Mythology Abroad (8 page)

“I don’t know. I’ve never made a study of it. But I’m here. And since the legend writers group my Folk in with them, I suppose there might be others out there. You’re counting on it, aren’t you?”

Keith considered the question. “I’m looking for whatever is out there, but naturally, I’d prefer them to be my kind of Little People, who consort with dragons and do magic.” He pointed out a passage on one of the pages. “This J.F. Campbell compares legends of the Fair Folk with actual people he met in Lapland. The way he describes them, they could walk under his outstretched arm with their tall hats on without bending over, but never touch him.” Keith measured his friend with an eye. “Just about the right size. Do you think you’re descended from Laplanders, Holl?”

Holl snorted. “I don’t know where my people are from, if not from the old place we’re trying to find. So far as I know they’ve always been there. All my father would say was that it was terrible when they left it, without much helpful detail. We didn’t spring out of the ground, so I expect we came from somewhere. You’ll need to ask one of the old ones. Why?”

There was a long pause. Keith’s eyes twinkled. “I read this feature article about a man in Lapland who everybody thinks is Santa Claus,” he offered impishly. He grinned at the expression on Holl’s face, who realized he’d been led into a trap. “Even the adults who meet him think so.”

“Aargh! Be off with you before I have a relapse!” Holl seized his pillow and yanked it over his face. Keith shut his book, and stood up to go.

“Oh, by the way,” he said casually, “I found the body. It was in a funeral urn, about five feet down the pike from where Matthew dug up the lidded pot. He’s dead all right. It was moider. No doubt about it. Moider. Case closed, shweetheart.” Running his finger along the brim of an imaginary fedora, Keith winked at Holl and swaggered out the swinging door.

Holl pushed the pillow back into place behind his head, and settled back with a sigh. “Thank you, Keith Doyle,” he said softly. “You’re a host and a cure in yourself. I have a lot to think about now.”

O O O

The guard at the quadrangle gate had become used to seeing Michaels walking in and out of the University grounds. Perhaps the guard thought the old boy in the tweed suit was a visiting doctor. The way the National Health chopped and changed, he could have brought in a host of agents and never been questioned.

Surveillance on the portable phone link the blond lad had been using revealed one interesting fact: the boy’s first language was not English. The lingo boffins hadn’t pinned down the root language yet, but it sounded halfway between Icelandic and Balkan. Were other powers involved in O’Day’s latest pickup? Michaels hoped the answers lay in Inverness, the tour’s next stop.

***

C
HAPTER NINE

“This is a great place,” Keith exclaimed, all but hanging out the coach window to get a good look at Inverness. Where Glasgow was gray granite and yellow sandstone, Inverness was red sandstone and black iron. He snapped pictures with the lens focus set on infinity so he wouldn’t have to keep changing it and risk losing his subjects. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked most of the time. He had taken three whole rolls of new scenery in the last two hours alone. “That’s weird. This castle looks almost brand new. It’s almost exactly the same color as cream-of-tomato soup.”

“I’m sure that’s precisely how they put it in the travel brochures,” Martin quipped sarcastically, from two seats behind Keith. “‘Our national treasures and how they compare with canned goods.’”

Inverness was hilly, set along the deeply cut bed of the river. With passersby wearing shirtsleeves and light dresses, it was hard to believe that the city lay 200 miles further north even than Glasgow. The hot summer weather was a surprise to the Americans, but it was more of one to the English school teachers, who exclaimed over it with pleasure.

The storefronts were trim and clean, and painted hoardings disguised construction sites. Flowerpots made a colorful contrast to the wrought iron light poles from which they depended. From pegs in the walls around some of the shops, lengths of tweed and woven shawls flapped gently in the breeze like plaid pennants. Above the buildings in every direction, distant mountains, the snow topping their peaks a shock in July, arched broad green backs to the sun and clear blue sky.

Holl leaned against the window across the aisle, and soaked up the new sights. He was feeling much better, and after a few days of forced inactivity, was ready to do some exploring. The others had been solicitous of him, cheering him up with stories of the dig. Matthew especially had been kind. He waved away the idea that Holl should pay him back for the telephone call home. “It was necessary medicine,” he assured Holl, “and we’d never stint you that.”

The camaraderie of the little group, the unquestioning acceptance of Big Folk toward complete strangers touched Holl. Beside his own village, the Big students in the Master’s course at Midwestern had been his only real outside contact. The ancient Conservative faction within the village held that the seeming friendliness of Big Folk was a sham. He was pleased to be bringing back to them proof that that was not so.

What did not delight him was the memory of the mysterious attack he had suffered on the hillside. If this was what happened to trespassers on charmed soil, he planned to keep Keith off any fairy mounds in the future. Thank heavens that nothing like this existed in Illinois. On the other hand, at home he would have had the experience of one of the old ones to hand, and there probably would never have been such a trap sprung from which he would need rescuing.

Though he was at pains to conceal it from Keith, he was troubled, and had been ever since he had called home. There was gossip going around the farm about Maura and Gerol, another male a few years older than Holl. They were spending a lot of time together, and the attraction seemed to be both obvious and mutual. She hadn’t said anything to Calla to the effect that her ‘understanding’ with Holl was off, but that was the way many of their clan read it. Holl was very hurt. He had taken on this quest so he would have the right to ask her to marry when he returned, following all the traditional forms. Apparently, she had taken his departure as a rejection. The impulse returned again and again that he should go home immediately; abandon the search for the white bellflowers. But did he give up his quest, thereby abrogating his right to be headman of the village one day? That was never an ambition he had intended for himself. It was merely what others had always expected of him. They were counting on him. If he went home now, there would be others who would lack the bellflowers for their weddings, and he felt somewhat guilty about that, but he didn’t want to be outmatched by a rival when he couldn’t be there to defend his suit. The Conservatives would attack him as a culture-killing Progressive, sucking up to Big ways, but he wondered if he cared about that if he lost Maura. Still, the Elf Master had made it a condition of his proposal to find the flowers before he could marry Maura. Holl wished he had taken her aside and told her his intentions before he had left, but that wasn’t the way the Little Folk did things. Until her parents said he had their permission, he had to hold his tongue.

There wasn’t so much bad about the Big Folks’ life. Would he wed instead after their fashion, making up their own ceremonies when it suited them, and when convention couldn’t apply? They seemed to get along fine. And yet, had Maura rejected the old ways? Was she choosing her own mate over her long-time suitor in defiance of tradition? He wished he could talk to Keith about his worries, but he wanted to think it through further first. It was important not to let the situation at home drag down his spirits.

“We are now passing over the River Ness,” Miss Anderson put in. The sunshine was brilliantly reflected off the flowing water. Small, black-headed gulls swooped around the coach as it drove over an iron bridge.

“Have they ever decided what it is that so many people report seeing in the Loch?” Holl inquired, and wondered why everyone else laughed.

“Do you mean Nessie?” Miss Anderson asked brightly. “No, there are ten times as many theories as there are reported sightings. You’ll have a chance to look for yourselves. You’re on your own for today, ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Stroud would prefer that we start with him Tuesday. He wants only his team on site this afternoon. I believe they are at a delicate stage of the proceedings. I am sure you wouldn’t want to interfere.”

There was a chorus of amiable protest. “We’re more like day trippers to the profs,” Edwin said, speaking for them all. “If they’re doing something serious, we won’t get in the way.”

“Somewhat inelegantly put,” Mrs. Green added, smiling over her shoulder at the tall young man, “but essentially what I would have said.”

“Those of you taking this for credit are not excused from your essays, though,” the tour director warned. “But allow me to suggest a topic you might explore. Picture yourself as far forward in the future as we are now to our Bronze Age subjects. What would you be likely to find left of Inverness in the 60th century?

“I think you will find Inverness worth your exploration. I have a schedule of day tours available, if anyone would care to inspect it, and there are more to be had from the Tourist Information Centre. We’ll be staying in a guesthouse this time, instead of a residence hall. Evening meals will be provided for you as well as breakfast. If you want to make your own arrangements for supper, please let the owner know early in the day.”

The weather was fine and warm, with a hot sun persuading the tourists to leave their coats behind in the guesthouse, and a breeze promising that the heat wouldn’t be too oppressive. Keith found a reasonably respectable tee shirt to wear among his belongings, and joined his friends on their way out for a look around.

From their lodgings to the city center it was downhill, via a long flight of narrow stone steps and a broader, sharply turning staircase. From the head of the twisting steps, they found they were on a level with the red stone castle, which gave them a good view to the east. Most of the section of Inverness in which they were staying appeared to be laid out along a similar plan to provide access to the higher neighborhoods. Down on the long High Street, Keith would catch sight of endless stairs reaching up and back into the shadows between buildings.

As in Glasgow, the traffic was fast, with taxis taking death-dealing turns around corners under the noses of wary pedestrians. Except for the perils of traffic, Inverness was easy to get around in. Keith found it cheerful and clean. The group stopped for lunch in a small family style restaurant by the side of the River Ness, just out of the shadow of the main bridge spanning it. The Hearty Trencherman boasted a sign showing a plump, happy diner beaming over a huge plate and brandishing a knife and fork.

Matthew made a face at the sign. “Ooh, I hate campy adverts.”

“I’d call it the Trench, for short,” Martin suggested, as they pushed inside. “Look at the high banks of the river, surrounding us. We’re in the bottom of a pit.”

“Well, if you look at it that way, anything good you get here’ll be a nice surprise,” Keith reasoned. He sat down and accepted a menu from the female server standing beside their table. “Hi, beautiful. What’s good here, besides the service?”

The waitress tossed a light-brown ponytail and dimpled prettily. “Nearly anything,” she said. “The salmon’s off, but all the rest is ready.”

Keith waggled his eyebrows at her outrageously, collecting a blush. “So’m I.”

“Keith Doyle!” Holl exclaimed, shocked. “What would Diane say?”

“Diane?” Keith, surprised, turned innocent hazel eyes on him. “What’s this got to do with her? We’re just having a conversation. It doesn’t mean anything.” He promptly went back to flirting, and Holl turned a hot red in embarrassment. The waitress seemed to take the whole business in stride, all the time noting down orders and dispensing drinks.

The menu was predictable, including the ubiquitous “and peas,” but the food was well-prepared. The young men leaned back from their empty plates with satisfaction, waiting for the bill.

Keith peered out of the plate glass window at the river. “This would be a good place to watch the sun set.”

“Aye,” said Matthew. “This is just into Midsummer, and we’re far enough north that the sun nearly never sets. We’ll go and have a sit down in the nearest local, and when the publican cries closing time at eleven, we’ll know it’s sunset.”

The others agreed that it was a good plan. They paid the bill and walked out into the sunlight. At the first sign of a likely pub, most of the young men turned in. “Aren’t you coming in with us?” Max asked Keith, holding open the door.

“Nope,” Keith replied, grinning. “We’re going to take a tour down to the Loch and look for the monster.”

“Oh. Happy fishing,” Edwin said sarcastically.

“See you later,” Keith promised. “I’ll look for you guys here around sunset.”

Directed by Miss Anderson to look for the signs with the small script
i
, Keith located the Tourist Information Centre on a street perpendicular to the main thoroughfare not far from the Trench. The TICs provided numerous services for travelers, including directions, event schedules, lodging arrangements, maps, and an assembly point for tours.

“The next one sets out in twenty minutes,” the woman in the glass-fronted booth told Keith. “You can pay for your tickets now or on the coach.”

With time to kill, Keith studied the wall map of the city, while Holl perused displays of handcrafted knickknacks for sale in the front of the Centre. Keith compared the scale from the city to Loch Ness, the long, narrow stretch of water angling southwest from the river which bisected Inverness. It was a curious shape, long and narrow like a spear.

“Keith Doyle?” Holl’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Can you come here for a minute?”

Holl gestured him quietly to a small display case which contained ceramic pieces. Behind a tiny card which said “Nessie” were ranged a half dozen separate pieces: a head, four semicircular loops with ridges over the back, and a tiny squib of a pointed tail, which made it appear as if the monster was swimming with half its length submerged in the table. “Is that what it looks like?”

“That’s what most of the people who have seen her say,” Keith said. “They don’t have any concrete proof, of course. Some of the pictures they’ve got suggest that descendants of plesiosaurs are living in the Loch.” Holl’s eyes went wide. “The legends also say she might be a selkie, which is a sort of magical seagoing horse. Does that look like a horse to you?”

“Don’t you go talking down aur Nessie,” the clerk chided them playfully from the other side of the shop. “We’re fond of her in these parts.”

Keith clapped his spread fingertips to his chest. “Me? I believe in her,” he assured the clerk earnestly. “I know of stranger things in real life. But it’s not like she’s ever appeared on the evening news.”

“There are those who believe and those who doubt,” the clerk said offhandedly. “But you’ll prove it to yourself at the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition. Queue up for the coach just outside the door.”

The Official Monster Exhibition was in Drumnadrochit, several miles southwest of Inverness. The guide doing the presentation offered them walls filled with blurred photographs and written eyewitness accounts as proof of the monster’s existence. The multimedia program was more interesting, and dropped delicious hints that investigating scientists were on the edge of making an announcement as to Nessie’s species and location. They showed the audience films taken by spotters, who had accidentally caught sight of the mysterious denizen of the Loch. After glancing at the displays, which held far less scientific theory than they had hoped, Keith and Holl made their way through the turnstile to the book and gift shop.

“Now here’s something that looks like home,” Holl said, spreading his arms out to the walls of books.

“Are you going to have trouble living on the farm, since it’s exposed and all?” Keith asked. “I mean after living underground in a library, anything is going to feel less solid.”

“No, but the walls are awfully bare without books. We’re budgeting to start our own collection of books. The Conservatives insist that we get a good grounding of textbooks, to keep up our education. The Progressives want literature, with an emphasis on science fiction. It’s still in negotiation.”

Outside the Exhibition hall was a pond, in which a twenty-foot concrete dinosaur model was posed swimming. “It’s a plesiosaur, all right,” Holl agreed. “But is that really what’s in the Loch?”

“No one really knows,” Keith said thoughtfully. “But I might come back someday and try to find out.”

The tour’s next stop was the ruin of Urquhart Castle, a fabulous ruin on the west side of the Loch. Keith slapped a new roll of film into his camera, and crawled all over the stones taking pictures. Holl followed him more sedately, stopping to inspect the layout and read the small signs describing what used to lie in each part of the castle.