Lock & Key

by Gordon Bonnet

  The more prosaic part of his mind responded, Lust at first sight, maybe. But you better not even HINT that you have the hots for this girl in front of Dugal, or you’ll be missing important body parts about two seconds later.

  It was a relief to drop the creel to the ground, and he rubbed his numb hands while trying not to be too obvious about it. Caitlin came out of the hut and gave her husband and children the same austere nod that she had given to Darren.

  I guess they don’t do demonstrative in medieval Scotland. Worth noting.

  Malcolm grinned broadly, and gestured at the full creels. “It was a good catch. We’ll have our hands full, salting and drying.”

  Caitlin regarded her son with mild amusement. “I hear you say ‘we,’ and I will take that to mean that you will be helping instead of wandering the island wasting time, as you usually do.”

  “It’s no waste, Mother,” he said. “It was me who saw the Vikings ships first when they came, three years ago. And I found Darinauld, just today.”

  “Indeed!” she said. “Two successes in three years of wandering. I was unjust to criticize you.”

  The sarcasm seemed to pass by Malcolm, and he went to the fire, and leaned over to look into the bubbling pot suspended above it. “I’m hungry.”

  “And there’s a second miracle,” she said. “You’ll wait to eat with the rest of us, child.”

  “Before then,” Dugal said grimly, “we have a matter to discuss. What has this Darinauld told you of his purpose?”

  Caitlin shrugged. “Only that he was pursuing an enemy here, who came, as he did, from a distant land, and intended harm. Nothing else.”

  “Then perhaps you would wish to know that he revealed by accident that there is more than that in his visit here. He knew, somehow, our daughter’s name before he had been told it.”

  Caitlin gave Dugal an inquiring look. “And have you asked him how he came by that knowledge?”

  “I did. He told me that he would explain it, once we returned here. And here we are,” —Dugal turned toward him—”awaiting that explanation.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. There was no sound but the crackling of the fire, and the ever-present whistling of the wind. All of their faces were turned in his direction. Malcolm expectantly, as if he really wanted there to be an explanation. Dugal filled with suspicion. Caitlin curious but reserving judgment. Maíre with a faint smile, as if merely amused at this diversion from the day’s chores. If she was disturbed by the fact that it was her name that had caused all of this, and had thrust her with him into the center of attention, she didn’t show it.

  Finally he said, “I’ve told you the truth. Like Caitlin said to me earlier, as much of the truth as I could easily explain. But there is one part of it that I didn’t tell you, that I have to tell you now.” He stopped, swallowed, and looked at each of them in turn. “I am from Seattle, which is a distant land. I did come here by some means that I don’t fully understand, and calling it magic is probably fairly accurate. I did come here trying to find a man named Lee, who has caused great harm to my land. But what I didn’t tell you is that now, at this time, Seattle doesn’t even exist. Seattle is a city that won’t exist for a thousand years. I come from the future. In my own land, I won’t even be born for another eleven centuries.”

  All of them simply stared at him. Had they understood a single thing he’d said?

  Finally, Malcolm broke the silence. “How can a man be here who has not been born yet?”

  Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? How could he be here? He studied the faces of Dugal and Caitlin, and saw no real comprehension in either. “I know it sounds impossible,” he said.

  “It does that,” Dugal said.

  “But I’m telling the truth. Look, all of you have said, at one time or another, that you thought I was telling the truth. You got to ask yourself, why would I lie? Or actually, if I was going to lie, wouldn’t it make better sense to come up with a lie that was plausible? There’s only one reason I would tell such a crazy story—if it was the truth.”

  Malcolm gave a smile, as if finally hitting a part of the story he understood, and looked at his parents. “Darinauld has a point, Father.”

  Dugal held up one hand, and his son fell silent.

  “Let us say, for the moment, that you are speaking the truth. There is one thing that I do not understand.”

  “Only one?” he blurted out. “That’s really good. There’s about a thousand things about this that I don’t understand.”

  Dugal also smiled a little, which he took to be a hopeful sign. “That is well said, Darinauld. I do not fully understand much of what you are saying, but I understand enough, I think, to ask a question. If your time is a thousand years hence, then to you, what you see around you would be far in the past. Our lives and deaths would be as a finished story to you. Therefore, your part in it would be, as well, as would your enemy’s. It would be a memory of events long past, and as unchangeable as the past always is. How can you explain that you do not know where your enemy is, nor what he plans to do here, if it all happened in the past for you?”

  He stared at Dugal. Damn. He’s smarter than I thought. He tried to do some quick thinking, to no very great effect. No way did he want to go into the alternate timelines issue, much less the role of the Library. He barely understood all of that himself. But there seemed to be no choice but to try those waters, and hope like hell that they didn’t get too deep too quickly.

  “Well,” he began. “I’m not sure I understand it all, myself. But I’ll try to explain, at least as well as I can. There’s a man I know who can somehow control where people are in time. He’s the one who sent me here.”

  “Fischer!” Malcolm shouted out, grinning. “The one who is not a god!”

  “Yes,” Darren said. “And I only met him because something bad had already happened. Lee—the guy I am chasing—he tried to kill me, and somehow that changed things in the distant past. Some event that’s due to happen, some time in the next few days, somehow what he did changed that, and that led to everyone in my time being destroyed. We don’t know why, nor what he did, nor how he got back here to do it. But Fischer’s idea is that somehow Lee went back eleven hundred years into the past, and changed something, and it caused the destruction of all the people on earth. I seem to be the only one left.”

  “What about Fischer himself?” Caitlin asked. “He was not destroyed.”

  “Oh, yeah. And him. And his administrative assistant.”

  This last pair of words elicited a trio of blank stares.

  “Administrative assistant?” Dugal said.

  “It’s kind of hard to explain,” Darren said. “She’s his, um, friend, I guess.”

  “His lover, you mean?” Malcolm asked, eagerly.

  “Good lord, no.” What would Maggie have thought if she’d overheard that? “She just helps Fischer. The two of them, and some of the people who work for them, didn’t get destroyed. And don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. They’re exempt from the rules, I guess.”

  “And you were sent back here to try to stop Lee from doing what he did?”

  “That’s the idea. But like I said to Fischer, it’s going to be difficult to stop him when I don’t know what he’s going to do, or when. All I know is that somehow, your daughter is involved. Her name was in the records as being important. That’s how I knew her name. Fischer told me.”

  And he was not telling them that supposedly, she was his ancestor. If they were freaked out before, that would put them over the top.

  Dugal looked at him steadily. “It is a strange tale. But there is probably little need to say that. It would rival the fanciful tales we tell children. But you do not seem to be lying, much as I find your story hard to comprehend and even harder to believe. As you said, liars usually rely on attractive, easy deceptions. You have a strange tale which you admit you do not fully understand yourself.” He turned toward his wife. “What do you think, Caitlin? Does he speak t
ruth?”

  Caitlin shrugged. “Who can know for certain? But for my part, I hear no lie in his voice, as I have said before. Perhaps a clever liar could tell such a twisted tale, thinking that we would be forced to say, ‘Who could come up with such a story? It must therefore be true.’ But I do not think that Darinauld is such a liar. I believe him.”

  Malcolm broke out into a grin. “And so do I!”

  “Silence, child,” Dugal said, but without anger. “You are too trusting, sometimes. I hope that you do not live to regret it. But I, too, seem to be forced to believe Darinauld, however peculiar his tale is. But we now come to the point. What is Maíre’s role in this? And why does this enemy of yours wish to harm her?”

  Maíre, who until now had remained silent, frowned. “What can I possibly have that he would want?” she said, sounding vulnerable and a little afraid.

  Darren looked at her, suddenly feeling a little desperate to protect her, to keep her out of Lee’s clutches.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think Fischer did, either. It just seemed like whatever was going to happen, Maíre was in the middle of it. I don’t know if he intends her harm, or if it’s that something he will do will inadvertently cause her life to change paths. But it’s all about her, somehow.” He gazed at her open, innocent face, and said, “We have to stop him from coming near her, I think.”

  “I will kill him, sooner,” Malcolm said fiercely.

  “I am glad to have such protectors,” Maíre said, smiling fondly at her younger brother, and then looking up at Darren shyly for a moment before looking away. “Be certain that if I see any strangers dressed as you are, I will tell you at once.”

  “He may not be dressed as I am,” he said. “He may have thought of that, and come dressed as one of you.”

  “Better, then, that you avoid all strangers,” Caitlin said. “Stay away from the harbor, where there are many men you do not know, and any one of which could be the man Darinauld seeks.”

  “That would be wise,” Dugal said.

  “No more flirting with Cullen,” Malcolm said teasingly.

  “Cullen is nothing,” Maíre said, and she gave another quick glance at Darren, almost too fast for the eye to see.

  Now what could that mean?

  But the moment was over, and the others had already begun to go about their chores. Now that the issue was decided, it seemed, he was one of them, and that was that.

  • • •

  The rest of the afternoon was filled with labor. Darren wasn’t asked to help, but he volunteered, feeling that now that he had earned these people’s confidence, he owed them something in return. He’d never gutted a fish before, and his first few tries were fumbling.

  “How do you eat in your land, that you don’t know how to clean a fish?” Malcolm said, chortling.

  He grunted in annoyance as the fish he was handling slipped from his grasp and slithered its way to the ground. “In Seattle, there are people who do this sort of thing for you.”

  “Indeed!” Malcolm said, sounding astonished. “And why do they give you food, if you do nothing to earn it?”

  How do you explain job specialization and a money-based economy to someone in the tenth century?

  “Well,” he ventured, “other people do other chores. I own a shop where there are books written by many people. People come to me to buy those books, and I use the money to buy food and other things for myself.”

  “Oh,” Malcolm said. “How many books are equal to one fish?”

  “Um… I suppose that depends on what kind of book, and how big the fish is.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Does it? Good.”

  “Seattle must be a difficult place to live. How do you know what to do?”

  “I’m really not sure. I think in a lot of ways, your way of life makes a great deal more sense.”

  This answer seemed to satisfy Malcolm. And within a few more tries, he had begun to get the hang of fish cleaning. He still was working at half the rate that Malcolm was, but at least fewer of them were landing on the ground.

  • • •

  Night came, and food was eaten around the fire. The chill deepened to the point that even Malcolm put on a shirt. Besides some of the fish he had helped to clean roasted over the fire, there was something a little like oatmeal, not remarkably delicious but hot and filling. Maíre got a woolen blanket from the hut and draped it around his shoulders. He smiled at her, but she had already turned and gone to sit at the other side of the fire, next to her mother.

  “Tomorrow,” Dugal said, “we should go around the island, and look for this enemy of yours, and ask others if they have seen him. I fear to have such a man walking about, doing what he will while we sleep. But there is little we could do in the dark, so I think that is our only choice. We will do what we can tomorrow to find out if he is here.”

  “I will come to help,” Malcolm said.

  “You will stay and help me salt the fish for drying,” Caitlin said. “I still recall your saying ‘we will salt and dry the fish’ earlier, and I have no intention of letting you forget that so you can go wandering.”

  “Mother!” Malcolm wailed.

  “Enough,” Caitlin said. “Your father and Darinauld are capable of doing what must be done. They don’t need a boy galloping along beside them. This is serious.”

  “I’m not a boy any longer, I’m a man,” Malcolm said.

  “Men do their share of the work, without complaint,” Caitlin said. “Therefore, your place as a man is here, helping me with the rest of the catch.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Malcolm said, and the scowl was clear in his voice, even if Darren couldn’t see his face. “It was me who first found Darinauld.”

  “That doesn’t mean he belongs to you,” Caitlin said. “The matter is decided.”

  • • •

  After dinner, the family rose and prepared for bed. Darren chose a time when Malcolm was alone, and went up to him quietly.

  “Malcolm,” he said. “Where is… um, your bathroom?”

  “Bathroom?” Malcolm said.

  “You know. Don’t you have an outhouse, or something? When you need to… you know, when you have to…”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then a guffaw split the darkness. “You need to relieve yourself? Then go there.” Malcolm gave him a little push in the direction of the ocean.

  “You don’t have, you know, a building or something? For privacy?”

  “Your people always relieve themselves in the same place? And indoors?” Malcolm’s voice sounded incredulous. “The stink must be incredible!”

  If Malcolm couldn’t understand economics, what hope did Darren have to explain indoor plumbing? Looked like it was camping-style while he was here. That part hadn’t occurred to him.

  “No, it’s not like that,” was all he said, as he stumbled off into the darkness.

  • • •

  By the time he returned, the family had already retired indoors. No one had told him where he was to sleep, but given that the other two buildings nearby were clearly for the animals and for storing dried food, he ducked into the low door, pushing aside a woolen hanging that had been drawn across the opening, and carefully walked inside.

  He couldn’t see the interior, but it was surprisingly warm and snug.

  “We have made room for you.” Malcolm’s voice came from the darkness. “And there is an extra blanket. I told Mother that you were from a land where it was always warm, and would probably need a second covering at night.”

  “Thanks.” He blindly moved toward Malcolm’s voice. His outstretched hand touched a shoulder, and Malcolm said, “Here,” and guided him toward a soft woolen mat and a pile of blankets.

  He lay down and pulled up the blankets, but for a long time, sleep eluded him. There was no noise from Maíre. He would have wondered where she was if he hadn’t been certain that her parents would never have let her go away, considering the threat. In ten min
utes, Malcolm’s breathing became deep and regular. But he couldn’t relax.

  I don’t think I’m up to this. I have to kill Lee McCaskill if I see him. I can’t wait to find out what he’s going to do, because by the time he’s done it, it will be too late. So the only way is to kill him as soon as I spot him. But how can I do that? He’s my friend.

  The rational part of his mind rebelled immediately. Friend? He tried to shoot you. He clearly wanted to kill you. He’s no friend, he’s a threat, and not only a threat to you, a threat to everyone. You may not like it, but you have to kill him.

  I don’t know if I can. I don’t have a weapon.

  These people have weapons. Malcolm has a spear. You know that Dugal won’t go out looking for Lee tomorrow without both of you being armed. He doesn’t completely understand the threat, but he gets that it is a threat, and he’s far too smart to leave home unarmed.

  So that’s it, then? I have to be ready to stick a spear into my high school buddy?

  Yes. That’s it.

  Well, it sucks.

  There seemed to be no arguing that point, and the inner dialogue died down. He closed his eyes, and tried again to relax, and for a few minutes, seemed to be making some headway. But then, on the other side of the hut, he heard the unmistakable noises of lovemaking.

  Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Dugal and Caitlin? Right here? With me present? With their kids present?

  Well, I guess that’s the only place you would do it, if you live in a one-room hut. But add that to the list of things about medieval life that I had never thought about.

  He tried to tune it out, but that sort of thing was remarkably hard to ignore, and they seemed to be making no particular effort to be quiet about it. And afterwards, as silence once more settled down in the little hut, he found he was so turned on that he couldn’t sleep.

  If it was going to be a porn soundtrack in there every night, he was going to have to sleep on the beach.

  It was after midnight when he finally dropped off.

  • • •

  Darren woke in complete darkness. The first thing he noticed was that he had to pee. The second was that the air in the little hut didn’t smell so good. In fact, it smelled fairly strongly of unwashed human. At that point, he discovered a third thing that he hadn’t really considered about medieval life—the lack of showers. Of course, intellectually he knew that there were no showers in the early tenth century, but the outcome—that everyone would go around smelling horrible—had never really occurred to him. Outside, in the continuous wind, it wasn’t so bad. Inside, it was pretty overwhelming.