The Tirnano - Book 1 'FINN'

by Peter Emmerson

  “No-no, of course not,” the Yank agreed, and Jeanne couldn’t deny another internal flutter at the disappointment in his words.

  “Call me when you are settled. I think the best we can do is, umm; - once you are ready to leave, I’ll try and arrange for a private flight to take you up from Oklahoma and over the border into Canada. The British government’s got a little more clout up there, and we should be able to get the little fellow through without too much problem. If I remember rightly there’s a RAF section based in Gander.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tom replied, joviality back as if the fleeting moment of tenderness had never been. “I’ll take good care of our baby.”

  Our baby? Don’t even go there! “See that you do,” she shot back smartly and hung up.

  Jeanne tossed and turned for a while, thoughts screaming through her mind, that man is screwing up my head. Unable to go back to sleep, she picked up John Wilson’s journal.

  See if this can send me off.

  14.

  OKLAHOMA

  International Airport.

  Tulsa OK.

  April 2011

  Tom knew disaster had struck the moment he cleared the temporary hallway leading flight passengers from plane to secure airport sections beyond. Down the short hallway, through the revolving doors, he could see Wintergreen and Macy Evans, minus the twins, encircled between three dark suited men and one capable looking, likewise clad woman. Admittedly, the youngest of the men in black was keeping more of a silent watch on slim, petite Macy than their surroundings, but his three companions bore an intimidating, eyes-straight-ahead stare warning others to keep back.

  Inwardly, Tom groaned. Great, the Feds have stepped in. Just what we need... However, his annoyance at this latest loop of events was temporarily shattered by Winn’s joyous squeal.

  “Uncle Tom,” she shrieked upon catching sight of him. Breaking a ring of dark suits, she dashed forward, stopping just before the invisible line, the airport security guard with the tazer ensured nobody crossed.

  Tom felt an answering smile break across his face. His pace quickened, belying the fatigue brought on by hours of flying and three delays in the international air voyage. Despite his affections for the twins and Macy, Winn held a special place in his heart - always had. Something about that haywire red hair, those silly red-rimmed glasses, and that bright, eager mind: always inquiring, always hoping, and always dreaming. Were it channelled in the right route, she would make a fabulous scientist. Girl like his Winn would never give up, not until all the facts were right there in her hands.

  Or, so he used to think, back in the days before Boggarts, time travelling, and fairytales come true. Now... Maybe Winn was the smart one all along, he thought, even as he crossed the line to envelope his honorary niece in an embrace that lifted her clear off the floor.

  “Uncle Tom, you came!” the sixteen year old cried, voice muffled by his shirt collar. “We were so excited when Mom and Dad said they’d called you. I was fixing to go right out of my mind!”

  Setting her down, Tom brushed her cheek with a quick kiss. “Not half as excited as I am to see you, hon,” he laughed.

  Now if only Jeanne would show even a fraction of this enthusiasm, maybe we’d have a chance.

  Shoving away the unbidden reflection, he looped an arm around the teen’s shoulders. “Let’s go see Macy.”

  Despite her new grown-up persona, and the attention from the young black suit, the college sophomore couldn’t restrain her own wide, groundbreaking smile.

  “Uncle Tom,” she laughed, permitting herself to be enfolded in his embrace. “So good to see you.”

  “How’re you, sugar?” Tom inquired, allowing himself to be swept back into his Midwestern roots.

  “Good, you?” Macy leaned back to study him. “You look tired.”

  “I am. You know how flying can be.”

  “Yep. But you still got an hour’s drive before we make it back to the house.”

  Both girls giggled at his exaggerated groan. “Remind me again why your parents decided to raise you kids way out in the middle of nowhere?”

  “They probably hoped to dig up some spectacular Indian artefacts,” Macy quipped, “but all we ever found was a couple of arrowheads and a piece or two of equipment on that old cavalry trail in the woods behind the house.”

  “Well, that’s better than nothing,” Tom remarked absently, focus already switching to the girls’ companions.

  “Dr. Tom Pinkerton,” he announced by way of introduction, extending his hand to the nearest of the group - who happened to be a tall, broad shouldered African American with a gold earring and a snake tattoo squiggling its way down the side of his neck and into his shirt.

  Former snake-eater? Tom wondered.

  “Case,” the fellow offered, along with a brief, bone-shattering squeeze and a terse nod of the head.

  Noting Tom’s inquisitive glance at the rest, 'Case' took the hint. “Shelby, O’Rourke, and Johnson,” he offered, nodding his shaven head at the other black suits in turn.

  Tom noted the names, adding mental classifications: Shelby, group’s one girl. O’Rourke, muscle bound ex-linebacker, and Johnson, Macy’s latest admirer.

  “Nice to meet you folks,” he said aloud.

  “I don’t think it is,” Winn mumbled next to his left elbow.

  Even Tom was shocked by that. The dreamy teen wasn’t typically prone to rudeness.

  “Winn!” Macy hissed. “Shut up.”

  “Well you said as much or more too. Remember?” Winn glowered.

  Macy’s cheeks turned a shade so bright nobody would’ve ever suspected Maybelline. A colour that high had to be real.

  Interesting, Tom thought, noting the young woman’s swift glance at ‘Johnson,’ whom for all intents and purposes she’d been ignoring. Interest returned? Whatever happened to Chad?

  He’d no chance to ask. Case, apparently the group leader, took over.

  “Histrionics aside,” he rumbled with a stern warning glance for Wintergreen, “the young lady’s boyfriend was right to call us in. Secrets like this shouldn’t be kept from the government.”

  Winn’s glare was absolutely, uncharacteristically rebellious. “It wasn’t the government’s secret,” she snapped. “It was ours! We found it. I’ve been taking care of it. I-”

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Before matters got wholly out of hand, Tom figured he’d better step in. “Winn, you can tell me the whole story on the way back to the house, okay? We’ll figure out what to do,” he added in a clandestine whisper. “Trust Uncle Tom, ‘k?”

  “Okay,” she relented, but her glare at Case didn’t diminish.

  In awkward silence, the seven left to retrieve Tom’s baggage and head on out to the parking lot and the black suits’ waiting van.

  15.

  NY-MO

  Cherokee County.

  April 2011

  Shelby drove. Case took shotgun.

  It was Macy who called the back seat, then manoeuvred for both her little sister and adopted uncle to sit with her. Johnson didn’t appear happy with the situation, but Tom noted the Fed managed to wrangle his way into the seat just above and across from her, where he could steal sly glances from out the corner of his eye.

  “Now,” he said quietly, once the van was speeding down 69 and the roar of the road mostly covered the sound of their talk. “Tell me everything, starting with the finding of the Boggart.”

  “Boggart?” In the intermittent orange and blue flashes of passing street lights, Tom saw Winn’s nose wrinkle. “It’s not a Boggart, it’s a Troll.”

  “Troll is another word for Boggart,” he clarified.

  “Says who?”

  “Says - says -” she’d have no idea who John Wilson or Paul, Jeanne’s son were. “Never mind. Just tell the story, please.”

  Macy, generally the bigger talker of the two, took over. In quiet, clipped sentences - and several glances at the black suit who was pretending not to be listen
ing, she relayed the twins’ finding of the creature and Winn’s identifying of it. Calling their parents had been her idea; Winn, she conveyed scornfully, had been against the idea, wanting to keep the discovery all to themselves.

  “Which I should have,” Winn leaned around Tom to fire at her sister. “If we hadn’t told anybody, your dumb boyfriend would never have found out and these guys -” A significant glower at Johnson and company - “wouldn’t have interfered.”

  “It wasn’t my fault Chad leaked the news,” Macy remonstrated, also leaning around Tom, who was feeling decidedly uncomfortable at being placed squarely - and literally - in the middle of their sibling squabble.

  “It was your fault! If you hadn’t had the jerk of a boyfriend in the first place -”

  “Well, pardon me for being a normal human being and wanting some romance in my life!”

  “Now ladies...” Deciding enough was enough, Tom interposed himself between the sisters. “Whose fault it is - that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, we’ve got the creature and now we’ve got them.” He nodded towards the Feds occupying the seats up ahead. “What we need to figure out now is what we’re going to do.”

  Winn squinted at him in the darkness. “I thought that’s what you were here for, Uncle Tom,” said the teen innocently. “You’re the grownup. Aren’t you supposed to know?”

  Again, inwardly, Tom released a little groan. Drat. She’s right.

  Sometimes being the grownup in charge wasn’t much fun. Now that the Feds were here, Tom felt as if he were in over his head. Navigating high profile, top secret waters had never been his specialty. Luckily though, he realized with a silent little chuckle, I know somebody perfectly capable of stepping in to assist. We might be an ocean apart, but she is just a phone call away...

  ~

  “Here he is, Uncle Tom,” Winn announced, dark eyes sober. “When we approach, be real still and quiet. I don’t want you scaring him.”

  His honorary niece’s uncustomary seriousness was almost enough to make the anthropologist chuckle aloud. This was not his dreamy-eyed, nose-stuck-in-a-book Winn. Just like that, she’d assumed a new persona, almost a maternal aspect, physically blocking my entrance into the barn’s hayloft in order to make me swear I’d do nothing to upset her friend.

  “You don’t have to worry, hon,” he reassured the teen. “Uncle Tom’s not an idiot, okay? And let’s not forget I was called in by the British government from the first when they discovered the other Boggarts. I know my way around, alright?”

  Winn’s dubious expression told him she remained unconvinced. Maybe informing Wintergreen and Macy about his work across the ocean hadn’t been the smartest idea he’d ever had. While Winn was sceptical that his creatures could really be the same as hers, Macy had gotten upset.

  “You mean there’s more of these...things...running around?” she’d practically shouted.

  Should’ve asked Jeanne first, he repented. But he’d hated to bug her. After all, I’ll have to call her soon enough to inform her of this latest twist: involvement by the Feds. If she doesn’t already know...

  And while the idea of speaking to his attractive colleague put a twist in his stomach - a good kind of twist - the notion of letting her know the way the cookie crumbled back home didn’t. Jeanne had enough of her plate without handling this too. Unfortunately, given her position in the case, if she wanted this newest Boggart to unite with Finn and Kesha, it would be up to her to pull strings and make it happen.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  Winn’s quiet question broke into Tom’s stream of thought. Pulled abruptly to the present, he recognized with a jolt his surroundings - metal pole barn, musty straw beneath his feet, a chicken cackling in the nesting box to his left, the ever present drone of insects harmonizing with melodic birdsong from outside.

  I forgot how noisy nature is out here in Indian Territory.

  “Sure, honey,” he answered the girl, flashing a quick smile. “I was born ready.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. Arriving at the Evans’ spacious log home set deep in the heart of an Oklahoma forest last night, the first thing he’d wanted was a bed. Thankfully, the girls were tired too; catching up and visiting the Boggart could wait till morning, all agreed. What the Feds did for the night he neither knew nor cared. Undoubtedly, Johnson would’ve liked being assigned Macy’s personal bodyguard, but Case, the team captain, was having none of that.

  After Tom went upstairs to the guest bedroom, he’d seen nothing more of the black suits until tromping back downstairs this morning to find Shelby in the kitchen, making coffee. “Morning, ma’am,” he’d greeted the cute, twenty-something agent. To which she responded with a very pleasant, very cheerful grunt. That was the most he’d gotten out of her. From his observations, Case was the only one allowed to talk. Not that he did a fat lot of it. Mostly gave orders.

  O’Rourke, the former linebacker, accompanied them now. According to Case, somebody had to be on hand whenever ‘the visitor’- as he termed the Boggart - was being seen. Probably, knowing the Feds, they wouldn’t have let any outsiders’ visit the little guy at all, except for the fact that it’d kicked up such a fuss when their doctors and scientists tried to examine him. Nobody except Winn could get close to him, he refused to eat for anybody but her, and so now the team of ‘experts,’ fearing the Boggart would cause itself harm, were content to jealously hang back and watch Winn work her special magic.

  Tom was excited to watch her work it now. Unlocking the padlocked wooden door, missing enough slats to permit daylight and fresh air, Winn called a soft greeting-“Hey there, Ny-mo. It’s me, Winn. How’ya doin’ this morning, huh?”

  When she moved aside enough for Tom to edge in and take a look, he did. A moment for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness, then he spotted the visitor. The anthropologist blinked. Did it again. Clearly, although related, this Boggart was no blood brother to those he and Jeanne had met across the sea.

  More like distant cousins, he thought.

  For one thing, this Boggart had to be at least a head taller than either of his and Jeanne’s. While it shared similar zebra-striped skin, its hair was long, coarse, and a shiny, unnatural black that gleamed in even the barn’s murky light. Its eyes glowed a soft gold. Like the female Boggart in Aberdeen, Kesha, this one’s hair was swept behind its shoulders and tied with a simple leather cord, even though a male, it showed no signs of having anything like Finn’s beautiful mane.

  Strange, bone earrings pierced its ears - four pairs to each ear and around its neck was some sort of bone carving dangling from a leather cord. Clothing was a suit of buckskin, reminiscent of American ‘mountain men’ or the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, Tonto, in the old western movies. Fringed and decorated with gaily coloured beads, the clothing was completed by soft moccasins on the creature’s feet and a flint hunting knife strapped to its waist.

  Why didn’t they remove that? Tom wondered, aghast. Could the weapon be putting his Winn in danger?

  Unafraid, the teen went right up to the creature who sat, feet crossed at the ankles, comfortably on a bale of straw. Halting a pace away, she stretched out both hands, offering them for the Boggart’s inspection. Tom’s jaw dropped to see the Boggart - just as had Finn and Kesha - extend a long, forked tongue that glided over Winn’s palms, knuckles and fingers. Tom’s jaw dropped further to see his niece - whom he’d never suspected of having too much ability - then start flashing her fingers and waving her arms, while simultaneously twisting her lips: mouthing words in silent communication.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” he muttered, shaking his head. “So it takes us days to realize we needed to send for a silent speech specialist, and here Winn’s figured out all on her own how to communicate with them.”

  Specialists and scientists, my foot. We should’ve called in the fantasy-loving kids from the start.

  16.

  MADDER JOHN

  Madder John’s Journal.

  Hinds
ight they say is a wonderful thing, but they also say that we should not look back in anger. Whoever came up with those two remarks I have no idea, in the end it matters not, but they collide with my experiences in many strange ways. They call me Mad John, hopefully not because I am mentally unhinged but because my first name (which I never use) is Madder and my middle name John, what my last name is has no relevance.

  I was once married, but my wife passed away over five years ago. Four years ago I walked out of my front door, drove my beat-up old Land Rover to my place of work; the beautiful Spittal of Glenmuick overlooking breathtaking views of Loch Muick.