Set in my All That Was Me Is Gone AU. I recommend reading that first, but it isn't absolutely necessary.
The fic cover is a drawing of The Devil's Eye
The opening and closing scenes will be set in my alternate post-apocalyptic future of 2281, and Claire is trying to get back to Jamie in 2079. She thinks reading a certain book might help her to do so. But will it? Let's see!
I hold the book out to him - "May I take this one home, Mr. Wakefield?"
"Oh, Reggie, please," he chuckles, "And of course you may. As I have said – anything to help out Lamb, whatever project he's onto now. You must tell him to come himself next time, it's been far too long since he visited."
He chuckles again, and smiles placidly.
That night, I lock myself in my room, hunching up at my desk so I might inspect the binding more closely.
""Parallel Crossings", by Iona MacTavish", I murmur as I read the words in faded gold leaf along the spine, "Tales From The Crack Of Doom."
Slowly, I open the covers to the title page, and there it is. A larger form of the simplified symbol on the spine that had originally drawn my attention. A seven-turn labyrinth, turned on its side, inside a sort of modified Aegishjalmur rune, until it resembles something like a cross between the feminine symbol, and a stylized, insane eye. It is, quite certainly, the symbol I saw inscribed on the wall of the Devil's Pulpit the day Dougal took me there.
The symbol he had called The Devil's Eye.
In the years since I first fell through the stones, I have learned much regarding the symbolism surrounding the circle of Craigh na Dun, but nothing yet has explained the strange similarity of the Druid term for the planet Venus (Haylel = Star of Morning = the planet Venus = Devil's Eye - Haylel being, according to some, the angelic name for the archangel who became Satan) and the name Dougal gave to this odd symbol. The only other time I have ever seen anything remotely similar to it was when the Druid priestesses purified the glade where Jamie and I were married, with the ashes left on the grass making a rough seven-turn labyrinth, and the nine "offering stones" they put around it – eight on the perimeter, and one in the center – each with a different gemstone placed in a shallow cup scooped into the rock. Lamb hasn't been able to explain either incident to me, and neither has seemed particularly important to unraveling the mystery of the stones as they pertain to me personally. . . until now.
But here is the name of the most mysterious person I saw in the past – Iona MacTavish – in conjunction with the most mysterious symbol I saw there – The Devil's Eye. That must mean something. I feel a little bad about hoarding such a book away from Lamb, even for one night, but if the information is important, I can always tell him tomorrow.
I run a finger over the name on the title page. Iona MacTavish. Geillis never told me her real name, and I never even bothered to ask Master Raymond, certain he would not have told me.
It doesn't much matter now. Or so I suppose. I know as much about her as I reasonably need to know about any stranger, really. She was an historical novelist in the twenty first century, who time traveled to do some of her research.
I shrug. Once you have accepted you are capable of time travel, it seems a not irrational use of the ability, even if I still don't understand why she traveled forward in time so she could research for books about the past. . .
Ah well. Perhaps it is a fiction-writer's prerogative to have an inscrutable method.
Only, she apparently also wrote some non-fiction – if that is what this book is.
I wonder.
I wonder very much. . .
I turn over another page or two. There is no table of contents, the chapters begin immediately after the title page.
I settle more comfortably into my chair, ready for a long night. . .
Parallel Crossings
Garnet
Garnet is the stone of Motivation, of Awakening, of Energy, and of Orientation. It lives under the sign of the North Star. Its colour is Red, and it warms the Heart of Spring. It is the only required Stone of Scrying.
Known replacements – live coals, red berries, menstrual or placental blood, freshly killed animal's blood, red wine, robin's eggs, fish roe, rabbit's fur or bones, holy water, red spinels, red glass, hematite, iron, steel, magnets, flint, jet, sard, and rubies.
"Where kinsfolk gather, there all things have their beginning." - Fiona Lewis, Thirty-First Oldmother of Dunhill Cray
When I wake up at dawn, Rel is already gone. He left a stone on the ground beside my head, so I know he is gone to the river for fish. Had it been a leaf, it would have meant he was in the hills hunting ryx or red deer – a twig, the woods for honey, berries and greens – a blade of grass, the fields where the wildgrass grows thick and lush, with their heavy heads full of seeds. I throw aside the large ryx hide that covers us at night, and jump up to stir the coals of last night's fire into life again. I feed the fire sticks of dead wood, and balance a large pot on the two stones Rel brought from the riverside and leaned together, to make a small platform for cooking that the fire would heat, but could not reach up and burn.
I feel underneath the lid of my willow basket for the small flint knife Rel gave me for a joining present. I test the edge with my thumb, and smile. I have never had such a good blade before. What it must have cost him in rabbit pelts, I dare not guess.
I sing as chop leafy greens, thick roots, and smoke-dried fish into the pot, and stir it together with some crystalline-clean water Rel fetched from the spring in the hills yesterday. I sing of the flowers I picked for Rel and I before our joining ritual four moon-turns ago. I sing of the life we both hope is now living in my belly. I sing of the strength of Rel's kisses, and the brightness of our nights together.
"Such bird-screeching I've never heard!" grumbles Uro as he shoulders past our small palisade and sits down comfortably on one of the large stones Rel has placed a little distance from the fire.
"Now then, father," I grin at him, "You won't enjoy your food if you fuss too much."
He isn't Rel's true father – both of his parents went to the ancestors long since – but he was a true and valued friend of Rel's mother. In fact, there were many who were surprised that she chose to join with Rel's father instead of Uro.
Regardless, we reverence him, and he has first portion of everything at our fire.
I ladle the hot stew into a wooden bowl for him, and hand him our best shell to eat it with. It's a wide oyster shell from the coast. I paid three blocks of good, clean clay to a westbound trader for it and five others just like it, six season-turns ago. Besides my seeds and roots collection, they are my most valued possessions. Uro sips delicately for a minute out of over-exaggerated politeness, his eyes twinkling, but then he abandons all pretense, and begins to shovel it into his mouth as quickly as possible.
I laugh at him, but also shake my head, half bemused at his crudity, but also half flattered he likes my food so well.
Behind him, the gate in our palisade is slowly pushed open, a great humped figure staggering though.
"Rel!" I cry, and run to him.
His burden is a large red deer, the first of the season. Meat! It has been many moon-turns since anyone in our tribes has had fresh meat. I help him wrestle the fat buck over to the braced wooden frame where we hang all our food, to drain and to dry. I am glad to see the fine pelt and good antlers – Rel needs a new tunic, and I need a new pick-ax. By the look of the beast, there might even be some fat cuts left over to trade for flint, or fine herbs.
Rel carefully wipes the blood from his hands before turning to me.
"Cha!" he says, softly, and pulls me to him.
I will never grow tired of this – the feeling of his mouth upon mine, the slow caress of his hands all over me, the press and warmth of his body through our tunics. I will never get enough of it, nor will I ever forget how often in the past days we have sneaked away, in the very middle of our day's labour, down to that quiet, sheltered dell near the river, and how our tunics lay on the ground, prisoning a large cushion of fresh wildgrass that we crushed under bare, flashing limbs, and how the other grass all around grew up and made a perfect nest, hiding us from the sight of all but the birds. Not that we need to hide our passions, of course, but the secrecy has been fun – a game - though naturally we have fooled nobody. Our joining ritual was witnessed by everyone from both of our combined tribes, my own tribe choosing to stay here in the north for a season especially for us. I only brought a small dowry of pelts and flints, but I also possess knowledge of the uses of herbs – knowledge I have learned from my mother and grandmother. And so I was deemed worthy enough for one such as Rel – even though he is fine figure of a man, and I am small and plain, even though he stands to inherit the Headman's place when his mother's brother dies, and I am only the daughter of a common southern huntsman, even though our Headman's son has wanted me since my first moon-bleed. . .
Rel releases my mouth and smiles at me, "Foolish beast was wandering near the river, slow and fat with spring shoots," he jerks his head in the direction of the deer, "Got it with my ax." He hefts the polished flint blade set in a stout length of wood, and pulls away from me, regarding the dead animal with somewhat more than the usual reverence. "Do you think, perhaps, it was sent to us? To be an offering for tonight?"
"Tonight?" I echo, bewildered.
"Ay. Has the old man not told you?" he crosses his arms and looks at Uro.
"Hmmph," Uro grunts around a fragment of fish, "Haven't hardly had the chance, and what with the pair of ye pawing at each other-"
Rel snorts, "Oh ay, excuses!" Then he smiles and turns to me, "The Stone is finished."
"Ohhh," I nod, understanding.
Our tribes have encountered each other often enough before – usually in the same way as Rel and I met, at a crossroads festival, to trade goods and gossip – and find spouses, obviously. But twelve season-turns ago, our Headman sent five warriors up north here to help fend off an invasion of wolves that had come down from the mountains to escape a dire winter. Eighteen pelts in total they had garnered, and our tribes have been fast friends ever since. Ten season-turns ago, both Headmen chose to set up a monument stone on nearby sacred hill, for the memory of our friendship, triumph, and good fortune. It has taken until now for the stone to be chosen, worked, transported, and set up – all of which are arts I do not understand or possess. But it is finished now, and now we must offer appreciation for it. It is good timing, because the seasons are on the turn, and soon my parents' tribe will go back south, and my new tribe will move along its spring route to the north, following the migration of red deer along the river valleys.
With the side of his foot, Rel scrapes a little pile of dust underneath the still-draining slit in the deer's neck. Most of the blood he'll have already given back to the land when he gave thanks for the deer down at the riverside – this dust will help congeal the dregs into an easily transportable lump for us to offer to the Stone at sundown.
After serving Rel some stew, and swallowing some myself, I take my worn pick-ax and a large bag, made from a red deer skin that was steeped for five or six moon-turns in a bog, then scraped and treated until it became both strong and supple, and go to dig the good water-roots that grow in the marshy meadows between the two lines of hills that define our spring shelter-valley.
I'm all day in the ponds and tussocky fields, gathering roots and catching fish, harvesting the spring greens that are shooting up everywhere, and even collecting some new-sprouting herbs to replenish my depleted winter stock, until I notice the sun hanging low in the West, and gather my things together to go home.
Rel and Uro meet me just outside our little palisade, Uro carrying the reddish, claylike lump of red deer blood, wrapped in a large handful of dried grass stalks.
Rel takes my day's gatherings, and goes back inside our enclosure for a minute. I hear the heavy bag settle into my largest willow basket, and then there are a few shufflings and splashings, and then Rel is back out with us again. He hands me a small willow bark cup full of clean water, a strip or two of dried meat, and two lumps of last winter's baked roots, preserved in fat.
I smile at him, and eat while we walk to the sacred place of Dunhill Cray.
It is not a large hill – not to the eyes of anyone who has seen the great northern mountains – but here in the river valleys, it rises well above the small rolling tussocks and occasional cold grey boulder. It is the only spot for miles around that is clear enough of the trees, and wide and flat enough to look at the stars to any purpose. The only place where the great ladle in the sky can seen in its entirety, and the Guidestar can tell each Headman which way he must lead his people to get them home. It is where all our journeys north will begin, and where all our journeys south will end.
I have been there many times, but never to climb it, nor to leave an offering. Both of those will be a first for me tonight.
Nearly all of both Rel's and my tribes are gathered beneath a stand of trees about two stone-casts from the hill. We join them, murmuring and gesturing soft hellos at people we know while we wait for our Headmen to begin. . . whatever tonight's ceremony will be.
I wander to the edge of the stand of trees, and look up at the wide, bare hill that now bears one gray pillar of stone around the rim of its peak. Our tribe's new Greatstone. It seems so small at this distance, though I know it is at least as tall as a man – even a man such as Rel – and probably somewhat taller.
The sun slips ever lower in the sky, tinting everything a fiery orange-red.
I look up at the now glowing pier of rock, and feel my heart swell in my body.
There is such a lonesomeness to the scene – a sort of casual aloofness that feels far less like braggery than it does an instinctive self-defense.
Which is a strange thing to say about a place, or a thing.
But that rock – knows. It knows it is dangerous, and it knows we ought to keep away.
Suddenly, I want to take Rel and Uro and flee back to our little enclosed shelter-circle, sit round the fire with dried berries and warmhoney, and go peacefully and harmlessly to sleep, letting the great bowl of the stars rotate around us all night long, unacknowledged.
Surely, our tribes have made their journeys so many times - they must know the ways by now? Surely they do not need the pointing of the only fixed star in the sky, do they?
The red light of the sky deepens, and now the hillside and stone look drenched in blood.
I shiver, though the night is not yet cold.
What is that stone? What have they done to it?
And worse, what will it do to us?
Uro comes up beside me and hands me a horn cup full of warmhoney. As I sip it, the drums begin, and the deep, wordless chanting our men do on holy occasions. Our two headmen lead the way, and slowly, one by one, the rest of us follow, up the side of the hill, and in front of the newly placed Stone.
Rel breaks the clot of blood-soaked dust into three pieces, and hands one to both Uro and me. He chants along with the other men, his deep voice rumbling on the lowest notes. Then he and Uro begin to climb their way up the hillside, keeping up the chanting, in time with the rolling of the drums.
All bright color is gone from the hillside now, the chill of night following quickly on the heels of sundown, save on the very top edge of the Stone, where the natural curve of the boulder makes the whole thing look like a worked and polished flint, with blood on the blade.
I clutch my clot of red deer's blood, and reluctantly follow Rel and Uro up the side of the hill.
It is an easy climb, but slow, since we all must file past the Stone to leave our gifts there. As I approach, I observe the growing pile of things left at the foot of it, as they always are to any Greatstone – piled willy-nilly, and all rolling about, to symbolize abundance. Last season's dried berries, late Blueshell eggs, bones and fur and bowls of blood, blocks of unworked red clay, and some clots of blood like mine. As I get closer, I can see a very few have placed tiny flakes of deep red crystals in a wide semi-circle around the main pile. In the near dark of twilight they look almost black, but two people with torches have joined us on the hill top, and every now and then a stray flicker of light flashes across a crystalline surface. I throw my blood offering onto the pile, and look up at the clean-cloven stone – the well worked face of rock. My eyes reach the top just as the torches are quenched, and the women take up our ritual sharp ululation for death of the setting sun. As I join in the heart-wrenching wails, I lift my my eyes to the sky at last, and there is the Guidestar, pale and glimmering, the only fixed point in all the over-heaven. . .
My heart is filled with great foreboding. I back away from the Stone as quickly as I might, winning clear of the groups of my still-wailing tribe-kin about the center of the hilltop, and then. . .
Then. . .
I am not sure how, or what, but I think a great branch of light, as I have sometimes seen in the midst of great storms, plummets down and strikes me, out of the clear night sky. My body shakes, as though I have been run into by a charging ryx, and my vision goes white, as though I have looked at the sun reflected in the water of a pond.
My mind seems to float, separate from my body, and then I see a new scene before me – one I can hear and see, but cannot touch, nor do they seem to see me. It is a milling group of people, much like me, but wearing skins on their bodies of colours I never knew existed, some so thin I do not understand how they keep them from flying off their bodies in the slightest wind. Some hold bags on their backs, and cups in their hands, but they all wear strange things on their feet that completely block their toes, and make it impossible to properly grip the earth. I do not know how any of these people can walk without falling over. There is distant thudding music, and from somewhere a voice shouts - "Welcome to the Inverness Scottish Highland Festival, Twenty Seventeen!". The people around me begin to cheer, and to do something that makes many small but very bright flashes of light happen all across the hilltop. I look wildly around, and call for Rel, but my voice is thrown back upon me so decidedly that I do not try again. I look around some more, and see that there are many Stones around me, not just the one.
My heart speeds up in a panic. I do know know where I am, or what is happening.
In desperation, I look up at my Stone again, searching for the Guidestar, hoping it might bring me home.
But all I see is the bright blue sky of day, streaked over with two long, thin, straight clouds, in perfect parallel, like two twigs placed deliberately side-by-side.
I have never seen clouds like that.
How do you get clouds like that?
"Cha!" I hear my voice through the vision, "Cha!"
My body shakes again, and there is Rel's face, looking down at me as at last I break out of that daze or dream, or whatever it was.
"Cha!" he calls again, desperately, "Wake up! Come back to me!"
With a shudder, I cling onto him, and begin to weep into his tunic.
I don't know how the Headmen ended the ritual, I only know that we are more than halfway back to our camp, walking slowly, before I can speak again.
"What happened?" asks Rel, running one finger gently down my cheek, then leaning over to kiss me while we walk.
I shrug, "I don't know. There was a – a shock – and. . . and then. . ."
"And then. . . what?"
"I don't know. Something. . ."
"Something terrible?"
"No. I don't think so. Something just. . . un-explainable. There were people, but they weren't there – or I wasn't there – and they were unlike any people I have ever seen before."
I shiver, and huddle close to Rel, though at least the night is cold now, "It was as though, for a moment, I saw an entirely different world – one I am not sure I was ever meant to see."
Rel chuckles a bit, and picks me up, bundling me into our little enclosure, all safe and sound. "Nonsense love," he says, "Everything is meant, for one reason or another."
I hum a bit, unsure of that, but I don't argue. He tucks me in under the ryx hide, and brings me another small portion of warmhoney – to "make sure I sleep" - he says.
Our stock is getting low – we must make sure to gather some hives as we travel north. We can just as easily ferment the honey at our summer enclave. I mumble this to him, even as I finish what he gave me.
"Yes yes," he says, gently brushing my hair back off my forehead, "But for now – sleep."
"Will you hold me?"
"But of course."
He eases underneath the ryx hide with me, and enfolds me in his big, warm embrace. At last, I relax.
"Rel?"
"Yes, love?"
"Promise me we will never go up that horrible hill again?"
Instantly and fervently, he promises.
But if my dreams that night are anything to go by, I'm not quite sure that his promise is the one that really counts. . .
