CHAPTER THREE
Sven took them to the pay-for-use showers, then dropped them at the ferry that would take them to the island of Faefnar. Sven rubbed noses with Sorcha in an Eskimo kiss that might have been cute if Simon hadn’t been forced to witness it.
It was a two hour wait and a forty minute trip. Simon fumed and pouted for the first twenty minutes about Sven getting close enough to Sorcha to touch her, but couldn’t tell her why he was being a butthead. Once they were out on the water, and safely away from Sven, Simon began to relax and put the parting into perspective.
He broke the silence by asking, “What are you hoping to find?”
“I actually work at steerin’ away from preconceived ideas. I’m more likely to notice something noteworthy that way. What are you hopin’ to find?”
“Ecstatic sex inside a fairy ring.”
Her surprised laughter was mingled with a series of feminine snorts that Simon found utterly charming. He had the presence of mind to question that and smiled to himself as he wondered if he’d think her farts were charming as well.
“Well, dependin’ on how many other curiosity seekers we find there, you might get lucky. Anything else?”
“Like you said. I’m working on clearing my mind and my heart.”
“How’s that goin’?”
He swung his gaze away from the passing view to fix on her. His eyes roamed over her face then moved back and forth, looking at one of her eyes then the other, as if he was trying to read her mind. “Better than I dared to hope.”
Sorcha’s chin dropped slightly as she felt a blush begin for the first time in her life. Like elves, fae are the furthest thing from shy about sex, and flirtation is a national pastime, but the look on Simon’s face and his words, in combination, conveyed something she’d never experienced. Intimacy. She liked it. And as time passed, minute by minute, she was coming to dread the idea of losing it.
Simon reached over and covered her hand with his in the most basic expression of affection. She laced her fingers in his, looked down at their two hands joined together and smiled. That simple response made his chest expand with the white heat of hope.
They had lunch in the village then caught a ride with a sheep farmer who was going their way with the back of his short bed truck empty except for a couple of sacks of grain. He dropped them off just a one hour walk from the ring.
As they walked, Sorcha said, “Do you know anything about the ring?”
“Not nearly as much as you, I’m sure. I know the stones have been there for four thousand years or so, but I don’t know who put them there, why they’re there, or where they came from.”
She laughed.
“What’s funny?” he said good-naturedly.
“You just summed it up in an expertly concise way. The Scotia fae and Irish elves had no’ come to be here. By that time. ’Twas a mystery from the very beginnin’. Someday someone will solve it.”
Simon looked over at her. “And you wish that could be you?”
She smiled. “Aye. Me and thousands of others. The other part of it. There were sixty of the stones. A third are gone. ’Tis almost as big a mystery as the ones left standin’.”
“Maybe creatures from another dimension put them here and then decided to take some back.” He chuckled, oblivious to how many times in the future he would think back on that innocent remark and wish he’d taken himself more seriously.
When they arrived at the site, they found that someone was camping between the water and the ring.
“Tarnation,” Simon muttered, which caused Sorcha to laugh.
The camper was inside the ring. If Simon had to guess, he’d have said that the man was taking measurements with a small laser-equipped device and making handwritten notes, the old-school way. He waved when he noticed them. So Simon and Sorcha walked over, introduced themselves, and invited him to share dinner.
They chatted amiably with the fiery redheaded fae who gave his name as Rogerin. He was in his early forties, although with elves or fae, it was very hard to guess age. Rogerin said that he’d been fascinated with the Neolithic remains since childhood and that he visited whenever he could.
When the sun began to set, Rogerin thanked them for dinner and company, and retired to his own camp site.
Grateful to be alone again, Simon and Sorcha zipped themselves into their sleeping bag and snuggled together, giggling like children. They whispered like they could be heard.
“Now that I know how sensitive these ears are,” Simon traced the outside of Sorcha’s pointed ear, “I’m bashful. Not an exhibitionist. And I don’t see any reason to make the poor man crazy,” he added.
So they settled for kissing, petting, and fondling. Before they fell asleep, Simon was treated to a hand job that severely tested his ability to remain silent.
When they woke the next morning, Rogerin was gone and they were alone. Simon looked at his watch. Five o’clock.
“We have the place all to ourselves,” he said. “Let’s enjoy it while we can.”
They stepped inside the ring. Reverently at first. But in a short time, they were running in circles. Simon caught Sorcha, both of them breathless, pressed her back against one of the taller stones and kissed her like he’d been desperate to do it all night. The fact that they were already panting fed into the frenzy of sex free from a sleeping bag.
Their hands roamed over each other as their bodies tried to create friction fully clothed.
Sorcha pulled back suddenly. “Simon. Do you hear that?”
He stopped, listened, and shook his head. “No.” He took a step back and turned to look over the surrounding landscape for signs that someone might be coming. When he turned back, his intention being to say, “I don’t see anything,” Sorcha was a transparent figure, blended with the rock, a look of startled horror on her face. She reached out for him, her lips forming his name, just before she faded altogether.
Eventually, after hours of pounding on the stone until his hands were bloody, shouting until his voice was hoarse, he succumbed to exhaustion and sank to the ground.
“The Ring of Thorgall,” Simon said. “Do you know where it is?”
Rosie shook her head. “Show me on the map.”
Simon pulled out the Atlas, found an enlarged spread of the Orkneys, and showed her the exact spot.
“I’ll be back with handcuffs and some go-juice.”
“Go-juice?”
“You know. I’m going to give you enough of my blood to take you through the passes without you dying.”
“It’s an hour flight on a whister. Why don’t we just…?”
“Simon.” Rosie laughed. “Have you never taken a ride in the passes?”
“Well, as a matter of fact…”
“Then I insist.”
“You insist,” he repeated. Simon wasn’t accustomed to having people insist on an approach that wasn’t his, but he was approaching Elora Rose hat in hand.
“Don’t be a…”
“Alright. Go get what you need.”
Ten minutes later, Rosie returned with furry pink handcuffs and a small syringe.
“Bend over,” she said, holding up the syringe. She doubled over with laughter at the look on Simon’s face. “Just kidding. Give me your arm.”
After injecting him with her blood, she snapped one cuff onto his left wrist and one onto her right. “Here we go.”
Before Simon had a chance to ask what to expect, they were in the passes. He had the usual sensations of walking, but what his feet touched wasn’t like hard ground. It was springy. Not so much like a trampoline. More like a sponge.
He was surrounded by swirling mists, like the thickest fog being wafted about and occasionally interlaced with swirling maroon-colored ribbons. He could make out Rosie’s shape, traveling in front of him, but not details. A couple of times he thought he might have heard voices, but the crescendo and decrescendo was so fast he couldn’t be certain if his mind was playing tricks on him.
In less than two minutes they were standing at the site of the ring with no other people in sight on a day where dark clouds were broken up with beams of sunlight. Simon felt mildly nauseated when they came to a stop in the deserted meadow.
Rosie grabbed him by the elbow when he swayed a little. He didn’t resist, but let her steady him.
When his color began to return, he said, “That was…”
“What?” When Simon didn’t answer immediately, she made an effort to supply an adverb. “Exciting? Exhilarating? Consciousness-raising? Mind-bending?”
“Stop.”
“Okay.” She unlocked Simon’s handcuff.
“It was unspeakably horrible. And I’m not doing it again.”
Rosie stared and blinked slowly. “Seriously? How are you going to get back?”
He fixed a silent and stony glare on her as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, punched the screen a couple of times, and said, “Fix this location and send a whister. Now.
“Humans do not belong there any more than fish belong in the Sahara. The fact that you have to give us an injection and keep us handcuffed is a big fucking clue.”
“Simon! You said fucking!”
“Yes, Elora Rose. I know the word. I’m not three.”
“I know, but I thought all the muckety mucks have a negative view of profanity.”
“I do have a negative view of profanity. And I am not a fucking muckety muck. I’m the Headquarters Director of The Order of the Black Swan. I’m the muckety muck.”
“Alright. Alright. What’s the problem? Tummy upset?” She pulled a can of ginger ale out of her shoulder bag and held it out to him. “No problem. I have the number one universal remedy used by choosy caregivers the world over.”
He gave her a dirty look. “Redundant.”
“What?”
“Once you said ‘universal’, adding ‘the world over’ was redundant.”
“I bet you bring a red pen to restaurants so you can edit menus, don’t you?”
He glared even harder. If that was possible. “You have to carry first aid for humans? You’re making my point about why dragging humans through the passes should be banned.” He took the ginger ale, popped the top, and jumped back as it fizzed all over his hand, most of the contents ending up on the ground. His gaze slowly raised to Rosie.
“Sorry?” She gave a ‘don’t-blame-me’ shrug that was cute and would melt the sternness out of a lesser man, but Simon was mad as a hornet. And he was not a lesser man.
“Just give me a minute.” He pulled a neatly pressed and folded, old-fashioned white handkerchief out of his coat pocket, wiped his hands and the ginger ale can, then gingerly took a sip.
Rosie decided the best course of action was to leave him alone and let the carbonated cure do its work. She looked around. There were signs of modernity here and there, but for the most part, it would be easy to imagine how the green plain must have looked when the stones were first erected.
Not that different. Same water. Same black craggy coastline. Same grasses. Same sky. Same breeze.
There was no denying that it was a place of immense power. The force of it had registered even before she stepped out of the passes and she was having to apply some self-control to keep herself from vibrating visibly. Some people call such places vortexes, but that’s not accurate. The word gateway would be a much better description.
Rosie’s witch whiskers twitched and reached out for information. Unlike other witches, she also had a demon side to call on, which meant that little went undetected.
Like all the standing stone sites, the location was chosen because of an intersection of powerful ley lines, which facilitated coming and going between dimensions. Who erected the sites was a mystery, even to Rosie.
“Even Grandpop isn’t this old,” she said under her breath.
“What was that?” Simon asked.
Rosie’s head jerked around like she’d forgotten he was there. “Nothing. Just chill a minute, sip your ginger ale, and let me look around. By the time that has a chance to work, I’ll have some questions.”
She walked part of the way around the circle then cut across the diametric line to the other side. She slowly proceeded to weave in and out of the circle as she allowed her normal defenses to drop so that she could feel the full range of sensory stimulus, trying not to step on the cuckooflowers and crush them.
By the time she made her way back to Simon, he was clearly feeling better.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
She chuckled. “No need to say you’re sorry. There’s a reason why I carry ginger ale and wear a thick skin when I take humans through the passes.”
“Standing by my original opinion that we have no business in whatever that was.”
“And you’re not ever going in again.”
“That’s right.”
“So how much of this is really about the trip through the passes?”
Simon’s head jerked like he’d been busted. He took in a breath and let it out in a huff. “It’s not that I’ve never been back here. It’s just that it’s…”
“Hard.”
He looked away and nodded slightly. “And it’s never gotten easier.”
“You ready to get to work?”
When Simon turned back, she thought she saw a glimmer that hadn’t been there before. Hope. “I am. What do you need?”
“Start at the beginning and recreate what happened. As much detail as possible.” She caught herself. “Just to be clear, I mean the non-personal stuff.”
Rosie hadn’t known Simon was capable of smirking until that minute.
He pointed toward a spot in the southeast quarter of the circle. “We slept there.” He continued to talk as he began walking in that direction. “When we arrived, there was another fellow. A fae camping alone. We gave him some dinner and chatted until dark. He thanked us and said goodnight. The next morning we found he was gone when we woke.”
“Where did he sleep?”
Simon pointed to a spot between the circle and the sea. “Over there.”
“Okay. What next?”
“We were kind of delighted to be alone. We walked around the circle. On the inside. Then Sorcha started running and I chased her around the circle until I caught her right there.” He pointed to the largest stone.
Rosie looked around before following Simon to the spot where he’d last seen Sorcha. He stopped in front of the stone. “Her back was against the stone. We were kissing. She stopped abruptly and asked if I was hearing what she was hearing. I turned around to see if I could spot any vehicles approaching. I didn’t see anything. She’d proven to me that human hearing can’t compare. When I turned back to tell her I didn’t see anything, she was… I don’t really know how to describe this.
“She was inside the stone. Like a transparency. She said my name. I couldn’t hear it, but I could read it on her lips. She reached out for me and when I tried to catch her hand, I connected with stone. And she was gone.”
With a furrowed brow he looked at Rosie, eyes haunted. “She was scared. Sometimes I still wake up at night seeing that. I can’t forget it or get past it. I can’t even say I wish I could because that would feel like a betrayal. I guess what I’m saying is, I know what happened to me. I don’t know what happened to her.”
He looked at the tall stone. “This is it. The one that took her.”
Rosie felt the hum coming from the stone and instinctively pulled Simon back.
“What is it?” he said.
“Just reflex. Being on the safe side.”
“You sense something?”
Rosie debated on whether or not to answer honestly, but decided she owed him the truth. Good. Bad. Or ugly.
“Yes. I sense something.” He opened his mouth to ask what, but she interrupted before he could form a question. “I’ll share when I have something worth sharing.”
Simon closed his mouth and nodded resolutely.
“So you say you walked around the circle.”
“Yes.”
“On the inside of the ring’s rim?”
“Yes.”
“Which direction?”
“This way.” He began retracing the steps he’d taken so long ago.
“Then you chased her. It was like a game?”
“Yes.”
“Same direction?”
“Yes. Does that mean something?”
“Maybe. I think you might have accidentally thrown the switch.” It was clear from Simon’s expression he had no idea what she meant. “Look. I’m so far away from a conclusion, I really should be keeping quiet. Anything I say right now would be speculation.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Long as you understand it for what it is. Guessing.”
“I understand.”
Rosie nodded. “You know what deosil means?”
Simon looked befuddled. “Of course. It’s Gaelic for clockwise.”
“That’s right. You walked around the ring deosil. Then you ran around the ring while adding more emotion to it. The ring was like a wind-up analog watch that had been left in a drawer. You wound it up and then stopped at the northernmost stone, which happens to be the gateway.”
Simon’s head jerked toward the tall stone. “To where?”
“That’s the question. I’m going to have to see if we can repeat the sequence of events exactly as you performed them. If all goes well, I can go through and see what’s what.”
“Go through?” Simon started shaking his head. “No. No. No. No. No.”
“Simon.” Rosie laughed. “Isn’t that why you called me? Because you want to find out what happened to your girl?”
“Yes. I want to find out what happened, but we don’t know the price tag on what you’re suggesting.” He looked back at the stone. “What if you followed her in there and then couldn’t come back?”
“That’s extremely unlikely.”
“It doesn’t feel extremely unlikely. It doesn’t even feel a little unlikely. It seems to me like that’s a real possibility.”
Rosie couldn’t tell Simon that her abilities were far beyond what he imagined they were. Even she didn’t know her full capability and, for some reason, Kellareal had made it clear he didn’t want her testing boundaries. One of the problems was that, if Simon knew what she could do, he’d be tempted to use her as a resource. That would raise all sorts of moral considerations. If she was a walking Armageddon, like the angel seemed to think, she couldn’t afford to let Black Swan know. Absolute power and all that.
“Don’t worry, Director. Taking care of myself is not the problem. The problem is faithfully recreating what you did so that we end up with a viable experiment.”
Simon was torn between his desire to find out what happened to Sorcha and his need to keep Rosie safe. “Deliverance.”
“What about him?”
“Ask him to help. I’ll feel better about it if he’s the one helping because I know he won’t let anything happen to you.”
She shrugged. “I could. The idea doesn’t fill me with delight because the only thing predictable about Grandpop is that you can count on unpredictability. But if it eases your mind, I’ll ask. If he comes, we might be able to skip a couple of steps.”
“It would.”
“You be okay here? I’ll need to, um, go away.”
Simon chuckled. “Yes. I don’t need babysitting.” He looked at his watch. “How long will you be gone?”
“Hard to say. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour.”
“The whister will be here in half an hour. Should I stay or should I go?”
“Dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah.” Rosie sang the instrumental reply to the vocal question posed by The Clash. Simon looked at her like she needed urgent psychiatric attention. “You don’t know the song?”
“What song?”
“‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’”?
Simon rolled his eyes. “No. I don’t know that song, but there is a question awaiting a reply.”
“Go.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“I think it would be best.”
“I’m staying.”
“Have it your way, but you are not allowed to interfere. Or even offer suggestions.”
Simon pursed his lips. “Alright.”
“And you can’t enter the circle.”
He looked around. “What will you do if someone comes?”
“Wait until there’s nobody around.”
“I could use some Black Swan influence to cordon off the area.”
Rosie cocked her head to the side. “Why don’t we just see if we can get this done without alerting everybody in the U.K.? Now, do you need anything before I go?”
Shaking his head, Simon said, “No. I just had part of a ginger ale.” He sat down on the ground and looked around. “I haven’t enjoyed the pleasure of being really alone for a long time.”
“K. Later.” And she was gone.
Simon breathed the sea air deep into his lungs. He looked up at the partly cloudy sky that was more rule than exception in Scotia, looked out across the blue water, looked at the occasional wildflower still blooming in early October, and felt his mouth tingle at the memory of Sorcha’s kiss so many years before.
He’d never been the foolhardy sort. As a young man he’d never shrunk from a fight. As a vampire hunter he’d never hesitated when confronted with an encounter that might mean his death. But there was a gargantuan difference between bravery and brashness.
He knew he should sit where he was and wait for Rosie to return. There was no question in his mind that waiting was the prudent thing to do. The right thing to do. Nonetheless, he got up and walked toward the ring.
Maybe he was feeling guilt because he’d been left behind and saved from whatever fate Sorcha had found on the other side of the ring. Maybe he was elated at learning something that passed for an answer as to what happened all those years in the past. Maybe his eagerness overrode both sense and self-preservation.
In any case, when the whister arrived, Simon wasn’t there.