Nancy almost choked on her stew at that. Her grandmother had mixed up names and dates, that was for sure, but nothing like this. “Excuse me?”
“The lake out there? That’s Loch Ness. At the bottom is what’s known as a burgh — a faerie mound. A kind of gateway between here and the Land of the Unaging.”
“A faerie mound.” Nancy was intrigued, despite herself. Her mother had often told her stories about faeries living in a kind of strange, mystical place that existed parallel to their own world… an alternative reality, a place where the rules of time and space were just a little bit different to the rules here. It seemed that Maggie knew similar stories. “At the bottom of … Loch Ness? Really?”
“Aye,” Maggie said. “The tall, glowing figures you met? They’re called the Sidhe. They’re Fair Folk — benevolent to humans, if a little difficult for us to understand. They find humanity interesting. Often come through and interact with them, in ways that make sense if you think about it enough. There’s a lot of stories, of course, about them stealing children and the like.”
“Oh, yes! Changeling children, and all that. My mother knew a thousand stories like that,” Nancy said, smiling a little. “I used to be frightened to walk home from school alone in case a Faerie came along and snatched me away.”
“They don’t take happy children,” Maggie said matter-of-factly. “Not the Seelie Fae.”
“The Seelie?”
“There are two — well, groups, I suppose. The politics of the Fae are hard to understand, especially from this side of the burgh. But the Seelie and the Unseelie, loosely speaking, are benevolent and malevolent forces. The Sidhe are Seelie and act only in the best interests of humanity. They’ll steal away mistreated and abused children, for example. The Unseelie Fae tend to make mischief.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“Depends on the Fae,” Maggie said, her eyes twinkling. “How do you tell a good human from a bad one?”
“Instinct and observation, I suppose,” Nancy said.
“Aye, that’s about it. The Unseelie tend to look a little more monstrous than the rest of us, too,” Maggie added. “But one oughtn’t stereotype. Monsters can be friends and allies.”
Monsters… that word rang a bell, and Nancy frowned, completely forgetting that Maggie had used the word ‘us’ and not ‘them’ when talking about faeries. “That reminds me. I saw something in the lake.”
“Oh, you did?” Maggie’s eyes were gleaming. “What was that, then?”
“A… creature. Some kind of… you’ll think I hit my head, or something,” Nancy admitted. “But it looked like a dinosaur.”
“Oh yes?” Maggie looked like she was trying not to laugh. Very curious. “And do you imagine that that was a hallucination, too? Like the glowing figures you saw in the cave?”
“I don’t think so,” Nancy said blankly — and she didn’t miss the sharp look Maggie shot her at that, the way the woman sat forward a little in her armchair. “I was lucid. It came very close to me. It looked kind of like … I think they’re called plesiosauruses? Like a big reptile, a big long neck, flippers and a long tail.” She jerked upright, suddenly making a connection between something Maggie had said earlier that she’d managed to avoid thinking about. “Wait. You said… you said that was Loch Ness out there.”
“Aye, it is.”
“Then… was that the Loch Ness Monster?”
“She prefers Nessie,” Maggie said, grinning widely. “But yes, sounds like you met her. And it sounds like she liked you, if she let you get such a good look at her. She was probably curious about all that gear you were wearing.”
“No way,” Nancy breathed. There was so much to unpack here — like how on Earth she’d gotten into that lake out there. What had Maggie said? She was in Scotland, and it was somehow the seventeenth century? Could that be true? She’d put it aside as the ravings of a woman whose mind was slipping, but she was beginning to question that assumption. Maggie just seemed… too sharp. And what else would explain the completely bizarre shift from flooded quarry to enormous lake? “I met the Loch Ness Monster?”
“You did.” Maggie tilted her head, looking curious. “So you — believe me? Just like that?”
“Well, I don’t really… see what other explanation there is,” Nancy said blankly, her mind racing to catch up. “I was in a cave, then I was in a huge lake. No time could have passed, or I’d be out of air. So — something paranormal must have happened.”
“Paranormal,” Maggie repeated thoughtfully. “I like that.”
“The Sidhe, these faeries you mentioned… you said they steal children away from their parents sometimes? That’s true? Could they have stolen me?”
Maggie laughed, clapping her hands together. “You’ve got it, girlie! I must admit, I’m surprised. Anna must have taken weeks to come around to where she was, and here you are, piecing it together with your hair still wet with lake water.”
“Loch Ness,” Nancy breathed. Part of her still felt like she was in a dream — but when had being in a dream ever stopped her from exploring? “That’s fantastic. So they picked me up out of the cave system. Why? Why choose me?”
Maggie hesitated at that. “Well… like I said, they don’t abduct happy children. So when it comes to grabbing people out of their homes and bringing them somewhere else… well, usually it means there was something fairly awful about to happen.”
Nancy stared at her. “The cave-in.”
“Aye, dearie. The cave-in. It’s likely you were marked for death, I’m afraid.”
Nancy took a deep breath, remembering the terror she’d felt when the rocks had caved in, separating her from her friends so thoroughly. She’d set off swimming into the depths of the cave… the light of the figures had made her think she’d found a way out. But maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d been trapped for good in the cave system, her air slowly running out… she shuddered, her appetite for Maggie’s delicious stew suddenly fading. Every experienced diver had spent plenty of time thinking about what it would be like to die during a dive, to find themselves trapped and suffocating… but the idea that that fate had been waiting for her in that old quarry was hard to take. She hoped suddenly that James and Hannah had been okay, that they’d gotten out of the water and driven home safe and sound.
“God. So… everyone must think I’m dead.” She stared up at Maggie, frightened. “I have to call them, let them know I’m okay. My dad —”
“Not an option, I’m afraid, my dear,” Maggie said gently. “The Sidhe didn’t just take you away from where you were. They took you from when you were.”
Nancy looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
“What year do you think it is?”
She had to think for a minute, so thoroughly had this whole conversation floored her. But when she said the year, Maggie just shook her head.
“Sorry, love. No. It’s a few hundred years earlier, I’m afraid. You said my cottage was old-fashioned… I’m afraid it’s not.”
“Wait,” Nancy breathed. “So — I was diving. I got trapped. The Sidhe realized I was going to die, so they pulled me through to their world… then pushed me back into this one, but in medieval Scotland?”
“That’s the long and the short of it, yes,” Maggie said.
Nancy took a deep breath. Her head was spinning. “So I can’t get in touch with my family.”
“My dear, your family won’t be born for hundreds of years.” Maggie chuckled. “If it’s any consolation, that means they can’t be worried about you.”
“But they… they will be.” Nancy frowned. “In a few hundred years. But I’ll have died of old age by then.”
“Exactly! So no harm done.”
“My head hurts,” Nancy said, staring into the fire.
“It’s a lot to think about. But you’re doing very well,” Maggie added kindly, leaning forward to pat her fondly on the shoulder. “Anna spent a week running through every possible explanation other than
the truth. Very frustrating woman, that one. She had some crackpot theory about alien abduction at some point…”
Nancy giggled. But something about what Maggie was saying made her frown. “Wait — Anna is like me? Someone else the Sidhe brought through to this place?”
“Aye, dear. You’ll meet her soon enough, I promise.”
Nancy had a thousand questions to ask — but when she opened her mouth, all that escaped her was a huge yawn. Maggie laughed again, leaning forward to pat her fondly on the shoulder.
“We’ll talk more in the morning, my dear. You’ll need a great deal of rest after the ordeal you’ve been through. It’s not an easy journey to make, the trip to the Land of the Unaging from our world and back again. But you’re here now — and you’re safe. I promise you that.”
Nancy fought back another yawn. “Thank you, Maggie. I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for you.”
“Probably in the middle of the forest and hopelessly lost.” Maggie chuckled.
“The Sidhe would have to save me again.” Nancy grinned. “I can’t believe I met the Loch Ness Monster. Can I visit her again? I’d love to get a closer look now that I know she’s — you know, not a hallucination.”
“All in good time,” Maggie said, getting to her feet. “Now, I think you’d best sleep down here by the fire. No sense catching your death of a chill.” The little woman dropped another log onto the fire, and Nancy smiled gratefully. “There’s a whole collection of blankets there on the back of the chair, take your pick. Get some sleep, let your mind settle. We’ll talk more in the morning. And I’ll send word to the Castle.”
It had been a night full of surprises, but that last sentence still managed to floor Nancy. “The what?”
“Oh, aye. The castle.” Maggie looked at her, eyes twinkling. “All in good time, Nancy Kane.”
Nancy took a deep breath, a grin spreading across her face. “I can’t wait.”
Chapter 8
Nancy lay awake for a long time, watching the fire burn and crackle. Maggie said her goodnights and tromped off up the stairs, leaving Nancy to stare into the fire and think. She’d told her to get some sleep, and it was true that her body was incredibly tired, but her mind was wide awake and alive, ticking furiously over everything that had happened. She could hardly believe it — the idea that she’d been snatched away by otherworldly creatures from a certain death, then spat out at the bottom of Loch Ness itself. That she’d come face to face with the Loch Ness Monster! God, she wished she could see James’s face now — he’d be eating his words about her being mad about cryptids, that was for sure. She’d actually met one. It had peered into her face with its beady little eyes, then swum away. She wondered if she dove back into the lake, would the creature come and see her again? She could conduct the world’s first study of the Loch Ness Monster!
But then her exuberance faded. She wasn’t in her own time anymore, from what Maggie had said… and that was a whole separate consideration. Time travel? She’d always thought that lived firmly in the realms of science fiction. Even the wild stories her mother had told her as a girl hadn’t mentioned time travel… although, maybe they had. She often spoke about children being stolen away and then returned, having aged not a single day though a hundred years had passed in the rest of the world. What was that, if not time travel? Her head was reeling, and she pulled the blanket a little closer about her shoulders, trying to breathe deeply and slowly to calm herself. Time travel. Unbelievable.
She had to admit — it made her a little sad. If this truly was happening (and a small part of her mind was reserving judgment — could this all be a very realistic dream?) then it meant she would never talk to her family again. Never hug her dad, never joke with her friends at the scuba school… God, she’d never look at her phone again. Could she live without Facebook? She thought about it for a moment. Yeah, she could probably live without Facebook. But could she live without a microwave? Her stomach sank. She had no idea how to cook on a fire. She could barely cook on a stove. How was she going to grow acclimatized to this life? The skills she was proudest of relied on technology that, as far as she knew, was absolutely not extant in … what had Maggie said? The seventeenth century? Yeah, something told her that compressed air tanks weren’t going to be easily available these days. The thought that she might never go diving again filled her with sadness. She had decent lung capacity, she could always go bare, but… God, the idea of never going deep again was heartbreaking.
Don’t be stupid, she scolded herself. If Maggie was right about everything, the facts were that she was supposed to have died back in that cave. Any kind of a life was a bonus, after that — even if it wasn’t a life that would include diving. Surely, she could find something else to be passionate about… some other way to spend her days. Did Maggie need an assistant, perhaps? She was fairly comfortable, curled up here in front of the fire, and surely an old woman like that could use an able-bodied young assistant about the place. For … chopping wood, and the like. Nancy had to admit, she couldn’t think of many medieval chores at the moment, but she was sure she’d think of something.
With these troubled thoughts coursing through her mind, Nancy finally drifted off into a troubled sleep. She had a few dreams about diving, but something was wrong — every time she tried to check her air levels, the dial was obscured, and she couldn’t tell how much air she had left. And she kept swimming through cave after cave, each one bigger than the last, each one dark as night and full of monsters that lurked just beyond the range of her light.
Sunlight through the window woke her from her sleep in the morning. She opened one eye, frowning a little at the way the light hit her, and turned over, trying to find a comfortable place again. The fire had burned down, only ashes left in the grate, and the air was a little chilly. Nancy sat up, tugging the blanket around her shoulders like a cape.
In the light of day, she could get a much better look at Maggie’s little cottage. It was a crowded little place, the walls ringed by shelves that were absolutely packed with all kinds of strange things… jars and tubes and bottles, full of substances of various colors and shades and consistencies. The suspicion that Maggie was the village witch just kept rising, and Nancy grinned to herself, imagining the little woman stirring a cauldron of potions while cackling. But she knew a bit about witches — her mother had bought her a book when she was a young woman about what witchcraft was and wasn’t. Witchcraft, it turned out, usually referred to women who knew more than men about things like medicine. The various potions and herbs that packed the cabin may well be medicinal. Or perhaps they were just tasty, Nancy thought, thinking of the delicious stew that Maggie had given her the night before. After all, spices weren’t exactly in plentiful supply in medieval times, were they? Distant memories of History class surfaced, and Nancy chewed on her bottom lip, a little worried. She hadn’t paid much attention in History… the teacher had been boring, and she’d spent a lot of those classes daydreaming about diving. She regretted that now. But how was her teenaged self-supposed to have known that history would come in handy in such a specific, concrete way?
There was motion upstairs — she could hear the sound of little footsteps on the upper story. And sure enough, down came Maggie, a grin on her wrinkled face. In the light, she could see the woman’s clothing — a long brown cardigan over what looked like multiple layers of assembled clothing. The overall effect was of a pile of rags, but somehow, it didn’t look slovenly or disheveled.
“Good morning,” Nancy said, stifling a yawn.
“Did ye sleep well?”
“Eventually,” she said ruefully. “It was hard to stop thinking about everything. My brain’s going a mile a minute.”
“Oh, that’s to be expected. You’ve got a lot to come to terms with,” Maggie said, bustling over to the table. “Breakfast? This summer’s been rather good to us. I hope you like fish.”
“Summer?” In Raleigh, it had been late autumn — just heading into winter. Her
favorite ice hockey team was playing unusually well, and there had been great excitement about the idea of them going to the Stanley Cup finals for once. Nancy sighed to realize she was never going to find out how that particular hope ended up.
“Aye, it’s nearing the end of summer,” Maggie said. She’d rummaged in her pantry and come out with what looked like salted fish. “Hope you’re ready for snow, it’ll be here in abundance soon enough.”
“Does the Loch freeze over?”
“Nessie wouldn’t be pleased.” Maggie chuckled. “No, it doesn’t get that cold. Some mornings you can see steam rising from it because it’s warmer than the rest of the world.” Maggie tilted her head as though she was listening to something. “Ah. Good timing.”
“What’s that?” Nancy asked, frowning a little. She hadn’t heard anything. But to her surprise, there was a tapping on the door.
“A student of mine,” Maggie explained, clattering over to open the door. In tumbled a young girl with a shock of bright red hair flying wildly around her face and a pair of bright blue eyes — which rocketed to Nancy and stayed there.
“Who’s this?” the girl demanded, wide-eyed. “I don’t know you. Do I? Maggie?”
“Nancy, this is Kaitlyn,” Maggie explained, gesturing to the girl with a smile. “She lives in the village. I’m teaching her a few of my old tricks.”
“More than a few,” Kaitlyn said, smiling down at Maggie — though she was clearly only around fifteen, she was already a full head taller than the little old woman. “Maggie’s teaching me to be the next village witch.”
Nancy laughed despite herself, picturing this bright young woman in a pointy black hat and a black cloak. But Kaitlyn was peering at her with a curious intensity in her blue eyes. Something about the keenness of that regard did remind her of Maggie, she had to admit. Maybe Maggie’s little apprentice was more of a witch than she appeared.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Kaitlyn breathed, creeping closer to her. “You look different. Strange.”
Stranded By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 2 Page 5
