Jean sniffed and said, “He should be covered so I can think.”
Kristie sighed, reached for her brooch and unfastened it, taking her green-checkered cloak from her shoulders. She held her dagger in her hand as she set the fabric over the man. She glanced at her sister-in-law, wondering what to do next.
Jean crossed her arms and muttered, “How are we to help a strapping fellow his size?”
“How are we to help him? Ye are with child and I”—Kristie waved her hand in the air—“I dinnae know if I wish to touch the fellow. What if he wakes to attack us?”
“That be no blade of straw.” Jean pointed to Kristie’s weapon. “Ye know how to use it, and just because I be pregnant does not mean I have lost all my strength. Plus, he does not seem in the state to give us trouble.”
“I say we leave him be. If someone else comes along, he can be their problem,” Kristie said with a sigh.
“If Domnall washed up on someone else’s shore, I would hope they would have the kindness in their soul to tend to him. I cannae, in good conscience, leave him.”
Kristie protested. “But what if—”
“While Domnall is away, it is my place to make these hard choices, and I say we should take him in.”
“Very well,” Kristie grumbled.
The cold winds pressed against Kristie’s belted, ankle-length tunic. She stared down at the partially covered man and grimaced. She shrugged off the chill and leaned down to shake his shoulder. “Up with ye! Yer kin are waiting for ye. Time to go.”
Unlike the last time she’d tried to wake him, his head adjusted slightly, and he moaned. Kristie held the dagger close, ready for any sudden movement. She knew it would be easier to get him up if he helped. “Time to rise to yer feet.”
Jean watched from a stride away as Kristie hooked her hand under the stranger’s armpit. With his eyes still shut, he reflexively pushed his palms against the gravelly shore and rose onto his hands and knees. She tried to help guide him up the beach and out of the water. He went far enough onto the gravel to pull himself from the water before he groaned and collapsed on his left side, rolling onto his back and tangling himself in Kristie’s plaid.
“Oh, Mary!” Jean exclaimed with a smile, putting her hand to her mouth and shifting her widened eyes in another direction.
It was nothing Kristie hadn’t already seen. She’d been married for a spell before her husband passed from this earth fighting for their freedom, but her cheeks still flushed in embarrassment as she observed the stranger’s uncovered form. She quickly grabbed hold of the end of her plaid and threw it over his abdomen.
“That be better,” she muttered aloud. “Let me try once more. He may wake and be on his way.”
Kristie took a breath and hunched as she called out to the man, “Will ye wake?”
There was no response. If they wanted to get him to the farm, they’d have to do all of the hard work. She gave her sister-in-law a frown before tucking her dagger’s blade under her belt at the low of her back with a sigh. She positioned herself at his head, slipped her hands under his armpits and lifted his shoulders off the ground. Then she directed her attention to Jean. “Grab the other end.”
Her sister-in-law blinked at her before walking slowly to his pale wrinkly feet and lifting them up. Kristie took the lead, going backward. He was heavy, but she was used to hard work on the farm. She found it easier to raise him up against her belly so both of her hands could clasp together, locking him in place. Jean followed after, casting glances from his face to her hillside farm.
They had to pause multiple times so Kristie could readjust her hold or to allow Jean to take a break. At one point Kristie nearly let him tumble from her arms, and his unfocused eyes opened as he muttered, “I could nay save him…”
The women stopped to stare down at him, but he’d already fallen back into his strange sleeplike state. Kristie looked up at Jean and asked, “Did ye hear that?”
“To be sure,” Jean responded and cocked her head. “Least he is not an Englishman.”
“That not be my meaning.” Kristie shook her head, panting. “Who do ye reckon he speaks of?”
“Only the fairies know.”
Jean’s forehead wrinkled with worry, and Kristie noticed her cast several glances toward the loch, no doubt searching for Domnall’s boat. They hurried the last length once the fence was in sight, both of them panting loudly. Jean let go of his feet to unlatch the gate, and Kristie dragged him the final distance to the covered animal shed. The byre’s roof sloped low at one end, for the bracing had rotted, so she had to duck down as she laid him on a patch of earth covered with straw.
Kristie groaned in exhaustion and stood beside her sister-in-law, trying to catch her breath. They both stared at him in silence until Jean said, “Domnall has a stained tunic that will not come clean. A naked man will not be found on my farm.”
She wandered slowly from sight, going around the side of the home with her hand pressed to the low of her back. Kristie waited anxiously for her to return, and when she did, Kristie was the one who tugged the long tunic over the stranger’s head while her plaid still covered his groin. She noticed that more than his head and shoulders were scuffed up. His right knee had a series of scrapes and appeared to be swollen like the bump on his temple.
Once he was covered, Jean sighed. “There. He be one step closer to getting well.”
Kristie shook her head. “Can ye look me in the eye and tell me he will not wake and run off with our livestock?”
“I cannae,” Jean answered with a shrug. “But it be the right thing to do.”
Kristie wasn’t so sure about that and went to find the hayfork. She handed it to Jean. “I did not get far before finding him. What if Domnall and Hendrie shared his fate? I will go back out to walk the length of our shore, but ye best not leave his side until he draws his last breath or wakes.”
“Aye, if it makes ye rest easy.” Jean took hold of the pointed tool and took a seat on an empty barrel. “I will not move from this spot until ye come back.”
Kristie took a deep breath and swept out of the byre. She hurried back down the slope to the loch and was careful not to slip on the rocky beach as she moved as quick as she safely could along the shore. The morning had gone, and she still had no sight of her brother and the neighbor.
She had gone far north of their home when she decided to turn back. When she was more than halfway home, she spotted a man on the bluff. He held up his hand in greeting, so she decided to go have a word.
Their older neighbor, Sacharie, had a dark-blue plaid wrapped around his upper body. It was belted around his waist, leaving the bottom of his linen tunic uncovered at his knees. He grinned at her from under his knitted woolen cap. His graying hair came out in a wiry mass beneath it, and his bushy eyebrows furrowed as he said, “Afternoon, Kristie. Ye never stuck me as the type to leave yer chores for a walk.”
“To be sure,” she answered. “I be looking for Domnall and Hendrie. They went out in the currach yesterday and have not returned. Have ye seen anything amiss?”
“Nay, lass.” He shook his head. “I will be sure to spread the word. My boy and I can go out to search.”
“Thank ye.” Kristie looked at the fellow and thought of another way he could help. “There be something else.”
“Speak up, lass. Ye know I will do what I can.”
Kristie pointed down the shore. “While I was out looking for my brother, I found a fellow, an outsider. He looks a sight and will not wake.”
“That is a strange happening,” the man breathed out in wonder.
“Jean would not leave him be. He sleeps in our byre, but what if he wakes and steals our cattle? I wonder if ye would stop by to give him a look. See if ye recognize him? Give yer opinion to Jean since she respects ye so?”
“Oh, aye.” The older fellow folded his arms across his chest. “I said to Moira this morning, a strange wind blows from the west. The fairies are behind it, to be sure.”
/> She continued on her walk home, squinting along the loch, searching for anything out of place, but saw nothing but the trees and rocks protecting the shore. Kristie hurried up their slope to let herself into the fenced property. She ducked into the darkened byre, hoping the man had woken and departed during her absence.
Jean’s eyes had drifted shut while she rested sitting up, and beside her the fellow was still sleeping on the hay-strewn ground. Kristie sighed. She shouldn’t have left her alone with the outsider. She walked up to her sister-in-law and placed her hand on her shoulder. “Time to wake.”
Jean’s lids fluttered open, and she glanced to the outsider with a bleary look in her eyes. “Oh, I fell asleep. Did ye find Domnall?”
Kristie shook her head and helped the pregnant woman onto her feet. She took the hayfork from her and suggested, “I can look after him. If ye would bring him a drink, maybe I can wake him and get some answers.”
Jean wandered outside and yawned before walking out of sight. Kristie gripped the hayfork and sat against the bumpy stone-and-clay wall. She set the sharpened forked points of the tool in the ground beside the man and took a deep breath. If he made any move to hurt her, she would be ready.
Next in the Time of Myths
Shapeshifter Sagas
Widow {13th c. | Black Shuck | England} *
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Research Notes
Viking Dublin-
Duiblinn means Black Pool, which takes its name from a dark pool in the River Poddle. Prior to the Scandinavian age in Dublin, the location likely served as a religious settlement.
The Vikings began raiding Ireland’s coastlines by the end of the 8th century, gathering valuables and people to sell in the slave trade (thralls) or to ransom off. By the mid 9th century, they conquered “Black Pool”. It became the biggest slave port in Western Europe. Over roughly the following fifty years, conflict consumed the growing settlement between the Norse and their native neighbors until the Vikings were expelled at the turn of the 10th century.
Twenty years hadn’t passed before the Vikings were back to reclaim various settlements in Ireland, including the important location of Dublin. The Norse were known for adapting, so it wasn’t long before the Irish and Norse cultures melded together. It was in the mid 12th century during the Norman invasion when the last of the Viking royal blood found its end in Dublin.
Kraken Mythology-
Story of the kraken was first mentioned in Norse sagas and observational records. It was described as being “land-like” or similar to a crab, which in later reports sounds more reminiscent of octopuses or squid.
Ægir and Ran, Norse Gods-
Ægir (“eye-jeer”, meaning ocean) and his wife, Ran, are ancient gods. These giants were said to live in an opulent hall the bottom of the sea and were said to hold only the best parties with the tastiest mead. They had nine daughters, all named after the waves, and Ran was fabled to keep a net that she used to collect the souls of lost sailors.
About the Author
Natasha Brown’s active imagination has always been a distraction. When she was a child, the forest outside her home, and books read in the dark past bedtime taught her that exciting worlds are created with dreams and a voice. Once she started writing she couldn’t break the habit. She is likely busy at work now, researching, planning and chatting with her future characters.
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Tides (Time of Myths: Shapeshifter Sagas Book 3) Page 21
