by Juliet Dark
His hair, still wet from his dunk in the well, hung in dark waves around his face. Drops of water clung to his pale flesh, glistening in the moonlight. The hand that grasped mine was cold and trembling, just as Liam’s flesh had been before I’d breathed life into him. His expression, though, was like Bill’s when he returned to make up for how he had hurt me as Liam—a look of pure gratitude. But this man’s face was younger—and his skin was goose-fleshed with cold.
“You’re human, aren’t you?”
He laughed. “What else would I be, lass? Did ye think you’d snared a kelpie or a phouka?”
“You haven’t … been changed yet. You’re William before he became the incubus.”
The amusement in his eyes faded, and his face became still as marble. “An incubus? A creature that ravishes young maidens? Aye, the Fairy Queen told me that’s what I’d become if I remained with her in Faerie. Once she sucked all that was human out of me, I would have to feed off human girls to survive.” He took his hand from mine and turned it back and forth in the moonlight. I recognized the hand, remembered the feel of it caressing me. I reached out my hand and took his. His skin was still cold. For a moment I thought I was too late, but then, beneath the chill flesh, I felt the warm pulse of human blood. I squeezed.
“See,” he said, “I am human. You saved me before I could become a monster. Just as you said you would.”
“Just as I said …” Of course. He thought I was my ancestor, the first Cailleach, the fairy girl he laid with in the Greenwood, who promised to come back for him in seven years. I looked around us, at the wild heath covered with long grasses and flowers. I sniffed and smelled—yes, the same scent that had been haunting my dreams, the flowers I’d been finding in my bed—heather. The humpbacked mountains that surrounded us were taller than the Catskills that surrounded Fairwick, and perched atop one were the ruins of a castle. I had done it! I’d gone back in time to Scotland in the time of William Duffy. But where was the angel stone?
I looked down at William and noticed something glimmering on the ground. We both reached for it at the same time, our fingers touching. I withdrew my hand, and he held up a silver heart identical to the one still pinned to the tartan wrapped around him. He held the two halves of the heart together.
“Aye,” he said, “you told me that someday these hearts would be rebound.”
“I’m not that girl …” I began to explain to him, but then I noticed how badly he was shaking. It was colder here than in Fairwick, and we were on a bare hillside with no visible shelter—and no angel stone. I’d hoped somehow that the stone would be waiting for me when I walked through the door, but clearly I would have to go looking for it. “I’ll explain all that later,” I told William, “but for now I suppose we’d better find someplace warm, before we both freeze to death.”
We walked down the hill, into a narrow valley where a stream flowed through a copse of beech trees. We followed the stream for more than a mile in silence, until we came to an unpaved road marked by a massive stone cross carved with intricate Celtic designs. Normally I’d be fascinated by an ancient monument such as this one, but I was cold, wet, and confused.
“Do you recognize where we are?” I asked William, whose teeth were chattering even more than mine were. Despite his cold, he’d offered twice to give me my plaid shawl back, which he’d craftily wrapped like a kilt around his waist with one end draped over his chest. I’d refused on the grounds that being seen walking with a naked man wouldn’t help my reputation any in the seventeenth century.
“Aye,” he said, “that stream is Boglie Burn. It runs into the Tweed, just beyond Ballydoon. And the forest we came out of is the Greenwood, an ancient enchanted wood. That castle on yonder hill is Castle Coldclough, but nobody lives there and it’s haunted. But that wee croft up there belongs to a cousin of my auntie’s, Mordag MacCready.”
He pointed up a hill that rose to our right. All I could see was a stone outcropping, but when the clouds cleared from the moon, I made out the shape of a stone cottage built up against the hillside. Its windows were dark, but that could be because its inhabitants were asleep.
“Do you think she’d put us up for the night?” I asked.
“No Christian soul would turn us away,” he said, already climbing the hill. There was a narrow dirt path between the bushes, clear enough to indicate that it had been in use recently. I caught up to him, wondering what Mordag MacCready would make of a naked man knocking on her door in the middle of the night, cousin or no. Would she think he was one of the boggles or haunts that everything around here seemed to be named for? As we approached the house, though, I began to doubt there was anyone home. The place had a forlorn, derelict look to it. A gate had been left open, swinging on its hinges, an empty bucket lay in the yard, and there was no smoke coming from the chimney.
“It looks deserted,” I commented to William.
“Aye, maybe Mordag is pasturing her sheep in the hills overnight, although it’s getting late in the year for that.”
Now that he mentioned sheep, I could detect the not-unpleasant aroma of manure mingled with hay and wet wool coming from an empty stone-walled enclosure beside the house.
“How do you know so much about sheep?”
William snorted. “As a wee lad, I watched the flocks—before I ran away to the city.”
“If you were living in the city, how did you get kidnapped by the Fairy Queen?” I asked.
“Och, I’d come back,” William answered. “Do ye want to know my whole life’s story standing here freezing on the doorstep, or would ye mind if I continued the tale inside by the fire?”
“Do you think we should break in? Won’t Mordag think we’re burglars?”
But William had already opened the door. I stood nervously on the threshold until William found a lantern and lit it by striking something that looked like a primitive lighter. With the lamp lit, I saw that the cottage was plainly and sparely furnished but clean. And cold. It was hardly warmer than it was outside.
“Are ye going to stand there all night letting in the cold air?” he asked, holding the lantern up. “Or are ye afraid of me? I’ll no’ turn into a lion again.”
With the coarse wool shawl draped over one shoulder and his long hair bushing out around his face, he resembled one of the wild men that peasants believed roamed the woods of medieval Europe. As I looked at him, it came home to me that I really didn’t know him. I knew the man—or creature—that he would become: the incubus Liam, who came to me as moonlight and shadow and became flesh through my breath; then Bill, who came back to me to make amends and died when my love made him human. But this man—William Duffy—I had dreamed of him, but I didn’t know him. Could he be trusted?
A cold breeze brushed against my back, insinuating itself down the neck of my damp blouse. I shivered at its touch … but then felt it warm as it crept down my back. It felt like a hand, as if the breeze had turned to flesh as it met my flesh—as Liam had gained flesh with my breath. And as the warm breeze coiled around my waist, I smelled heather.
William lifted his head and sniffed the air. His eyes met mine and I felt a spark of recognition. Pulled by that spark—and the invisible hand at my back—I stepped over the threshold.
While William went to work lighting a fire, I looked around the cottage. The central room contained the fireplace, with a settle and two chairs set before it. A spinning wheel had been knocked over, the wool from its bobbin strewn all over the floor. There was also a rudimentary kitchen consisting of a cupboard, an iron basin, and a cast-iron stove. There were two small rooms in the loft upstairs, one with an antique brass bed covered with wool blankets and a sheepskin, the other with a loom, more trunks, and piles of blankets and sheepskins. Mordag was a weaver as well as a shepherd, which made sense.
I grabbed an armful of blankets and sheepskins, then came upon a trunk full of clothes. I put the blankets down and stripped out of my wet clothes, carefully spreading them out over the loom to dry. I put on
a long white cotton shift and picked out a nightshirt for William—there were no pants—then carried the blankets down the stairs. I found William crouched on the stone hearth in front of a roaring fire.
“Here,” I said, tossing him the nightshirt. “Put this on while I see if there’s any food.”
“There isna but a stale bannock or two, but I did find this.”
He held up an earthenware jug. I took it and smelled the peaty aroma of malt whiskey. Good scotch had been Liam’s weakness. Some things never changed, I supposed. Certainly the golden skin of the man before me …
I took a swig of the scotch to keep from looking at those long golden limbs. Turning away, I felt unaccountably shy. I’d been making love to this man in my dreams for weeks now—I’d made love to his incarnations for longer than that—but I didn’t know him. He looked at me as if he knew me, but that was because he thought I was the first Cailleach. He’d never met me—and he wouldn’t, I suddenly realized. I’d saved him before he became the incubus, so he would never come to me as Liam or Bill. I felt a sort of hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, but perhaps that was an aftereffect from emptying myself out to become the door. Certainly I should feel glad that I’d rescued William Duffy before he could become the incubus, but I didn’t. The man I’d fallen in love with—whatever combination of Bill and Liam that had been—had never existed. I’d rescued a total stranger.
A hungry and cold stranger.
I searched the cupboards for food. I found a number of glass jars full of dried herbs and a covered earthenware canister half full of oatmeal and another with hard biscuits—the bannocks William had spoken of, no doubt, although they didn’t resemble the warm, flaky biscuits my father used to make. Either seventeenth-century fare was spare or Mordag had planned to be away for a while and hadn’t stocked her kitchen before leaving—although I noticed that there was a bowl on the table half full of dried oatmeal, a wooden spoon congealing beside it. It looked as if Mordag had been having her morning porridge when she’d been interrupted and left suddenly.
I hadn’t come across any indoor plumbing on my exploration, so I went out back to relieve myself, squatting behind a lilac bush. In the moonlight I could see a pump, a neat garden sheltered in the lee of a stone wall, and an apple tree, all well tended and trimmed back for winter. Mordag hadn’t been gone for long.
I washed my hands at the pump and filled a tin bucket that hung beside it with water. The water was ice cold and tasted like snow, which I noticed was covering the tops of the moonlit mountains surrounding the cottage. There hadn’t been any snow in the Catskills when I left Fairwick. It gave me a hollow feeling that time was moving on, even though I knew that was absurd. The gulf of time separating me from my friends in Fairwick was far wider than a few weeks.
Shivering, as if I’d felt that wide gulf of time opening up under my feet, I hurried back into the cottage, which felt toasty warm now. William had arranged the sheepskins and blankets into a sort of couch in front of the fire and was reclining lazily, his bare legs ruddy in the firelight. I brought the water and bannocks over and busied myself filling a cast-iron kettle.
“I thought ye might’ve run away, lass,” he said when I finally sat down beside him. “Ye seem more scairt of me now than when I turned into a lion.”
“You remember that?” I asked, avoiding the question of me being afraid of him. He was right—I was. But why?
“Aye,” he said, his eyes glowing with mirth and reflected firelight. “I didn’t have any choice about it, mind, no more than I had these last seven years, but I knew how brave ye were—and how kind. To risk your own neck for a man ye’d only met that once, although …” He drew his legs under him and knelt in front of me, studying my face. “It was a once that I would never forget.” He leaned forward. His loose hair, falling in soft waves around his shadowed face, was lit red by the firelight behind him, making him look for a moment like the lion he’d turned into back at the well. When he touched my face, his hand felt as soft and warm as the lion’s fur.
I swallowed, feeling the pressure of his strong fingers on my skin. My voice sounded hoarse when I spoke. “There’s something I have to explain to you …” I began, before his lips touched mine. He leaned back on his heels and looked at me, a line creasing his brow. I resisted the urge to smooth it away.
“I’m not that girl,” I said, “the one you met in the Greenwood—Cailleach. I have the same name—although I go by Callie more often—but I’m not her. I’m … her descendant. I’ve come back through time.”
“What happened to her, then? The other Cailleach?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think she had to leave Ballydoon because the witch hunters came and she tried to get back to Faerie, but it wasn’t the right time. I’ve dreamed about her. I think she saw you and tried to come through the door, but then she faded …”
A pained look crossed his face. “Aye, I half-remember that, but I thought it was a dream—I’ve had some awful dreams in the time I’ve spent in Faerie. If she didn’t come for me, then what happened to me?”
“You became an incubus,” I said. “You came to me twice as that creature, each time in a different guise.”
“Did I hurt ye, lass, when I came to ye as a demon?”
“No—or at least not physically. You rather broke my heart as Liam, but then when you came back as Bill you tried to make it up to me.”
“As if there were any way to make up for treating a lady badly!” He jerked away and flung himself back against the piled blankets and stared into the fire. “There were things I did when I was in Faerie … things I remember … I don’t know if they were real or no’. There were great feasts at which we ate and drank like kings for days and nights on end, only there wasn’t any difference betwixt night and day, so no telling how long our debaucheries went on—or where they might lead. I remember riding through the woods, horns calling the hounds to the hunt, chasing a white deer, only the deer became a girl … a frightened human girl.”
He turned to me, his eyes glowing blood red in the firelight, his face pale as ash. “I don’t like to think of what became of that girl, or the others. The queen brought them to me. She said I must learn to feed on their life or I’d no’ be any good to her.” He looked back at the fire, his profile white against the shadows. He was no longer cold, but he was trembling. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I was afraid that when he looked at me he would see one of those girls he’d hurt. I remembered that after I’d banished Liam to the Borderlands, he spent his time there trying to help creatures across safely, to make amends for the souls he’d drained of life. And when Bill showed up at my door to fix my roof, he constantly told me that he was sorry. I saw now that it wasn’t just for the hurt he’d caused me. He’d been trying to atone for the things he was forced to do to survive in Faerie.
“I didn’t know what she meant,” William went on. “I … I lay with those girls, but I never meant them any harm. Still, they would grow paler and weaker and thinner … and then they would be gone. I told myself they had been released back into the world, but when I asked, the queen would only laugh and take me into her bed again—” He broke off and lowered his head. “Ye must think me a monster,” he said in a low, desperate voice.
I started to speak, but my throat was so dry I gagged. I reached for the water and took a long drink, wishing the clean cold of it would wash away the images of William in the Fairy Queen’s bed. I remembered that before I knew that Liam was the incubus, he told me a story about a lover who had led him into debauchery, with whom he had done things he didn’t like to remember. That, I saw now, had been his way of telling me what had happened with the Fairy Queen. But that story hadn’t come close to the raw details of this tale. Soheila had first told me the story of how a mortal became an incubus because he lived so long in Faerie that he had lost his humanity and then had to feed off the life force of human women, but I had not imagined exactly what that process entailed. I had not pictured the F
airy Queen feeding live girls to him, as one might feed a pet snake live mice. Nor had I pictured her taking that pet—replete with the strength he’d sucked out of those girls—back into her bed. I knew I should say something reassuring to him, but I couldn’t think what.
William looked up again and helped me hold the pail to my lips, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He took a sip of the water himself, put the pail aside, and looked back at the fire. “Aye, I don’t blame ye. I became a monster in my own eyes. The worst of it was, I began to hunger for those girls. I looked forward to the hunt. When I saw ye standing on the road tonight, I thought you were tonight’s prey, and …” He turned to me, his eyes wide and staring. “I cannot lie to ye—I wanted you. I want ye now, but I’m afraid of what I might do to ye.” His hands twisted around my arms as the serpent had coiled around me. His hair, dry now, waved around his face like a lion’s mane; his eyes burned like a fiery brand.
I shook one arm from his grip. I saw the pain in his eyes as I broke away, but he didn’t try to restrain me. He let my other arm go and sat back on his heels. My arms free, I stroked his hair and wrapped my arm around his trembling shoulders. I coaxed his head down to my shoulder, stroking his hair and kneading the knotted muscles along his back. His whole body began to shake, but I held on to him fast as I had at the well, only this time I wasn’t so sure what I’d be holding in the end.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We fell asleep in front of the cottage’s fire. At some point, when I felt William’s body relax, I stretched out beside him and brushed the damp hair from his brow. Fresh washed with tears, gilded by the light of the smoldering embers, he looked like a boy, not a monster. I felt like Psyche gazing at her lover by lamplight, astonished to find a beautiful youth instead of the beast she had feared. But as beautiful as he was and as much as this man looked like Bill, he wasn’t Bill. And now that I’d saved him from a cursed existence as an incubus, he would never become Liam or Bill. I should have been glad that I’d spared him years more of servitude to the Fairy Queen, but all I felt was a pang for the man William would never become. I let slumber overtake me, my own tears falling on his breast like the oil from Psyche’s lamp, all the while feeling the beat of his heart under my cheek.
