it was nearby.
The world did flips around Luag, as if he were swimming on the seashore, being churned by the waves. Someone grabbed onto his back, and he lurched to get the man off him even as he held onto Katherine and pulled her away toward safety.
Abruptly, he no longer heard her mind inside his. No longer saw what she imagined. He didn’t need to. He and Katherine were there, in the place she had imagined.
The ocean air was pleasantly balmy, but everything else made him uncomfortable.
He didn’t understand anything he saw except the hundreds of people who walked past him, so for a few moments he focused on them. They were all in such a rush! And they were rude.
“Watch where you’re going!”
“Get out of the way!”
“Wrong way, buddy.”
“Go back to the Renaiss
ance Faire!”
Luag would have said something back, only his jaw hung open. They were all wearing so little clothing! Nothing was left to his imagination. The women wore even less than the men, less than undergarments. Only the barest parts of their bodies were covered up, and he could see more skin than anything else. None of them seemed to be at all bothered by it. Well, a few of the men were looking at the women, but appreciatively, not in any sort of panic that the women had lost their clothing.
These people set him on edge, and so he looked away from them, at everything else.
The surface they were standing on — for it could not be called the ground — was hard like stone, but it was flat and smooth like an earthenware plate. Everyone was walking around on it without comment, so it must’ve been normal for them, but it was not normal for Luag. The surface was white or very light gray and now that he looked closer it was marked with a series of lines that crisscrossed each other. The more he looked at it, the more aggravated he grew. It made him feel overcome with the urge to bend over and scrape it away so he could see the ground.
The battle fever raged in him, preparing him to survive this encounter with the unknown as it had so often before. But this time there was no one to fight, no beast to kill. This time he was simply overwhelmed with too many new sounds, sights, scents, and sensations all at once.
He shifted his attention over to the right, where wheeled things moved by with startling speed on a black surface just as flat but not as smooth. Of course the things that moved by were far more interesting than the surface. They were beautiful, made of all the colors of the precious jewels, of different metals and glass, more metal and glass than he’d seen in his whole life or ever hoped to see. What were they? Where were they going? How did they move without horses to pull them? Why did they make so much noise? Were there people inside?
He was so frustrated at not understanding what he was seeing and not knowing what things were!
And there was no place he could rest his eyes. When he glanced away from the people and the strange jeweled objects, there were only brief patches of flowers to look at before his eyes landed on one of the hundreds of buildings that loomed up all around him, blocking the view of the mountains that must surely lie beyond. Every last one of these buildings was ten times as big as Ualraig’s castle. How many people must there be here in order to need so many buildings? Where was the person in charge of them? Certies he should be seeing to it they were na so rude!
And the noise! His ears were full of hundreds of noises he didn’t recognize or understand. Loud sudden noises and jarring long noises. Sound that resembled music but wasn’t made of any instrument he ever heard before. The infernal noise was pervasive, and he didn’t understand how everyone was ignoring it.
The place smelled bad too. The most noxious smoke ever lingered in the air, and it stung his eyes.
If all that wasn’t enough, then the sight of the oddest trees imaginable pushed Luag over the edge. These trees shot up fifty feet in the air before they had any branches. Their branches were all bunched together in a ball at the top of the tree. They looked like huge skinny one-legged giants with big heads.
The only familiar thing that saved him from insanity was he was still with Katherine. And she looked calm, happy even. Obviously, she had seen all these things before and didn’t consider them unusual in the least.
“I need to get back home right away,” he told her, surprising himself by speaking fluent English. “This place is extremely unpleasant.”
Instead of agreeing with him though, she scowled and groaned her displeasure at what he had said. ”Aw, I finally get home and now I’m stuck with you? Why did you have to come with me?”
He took another look around just to assure himself it really was as odd as he had thought. “Och, this is your home? No wonder you traveled back in time.” With all this change, it pleased him that some of the words he said at least were still familiar. Apparently, whatever magic had allowed the lasses to speak Gaelic in his time was also allowing him to speak English in hers, but it left a few colorful words in his speech, and he appreciated that.
Katherine groaned again, and this time it was more like a growl. “What am I going to do with you?”
Chapter Eight
Taran was dizzy, disoriented, and confused. How had he gotten on the ground? Where were Leif and Luag? They had been standing right here a moment ago. There were no threats nearby, so who had tackled him, and why? Negotiations with Donald were going smoothly and according to plan. Prospects looked good. But then, where was Donald?
But all that was in the back of Taran's mind, because the great majority of his consciousness was centered on Lauren. She was holding his face tenderly in her hands, and her own sweet face was inches away from his. Her loving eyes were gazing deeply into his, dripping tears. She was at once both so beautiful and so heartbroken, it made him want to cry as well.
But that wasn't the biggest surprise.
Not by a mile.
Taran could hear Lauren’s thoughts! They were as lovely as he always knew they’d be.
"Och! ‘Tis so glad I am, tae be here with ye. Ye canna imagine how glad. Ye're alive. Ye're wull. We hae a future together. Aye, I will settle doon with ye in that little cottage by Cresh Manor. I want naught more in all the waurld, and it makes me sae happy tae ken ye want me tae. Let us run away and start this verra moment. Tae heck with all this conflict, and… Nay, ye hae the right o’ it, Galdus. Aye, I ken. We hae tae wait for the conflict tae be ower sae that we can get ye the artifact. But promise me Taran survives this. Promise me.”
Taran marveled, and then it occurred to him. If he could hear Lauren’s thoughts, then could she hear his?
"Lauren,” he tested thinking at her, “I canna believe ye are here either. I hae longed tae hold ye this way ever syne I foremaist met ye. Ye mean the waurld tae me. Glad I am that ye want tae bide with me and be my wife.“
He could also see what Lauren saw in her mind, and now she saw them together in an idyllic version of Gammer's cottage. Everything was new, from the bed lovingly cut and pegged to the bedding lovingly stitched and stuffed and embroidered to the rugs Lauren had made with love to the dishes the town’s women had made and even the furs in the windows, from a special hunting trip the townsmen had taken. The dirty dishes from their private wedding supper sat on the table, and their two chairs had been pulled close together. Their clothing lay gently over the tops of the chairs.
He caressed her face and drew her down toward him for a kiss. And then his vision took over, in their minds. The two of them were in the bed together, cuddled up close after their marital lovemaking, holding each other close and talking late into the night of their future plans.
"I ken ye hae seen much o’ the waurld," he said softly next to her ear as their cheeks caressed each other. "Will ye be happy tae stay the rest o’ yer life here in Cresh Manor?"
Her arms went more fiercely around him. "So long as you are here with me, I will be more happy here that I could be anywhere else." How soon do you want to start our family?"
He chuckled deep in his throat. "Is not that what we just did?"
She laughed deep in her throat as well. "I suppose it is." And are you glad? As glad as I am, I mean, at the prospect of being a parent?"
He took her face in his hands gently and gave her a kiss that he hoped would show her all the love that he felt for her and for the prospect of starting a family together. "Och aye lass I am happier at that than anything other than making you my bride."
“There is nothing in the world that can make me happier than I am right now except perhaps when our children come and we get to meet them," she said between placing soft kisses on his jaw, his temple, his ear.
"Aye, I never imagined being this happy." He lay back with a smile she continued placing her kisses.
She shook her head a little, which made her hair tickle his face. "I did na either. I cannot believe I am rid of Galdus. I thought I would never
be able to touch you so long as we lived, never be free of him."
He gathered her to him and held her tight. “Aye, I feared so as wull.”
A mischievous smile spread on her face as she lay there beside him now, her eyes sparkling at him. “Did you truly wish to hold me in your arms the moment you met me?”
“Aye, and even more besides,” he said with his own mischievous smile as he traced hers with his fingertip.
Laughing, she grabbed his finger and pulled on it, rolling back so that he landed on top of her, and they enjoyed another time of marital bliss. After they were once more spent and their breathing had returned to its usual pace, they lay there in bed once more, tired but unwilling to go to sleep, unwilling to say goodbye even for the few hours their eyes would be closed and they would be unaware of the world.
“Katherine is far more beautiful than me,” Lauren said with a puzzled look on her face even as she caressed his bare chest with her soft hand. “And Jessica is far more feminine, caring and nurturing. Whatever made you want me so, upon first sight?” She made a sage and knowing face. “I mean I know I’m the smartest of the three, but how could you know that before we’d spoken much?” She paused with a sly smile, but he could tell she was eagerly awaiting his response.
Holding her worried gaze with his admiring and loving one, he tried to tell her just how amazed he had been. “Ye kenned the strongest place in Alvin’s barn would be in that corner somehow, and ye had just arrived in toon, sae ye didna ken it had caved in there and been rebuilt. Ye couldna hae seen the fresh build for all the hay in the way. Ye also kenned tae rest against the stronger wall, even though the other wall would hae given ye a better view out intae toon, from the other window. Ye kenned aught nay other lass I ever met would ken. Ye still dae, and ye amaze me each day with all ye understand…”