[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  It hurt.

  And then everything went black.

  When Vange woke up, she was staring at a spear again, but this time she was sitting on the wet and cold wooden deck of a small sailing ship, restrained against its mast by her arms and legs, which were tied around it with rough ropes at her wrists and ankles.

  So far as she could tell, she still had all of her possessions—except her one dagger was missing from its sheath in her boot, and the little people still had Emily’s phone.

  The ship was in a vast river, or maybe a lake. Vange could see a distant shoreline on two sides.

  Peadar was sitting tied to the mast as well. His claymore was missing, and he was staring at her with a stern look in his eyes.

  He whispered once their eyes met and he could see she was fully awake.

  “Do not say a word.”

  Nodding yes to him, she felt her face wrinkle up in anguish.

  The small spearman didn’t miss a beat, though.

  “Har. Now you tell her to behave. I’ve half a mind to turn you loose so as you can teach her a lesson.”

  Fortunately, Peadar asked of the spearman the question that was on Vange’s mind, because she was this close to asking it herself when he did. No one had ever told her to be quiet before. His order had already slipped from her mind.

  “Where do we go?”

  The spearman tipped his drinking horn all the way back and emptied the last few drops into his mouth, swallowed, and then wiped his mouth with his voluminous sleeve.

  “Mull looms there even now.”

  He pointed.

  Vange looked over at a new shore, barely visible in front of the ship.

  The brunaidh leader came up from below decks then, holding two steaming cups.

  “Ah, you have settled in, I see. Murl here will give you some stew to drink, if you be civil to him.”

  The leader patted Murl on the back and handed the small man the two steaming cups, then went back below, chuckling.

  Murl smiled at them and waved the stew cups under their noses.

  “Have you the will to eat? Or are you determined to fight me if I get close?”

  Vange had barely started to open her mouth to answer the small man when Peadar cleared his throat.

  Again she had forgotten their new agreement that he would do the talking. This was unusual, so it was hard to remember. She loved to talk, and he was usually quiet.

  He spoke up.

  “We will eat, and we thank you.”

  Vange knew it was silly to worry about stew stains down the front of her English renaissance faire costume while she was tied to the mast of a ship headed who-knew-where with little hope of getting back home to the 21st Century.

  Still, she felt more anxious than hopeful as the little man approached her with the cup.

  He tipped it carefully, though.

  The stew tasted wonderful, mostly broth but with bits of meat, carrots, celery, and onion mixed in.

  They both drank their whole cup of it, and then Murl hollered down below decks.

  “Come and get the dirty cups, Fal.”

  Peadar was watching Murl warily, but he seemed harmless as he went about the deck pulling ropes that adjusted the sails and yelling at others to help him sometimes.

  Vange whispered to Peadar.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  He pressed his lips together into a hard line before he whispered back, never taking his eyes off Murl.

  “Look about for the wee phone. Take it, and go.”

  She jiggled her hands in the ropes.

  “But we’re tied up.”

  His chest heaved, and his fists balled up.

  “They will need to untie us, lass, in order to take us off this ship.”

  Vange breathed a sigh of relief.

  “So as soon as they untie us, I’ll run around looking for the phone while you keep them busy?”

  “Aye, lass. I have only seen four of them on board. I can handle that many.”

  “But they’ve taken your sword.”

  “Och, they be so small. I will throw them all overboard.”

  Vange giggled.

  And she was instantly glad that she had.

  Peadar’s entire face lit up with his smile.

  It was marvelous to gaze at, so that was what she did for the next half hour, while he kept his eye on Murl and their other captors, visibly scheming how he would take them down so that the two of them could get Emily’s phone and get back to the 21st Century.

  Vange kept her eye out for the phone. He was right. It had to be on board somewhere. She didn’t see it up here on deck anyplace, so it had to be down in the cabin. That was the first place she would look.

  And then she realized.

  “What if there’s someone down in the cabin when I get down there?”

  Peadar shrugged with his nose.

  “My bout with those up here will be so loud, anyone below decks will run up to help. Wait just a bit before running down there, lass.”

  Vange nodded.

  “OK.”

  She looked around.

  “See the little nook by the door to the cabin?”

  “Aye.”

  “I’ll wait there.”

  “Tis a good place.”

  They smiled at each other.

  Vange was wondering how far they had traveled away from where she’d been knocked out when the ship’s gentle sway on the water got the better of her.

  She became very sleepy and couldn’t help leaning forward against the mast and passing into slumber.

  Vange raised her hand, and her child-development professor called on her.

  She was so happy.

  She had studied and she knew the answer well.

  “According to Piaget,” Vange said with a big smile on her face, “children readily change how they already think inside to match what is going on in the outside world, but adults find this difficult.”

  “Correct,” said the professor with his hands clasped behind his back, pacing across the front of the lecture hall to start his next point in front of a different group of students.

  Grinning even bigger, Vange discreetly went to Facebook on her phone to post a brag.

  But she heard rough voices that didn’t fit into the college atmosphere at all.

  “Get up. Get up.”

  “We have arrived.”

  “And we do not wish to carry you.”

  Vange tried to make the rough voices and jostling fit into what was going on there in the lecture hall, but it was difficult.

  She smiled.

  According to Piaget, that meant she must be an adult.

  They weren’t all adults there in the lecture hall, though, because someone threw a Double Big Gulp of cold water all over her. It landed mostly in her face.

  Shivering from the cold and spluttering from the water in her nose, Vange looked around for the student who had done that.

  “How much did you give them, Fal?”

  “Twice as much as I would give you or me, is all.”

  “Fal.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “We need them, Fal.”

  “If they die, we’ll never know what the phone is, or what it can do.”

  What the heck were these students behind her talking about? Who in this day and age didn’t know what a phone was?

  Vange turned to shush them, distracted from her search for the student who had thrown the water.

  But then she stopped to write in her notebook.

  Wow, this this incident had made her understand why all that emphasis was placed on laying down the rules the first few days of school. If her second-grade students were going to be anything like her classmates, then they would be a tough crowd.

  “Cor, we will just need to carry them, then.”

  “They be heavy, Fal.”

  “Just put your hands under them and lift.”

  “Hurk.”

  Vange was being jostled by ot
her students in the hallway as she headed to her next class. Funny, college hallways weren’t usually this rowdy. Oh well. Maybe there was a football game or something this weekend that had everyone but her all hyped up. She didn’t pay attention to such things, preferring to focus on her coursework.

  “Here, put them on the wain.”

  Vange finished her school day amazingly fast and was home in an instant. She was unusually glad to be in the small apartment that she shared with Emily, who was in the bathroom getting ready for a party…

  Wait, Emily had married Dall MacGregor, and she traveled with him now, to all the various renaissance faire sites.

  What was Emily doing home?

  Vange’s eyes opened.

  She had trouble making sense out of what she saw—and what was that smell? It reminded her of when she used to babysit and the kids wet the bed.

  The wall near her was painted white, but it was clearly made of hand-cut wood and stuffed with … straw?

  She was seated with her legs folded in front of her, and when she tried to get up, she found that she was tied to a post behind her. Her elbows stuck out to either side of her face, and her wrists were fastened behind her head. Her ankles were tied to the post, too, but that didn’t hurt as much, because she still had her boots on.

  “Aaaeeeeehhh.” she screamed.

  Peadar’s soft voice came from behind her.

  “What is it, lass? Did something bite you?”

  “No. We’re just stuck in this backwards time period with no TV where people don’t have any manners. I want to go home.”

  “Quiet yourself, lass. Save your strength.”

  “I’m tired of doing what I’m told. I just want to leave.”

  She struggled against the ropes that tied her, grunting and crying.

  The mature adult part of her knew she was being childish, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get off this ride. It wasn’t fun anymore.

  His voice came as quietly as before.

  “Evangeline. Get yourself together. You need your wits about you.”

  His calmness started to sink into her. When she stopped fighting the ropes, her mind started to come into focus and she felt less out of control, more sane. Her tears hadn’t stopped flowing, though.

  “You are the one who does know how to make the phone work,” Peadar said encouragingly, “I will help you get it, and then you can use it to get yourself home, lass.”

  Vange took a good look around. The two of them were seated back-to-back alone in a house that was not much larger than two king-sized beds.

  The floor was just dirt.

  There was a fireplace, a table with four chairs, and a ladder that went up to a loft, where presumably the beds were.

  They couldn’t reach any of it, though. The ropes that tied them to the post were just long enough that they could sit comfortably.

  A thought occurred to her.

  “What do you know about these little people, and what was that you called them?”

  To Peadar’s credit, he went with the change of subject. Perhaps he realized that dwelling on her tears would only prolong their falling.

  “They are brunaidh. They do not have any territory, but rather they travel the world as they like. They speak most languages and are handy as tinkers. Very few have met them, aye? Most think they are legend.”

  “Will they hurt us?”

  “I do hope not, lass.”

  His matter-of-fact steadiness helped Vange get a grip on herself. She blinked back her tears and snuffled to clear her nose. She lowered her voice to the softest whisper she could manage.

  “Should I tell them what they want to know, about the phone?”

  He whispered back just as quietly.

  “Aye, if need be, lass. Do not hold your knowledge away from them if they do threaten to hurt you.”

  “But if they find out how to use the phone, then they won’t need us anymore …”

  “And you ken they will turn us loose then.”

  “Or kill us.”

  He laughed.

  A few minutes before, his laughter would have made her feel all the more alone. She would have cried even harder and perhaps lost all hope of ever getting home again.

  But Peadar’s practicality had calmed her—only now it was making her angry.

  She hissed at him.

  “What’s so funny about the idea of us being killed?”

  He whispered between chuckles.

  “Och, lass, you must know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You cannot jest about it, Vange.”

  “Jest. I’m perfectly serious.”

  “Aye?”

  “Yes, aye.”

  “It is nay very likely. That is all.”

  “Won’t they want to get rid of us because they know that we know that they know about what the phone can do?”

  Peadar’s chuckles became more pronounced.

  “Whatsoever did give you that idea, lass?”

  “Every movie I ever saw about such things.”

  “Lass?”

  “What.”

  “What be a movie?”

  “Gggrr. It’s so aggravating the way you don’t know anything.”

  “Och, I have you to tell me, now, do I not?”

  “Ug. It’s not important.”

  They sat silently for a few minutes, and then Vange could not stop herself from teaching him a bit of what she knew from her time.

  “Movies are just … the way we tell stories in my time.”

  “Ah. Well now. And it is from these stories that you know what will happen, lass?”

  When he put it like that, she knew she sounded silly.

  “No, I’m not at all sure anymore, but in the stories, they always kill you off after you tell them what you know.”

  He chuckled some more.

  Vange got quite irritated with him. If her hand had been free, she would have hit his arm with the back of it. She must have tried, because he noticed.

  “Be you trying to box my ear now? Here, lass, do it if you dare.”

  He leaned back so that she could feel his ear with her hand.

  She was about to flick his ear, but she gasped.

  “Huh.”

  His body reacted immediately. If he hadn’t been tied, he would have been turned around to face whatever threat had made her gasp.

  “What? What’s coming, lass?”

  “No, it’s not that. I can touch your ropes, Peadar. Can you lean back more? I might be able to untie you.”

  Peadar made straining noises while he leaned into Vange’s back.

  At the same time, she strained against the ropes around her wrists in order to reach those around his.

  Even in their excitement at almost being loose, they remembered to whisper.

  “What if they come back and see us doing this?”

  “Do nay worry about it, you ken? Just take the trouble we have and do not be creating any new.”

  “What will we do if we manage to get untied?”

  “Listen at the door and if it sounds clear, open it.”

  Vange rolled her eyes.

  “I know that much, but if we get out of this house, then what?”

  “You keep quiet and follow me.”

  “What will you—”

  “Lass, do not ask me to explain to you all that I learned in my childhood here in the highlands, aye?”

  Oh, come on. How much of that could there possibly be? Still, no reason to make him mad.

  “Yeah, OK.”

  It took what seemed like forever, and Vange’s fingers were cramping something awful toward the end, but she finally got Peadar’s hands untied.

  Quicker than she would have believed possible, he had both himself and her entirely free and they stood at the closed door to the house.

  They had searched all over for his claymore and their daggers, not finding them. It seemed the brunaidh were familiar with the practice of sheathing a dagger in one’s boo
t.

  Vange still had all of her pouches, though. She hadn’t checked the contents, but they felt like they weighed the same.

  He took her hand in his.

  “Do remember to keep quiet and follow me, aye?”

  “Yeah.”

  He squeezed her hand and put his ear to the door.

  Wondering if that really worked, Vange put her ear to the door as well.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Sh.”

  He listened at the door for a long time, and then suddenly he pulled it open.

  Outside, all they could see was the side of a grassy green hill going up, and parts of a wooden fence that stretched off to the right and left.

  Firmly gripping her left hand, he pulled her out the door, to the left, and then quickly backed up so that their backs were against the wall of the house.

  She still only saw hill, grass, and fence.

  “Where is everyone?”

  She remembered to whisper.

  But he still shushed her.

  “Quiet, lass.”

  He inched them along the wall until he could peek around the corner.

  “Ready?” he asked her quietly.

  Vange tucked her skirts up into her belt and took his hand again.

  “Yeah.”

  They ran around the corner, down more of the hill, and into the woods. Hand in hand, they kept running, over hill and dale.

  Eerily, Vange heard no sound of pursuit. No dogs barked out news of their departure.

  Before half an hour had passed, her adrenaline was spent and she felt winded. Knowing they absolutely had to keep going, she tried. She really did, but it was no use.

  “I’ve … got a … stitch in my side … Peadar. Huh, huh, huh.”

  Before Vange knew what was happening, he had scooped her up into his arms like a baby again and was running for the both of them.

  Was this going to be her life from now on, always running from some menace and always needing Peadar to carry her when she couldn’t run long enough?

  Vange’s desirous urges returned while Peadar’s arms held her under her thighs and her shoulders. For the first ten minutes, she was again too tired to enjoy them. After that, she started to lapse into familiar daydreams about the two of them together.