by Jane Stain
“So yeah, Brian called me Priestess, and then later, the elite crew of professors met with me and Tavish — they’d promised to be in touch, and believe me, they are. They included me in his assignment to get a sword, so I’m pretty sure they feel like they can order me around just like they can order Tavish around.”
“Wait a sec. I’m confused. How come they can order Tavish around? He wasn’t a student at Celtic.”
Kelsey made a face that meant ‘I’m an idiot.’
“Right, right, right. Okay. Generations ago, Tavish’s ancestor made some kind of deal with the Druids. It’s convoluted, but right now all you have to know is because of that deal, he’s their slave. Well, and it’s their power — their magic — that allows him to time travel. Are you with me so far?”
“Uh, I want to say that’s ridiculous, but…” Sasha gestured at the dream-world version of Eileen’s house and the two of them sitting in their jeans and T-shirts. “Under the circumstances, yeah, I guess I am with you so far.”
“Good. So the reason they make him time travel is to get things for them.”
“This is getting good. What kind of things – and why don’t the druids just time travel themselves and get these things? Time traveling’s fun. You’d think they’d be all over it.”
“Last time, the thing we were told to get was a magic scepter. This time, it’s a magic sword. And when Tavish uses their ring to time travel, he comes back to our time the instant he left it. No time passes while he’s gone. So time travel makes you seem to age faster in your own time. That’s why Tavish looks five years older than me. He’s been here in Eileen’s time for five years these past three months of our time.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. So anyway, the druids don’t want to age that fast in their own time, so they pop in now and then, but mostly they make others do the time traveling for them. Mostly. Oh, and when Tavish and I left for our time?”
“Yeah?”
“How long were we gone, from your point of view?”
“Half an hour?”
“Yeah, and that was the time it took us to walk to the end of the middle corridor and back. But we spent two months back in our time—”
“Two months! That’s longer than I usually go without calling my mother. She’ll be worried.”
“Nah, I covered for you.”
“What did you say?”
“That you met a guy.”
They looked at each other and grinned — Sasha sheepishly and Kelsey teasingly.
“Okay, and my obvious question is why would Tavish give the Druids a magic scepter — but oh yeah, he’s their slave. Hm. That kind of sucks. Was it at least a benign magic scepter?”
“I hope so. All I could tell was that it was magic. Curiously, Tavish couldn’t tell that. With the sword we’re looking for now, the elite crew told me it was magic ahead of time. And that brings me to the other things you need to understand.” Kelsey held up her right hand, with her class ring on it. “Brian the Druid called me a priestess when he saw this ring. I’m assuming he meant I’m a Druid priestess. And the Druids Tavish reports to back home are the elite crew of professors at Celtic. They’re real Druids who can use real magic – and who have slaves.”
“About that last part. Tavish is really a slave? As in he has to do what they say or they whip him and stuff?”
“No. As in he magically has to do what they say. Period.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah.”
“Kelsey —”
But her friend held up her hand, indicating she was not going to hear Sasha’s advice.
“I know it’s not the brightest thing to do, being with someone who’s a slave to others. But he’s the one for me. End of story. Not going to discuss that.”
Sasha felt like she had to try again. This was madness.
“But —”
“Sasha, it’s not very smart of you to be flirting with Seumas. It can only lead to one or both of you getting your hearts broken. You’ll be going back to our time and living there, right? I mean, I can’t see you settling anyplace that doesn’t have a hairdryer, much less no running water. I know I’m right, but I want to hear you say it.”
Sasha held up her hand the exact same way Kelsey had before.
“Okay. You made your point. I don’t want to hear your advice, so I can see how you don’t want to hear mine.”
Kelsey drew her knees up in front of her, and suddenly her feet were on another chair that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Yeah. So anyway, perhaps all the professors at our university are Druids, but for sure the elite crew are. And Druids do evil things like enslave people. And at least one Druid from eight hundred years ago thinks we’re also Druids because we wear these rings.”
“But how can we be Druids? Druids can do magic.”
“But we can do magic, Sasha. I can dream walk, and you have second sight.”
Kelsey sat there, quietly meeting Sasha’s gaze, visibly and patiently waiting for what she had said to sink in.
Sasha’s rational mind fought it for the longest time. How ridiculous. But of course finally she had to accept it for the truth, just as she had accepted time travel. At long last she spoke.
“So where’s the sword you’re supposed to get?”
Kelsey got up, and suddenly Sasha was standing next to her, without having moved.
“I don’t know where it is, but I do know someone who probably does. Come on. Tavish and I were going to show you where the tower was anyway. Might as well do it now.”
What happened next was one of the weirdest things Sasha ever experienced. She started to walk toward the door, but quick as thought, she and Kelsey were at the castle entrance that she had seen while they walked from the underground exit into the castle town.
Just a dream. Just a dream.
Once she got that settled in her mind, Sasha paused and admired a much larger and more fortified castle than was still here in her time, before entering.
“Seems like a week ago that I saw this entrance as we walked by, but for me, it’s only been a few hours.”
Kelsey nodded sympathetically.
“And you’ve only time traveled once. I’m on my fifth time – been here and back, here and back, and now here again. Dream walking was very weird for me at first too, but two and a half months later, it’s almost second nature. Don’t try to move.” She laughed. “And I’ll try to quit suggesting you move. Just stand here with me while I move us around. Pretend you’re in Willy Wonka’s great glass elevator. You’ll get far less disoriented.”
Sasha tried it, and as long as she concentrated on just standing there and watching things go by, it worked. They went into a banquet hall first, complete with iron chandeliers. Then down several stone hallways with tapestries on the walls depicting natural scenes and finally up a long stairway that spiraled up a corner tower.
Kelsey paused before they could see the top.
“Now, the reason we were going to show you this before was so that you don’t come up this way in real life. It’s not very likely that you’d come here by accident, but we wanted to be sure. Do you think you can manage to not find your way up here?” Her friend smiled at how oddly she had phrased that.
Sasha nodded.
“Yeah. I think I’ve got it mapped out.”
Kelsey looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Hm, I’m going to make you invisible, so don’t say anything and he won’t even know you’re with me.”
“O-kay.”
Kelsey laughed softly.
And then Sasha looked down and saw the stairs where her long skirts should be. Panic surged through her, making her heart race and her breath catch. She gulped in several deep breaths.
Just a dream. Just a dream.
She got ahold of herself just in time to float up the last curve in the stone stairs without being able to see herself. She had to resist the urge to go ‘Who-oo-oo-oo’ like a ghost.
And then they were up at the to
p of the stone tower in a dead-end stone hallway with a stone ceiling in front of the tower-room door. It was solid oak and had a little window at face height with three iron bars going up and down.
And with his face to the window, fists holding the iron bars, was a man who could only be Brian the Druid. He wore a white robe and had long white hair.
“Priestess! Ye hae come tae see me.”
Kelsey made an oddly shaped bronze sword appear in her hand.
“Brian, tell me where this sword is. Tell me now.”
Brian got a look of wonder on his face as he gazed at the sword.
“Galdus?”
Kelsey leaned in toward Brian with visible eagerness.
“Who’s Galdus? Is this his sword? Ye ken where it is, dae ye nay. Where is it?”
Brian cackled like an old woman.
“Dae tell me what it’s like in yer time, Priestess. Surely ye hae an artifact from then ye can trade me for this one oor colleagues o the future hae sent ye back for.”
That didn’t sound like a good idea. Sasha prayed that Kelsey didn’t fall for it.
But she appeared to be considering it.
Brian pressed his advantage.
“Aw, I am na gaun'ae show it tae anybody up here in this tower. I just want tae see it, tae know some aught o the future.” His eyes looked eager and kind of deranged. “How dae ye keep yer skin sae smooth and yer hands sae callous free? Does everyone in the future use magic, with nary a need for work? Tell me it is sae!”
Kelsey nodded slowly, and the look on her face was… apologetic. As if it were her fault that he was born in the wrong century and didn’t have all our modern conveniences.
“Aye, ‘tis now magic, but ‘tis true. We hae machines that dae all the hard work for us. They dae the threshing and the sowing and the harvest. They bring us water and heat it for us and take away oor waste. They transport us, even fly us. And they build other machines. It truly is a wonder, and I never appreciatit it until I came back tae now and saw juist how hard life can be for the workers, especially in the fields. But na everyone has all these things. Only aboot one percent o the world does. I’m sae blessed, and I ought tae be more grateful.”
Brian’s face wore a mixture of enthusiasm and puzzlement.
“How sae, lass? What is a machine?”
Sasha was puzzled too. Kelsey had said this man was dangerous, so why was she trying so hard to explain the future to him? Why did she care?
It wasn’t like her friend to not notice when someone was leading her away from the subject she had come to discuss. In this case, the sword. It was very tempting to speak up and ask these questions, but maybe being hidden would turn out to be an advantage, so she remained silent.
Kelsey was uncharacteristically bland and unanimated. As she spoke, she got closer and closer to Brian, until their noses were almost touching.
“A machine is a slave that doesna live, made o materials mined from the yard and powerit by what may and all be magic, I have sae little understanding o how it works.”
As she spoke, Brian’s arms slithered out of the opening in the door through the bars like snakes, cold and slow.
Sasha’s breath caught when she realized what he was going to do.
He looked right at Sasha and winked at her.
She screamed.
Kelsey startled out of whatever trance Brian had put her in. In one continuous movement, she pushed off the door, grabbed Sasha’s hand, and blinked them out of the tower and clean back to their own time.
Sasha found herself sitting in a trailer she’d never been in before, but it looked familiar. As she spoke, she offhandedly realized this was the blue on blue interior she and Kelsey had picked out. Mr. Blair had gotten it for them. It was nice.
But far from being idle, their conversation was more of the panicked variety.
“Kelsey, he put you in some kind of trance. I thought you were going to open the door and let him out, you were acting so off. How can he put you in a trance inside of a dream you control?”
Kelsey shuddered and hugged herself.
“Obviously, I’m a lot less powerful a dream walker than I imagined. I knew Brian had the power to put people under a trance. He’s made Tavish sleep before. But I had no idea he could do that inside a dream. We’re lucky to have gotten away.”
Sasha nodded. Noticing that her hands were shaking, she sat on them.
“You also need to know you were not able to hide me from him. He looked right at me and winked before he tried to grab you. That’s what made me scream, it was so creepy.”
Kelsey bit her lip and looked all around.
“I hope we’re safe from him here. I hope he can’t follow us to our time in the dream world.”
Sasha shrugged and shook her head.
“If he can do that, then we’re screwed. There’s no sense in worrying about it. Our bodies are back at Eileen’s house asleep. I think we should send our consciousnesses there to take care of them.”
Kelsey was looking at Sasha with respect now.
“You’re right. I don’t know why I thought he would give us an answer. You should know that the reason he’s locked up is because he tried to grab me before in a dream. I’m so stupid. I keep wanting to take shortcuts instead of doing actual research and exploring. And those are the things I went to school to learn how to do.” She was nearly crying by the end of this.
Sasha took both of Kelsey’s hands in hers.
“Hey, hey, hey. None of that now. Very few people would remain logical in a situation such as ours.”
Kelsey opened her mouth to argue and then opened her eyes wide and looked at Sasha and burst out laughing. Sasha joined her in laughter, and they squeezed hands and let go.
Kelsey stood up straight once more and spoke with humor.
“You’re right. We should go back to our sleeping bodies and keep them company. Who knows what evil things could happen to us if we left them there too long.”
Even though what she said was true, it struck both of them so funny that they dissolved in fits of laughter again. Which felt much better than crying.
While they laughed, another woman their age came out of one of the bedrooms, dressed for sleep in an old T-shirt and ratty old sweats. She was in the middle of redoing her long black ponytail, and she opened the fridge with her knee and bent over to sip through a sports bottle straw before she greeted Sasha. Her eyes were bleary, but they were the most beautiful shade of light brown, almost yellow.
“Hi, I’m Amber. You must be Sasha. Guess you’ll be wanting your room back, huh.”
Kelsey made an ‘oops’ face and gestured toward one of the bedrooms, and Amber was gone.
“Sorry about that. I must’ve walked us into her dream somehow. She was Tomas’s girlfriend back when we all hung out together at the faire —”
Sasha held up her hand to stop Kelsey’s story.
“Tell me later. Let’s get back to Eileen’s.”
Although Kelsey had been right in what she told Brian about how easy life was in the modern world, Sasha thought there were charms to the old world. She couldn’t wait to get back to it, finish sleeping for the night, and wake up there. And seeing Seumas again was only…
Well, let’s be honest. Seeing Seumas again was nine tenths of why she was so anxious to get back. She really shouldn’t dote too much on him. Kelsey was right. There was no way she could live in the past with him. She could enjoy looking at him in the meantime though, right?
Sia (6)
Seumas, Tavish, and Alfred left Eileen’s house together: Alfred headed toward his rooms in the castle, Seumas and Tavish to the barracks. It was dead night, but there was plenty of light from the moon. All the shops were closed except for the two taverns. Light and raucous laughter spilled out of those.
Seumas felt sure Tavish would approve of him as a mate for his clanswoman Sasha. The man had come to the castle town six months ago — a complete stranger in need of work and lodging — and Seumas had taken a
chance on him when no one else would.
And come to think of it, the man’s appearance had been under suspicious conditions. How could he have forgotten about that?
~*~
Seumas was walking out along the underground tunnel from duty at the stone docks below when he found a stranger wandering around looking at the patterned carvings in the walls as if they were fascinating — which he supposed they were.
As soon as the man saw him, he planted a grateful look on his face.
“How blessed I am that ye came along. Can ye help me out? I’m lost, ye see.”
Seumas looked up and down the tunnel. The only way in here that wasn’t tightly guarded required crawling up through a narrow passageway that started under the sea, and the man was bone dry. Couldn’t have been in here wandering around long enough to dry off, could he?
Best to be direct. And put a little fear in the man. He was much too carefree.
Seamus scowled at him.
“How did ye get doon here?”
The man shook his head and made a funny face that vaguely resembled bafflement but was too dramatic by far. Was he a player? Rare for one of those to be found alone without his troupe.
“I was exploring the caves ootside and I just wanderit in here. Now I canna find ma way oot.”
Seumas started walking toward the nearest exit, and the man fell in alongside him. He wasn’t sure yet what he was going to do with the man — take him to his uncle for questioning, most likely. If he was a player and had a troupe nearby, that would be a treat.
“I canna see any way ye could hae come in here withoot us knowing. All o the ways in are guarded. Are ye sure that’s what happened?”
The man smiled at him. Smiled. And looked smug.
“Aye. Na all o the ways in are guarded.”
“Nay?”
“Nay.”
They were at the guard post now, and it was the custom to introduce whoever you were walking with, if they were a stranger. Seumas turned toward the man.
“Tell Dubh and Luthais yer name.”
The man bowed at them theatrically, which neither of them had probably ever seen. Seumas only knew it was a theatrical bow because he’d seen a traveling troupe of players while he was being fostered up at Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire. Aye, he was definitely a player, or at least had been, in his younger days. He was going on thirty. Bit old to be traveling alone.
