The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  You have to pay the piper. Not the Highland pipes but the pan-pipes—the great god Pan, no greeting card cherub but the ancient spirit of madness and terror—panic at the wilderness of sea and stone and wind-tortured hillsides—an old pagan spirit that never went away, that grew and changed and survived. And summoned Kate into the wilderness.

  She lay on her bed, on the beach, the shit-splattered walls of the castle leaning disapprovingly over her as inside old MacDonald feasted on his own future—what liquid would ever wash that taste from his mouth, not whisky, not water, not blood itself. . . .

  Help me, release me, let me out, let me go, said the resonant voice in Kate’s ear.

  Express appetite, she heard herself reply, and you turn to stone, to stand for all eternity as a warning to others.

  Appetite isn’t easy, only natural.

  The stones stood up from the earth, stones, rocks—music that rocks, that reaches right down into your gut and twists—music that reverberates in the marrow of the bones where fear hides. Not the fear of mortality, because fear is mortality. The fear of making mistakes, of going too far, of revealing yourself, of stepping over the edge of the earth—or out of the banqueting hall window—and falling into ice-cold blood-warm currents of the body, blood, sweat, tears, semen, milk, whisky.

  Kate was thirsty. She opened her mouth to drink. To speak. And he was there, his kisses insistent as his music, music that would wake the dead and set them to dancing, help me release me let me out let me go.

  She wasn’t sure who she was or where she was. What she knew—what she recognized as if out of deep memory—was his smoke and salt scent in her nostrils and the tart-sweet taste of his tongue in her mouth. His eyes were a tender green, like the sea at the base of the cliff where the rock plunged smoothly into the water and filled it. His body in her arms was too too solid flesh, hot, hard, smooth, real as the imagination is real.

  Kate heard her own voice catch in a gasp of both terror and delight. Keridwen and her cauldron, there was anatomical symbolism for you, the feminine cauldron of creativity, of inspiration, the cauldron that needed to be properly stirred.

  And she gave tongue to her delight and her terror, kissing his eager mouth and devouring his in return, just as she devoured his music and spoke her truth to his body. No more hiding, no more shame. Eat, and speak out.

  Help me release me let me out let me go.

  Let him out? But she was letting him in. . . . She let go and slid down a waterfall, sparkling, fragile as glass, strong as rock. And then the music was gone. Silence deep as the sea echoed in her head. The dungeon walls closed around her. She stood over his body, a woman warrior, and raised her sword. “Let me out, I’ll confess it all, every word of it, let me out!”

  The sword was his body. With it she cut, she slashed, she stabbed. The stones of the wall fell before her. They weren’t bleeding, it was her own hands bleeding where she clutched the sword. Let me out let me out. . . .

  Her eyes opened. Was that steam in the cool room? No, a bright light was shining in her eyes. Slowly Kate sat up, her heart hammering, the sweat pooling between her breasts and thighs.

  No, it wasn’t that bright a light at all. The creamy circle of the moon hung in the window behind her mirror, through her looking glass. The curtains moved gently in a draft like a sigh of satisfaction. But Kate knew she’d never be satisfied. She’d always want more.

  “Where are you?” she whispered to the room.

  All she could hear was the thrum of the wind and the waves.

  “Who are you?”

  But dreams don’t wear nameplates.

  Suddenly she heard, small and distinct, the sound of her door shutting. Kate stumbled from the bed and across the room. The door was locked, the bolt thrown, just as she’d left it.

  The cold draft teased her naked body and goosebumps rose on her skin. She couldn’t remember taking off her pajamas. Throwing herself back into the bed, she yanked the covers up to her chin. They were damp, scented with whisky as though she’d exuded it like sweat. No, she hadn’t seen anything, but she’d felt everything.

  She expected to lie there awake the rest of the night, watching the moon cross the window. But it was when she woke up the next morning she realized she’d fallen into a profound dreamless sleep. She stared at her crumpled face in the mirror and told herself she’d been asleep all along. She’d had a dream so vivid it was a hallucination. Or a vision. Sensory overload or alcoholic fantasy, or Alexander playing his pipes downstairs, it didn’t matter.

  Alexander. Wow, I didn’t know I had it in me. . . . She laughed. No need to be embarrassed about a dream. What was safer than a dream?

  This dream strained against the borders of her mind. She was pregnant with it. If you were pregnant, you couldn’t act as though you’d never had sex.

  In the dining room the young couple were feeding each other small bites of toast. Kate smiled at them. They didn’t know, did they? They were too young for the creative heavy lifting.

  Hungrily she ate everything Lucy set before her, rich, fat food, eggs, bacon, sausage, toast with butter and a sweet-tart smear of marmalade. “I heard Alexander playing his pipes after he got off work last night,” Kate commented. “Have you ever heard Keridwen play?”

  Lucy stopped dead with the teapot in mid-air. “Eh?”

  “Or was that a demo tape he was playing last night? You had to have heard it, the great highland pipes aren’t shy.”

  “It was quiet as the grave here last night—I’m sorry, don’t believe I ever caught your name.”

  “Kate,” Kate said automatically, and set down her fork. Her stomach tightened, embracing the food.

  “No one named Alexander works here. You’re not thinking of Angus, are you? My husband, he minds the bar in the evenings.” Lucy gestured toward a dark, heavy-set man who was just emerging from the back hall carrying a mop and bucket.

  “Good morning,” he said politely as he passed. “Hope you slept well. A dram of Lagavulin makes a right fine nightcap, and no mistake.”

  Kate opened her mouth and shut it again. What was she going to ask—was I talking to you last night or was I sitting nursing a whisky and staring into the fire? She glanced over at the honeymooners. They wouldn’t have noticed a brass band in the room. . . . They wouldn’t have noticed a rock band, either, even if its lead musician was a piper.

  Rock. There was a double meaning for you, either stone and immutability or music shaking the listener to his roots. “Is there a piper who plays at the castle ruins?” she asked.

  “No,” Lucy said. “There’s a fine old ballad about one, though. A piper from Dunshian was called to play for the Queen of Faerie, thought he’d stayed there for just one night but when he left found he’d been there two hundred year or more.”

  “Of course. Dunshian. Dun means ‘fort’, right? And ‘Shian’ means ‘Sidhe’. The Sidhe. The fairies.”

  “That’s the story, right enough. More tea?”

  “Ah, no, no, thank you.” Kate felt as unbalanced as she had when listening to Alexander play yesterday. If she pinched herself would she wake up? She hoped not.

  Your stories need taking seriously. But that was one story Alexander hadn’t mentioned. The Sidhe, not Disney pixies but the ancient and powerful fair folk. Elementals. Figures from the Dreamtime, summoned by human desire.

  No, Lucy and Angus weren’t playing an elaborate joke on a tourist. The dream had really happened—and the word “real” would never again have the same definition. You had to believe in something beyond reality or there was no point to story-telling, was there?

  Kate got up from the table and walked outside, following the sound of the waves, the wind, the seabirds, and the elusive music of the pipes. The music which called to battle and lamented the fallen all at once.

  The pied piper—no, the pied piper led children away. This piper was leading her onward. But this time the music didn’t grow louder and louder as she approached the castle, and no piper guard
ed the gate.

  The archaeologists worked at the blocked archway, carefully pulling the stones away. The taps of their hammers sounded like snare drums. She stood with her hands jammed in her pockets, watching and waiting.

  Behind the door was a dark cavity. One of the man trained a flashlight into it. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

  The other man stepped forward. So did Kate. For just a moment she caught the stench from the open door, every stink mortality could yield. Then a gust of wind scoured away the reek of decay and sea spray coated her glasses so that her eyes blurred.

  But she could see what the men were seeing, illuminated by the gleam of the flashlight. A human skeleton lay on the rich loam like a sleeper lying on a bedspread. Matted fabric lay across the leg bones and a bundle of sticks and more fabric lay inside the curve of his left arm. Next to his skull, next to his eye sockets staring blindly upward, a gold earring glinted like a wedding band.

  “How long has this doorway been blocked up?” asked one man.

  Another answered, “Two, three hundred years maybe.”

  “Suppose he’s been there since 1745? After Culloden the English passed laws banning the pipes, said they were instruments of war.”

  “They banned the kilt, too, wanted to erase our identity.”

  “Was this one a rebel then, are you thinking?” The men exchanged shrugs.

  Kate stepped back and turned away, but not before she caught a quick whiff of something aromatic as whisky. The odor of sanctity, probably, said to cling to a saint’s bones. Where did saints come from but the Dreamtime? There were saints who stayed detached in the face of madness and murder and there were saints who passionately desired to ease the wounded souls of man—of woman—kind. . . . Alexander was no more a saint than she was.

  Kate pulled a tissue out of her pocket, wiped her glasses, and put them back on. There, she could see. See that the young man, no matter what his name had been, had just as likely been walled up alive because he wasn’t a rebel. Because he didn’t make plots. Because he never confessed but kept quiet and safe. If he’d spoken out no cell could’ve held him.

  Kate’s heart swelled, filled every cell of body, strained to burst. Help me release me let me go let me out. . . . “Yes,” she said.

  Without looking again at the fragile bones she walked down from the castle and away from the threshold where this world met—no, not the next, for Faerie, the Otherworld, was this world too, created and nurtured by poets and musicians.

  Inside the hotel she could hear Lucy singing the ballad about the human piper who stayed too long in Faerie. But what about the corresponding ballad, the story of the fairy piper who stayed too long in this world?

  Kate walked into the lounge and sat down. She opened her notebook to its virgin first page. She took out her pencil. It was time to leap from the window, not into eternity of death but into the eternity of the story.

  The pencil was a chanter. It was a magic wand. It was a taut male body in her hand. Faintly at the edge of awareness Kate heard the pipes playing. “Thank you,” she said, and she touched her pencil to the page.

  She’d always threatened to run away, and now she’d done it. She ran until she reached the end of the Earth. And then she stepped off its edge and flew.

  Author’s Note

  “The Muse” first appeared in Realms of Fantasy Magazine, Shawna McCarthy, editor, Volume 8, Number 3, February 2002.

  This is the one story in this collection that was written on spec. That is, written from the heart, with any thought of actually selling it secondary. Fortunately, sell it I did. The bonus is that it appeared in the same issue of Realms of Fantasy that printed photos from the (at the time) new Lord of the Rings movies.

  This story was inspired by a real place, Duntulm Castle on the northern coast of Skye and the hotel just beside it. The older of twin Dunasheen Castles in my novel The Blue Hackle owes a bit to Dunshian.

  My husband and I have been to Skye twice, both times in brilliant sunshine. I’m not sure what we did to please the infamous Skye weather fairies, but we’re very grateful.

  On our first visit we only stopped for tea at the hotel, where the women’s toilet, was, alas, as described. Why this appealed to my muse I don’t know, unless the answer is in the story. On our second visit, after the story had been written and published, we stopped at the castle. Imagine my awe and delight, not to mention the fairy fingernails tracing down the back of my neck, to find a cairn just outside the entrance with a plaque reading: This cairn is to commemorate the MacArthurs, hereditary pipers to the MacDonalds of the Isles.

  A short Gaelic verse was printed below, translated as: The world will end, But love and music endureth.

  To which I can only add, Amen.

  Writing historical mystery short stories: How to keep the characters under control.

  One of the basic skills of short-story writing is focusing tightly on one situation, one setting, and one group of characters, keeping the story immediate rather than sounding like the synopsis of a novel. It goes without saying that a mystery short story, historical or otherwise, will not have nearly as many red herrings or as intricate an investigative process as a mystery novel will have.

  I use one strong point of view to tell the story, and through this person’s thoughts and observations drop in just enough description to set the scene. The problem with historical short stories is that setting the scene is a bit trickier. I have to clue the reader in to the time and the place very quickly with, say, “The Luftwaffe was hammering the dockyards at Bristol again.” I can’t tell the entire history of the period in a short story.

  I introduce secondary characters with just one quick identifier, not a full backstory. I try to limit the number of characters to those needed for the plot, ignoring all the others who would have been there at the time. Because my stories tend to be longer ones, between 6000-8000 words, I do have some leeway.

  In “The Necromancer’s Apprentice,” I focused on historical characters Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth I, and on Erasmus Pilbeam, my imaginary magician and sleuth, and his assistant. I did not introduce the plethora of courtiers, diplomats, and other figures who would have attended the queen at court. Since Pilbeam’s investigations are secret, keeping him away from the court wasn’t difficult.

  In “A Mimicry of Mockingbirds” the protagonist is Thomas Jefferson as a young man living in Williamsburg, Virginia. Again, I’m dealing with several historical characters as well as my imaginary ones, but by having Jefferson interact with only one person at a time—until the “who done it” revelation, at least—I was able to keep the story in focus.

  Two of my stories ended up with a mob of characters: “The Rag and Bone Man” and “The Eye of the Beholder.”

  In the former, a pilgrim is murdered during a visit to the shrine at medieval Walsingham Priory. Here I had to not only set up the members of the pilgrim group, but also the prior and his staff. One pilgrim is identified as Isabella, “the king’s mother”. Tempting as it was to give her entire back story—and quite a story it is, if badly mangled in the film Braveheart—what was important to the story was that she was still wealthy and influential in retirement, and that she was a member of the French royal family.

  In the latter story, I have a group of recovering WWII airmen at a stately home turned hospital near Glastonbury. My protagonist is an American, enough of a fish out of water that he can notice and comment on the things the reader needs to know. I chose one or two other people out of the wounded airmen and hospital staff to play major roles and kept everyone else in the background.

  In any short story I imagine myself as a movie cameraman, focusing on a character or a clue and letting everything else fuzz out behind the main actors. Even if those blurry shapes are intriguing historical details or characters, if they’re outside the scope of the story, then they’re out!

  Postscript: The above essay is reprinted with permission from How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries: The Art and A
dventure of Sleuthing through Time, by Kathy Lynn Emerson, Perseverance Press, 2008.

  Author Biography

  Among many other novels, Lillian Stewart Carl is the author of the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron cross-genre mystery series: America’s exile and Scotland’s finest on the trail of all-too-living legends. It begins with The Secret Portrait (“Mystery, history and sexual tension blend with a taste of the wild beauty of the Highlands: an enjoyable tale.” Kirkus Reviews) goes on through The Murder Hole, The Burning Glass, and The Charm Stone (“Carl's well-crafted fourth Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery takes Jean, a journalist for travel magazine Great Scot, and Alasdair, a former detective, from Edinburgh to historic Williamsburg, Va.” Publishers Weekly), and culminates in The Blue Hackle (November 2010). A short novel, The Mortsafe (December 2011), picks up the couple’s adventures.

  With John Helfers, Lillian co-edited The Vorkosigan Companion, a retrospective on Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction work, which was nominated for a Hugo award.

  Her first story collection, Along the Rim of Time, was published in 2000. Most of Lillian’s novels and short stories are available in various electronic formats.

  Her books are available in both print and electronic editions. Here is her website. Here is her Facebook Group Page. Here is a listing of other Smashwords books.