[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  Emily could see Dall standing in the arena’s gateway, paying rapt attention. Holding her side where she had supposedly been kicked, she got up while Siobhan was teetering. Not wanting to say anything, Emily just moaned some more about her aching side.

  Siobhan kept teetering and making their audience laugh. “The only possible explanation is that you and Dall must be time traveling on your own. Your Time Management app must have gotten unlocked somehow.”

  Siobhan quit teetering, grabbed Emily’s wrist with both hands, and started swinging her around in a circle.

  Ug, comic fighting is the most physically strenuous kind. Emily would have preferred throwing fake punches at each other. But women don’t typically fight that way, and when women do fight, people would rather it be funny. Or sexy, but the renaissance festival was a family show. Emily was just glad that at least Siobhan couldn’t expect her to talk at that moment.

  Siobhan let Emily go.

  In keeping with the improvisational acting rule of always making the most interesting choice, Emily spun out of control on her own like a top and went stumbling across the arena, flailing her arms in the air. And not talking.

  Their audience laughed again, and then started clapping.

  Sure enough, Siobhan had followed another rule of improvisational acting: stop when the audience is happy. She was bowing over and over in comedic fashion.

  Emily bowed, too, and then she headed back over to Dall.

  But Siobhan caught her arm. “Let me near you often. So I can tell you when you are pregnant. So that you’ll know when to stop time traveling and not lose your baby.”

  Just like that, Emily was in tears.

  When they got to Dall, Siobhan breezed on by without even talking to him. He hugged Emily tight. “Aw, lass, what did she say to you?”

  “Can we just go back to the trailer now?”

  “Aye, lass.”

  When they got there, Emily told Dall everything Siobhan had said. “I was ready for an argument. To tell Siobhan we’d just been doing as she said, making friends with the Scots guild members. Why did she… What does that… I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  Dall looked thoughtful as he sat next to her on the couch and held her close, caressing her shoulder. “Well, at least we do not have to worry about them finding out we can travel on our own.”

  That cheered Emily up enough to go get her phone and check the current time. It was 7:45 Monday morning. “In just fifteen minutes, we’re going to meet Vange’s cousin the gangster. Do you think we’ll re-live it?”

  Dall just smiled and shrugged, and she found that so funny that she started tickling him, and they were busy for a while. By the time Emily looked at her phone again, it was 5:25 Monday evening. She showed him, and they laughed.

  “Now we know.”

  “Aye, and it will happen again tomorrow, lass.”

  “Oh yeah,” Emily said, thinking about it. And then she smiled contentedly at him, cuddled up to him, and whispered in Dall’s ear, “I want to take Vange along with us and time travel one more time. And then I want to stop and make more MacGregors.”

  10 Warriors

  It was weird knowing they had already spent the next five days elsewhere. They could see their time debt in orange squares on the calendar.

  Dall and Emily were cuddled up together on the cheap couch in the new two-bedroom trailer the druids were letting them live in. It was backstage at the renaissance festival, where they both worked. The young married couple stared at the calendar in the Time Management app that a druid named Siobhan had put on Emily’s phone.

  Emily was glad Dall preferred to wear his kilt rather than the ‘normal clothes’ they had bought for when he visited her parents. She idly played with the wool plaid yardage he had belted at his waist while they stared at her phone. She herself wore shorts and a T-shirt.

  The clock at the top of her phone said 9 pm. “I think Vange is home by now,” Emily said in Gaelic, the language they always used when it was just the two of them in the conversation.

  “Aye, and why do you say so?” Dall often said things that were a challenge for Emily to answer in his language, which they had discovered was the Time Management app’s command language.

  “I’m going to call her.” Emily had to stop and think about her words for a moment.

  Dall gestured for more.

  “I’m worried about how mad she gets at me tomorrow about not knowing our plans.” Again, Emily stopped to find the words she knew.

  Dall caressed her back.

  “What if I just call her now and tell her that story about how you lost your ID behind the club Saturday night? That way, I can tell her we’re coming out her way tomorrow. That should fix it, right?” When Emily absolutely couldn’t find a word, then she just said it in English and Dall told her the Gaelic for it.

  “ID we do not have in my time, exempting a lord has a signet ring. About the matter at hand, the truth will tell, lass.”

  Emily dialed her best friend’s cell. It rang and rang, like 15 times, and no voicemail picked up.

  “That’s just too weird. I’m going to try her parents’ house phone.”

  The same thing happened. The phone rang and rang with no answer.

  “What is it, lass? There cannot be that much devastation inside that wee phone.” Dall was leaning in so he could hear with her.

  Of course, all she was hearing was ringing.

  Emily opened her contact list. “None of my calls are going through. I’m just going to push on a random phone number to see if we can reach the outside world.”

  “Hello, Emily?”

  Emily let out a calming breath. “Hi Ashley. Uh ... “she looked at Dall for some reason even she herself didn’t know.

  Her 16th century highlander husband grabbed the phone and awkwardly held it to his ear. “Hello, lass. I wish to speak with your man, Cody… Yes, I can…”

  Emily finally got over her shock at seeing Dall talking on the phone and leaned in so she could hear both sides of the conversation.

  Cody came on the line. “Hey, brother. What’s up, my man?”

  Dall laughed. “I wish to invite the five of you to a festivity in our … trailer this Saturday night, by way of thanking you for your hospitality last Saturday evening. I will not take no for an answer, and I beg of you to tell the others.”

  “Oh, cool. Sure will. See ya then.”

  “Aye, see ya then.” Dall held the phone out to Emily.

  She took it. “Hello?” No one was there. She grinned.

  “Well, that is better, lass, seeing you happy again, but I would be in on the reason.”

  Emily gave her husband a look she meant to be apologetic. “I was thinking men in different time periods aren’t much different. None of you like talking on the phone, but that was the shortest phone call I ever heard.”

  He smiled back at her, only his smile was anything but apologetic, and he reached for her.

  When Emily woke up, it was 7 pm the next day. She wasn’t alarmed, though. She knew she’d already spent Monday visiting Vange and her parents and Tuesday sleeping in her old room at her parents’ house. She and Dall had been up 24 hours straight by then, and they had needed to stay up another five hours in order to drive back to their trailer at the festival site.

  “Dall?” she called out, hoping he was inside and could hear her.

  “Aye?” Oh, his voice was coming from the shower.

  “Let’s go see Vange.” She listened for his reply over the shower noises that she now noticed down the hall in their one bathroom. Instead, those noises stopped.

  And then Dall came into the room, drying his hair. “Aye, well enough. Let us go see your best lass, then.” He smiled at her.

  She smiled back, and things got interesting for a while.

  Once they were both showered and dressed in normal clothes, Dall put his arm around Emily and she got out her phone and selected as a destination her parents’ garage at their current time
of 8:27 pm Monday night. The night right after Vange blew up at Emily for not sharing their plans to come into town with her and the awkwardness of having to hear about it from her cousin Emilio.

  The world went swirly.

  Marking in the garage had been a good plan. No one saw them appear out of nowhere, and Dall and Emily left through the back door and walked out to the street and then down to the park. Emily got on one of the swings. Dall copied her and then looked pleasantly surprised when it held him.

  Emily called her best friend.

  “Hi Em.” Vange’s voice sounded sad, rather than mad.

  “Vange. We’re at the park. Come on out.”

  The line went dead.

  Vange came running over. She chuckled. “OK, if you’re trying to make up after our fight today, you’re doing a lousy job. You did it again. You drove all the way out here and didn’t tell me you were coming.” But she was smiling. Just a little.

  “Glad to see you, too, Vange. Look, I really am sorry—both about this morning and about being here without telling you before now.” Emily gestured for Dall to get his little notebook out of his pocket, and the pen.

  He handed them to her, and while she was writing, he talked. “Aye, lass. I am truly sorry as well, for all the grief that you have suffered.”

  Vange started a question with “What—”

  But Dall must have made a gesture that stopped Vange from asking Emily what she was writing. Good.

  Emily finished and then showed it to Vange: “I can’t tell you this secret; I just have to show you.”

  “O … K?”

  Now that she was sure Vange was paying attention, Emily wrote while she watched, “Take my hand, and don’t let go.”

  Vange took Emily’s hand while Dall had his arm around Emily.

  She got her phone out and let Vange watch her set it to take them back to their trailer at the current time. And they swirled on over.

  Emily put her hand in front of Vange’s mouth to keep her from saying anything.

  Vange nodded, wide-eyed and grinning huge and stomping her feet she was so excited—and frustrated that she couldn’t say anything.

  Emily nodded at their hands so that Vange would let go, and then she loaned Vange one of her long plaid skirts, a bodice that matched, a shift, and a hat. Emily dressed similarly, and Dall put his kilt on. They loaded their belts with pouches stuffed full of provisions and items to trade.

  “Hold onto me, and don’t let go,” Emily said again, holding her finger over her lips to remind Vange not to say anything.

  Vange nodded yes and latched onto Emily’s arm.

  “Aye lass, it was my plan ere you did say it, to hold you close and never let go.” On Emily’s other side, Dall squeezed her.

  Emily looked Dall in the eye and then looked at her phone.

  Nodding yes, Dall leaned over her phone. Yeah, it was hard to see the little screen in the glare from the cheap overhead lights in the trailer.

  Emily brought up the picture they had taken of Dall’s son Peadar and hovered her finger over it as a destination. She looked to Dall for his opinion on if they should try it.

  “Aye, lass. We do need to find out if it can be done, finding the children, and it is a safe location where he is, all things considered. Let us go.”

  In Gaelic, Emily said to her husband about his son, “For when we really need to know that he is safe.” And then she looked at Dall and Vange both again and pushed the ‘Go’ button that made the world turn swirly.

  Instead of their attic bedroom at Dall’s mother’s house on the green cloudy mountains of the Scottish highlands, Emily, Dall, and Vange found themselves in a thicket, looking out on a wide open plain. The sun was hot over their heads, and the sky was a deep clear blue. A few dozen cattle were grazing on the plain, and there was not a sign of civilization as far as the eye could see.

  After Emily’s eyes adjusted to the bright light, she could see men in English trews resting in a few shady spots, wearing various and sundry styles of sun hats. And when her eyes adjusted more, she could see that one of these men wore a shirt made of MacGregor plaid over his trews.

  Dall’s hand clenched on Emily’s waist, so she figured he must have seen the MacGregor plaid, too. He started to move toward the man who wore it.

  Emily clutched him tight and said in Gaelic the phrase she had at first thought meant “I want a do-over.”

  They swirled back into the trailer at the renfest.

  “Why, lass? That was my son. That was Peadar. And that bit you said to bring us there? That meant ‘Take us to him when he needs us most.’ you ken? Peadar needs us, lass.” He was so earnest that he was actually wringing his hands.

  “Dall. Dall.” Emily was desperate for him to listen to reason.

  Finally, he looked at her with a question in his eyes. And he looked hurt, as if she would deny him the need to see to his son’s safety. He looked betrayed, and so sad her heart nearly broke.

  She had to snap him out of it. Make him see. “Those men were wearing trews, Dall. They’re English. If they saw a bunch of Scots appear out of the bushes, they would enslave us. No wonder Peadar cut his kilt up and made it into shirts.”

  “Aye, but he needs us, lass. We must go back.” He wasn’t listening, he was so desperate to save Peadar.

  “We will,” she said, “but after we all change into trews.” Emily hugged Dall. “We will go help him, love. We just need to change clothes. Just a change of clothing. We’ll go back to that very same second in time.” She hugged him some more.

  He finally relaxed and was no longer straining to get free of her, which wasn’t the way he could get to his son.

  She understood he was upset and a bit irrational.

  At last, despair lost its hold on Dall. He looked at her and at Vange in their long skirts and their bodices that hiked up their breasts. “Aye, some large trews and large tunics to hide your womanhood, I ken well. Come. I know who we need to see.”

  A few minutes later, they stood outside the large tent of Marion, the time traveler who approved the locals’ handmade renaissance festival costumes for authenticity.

  “Knock knock.” Dall said, as was the custom at the festival site when arriving at another staffer’s tent.

  “Dall.” came Marion’s voice from inside, “come in.”

  Dall ducked inside the tent, pulling Emily and Vange in with him. “I would ask your assistance, lass, in making me and my wife and our friend look like English men of our time.”

  Marion gave the two healthy young women a look that said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Dall looked at Emily appreciatively and said, “At least, can you make them look like English men from a distance?”

  Marion looked Emily and Vange up and down again, more thoughtfully. “Well enough. Do come with me. We will be needing the clothing in the costume shed for this.”

  An hour later, they all sported trews and tunics in varying shades of unremarkable brown. They still had their belts and pouches with provisions. They had added packs with camping items and more provisions, and they had left the items for trading behind.

  Dall and Emily had their boots with their daggers sheathed in them. Vange had loaner boots that weren’t the best fit but that would be far less remarkable to the people of the time they were headed for than the neon green sneakers she’d been wearing under her long skirt. Far less remarkable. Good thing her hair wasn’t neon green these days.

  Emily and Vange had been talking excitedly in the course of being fitted into these 16th century Englishmen’s outfits. They had purposely left Emily’s phone in the trailer so that this wouldn’t be a problem.

  “This is so much fun.” Vange said, swinging her legs in her chair and glancing sideways at Dall as if she had no idea why he was so upset.

  “What is?” Emily said, trying to tell Dall with her eyes she was sorry for her friend’s lack of empathy for him.

  “Getting all dressed up in these costumes. Wher
e are we going, anyway?”

  “Like I said before, I can’t really tell you. You wouldn’t believe me, anyway. I’m showing you. You’ll see pretty soon, when we get there.”

  “The suspense is killing me.”

  “Call home,” Emily told Vange. “Tell them you’re out with me and you might stay over. We’ll try to get you home this evening, but you never know.”

  So Vange called home, and then they went back to the trailer and hung up Dall’s kilt and Emily’s two Scottish outfits.

  “Ready?” Emily grabbed her husband and her friend and waited for them to nod yes. “Take two.” She selected her new English Thicket destination, pressed the ‘Go’ button, and swirled them back to Peadar.

  Not even an instant had passed when the three of them arrived back in the thicket in Peadar’s time. The men were all in the same positions and locations—as were all the cows, near as Emily could tell.

  “Dall,” she said, gently holding him back. She could tell he wanted to run to his son. Who by the way appeared to be about Dall’s own age, 28. “Dall, you can’t let those Englishmen hear your Scottish accent.”

  He was intent on his son, straining to see what peril he was in.

  Emily spoke in soothing tones. “If they hear you talk, they’ll know you’re a Scot, and then why did we go to all the trouble to get these English clothes? And me and Vange have to keep quiet, too, or they’ll know we’re women. And three mutes in one group is just too far-fetched a tale for them to buy. We have to wait until Peadar is alone, and then we can go talk to him and make sure he is OK.”

  Dall had gradually relaxed as she talked.

  "Aye lass, you have the right of it."

  But neither of them had stopped to consider that Vange had never time traveled before today. The last time had been so brief, she hadn’t seemed to realize that was what they had done.

  Their poor friend Vange looked like she was in shock. Hardly a shy person, she stood there speechless, even trembling a bit.