Chapter 6

Chapter Six

O nce he and Julianne had moved out of sight of the walking labyrinth Shaw changed direction, taking an old trail that led to the Stone Forest. He needed to put some distance between him and Connal, and especially Merrick. The king had almost seemed dazed by looking upon Julianne. This while Merrick remained hopelessly in love with Meg, the red-haired chambermaid who had moved across the island to get away from him. Thankfully Jamaran had seemed immune to Julianne's charms, or jealousy might have compelled Shaw to snatch up his woman in his arms and run away with her.

She's no' my woman. I've no more right to claim her than Merrick. No matter how many times Shaw told himself that, he couldn't stave off the constantly, gnawing need to remain close to his merrow lass.

The moment they came within sight of the cursed woods Julianne tugged her arm free of his and backed away several steps, but she wasn't looking at him now. She stared without blinking at the silent, still forest.

"What happened here?" she asked, her voice as tight as her expression.

"A curse turned the woods to stone." He didn't want to tell her the sad tale behind it, as no one knew why the melia that had loved his sire had done this, only that they had sealed themselves inside the trees for eternity. "'Tis a spot I cannae set on fire with my touch."

"I don't like it. This is just so wrong I can't even." She wrapped her arms around herself as she surveyed the trees with their glittering leaves and glossy trunks. "Did you do this with your dark thing?"

"No, I should never. I'm no' at fault for any misery on the island." As she frowned at him he spread his arms wide. "Except my own, as you see before you."

"Join the club." Julianne used her sleeve to blot some sweat from her brow, and then took in and let out a long breath. "All right. Let's try it here, outside the cursed area. I don't want to go anywhere near those trees. There's nothing here but grass and dirt."

When he reached out to grasp her hands in his, Shaw saw the sun brought out the unusual colors of Julianne's eyes. Indeed, the light made the blue starbursts sparkle like polished gems, and the outer brown irises take on a golden shimmer. Something about looking at her face reached deep inside him with velvety softness wrapped around hot steel. His mouth dried, and his heart fluttered in his chest as if he were but a young lad.

"You've the loveliest eyes," he murmured, taking a step closer as he entwined his fingers with hers. "Close them now."

"Why?" she countered. "I want to watch it happen this time."

"Do as you wish, then." He took a firmer hold of her, and pressed his thumb against the green stone of Lady Joana's ring. "Think on your homeland, and imagine us there. I shall do the same."

He did not believe she could take them to the future, yet as soon as the last word left his lips the ground around them began to sparkle with Fae magic. Although the melia had cursed themselves and their forest, beyond it the soil remained saturated with many years of their earlier enchantments. What perplexed him was how this mortal was able to awaken the ancient magic merely by attempting to use her boon.

"I'm thinking," Julianne said, her lips thinning with annoyance. "Why isn't anything happening? Can't you trigger this thing however you did to come to my time? Wait, no, you were drowning. On second thought, don't do that."

"I reckon as you wear the ring, you must take us there, my lady," Shaw said, and then the world blurred around them, and suddenly they stood on an unfamiliar shore looking out at a dark blue sea. After a moment he recognized the water as the same he'd landed in when the ring had brought him to her time, but the rest of the place looked very different. "And so you did."

Julianne staggered as she looked out at the water.

"I did this." She sounded as if she couldn't believe it. "It's really true. I'm a transponder thing." She glanced at him. "Why didn't we turn into sparkly blobs? Maybe it doesn't work like the show."

Movement caught his eye, and Shaw turned his head to see two dark-skinned tribesmen wearing only cloth wrapped around their hips stumble to a halt at the other end of the wide crescent of sand. Judging by the bounty of shellfish in the loosely-woven nets they carried, they had been gathering food from the shallows. One wore a wide collar of carved abalone shell; the other sported crude ear baubles fashioned from tiny mollusks. Both had braided their black hair, and decorated the cables with feathers, beads and quills.

"The lifeguard tower's gone," Julianne muttered, and then noticed the pair of men. "Whoa. Those two are not county employees."

One of the men drew a stone dagger from a strap on his thigh and brandished it as he shouted something.

"Don't," she said as Shaw shifted to put himself in front of her. "He thinks because our skin is light-colored that we're ghosts. We're scaring the snot out of them just being here."

A moment later they returned to the trail of the Stone Forest on Caladh, so abruptly that he nearly fell onto his hands and knees. Julianne swayed, her face pale, and leaned against him as she tried to steady herself. Putting his arms around her, Shaw urged her over to a low flat-topped rock to sit down. Over her skin a dark green light shimmered, and then vanished.

Someone enchanted her. Shaw eyed his marked hand, and saw his ink shimmer with a ghostly opaque whiteness, as if he'd been covered in frost. The spell doesnae affect me or the beast.

"What the heck was that?" Julianne whispered, holding her head with her hands. "How did I do that? How did I know what that man was saying?"

"I cannae tell you." Pushing aside his own worries, he crouched down in front of her. "'Twas painful, using your boon?"

She hunched her shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe, sort of? I'm freezing on the outside, but boiling on the inside. Like french-fried ice cream in reverse."

Shaw reached to touch her arm, shocked to find her skin chilled to the touch and yet somehow radiating heat as if feverish. "You're ill. I shall take you see Duncan."

"Wait. Give me a sec, okay?" She closed her eyes, breathing in and out a few times before she regarded him, her eyes tearful. "That beach looked a lot like the park where I work." She sniffed and pressed the heel of her hand to one eye. "Those men might have belonged to a tribe of early people that lived a little further inland."

"You recognized them, then," he said, unsure as to why that would upset her so greatly.

"I've only watched some history shows on TV." Julianne made an odd sound before she added, "Shaw, I think we did go to California, but in this time. Your time. The twelfth century." She shook her head. "Why didn't I realize that before? I'm such a ditz."

That was when Shaw knew she had been not only disturbed but wounded by the experience. He imagined it the same as returning home after a long absence to find the stronghold emptied and abandoned by one's clan.

My brothers, they waited for me. They longed for me. Didnae kin of this poor beauty do the same in her time?

"'Tis no matter," he told her. "We shall ask the laird consult the druids for their aid in controlling your boon. Surely you need only guidance so you may use your power and cross time as well as distance."

"I don't know if I should go back to the future now." She climbed off the rock and walked toward the Stone Forest, stopping to reach out and touch the branch of a willow. Her fingers trembled when she pressed them against the reddish-brown hardened bark. "What if someone finds out what I can do? How do I explain that a ring from a magic Scottish clan turned me into like this thing from a space show? Won't they instantly Area 51 me? Not only that, but why do I suddenly understand a totally old tribal language? I mean, I barely get English right half the time, you know?"

Julianne drew her hand back, a dark red stone leaf in her fingers. Long and narrow, with a graceful curve to it, its stem ended in a tiny curl. She smoothed her thumb over the textured surface and tucked it in her pocket.

"It's not fair," she told the stone willow. "I can't handle all this. What the heck did I ever do anyway? I never cheated on Mitch. I never lied to anyone. Okay, I didn't say stuff when I should have, but everyone does that. If I ever told Eva that after all those dye jobs her hair looked like an old scouring pad, and that red lipstick she loved kept getting on her front teeth, that just would have made her cry."

Shaw followed but kept his distance as she continued muttering under her breath. He ached with the need to comfort her, but knew no words that would offer her any solace. Julianne had left her life behind in the future, one that included a husband and a home. Everything familiar to her would not come into existence for another nine centuries. He would never know Eva or dye jobs or lipstick. He had nothing to give her but more sadness and perhaps terror.

"This is what it's like for you, too, isn't it?" She stopped and regarded him. "Being here, but not being a part of all this because of your ink. Always having to stay back from your family so they don't freak. I don't have a family anymore, but it's the same for me. Having no one and nothing you can count on but yourself is tragic and lonely."

He could see the glistening tracks of tears winding down her cheeks. He wanted to wipe them away, in truth kiss them away, but some part of him knew that was not what she needed. She spoke to him from the heart; he needed to do the same.

"Your family, they've all died, then?" When she nodded he held out his hand. "You're no' alone, my lady. You may depend on me until such time as you no longer need or wish such aid." As she started to shake her head he stepped closer. "'Tis only fair, for you saved me in your time. Now 'tis my turn, aye?"

"You've got enough on your plate. I mean, you don't need more trouble," she told him. "Besides, I can't stay."

"I wish share in your trouble," he told her softly, holding out his hand. "'Tis of no consequence if you choose go or remain. Rely on me, my merrow lass."

Uncertainty filled her eyes. "If you totally don't mind…until I figure out how to control the transducer thing, if you would stick by me, and maybe talk through stuff with me, that would help."

As she joined hands with him, he ignored the clenching in his gut and the judders of sensation from the physical contact. She had asked of him what he would have done regardless. She trusted him with the enormity of this boon she had been gifted as well. Julianne might weep and tremble, but even in the depths of terror she had spine and sense.

Aye, and I'm half in love with her already. He could not have her, of course; the beast made anything more than a night of facking impossible for him.

"I'll do the same for you," she said, trailing her fingertips over his marked skin, leaving a swath of fine, fiery heat in their wake. "If your dark thing likes me that much, maybe it'll listen to me."

"'Tisnae what the beast desires." Even as he said that Shaw winced. "Dinnae offer the facking thing any part of yourself, my lady. 'Tis like a crazed animal."

She stepped closer, curling her arm against his to keep hold of his hand. That pressed his forearm into the sweet valley between her chebs, which seemed to swell on either side.

"What does it want, Chief?" she asked, her lips curving as she kept stroking his skinwork.

In that moment the frigid black inside him melted into a pooling, drenching weight so heavy and hot Shaw would not have been surprised if his body had sprouted flames. His cock, which ever rose to any occasion he wished use its broad girth, hardened so fast it seemed determined to tear through his trews so it might thrust into her lovely quim. He released her hand, and took a step back to break all contact with her.

"Dinnae provoke the evil in me, lass," he said, his voice so hoarse now the words seemed to sift out of him on a wave of sand. "For I reckon it wants you as much as I do."

Instead of cowering or running away Julianne walked up to him and put her arms around his neck.

"Good," she said, astounding him. "We can use that, maybe, to get through to it. Doesn't it have a name?"

Shaw knew his hands were pulling her closer. It seemed his will had crumbled, and all he could think of in the moment was how sweetly she fit against him, her long body nothing as he'd expected. She had the firmness of muscle instead of the soft flesh of most female mortals on the island. She also looked directly at him as she uttered such ridiculous schemes, and he suspected the beast could not only hear but understand her meaning as well. Yet instead of lusting for the taste of her flesh and blood, the darkness only hummed with a strange pleasure, like some pampered pet.

The facking thing likes her.

"Why should you name the beast, Mistress Scott?" Shaw asked her, longing for what he did not know.

"Quit being uber polite. It's not you, and it's good manners to call someone or something by its name, assuming it has one." She tilted her head. "Your eyes are growing darker. That means it's looking at me, right?"

"'Tis seeing you through my eyes. I yet look upon you." He didn't know if she would understand the difference.

"I know you're two separate things. Beings. Whatever." Her expression softened. "It's okay, Chief. We'll give it some time and I'll be nice to it. I think it needs to get to know me, too."

As he walked back to the stronghold with her, Shaw waited for the beast to knot and snarl inside him, as it always did after awakening. Yet for the first time since the ritual, it only lay inside him like a sleepy cat napping before a hearth.

Could she somehow tame the beast, and persuade it to leave him on its own?

"Wait, my lady," he said as she went toward the stairs leading to her bed chamber. "I've an idea."

Serving the MacMar Clan as their healer caused no end of troubles for Duncan, whose mortal weakness caused him for a time to suffer the same symptoms as any wounded or ill mortal he touched. He told himself it made him understand his patients better than an ordinary healer could, and perhaps it did. Yet after centuries of living each day as if perpetually sick or injured, he sometimes wondered if his weakness had been deliberately inflicted on him as an eternal punishment for some great wrong he'd done in an earlier life.

Today he had only Briga and Gilla Tarney, a pair of elderly spinster sisters, to attend. For close to ninety years both enjoyed the same remarkable good health as the other mortals on Caladh, but their great age had finally brought a range of daily miseries to them. Their bodies, gnarled and frail now, plagued them with swollen joints, the constant ache of whirl bone, and wounds that took too long to heal.

"They've both the catalepsy now, my lord," their housemaid Cora reported when she came to the infirmary to summon him. "Neither will eat nor wake more than a few moments. If such goes on I fear they'll starve."

Now Duncan crouched down in front of Briga, who had a head of thick white hair and a face so wrinkled she seemed to be wearing a crumpled mask. Her body smelled warm and clean, but her breath had a strange, almost mossy odor to it. "Mistress Tarney, do you ken me?"

Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, but moved as if she could not focus. "Handsome lad. You're my swain."

"Aye, always." He took hold of her hand, gritting his teeth as a wave of aching pain and nausea swept over him. He instantly became dizzy as well. "What plagues you now, my sweet Briga?"

Her gaze darted for an instant at the housemaid before she yawned and groaned. "Naught, if you shall take me to bed."

Duncan forced a laugh as he stood. "You tempt me unbearably, my lady." To the maid he said, "Fetch some fresh water for me." He waited until Cora left before he asked Briga, "What did she, then?"

The old woman reached into her bodice and pulled out a kerchief tied around something. "I saw her steep this with our evening brew. I spat the stuff out in the privy, but 'tis kept Gilla asleep all night and the morn."

He went over to check the other sister's pulse, which barely beat at her wrist, and then quickly unknotted the kerchief, revealing a dried root of a plant he recognized, with a strong mossy odor like that coming from her breath.

"'Tisnae poison," he murmured to Briga as the younger woman returned with a brimming bucket. "Cora, tell me of what you're using as medicine for the ladies."

The housemaid set down the water and then knelt before him, her whole body shaking. "Please, my lord, I meant no harm. The all-heal, 'twas to help calm them and end their pain."

"You gave them too much, lass," Duncan told her. "The root, 'tis too powerful for elders like these ladies. Such not only put them asleep, it near stopped their hearts from beating."

Cora looked horrified. "My mam said 'twould only do them good."

He thought for a moment, recalling the broad, scowling face of Cora's màthair , Angalan, who sold her mostly harmless herbal remedies to the more superstitious villagers. She had never liked her daughter working at the stronghold, which was why Duncan had sent the maid to live with the Tarney sisters. She also distrusted him for reasons he did not know but suspected had to do with his Fae sire. Whenever he crossed Angalan's path, she spat on the ground and made a protective gesture over herself.

"Dinnae give Briga or Gilla any remedy I've no' first seen," he told Cora. "Else you end them instead of aid."

From the sisters' cottage he walked across the village to a large, well-kept house outside which several mortals waited. They quickly scattered as he approached, making Duncan wonder what gossip his mortal rival had of late been spreading about him. He knocked once on the door and stepped inside, where the stink of burning rosemary made him grimace.

"You need wait outside until I call for the next." The short, plump figure of Angalan appeared in the passage ahead of him. She stopped and glowered when their gazes met. "What want you, son of Mar?"

"You used your daughter so you might treat the Tarney sisters with valerian root," he said. "They're too old for such a strong dose. Do you wish them dead?"

"Oh, aye, 'tis why I've spent my life as a healer, so I might slay at will," Angalan told him, planting her hands on her hips. "The root, 'twillnae harm those old hags."

Sometimes Duncan wondered why he tried so hard to co-exist with the surly herbalist. "Drugging them asleep may prove fatal. Their hearts, they're too fragile at this age."

The herbalist made a contemptuous sound. "As if you might see what abides beneath their sagging chebs." She made a shooing gesture. "Begone with you."

"Angalan." When she looked at him he saw the depth of her anger. "I dinnae mean cross you, nor question your methods. 'Tis but truth I offer."

"Truth then." She marched up to him, tilting her head back to hold his gaze. "You may come and use your Fae magic so you may heal whomever you desire, but where hide you when the elders come begging for relief in the night? Cora wept as she told me of the Tarneys spending every evening moaning abed. They're so crippled by the whirl bone now naught may bring on their slumber but valerian root."

The heat of her words seemed to scorch him. "'Tis other remedies safer for the sisters. You've but send word to me, and I shall come and treat them."

"Cora sent word three times to Dun Ard before she came seeking my aid," Angalan said flatly. "I dinnae ken who attends your messages, MacMar, but I reckon they're burning more than they deliver."

"I shall return before nightfall to treat the Tarneys for their pain," he told her. "And I shall learn who has kept the summons from me."

"Do as you wish." The herbalist sniffed. "Only ken if Cora begs my aid again, I shallnae shirk my duties."

On his way back, Duncan's dizziness and aches eased, but his temper flared with unfamiliar heat. He'd had no summons from outside Dun Ard for more than a week now, and if Cora had not come to the stronghold herself, the Tarney sisters might have died without him the wiser. If he could not attend to the sick on the island, then superstitious mortals like Angalan would end up treating and possibly killing the helpless.

In the great hall at Dun Ard, he found Fletcher overseeing the cleaning of one of the hearths, and pulled him to one side. "Who attends the summons for me from outside the stronghold?"

The seneschal frowned. "Any vassal or clansman given the message, I reckon. Why?"

Duncan told him about the issue with the Tarney sisters, and Angalan's accusation. "I might excuse one or two messages gone astray, no' all for the last week. Someone wishes me no' leave the stronghold."

"Why should anyone interfere? You're the clan's only healer." Fletcher rubbed the back of his neck. "Give me time, and I'll ferret out the cause."

In the infirmary Duncan pulled out the ingredients he needed to make a salve as well as a tincture for the elderly sisters. Although it would not alleviate all their pain, it would calm their aches and allow them to sleep a few hours without endangering their fragile organs. As he rendered some beeswax and honey to serve as the base of the salve, he smelled a dank saltiness and glanced over his shoulder to see the doors of his cabinet standing open.

Since Duncan always kept them locked he frowned as he walked over to close them. "I dinnae need more trouble today. Who got into you?"

Ambre and bronze lights exploded in his face, knocking him backward onto the floor. Something took hold of him and flipped him over, shoving his face into the stone, and then the sound of a million leaves rustling rushed through his head, along with a low, menacing voice.

Where abides the child, Halfling?

Duncan struggled to push himself upright, but then the sting of needle-sharp teeth pierced the back of his neck. He resisted the impulse to reach back and crush the thing, for if it fought back it could bite through his spine.

"I cannae tell you what you wish ken if I'm dead." The sound of lips smacking disgusted him. "Or if you drink all my blood."

Your blood assures me you know nothing, son of the sea.

He staggered to his feet, spinning around in time to see something small and brown fly out through the window slit. Touching the back of his neck, he detected tiny wounds in his flesh, and his palm came away with spots of blood on it. He then went over to the cabinet, and saw on the floor beneath it the broken bits of what appeared to be a shattered golden ball.

That was when Duncan knew what had fallen from the cabinet, hatched and attacked him. "Och, you wee fiend. You'll no' hunt bairns on our island."