Mythology Abroad (14 page)

Professor Parker was almost apologetic that almost no perishable grave goods were turning up. He had been hoping for some examples of craftworks to augment the funerary materials that were contained in the cairns. What they were finding was mostly fossilized bone and pottery. Keith knew that Matthew was disappointed. He had hoped to recreate his Glasgow experience, unearthing a successful find. Matthew was working hard to find something the professor would be pleased with.

“You have a true talent for this job,” Holl told the young man sincerely.

“Yeah, you sure do,” Keith chorused.

Matthew’s oddly thin skin blushed scarlet. “I’m enjoying it,” he confessed.

Martin elbowed him. “Pretty soon the hols will be over, though, mate.”

Matthew nodded sadly. “I know it. I thought six weeks would be a long time, but it’s not.”

The Tea Shop served only tea and soft drinks, and it became crowded several times a day by the many coach tours that visited Callanish, so the group hung about there only when there was nowhere else to go. On the proprietress’ part, the students were allowed to stay there only because they were well groomed and clean, a contrast to the unwanted guests behind the shop, but it was made clear to them that they, too, remained under protest. Keith and the others tried not to wear out their welcome, but they could tell that the ladies would prefer it if the whole lot of them would clear off at once.

Holl’s gloom had worn off by the end of the first day. In an effort to keep his friend from falling back into a gray mood, Keith asked Miss Anderson about setting up a tour of Lewis and Harris, the southern half of the Long Island, one that would include a lot of wool shops, but the teacher reluctantly had to refuse.

“The coach’s brakes aren’t in the best condition right now. We’re doing pretty well in making it safely between Callanish and Stornoway every day—well, wait until you see the roads in the interior of the island before you protest that we could do it. They are steep and very narrow. I wouldn’t advise trying an extended trip until the vehicle is fixed. The driver is awaiting a part to be sent to a garage here. Perhaps later, near the end of the tour.”

“I tried,” Keith reported back to Holl. “We’ll have to wait for a while.”

“Ah, well,” the Little One said resignedly. “Still, I appreciate you trying to cheer me up. It means a lot.”

The U.S. Passport office, in a pointed example of hands-across-the-water, had come through with the files which Michaels had requested. The chief’s secretary read the details to Michaels over the phone. The agent stood in the only public telephone in the village. It was a new telephone and worked a treat, but the booth was unaccountably open to the elements six inches from the ground, like a lady holding her skirts up off the floor. It gave the wind a perfect chance to freeze his ankles while holding him virtually immobile.

“The passport issued to Keith E. Doyle is fairly recent, issued only weeks before he arrived in Britain.” The chief’s secretary read the information from the sheet over the phone to Michaels.

Michaels huffed into his moustache. The pay telephone from which he had placed his call was situated halfway between the Mackenzie farm and the dig site. From it, he could keep a reasonably constant eye on his quarries. “He mustn’t have made up his mind on a pseudonym until the last minute.”

“The one for Holland Doyle, aged 14 …”

“Ha ha. If he’s fourteen, I’m Winnie the Pooh.”

“Yes, sir,” the secretary continued. “… was issued even more recently, only a day or two before departure from the U.S.”

“It seems there is a real Keith Doyle. We haven’t been able to locate him, though. He’s got two addresses, one in the north of the state of Illinois, and one in mid-state. The FBI is sending an investigator to look into it.”

“Could it be a full-fledged plot, I mean the family’s name is Irish, after all,” Michaels pointed out significantly.

“We hope it’s not that, sir.”

“Aye, I hope not, too. Probably we’ll find the boy is dossed down with a bird somewhere in between one place and the other.”

“In the meantime, we want you to keep a close eye on those two.”

“Well, I wish they’d go ahead and make a move. I haven’t seen a trace of any stranger yet who might be O’Day’s contact. The weather’s a great bloody mess, and there’s hardly a pub in the place. Praise God the coach takes them off to the town every night, where there’s a little civilization. Regular old package tour, this is becoming. I feel like a gypsy.”

“The chief asks that you keep him posted, sir.”

“Thanks, love. I’ve already asked the local constabulary to lend me a hand if I have to lay gloves on our boys. More tomorrow.”

***

C
HAPTER FIFTEEN

“There’ll be a full moon tonight,” Keith said early one morning when they were dressing for breakfast. He reached over the edge of the bed for his old pair of socks to toss them into his suitcase. They weren’t there. “Holl, did you pick up my socks?”

“I’d sooner handle nuclear waste, and well you know it,” Holl said indignantly. “You must have stowed them somewhere yourself.”

Keith glanced under the bed, and then sifted through one side of his duffle for a clean pair. “Oh well, I must have put them away last night without thinking. I’m about due to hit the laundromat again, unless Mrs. Mackenzie will let us use her washing machine. I was really beat yesterday. Dr. Parker is working us like robots, but you know, I’m enjoying myself, and learning a lot on top of everything. I’m going to have muscles in my brain as well as on my arms when I go home.”

“At least that’ll give your skull some makeweight,” Holl said tartly, but his heart wasn’t in the banter. While working on transferring Parker’s minutiae, he’d had plenty of time to think about his troubles. Holl had no idea whether his life as he left it would be ruined when he got home. Nothing could be done while he was here but worry, so worry he did. Whether he completed either half of his quest now was immaterial to him. He had considered over and over again phoning Maura at the farm as Keith Doyle suggested, and demanding to know what was going on. But if there was nothing to know, no truth to what his mother had said, then it would be a slap in the face of distrust to Maura, and shame to him. In the meantime, he had plenty of occupation for his hands.

“You know, I think this is probably what they mean by the midsummer full moon, Holl,” Keith offered again, fastening his shoes.

“Midsummer Eve is the summer solstice, the 21st of June. Any buffoon knows that.”

“No, but look: summer is June, July and August, right?” Keith argued. “This is July, so it’s the middle of summer. That makes tonight midsummer. Right?”

“As a syllogismist you’re correct, but custom has dictated otherwise for centuries.”

Keith made a face at him. “Yeah, I know, but it sounds like a good excuse. I want to go up to the stones under the full moon. If any of the faerie folk visit that circle, this would be the time of the month when they’d do it. You could come with me.…” Keith hinted temptingly.

“Hmph! Well, give my regards to Oberon and Titania if you see them. I’m going to stay and get a quiet night’s sleep without you thrashing in the next bed.”

At midnight, armed with a camera full of very fast film and a notepad with a pencil, Keith made his way out of the B&B. The moon was a burning silver disk high in the twilit sky. It threw a sharp shadow behind every stone and pebble on the road, and made the shallow potholes appear bottomless pits. Keith trudged up the hill to the circle of standing stones, listening to his feet crunch on the pebbled road. It was very quiet, and only a soft breeze ruffled his hair. The sensation of still, sleeping power came to him again. He imagined it surrounding and lifting him up, until he could dive into the milky heart of the moon. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the dig site. It was dark, with the sea tossing up occasional white glints in the distance. Every light in the village was out. Though he could see every house and barn, there was no illumination in any of them, except for one white dot, like an eye, at the bottom of Mrs. Mackenzie’s garden. Keith blinked at it. It was probably a birdbath, or something else which was reflective.

As he came over the breast of the hill, he saw the Callanish stones gleaming like candle flames under the moon, reflecting its silver light. It was hard to believe how few the stones actually were. In the sharp black and white it looked like there were thousands. Keith saw a sudden movement under the tallest monolith, heard a snatch of vocal tone like a shout and then a rhythmic booming. He pricked up his ears. Suddenly, white figures burst from the center circle and melted into the darkness between the other stones. Keith ran the rest of the distance to get a better look. Could this be the fae, rising from the center of the hill to its peak to dance in the ancient temple?

Then one of them tripped on a rock, and hopped around, uttering a curse. Keith blinked and shook his head. It was only the hippies who had been living in the parking lot for the last month. This was their long awaited full moon ceremony. They ran forward again, raising their arms and touching hands at the height. Their voices carried to him. They were chanting and dancing in a circle around the tallest stone. Once again Keith wondered at their ability to ignore the temperature. They were all stark naked.

Their ceremony appeared to be breaking up. Keith was relieved, since he had felt like an intruder watching. The sensation of mystic power hadn’t passed yet. He waited until they were all back by their campsite before he crossed the gate and entered the monument at the south end.

He followed the broken avenue slowly, and stopped at the edge of the circle. With a mental apology to anything he might be disrupting, and a quiet prayer that it wouldn’t be something as cranky as that fairy mound in Glasgow, he stepped forward.

Keith wandered around the circle, listening and waiting, the camera hanging by its strap from his shoulder. The sound of the sea and the low chatter of the worshipers reached him as a soft undercurrent to the silence. He waited at each compass point by the inner perimeter of the circle, looking around for any clue that there might be something else here, something he hadn’t seen or sensed yet. The west was barren. So was the north. He was doing a full rotation on his heels at the east, when a tall, dark figure, the moon behind it casting a ghostly outline, rose before him from the cairn. Keith gulped, and fumbled one handed for his camera. The other hand was steadying him on the monolith behind him. Abruptly, the figure stretched out a hand and spoke, but not in staves of poetry or syllables of the wild magic.

“‘Ere, gi’es a hand, mate. I fell on my ruddy bum in here. Wot time is it?” So he wasn’t faced with a prince of the underworld, or one of the returning dead. This was only a human being like himself, one of the hippies. Disappointed but vastly relieved, Keith waited for the hammering of his heart to stop.

He extended a hand, and helped the man out. One warm hand clasped his fingers, and the other grasped his wrist. Unlike his fellows, this traveler was clad in the usual dally mix of odd garments.

“Just after midnight,” Keith said, squinting at his watch, as his new acquaintance beat the dust out of his clothes.

“Yank, are you? Hoy, I got an uncle in America.” The lanky man caressed his temples with both hands. “Christ, I’ve been passed out for hours. Me head feels like it’s been detonated. Where’d everyone go?”

Unwilling to trust his voice to perform without a squeak, Keith pointed toward the campsite, where the others, once again robed, were sitting around the fire. Now that their devotions were ended, they were breaking out cans of beer, and having one heck of a party.

“Ta,” said the tall man, and stalked expertly between the stones to rejoin his friends. “Y’can come sit with us if you want. Plenty for everyone.”

“No, thanks,” Keith said, shaking his head. “I’m driving.” The man lifted his hands palm up, and clapped Keith on the shoulder as he went by.

Dejected, the American left the circle and walked back to the B&B. Holl was right. There was nothing there. He let himself into the room and walked on tiptoe, trying to be quiet.

“Well, was there a dancing circle of magic elves under the moonlight?” a wry voice asked out of the darkness.

Keith felt for his bed and sat down on it. It gave under him with a wheeze and a thump. “I guess Shakespeare was wrong.” Moodily, he pulled off his shoes and pushed them to one side with his foot. One by one, his socks went off in opposite directions.

“Did you see any fairies?”

“Nope. Just hippies.”

“Hm. Not the same thing at all. Perhaps you should come next year in June, when it genuinely is midsummer,” Holl suggested in a gentle tone. “The Fair Folk likely have rules, too.”

Keith shrugged, disappointed. “I didn’t feel a trace of anything out of the ordinary up there, not in the circle. But I can’t believe that there’s nothing here to find, I mean not just on Midsummer Eve. It’s such an amazing structure. This place feels so old, and magical, that I expect something. If it’s here, though, I’ll find it,” he finished with determination.

“I count on you for that,” Holl said drowsily, and turned over to go back to sleep. “Good night, now.”

The next morning, Keith arose feeling a little sleepy, and wondered if even the hippies had been a product of the moonlight and his own imagination. Yawning, he glanced at his watch and blanched. “Hey, Holl, it’s late! Breakfast is almost over.”

“Eh?” The elf blinked at him, and sat up.

“Quarter to nine!” Keith seized his shaving kit and hurried out to the bathroom. When he returned, he started throwing on his clothes distractedly while Holl went out to take his turn under the shower. He came back, well-scrubbed, and feeling much more alert. The red-haired student was on his knees casting around under the bed.

“Have you seen my shoes?” Keith asked.

“I did. They’re just outside the door, where you left them.” Holl started dressing, much more calmly than his roommate.

Keith looked puzzled. “I didn’t put them outside. I remember sitting on the bed to take them off. I think.” He tilted his head, trying to bring back the events of the last evening. “Oh, well.” He opened the door and dragged his shoes back into the room, and sat down on the bed to put them on.

“Holl,” he said suddenly in a strangled voice. “Now I’m sure that something is happening. Look!” He held up one of the shoes.

“It’s clean. What about it?”

“No, but look. The heels are whole. And my socks are gone again. Boy, after the letdown I got up in the stone circle, it’s hard to believe. I wonder if there isn’t some kind of Wee Folk right here, who does little jobs around the house.”

“Oh, come now!” Holl scoffed.

“They might take the socks as a fee,” Keith continued thoughtfully, as if Holl hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t leave any money in the shoes. I mean, I didn’t know that anyone would come by to fix them, so they took whatever else was around. They’re nice socks, one hundred percent wool.”

“Nonsense. What a lot of silly legends you do attribute to folk like mine,” Holl said, exasperated. “Making supernatural fix-it men out of us. Shoemakers and housecleaners!”

“Okay,” Keith demanded, rounding on him, “if the old story isn’t true, how did you people get a reputation for fixing shoes and so on? You’re master craftsmen; you might have wanted to do favors for some Big Folk, who, it turned out, knew a writer.”

Holl was adamant. “Nothing to do with us. We’re natural creatures. We’ve always kept to ourselves, live and let live.”

Keith shook the shoe at him. “Well, what about this? You saw what they looked like yesterday. They were about to fall apart. Now the heels have grown back. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he reasoned.

“Yes, and where there are balloons, there’s hot air,” Holl retorted.

“Well, do you have any idea what to look for, to tell if there are other Little Folk in this place?”

“No, I have not. You’re the one with all the experience with looking for bogeys. I’ve lived in one place all my life, and you’ve been everywhere else I’ve visited so far, and that’s not much.”

“Maybe Mrs. Mackenzie knows about her little helper. I’m going to ask her.”

“She’ll think you’re as mad as I do.”

Keith grinned. “You know, that’s exactly what everyone used to say, and somehow I connected up with you guys, so I’m just going to keep on asking.”

He put the question delicately to their hostess, expecting her to be disconcerted by the concept of magical folk, but instead, Keith was the one surprised. As soon as she ascertained what her American guest was asking, Mrs. Mackenzie burst into merry laughter. “Have I got a
what
roaming around my house?
I
polished your shoes, lad. They were in foul state after your night on the stanes, when you came in so late. My poor clean floor! I’d also bought a repair kit for my boy’s boot heels, and there was enough left to patch yours. They were all to pieces, I saw. So, you were looking for the whippitie-stourie, were you?”

Keith seized his manual of Scots dialect from his back pocket and started to thumb through it. “A ‘house brownie’? Um, I suppose something like that.”

Mrs. Mackenzie kept on laughing, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, until Keith had turned as red as his hair. “Nowt of it, lad. Look here.” She led them through the dining room to the kitchen. Keith and Holl followed the sound of her chortling down the hall.

“I didna ken this oun, so I guessit t’be yours. It’s too late to rescue.”

From her nest next to the stove, the slim female Siamese blinked adoring blue eyes up at Keith. Under her sable paws, she held her prey, one of Keith’s gray wool socks. Delicately, the cat dipped her head, and dragged a few fibers out of the sock, swallowed them, and did it again, like a child playing “he loves me, he loves me not.”

“She’s eating my sock,” Keith said incredulously.

“Ach, she does that,” complained the landlady. “Loves wool, she does. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s scold her and scold her all the time, and nowt comes of it. It’s a wonder she doesn’t chase down the sheep for their fleece. She must have slippit in when I fetched out your boots. I’ll clear out a drawer for you to keep them safe from now on.”

Holl started laughing. Keith was outraged at the destruction of his clothes, but disappointed that there was no more to the mystery than a shoe-shining landlady and a sock-eating cat. “There you go, Keith Doyle. One more legend of the Fair Folk relegated to children’s tales.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Mackenzie nodded. “If you wanted the true Fair Folk, you ought to look for them under the moonlight when the milk runs. That’s what my gran used to tell me. Now, come and have breakfast. All this wild jumping at conclusions has no doubt left you ravening.”