Wishing For a Highlander (24 page)

“No. I havena seen it. But I ken someone who has. ’Twas magic in a box, a box not unlike the ones your Mr. MacLeod sells at the back of his shop.” Taking a chance, he added, “In fact, ’twas a box with the very name of your mentor on the bottom.”

The lad’s eyes went wide. He hugged the crate so tight that the wood creaked. He shook his head, white hair flopping. “Surely not, sir. I dinna mean to argue, but Mr. MacLeod has no tolerance for anything not deemed proper by the church.”

“I saw the inscription with my own eyes. MacLeod. Inverness. ’Twas a box with no clasp and with white gold patterns on the lid.” He kept the date to himself, not willing to give away too much before he understood the lad’s purpose.

The lad’s expression didn’t change. If he’d ever seen such a box, he gave no indication of it.

Darcy tried not to be too disappointed and reminded himself the box wouldn’t be made for another twenty-five years.

“You’re certain it was magic?” the lad asked. “What–” He looked down and scuffed his toe in the dirt. “If you dinna mind me asking, sir, what did the box…do?” He whispered the last word.

“It brought a fair lass through time. From far in the future.” He watched closely for a sign of recognition.

If the lad could have grown any paler, he might have done so then. “The future,” he whispered as if it were the answer to a question that had long plagued him. He stared at Darcy in an apparent state of shock before spinning to put his crate on the workbench.

Making a racket, he pulled the cloth off and unpacked an armload of tools, horseshoes, and haphazard bits of metal. He paused with his gloved hands clutching a second cloth, one much cleaner and finer than the one that had been on top. The crate was like a cake with layers. No one would look twice at the junk making up the top layer, which served as a disguise for the second layer.

He leaned over the lad’s shoulder, anxious to see what the second cloth hid.

The lad pulled it away to reveal a mass of objects the likes of which Darcy had never seen before. There was a shiny object the size of a man’s palm with wee decorations–no, not decorations, but raised bumps declaring the letters of the alphabet, numbers, and other symbols. A similarly-shaped flat object looked like a rectangular stone, so black and glossy he could see his reflection in it like an expensive mirror. There was a large sheet of parchment somehow made stiff. Across the top, it read,
Rise and Shine Bed & Breakfast, Inverness, in business since 1928.
Below that were lists of foods, some he kent well, like blood pudding, kippers, eggs, and smoked eel, but many of the foods sounded foreign to him. Pancakes? Waffles? Hash browns? A heavy, porcelain cup with a handle had bold black letters across it saying,
SCOTS DO IT WITH A BURR.
Do what? And why would someone paint such large letters across a perfectly good cup? Several spoons jutted from the pile and several spoon-like objects that had tines like a pitchfork, rather than a broad surface for scooping. Amidst the strange trinkets, he recognized a circular face that reminded him of the big pendulum clock in Steafan’s office, but this clock was set into a strip of leather as if it were meant to be worn on a man’s wrist.

His fingers twitched, wanting to explore the contents of the crate, but his neck prickled with warning.

“Some of them would glow when ye touched them just right,” the lad said. “But the glowing always stopped after a few days. Except this one,” he said, lifting out the wee clock. He touched it with his gloved finger and thumb on each side of the face, and the thing gave off an unearthly green light.

Darcy jumped back. “Christ,” he breathed. ’Twas surely magic making that light. ’Twas likely magic that crafted such curious objects…or brought them here from a future time. Magic the likes of which might help Malina.

He bent closer, his initial fear forgotten as hope for his wife rose to the fore. The lad beamed at his interest as he released his hold on the clock and the light went out. “I’ve had this one for nigh on six months, and it still does that when I touch it so. And I havena had to wind it once, yet it still keeps the time.” His look of pleasure at revealing his secret to a stranger made Darcy worrit for him. Did he not realize what ill fate might befall him if he showed his collection to the wrong person, or if anyone stumbled across it?

“Put it away. Put it all away. In fact, ye should bury it. What are ye thinking, keeping such things where anyone might find them?”

The lad’s eyes dimmed. His shoulders fell forward as he pulled the cloth over the strange items and began piling the tools back in. Working with his back to him, he muttered, “’Tis only me that uses the shed, and I keep it locked.”

He’d kept Malina’s box locked away, but that hadn’t stopped Steafan from finding it. Though he hardly kent the lad, he couldn’t help the urgency that sharpened his tone when he countered, “Any fool kens locks can be broken. Are ye mad to trust this pitiful shed to keep safe that which might condemn you?” A twitch of the lad’s shoulders, like a dog expecting a beating, made his scolding fizzle out. Gentler, he said, “Ye may trust my authority on this. Ye dinna want anyone to find these objects.”

The lad crouched down and scraped the crate back into its hiding place. “I ken as much,” he said with more than a trace of wounded offense. Still low to the dirt floor, he turned his fair head just enough to show his profile. Though old enough to shave, he still carried a child’s roundness in his cheeks. He would be about sixteen, an age at which a lad thought he was a man and hoped to be treated as such by other men. “Ye willna tell Mr. MacLeod, will you?”

Sympathy doused him. He didn’t understand what manner of burden bent the lad’s sturdy back with shame, but he’d borne his own burdens long enough to ken only understanding and acceptance would make that back straight and proud. “What’s your name?”

Eyes that looked pale lavender in the dim light turned up to meet his gaze. “Timothy, sir. Though most call me Milky.” He grimaced with the nickname.

“I shall call ye Timothy. And ye may call me Darcy. And ye may be assured I willna be speaking to your Mr. MacLeod about that crate or aught else. The man doesna seem to care for my company.”

Timothy’s face relaxed. “Dinna think ill of him, please, sir–Darcy. He is firm in the teachings of the church, but that makes him charitable as well. If it werena for him and his wife taking me from the orphanage in Edinburgh, I’d surely be begging on the mile with the lame lads.” A frown furrowed Timothy’s white-fringed brow. “But if he kent the odd things that happen around me, he would send me away for being wicked.”

“Happen around ye?” He tried not to sound overly eager. He also tried not to dwell on the inevitable loneliness and heartache that awaited him once he found what he was after. “Ye refer to these objects? How do ye come by them?”

“’Tis my blood that does it.” Timothy’s eyes searched his face.

He worked to keep his features free from condemnation or disbelief.

He must have succeeded, because the lad went on. “Ever since I was a wee ane in the orphanage, when I’d scrape my leg on a stray nail or get a bloody nose from one of the bigger lads, odd things would appear at my feet. At first ’twas toys and trinkets that amused me, but as I counted the years, the objects grew more complex and less obvious as to their function. And though I dinna like to say such things, I suspect the objects may be made by the fair folk, for I ken of no substance nor craftsman, at least nay in Scotia, that can create such things.”

“I dinna ken about fair folk, but I ken where such things may have come from.” At least, he’d heard descriptions of similar objects, wondrous objects made of materials called “plastic” and “batteries,” objects that could fit in a man’s hand and bring the world to him, and send him out to the world in return. He hardly understood why a man would need the world in his hand or why he would want to send part of himself away into the air, but Malina seemed to miss such “conveniences.”

The fine hairs on the back of his neck rose with the suspicion that some of these objects, mayhap all of them, had come from Malina’s time. But he had more questions than answers, such as if Timothy’s blood could bring these objects here, could it also send them back? Were aught from Malina’s America or were some from Scotia as the paper and the cup indicated? Could Timothy access a specific time and place with his magic? He suspected not, since it seemed the lad was looking to him for help.

Timothy raised his eyebrows in desperate curiosity, but before Darcy could say more, a lady’s high-pitched scream grated through the cracks in the shed.

He threw open the door and charged toward the main courtyard, Timothy close behind.

What met them when they plunged from the alley was a sight so outlandish, he didn’t ken whether to jump into the fray to assist the screaming woman or to laugh. ’Twas the same overdressed patron he had seen in MacLeod’s shop, only when she’d been inquiring about the armchair, she’d not had a shrieking monkey in red trews jumping upon her head.

The woman’s hat lay trampled on the cobbles like a wounded game bird, and great chunks of her graying hair had come loose from her pins. As she flung her arms about her head in an attempt to rid herself of her meddlesome cargo, she called to mind a twirling mop. Her violet-faced husband bounced from foot to foot, clutching his coin purse as though he might use it as a weapon, should he summon the courage to come to his wife’s aid.

A tinkers’ cart painted a garish shade of pink burst through the archway into courtyard, followed by a crowd of gawkers apparently drawn by the woman’s screams. Within seconds, the close was packed to overflowing until it seemed the white carthorses with feather plumes on their bridles were the only two souls in Inverness not gawking at the debacle.

A bow-legged dwarf jumped from the rider’s bench and began leaping around the woman in his attempts to call the monkey down. The driver, a slender man in a lacy shirt and high-waisted breeches, drew the horses to a halt and glided from the bench. His embroidered boots with their stacked heels that added to his already substantial height landed lithely on the ground. Unconcerned with the spectacle, the man sent his onyx gaze searching the crowd as though for a particular acquaintance.

Deciding someone other than the shortest man in the vicinity should help the poor woman, Darcy elbowed through the crowd. He shot an arm out to scoop the gleeful creature off the woman’s head. Unfortunately, the woman’s husband must have assumed he meant her harm, because the change purse, which was lamentably heavy despite his wife’s effort to empty it in MacLeod’s, slammed into his eye, causing him to stumble back.

Stars burst in his vision, and not the pleasant kind Malina had made him see the night before. They cleared in time for him to see the man come at him with an odd sort of cane that looked to be wearing a frilly gown. The man attempted to beat him with it, but his new friend intervened.

Timothy grabbed the end of the cane while the man had it reared back and said, “Here now, sir. The big man’s only trying to help your lady.”

The patron wheeled about, and his eyes grew round with a crazed sort of fear when he looked on Timothy. “Accursed tinks, all of you! A giant, a dwarf, a Rom, and a pale man! Devils ye are! You’ll be leaving my wife alone!” He ripped the cane from the lad’s gloved hands, and the fabric of the cane’s gown spread between fingers of wood until the thing became round like a wagon wheel with the stalk of the cane acting like a spoke.

He hardly had time to contemplate what manner of weapon the odd thing was before the man swung it at Timothy’s face. The pointed tip sliced across the lad’s cheek, leaving behind a path of torn flesh that welled with blood.

No sooner had stark red appeared in the snow of Timothy’s cheek than a great rumbling cut the air. The ground quaked, and between one breath and the next, a boulder of shiny black steel and glass appeared in the street.

Chapter 17

The rumbling was like nothing Darcy had heard before. It sounded like a boar about to charge–if the beast didn’t need to take a breath. On and on it went, steady and deep as night but with a subtle brightness to it that called to mind the far-away clang of a smith’s hammer. The sound spoke to his gut, and he grinned, realizing what the large object was.

’Twas an “automobile,” or a “car” for short. Malina had talked at length about them, especially when the soreness in her bottom and legs from riding Rand all day had become enough to turn her sweet spirit a mite contrary. Of all the wonders his wife had told him of, cars were the one thing he thought he’d have a use for. He’d even imagined himself in the driver’s seat of one, racing down one of the evenly laid roads she’d told him of, with the wind whipping his hair, not stopping or even slowing for a hundred leagues and only then so he could fill the thing’s belly with “gas.” As fast as Rand was, Malina claimed a car could go even faster, and ever since she’d said so, he’d longed to see the proof of it for himself.

But this was no fantasy. This was nay Malina’s land 500 years hence. ’Twas an Inverness that wouldn’t ken what to make of such a thing. He wouldn’t ken what to make of it either, had he not been prepared by Timothy’s crate.

The lad’s blood had done this. And judging by the stricken horror on the lad’s face as he stared at the car, he had neither intended it nor had aught control over it.

He considered all this in the space of a single heartbeat, and that was all the time he had for the luxury of thought, because the car hadn’t just appeared and had done with it. The bloody thing was moving.