The Archivist

by Christy Sloat

  For a few moments he worried his lip and looked anywhere but my eyes. Finally he laughed and asked me, “So you know when he died do ya? Then why on earth are ya still here then, lass?”

  I shook my head, confused, because I just explained that. Perhaps he was testing me and trying to see if what I said was the truth. Catching me in a lie would show I was a liar.

  “To find out where he is hiding. I told you that.”

  “Yeah, but you just said… wait you don’t know exactly when he dies, do ya?”

  “Yes, I do know that. He will be caught in 1304 and hang for his crimes against the English crown. I just didn’t want to tell you that, is all. I know that you are with his men and that you’re rallying around him.”

  Eoin laughed his hearty laugh and jumped down from his horse. Angry now that I was being laughed at, I got down from mine. He was being an ass again. I guess his moods changed much like the Scottish weather, because the sun went away and grey clouds began to form.

  “What is so funny about this? You don’t believe me?”

  It wasn’t normal for a traveler to tell their targets or the people surrounding them who they really were. I was going way against the rules, but I had lost my bracelet and that was cardinal rule number one, and I screwed that up. So I figured, what the heck!

  “It’s not that I don’t believe ya, lass. Granted, your story is a bit odd, but we can come back to that. What is so funny is that in your future they’ve got it all wrong. Sir Malcolm Walsh is dead already. Very dead. So how can he die in six years, again? Will they bring him back to life then, and then re-kill him?” He chuckled and then kicked up a spot of grass with his toe. He seemed tense and angry. Perhaps it was because he thought me crazy.

  No! He couldn’t be dead. Eoin must be wrong.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Eoin,” I said. “I know what the future holds for him, and we are not wrong. Historians have studied this man for centuries.”

  “Ye are wrong, woman! I can prove it to ya.”

  I shook my head. Maybe they told the castle’s inhabitants that he was dead, but they were all so mistaken. Perhaps they wanted to keep it hushed and only a few people knew he still lived. Maybe, there was a traitor in the castle, ready to out his whereabouts the minute they found out the truth. I wasn’t sure, but when they caught him in six years, it would shock a lot of people. They did think him dead when he was in hiding. Sure, that’s what Eoin thought. But what of his proof?

  “Get on with this so-called proof, then,” I challenged.

  He began taking off his coat, and the breeze blew harder, tossing his hair free from the tie. What on earth was he doing? When the coat came off, he began taking off his white blouse.

  “Eoin, please put your clothes back on,” I urged. “You are proving nothing except that you’re getting naked.”

  When the shirt was removed, Eoin displayed another piece of fabric, this time it was a clan tartan that should have been worn on the outside over the jacket. Instead, he was wearing it underneath his clothing, as if hiding it.

  I still didn’t understand how this proved that Malcolm was dead.

  “Do you know this clan tartan?” he asked, boldly.

  Looking at the colors I knew I had seen it before, but I wasn’t sure where. The blue and the brown with hints of green had been colors that I had indeed seen before.

  Then it hit me, it was the tartan of Clan Walsh.

  “Why are you wearing that?” I asked.

  “Because, Sir Malcolm Walsh, the hero, was my father. I was there when he took his last breath. You see, your future is wrong. He doesn’t get caught for his crimes against the crown in six years, because I was the one to bury him. Just like I was the one who rode all the way from my home to the hidden castle where his wife lived. He made me promise to tell her and only her of his death. I had to go there, to be at her side and help her, if need be. It was an oath he made me swear to uphold. I’m there, day after day, lying to his many supporters giving them a false hope.

  “I’m his bastard son, you can imagine just how welcomed I was to the one wife who couldn’t have any of his children. She was less than happy to see me. When I told her he was dead, she fainted.”

  My mouth fell open. I had no words for this confession; only shock. The man I had traveled through time, and gotten stuck here for, was dead. My whole universe was literally in ruins. I felt like fainting, too. Instead, I sat down on the ground and the rain began.

  “Lass, are you okay?”

  He was asking me if I was okay? He just confessed that he was the bastard son of the man so many hailed as a hero, had heard I was from the future, and had no family left. Eoin was totally and completely alone here. I wondered if he still thought I was like the sun.

  “I’m stuck here, Eoin.”

  He shook his head.

  “No. I will help you up, stubborn lass.”

  I pushed his hands away. “No. The bracelet that’s missing. Without it, I am stuck here in Scotland, in this time. I can’t go back home. Ever.”

  “Is it magic?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, hmm.” He began biting his lip again.

  Yeah, that about summed it up. We were quite the pair.

  “What if we find it, can you go home?” he asked, running his hands over his chin.

  I nodded. Then realized not once did Eoin question my story. He didn’t run for the hills or accuse me of lying, like I basically did him.

  “Do you believe me?” I asked, hopeful.

  He sat down across from me and shrugged his shoulders. “Whether I believe your story doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you do. You know there is talk of fairies, maybe you are one. You do fit the description.”

  I laughed. “Aren’t they small?”

  “Oh no, they can yield magic. You could have made yourself grow into a full size human-like woman. You do have that way of overcoming me with yer beauty.”

  I laughed, not knowing if he was serious or not. “You have to be joking. You actually believe that?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. If that’s what helped him believe me, who was I to dispel that notion? I decided to get up and get back onto the horse. We rode in the rain until finally Eoin saw how drenched I was. There was an abandoned, at least I thought it was, cottage hidden amongst the trees. If Eoin hadn’t seen it I never would have.

  He jumped from his horse making a loud splash in a puddle and pulled my mare along with him.

  “We’ll stay here tonight. But we must go before first light.”

  Nodding, I got down and followed him into the home. The thatched roof had need of repair, but it was better than sleeping in the rain. Eoin cleaned out the fireplace and I cleaned a spot on the ground for us to sleep. I had slept in some pretty rough places, but nothing as bad as this. The spiders were making this house their haven and I hated spiders.

  “It’s pretty dirty,” I said, realizing that I was still speaking without an accent. It was nice to finally be myself. Continually speaking in another language can be exhausting after a while.

  “Oh, Mollie, er, I mean… what’s yer real name again?”

  I laughed. “It’s Savannah. But try not to call me that in front of people. It’s not a common name and it will be strange. Also, when we make it to town, I’ll be pretending I’m Scottish, again. If that’s okay with you? I’d rather not be arrested for witchcraft or—”

  “Pretending yer Scottish?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  He laughed as he got a small fire started in the empty fireplace.

  “It must be strange to keep up such a rouse. How do you go about that?”

  It was strange. I explained how I had Jessa make the dress that I wore the first day I arrived, and how I studied Gaelic to pre
pare for the journey. Along with all the months of preparation that came with it. Then I told him the odd circumstances that brought me back; how the book had called to me.

  “I’ve been here before. I met your father. He was very nice to me,” I told him. He only rolled his eyes. “He’s nice to all the lassies. Try having him as your father.”

  I realized that because I had met him a few times and read false stories about him, Sir Malcolm was proving to not be the man I thought he was. Everything I was learning here was being recorded in his book. Which meant his history would change and he wouldn’t be the man so revered. Just then, it hit me.

  “Oh my God!”

  Eoin grabbed his knife and jumped up. “What is it?”

  I laughed but tried to bury it down.

  “Nothing. I just realized something is all.”

  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before now. If everything was being reported as I went along, then Jessa knew where I was. She could send a Librarian inside the book to help me out. All she’d have to do was visit the Historical Society of Libraries and tell them I was stuck.

  Unless two things: She didn’t look inside the book for me or she thought I ran away for a few days to think. Maybe she wasn’t even worried about me. It wasn’t unlike me to go off for a few days without telling her. But, I would eventually text her to tell her I was all right. I could only hope that she would notice my absence and realize it wasn’t me trying to get away.

  Fourteen

  “Do you have the food?” Eoin asked, changing the subject entirely. When his belly growled, I understood why.

  I nodded and pulled out the satchel. The food was tucked neatly inside, but as I dug for it, I found that it was soaked and ruined.

  “Crap!” I tried to dig around to see if any of the food was salvageable, but to no avail. The meat was soggy and the bread mush.

  “Well, I suppose I need to go for a hunt,” Eoin exclaimed, standing up.

  “I thought that it would stay safe inside this,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nay, lass. Do not apologize to me for something that the rain did. You are not at fault. I crave a hunt. I will find something for us to eat. Worry not.”

  He grabbed his own satchel and pulled a bow and quiver of arrows free. Thinking maybe I could help I stood up and felt the world beneath me rock side-to-side.

  “Whoa, lass. Steady yourself.”

  Eoin helped me back down gently and I took the hand offered. He laid my head back and put a hand to my head.

  “You feel feverish,” he said, upon inspection. “When was the last you ate?”

  “This morning, before we left the last camp. But I felt fine before this. I wasn’t really hungry.” Now though, my stomach churned in anger craving food and I felt nauseous at the same time. The feeling was odd and unlike anything I’d felt before. Maybe I’d caught some rare stomach bug from someone in the castle and was now feeling the effects of it. I wasn’t even sure if that was possible or not.

  “I’ll get you something to eat. Stay here and rest a while.” I nodded and let myself recover from whatever had happened to me. As I closed my eyes, I thought about home and all that I had left behind. The nights here were the worst. They made me crave what I was missing and brought back all the memories of what I left behind. The fight with my mother played over and over in my head. Leaving the way I had left so many things up in the air. Jessa was smart, no doubt she was looking for me and as my protector was doing all she could to find a way to get me back.

  I looked out the small hole that used to be a window in this broken down cottage and watched the rain fall upon the greenery outside. Scotland was in a way becoming my home. The very thought of living here forever was horrible, no doubt due to the time I was in, but as a country, it would be amazing.

  Eoin, well he was unpredictable and surprised me in many ways. At first, I had thought him very a different person. He was truly growing on me. He was much like me, he had a rough upbringing that forced him to grow up faster than he wanted, I’m sure. With his father being the man he was, Eoin was fatherless, like me. Sure, he had been rough to me when we first met, now I knew the reasons behind all of that tough exterior. I, in many ways, was much like him. I wasn’t the cheeriest person to be around. I held onto a lot of my anger from my upbringing and tended to take it out on the people around me.

  At school I distanced myself from everyone because I wasn’t happy with my life. And I could see that in Eoin. He pushed me away, and probably everyone else, because he was unhappy.

  I waited for what seemed like hours for Eoin to come back. And even drifted off to sleep. Finally, I felt his presence and woke up to him cooking over the fire.

  “Tis almost done, lass. You should wake up and eat something.” He handed me a slice of meat. Without question I ate it up and almost licked my fingers to savor the flavor.

  “I caught three of them,” Eoin said, as he handed me more. “Just… keep eating and try not to look at what it is I killed.”

  Smiling, I did as he said. He didn’t want me to see what it was, because of my sensitivity I’m sure. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t care what I was eating at the moment. I was just happy to have a full belly. My sick feeling started to go away a bit, but not completely. I needed to rest and get this mission completed so I could get home.

  “It’s delicious, Eoin. Thank you, really,” I said, as I sat back. “My stomach thanks you.”

  He nodded and cleaned up the mess he’d made and ate the leftovers. I laid back watching him as he did.

  “What is it about this bracelet that can get you home exactly?” he asked, sitting down and wrapping himself in his large wool blanket. I looked down at his bare legs and his kilt and wondered if he ever got a chill from weather like this wearing that.

  “If ye want to see my kilt, come have a closer look then,” he said, pointing to it.

  My cheeks went red. “What?”

  He had caught me staring openly at his crotch. I was embarrassed beyond belief. The words didn’t come fast enough for me to reply. I just looked away.

  “You were looking at it. Come take a closer look at the colors. They’re beautiful are they not?”

  Oh! Thank goodness. He thought I was looking at the colors in his tartan kilt and not, well anything indecent.

  Many men of this era wore their family’s colors, but I knew his family’s colors were underneath him, hiding.

  I slid closer taking in the differences in color. I liked this tartan better than his father’s colors. These colors were brighter greens and blues.

  “Whose colors are these if they’re not your father’s?” I asked.

  “My ma’s. This kilt belonged to her brother, my uncle. He died in the war, bravely. I wear it proudly.”

  I decided not to tell him that I liked it better. I lay back again, watching him tend to the fire.

  “Funny thing fire,” he said, as he played with it. “I burnt my father and mother in a pyre when they died. I couldn’t tell anyone that my father died. That’s not easy to hide, you know.”

  I nodded, understanding full well what hiding things was like.

  “Lying isn’t easy.”

  “Tell me about the bracelet, now. What does it look like?”

  I described it in full detail, so that when we went into the town, he would know exactly what he was searching for.

  “How does it work?”

  I sighed, not knowing how to explain this part.

  “Well, traveling through time was all part of a scientist, Harold Lockhart’s plan. He wrote a formula, a sort of spell if you like, that allows only certain people from a particular family, to travel through time. We record history. It’s our job to record it correctly so that historians can teach those in future generations. Often times
it’s the historians who make mistakes when they’re learning about a famous figure, so we go back in time to double check. Lockhart’s a genius for coming up with the Librarians. It’s the perfect way to hide time travelers.”

  “What are librarians?”

  I laughed. If anyone in my time had asked me that, I’d smack them.

  “They have the best job. They work with books. Their job is very important. Some librarians even help people learn to love books. I want to be an archivist someday and work in the historical library archives, but that’s beside the point.

  I believe you have librarians in this time period, but you refer to them as monks. They copy the words from one book to another. And to be exact, the first library in France will emerge in the next century. You’ll someday hear about libraries and those that care for the books there, and you can think of me.”

  He smiled at me and said, “I could never forget you, lass. I’ll think of you every time I see this.” He pointed to my thistle. “My cluaran.” Cluaran meant thistle in Gaelic.

  Eoin was definitely a charming Scot, proving to me again and again that I judged him too harshly upon our first meeting. I silently wished that he could have been around in my time. A guy like him would change my whole outlook on life.

  Continuing on I explained the way we traveled and how the bracelet protected me and kept me from being stuck in that time, like I was now. He didn’t say a word; just listened intently.

  “When I came this time, it was different,” I told him. “I had a horrible night, the night before. So I got up early and went to the library. I wanted to read, but I saw him—”