Mythology Abroad (19 page)

He realized that he could think about the future again. Though he was still lost, he was safe for the moment. Even exhausted, that thought gave him some hope. So long as the
bodach
didn’t pop out of nowhere again and put him back in the round cave.

***

C
HAPTER NINETEEN

“Now, where exactly did you lose him?” the Master asked, pausing at the gate to the Mackenzie garden.

“This way,” Holl said, leading the others down to the holed stone. Though he still resented giving up authority, he had to admire how quickly the Master could sum up the facts of a situation. It was possible for him to walk in cold and instantly take over in a crisis. Holl was still a schoolboy in comparison. The Master studied the holed stone with interest, but then focused on the whiskey bottle, as Holl had done, as a clue to the way the
bodach
worked. He stood rubbing a fragment of glass between his fingers, thinking.

Holl could sense the directions his thoughts took. He had some finding process he wanted to try, and he didn’t want the strange but helpful Mr. Michaels to watch him. That meant Holl had to remove the stranger. Fine and good. With two parties searching, the chances of finding Keith Doyle were raised significantly. He cleared his throat and spoke up. “We’ll continue looking in Mr. Michaels’ car. It was his suggestion the other day that Keith may have become lost and strayed further. I’ll let Mrs. Mackenzie know you’re here.”

“Gut,” the Master said, seeming to come back from very far away. “You go that vay, and ve vill start to familiarize ourselves vith this area. Ve can meet later and share our impressions.” He pottered around the garden, and looked over the edge of the field.

“Dismissed, are we?” the Big Person asked, feeling left a little behind by the conversation. “Come on, then. I’ve got a topo map of this part of the island.” He led the way back toward the house. He wasn’t sure what the other two actually had to do with his case, but so long as he could keep his quarry under his eye, he was happy.

Diane stood under the apple trees, swaying slightly with fatigue. She had had little sleep in the last twenty-four hours, but she was too worried to go lie down and let the Little Folk alone. The Master noticed as she tried to stifle a yawn, and smiled.

“Mees Londen, I vould be grateful for your assistance, but it is not necessary.” As Diane tried to protest, he interrupted her. “I know vhat promises the others extracted from you to look after my vell-being, but I assure you, I vill be fine.”

Diane forced her brain to clear, shoving down the sleep toxins like coffee under a plunger. “No, I can’t do that. A promise is a promise. Your son Enoch would slice me into little bits and build lanterns out of me if I didn’t make sure you were all right. I don’t know why they asked, because you’ll probably end up looking after me. Besides, I have
got
to know what’s happened to Keith. Is he alive?” she asked plaintively.

“Yes, I belief he is, but he is a long vay from here. Let us go into the house and find our starting point.”

When he felt like making the effort, the small teacher could be charming. In Diane’s opinion, the Master positively buttered up Mrs. Mackenzie while she was showing them the house in general and their rooms in specific.

“Qvite a lofely place,” the Master insisted. “A hafen uf calm and beauty against the backdrop uf the vild sea outside.”

“I wasn’t expecting two, since the lad only asked for one extra room,” the landlady said, much flattered by the little man with the thick German accent. “It’s good fortune I’ve just seen off one of my other guests. Pity about the young man, is it not? The local constable is having a wee look around for him. He’s likely gathering his wits. So easy to take a wrong turning when you don’t know the way. The road dips away when you’re no more than a few paces doun it.”

“Funny he couldn’t see those creepy stones on the top of the hill,” Diane mused.

“Ah, weel, they’re not visible from every side,” Mrs. Mackenzie explained.

“Thank you,” the Master said. “Ve vill endeafor not to be in your vay.”

The landlady left them alone in the room shared by Keith and Holl. It was an airy, pleasant chamber, the twin beds covered by yellow and white. With the small suitcases zipped closed, it looked as if both occupants had just stepped out for a moment. Diane flopped woefully on one of the beds and folded her arms.

“Now what do we do?”

The Master, who was rooting through Keith’s belongings, didn’t answer her. At last he rose, brandishing a gray wool sock. “This vill do.”

“What for?” Diane asked, casting a skeptical eye on his discovery. Above the ankle, the sock featured a grimy brown ring that matched the dark soil outside.

“It is for the finding,” the Master explained, beckoning to her to follow him out of the door.

In the garden, he brushed away the broken glass from the place in the grass nearest the low stone plinth. While Diane watched curiously, the Master knelt and placed the sock on the grass, and held his hands over it, as if he were warming them.

She stared at the sock when he moved his hands away. It looked no different than it had before. In a moment, it began to twitch. Diane checked for a breeze, but the air was fairly still. In any case, it couldn’t have made the sock do what it did next.

As if it had been pulled by a magnet, the sock started to slide along the ground, very slowly and jerkily at first, and then with increasing speed.

“Ah, I was not expecting such a strong response,” the Master said, rising swiftly to his feet and trotting after the sock. “This is fery gut. Keep an eye on it.” It disappeared around the corner of the garden and under the bushes toward the road. They ran after it.

“I’ve heard of laundry walking by itself, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it,” Diane admitted.

The Master, who was rather fond of Diane but did not show emotions easily, grunted a bit at her witticism. The matter was too serious to admit humor. They grey sock, moving as fast as a snake, had gained the rock, and was already yards ahead of them when they emerged from the garden. Diane, with her longer legs, paced the sock as it took a sharp right at the bottom of the road and slid across to the left side.

“Where’s it going?” she shouted back to the Master, who was huffing to catch up. The wind, now coming in off the sea, whisked away his words. “What?”

“Follow it!” the Master called. “Don’t lose it! It is taking us to Meester Doyle!”

O O O

Holl felt in much better spirits this morning. Perhaps it was just the arrival of the Master which gave him confidence, but he had an indefinable feeling that Keith Doyle was alive, well, and not too far away. Mr. Michaels had driven him inland several miles, and they had explored the narrow tracks which led off the main road. Keith was nowhere in sight, and no one they met had seen anyone answering to his description. Michaels seemed concerned for him. Holl, preoccupied with organizing his thoughts, put off his attempts at cheerful conversation.

Instinctively, Holl knew that they were going the wrong way. As soon as they had circled back through Garynahine and were once again approaching Callanish from the south, the fragmented senses he had thought too scrambled to do him any good suddenly pulled together. They were now going the right way. He could almost imagine he heard the American student’s mind somewhere ahead.

“I think we’ll find him in this direction,” Holl suggested.

“How the blazes do you know that?” Michaels demanded, slewing his gaze left at the vivid young face next to him.

“Only a feeling,” Holl answered absently. He could sense the Master’s strong personality nearby. It was on a vector to intersect with the way they were driving. Fairly soon, he and Michaels would pass by him. ‘Triangulation’ was what they called this process, and it seemed to be working. “I think he’s near the sea. I think he’d head for the water.”

They drove back into Callanish by the lower road, which took them past the public telephone booth, and the intersection that led to the farm. Before too long, he noticed a fall of blond hair deep in the field to the left.

“Stop! That’s Diane,” Holl said. Michaels pulled to the side of the road, and the Little Person jumped out. Once he stood up, he could see the Master. They were climbing over a hillock of peat. Another moment and they would have been out of sight on the other side. He pushed through the wires of the fence and ran to them.

“What news?” Holl shouted.

They looked up at the sound of his voice. Michaels had parked the car, and was climbing over the fence to join them. Quickly, Diane picked up the topographical map she was carrying, and pretended to sight it down over the edge of the sharp fall of the land to her right.

“Keith Doyle is here,” the Master announced.

Holl leaned under the lip of rock and shouted into the dark tunnel entrance he found there. “Keith Doyle! This way. Come out, Keith Doyle.”

O O O

Keith clambered up further into the fall of pebbles, and drew his legs out of the stream’s flow. With blind hands, he patted the mossy wall over his head, seeking an escape from the underground riverbed. He knelt suddenly in a trickle of water traveling across his shelf. There had to be a way back to the source, perhaps big enough for him to fit through. Hopefully, he followed the flow upstream. About five feet from where he had washed up was a large opening. The sides were rough, but it was more than adequate in size. He leaned through it, prepared to crawl onward.

“Yahoo!” He let out a shout of delight, which echoed in the cavern. On the other side of the opening he could see the golden lines of mosslight, banking the narrow cataract of water. The magic was gleaming more brightly than ever. He was never more glad to see anything in his life. It seemed the stream had not dragged him out of his way. He had probably been paralleling the airway all along.

Hands and knees straddling the cataract, he scurried along the floor of the cavern. Every muscle protested.

“Boy, after this, a marathon actually standing up would be a piece of cake!”

The passage twisted and wound upward in a more sinuous, smoother fashion and at a gentler angle than had any of the tunnels he had been in yet. Keith had a hopeful suspicion, but was trying to keep from believing in it, in case it was another disappointment. In a few more turns, there was a glimmer of light ahead of him, not the gold of mosslight, but the genuine white glow of sunlight. Excitement spurred him the rest of the way. His hands and knees slipped painfully into the stream bed once and again, but he splashed his way out and kept going.

What if the bright light was a decoy, he thought suddenly, stopping him in mid-crawl. What if the
bodach
had decided to keep him running around in circles for the rest of his life, which wouldn’t be long, stuck underground as he was. Confused and exhausted, he collapsed down full length on the wet stone.

Holl’s voice intruded itself into his consciousness, almost like a sound heard in a dream. “Come out, Keith Doyle.” It had to be an illusion, but he was willing to grasp at straws. With one more effort, he pushed himself forward.

He emerged into the brilliant day. The moss under his hands changed suddenly to cress and then to warm grass. The sky seemed blinding white at first, but resolved through a squint into blue. Keith drew a huge breath. He was out! Grateful and exhausted, he threw his hands out in front of him and flopped onto the grass. The wind sang Hallelujahs in his ears. In a moment he would get up, he promised himself.

Something smooth under his hand moved. He thought it was a stone, but stones usually didn’t move by themselves. Nervously, he raised his head to look. In front of him was a shoe. A woman’s casual shoe. There was a woman’s leg in it, and another one with a matching foot and leg beside it. He raised his head further. At the top of a much foreshortened body surrounded by a corona of tossing white light was a face that he knew. It was Diane. There were tears in her eyes as she stooped down to him.

Surprised, he stuttered out a greeting. “H-hi, there.” His voice sounded rusty in his own ears.

“Hello, sailor,” she returned, relieved to find him safe, but quick enough to throw him a line. “Buy a girl a drink?”

Snappy retorts having to do with money, women, and liquor swirled through him mind, but because of the creature’s mocking curse, none of them would go anywhere near his mouth. In the effort to say something,
anything
, in reply, Keith passed out.

Michaels joined the others in jubilation as they gathered up their lost lad, patting him on the cheeks to bring him back to consciousness. The young man’s clothes were torn and wet, and the red waves of his hair lay plastered to his head. There were streaks of moss on his clothed and skin, but he was alive. Michaels found he was as relieved as the rest to find that Danny O’Day was all right. The youth had been abducted, all right, by one of his scummy compatriots, and then pushed out into one of these littoral caves. Can’t trust ’em even when you have to work with ’em, he thought. Good thing they’d been there waiting when the youth crawled out of his hidey-hole. Sun blinded as he was, he’d have fallen smack over the precipice only a few feet beyond the cavern mouth.

“Meester Doyle,” Mr. Alfheim said patiently, as they raised the youth to his feet, “I see I find you as I have always found you, prostrate and half in, half out of trouble.”

Michaels chuckled. “Come on,” he said. “It’s only a few hundred yards back to your B&B. I’ll give you a lift.”

The young man seemed astonished. “D’you mean after all that I’m
walking distance
from the garden?” he croaked.

As he helped hand the young man into the car, Michaels gave him a quick pat down. Nothing on him. In fact, his clothes had been half torn off him, leaving no way to tell if there had been a drop or not. There was no money on the lad, not a coin—literally empty-handed except for a broken stick. Time to report back to the chief. So long as O’Day had been recovered alive, he had to remove himself and go back to observation. His well-being was no longer Michael’s concern. He’d already jeopardized his cover enough.

In a daze, Keith, kept upright by Diane on one side and Holl on the other, wiped his shoes carefully on the mat.

“They’re just about hopeless,” Diane said, looking at the worn shoes. The toes were nearly worn away, and something had ripped off the metal buckles. She squeezed Keith’s arm. His hands were still half-balled-up, probably a muscular spasm of some kind, and he was clutching a piece of old stick. She was trying not to cry at the pitiful picture he made. “So are your clothes. You look half dead.”