Niebos, 1 January 2024:
Eleanor clenched her hands as she glared at Methos. She'd risen early, eaten breakfast with the children, and then had returned to their room to begin packing while she thought he was downstairs obsessed with those artifacts. She'd thought she'd be through and already have the arrangements made by the time he poked his head out of Phillip's study to see that another day had passed.
Instead, he'd evidently spent the latter part of the morning with Marianna and J.D. on the terrace and had burst in on Eleanor filled with excitement. What followed then wasn't pretty.
"There is no way I'm allowing you to take these children and return to Virginia!" he shouted when she'd explained what she was doing.
"J.D. has to go back to school! He's falling behind!" she'd protested.
"He'll catch up. We can home school him. We stay here!"
"You can stay! I'm taking the children home!"
He'd glared at her and there had been no sense of his attempting to breach her walls and figure out what she was thinking. "Over my dead body. The children are safe here."
"There are undercurrents of danger all around us. There are too many immortals here. Can't you feel it? It's no longer safe."
"I'm not the one who had a vision of beheading a child!" he'd roared at her.
Eleanor blinked away the tears that stung her eyes. She had no response to that. "That's a low blow," she finally said quietly.
"The children stay. You can leave if you have to," he said as if hurt. "It's what you always do. You get bored and run off. Well this time, I won't stop you or pine after you. If you want to go, then go. The children, however, stay."
Eleanor pushed past him as she stormed out of the house, passing a smirking Sarah Manning on her way. It took all of her self-control not to cold-cock the young woman. Halfway along the path to the hospital, she stomped her feet several times in frustration and screamed her denial. The primal scream helped some and she bore to the right while she considered climbing the Pilgrim's Path… seeking solitude and a place to think. But thoughts of Sarah Manning bothering her there made her change her mind. Instead, she turned to head toward the village and the shoreline.
Behind her Phillip watched her go and then looked back at Methos descending the stairs. "That went well."
"I don't want her to go, but if she's determined, maybe it will help clear the air."
"Well give her some time to calm down," Phillip replied.
"Ever since Derrick left, I feel that's all I'm doing… letting her alone, letting her think, except for the other night and we all know how that turned out." Methos slouched onto a sofa with deep sigh. "There are reasons I've always wanted to be on my own and without attachments. Maybe we immortals can only manage living together for so long before everything explodes." He glanced up as Sarah Manning walked through the room, giving him a bright smile as she did so. Methos groaned. If there was one thing he knew, it was that the situation with Sarah seemed worse than before Cassandra had come. Had the psychic done something to Sarah?
Phillip watched Sarah and shook his head. That one was trouble, and he'd have to deal with her. A memory of ramming a knife through her hand fluttered through his mind and he smirked slightly as he drank his coffee. Kingsley had been a sadist pure and simple… and his quickening still bothered Phillip… but in this case… maybe he'd had the right idea.
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A funeral procession made Eleanor pause in her flight, and stand aside on the path, her head bowed in respect as the coffin, borne aloft on the shoulders of six men and surrounded by the mourners… old women dressed in black and sobbing; solemn men in ill-fitting black suits; somber children whose eyes darted about… passed her by. Clearly the children wanted to be anywhere but here. Watching the procession pass, Eleanor considered that she'd had few real encounters with funerals and the deaths of friends and loved ones. Immortals by their very nature did not face death except through the game. The few immortals who had ever known Eleanor still lived… except for Rebecca… and Darius. She had been in Africa when they had died and while she still mourned their passing… Rebecca's had been in the game while Darius… she shuddered. That murder still haunted her, as did having saved the life of James Horton decades before he killed Darius. In some ways… that had always been at the heart of her grief over her lost mentor… guilt that she had contributed in some way to his death.
The bell at the small church tolled slowly… one toll for each year the dead man had lived. Eleanor counted them as the crowd clustered in the small cemetery. He'd been seventy-nine. Eleanor couldn't even recall her life at seventy-nine, or where she'd been at the time. Had she moved on to Europe by then? Was she still in Viking lands? She shook her head. Clearly nothing of that time period stood out in her memory. Too much of her early immortal life had been one day after the other… wandering and alone.
Finally she turned thoughtfully and strode swiftly along the main thoroughfare of the village with its white buildings and turquoise painted doors… reminiscent of sand and ocean. Avoiding the stone dock she headed to a strip of white sand beach and stared out at the ocean. It seemed dark today… thoughts of Homer's description the wine-dark sea crossed her mind as she stared at the enormity of it. The horizon was a rippling line of gray sky against dark sea.
It was then that a memory flashed in her mind, much like ones she got from Methos in the unity bond… but this one was hers. She closed her eyes and reveled in it.
Coast of East Anglia, England, 885 C.E.
Aella paused on the road, hearing the great roar that whispered on the wind. "That way lies the sea," the farmer had told her. She'd thanked him and taken the road, which led through scrub trees toward a high dune of loose, gritty soil and grasses.
In the years since leaving Edward behind, she had taken her time in her travels, wandering through the island and the lands of the Angles and Saxons. She'd learned their languages easily enough and, while she'd thought them barbaric compared to her good Celtic tongue, she'd mastered them with ease. She'd worked as a servant and a midwife. She had neither seen nor even sensed another immortal.
Aella shifted the cloth bag on her shoulder and began the final ascent. Already the air was filled with the scent of salt and fish. Above her, gulls careened and screamed their raucous cries in the gray sky… laden with storm clouds. She didn't care. She wouldn't melt and she wouldn't die of exposure. And… she wanted to see the ocean she'd heard so much about in her travels.
While she'd been told that the land of Britain was an island, it had seemed enormous in her travels. The roads had always gone on and on. They'd wind through hills and valleys and through dark dense forest. They'd widen on open fields and narrow in city streets. She'd walked many of them until at last, Aella had decided to visit the shoreline and view the great sea.
As she mounted the hillock that was the final barrier… she gasped open-mouthed at the wide expanse that met her gaze. Dark greenish gray at the shoreline… foaming as it rushed to the land… dark and gray further out where she'd been told it was deeper than a tree was tall. When she'd seen the lochs of Scotland, she could still see the opposite shore… but here… there was only a horizon where sky met water.
In the distance she could see spumes of water cast upward… "Merfolk dancing" one old crone had told her when she'd asked about the ocean yesterday at the village. "The silkies live deep under the water in their cities of rock and shell. Be wary young miss for they are treacherous," the woman had said with a wink and a cackle. Aella had thought it was a tale told to enchant. She wondered what the woman would think of immortals… but wisely had held her tongue. Now she saw the spumes of spray and wondered at their origin.
"Silkies," she murmured as she half-slid down the loose soil… sand she'd been told it was called… to reach the waterline. Once there she dropped her bag and removed her boots to step into the water… feeling the "sand" squeeze between her toes as the tide washed over her feet. She knelt to take a handful of water cupped in her small hands and drink. She spat it out. "Brine," she whispered, recalling the saltwater solutions that were used to pickle cabbage and other vegetables.
Still… the sight of all that water took her breath away. Who would have thought there was so much water in the world… or that the world could be that big?
And the world had been big. It had been at that moment that she'd been filled with an urgency and sense of wonder at the world she inhabited and a desire to see it all. She'd been almost everywhere and had taken in the sights, committing them to memory, the rain forests, the mountains of the New World once she'd gone there, the deserts, the Great Wall of China, the Australian Outback… and the jungles of Africa and South America. In her eleven hundred years, she'd seen almost everything… and still she felt a sense of awe and wonder when she looked at the ocean.
Eleanor dropped to the sand, her legs crossed before her as she gazed at the birds overhead, the sounds of the cries interspersed now with the sounds of the approaching ferry horn… and reveled in the gentle lap of water on the sand and the ripples of wave and foam in the distance. Eleven hundred years and if she let it… the sea still called to her. Against the horizon she saw leaping dolphins. "Silkies," she breathed and laughed. The weight of the morning's events began to lessen.
She still wanted the children away from here. As she'd told Methos, the island was just getting too full of active immortals. It wasn't just Derrick's bunch… it was all of them. While generally pleasant, there were undercurrents of unrest and danger in their midst. It wasn't just Sarah… it was in Phillip, too.
Her genial friend seemed to glare and speak sharply all too often. She wasn't certain if it were the aftereffects of Kingsley's quickening… or his twice-daily visits to the cove. She and Methos spent as much time arguing about inconsequential things as they did making love. Kenny was a poised dagger over all of them… even if he had saved J.D. from drowning. Even Grace had been short-tempered in recent days.
Eleanor feared greatly that an explosion among them was imminent. She'd had too many dreams in recent weeks that had featured erupting mountains and a fire and blood-drenched landscape. While she understood those were visions of their collective past… they also seemed like warnings. She'd hoped to talk to Methos about them… see if he too was having dreams… but his mental walls and then his bitterness toward her this morning about her wanting to take the children had closed her mouth. He was so caught in the snare of the artifacts that he heard nothing else but their siren song! Eleanor grasped sand in her left hand and then raised it into the air. She watched the sand dribble away between her fingers and felt that the life they'd been trying to build… their commitment to one another… the children… everything was dribbling away in the same manner. They were losing who they were and what they meant to one another in this place. They needed to be gone from here!
Sensing an immortal racing up the beach, she glanced with concern toward the dock. Was it even now someone else to worry about? She gasped and rose, flinging her arms wide as the small form of Chou flung his arms about her waist.
"I'm back Eleanor," he cried even as she folded her arms around him. Eleanor hugged him tightly… saying a small prayer to the fates for returning him safely. Then she held him at arms length and patted his round cheeks.
"You certainly don't look like you missed any meals," she teased.
Chou laughed and then Eleanor felt others on the beach. She looked up to see Madrigal and Micah… another two returning. "They rescued me," Chou said, pointing at the two teens with a wide grin. Eleanor could see that the two had grown close indeed in the last few years that they'd been on their own. They'd wanted the chance to live in the outer world and had promised Phillip solemnly to look after and care for one another. Clearly their relationship had also become physical. The two immortal teens waved at her and, clasping a hand, began to race along the sandy shore with abandon.
Madrigal flew into Eleanor's arms. "Chou saw you from the ferry and just had to see you first. I'm so glad you're here," the girl said breathlessly as she hugged Eleanor. The two were of a similar height… although had she lived a normal mortal life, Madrigal would have been taller. She'd been beaten to death by an abusive "father" at about age thirteen and had always been a shy little thing. About three hundred years old, her heart-shaped face was framed by brown hair.
Micah was about fourteen physically and about ninety years old. He'd died in the ghettos of Warsaw in the early days of World War II. He'd assumed the leadership mantle among the small ones after Ian Daffyd had left them to follow Alisaunne. He was both eldest and youngest of the small group of small ones who had lived at the now-destroyed convent of Ste. Genevieve in Alsace-Lorraine. Dark-haired and athletic… he'd been a born leader. During the ghetto years in Warsaw, he'd learned many things in the Jewish Resistance. He bowed to Eleanor stiffly and then winked as she hugged him as well.
"Welcome home both of you! However did you find our missing smallest one?"
Micah and Madrigal spoke at once, telling of how they'd settled in Armenia for a while and had pretended to be brother and sister. "We hired a woman to be our grandmother," Micah explained. "She never knew too much about us, other than that we were on our own and had money with which to pay her if she just agreed to deal with problems like truancy, school, and the police."
"We lived very quietly and simply," Madrigal added. "She was a dear. I hated leaving her behind when we moved on."
"We were in Macedonia when the tsunami hit," Micah said somberly. "Things were such a mess and travel was next to impossible. We headed south on foot."
"It was only by chance," Madrigal added, "that we saw a news story about a boy rescued at sea by a fishing boat. He'd been caught in a net of fish," she finished laughing.
"Not funny," Chou pouted, but a mischievous grin lay behind the frown and the crossed arms.
"Chou the fish boy!" Micah teased as he tickled the smaller boy. Chou took off running along the path to the village and Micah followed… even picking the smaller immortal up and carrying him for a time before both collapsed in the sand laughing.
Madrigal sighed and looked knowingly at Eleanor. "Boys can be so immature."
Eleanor managed not to snort her amusement. Instead the two linked arms and headed toward the villa. "J.D. and Denis were both devastated. They will be ecstatic to see him back."
"Well we didn't think it smart to leave on display too long. Though those fisherman wanted a small fortune to sell him to us," Madrigal added. When Eleanor looked at her aghast, she broke into laughter. "Ahh… I got you there. No we didn't have to buy him… but it was interesting trying to spirit him out of the hands of authorities. If there hadn't been so many children they were trying to place with families… his face might have ended up on CNN before long. Once we had him, we had to stay hidden and low until we could get to Athens and then use the ferry."
"You might have called," Eleanor chided with a shake of her head.
"Have you tried using the phones?" Madrigal said with a shocked expression. "Besides… it was all a grand adventure. We only found him a little over a week ago. We'd hoped to be back by Christmas… but obviously that didn't happen."
"Not to worry… Adam always preferred New Years gifts," Eleanor replied with a small, secretive smile tinged with memory. Yes… New Years was always the time for presents as far as he was concerned.
Ahead on the path she saw the boys come running, J.D. in the lead and clearly excited. Her son stopped suddenly when he recognized Chou and whatever had sent the three of them charging down from the villa was forgotten in their sudden excitement of having their lost friend back.
By this time Eleanor and Madrigal had caught up with squirming mountain of boys wrestling and laughing on the path.
Once again Madrigal laughed. "Boys," she said dismissively. From the pile, Micah looked at her as if hurt… and then reacted to tickling and returned to laughing and crowing along with the rest of them in that pile.
"Boys… let him breathe!" Eleanor finally laughed. "Let's not suffocate him with such a hearty welcome."
As if her voice had suddenly reminded J.D. why he'd been running to find her, he looked up and paled. "Mom… Dad said to come… now!"
Eleanor froze and glanced toward the villa. She lowered her walls but only a sense of urgency came through from Methos. She took off running. "Marianna," she whispered in fear. Something had happened to Marianna. What else could possibly elicit such urgency for her to return? She left the children behind as she raced hurriedly up the mountain to the villa.
Reaching the terrace, she bent over for a moment to catch her breath and saw Methos emerge from the house looking worried.
"What's happened?"
"Best come see," he said carefully.
She pushed past him into the house, fully expecting to find that Marianna had fallen and broken her neck. Instead she saw her daughter and Denara sitting on the floor and playing. Not to be deterred, Eleanor swooped down on Marianna, lifting her, kissing her and checking her for breaks, scrapes and bruises. There were none. She turned to look quizzically at the somber Methos and sent him her puzzlement.
He sighed and closed the door behind him and then motioned Katherine to take Marianna and Denara away. His walls stayed up.
"Now you're really scaring me," she accused him.
"I just didn't want you to overhear me… or to be alone when you hear," he said softly. He stepped toward her. She backed away.
"What?"
Methos sighed. Clearly this was not going to go down the way he wanted. Finally he seemed to reach a decision and nodded. "Derrick," he said. Eleanor's knees buckled and Methos reached to catch her. "Come… it's on the news." With an arm wrapped protectively about her, he led her into Phillip's study and closed the door.
The television was on and Phillip sat behind his desk thoughtfully stroking his beard.
From the set came a Greek news commentator. "The plane dropped off of radar shortly after takeoff. As of this moment… US and NATO flights have scrambled and are in the air."
Eleanor turned to watch the news loop play out on the set… just stock footage of the type of plane taking off, taxiing and in flight. Slowly the events pierced her fogged brain. Derrick's flight home had vanished… likely it had crashed into the Mediterranean shortly after take-off. A low cry of despair and denial rose from her as she pushed Methos away and began to stumble. Phillip caught her as she half fell and her voice rose to a scream. Methos took her in his arms; his voice trembled. "He's immortal Eleanor. I'm certain he's fine. It's only a plane crash."
"No-o-o-o-o-o!" she screamed and stomped her feet. This couldn't be happening. The room swirled around her and began to tilt. She was lifted into Methos arms where she buried her face in his chest and wailed. In an instant… all the horrors and fears of recent days had come to a head and she had lost all self-control or ability to handle them.
Methos cooed gently to her as he met Phillip's eyes. He gestured the Greek out with a gesture of his head. Phillip nodded and left… again closing the door while Methos placed Eleanor on the sofa and caressed her face. He lifted one hand to check her pulse. Her eyes fluttered open and she started upward… moaning again as her gaze found the television. The news was still the same… and in the openness of her mind he knew she was consumed with images of Derrick… but not the Derrick of today… but visions of small boy lost and alone in the darkness. He took some comfort in that… that she still regarded the young man as a child, and then chided himself for such thoughts.
He leaned closer to her, holding her to his chest as he whispered, "I'm here Eleanor. It will be all right. I didn't want you to be alone when you heard the news. I'm here."
At a creak of the door, he glanced up and saw the figure of Sarah Manning. She smirked slightly and then reached to close the doors. Inwardly he groaned and snarled at the thought of her… but his anger only seemed to make Eleanor shake and wail harder as if his anger were directed at her. Bloody hell, he thought. What is it with her these days? Where is the confident woman I married? But at the heart of it, she was as she had been when she was young… a small waif of a bird… shy and insecure. Perhaps that had always been a part of her… even when she showed a brave face to the world.
He hugged her to him and rocked with her until exhausted she finally slept. In dreams she kept murmuring Derrick's name. Off to one side the television commentator continued her interviews and recapped that news about the lost AlItalia plane bound for Athens.
What the hell had happened?
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