[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  The world went swirly, and then Emily, Vange, Peadar—and the indian man—were behind the Christmas tree in the storage closet at Brittany’s favorite dance club. Emily had set her phone for midnight on a Saturday, so loud music came in through the walls and they could feel the beat of the bass in their bones.

  The men fell down, suddenly hanging from nothing where their hands had been locked around tree branches. They landed and kept on struggling with each other, albeit in a restrained, wrestling sort of way.

  Emily and Vange stayed on their feet.

  Vange looked around curiously. “Wow, Emily. How did you do this? It’s amazing.” She caught sight of Peadar and smiled at him.

  Peadar smiled back at Vange from the floor, where he was so tangled up with the indian that Emily couldn’t tell who was winning.

  But just then, the indian let out a loud keening yell, “Eye ee ee ee ee ee ee.” It sounded like a whole pack of coyotes.

  Well, that did it.

  The door opened out with a bang against the wall, and two bouncers ran into the already crowded little storage room.

  “What’s going on in here?” said the first bouncer.

  “Quit making that racket.” shouted the second one.

  Emily improvised. “I came in here looking for my friend.” She pointed at Vange. “She was making out with this cowboy.”

  Vange played along, tossing her hair and smiling at Peadar.

  Emily went on. “I was trying to get her to leave with me when this indian came barging in and started a fight with the cowboy. We tried to pull them apart, and he started yelling.”

  “I never saw any of them come in. Did you, Bud?” The bouncer was looking all of them over thoughtfully.

  “Nope. Must have snuck in the back.”

  Both bouncers moved toward them.

  With the crazed look of a cornered animal, the indian yanked away from Peadar onto his feet, lowered his head, and rammed past both bouncers and out the door, all the while screaming, “Eye ee ee ee ee ee ee.”

  “Get him before he hurts someone, Bud.” The bouncers ran out after the indian.

  Peadar made a move as if to go help them.

  Emily reached out and grabbed his shirt just in time.

  Peadar turned to her.

  She held out her hand.

  With realization dawning on his face, he took it.

  “Hold on to me.” Emily said to Vange.

  Her best friend grabbed her arm just in time for Emily to select a different destination and push the ‘Go’ button again.

  This time they swirled into the trailer where they stayed at the renfest.

  “I have to charge my phone,” Emily said, looking all over for the cord she hadn’t needed for nearly a year and then plugging her phone into an outlet in the kitchen. “That’ll take two hours or so. In the meantime, we might as well eat and stock up on whatever we might need if we have to rescue Dall from that John fellow.”

  But Vange was staring at Peadar as if she’d never seen him before. “Huh? What John fellow?” She looked around as if she expected to see Dall in the room. “Where is he?”

  “Oh no. You don’t remember going to Peadar’s time, do you.”

  Vange looked worried and quickly shook her head no, then looked over at Peadar and waved.

  Peadar waved back, smiling at Vange.

  “Ug.” Emily yelled in frustration. “How did I forget you wouldn’t remember being there. OK, Vange. Peadar and I have to get ready and then go get Dall. You stay here in case he finds his way home without us, so you can tell him we’ve gone looking for him. He’ll know what to do if that happens. OK?”

  “OK, gosh. Dall’s a big boy, Emily. He can take care of himself. You don’t have to get snippy with me.”

  Emily could tell Vange wasn’t really upset. Her friend was just talking big to impress Peadar. It was weird, but it worked for Emily right now. Since she was sort of afraid to watch the two of them flirt, she busied herself reheating leftovers in the trailer’s tiny built-in microwave.

  Every time the microwave went ‘Ding.’ Peadar would lower himself and freeze.

  He reminded her of the cat she’d had when she was little. But the man was so preoccupied with Vange that he didn’t even turn to look once he reassured himself nothing was attacking any of them.

  They were all eating reheated leftover stew when Siobhan the druid burst into the trailer with a sheathed claymore and the leader of the new Chinese guild that had been started at this site of the druids’ renaissance festival.

  “Ju-long, this is Emily, the wife of our missing man, Dall,” Siobhan said, handing Peadar the claymore and a dagger that Emily hadn’t noticed before.

  “So much sad.” Ju-long bowed a little to Emily. He was wearing complicated brown-leather armor that had a flappy skirt with pants underneath and a brown leather helmet shaped like Darth Vader’s.

  But his rudimentary firearm was the most interesting part of the Chinese man’s outfit.

  Emily could tell that Ju-long was trying hard not to stare at her and Vange in their obvious men’s wear of the 1560s. He was doing a good job. She sometimes wished she didn’t know how to tell when someone was acting, but it came with her training.

  “I’m not sure Peadar knows how to use that claymore,” Emily said to Siobhan after she bowed back to Ju-long.

  But Peadar put her uncertainty to rest by testing the heft of the claymore with a few loud swoosh sounds. Looking pleased, he re-sheathed the sword and strapped it onto his back. He tested the dagger a bit too before sheathing it in his boot.

  Siobhan continued. “And this is Dall’s son, Peadar, the man I explained to you.”

  Emily was watching for Vange’s reaction, and she wasn’t disappointed.

  Her best friend was almost as good an actress as she was. They had been in drama together all four years of high school. Vange was fooling the men and maybe even Siobhan with her calm, cool, collected demeanor.

  But Emily could tell Vange was freaking out at hearing that this grown man of Dall’s age was Dall’s own son. It gave Emily the tiniest bit of satisfaction, the fact that someone she’d known for a long time finally knew how weird her life was now. Emily was glad Vange had the chance to react to the big picture in relative safety, rather than just survive like they had in Peadar’s time.

  “So much sad.” Ju-long gave Peadar his little bow.

  The highlander wearing his cut-up kilt in the form of a shirt gave the Chinese man little pause at all. He bowed and then looked impatiently at everyone.

  Siobhan kept talking. “And this is Vange, Emily’s friend.”

  “So pleased.” Ju-long smiled at Vange while he did his bow thing. Yes, he stared at her trews, but mostly he smiled at her pretty face.

  Watching her friend meet her second time-traveler made Emily wonder for the first time how that indian was doing, back at Brittany’s favorite dance club. She felt a little bad for abandoning him in her time, where he was sure to have difficulty fitting in. But just a tiny bit. After all, he had been trying to kill her stepson…

  “Emily, this … Emily? Emily.”

  Startled out of her thoughts, Emily looked up to see Siobhan’s impatient face.

  Siobhan raised an eyebrow at Emily. “I’ve explained the situation to Ju-long, and he’s agreed to help you bring Dall back here. So long as he wears this amulet, he will remember that.” She held out from around Ju-long’s neck a flat green stone hung by a leather cord.

  “Aren’t you coming along to remind him?” Emily asked the druid.

  “No. I don’t … travel well,” said Siobhan. “I only go where I need to in order to help run the festivals. But I brought you each a leather backpack full of fresh provisions and a few other things that might come in handy out in the middle of nowhere.”

  Everyone gathered round, and Siobhan showed them what was in their packs, explaining how to use the unfamiliar items and answering their ‘what if’ questions matter-of-factly.

/>   When their questions died down, Siobhan said, “I know you’re all wondering about Ju-long’s firearm. Yes, it is functional. He can only take one shot before he has to re-load, though, and loading takes a good ten minutes. So make his one shot count—”

  And then Siobhan’s phone played the catchy tune of a silly boy-band song.

  “Yeah? OK, I’m coming.” Siobhan looked up at Emily. “Gotta go. You bring back our Dall.” She turned and hurried out of the trailer, letting the door bang on her way out.

  But not before Emily caught the hint of a smile on the druid woman’s serene face. What was that all about?

  Peadar finally broke away from staring at Vange long enough to show concern for his da. “Well, you ken we should be going?”

  Vange stepped back from Peadar, but she still drank in every word he said.

  “Yeah,” Emily said, “let me see if my phone is fully charged yet.” She went back into the kitchen.

  Peadar, Ju-long, and Vange followed her.

  “Yep.” Emily said, “It’s at 100 percent. OK, we could go back to the last place we were, up in the tree above those three horses. How long will it take us to ride to the English settlement from there, Peadar?”

  “Cannot we go directly to wherever they are holding Da? It would take a few days to ride the horses to the settlement.”

  “We can try,” said Emily, “but I’m worried about people seeing us appear out of thin air near Dall and then not being able to get close enough to get him out of there with us.”

  “But—”

  “I can say the ‘Do over’ words and we’ll come back here,” Emily said, “but that doesn’t undo them seeing us. They might charge Dall with witchcraft for making us disappear, you see? They could burn him in the time it takes us to get back to him.”

  Vange gasped. “Appear out of thin air. Really?”

  Emily nodded yes at her best friend. “Yep. Really. I showed you, but you don’t remember.”

  Peadar’s brow wrinkled at that, and he looked at Vange with concern. “How was it that you and Da found me, Emily? You did seem to come from nowhere, you ken, from out of the bush.”

  “Oh, well, we had taken your picture when you were young.”

  Peadar gave Emily a blank look.

  “Oh yeah, you’ve never seen a picture.” She thought for a moment and decided to just tell him the story and hope he understood it. “While you were sleeping, your da and I came into your room and captured your image with my phone.”

  Peadar looked more confused than ever.

  “Here,” Emily said, “like this.” She took Peadar’s picture.

  He blinked and ducked when the flash went off.

  Emily showed the picture to him.

  Peadar grabbed her hand and brought the image close, staring at it in awe and wonder. “Do you have a likeness of Da in this wee ‘phone’ of yours?”

  “Yeah, here. Let go and I’ll show you.”

  Peadar let go of Emily’s wrist.

  She showed him a photo of Dall in his kilt and a black tank top.

  “Well, and the likeness you have of me helped you to find me?”

  “Yeah. I used it as a destination. See? All these bookmarks are saved destinations where we’ve been. There’s a map, and I think we could use it to pick destinations, but that scares me because someone might see us. We know that all these saved destinations are hidden from view.”

  “Aye, lass, but were you not hidden from view when you came to my destination? You were hidden by the bush, aye?”

  “Well, yeah, we were, but who knows if that was just an accident? Next time, we may pop up in the middle of a street that wasn’t there the last time some druid used that destination. You see what I mean?”

  “Aye. However, I do think saving Da be worth a wee bit of trouble, you ken? We should be using the likeness of him to find him, before the English make him angry enough to grieve us over him.”

  Emily felt tears rise up in her eyes at the thought of Dall dying in a fight with his new English masters because she was afraid to use his picture to find him.

  Vange’s hand found Emily’s, and Vange gave her a sympathetic look.

  Peadar looked every bit as fierce as his father, perhaps even more so because of resentment at being a slave.

  Emily’s mind changed. “OK, yeah. You’re right. We’ll use Dall’s picture as a destination. Help me with the Gaelic I’ll need to say in order to go back there—but to Dall rather than to where we were when we left your time, Peadar.”

  So Peadar coached Emily in Gaelic pronunciation, trying to get her to say the phrase with just the right inflections in just the right places to tell the wee phone app to get the three of them to Dall in Peadar’s time—and not somewhere completely different.

  Vange and Ju-long were having their own conversation during this, obviously not understanding anything Emily or Peadar said. While they talked, Ju-long loaded his weapon. This was an intricate and fascinating procedure involving bottles of various powders and small metal measuring vessels.

  But in the back of her mind, Emily was deeply bothered by the fact that the druids always had someone listening in on her conversations through the app that Siobhan had installed on her phone. She was a bit embarrassed in case a pre-18th century druid was listening, because they would understand every word she said in Gaelic. And from the way Peadar was reacting to her, Emily knew she sounded pretty foolish:

  Peadar: Take us back to Dall near the time we left him.

  Emily: I want to go ‘spend time’ with Dall.

  Peadar (shaking his head no): Take us back to Dall near the time we left him.

  Emily: Take me back to Dall’s moment in time.

  Peadar (with a panicked look): Take us back to Dall near the time we left him.

  Emily: Take us back, we want our moments of time with Dall.

  It was tough going. Sometimes Peadar laughed at her, but most of the time he looked worried, and sometimes even sick.

  At long last, after an hour of practice, Peadar said she had it right.

  Ju-long spoke up then. “I hear is danger when we arrive. And no one must see this small box.” He gestured at Emily’s phone. “So we stand in circle. Watch other backs. Yes?”

  Vange ran in and hugged Emily. “You’re really going away, huh. It’s scary being the one staying behind. Promise you’ll be careful and come back.”

  Emily got the feeling that even though Vange was hugging her, she was really talking to Peadar. She hugged Vange back. “We’ll come back. I promise.”

  Vange stepped back and leaned on the kitchen counter.

  “Ready?” Emily asked the men. They huddled around her phone. She looked at it and got Dall’s picture ready. The two men looked over each other’s shoulders, guarding their backs from any danger they might encounter upon their arrival.

  “Aye.”

  “Yes.”

  “Take us back to Dall near the time we left him,” Emily said in her careful Gaelic while she pressed the ‘Go’ button.

  They swirled into a grove of trees at the top of a hill overlooking a tiny settlement by a big river. They could see where the river dumped into the ocean in the distance to their left.

  The settlement consisted of four small log buildings. Singing and clapping came from one of them. It sounded a bit like a church hymn Emily had heard before, but she couldn’t hear the words. The four buildings created a small dirt square.

  As soon as she had her bearings, Emily saw that Vange had managed to touch her somehow so that she could come along anyway, despite agreeing to stay behind. Their eyes met briefly.

  Vange made a face that said, “Sorry, but I wasn’t going to be left out of this and let you take all the risks—and have all the fun.” Out loud and with her biggest smile ever, Vange said to Peadar, “I remember everything now. I remember you.”

  The highlander-turned-cowboy was smiling at Vange like a fool.

  Exasperated—and if she was honest, a little embar
rassed at seeing her best friend flirt with her stepson—Emily brought Peadar back to reality. “I think our best bet is to hurry up and go get Dall while they’re all singing. Come on.”

  “We not know where Dall is,” said Ju-long.

  Emily made an exaggerated gesture and spoke what she meant by it. “The druid app brought us here, so we know Dall is near. There aren’t many places he could be in that teeny tiny settlement. All I have to do is touch him and then touch the ‘Go’ button, and we’re out of here. I don’t care who sees us, either. I am going to get him out. Now.”

  They started to answer.

  Before they could, Emily was running down the hill toward her man. She knew they would follow. She was their way home.

  The flapped skirt of Ju-long’s leather armor made enough noise as he ran that she could tell they weren’t far behind.

  Emily didn’t see anyone as she ran all the way down the hill and hid in the shadow of one of the four buildings. She wasn’t too worried about the people inside seeing her, because the buildings didn’t have wind openings, which made sense out here in the wild frontier.

  The others finally joined her in the shade, leaning against the small log cabin. Peadar took the lead now, finally back on task and looking for Dall. They crept up the side of the house toward the small dirt square.

  “Do you see anyone?” Emily frantically looked every which way to make sure no people were around.

  “No,” said Ju-long, behind her.

  “Only Da,” said Peadar, ahead of her.

  “Dall.” Instantly mortified that she had yelled out loud, Emily kind of ducked her head, but she ran around the corner into the dirt square.

  Still wearing trews, Dall was in stocks. “I did know you would come for me, lass. I did not worry one bit.” Dall smiled up at Emily as best he could with his head and wrists locked between two stout pieces of wood that were tied to a stunted tree that Emily hadn’t seen from the hilltop.

  Peadar ran to his da and hugged him.

  Emily was running in to join him when she heard Vange scream behind her.

  Confident that Peadar would protect Dall, Emily looked around the corner outside of the dirt square to see Vange being grabbed by two angry-looking men and Ju-long holstering his gun in order to help her.