The Angel Stone: A Novel (17 page)

I nodded to Moondance, then to each of the others, and stepped into the center of the circle, to the empty place where once stood the door and where Bill’s blood had been shed. I took off the brooch, pricked my finger, and let a drop of blood fall on the ground. I recited the first part of the spell.

“My blood binds me to the door.” A red mist rose from the ground and arched over me. I felt Bill’s love for me, so strong that he had sacrificed himself. That love bound me to the door.

“I empty myself so that I contain all things.” I closed my eyes and became hollow inside. I’d felt like this before: when my parents died, when Liam left, when Bill perished. But each time I had been emptied, there were people who stepped into my life to fill that void. Annie, after my parents died. My friends and students, after Liam and then Bill had gone. I thought of all the
good neighbors
in Fairwick who had filled my life and who were depending on me to save them. They were inside me now. I had only to make myself a bridge from Fairwick to another world. And to do that I had to open myself up to the possibility that somewhere there was still love for me. That was the hardest part of the spell. Since Bill died, I had not allowed myself to think that there could ever be
anyone else. It was too painful to hope. I had closed off a part of myself so that I’d never be hurt again. That was the part I had to open now.

“I open myself to love,” I said.

The red mist began to swirl around me. I felt a wrenching pain and then a dizzying lightness. I was inside a maelstrom. Around me, my friends stood in a circle of protection, and outside that circle stood the Stewarts, but none of them could protect me from the hurricane. I was alone here, open, unguarded, at the mercy of every fear and emotion, so torn by the currents of time that for a moment I didn’t seem to exist. In that moment, I became the door. I stepped through my own self, through my own pain and fears, and found myself standing on the threshold of Faerie, its iridescent dusk stretching out below me. I stepped forward …

 … right into the path of a galloping horse.

I barely had time to throw myself to the side to escape being trampled. I fell to the ground beside a curved stone wall as the horse thundered past me, its silver hooves flashing mere inches from my nose. I looked up to see its rider glancing disdainfully over her shoulder at me, then tossing her silver-white hair and green cloak as she rode on. Another mount followed close behind, this one gold with jet hooves, its rider cloaked in gold. I recognized them both—Fiona, the Fairy Queen, and her king, Fionn. More horses followed in their wake, all decked in gold and silver and glittering jewels. It was the fairy host riding out on All Hallows’ Eve, just as they did in the ballads of Tam Lin and William Duffy.

William
. Was he here with them? I struggled to my feet, pulling myself up on the damp stone wall to scan the faces of the riders as they rushed past me, but they were all cloaked and hooded. How would I recognize him? But then I remembered
the ballad and the sign William Duffy had promised his beloved—that he would leave one hand ungloved.

I watched for a rider with a missing glove … and saw him at the end, on a white horse the color of moonlight, cloaked in black, one hand gloved, one bare.

I stepped into the path of the horse, which reared, diamond hooves flashing in the air inches above my head. The rider’s cloak fell back, and I saw his face in the moonlight against the shadow of the cloak. That is how he came to me first, as moonlight and shadow. I reached up, grabbed a handful of cloak, and pulled.

He slid off his horse and landed right on top of me. We both tumbled to the ground, tangling in our cloaks. As we rolled, I felt him changing in my arms, his long, lean muscles lengthening and wrapping around me. When we came to a halt, I saw that I no longer held a man but was held instead by a huge serpent. Its eyes were still William’s, though, so I held on, remembering the story and bracing myself for the next transformation, which, if I remembered correctly …

Dagger-length teeth snapped at me as slippery scales turned to deep fur in my hands. The lion’s great jaws opened wide and roared in my face, but the eyes were still William’s, so I held on …

And was engulfed in flames. I had no eyes to look at this time, and I recalled from the story that this was where the heroine tossed her lover into a holy well.

Which, if I wasn’t mistaken, lay just behind that damp stone wall I’d fallen against. I blindly groped my way to the wall, pulled myself up by my burning fingertips, and dove over, headfirst. As soon as I hit the water, I felt another body in the well with me, arms and legs flailing and dragging me down. There was nothing in the story about the hero drowning
the heroine. But then he was pulling me out of the water, pushing me up on his shoulders so I could fling myself back over the top of the well. I turned and reached for him and pulled him, sputtering, sopping, and stark naked, out of the well. His long, lean torso and limbs gleamed like marble in the moonlight. For a moment I was dazzled at the sight of him—I knew that smooth chest, those strong legs—and then I thought to toss my sodden tartan over his shoulders, just in time to cover him before the Fairy Queen rode back to stare down at William from her silver horse.

“If I had known you would leave me for a human girl, William Duffy, I would have plucked out your eyes and heart and replaced them with eyes and heart of wood. If you ever step foot in Faerie again, I’ll do just that. And you.” She turned her eyes on me. “I condemn you with the same curse. You may never step foot in Faerie again.”

Then she turned and rode off, leaving me with a shivering half-naked man atop a bare and windswept hill.

“Are you all right?” I asked the shivering half-naked man beside me.

In answer, he sank to his knees. “I am now, my lady. You have saved me. I have been a prisoner of the Fairy Queen for seven long years, and tonight she was supposed to sacrifice me to the devil. At the last minute, she decided to keep me as her slave, but then I would have become a demon myself. You have saved me from that fate.” He took my hand. “And for that, you have my undying gratitude and love, dear lady.”

His hair, still wet from his dunk in the well, hung in dark waves around his face. Drops of water clung to his pale flesh, glistening in the moonlight. The hand that grasped mine was cold and trembling, just as Liam’s flesh had been before I’d breathed life into him. His expression, though, was like Bill’s when he returned to make up for how he had hurt me as Liam—a look of pure gratitude. But this man’s face was younger—and his skin was goose-fleshed with cold.

“You’re human, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “What else would I be, lass? Did ye think you’d snared a kelpie or a phouka?”

“You haven’t … been changed yet. You’re William before he became the incubus.”

The amusement in his eyes faded, and his face became still as marble. “An incubus? A creature that ravishes young maidens? Aye, the Fairy Queen told me that’s what I’d become if I remained with her in Faerie. Once she sucked all that was human out of me, I would have to feed off human girls to survive.” He took his hand from mine and turned it back and forth in the moonlight. I recognized the hand, remembered the feel of it caressing me. I reached out my hand and took his. His skin was still cold. For a moment I thought I was too late, but then, beneath the chill flesh, I felt the warm pulse of human blood. I squeezed.

“See,” he said, “I
am
human. You saved me before I could become a monster. Just as you said you would.”

“Just as I said …” Of course. He thought I was my ancestor, the first Cailleach, the fairy girl he laid with in the Greenwood, who promised to come back for him in seven years. I looked around us, at the wild heath covered with long grasses and flowers. I sniffed and smelled—yes, the same scent that had been haunting my dreams, the flowers I’d been finding in my bed—
heather
. The humpbacked mountains that surrounded us were taller than the Catskills that surrounded Fairwick, and perched atop one were the ruins of a castle. I had done it! I’d gone back in time to Scotland in the time of William Duffy. But where was the angel stone?

I looked down at William and noticed something glimmering on the ground. We both reached for it at the same time, our fingers touching. I withdrew my hand, and he held up a silver heart identical to the one still pinned to the tartan wrapped around him. He held the two halves of the heart together.

“Aye,” he said, “you told me that someday these hearts would be rebound.”

“I’m not that girl …” I began to explain to him, but then I noticed how badly he was shaking. It was colder here than in Fairwick, and we were on a bare hillside with no visible shelter—and no angel stone. I’d hoped somehow that the stone would be waiting for me when I walked through the door, but clearly I would have to go looking for it. “I’ll explain all that later,” I told William, “but for now I suppose we’d better find someplace warm, before we both freeze to death.”

We walked down the hill, into a narrow valley where a stream flowed through a copse of beech trees. We followed the stream for more than a mile in silence, until we came to an unpaved road marked by a massive stone cross carved with intricate Celtic designs. Normally I’d be fascinated by an ancient monument such as this one, but I was cold, wet, and confused.

“Do you recognize where we are?” I asked William, whose teeth were chattering even more than mine were. Despite his cold, he’d offered twice to give me my plaid shawl back, which he’d craftily wrapped like a kilt around his waist with one end draped over his chest. I’d refused on the grounds that being seen walking with a naked man wouldn’t help my reputation any in the seventeenth century.

“Aye,” he said, “that stream is Boglie Burn. It runs into the Tweed, just beyond Ballydoon. And the forest we came out of is the Greenwood, an ancient enchanted wood. That castle on yonder hill is Castle Coldclough, but nobody lives there and it’s haunted. But that wee croft up there belongs to a cousin of my auntie’s, Mordag MacCready.”

He pointed up a hill that rose to our right. All I could see was a stone outcropping, but when the clouds cleared from the moon, I made out the shape of a stone cottage built up
against the hillside. Its windows were dark, but that could be because its inhabitants were asleep.

“Do you think she’d put us up for the night?” I asked.

“No Christian soul would turn us away,” he said, already climbing the hill. There was a narrow dirt path between the bushes, clear enough to indicate that it had been in use recently. I caught up to him, wondering what Mordag MacCready would make of a naked man knocking on her door in the middle of the night, cousin or no. Would she think he was one of the boggles or haunts that everything around here seemed to be named for? As we approached the house, though, I began to doubt there was anyone home. The place had a forlorn, derelict look to it. A gate had been left open, swinging on its hinges, an empty bucket lay in the yard, and there was no smoke coming from the chimney.

“It looks deserted,” I commented to William.

“Aye, maybe Mordag is pasturing her sheep in the hills overnight, although it’s getting late in the year for that.”

Now that he mentioned sheep, I could detect the not-unpleasant aroma of manure mingled with hay and wet wool coming from an empty stone-walled enclosure beside the house.

“How do you know so much about sheep?”

William snorted. “As a wee lad, I watched the flocks—before I ran away to the city.”

“If you were living in the city, how did you get kidnapped by the Fairy Queen?” I asked.

“Och, I’d come back,” William answered. “Do ye want to know my whole life’s story standing here freezing on the doorstep, or would ye mind if I continued the tale inside by the fire?”

“Do you think we should break in? Won’t Mordag think we’re burglars?”

But William had already opened the door. I stood nervously on the threshold until William found a lantern and lit it by striking something that looked like a primitive lighter. With the lamp lit, I saw that the cottage was plainly and sparely furnished but clean. And cold. It was hardly warmer than it was outside.

“Are ye going to stand there all night letting in the cold air?” he asked, holding the lantern up. “Or are ye afraid of me? I’ll no’ turn into a lion again.”

With the coarse wool shawl draped over one shoulder and his long hair bushing out around his face, he resembled one of the wild men that peasants believed roamed the woods of medieval Europe. As I looked at him, it came home to me that I really didn’t
know
him. I knew the man—or creature—that he would become: the incubus Liam, who came to me as moonlight and shadow and became flesh through my breath; then Bill, who came back to me to make amends and died when my love made him human. But this man—William Duffy—I had dreamed of him, but I didn’t
know
him. Could he be trusted?

A cold breeze brushed against my back, insinuating itself down the neck of my damp blouse. I shivered at its touch … but then felt it warm as it crept down my back. It felt like a hand, as if the breeze had turned to flesh as it met my flesh—as Liam had gained flesh with my breath. And as the warm breeze coiled around my waist, I smelled heather.

William lifted his head and sniffed the air. His eyes met mine and I felt a spark of recognition. Pulled by that spark—and the invisible hand at my back—I stepped over the threshold.

While William went to work lighting a fire, I looked around the cottage. The central room contained the fireplace, with a
settle and two chairs set before it. A spinning wheel had been knocked over, the wool from its bobbin strewn all over the floor. There was also a rudimentary kitchen consisting of a cupboard, an iron basin, and a cast-iron stove. There were two small rooms in the loft upstairs, one with an antique brass bed covered with wool blankets and a sheepskin, the other with a loom, more trunks, and piles of blankets and sheepskins. Mordag was a weaver as well as a shepherd, which made sense.