by Julianne Lee
Nick said softly, “It was three centuries ago, Beth. Nobody lives that long.”
“No, Nick.”
“I’m sorry.”
The tears came. Her face crumpled, and a sob shook her. Nick reached for her, folded her into his arms again, and held her.
“It will be okay, Beth,” he whispered. “You’re with me. You’re not alone.”
Her arms clutched him to her as she wept, and he kept her there a long time. His heart ached for her, but he knew this grief was better than what had been in store for her in the past. Here she would live, but in Glencoe there was nothing for her but death.
Once she’d cried herself out until the sobbing was reduced to an occasional hiccup, he kissed her hair and said, “Are you hungry?”
Eyes puffy and wet, lips red, and nose as bright as Rudolph’s, she lifted her head and sighed. She looked at the room again, silent, and he thought she might not answer. He couldn’t blame her for not being hungry. Or talkative. He waited while she thought about it. Finally she nodded. So he wiped her wet cheeks with a corner of the bedsheet, then slipped from the bed and drew her with him. “Come. I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
She rose, but her attention was drawn by the window. It overlooked the back fence of the apartment complex, which was lined with pine trees. Not much to see. But she wasn’t looking at the view. It was the glass. She reached out and tapped her fingernail on it, her mouth dropped open in awe.
“I’ve seen glass. In the laird’s house in Carnoch. But this is so smooth. So clear, as if there were nothing there. I wouldnae be able to see it at all if not for the dust on it.” Her voice was still thick with spent tears, and the words she spoke moist and soft from her crying.
Nick chuckled at her comment. “Yeah, I guess they need cleaning.” Before her attention could wander further, and she might begin examining everything in sight, he tugged on her hand to bring her along. “Come on. Food. We’ve got to eat, and I’ve got to get dressed for work. One thing about being the boss is that it makes me irreplaceable. I don’t get to call in sick unless I want the whole shop to go to hell.”
“Calling sick? Are you ill?”
“No. You’ll see what I mean. Come on.” He grabbed his terry cloth robe from the floor and gave it to Beth, then he pulled on his cutoffs he’d draped over the chair the night before... a month ago. Even as she was admiring the thick cotton of the robe, he pulled her by the hand toward the kitchen.
“Sit here,” he said as he deposited her on a chair at the kitchen table, and went to the refrigerator for eggs and juice. He glanced at the clock and groaned. He was going to be late for work. Probably very late, now that traffic was against him. As he made the coffee, he sifted through his memory for what was on the agenda for today, assuming it was the day after he’d gone to bed here last. He turned back toward the stove, and bumped into Beth, who had risen from her seat and was at the refrigerator.
“Oh. Sorry. What do you need?”
“What is this?”
“Refrigerator.” He pulled a frying pan from below the counter, threw some butter in it, and cranked the knob for the gas burner. The flame leapt to life, and Beth emitted a sharp, surprised sound.
“Och, Nick, you’re a faerie of some sort yourself. Are ye certain it was another of the wee folk who brought us here?”
“Not magic. Technology.” He gestured toward the burner. “The fire is burning a flammable gas that comes through a copper tube in the ground. I turn on the gas, it’s lit by a pilot light... see, in there.” He pointed through a little hole in the stovetop. “Then the burner lights up with a nice little flame.”
“And the cold inside the... re... box... food box?”
He thought for a minute, then said, “I don’t really know much about refrigeration. I just know that when it works it keeps things cold and makes ice that comes out that slot in the door. See that lever there? Push it.” She pushed it, and a couple of roundish ice cubes fell out. She picked them off the floor, and grinned as she felt the cold. “The other lever shoots cold water.” She reached for it. He said, “But don’t—”
Too late. Water sprayed onto her hand and all over the floor. She laughed and shook the water from her. He went for a paper towel and said, “Usually you’re supposed to have a glass in your hand when you do that.” He returned his attention to the eggs, and decided scrambling them would be quickest. Most likely, in any case. He cracked them into the pan and the melted butter, and began stirring.
“Glass? Yet more glass?”
“In that cabinet.” He nodded toward the cabinet with the glasses in it, then returned his attention to scrambling the eggs.
She opened the cabinet by the sink, and emitted another surprised sound just like the one before. “Ye dinnae tell me you were a rich man!”
“Nope. Not rich. If I were rich I wouldn’t be having to leave you to go to work today; I’d just sit around and hold you.” He slipped an arm around her waist to give her a squeeze, then returned to the eggs. “Glass is cheap here. Everyone has glasses. And windows.”
“Everyone here is rich, then.” Her tone was firm, and brooked no argument.
He found it difficult to come up with one, and so shrugged. “Yeah. Most of us are pretty well off, I guess.” He waved in the direction of the cabinet and said, “While you’re there, take a couple of those and pour us some juice from that bottle.”
She complied, set the glasses on the breakfast table, and picked up the juice. After a moment, he realized she was having trouble with the top, so he said while stirring eggs, “Twist the thing on the top. Counter... I mean, widdershins.”
The top came free, and she poured. “’Tis pink. Like blood in milk. What sort of juice is this, to be so pink?”
“Grapefruit juice. Citrus, like oranges and lemons. They put sugar in it, so it’s not so tart as lemons.”
“I see.” She tasted it, and seemed to like it. “So strange.”
He smiled, and figured she hadn’t seen anything yet.
Coffee and eggs, but no toast for he hadn’t been to the store and still didn’t have any bread. So he set the bag of dried figs on the table. They ate, and Nick introduced her to the fork. She’d never seen one before, but was quite taken by the ability to spear her food. Gently, he taught her to hold it correctly, keep it right side up, and not use it like a shovel or a spike. She learned quickly, deft enough to control the fork and mature enough to understand there were niceties involved. She kept peering at it, though, examining the tines and the rose pattern etched into the handle.
“So fancy.”
He shrugged. “Stainless steel. No big deal.” Quickly he ate his eggs. He was late, late, late.
“Steel? As fine sword blades and knives?”
He swallowed, then reached for a fig and bit it off its stem. “Nah. Not tempered, or anything like that. Half the world is made of steel these days. Glass and steel and plastic. It’s wood that’s rare and valued now. You pay an arm and a leg for furniture that’s not plastic.”
Her response to that was, “Och.” A moment later she said, “What might ‘plastic’ be, then?”
He rapped the top of the Formica table before him. “This. It’s plastic. The wood grain is printed on.”
She leaned over to peer at it, then said softly, “Och. ‘Tis uncommon smooth. I dinnae expect there would be many splinters from this table.”
He chuckled. “I expect not. I’d still like to have a wooden one, though.”
“So folks will ken your wealth.”
As he swallowed another mouthful of eggs, he glanced at her sideways and didn’t comment. “Try the coffee. If you want sugar in it, or milk, I’ve got some.” He didn’t figure the milk had gone bad while he was gone, if only one night had passed.
“Coffee. I heard of this once.” She appeared doubtful, and made a terrible face when she tasted it. “So bitter!”
“Here, try it with sugar.” He shook some from the bowl on the table into her cup, then stirred it with his spoo
n.
But when she tasted it, she still made a gagging noise and stuck out her tongue. “I dinnae think I care for the coffee. It may be the thing to drink in London, but this Scot prefers ale.” She picked up her glass filled with pink liquid. “And juice. The juice pleases me.”
Nick looked at the clock again. There would be someone in the shop now, so he leaned back in his chair and reached for the wall phone. He dialed, got the head mechanic, and explained he would be late today. The message for the owner when he came in, if he came in, was that Nick would try to be there before noon. Family emergency. Then he hung up.
Beth was gawking at him, her fork halfway to her mouth.
“Calling in sick, he said. “More technology. A doohickey inside the phone turns the sound of my voice into electrical impulses, then sends them through a wire. That wire is connected to the person I want to talk to, and the phone on his end turns the impulses back into sound. He hears me as if I were there, and I hear him.”
“Magic. Like the faeries, but you bother to explain it.”
“No, not like the faeries. I don’t think even they really know how they do what they do. I think magic for them is like sneezing. Or farting. They just do it, and sometimes can’t even control it. Maybe they don’t even care if it’s controlled.” Disgust rose at the thought of that nutcase Fionn and all the trouble he’d caused. “But this stuff is totally under control.” He paused, then said, “Well, mostly it is.”
Beth had finished her eggs and was draining her juice glass, so Nick stood and reached for her hand again. “Come on,” he said with a smile. “Something else to show you. You’re gonna like this.” Happily he drew her back through the living room to the bathroom. There he reached into the shower to turn it on.
But her attention was on the toilet. “A commode.”
Holding his fingers under the shower spray to feel for the hot water, he looked over at her. “You recognize it?”
She made a noise in the back of her throat that was halfway between an och and a hawk. “A seat atop a bowl; what else could it be?”
He had to chuckle at that, and nodded. “I guess. But have you seen one that does this?” He leaned over and pushed the handle so it flushed.
Her eyes went wide and a smile lit her face. “A river of water! There’s a cistern, then?”
“Pipes. More like an aqueduct. With mechanical pumps and valves... uh, little doors in the pipes that open and close. You—”
Beth lifted the robe, turned, and sat on the toilet seat to urinate with an excited smile on her face.
“Toilet paper is right there.” Nick turned his attention to the shower, which had begun to warm, and he adjusted the temperature.
“Paper?”
“That roll on the wall next to you. We use that instead of grass and leaves.”
“Paper?” She felt of the roll, as if it were fine silk.
“Thin paper. Cheap, and it dissolves in the water. Eventually.”
“But wood, you said, is expensive.”
He shrugged. “I don’t get it, either. But that’s what we use.” He unrolled some and handed her the wad for her to use. Then she stood and eagerly flushed, like a little kid in potty training, and watched the paper circle the bowl before it disappeared.
The shower was ready, so he drew back the curtain all the way before dropping his cutoffs onto the floor. “Here,” he said, and stepped into the bathtub. “Take that off and hang it on that hook over there behind the door.”
Beth removed the robe and hung it, then came to join him.
“Careful,” he said, and he helped her over the side of the tub. “It’s old-fashioned porcelain, and can be slippery.”
“Porcelain.”
“Yeah. Rich. It’s getting to be like wood, and you don’t see it so much any more. Really, it’s a layer of the stuff over a metal tub. Here...” He changed places with her. “Get yourself wet here.” He soaked down her hair so she sputtered, then reached for the shampoo to lather it. “Close your eyes; don’t get this in them or it’ll sting.” She obeyed, and he scrubbed her hair for her. Rinsed. Repeated. Then he wiped her eyes so she could open them, and started on his own hair. It needed cutting. Last time he was home he’d not had time for it, but it was uncomfortably shaggy now.
While he happily shampooed, Beth played with the hairs on his chest then tweaked his nipples to make him giggle. He held her and made her stop as he leaned into the spray to rinse, then he took the bar of soap from the dish on the window ledge to run it across her skin. He started with her shoulder, and immediately was transfixed by it. Her arm. Her hand. Back up the underside of her arm. She was exquisite, and she was with him. Safe. His throat tightened, and he realized how lucky they both were.
She slipped into his arms as he moved her hair aside and soaped her back. The warm water flowed over them and between them, and her skin against his was like another part of him. Her breasts pressed against him, soft and jiggly, and he brought the soap around to lather them as well. Then she took the bar from his hand and began on him.
Her hands were gentle, and agile. Skilled in ways he’d not imagined. But then, she’d had a husband for a year. He himself had never been married. Never dated anyone long enough to even consider it. Beth seemed to know where his best spots were, and lathered them all with great care. Blood rushed to his groin.
Bad idea. He needed to quit playing around and get to work. He kissed her, took her hands in his so she would stop lathering him, and rinsed the soap from them both.
It was a miserable thought to have to leave her for the day, but there was no getting around it. “Come,” he said as he turned off the water. “Let’s find something for you to wear.” A finger touched the peak of her nipple and he murmured, “A shame though it is to cover these.”
She chuckled at that as he reached into the linen closet for towels. In the bedroom he found a pair of drawstring pants that would stay up on her when pulled tight enough, and a T-shirt that was small enough on him that it didn’t swallow her whole. “We’ll go shopping as soon as we can, but this’ll do you until I get back from work.”
“Ye havenae a skirt of any kind? Even a kilt?”
He shook his head. “Just about everyone wears pants now.”
“Pantaloons?”
“Trousers.”
“Trews. I wore my brother’s trews one winter, and found them none too comfortable. They itched in places I did not care to be seen scratching.”
“They make them out of stuff other than wool now. Cotton doesn’t itch so much. See?” He rubbed the soft fabric of the pants between a thumb and finger.
“Aye. Very much softer.”
He turned to throw on his work clothes, hoping to look put together enough to pass muster with his employer and not invite anarchy in the shop, and while tying his shoes made an effort to explain to Beth things that might be a danger to her while he was gone.
“Don’t touch anything, okay?”
“Nothing?” She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands clasped together and pressed between her knees.
“Well, I mean, stay away from the stove and don’t go poking around any wires or anything.”
“Stove? And what might wires be?”
He sighed. “The stove is the thing with the flame. Where I cooked the eggs. Wires...” Sheesh. “There are things coming out of the walls. Don’t touch them. And don’t poke anything into any holes.”
“Not even should I have a mad urge to do it?”
A glance at her, and he saw the light of humor in her eyes. “Okay. I guess you’ve got enough sense to not poke around while I’m gone. But be careful. Don’t eat anything if you’re not sure what it is, even if it smells like food. Lots of soaps and cleaning solutions are scented like fruit and mint.”
“I see.”
“Don’t go outside. I’ll be back as soon as I can get away from the shop, and I’ll show you around. But for now, just stay inside. It’s too dangerous for you out there. Things move to
o fast.”
“Do they?” The humor was still in her eyes, and now it was in her voice. She didn’t believe him, but now she needed to.
“Yes. Trust me, Beth, you don’t want to wander around out on the street by yourself. Not until you’re accustomed to how things are here.” He stood and straightened his pants, muttering half to himself, “Don’t want you getting clobbered by a car.” He picked his keys from atop his dresser, and went to the living room for his briefcase. She followed him.
“Sit tight, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Keep this front door locked.” He turned to kiss her goodbye, then went out the door and locked it behind him.
Hurrying to his car, he stopped a few feet from his door, cold-cocked by the realization his life had just changed. On Sunday he’d been utterly single, without so much as a steady date, or even a good prospect, and today he had a woman living with him who was completely dependent on him. A woman he’d not even known on Sunday. Which had been nearly two months ago. The weird sense of being in two places at once swept in again, and made him dizzy. As if he were two different people suddenly shoved into one body.
He turned back toward the apartment, and found her watching him through the picture window in the living room. Her eyes were wide and her hands in fists at her sides, her body stock still and barely breathing.
“I love you,” he said, loud enough to be heard through the glass.
Beth raised her fingers to her lips and kissed them, then pressed her fingertips to the window. Nick smiled, then hurried on his way to a day he didn’t relish without her.
Chapter 9
Beth watched Nick leave, hurrying past the unnaturally blue pond in the stone courtyard outside, and the last shred of any sense of safety went with him. She was trapped in a faerie land, with no way home, and though it was filled with wondrous things, they were also strange and terrifying. Everything around her strained her ability to keep Nick from knowing how horribly afraid she was. As she watched him turn a corner and leave her sight, tears rose and she began to shake. She fought the urge to run after and beg him to take her with him, wherever he would go that day. Or forever. Over and over she told herself he would return as he’d said. He’d said he loved her, and she had to trust in that, for it was all she had. All there was left. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she hugged herself. For a long time she stood at the window, her wet hair dribbling down her back and soaking the sark she wore, praying for Nick to return. But the answer to that prayer was “No.”